Explore "Romance En Route" by Gelett Burgess on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
How tired I am of the question, "How do you like London? " and "How do you like New York? " "Would you rather live in San Francisco or Paris? " Why, indeed, should I not like London, Kalamazoo, Patagonia, Bombay, or any other place where live men and women walk the streets, eat, drink, and are merry? How can I say whether El Dorado is better than Arcady, or a square room more convenient than an oblong one? Every living place has its own fascination, its mysteries, its characteristic delights. Ask me, rather, if I can understand London, if I can catch the point of view of the French _concierge_, if I comprehend the slang and bustle of Chicago? Like them? Show me the town I cannot like! Know them? Ah, that is different!
This is the charm of travel -- to keep up the feeling of strangeness to the end, never to take things for granted or let them grow stale, to see them always as though one had never seen them before. Then, and only then, can we see things as they really are. When I become cosmopolitan, world-old, _blase_, when I think and speak in all languages, I shall fly to some deserted island to study the last, most impenetrable enigma -- myself.