stop, loss

"Tourists now wander through museums, seeking to fulfill their lifetime’s art history requirement in a day, wondering whether it may now be the quantity of material they pass by rather than the quality of concentration they bring to what few things they choose to focus upon that determines whether they have “done” the Louvre. It’s self-improvement on the fly." -- Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times

Reading this article in NYT today was great timing, because I'm right now distractedly planning for a trip in October, and it's reminding to force myself to plan for lingering, rather than worry about hitting a desired number of "must-sees".

I remember the times I overplanned and stressed myself out scraping for time to see"everything", as if we can ever see "everything". Silly me.

I'm a tourist, I join cycling tours and city walks, I consult guidebooks. These things orientate me and help me plan my time better (like find a decent restaurant within five minutes of the Louvre because I'm hungry), but it's important to shut the guidebook and really see what's in front of us before we take off for home, never to return the same person we were.

Image from fotodecadent