Les voyages forment la jeunesse

Last fall I traveled to Iceland and France with an American friend, Jim. This was Jim's first trip outside North America - a vacation of a lifetime. For me, this was my annual pilgrimage to the fatherland with a fun, random weekend in Reykjavik tacked on (why Iceland? b/c Icelandair is cheap). As could be expected, Jim and I didn't turn out to be the most compatible of travel buddies. I'm a city girl who power walks to get places; he's a suburbanite who strolls for leisure. I like to find the off-the-beaten track, random nooks and corners of a city, whereas he understandably wanted to check out the big tourist stuff, which he wanted to photograph from every possible angle, using every possible setting on his camera. I, meanwhile, was perfectly content to wander around, taking in the sights, sounds and smells without trying to document the moment. I vividly remember admiring the neoclassical sculpture at the Louvre and having my precious moment ruined (from my perspective) by Jim sighing, "I'm not crazy about all this stuff, to be honest, but I didn't want to go back the States after a trip to France and not have been to the Louvre!" Meanwhile, I'm sure that my insistence on enjoying the moment, walking briskly, and eating strange foods while holding my cutlery in a specific way drove him equally crazy.
This "collecting proofs of experiences" attitude toward travel is something that has often perplexed me in my American friends and acquaintances. I remember being horrified by friends returning from a semester abroad with 9,000 digital photographs, which they assumed I would fascinated by (I was not). Just the other day another acquaintance was describing her desire to visit London "just to be able to say that she'd been there." I don't think this is a particularly American trait, even though I've mostly experienced it with Americans - but then again, these days I mostly interact with either Americans or TCKs who are just as blase about world travel as I am.
What is it about "being in the moment"? I think it's a combination of taking in the scenery, sounds and smells, of people-watching and seeing all the way in which they are familiar and foreign all at once, and of imaging what my life would be like and who I would be if I lived there.