Is "Sightseeing" redundant?

       The lead story in today's  L.A. Times Travel Section about poems that have inspired readers to want to travel led me to dropping a line to the letters column of the section.  Some readers cited poems that dealt with the "stress of a journey" as well.   Here's what I wrote:

I had to smile at “the tension" and "stress" of travel, plus "the longing for home" (re “Poetry in Motion” by Peter Mandel, November 30).  Toward the end of a wonderful 4500 mile West Coast, Southern Canada road trip, I experienced for the very first time the redundancy built into the word “sightseeing.”   It had become something of an "eyesore."   I didn’t want to “see” another thing that kept me from a straight line home:  pedal to the metal!
   ( Find the interesting article here.)