When asked what I like to see or what I did on a one of my trips, it sounds like all I do is eat snacks at roadside carts, travel by bus and visit markets. I do not go for "the sights".

Everybody has a different set of reasons why they travel, I suppose. After my last trip, I have come home not really knowing why I travel any more. I mean, I still like it, but have no good reasons to explain it. If pressed, the only thing reason that I can come up with is that "I like to".

Here is a typical guidebook entry (place names changed to protect the innocent):

"Also referred to as the Great Unwashed Temple, it is a three-storeyed temple in the principal market called Stan Key Finger. The divine image of the Abashed Angrab is displayed outside for a week -long period during the great festival of Kinda Tatra. The celebration of Kinda Tatra honors Kinda- the King of Soup cons and the God of Broth."

Perhaps if I had studied ancient history, architecture or art history or religion in college, I would be a lot more impressed. Or even somewhat interested.

To be honest, all this wondrous ancient stuff is lost on me, and the snippets of background history that I do read are only out of the Rough Guide; certainly not advanced collegiate studies. Put me in a history museum and my eyes glaze over within 30 minutes. ("Oh joy! More clay pottery shards!") I'll admit to being bored at Topkapi Palace. I was even bored at the Louvre. I admit it, I am shallow. And yes, I feel very guilty, ashamed and whiny.

Day tours, tourist office brochures and guidebooks often assume that a typical tourist wants only to see cathedrals, temples, churches, mosques, museums and, for some reason "typical folk dancing". I want none of those things. On the other hand, I do not even know why I travel anymore.

What about you? Do you do relish the historic sights? Or do they bore you? Am I the only dullard here?

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Day tours, tourist office brochures and guidebooks often assume that a typical tourist wants only to see cathedrals, temples, churches, mosques, museums and, for some reason "typical folk dancing". I want none of those things. On the other hand, I do not even know why I travel anymore.

Very interesting post.

So here at the college the students like to get plenty of sightseeing in before they go back to Korea. Some of the things that they do include canoing through a beautiful waterfall and horseback riding out in Tagaytay near Taal volcano. There's also beaches and snorkling at some spots that are AWESOME sights. Most of my Korean students for some reason are not good swimmers or flat out afraid of water, and still go and have a great time. In other words, it's easy. There is also cheap scuba diving here. Get certified in three days and go to some hot spots.

Yeah, this is the Philippines, but aren't there things like this everywhere?

I never- oops- almost never visit temples or chruches or anything like that. I do like museums, my eyes don't glaze over there, but most of the students here don't like that kind of stuff.

I think that people with hobbies tend to enjoy travel. Example, photography, ocean lovers, history lovers...I happen to collect people. This country you could never be finsihed meeting people and visiting interesting houses.

I also enjoy being an Enlgish teacher because the relationships that I'm making are quite meaningful.
Ask yourself what you *really* like. Is it the people? If there is a way you find people you trust in different locales, then there's your angle.

Me, I like beautiful scenery and learning more about how people live.[Warning: repeat experience]: I went to Mindoro over the first of the year and stayed with a very poor family we had no running water or elec. We were surrounded by incrdeible rice fields and animals. It was breathtaking. So I learned a lot more about what it takes to survive and how I adapt, and how I'm awed with beauty.
This experience definitely will shape my future experience choices.

Maybe you're ready for something different and slash or more meaningful? I don't know. But get to know yourself, what do you really like the best in life?

I think it's awesome to ask the question, 'why do I travel?'
If you figure out why, then your next trip will be the greatest one of all.

You are not alone Static. I am with you 100%. However I don't feel guilty or ashamed....whiny, yes.

I also agree with jedi. The scenery and seeing how people live up close is a big thing for me. Nightlife is important too.

Hmmm, there must be something you like or you wouldn't travel anymore. For me - I love the novelty. I have only been traveling once, so perhaps that is it. I love the museums, the archaeological sites, the culture, the people, the sights, the beauty.... I think most of all I love seeing beautiful things. Things that you would never see at home. However, I do love the culture and history too. I just love traveling .

I like going to historical sights, but I like history. Usually I have to have some backgrond knowledge of a place before I'll really be impressed with it.

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To be honest, all this wondrous ancient stuff is lost on me...I'll admit to being bored at Topkapi Palace. I was even bored at the Louvre. I admit it, I am shallow. And yes, I feel very guilty, ashamed and whiny.

I don't think it's shallow - I think you're just a lot more honest than a lot of travellers who feel the same way but won't admit it.

This is a great thread and I don't have a whole lot to add except that I'm not a big "sight" person either.

