We hear the words TRAVELER and TOURIST quite regularly, used by some as “synonyms” and in some cases as “two worlds and two different ways of traveling”.

But… is there really a difference between these two concepts?

TRAVELERS exist ever since man by instinct began to explore the world and to overcome hit own territorial limits searching for the new, the foreign and the alien.  This is different from the concept of TOURIST which belongs to a not-so-old age, arising in the Old Continent around the 1840’s and 1850’s with the opening of the very first Travel Agency, “Cook’s Tours”.

Talking specifically about TIME, we can say that theoretically there is a difference as the travel period of a tourist is delimited even before leaving, planned to every detail and most of the times even pre-paid, unlike a traveler who plays with the itinerary leisurely, visits and experiments the chosen destinations without a defined time limit.

Naturally, because of the current rhythm of life  there are more people who plan their vacation in pre-determined dates for work issues; those people are undoubtedly tourist, which is not wrong at all as their main goal is to escape from a chaotic routine and get to know other places.  On the other hand, those who have the opportunity to travel without delimited dates and for the mere pleasure of doing so, are the travelers we all would like to be.

Can you be a tourist and a traveler at the same time?

It could sound far-fetched and even illogical, given what we have mentioned above, but at times we only need the will and the desire to let go, wonder and discover.  Even with a pre-established itinerary, the important matter is not to remain just behind the camera or behind what others tell us what it is or what we can see in such and such place.

Either way of traveling is valid, it only depends on our personal likes and on the possibilities someone has upon starting a journey.