travelling

The concept of travelling is interesting, because when you reduce it to its basics, its just walking around in foreign places. So instead of walking to the shops in your hometown, you walk to a restaurant or your hotel in a different location. So walking is key to travelling, second only to buying stuff - buying food and buying occasional travel momentos... So what's that all about? Maybe I've just been struck with some common sense, but surely a more enjoyable holiday is sitting on a beach at a resort somewhere, or skiing, or at least doing something that you don't already do at home. This has taken me years to realise this. Most of my life I've been fascinated by urban cities - it has been important to see, and walk around the places where people (for whatever reason) have chosen to congrugate... London, New York, Tokyo, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris, Bangkok, Melbourne, Shanghai, Barcelona, Vancouver, Singapore etc etc... I still love big cities, but for me that experience probably makes more sense if you actually live in the city for a while. Hence what we are now doing in Suzhou (and near enough to do in Shanghai).

So, I guess I'm saying that the 'tourist' attractions (that have never really appealed to me anyway) seem to interest me less and less. Temples, historical sites - the commercialism of these places has always distracted me from any sense of genuine appreciation, and I already feel that I want to steer clear of the so called hot tourist must-sees in China. Although I do want to see the Great Wall. But a temple is a temple, an art gallery an art gallery, one city becomes the next and the next... As a consequence, I think the things that I will more than likely take away most as memories from China will be the people.