In Praise of Tour Guides: World Tourism Day 2011

(As today is the UN’s World Tourism Day, I thought I’d repost this old entry…)

As I may have mentioned here in the past, I’m an information junkie. However, I’m an information junkie cursed with a terrible Swiss Cheese of a memory, possibly caused by an old gypsy woman, and therefore I’m a fan of tour guides.

(The Glass Floor in the CN Tower can hold the weight of 14 hippos.)

We spent a lot of time on tour buses this week, mainly because a ticket lasts for something like five days and thus it’s easy transport around an unfamiliar city. The great thing about this is that it also comes with a commentary and, as I’m the sort of guy who sits and listens to DVD commentary tracks, that’s a selling point.

(The horses in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are classed as officers, and get badge numbers and official funerals.)

I enjoyed the Toronto tour guides a lot (ShopDineTour Toronto, for a free plug), not least because they pull off the sort of trick that I just can’t – they know what they’re talking about, they can remember it, and they can communicate it in an entertaining way. This is the sort of thing I struggle with – my brain has a communication and information retention firewall installed, and so when the guide on the way to Niagara Falls is reciting the history of Toronto AND making it interesting, I’m in awe. He just seemed to know vast amounts about John Graves Simcoe, the guy who founded Toronto, and yeah, sure, he’s making a living from reciting this stuff but it’s something I could never do. I’d get the script all tangled up in my brain, and then knock myself out on a low-hanging branch.

(Casa Loma, a mansion/castle just outside of downtown Toronto, was used as the filming location for Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in the first two X-Men movies… but not the third.)

That said, I also want to give a shout-out to guides from other cities – some the people who first got my respect as guides were the US National Park rangers on Alcatraz Island, who not only knew all about the old prison there but also the oysters and fish that live around the island. It’s a cool, outdoorsy job, but it’s also got a sense of the geek spirit, in the most postive way – the idea that this stuff is cool, it’s good to be enthusiastic about it, and there’s nothing wrong with communicating that enthusiasm to the people who pay to do the tour. It’s fun.

(Yonge Street is the longest street in the world, stretching 1896 miles out of Toronto. Many dispute its claim to this, however, but I don’t care.)

And don’t forget the drivers – heck, my main regret from Niagara Falls was that they didn’t give the driver a mic as well, because he was as clued up as the guide and had a fun double-act thing going on. We were near enough the front to hear this, but it was gold. The personalities made a pretty long journey that much more entertaining.

(The city was originally named York, but when New York got too big, the Canadians renamed it Toronto so there wouldn’t be comparisons.)

But for courtesy, friendliness and entertainment value, we probably have to give the award to the guide we saw a few times throughout the week, who recognised us and said hi, bothered to tell us when the bus times were so we didn’t end up inadvertantly stranded, and, while we guessed he was a bit geeky from his first MacGyver reference, the fact that he admitted to being a comic collector in front of a bus full of people gave him geek kudos. AND he had his Toronto knowledge. You can’t ask for more than that.

(Toronto is North America’s third largest film and TV filming location, after LA and New York.)

So if you’re ever in Toronto, check out the yellow buses. They’ll even give you a free map!

Some New York Memories

So I wake up this morning and check my Twitter feed, and it turns out that Kyrgyzstan is demolishing its equivalant of the Statue of Liberty due to a ‘curse’ that has led to the social instability faced by the country over the years. And I guess yesterday’s post on slavery already had me edging towards a subject I’ve been meaning to write for a while – ladies and gentlemen, I give you Matt’s New York Memories!

I’ve been to New York twice, in 2002 and 2008, and it’s always been an amazing experience. That’s partly because it doesn’t seem quite real; half of it is a bustling, chaotic 24/7 city made up of cops, business people, street sweepers and waitresses, while the other half is a film set, pregnant with possibility. Bumping into Kevin Bacon, glimpsing Spider-Man crawling up a building – these are equally likely possibilities. After all, I saw Jimi Hendrix.

Well, no, I didn’t. My friend Andy and I were wandering in the vicinity of Madison Square Garden when we came across a busker tuning his guitar. He had a touch of Hendrix about him, effortless cool in the shadow of the metropolis; this, we decided, would be the most awesome busking since the first minstrel picked up his lute. We could wait for him to finish tuning, clearly it would be worth it.

And so we waited, and waited, and waited, and it become clear that Pseudo Hendrix wasn’t gonna play. Maybe the cosmos wasn’t correctly alligned. Maybe he just thought we were waiting to mug him.

My second visit to New York was with my sister, and she got to fulfill an ambition by going on a Harlem Gospel tour. Initially I wasn’t sure how to feel about this, my sole experience of Harlem being based on the opening sequence from Shaft. This was unfounded, the area having gone through a period of gentrification in the nineties, and we attended a church service. It was a strange experience, a mix of the familiar and elements that, while not wrong left me a little uncomfortable. That said, what struck me most was the church’s committment to social action and ensuring that young people had the opportunity to receive a decent education. Faith needs to have a genuine, positive impact on local communities; I’m glad that we, as annoying tourists, got to see that.

Then there was the Statue of Liberty. In some ways this is the spiritual heart of New York, a physical and historical icon. Sadly the crown was closed following the 9/11 attacks, but this was compensated for by a happy accident. We under-estimated the sheer size of the city and the time it would take to visit some of the major attractions, finding ourselves on Liberty Island as the day drew to a close. We caught the last ferry back as the sun went down, and as we turned to face the city, we saw the iconic skyline before us, lights blinking into life, Manhatten at night showing off. It was a breathtaking moment, a sight I’d seen in countless films, but this was for real. None of my photographs were any good, but they wouldn’t have captured the epic feeling anyway.

This was in 2002, only a year or so after the destruction of the World Trade Center, and as we disembarked the ferry and made our way back to our hotel, we stumbled upon Ground Zero. The church used as a refuge for the emergency services on the days immediately following the attacks was still covered with flags, messages of support from throughout the world. Among them all was a St. George’s flag, placed there by supporters of West Bromwich Albion, the football team Andy supports. While it’s probably not all that unlikely, it seemed like a coincidence at the time, and so we found a pen and added our signatures to it – it just seemed like the right thing to do.

I ❤ NY.

Travellers Show and Tell Blog Carnival

One of my posts is featured in the Travellers Show and Tell Blog Carnival over at Mental Mosaic – check it out for posts on California, Norway and ancient American ruins…