Just the other day, I read a “travel tips” article that talked about how to be a traveler, rather than a tourist, and tips for how to best experience a new place. I can’t find the article now (of course), but one of the tips was something like “Get to the highest point possible — after all, you want the first photo you share on social media to be a great landscape, and it’s a great way to get a scope of the land.” Anyway, I’ve seen multiple “travel tips” articles like this and I thought perhaps it’d be nice to do one of my own, based on my travel experiences.
Here’s the thing: it’s great to be a traveler, but it’s also great to be a tourist sometimes. There’s a reason that certain attractions are popular; often, they’re a once-in-a-lifetime experience that you shouldn’t so easily pass up just to avoid seeming like a tourist. So I’m not sure I buy into the whole “be a traveler, not a tourist” thing — that’s really just going off the negative connotations of the word “tourist,” and I’m pretty meh about that.
Alas, without further ado… my traveler/tourist (how about both?!) tips:
thoughts of Melissa 