Rick Steves! Tourist Vs. Traveler

On Salon.com, there is an interesting interview with that travel-guru, Rick Steves, in which he has a wonderful response to the interviewer in re: to travel vs. tourism, citing Don DeLillo's work, "The Names":

I always remember this line from it: "Tourism is the march of stupidity."

That's a great line. And that's my challenge. I write somewhere in one of my books that my kind of travel fits the industry like a snowshoe in Mazatlán. That's our challenge: to offer Americans, who are thoughtful and curious, a way to be thoughtful in their travels.

Rick Steves' way of understanding "travel" is not too far from how many people I know understand "pilgrimage."

Click here for more of this interesting interview.

Buen camino!

B