Skip to main content

To sit at a café and watch visitors from all over the world pass before you is better than any beauty competition.

Some people are truly awed, happy to see something that is nothing like their home and, sometimes, they are joyed to simply not be home. You can tell by their open-faced smile. They feel privileged to be there, and it doesn’t matter how many thousands of people have been here before them. For instance, I felt nothing but a thrill to see the Lion Gate at Mycenae Palace. Similarly to glimpse ancient paint high on a pillar in the Nile Valley and let’s not even discuss the toilets at Philippi. I was like a dog wagging its tail. Visitors like me, walk slowly, breath slowly, they even move our eyes slowly, all in fear of missing something, anything.

Others are less happy. They prefer to take some good photos to show people back home or maybe bag a bargain. They want to see what is on offer to them. What they might extract from a place. They walk faster than the awed visitor, jut from place to place anxious not to miss something that might just make the visit worthwhile.

The worst visitors are the bored ones. They quickly assess that the place is not like their home, which, from their point of view, is to be expected, because nowhere is as good as their home. They look at their watches, scan across the restaurants and cafes to find a good place to waste some time until they move on. Every step in their itinerary takes them closer to home which is really where they want to be.

Which kind of visitor are you?


A cyclist on a penny-farthing bike in London receives little attention

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We're all foreigners somewhere

  Most of us don’t think of ourselves as foreigners, even when we’re overseas. We believe that we are one with the wider group. After all, foreigners are something else, they are the people who don’t belong. I remember the first time I realised I was be an outsider. My British Caledonian flight to Zambia had landed in Lusaka and, when I looked out onto the tarmac, none of the ground staff looked like me. It gave me a thrill but also a sense of vulnerability. These people were not my people and I wondered if I would be safe among them. That thought prompted another – this is how visitors to my own country must feel. They are outnumbered, and their dress, skin colour, hair, any number of things, mark them out and perhaps leave them open to hostility. I have to say that I met no hostility in Zambia. Instead, my social skills grew as I learned to reach out to the people I lived among. Perhaps I did it to fit in, to ensure that I was less of a foreigner. I didn’t anticipate feeling ...
Post a Comment
Read more
 Travel solo - common scams Street sellers - never let anyone give you a bracelet, heather, lavender, etc. or drape anything over your shoulder. You will be charged for the 'gift'. Simply refuse to take it or put it straight back into their hands and keep walking. Do not stop. A more extreme example is when someone thrusts a baby in your arms and they riffle through your pockets. Yell for help, loudly. Fake police - if you are asked in the street for your passport, do not hand over any documents. If they say they are the police then tell them your passport is in the hotel safe. If they say you have done something wrong, do not pay a fine in the street. Ask for identification and tell them you will call the police to check their identification. Do not offer to accompany them anywhere, stay in a public spot and find a real police officer. An accidental distraction - if you feel something hit your shoulder or back and a kind stranger tells you it's bird poo or sauce, do not ac...
Post a Comment
Read more
If no one ever left home Think of a world where no one ever travelled. One where we knew all our neighbours, our landscapes, and we shared the same philosophy on life. In this world we would know nothing of what lay over a hillside, behind a mountain or across the sea. Some people in this world, they are perfectly happy here.   Personally, I feel smothered even writing that description. Travel is as much about considering new ideas as it is about taking a photo or buying a t-shirt. My first trip overseas was magical although perhaps not in some people's eyes. I travelled from Scotland to Greece by bus - four days of looking out of the window onto a foreign world, my very own vista. It was dawn when we reached the Greek border, the hillsides were golden and, as I looked around, I would not have been surprised to see a shepherd and his nymphs frolicking downhill toward me. No matter the long bus journey, I had arrived into a magical land. The children of The Lion, the Witch and ...
Post a Comment
Read more