I think it's not only fun but also gives insight to just be a foreigner somewhere.

I hear ya on the museum thing. For history-type museums (pottery, old weapons, etc), I can last maybe 30 minutes, then I've seen enough. For an art museum, it can stretch to 2 hours max. There are so many other things I'd rather do (like walk around the city/town), and that's why I tend to skip them altogether. As for old stuff, I DO like some old buildings, and I like ruins. I can appreciate the history. But half of it also is the context the ruin is in -- beauty is what I seek, so a ruin in the middle of the countryside or on the edge of the cliff or in the middle of nowhere I LOVE - a ruin surrounded by modern stuff loses its appeal.

I think the root, basic reason I travel, is because of the feeling it gives me - no responsibilities, freedom, the feeling of life - it makes me feel connected to the universe. Tied to that is my desire to seek natural, beautiful places -- the wilderness, and away from people and modern civilization. To be completely honest, I don't travel for the culture, and I don't travel to meet people - those are just secondary. Yes, I can *appreciate* culture and beautiful buildings and good food.

But I travel to just BE, exist, and I travel because I'm passionate about the living world around us, and I want to soak as much of it in before we destroy it. Purely selfish reasons for traveling. It makes me happy. Forests, sunsets, lakes, mountains, animals, birds, vast landscapes within foreign countries..will always rank higher in meaning to me than the towns I happen to visit while I'm in that country. And cultures that are *part* of their natural environment, and co-exist in harmony with it, really appeal to me as well.

While I do occasion some of those popular site seeing things, I agree with you static, that is not why I travel.

While on the road, I sent home a couple of group emails and here is one of my entries that sort of summed my feelings up at the time (this was under a FAQ section):

"Q: SO, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO ALL DAY?
Below is a breakdown of the 4 basic kinds of days we experience.

1. Travel Days (20 %) : airplane , train, bus, ferry, donkey taksi, you name it. If advertised travel time is 2 hours, it takes 5hrs... a 6 or 7 hour trip takes 12 hours. There is always a delay or "connection" they
don't tell you about. Aside from the scenery, these days suck!!!

2. Sightseeing Days (35%): On these days we act like(try to put up with the...) tourists and frolic among historically significant things.

3. Sick Days (3%): any detailed explanation would not be pleasant

4. Lost Days (52%) : ???


Q: WAIT…WHAT IS A LOST DAY?

These are the days that fall into the unknown abyss and are our favorite just for that fact. We've killed off entire days watching children play, feeding stray animals and staring at trees. "



OK, I dont condone feeding stray animals as I look back at this but you get the idea. What people at home would probably call Lost Days because they are not "productive" are precisely the reason I travel. It is a moment in time, a feeling, that cannot be explained to those who have not experienced true freedom before.

This is an interesting discussion because I think a lot of us here fall into this category. I think the more a person travels the harder it's going to be to "impress" them with the checklist attractions. An example I use for this is when taking the trains around Western Europe (or anywhere really) you stop in a city where the touted attraction is its cathedral, but when you see it you realize it's the 17th most impressive cathedral you've seen...in the last month.

When I visit somewhere for the first time I tend to hit most of the checklist attractions, but often it's out of general curiosity more than fascination with that particular thing. I'm often pleasantly surprised by some things, but if you are honest with yourself you have to admit that many of these attractions can be disappointing as well.

I consider myself a bit of a modern-day anthropologist when I travel. I have almost no interest in souvenirs, but I love to walk through grocery stores to see what they sell, look at the packaging, and check out the prices and such. I used to love going through record stores back when people bought CDs because it was interesting to see what the top sellers are in Singapore vs. Berlin. Little things like that fascinate me.

And I've thought about the main question a lot myself through the years and I think the reason I love traveling has a lot to do with the memories of doing it. Sometimes I can wander around a foreign city for an entire day without cracking a smile once, but two years later I remember that day vividly and it gives me a strange sense of pleasure.

So I can buy a flatscreen TV for $1,000 and I'll have it for 5 or 10 years, or I can fly to Buenos Aires for $1,000 and remember that trip for the rest of my life.

I think most of us here have reasons we love travel that have little to do with things like seeing the Mona Lisa in person.

I have to laugh at this, I guess. Judging by your list, I'd be the "typical tourist" - though that's not how I see myself. (Mais, c'est la vie...)

