Likely not what you want, but I'm going to pimp out the most overcrowded, touristy city in the U.S., simply because what makes it the worst makes it the best. This is long, because it means a lot to me.

I'm a Canadian who visits DC every year for the Smithsonian Folk Festival, in mid-summer. I'm always broke, incapable of making friends, so I keep just going to the tourist sites. I live on an island that seems to be perpetually windy and rainy, so the heat of DC just about kills me. There are swarms of tourists all around you constantly, and you spend half your time in long line-ups crushed sweaty arm to sweaty arm. It's impossible to enjoy the Smithsonian museums, particularly the Science museum, fully, because you're constantly being ushered by the crowd behind you and dodging the million family photographs from tourists who take up 10 feet of space. It's every-orifice-sweatingly humid and so the buildings overcompensate by blowing the AC till your tits are about to fall off. Once there was an RV on the National Mall that had a guy with a blowhorn talking about how gays are trash and should be killed and people didn't even look up, which really makes you think about the concept of free speech. (This would be considered a major event where I'm from, and totally unacceptable). There are subtle (and not-so subtle considering all the times I was called 'cracker') racial divisions and attitudes from all races that are tangibly existent, and you're reminded that there is a racial history so particular to this nation and vastly different from Canada's own difficulty with racism. It's the same kind of buildings, the same laws, the same trains, the same media etc back home, but in some ways that I can't articulate, everything is different. Different social rules, different attitudes, different perceptions, different people.

And I love it.

All of these things are so contrary to my likes. I'm an introvert who can't take heat, crowds, opinions that are opposite of my own. These are all stress factors for me. But being in DC during the busiest, hottest time of the year, forces a reaction out of me that I don't get at any other time. It forces me to be calm. I walk slowly, so as to not break out in a sweat. I look around myself, to contextualize my position amidst a swarm. I become fully present in my environment, because I'm forced to take things slowly. I people-watch all the variety of tourists, Americans visiting the city central to their politics and history. I walk along the Vietnam War memorial and hear a woman crying on her phone, exclaiming she's found an uncle listed on the black surface. (It was designed to look like a scar in the landscape). I walk along the grounds that was home to so many movements and protests and memorials. I tear up at a soldier saluting the Canadian war memorial. I visit the non-descript various Kennedy graves, amazed that it's just right there. The Korean war memorial, World war II memorial, the Martin Luther King memorial, the magnitude of so much history all right there. I go back to my hostel and talk to other Americans, so many of whom are unimpressed with how impressed I was with all this touristy stuff. Some of them take their history for granted.

I never wear dresses, I'm too self-conscious of my body. But the DC heat my first summer there forced me to wear a dress. So the morning, like most mornings in DC, began with a fuck-it attitude. I volunteer at the Smithsonian Folk Festival, which is so alive with cultures and music and people and I am in my element. That day I got to record the minister of culture for the Black Panthers, and was privileged to hear the most beautiful voice I've ever heard from singer Navratil Andrea, who lulled a crowd in the waning hours as she taught them how to sing a simple Hungarian folk song, Viragom Viragom. (Her voice rang clear and pure across the National Mall. Her online recordings don't do her justice). As I stand in line at the museum, crushed against people who are forced to be good-natured about it, a southern lady with a walker frantically rushes up to me from across the courtyard to whisper that a bit of my bra was peeking out. (I didn't care, but it was sweet of her). I joke with the security guards as they dig through my "Mary Poppins" bag, and a little boy wraps himself around my leg because he mistakes me for his mother amid the crowd. I accidentally walk past a checkpoint, and a soldier makes a joke about having to tackle me but then gets super embarrassed and blushes like a kid. (Lemme tell you, it has been awhile since I've made a man blush). I take pictures with my old film camera, and have to carefully consider each shot as I can't afford any more film. I walk along the park at night, watching the fireflies peek out after the drizzle of rain. My favorite moment, however, was the Lincoln memorial. It's late, it should be bedtime for many of the kids, but the gift shop is still open and orange lights make the outside night all that more darker. Again, just swarms of us drifting in and out of this place. I climb the stairs, and I can't even tell you how massive that statue is. I stand, squeezed between white people and black people from all different backgrounds, reading the inscriptions of his speeches on the wall. It's all so fucking meaningful. I move away so that another family can take their family photograph, and I find a spot on the top step of the temple, overlooking the national mall. There are people sitting at various spots on the steep stairs, and more families crowded below. I am a young woman, alone and knowing nobody, broke and unsure how I'm going to get to the airport the next morning. Perhaps it's because I haven't seen my family in years, and I rarely can afford trips, but sitting here with all these families on their summer vacations made me feel so nostalgic. Dads in their khaki shorts and polo shirts with their overpriced cameras on their necks. Mothers catching fireflies with their kids. I sit under this big marble roof that protects me as the drizzle begins again, and other people begin to sit beside me. Nobody's in a rush. It's the end of the night, and we're taking a reprieve from the remnants of the hot day.

It hit me then why I like it so much. I felt like I was in a 'Where's Waldo' page. I was one character among many. People of all different colours and backgrounds, converging all at once for their interest in a shared history. I felt like the reader, suddenly plopped down into the pages, where I could observe the people first-hand. It is an extremely commercialized, touristy and controlled landscape, but it was an amazing privilege to witness a vast diaspora of people mix and mingle.

While not my ideal travel plans, sometimes it's nice being a tourist among tourists.