I mean, sure, it’s not as population dense as the USA, or Mexico, but Canada is huge, your people are nice, you have some of the best entertainment companies on the planet (namely Cirque du Soleil and Pornhub), your natural resources and attractions are unbelievable and your actors are the best (especially the BSG/Chronicles of Riddick cast).
And yet, as an Italian with an international perspective (lived abroad for the last 16 years and visited the USA and South America repeatedly), I have been not “Canada-aware” for most of my life.
I get it that you are not boasting like your neighbors (and that alone makes you better than them imho), but how come that I was left to realize only today that the Manitoba flour I used to make pizza all my life takes its name from one of your provinces, while I know about all the shitty pizzas the US made up in a century.
Same thing goes for Latin American countries, even the ones I never visited, like Mexico or Argentina.
I shall visit soon and I hope you can take the chance to teach me more in the meanwhile.
Wait … did you just say that all the tourists in Edinburgh spoiled it for … you, as a tourist?
No, more like what tourism did to Edinburgh.
Which you discovered because you were a tourist there?
You’re really gonna do the “and yet you participate in society, curious” thing?
I have only been on that singular trip in my entire life, if that helps you.
It’s just kind of weird to lament that a place is touristy as a tourist of that place. Kind of like driving a car and lamenting the traffic that you’re in.
What better way to grasp the impact of an activity than by doing it? Of course this can be harmful - if every visitor to a natural reserve picked a flower, eventually that reserve would have no more flowers. But it can certainly bring that impact home when you’re in the midst of the results of many insignificant actions.
I like travelling, but I’m occasionally very aware at how Touristy I am. Seeing other places after growing up bare-floor poor is just such an experience that I want to see everything while I can – and that makes me rushed, hyper-focused, interested in the marquee landmark places, etc. SUCH a tourist.
If we get more travel to new places - all our plans are for a second, longer visit to the favourites - then I hope I can be relaxed and less likely to forget my manners or to act stressed based on all this goal-focused travel.