I definitely don't go for the sites, and guided tours (except for kicky walking tours like London Walks or the Irreverant Cemetary Tour in Eureka NV) blow. I DO like history, art and historical sites...as long as I can encounter them on my own. For example, I got very excited when I realized the bump in the road I was walking on was an old Roman town wall (London) or walked into a performance of the world's oldest jazz band while looking for a drink (Shanghai).

The things I really relish and remember about travel are usually little things - being surprised by a familiar thing done in a very different way, learning words in another language, beautiful, odd or horrifyingly ugly sights, making friends with people who aren't just like me, participating in life that's a few degrees off from what I'm used to.

I do have a few fond memories of some tourist sites - drinking homemade tequila atop the Pyramid of the Sun, dashing illegally out into the middle of Stonehenge when a sudden downpour sent everyone else (including security) running inside....

I've given up trying to explain why I travel. I do it, I enjoy it, and that settles it.

La

quote:

The things I really relish and remember about travel are usually little things - being surprised by a familiar thing done in a very different way, learning words in another language, beautiful, odd or horrifyingly ugly sights, making friends with people who aren't just like me, participating in life that's a few degrees off from what I'm used to.

Well said.

Exactly! La Rosser nails it, as usual.

Why do I travel? What's better about being "somewhere else" than being at home? I can't put it any more succinctly than this:

It's different, therefore not boring.

EDIT/ADDITION: Whoops. Sights and shit? Yeah, whatever. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Depends. No guilt or shame felt.

quote:

Originally posted by Eowyn218:
I think the root, basic reason I travel, is because of the feeling it gives me - no responsibilities, freedom, the feeling of life...

I think this, in essence, is why I travel.

In terms of sight seeing - yeh, I try to see the sites which genuinely interest me, but I learnt long ago that you don't have to feel guilty on passing on something which is a) in the guidebook or b) raved about by everyone.

I am sure Siam Reap is lovely. But all that way? For a temple?

It's your time and your money afterall.

Why travel? I guess I just didn't fit into the 'normal' lifestyle. I didn't get what was so great about working in a job which was 'okay' to pay the mortgage on a flat which was 'nice'. And especially not doing that for the next 40+ years.

But I am one of those people who is looking for new things all the time anyway. Who wants to try everything out there. Even whilst in my 'okay' job I was always attending night classes, going away for weekends, experimenting.

When I go back home I don't see myself falling back into the 9-5 thing. Travelling, and distance, gives you good perspective on the things which are important to you.

Plus, I come from a large family and a close network of people I have known for years. I find you can get constrained by the way other people (and you yourself) expect you to be and behave. Being on the road, in a transient lifestyle, you have more freedom to be who you want to be.

And finally, I travel because it gives me the excuse to do all the things that I could have easily done back home but could never seem to fit in on the weekends. Off paragliding tomorrow.

KPG

I'm a huge sucker for history and museums.

I'm also a sucker for geology, botany, and food.

A feel a place is more than just the people and their food. The difference between British Columbia and Great Britain, or the US and a US military base, is fundamentally one of history and place.

quote:

Originally posted by CaesarRomanus:
I'm a huge sucker for history and museums.

I'm also a sucker for geology, botany, and food.

A feel a place is more than just the people and their food. The difference between British Columbia and Great Britain, or the US and a US military base, is fundamentally one of history and place.

Yeah - but you don't have to go to a museum to experience this. With some exceptions, when you're inside a museum you could be anywhere in the world.

KPG

quote:

With some exceptions, when you're inside a museum you could be anywhere in the world.

That's why I think things should be in museums in the country they came from... None of this going to London to see Egyptian ruins baloney. Touring shows are fine, since not everyone can travel to see historical relics, but if a country wants its stuff back (from, say, the British Museum), they should get their stuff back...

Sorry, - I'm done with my rant now.

I think there's no such thing as a shallow way of behaving as a traveler. There's so much to take in from each destination. Every place is so rich and how you choose to approach it is going to offer just one side of many that destination has to offer. If you wander around town from street food stall to another (a very honorable way of traveling if you ask me) you're going to get a completely different experience - but just as worthy and just as true to the place you’re traveling in - than the person who's hopping from museum to museum.

I myself am also a sucker for the history, the landmarks and the museums. I guess I like to get a glimpse of how that place and how that people came to be. For me, past is as important as present. Something like what Calvino put it in Invisible Cities: "the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait in the foreign and unrecognizable places".

But I have travel moods too. Sometimes I just don't feel like going inside museums and just want to wander around, sit in a suburban café with a newspaper in a language I don't understand. The important thing is to take in your destination in a way that is true to both yourself and the place.

I was bored at the Louvre too. And I hated the crowds around Mona Lisa and the other popular art exhibits. My stand-out memory of the Louvre is this woman screaming at my ear, to her friend, a scant metre away, to come have a better look at the Mona Lisa.

