I hate tourists, i really do. Living in Amsterdam especially highlighted that trait in my already sporadically abrasive personality. I had to walk through the Dam every morning on my way to work and would hold my breath, as i whizzed past herds of lost tourists walking at the speed of a pot-induced crawl, looking around conveniently dazed and confused, not sure what they were supposed to look at in the first place. I would hear every language that i know (or can understand) on my way past them: italian, french, spanish, quebecer, french… it was a nightmare to go through that square with a friend as I would inevitably distracted from our conversation, my ears catching bit of pointless conversations. I hate tourists because I don’t think that a place is best lived this way, by buying the guidebook to it, going to the hotel everyone else goes to, buying the trinkets that are supposed to symbolize the culture you’ve just brushed past on your way to Mme Tussaud’s. I think that the best experience you can have of a culture is by pretending you live there.
I spent the weekend in Paris to see a good friend of mine who was on her way to Istanbul and had decided we were going to meet in Paris and chat. That’s exactly what we did. We walked and talked. We didn’t visit anything in particular as it was hardly our first trip to Paris (I lived there 11 years, she spent a few years there in the 60s and had visited several times), we walked around the Quartier Latin, Montparnasse, went to see a very bad Gerard Depardieu movie, ate the best food on the planet, drank way too much red wine and had lovely coffee and were generally very parisian. That, i think is the best way to experience a new city, by just bumping into things, letting the urban design guide you into an experience, something an ex-colleague of mine worked on for his thesis. Well that and great food always helps : )