For example, in the mid 90s we went to the Dominican Republic for a week, and we were oh-so-broke. We stayed in a hut (actual hut) behind a friend's house; we borrowed their bikes to go to town to buy groceries (including food items where I had no earthly idea what they were); we cooked on a tiny alcohol camp stove (and when it ran out, we discovered that the alcohol it used was a bottle of rum). We saw nothing that was a tourist destination; it was all "just folks." ...and we got a huge amount of understanding about what it meant to live in a poor country without resources.
I've also stayed in 5-star hotels in Paris and indulged myself for a week falling into every tourist vortex. That's perfectly fine, too, because it's okay to appreciate beauty. However, you appreciate it _better_ when you know its context and history; I highly recommend Rick Steves _Europe Through The Back Door_ because it gives us Americans a better sense of European history, not to mention how it affected art, architecture, etc.
Mind you, Steves' travel guides are rarely my favorites. He's not a foodie, and I regularly choose destinations based on what I can eat. And he's opinionated, which I appreciate, until we disagree on those opinions. (He's meh on the Black Forest, and it's one of my favorite places.) Then again, I'm not his target audience. I think he's a treasure nonetheless.