Having spent a summer visiting different people and places I happened upon a realization regarding my exploration of new places.

I should probably begin by describing my understanding of two concepts:

Travel: Visiting a new or unfamiliar place for a defined period of time, usually for pleasure or enjoyment. Tourism: A made up industry fuelled by an ambition to take advantage of people willing/susceptible to spending more money due to an increased sense of leisure or unfamiliarity in a new territory. This encompasses everything from tourist attractions and tour busses to overpriced cafes or pickpockets.

My problem is that these realities don’t reflect what these terms should represent. While the definition of travel is true, that of tourism is not. The “tourist” is a representation of the tourism industry which has evolved from serving the tourist to exploiting them.

Tourists are well intentioned. They begin with the innocent hypothesis of wanting to visit a new and interesting place but gradually morph into the camera carrying, map consulting, bum bag wearing tourist. Perhaps it begins when you Google your chosen place of interest and stumble upon the first of many ‘X things you cannot miss in city Y’ articles. From that point on your “holiday” becomes a rat race to ensure you tick each of the essential sites off the list.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Funnily enough, I came to realize this while visiting one of these “tourist attractions”, The Bean in Chicago, which despite all I’ve said is actually worth seeing.

It’s believably a piece by Banksy. Every tourist in the city feels obliged by friends, previous visitors or guide books to come and look upon it. What most don’t realize is that it’s simply a reflection of the city itself. The attraction literally screams at you to stop doing the prescribed “touristy” things and instead go an explore the city for what it is. The constraining half of the convex skews together its immediate surroundings into a very confined group almost representing the limited view of the city tourists achieve. The upper half acts, in contrast, to extend the reflection, inviting beguiled revelers to see that the city runs much deeper than that offered by the tired tourist trail.

This shouldn’t mean that you exclude every visitor site from your trip but you should instead look to only visit those that genuinely interest you. Instead of wasting time and money conveniently covering every site offered on a one-trip-fits-all tourist bus use your reclaimed time to walk from point to point, experiencing the city as you go. The unique atmosphere of a place cannot be felt from an open top bus. Ask for restaurant recommendations from your hotel, family living in the area or even the local police as they’re bound to know better than those recommending in umpteen guide books. Attempt to interact with as many locals (who don’t work in the tourist industry) as possible; you can only see and experience so much of a place in a short amount of time, so you should instead attempt to understand their views and opinions of the city as a synopsis of having lived their longer than you will ever visit.