Fernando Pessoa on tourism

What’s travel and what good is it? Any sunset is the sunset; one doesn’t have to go to Constantinople to see it. The sensation of freedom that travel brings? [… If] the freedom isn’t in me, then I won’t have it no matter where I go.

“No matter how high we climb or how low we descend, we never escape our sensations.” We never disembark from ourselves. We never attain another existence unless we other ourselves by actively, vividly imagining who we are. The true landscapes are those that we ourselves create since, being their gods, we see them as they truly are, which is however we created them. None of the four corners of the world is the one that interests me and that I can truly see; it’s the fifth corner that I travel in, and it belongs to me.

Whoever has crossed all the seas has crossed only the monotony of himself. I’ve crossed more seas than anyone. I’ve seen more mountains than there are on earth. I’ve passed through more cities than exist, and the great rivers of non-worlds have own sovereignly under my watching eyes. If I were to travel, I’d find a poor copy of what I’ve already seen without taking one step.

The Book of Disquiet, translated by Richard Zenith, 2001.