Travel Icons: Once-in-a-lifetime experience or tourist trifle?

My friend Daisann McLane occasionally writes essays for Singapore Airlines’ magazine Silver Kris. Have is a link to Daisann’s latest essay,

“Travel Icons: Once-in-a-lifetime experience or tourist trifle? Indefatigable traveller DAISANN MCLANE weighs in on must-see destinations – the Empire State Building, the Pyramids and more – and tells us why she went from naysayer to believer.”

Here is a paragraph from Travel Icons,

“I’ve always had a complicated relationship with travel icons. Like a lot of travellers, I bristle at being handed a list of places, buildings, works of art or things I ‘must’ do or see, especially when everything on the checklist is something that multitudes of people have already seen or done. Yet I worry. If I turn my back on the Eiffel Tower, snub the Mona Lisa, the Great Wall, the Taj Mahal, the Colosseum or any of the other travel icons that, year after year, draw throngs of dutiful pilgrims, will I end up overcome with regret? Icons, after all, are the superstars of travel. You don’t get to be a star unless you have that certain something.”