My favourite travel memories include the 'lost days' as someone aptly put it. Angkor Wat was impressive but my favourite memory of Cambodia was playing with the children in the floating school in Tonle Sap Lake. As for Paris, the best moment for me in Paris was eating ice cream and wandering around the streets of Paris in the middle of the night with a bunch of newly found Parisian friends. And like Eowyn, visiting the forests, nature in other countries means so much more to me than museums,etc..

I'm not sure why I travel either but sometimes, opportunities come up and I am compelled to travel to a certain place. I don't really like itineraries -- I often go with an idea of which places to see but sometimes plans change and am ok with that. Rather like life back home anyway! Just different scenery.

I think you're on to something here. Joe.

I, too, have the experience of eyes glazing over in "history" museums. But I find that it's really because they're not about history, they're about archaeology. With only a couple of exceptions, the museums I've visited while travelling comment on their artifacts as "clay shard, found at (location), c.(date)," which tells me absolutely nothing of any interest. The key component of history is "story," without that, it's just old stuff. Very few museums tell stories at all, fewer still actually bring those stories to life.

And I do like history, so I can probably get more into those sorts of things than you can, but I need some real background knowledge...I have taken a couple of university history courses, and, particularly in the ground I covered on my last trip, that knowledge really filled out the historic sites.

For tours, you've also hit the nail on the head. Most tours suck. But I keep doing them, because every now and then I get a gem that terribly informative and engaging. Usually these tours involve the word "walk" somewhere in the title.

But when it comes to why I travel. Well, like you said, it's because I like to. But I like to because I hate routine, but it's impossible to stay in one place all the time and not form some kind of routine. More than that, being outside of an ingrained routine, I do things that I simply wouldn't at home - talk to strangers, go kayaking, take up random lunch invitations from that guy I met on the bus, maybe learn a thing or two.

And there's challenge to it. Life is dull without challenges, you can't have anything to look forward to. Coming back to routine, there's not much challenge in doing exactly the same thing you do every other day.

Bleh...what I wouldn't do to be off again.

(On a side note, I finally found a part of the Louvre I liked - it only took three tries. It just requires heading in the exact opposite direction from the Mona Lisa.)

I enjoy some museums, but like most of you, relate more to the personal aspect of it. For example, the British museum was fascinating to me when I saw one of the original signed Magna Carta documents - looking at that made a piece of history come alive for me.

The most important part of travel to me is that it ignites my imagination. Preparing for a trip allows me to anticipate and dream about someplace that is outside the realm of my everyday life. And the actual travel is where those reveries come alive for me. It's a desire for change - for surprise - for new experiences.

I also think a desire to explore is built into some people. I know of many who have no real wish or need to experience new places, and I'm sure you do too. Those are the same people that take the same route to work every day and eat at the same restaurants. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think it is an innate personal trait in some people.

I also think that generally that is why most travelers are liberals (with some exceptions, obviously). It seems that most conservatives tend to veer towards the status quo - a more traditionalist view - whereas a liberal likes heading out into uncharted political waters.

You know, before I travel I always get very excited about the sights. And then when I get there, I don't find myself enjoying them nearly as much as I thought I would. In fact, about half the time I'm worrying about not enjoying them even though I was so excited. Odd, huh?

Example: The Alhambra. I think it will be the highlight of my Spain trip. Sure, it's beautiful. But the beauty is lost when you walk down a steep hill and have to walk back up not knowing that that ISN'T part of the park, then are not sure where to enter it (the Alhambra wins the worst signage award, by the way), then when you get to it there are so many tourists it could be Walt Disney World, and you're running out of time, and those tourists won't let you examine more thoroughly the walls, etc...they need pictures of themselves, etc., the audioguide is horrible and they don't provide with any other written information, probably because they want you to buy a guide that's probably going to be expensive from the bookstore, etc.

But if I actually spend some time at a historical "sight" rather than take a picture and check it off and try to understand its significance vs. all the other places I usually am, it helps.

Though I must say I really wish I could enjoy sights more than I do. Especially monument - type places.

On the other hand, I've always liked museums. Especially ones with a lot of variety. The Prado was great, but nowhere near as interesting as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, simply because the latter had so much of a variety. Likewise, I love archaeological museums like the one in Granada or Madrid that go period-by-period.

In the Old Town area of Alexandria, VA, there's a house that has a sign on it that says something like "On this spot in 1859, absolutely nothing happened".

quote:

"On this spot, something very important happened long ago"

This is precisely the type of thing that facinates me as a traveller.

Me, too.
I love it. I love thinking about the people walking there before me, and how long ago that was. Especially as a Californian, where our history is very, very recent.

For example, though I lived in Sevilla 10 years ago, I never went to the Alcazar, a "site." I did this time, and I absolutely loved it. It was like a mini, serene Alhambra. I didn't go before because I was living there and it wasn't what locals did. Boo to me.

There are disappointments, too (see: Montserraut), but those are far fewer, to me.

(and, FWIW, when I revisit places I have been before, I think of who I was the last time I was there, and "very important things that happened long ago" on that spot ).