A picture doesn’t always tell a thousand words

A friend of mine is in Copenhagen right now. Yesterday I text him to see how he was enjoying it and found out he hadn’t yet visited my number one recommendation, Lousiana Museum of Modern Art.

As Lousiana is one of my favourite places on the planet, I was devastated to think he might miss it and embarked on a mission to convince him to go.

Without really thinking about it, one of the first things I did was open Instagram to search #LousianaMuseum. When the few thousand results loaded I did a quick scroll and shared the hashtag with him via Direct Message. From what I could tell there was some trippy looking lights exhibition on which I thought would seal the deal on him going.

Now, knowing this particular friend I can’t say I was altogether surprised by his response, but I still wasn’t really expecting it. He simply said “I’ve seen your link but I don’t want to look. Spoilers”.

Our conversation wandered off into some other topic and I didn’t really give his comment too much thought. However, it pinged in my mind today when I found myself reverting to google images to further substantiate a beach recommendation I’d been given from a friend.

On one hand it made sense, I wanted an idea of whether the place looked like somewhere I’d enjoy going. But on the other, it seemed to extinguish any chance of serendipity or surprise, which seems counterintuitive to the idea of exploring on holiday. Plus, the place had already come as a recommendation. In theory, that should have been enough to make a call.

While having confidence that what we are about to do will be fun is a good feeling, it’s also worth balancing it out with a bit of chance. Or, if the suggestion has come from someone we know, to just trust in their judgement.

If we only ever make decisions based on certainty of outcome, we lose out in some way. Either the experience is predictable or we set our expectations too high and they’re not met.

I wouldn’t call myself a seasoned traveller but I’ve done enough over the past three years so know that some of the best experiences are the ones where I’ve not really known what to expect.

Pictures are good, but we don’t always need them. Sometimes going in blind, or only semi aware is what makes an experience the most memorable.