Tourist

tour·ist [toor-ist] – noun 1. a person who is traveling, especially for pleasure.

trav·el·er [trav-uh-ler, trav-ler] – noun 1. a person or thing that travels. 2. a person who travels or has traveled in distant places or foreign lands.

No one really wants to be a tourist when they travel, right? The word has such a negative connotation & evokes a mental picture of someone wearing mom-jeans, sneakers, a fanny pack, a backpack, probably a t-shirt or baseball cap promoting the city they’re visiting, &, of course, a large camera set to “auto” hanging around their neck. I like to think of myself as a traveler when I’m out & about, even though I do definitely have my touristy moments.

On Tuesday, in the very awesome Travel Talk on Twitter online Twitter chat, we had a raging discussion on non-tourist travel. This lead to a side conversation between a few of us on touristy photos. “Wouldn’t it be fun if we all did blog posts with our embarrassing ‘touristy’ photos?,” someone queried. That evening, I ran the idea by my husband, since he is the subject of many of these touristy photos. He is reluctantly on board.

So here we are. Enjoy: