There is much debate as to the causes of the contemporary fascination with gazing upon tourist sites (Lowenthal 1985). It is often read as a type of religious experience. MacCannel¹s (1976 ) work in the "ethnography of modernity" sees tourism as a search for alterity (1973, 589­90; 1976, 92­107). Tourism is based on the notion of a departure from established routines and practices of everyday life, usually work. Tourism is a leisure activity that presupposes its opposite, namely, regulated and organized work, and the consumptive labor of late capitalism. As Urry writes, "Tourism experiences are, by comparison with the everyday out of the ordinary" (1990, 2).