It's okay, Be a Tourist.

The word tourist is very offensive to many people. So much so that people often do not allow themselves to appear as if they are alien. This means not taking the cheesy pictures in the famous landmarks, or asking people for directions. There are very few benefits to this! First of all your photo album will be missing all of the essential pictures (you holding up the Sphinx, or inside one of those red telephone booths). But more importantly you don't allow yourself to truly feel the overwhelming joy a new place has to offer. Playing it cool, was never cool. You're in a new place, be excited! Shameless tourism, as long as you're polite can lead you to so many new experiences. My first time in Central London I took a guided walking tour of the city, not only did I learn a whole bunch of history, but I got my tourist shots out of the way, here are some:

Big Ben

The aforementioned telephone booth

Buckingham Palace

A legendary Beefeater and his purebred horse

Westminster Abbey

All of these photos mean so much to me and when nice local people see you taking them it leads to conversations. For example while in Chinatown the same day, I was with a bunch of friends taking pictures uncontrollably when two men yelled at us "Hey tourists take a picture of us!" I laughed at them and playfully struck up a conversation. The men told me they were from Liverpool and felt fairly alien themselves as they were not Londoners either. I told them I was from New York and I received the response I typically get "Wow, New York?!" (Just as a side note, whenever I tell someone that I'm from New York, they usually imagine me as living right smack in the middle of Times Square underneath the Cup O'Noodles sign and often forget that NY is indeed a very large state.) They wanted to take a picture with a girl from NY (I didn't tell them I was actually from Long Island, I didn't want to ruin their fun) We had a good laugh and took this picture:

Not the most flattering photo, but a good memory at least

Deeper into Chinatown there was a man making candy outside of his shop. In broken English he yelled out to my friends and I "Hey students, try my candy, I make it by hand and I'll take a picture with you!" Since I was in an unusual mood that day I decided to take this man up on his offer. I told him "I'll buy your candy but you have to take a picture with me!" He smiled and agreed "Okay!" It led to this picture:

Again, not entirely flattering but I don't think I've ever laughed harder

Plus, it allowed me to try something new that I really liked, Dragons Beard Candy, here's a picture of it:

I suppose my lesson here is that as long as you are polite and are truly willing to experience a new place and culture for all that its worth, people will welcome you happily. It takes you out of the category of ignorant tourist and allows you to be a friendly and eager tourist, someone who is truly interested and ready to learn. As you may know, tourists eventually grow to become travelers, but I don't think the title "traveler" should be earned until one returns home and can say that they saw the sights, spoke to the people, and had a lovely time.