Not Looking Like A tourist
 

A fool's errand to think you can dress and not look like a tourist in a foreign city or even in another American city.

Besides you clothes and shoes, there is your eyeglasses, haircut, watch, camera, tourist book, belt, the upside down map, and your voice and language., But besides there is your mien. A tourist walks differently than a local. They usually do not walk with a specific intention and are often easily distracted. Their eyes are different and more often than not people travel with someone else. So if you are with people who do not look business associates during the week, you are immediately pegged as a tourist. And there are many variations on that theme including how children act and are dressed.

So even if you dress appropriately and respectfully for the culture or an event, you are still not fooling anyone.

And your point is???

True True True.. but who cares? If you are a tourist revel in the status and be what you are...delight in all you see, hear and taste!!

I'd think that indeed you ARE done here!! LOL
Do we even think we ARE fooling anyone.

Obviously nobody is fooling anybody anywhere. I have certainly never tried, since I wore my usual clothes in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America. Just wearing my usual skin already tagged me as a visitor.

The important thing is not whether or not you look like a foreigner, it's whether you look like a gullible nitwit.

Just look like you use a bit of common sense and awareness of others when crossing the road, consulting a map or a guidebook, dealing with your valuables and when being approached, uninvited, by complete strangers.

New travelers often ask or think about this issue.

I don't get it. We are all tourists. That's the point of traveling, to be a tourist.

Patrick, I look like a gullible nitwit at home and abroad. But it makes for great stories.

If you want to blend in wear a locally purchased fanny pack. And a ball cap with the local team's name on it.

I'm a tourist and glad of it!

Long, long ago if you wore jeans in Europe you looked like a tourist; now if you don't wear jeans you definitely look like a tourist!! ;;) Deborah

<< belt >>

If you wear a belt you're a tourist???

<< Their eyes are different >>

Different from what?

<< So even if you dress appropriately and respectfully for the culture or an event, you are still not fooling anyone. >>

Are you fooling us with this post? What the heck is all this stuff about???

Their eyes are different >>

Different from what?
__________
Well certain people can see straight, well others would rather get angry about nothing.

For those who actually want an answer. Locals eyes do not dart around responding to unfamilair sights and stimuli. Locals have either something to do or doing something bt rote. A tourist reacts differently.

I love looking at tourists in Oz...I refrain asking 'so what you think of the joint?' But I'd love to know! I love it when it is winter here and they're dressed in shorts and tees enjoying our sun whilst we are in our coats and scarves still lol nothing wrong with being and looking like a tourist
Spend up big and make some memories!

I dress the same way when I travel as I do at home..
..perhaps, I look like a tourist In my hometown
and did not even know it!

"So if you are with people who do not look business associates during the week, you are immediately pegged as a tourist."

If you travel with a dog, the above observation is rubbish. Raisin and I have poked around Europe together and been taken for locals in many places (far above the minimum threshold of some other tourist asking for directions). My dress was irrelevant -- the English cocker spaniel at the end of the lead/leash was all the entrée I needed.

Now that doesn't mean they took me for a fellow citizen -- far from it. They usually assumed I was just another expat living in their fair city.

Now that doesn't mean they took me for a fellow citizen -- far from it. They usually assumed I was just another expat living in their fair city.

Maybe they assumed your dog was your business associate. Traveling with an animal always smacks of various forms of pretense.

You have to give him credit--this is highly successful trolling!!

Madam, I may be short but I am not a troll.