Interesting characters from our travels

Another great link up idea, thanks to the lovely ladies Emma, Kelly, Rebecca and Molly – most interesting travel characters! Well apart from the best celeb spot and conversation that we have so far managed in the British Airways Concorde Lounge I had to have quite a think about this….

It really was him – sooo exciting!

We don’t tend to make the effort to meet people when we are away. Not through laziness, but we are so busy every day that apart from the usual pleasantries with fellow hotel guests, we really do like to keep ourselves to ourselves – preferring to stay away from the crowds with plenty of private space.

Meeting people is however completely different to people watching and that is something that fascinates me – home and abroad!! I won’t go into the insight I’ve gained from partaking in this pastime! Always fascinating, and I am probably not the only Brit that cringes when I see ‘Brit’s abroad’ behaviour in my vicinity – my accent normally becomes increasingly cut glass at that point..!! Enough said!

Dune Bashing trip to the Wahiba Sands

You’ll know from what I’ve written before that when we go away we love to see a place, and the best way to do that is with a local or through their insight. Given their local knowledge, it’s very likely that these will be the most interesting people you will meet on a trip and they’ll know where you should really go to see the true beauty and history.

Some of my favourites…

Dining at Isibindi with new friends

We stayed on a game reserve in Kwa Zulu Natal on our honeymoon – called Isibindi. It only had 6 rooms and when we were there we were the sole guests – bliss. Our hosts – Chris and Carmen – were fantastic. They weren’t local but had travelled widely and had great stories to tell! One evening they joined us for dinner and it was like being at home with friends in the grand dining room of the reserve!

Water taxi to the Pelican Bar

The Caribbean is always going to be somewhere to meet great characters! Jamaica has a few stories! Driving through Kingston at night and nervous we found the most boring person we could see to ask for directions – you don’t always want the exciting people, but the safe ones! He was very calm and clear on directions, and on keeping our doors locked!! We took a boat trip one day out to a little bar on stilts in the sea – our driver was great, I watched the waves crash over the bow of the boat and counted dolphins while Mr P nattered with his new friend like they had known each other their whole lives! Oftentimes the most interesting people you will meet are the hotel concierge – Kingsley at Round Hill is definitely incredibly knowledgeable as well as friendly, he shows no sign of being tired of silly questions! He is also a dab hand at getting you a good dinner reservation – we dined out one evening during our visit and of course he had booked us the best seat in the house despite the restaurant being manic!

Washington at its best

When I was in Washington a few years back with work, I finally met one of my Uncle’s and his daughter. It was lovely to catch up but better still was the grand tour of DC that he had arranged for us. I think he had planned the route meticulously as we saw all of the monuments and he knew all the interesting facts about each of them. I love prowling around a city finding all the history, but we had half a day – and my Uncle Nigel did us proud! He sold it well too – I want to go back one winter and do some museum visiting!! It must be a family thing, because my Grandpa over the years has been a similar knowledge bank about Cornwall – we have seen some fantastic places with his guidance, ones that we wouldn’t have known the history to (or the family links) unless he’s pored over the map with us and also helped us to learn correct pronunciations! I always loved finding the place, loving the place and capturing some fantastic photos to take back and share with him.

Cornwall in June – it could have been the Mediterrean

But the most interesting characters we’ve met when travelling have actually turned out to be some of our closest friends. We used to travel around the UK every weekend to go sailing in our chosen type of dinghy. Whilst this was just weekend sport – it actually ate up the holiday budget and so holiday was all about heading off somewhere on a Friday evening and either camping or staying in a B&B of questionable quality. As you might expect there was a big group of us doing this at the same time, and weekend after weekend we would meet up at another venue – race competitively against each other in the daylight and debrief boisterously in the sailing club bar in the evenings! If you can get on with each other after an aggressive day of competition then take away the sailing and it is a great basis for making friends! So whilst we’ve met and learnt from many fascinating people in our overseas travels that have allowed us to learn about new cultures and locations, the most interesting characters we’ve met are those that we now count as friends!

Simply nothing better, than messing about in boats!