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Ricki Stevenson, The owner of the Black Paris tour company, mentioned the difference in being a tourist and a traveler. A traveler...travels and researched the language, cultural dress, history, even the government policy. What I picked up is that a traveler immerses themselves in the culture, respecting its differences and similarities to their own. A tourist visits a place, picks up an "I (heart)__" t-shirt, without trying to learn the culture, and goes home unchanged. In preparing to go to France I quickly learned some rudimentary French. I couldn't have given a lecture on French history or anything, but I was able to introduce myself and communicate that I didn't understand something in French. I also made an effort to always speak the French that I knew. When stuck, I reverted back to English or even Spanish as that is my unofficial second-ish language. After hearing the tourist vs traveler spiel, I said to myself "Kendra T is gonna be a Traveler!"
On my most recent...and first... trip to Paris, I joined the "Black Paris Tour". I always take a tour on vacation and this one was very different. It highlighted facts, monuments, and the obscurity of the presence of Africans and African-Americans in Paris. It was like viewing the city through a Black lens-so-to-speak. In case you haven't noticed in my profile picture, I am Black...Brownish actually, but you get the point. In all of my research before going to Paris, I learned of the history of the majority such as multiple aristocratic "Louises" but not about the Count General Alexandre Dumas. It's interesting to see the perception of Africans and slavery by the French vs English vs Americans vs Africans. My Video "The Black Paris Tour Review" on my Youtube channel shows some highlights of the tour, including an interview with the founder/tour guide Ricki Stevenson: