Tenby on holiday
And my son cosplaying a tourist
11 Likes
I remember that view! When I were a lad we’d stay in Amroth on holidays, just round the bay.
1 Like
I love Tenby, and Pembrokeshire in general, one of our favourite holiday spots when we lived in Wiltshire.
5 Likes
Back from Festival. of course we caught the 2 days of rain this summer had. worst mud I ever had in 20 years of going to festivals. it was great. best concert was Amorphis I would say 
but others were also great fun. wrecked my back and my foot and I’m exhausted. We even played games! (Top Ten is perfect for places where you don’t have any space and you can play until it gets boring)
11 Likes
Went back home - San Diego - for the first time since 2019. The rest of my family has all come back here in the time between, but that darn pandemic. My parents didn’t meet our current youngest until she was nine months old and that just wasn’t right. Good to be home, and gosh I grew up in a nice place.
And of course the local aquarium and the World Famous San Diego Zoo…
Didn’t miss this part.
18 Likes
Hungarian Parliament & public transport (we have a 3 day ticket and been using it a lot. We traveled here by overnight train which was a good choice as pilots are striking and other wedding guests had to switch their travel plans)
I may have eaten some cake
It‘s been 10 years since we visited Budapest last time. But these cafés have been here far longer. I don‘t remember this exact corner but there are a few like it. Overall though the city seems to have changed. There is more public transport, and a lot of buildings seem renovated.
The big market hall has not changed one bit however.
The parliament. I think the whole space here has been modernized and changed. I don‘t remember it looking like this back then but it may be that we only saw it from the river side at the time. We were in town only for a few days to go to another wedding somewhere in the country side.
14 Likes
We had a week in Budapest booked for our 10th Wedding Anniversary.
Unfortunately COVID stopped us travelling. Looks lovely
3 Likes
I’ve been in that market! Probably more like 20 years ago, though.
3 Likes
My last city break was there the summer of 2018, for a 40th birthday celebration. Loved it, the best bit was the spa for us, we were watching the World Cup while soaking in lovely warm water under the sun. Perfect.
3 Likes
Budapest is the only place where I’ve been offered ham in pizza as the vegetarian option 
I don’t remember much else about my trip but your photos suggest that it might be worth a return visit 
6 Likes
Well, Hungarians are meat afficionados, so ham and bacon are as vegetarian as they get Just think I am going to the „Big Fat Hungarian Wedding“ (though this time there were actual vegetarian options on the menu, because … times have changed and even the classic Hungarian restaurant we went to yesterday had a whole page of vegetarian options!)
The city really is quite a lovely place. Definitely worth a visit. We have no time to visit any of the baths or most of the museums. But there is also a Vasarely museum which we saw last time and today I might find the time to go see the Art Deco exhibition at the castle (while everyone else is making a big fuss of helping bride and groom get ready—since I still don‘t speak Hungarian 22 years later… I am on my own 
)
5 Likes
A vegetarian friend of mine visited China in the 1990s and found similar incomprehension of “vegetarian”. But they did understand “Buddhist”.
5 Likes
In countries where vegetarianism is not very common, I’ve had the most success eating at places run by hare Krishnas 
4 Likes
We were served big strips of pig fat in soup by Chinese Buddhists at a Buddhist monastery - a real one, not a tourist destination.
reminiscing
(Looking back on it, I can’t believe we just got off a long distance bus in the middle of the mountains, relying entirely on the charity of strangers for food and shelter, with no way of knowing when or how we might be able to continue our journey. They did feed us, there were labourers quarters free that we could sleep in, and it somehow all worked without any common language. And we/I did this sort of thing a lot.)
5 Likes
Is it possible that it was included because they knew/assumed you weren’t Buddhist and were being good hosts?
Stories like this, of people just going to random places with no plan and, critically, with no money terrify me. I’m super impressed that people can and do successfully travel like that, but the idea of it…
I had a buddy once who was threatened with a submachine gun to stay at a particular hotel. The world is a weird place, man.
That stated, I do love to travel. But I always plan out where I’m going (and more importantly, where I’ll be eating!) weeks, if not months, in advance. My 10 day trip to Japan in 2019 I started planning (officially) in October 2018.
2 Likes
Nope, they ate with us. I guess you need those extra calories up near Tibet (and I vaguely remember researching this and finding it is not uncommon in such situations).
Pretty sure we had some money, we just weren’t inclined to use it much. I think I was averaging about 4 USD a day - pretty equally spread across visas, accommodation, travel, and food.
Assorted anecdotes from two separate year+ long travels
Got drugged and robbed on a road trip with some Filipinos, but they only took one credit card - it actually wasn’t a bad experience.
The bus after mine was waylaid by highwaymen in Colombia, who took everyone phones and my friends jacket and cash, but they gave the sim cards back.
In a hostel in Chungking Mansions I bought some books from a guy whose motor functions were fading as his drugs wore off, I had to help manhandle him into bed.
Guys we suspected were Yakuza “accidentally” locked us in their van while they met somebody at a service station. Much later in the day they aggressively paid for a hotel room for us after failing to find a park we could sleep in.
Specifically in Budapest, I remember we were freezing in the snow at night looking for somewhere to sleep, and a random person took pity on us and led us to a hostel.
There’s just so much of this kind of thing, and it sticks way more than any planned itineraries I ever had.
4 Likes
We have done our share of road trips without preplanning where we would stay or go… and booking accommodations while already on the road. We only booked the remainder of this trip after arriving in Budapest because I was not sure until the last minute we weren‘t going to have to cancel everything due to pandemic. But these days with booking through apps it is all rather trivial and we‘re still so close to home we‘ll always find our way back.
I dislike that in recent years it feels like preplanning is needed more and more because places are likely to be booked…
Last time I traveled without any real planning ahead was our trip to Thailand in 2014/15.
I flew to Bangkok on my own because I had more free time than my partner and arrived with just a few nights at a first hotel booked. Bangkok is a difficult city when you have mostly spent your traveling in western-style places (and I appreciate that Thailand is also considered „easy“ on the whole) and I had accidentally booked a hotel in an area of the city where few foreign tourists stayed… long story short I panicked and quickly booked a flight to Chiang Mai where I stayed for a week, met interesting people and overall had a much better time One of my favorite travel memories to this date. Though there as well I started with a shitty hostel and only once I arrived found a much nicer one a day later. After the week, I returned to Bangkok to meet up with my partner and somehow by then I had „learned“ the city enough that he thinks it is one of the most awesome cities ever… (it is but I very much prefer Chiang Mai at least from 2014).
Future travel plans of ours include using more trains and since trains are more easily booked spontaneously, I look forward to some interesting travel in the near future Though we are unlikely to get to many complicated places. Trains only go so far… although apparently there is a train connection that can be booked „through“ from Spain to Vietnam.
4 Likes
