Tourist Trap

There's a remarkable, resilient quality to being a tourist we don't always appreciate--I mean the way being a visitor to an area makes an arched bridge look detour-worthy and turns a thorny collection of gorse branches into a bouquet. A regular might roll their eyes at that stranger wandering around a mucky field and photographing the underside of an aqueduct but the tourist is happily oblivious, content instead to wander and explore with fresh eyes. Of course, I'm not even the best tourist--I never like my shoes getting too muddy and prefer sights a not-too-far walk from wherever the car can be parked. And perhaps I'm just waxing poetic since we had a different destination in mind and got a bit turned around, but I enjoy seeing people get excited about ordinary things. When I studied in Greece I made a habit of photographing different signs I saw written in Greek--sometimes they were historic plaques, other times graffiti, and I even snapped a few protest banners. I was studying Greek (although I never did that well), but for me it was more about how different and interesting the writing looked compared to what I was used to. Even something as simple as a road sign is rendered a curiosity when you're traveling (as long as you're not the one driving and struggling to decipher it).