I absolutely visit "cathedrals, temples, churches, mosques" and other spiritual sites. I do this both at home and abroad, but I'm a spiritual person who once was a scholar of religion - in terms of philosophy, geography, iconography, sociology, etc, etc. I'm the kind of person who'll research for ages in order to ascertain the symbolism behind the specific direction Ganesha's trunk happens to point; I'm the kind of person who'll (inwardly) jump up and down upon encountering an icon of Lakshmi in the National Museum in Naples amongst the artifacts from Pompeii. (I mean, can you imagine - Lakshmi at Pompeii?!) I'm just a geek like that - and I admit it. My travel interests will probably always relate in some fashion to religion - whether physical manifestations such as spiritual sites, or manifestations of lived religion such as rituals, celebrations and superstitions.

As for seeing how people live and understanding cultures on their own terms... I think diving into a culture's religious sites and practices is a great way to do that. It's not the only way, true, but it's certainly one way.

That said, I have quite a low tolerance for non-religious-oriented museums.

I admit, I'm one of those people who stood in the middle of the Pantheon on Rome and was overcome by the thought of all the people who'd stood there before me... I squint at famous paintings to see brush strokes made by the masters and I get a chill... If famous historical figures' chairs and beds weren't always roped-off in museums, I'd be sitting in them in a heartbeat and being amazed by that.

Now, I'm certainly no history buff, and art museums often leave me glassy-eyed after not very long. The trick for me with any of that stuff is to find out why something is significant. In European art museums, for instance, I'm a big fan of Rick Steves' "Mona Winks" (sadly now out of print), which has self-guided walking tours and helps you understand not just that this painting is important, but also why it is. And when it comes to historical sites, I get what I need to know from guidebooks, too, not from pre-trip research. In Florence, for example, I happened to read that Savonarola, the crazy monk who started the "bonfire of the vanities" into which Botticelli actually threw some of his masterpieces (thankfully not all of them), had been burned at the stake in one of the public squares... And when I found a plaque marking the spot where it'd happened, I had to have a picture of it.

So, yeah, I'm absolutely one of those people who feels history in the present, both at home and abroad.

A very good topic indeed!

I feel like I'm somewhere in between. My best memories of travel tend not to be site-related. It's about meeting people, trying new food, and experiencing a living culture rather than dwelling on an extinct one.

However, I admit to doing many churches, temples, mosques, and so on -- if only for an excuse to have a "destination" when I go on long meandering walks. I don't usually sit there with my guidebook, swooning over flying buttresses and the partially intact gargoyle from the 12th century. I'm too much of an amateur for that.

Museums are different. I'll definitely do a museum or two, but I have a couple of rules: First, I only visit if it's "really really good" that seem to have great potential. Second, I never stay more than two hours. After that, I can no longer absorb any more information, no matter how interested I am.

OK, that first criterion is not too precise -- it's more of a feeling. But as an example, on my last trip to the Baltics, I visited places like the tiny KGB "torture cells" museum in Tallinn and the occupation museum in Riga. But I skipped nearly all the major art and national museums.

I do of course find that the more I know about a place's history, the more I enjoy ruins, museums, churches, etc. The problem is, I'm not one to read volume upon volume of history before I visit a place. I tend to read *after* I visit. That does have the effect of making future visits (or visits to the same region) more interesting. It has the effect of sparking my imagination, I think. As Jessie alluded to, you can better stand in a place and image what it was like, and get a better feeling of the "something very important" that happened here.

And static, are you to tell me that Mr. Turkey buff himself isn't interested in all those fantastic ruins that country has to offer? Oh man ... and here I looked up to you!

I should clarify - it's not just the "sites" that I like to see, but also the food, people, festivals, etc. Also, it's always struck me as strange, since I'm completely not religious, but I absolutely adore churches and cathedrals.

It's strange after just being on the thread on whether or not to travel to places because of ethics and then seeing this thread espcially where static says;

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I do not even know why I travel anymore.

I travel because I don't know how to do anything else. I stay in one place too long and I go crazy. But I love the historical sites such as Pompei, Zimbabwe, and hope to Angko Wat soon. Museums thrill me but the most fun I have is when I go out in the Bush and meet the people. That is exciting.

I dont usually like mueseums at all, only once during my european trip did I do sight seeing, one month of it in fact in Italy, but I love art so that was the reason really. Learning other launguages, being imersed where I dream in it is what I love and live for, the people as well. Im on a mission to head south of the border for a while to teach spanish, cause I lived in Cuernivaca and picked it up greatly, it just opens great new doors for you, makes you feel more fullfilled than being a hostile rat, seeing some preaty thing and leaving the next day. Especially if you visit the sights with a good friend you met there who cant speak english. And nightlife kicks ass with a local =). So mix it up I'd say.