Tourists

Two of the most difficult parts of my vacation were (1) actually being a tourist and (2) dealing with all the other tourists.

I actually hate acting like a tourist in a foreign city. I’m totally fine with taking a ridiculous amount of pictures around Sacramento, but put my in Vegas, San Francisco, or New York, and the last thing I want is to annoy all the locals as I take photos and gawk at everything like the tourist I am. If it weren’t for my mom and relatives, I might not have taken as many pictures as I did. But then that leads me to the other problem with being a tourist in New York: there was too many things worthy of photos. Between the scale and age of many of the buildings in the city, it was tempting to use my camera several times per block. New York is just a very interesting city architecturally, and I’m not sure if native New Yorkers often appreciate that. It’s not easy to really capture in photographs either, as the few photos I did take demonstrate. You honestly have to experience it yourself.

Although I frequently had trouble being a tourist myself, it was dealing with the other tourists in the city that ended up being even worse. I didn’t notice them much at first, but by the penultimate day of my trip, I was glad I didn’t live someplace where I would constantly being dealing with tourists. Of course, I’m one to talk, right? It just felt ridiculous at times though. There are people constantly recording video with their iPads or stopping in the middle of foot traffic to snap a photo. Even while I was writing in the NY Public Library in one of their study rooms, several people came in and wandered around the room, gawking and taking photos of the artwork on the wall.

How do New Yorkers deal with all these tourists while still maintaining their sanity? I know that in less than a week I was already going a little batty.