There are endless articles written about how to avoid looking like a tourist.
How to fit in, feel like a local, and conceal the fact that you don’t know everything about a given destination. Some of these articles focus on concealing your lack of knowledge for the purposes of safety. But far more promote the idea that to be a tourist is to somehow lack in an essential sort of cool reserved only for locals.
I’m here to tell you the opposite of what all of those articles say. I think you should embrace being a tourist whether you’re visiting or a recent transplant. There is something special about visiting the sights that cities promote as essential parts of themselves. Yes, the Space Needle is expensive and a little cheesy. But it’s also an engineering marvel that offers visitors a wonderful way to orient themselves in a city full of funny shapes and lakes that must be navigated. And sure, the Seattle waterfront is a little kitsch but it’s also teaming with smiling faces.
This weekend I decided to embrace everything that is touristy about this new place that I’m lucky enough to call home. Because enthusiastically taking the same picture that 1,000 people before me have taken doesn’t mean I had any less fun.
But ferry travel is something I find inexplicably delightful. To use waterways as a means for public transit. To connect one city to another by gliding across an open sound. Incredible.
