In Praise of Hot Locals
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 09.23.09 | 3:34 PM ET
It comes from Guy Trebay and his essay in the latest Travel+Leisure:
Naturally, we all hope when we are away to find fine hotels and good food and clement weather and merry encounters with charming locals. But we also, secretly, want the strangers in the places we visit to give us something good to look at. If not flat-out beautiful, we want them to be comely or stylish or to have something about them to please that most promiscuous of organs, the eye. At any rate, that’s what my eyes desire.
This approach may seem politically incorrect, at its worst, and baldly superficial, but getting to know inner beauty requires intimacy. And intimacy takes time to develop, and travelers generally have little time to spare.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor of World Hum.
