— LostAruban

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Travel Philosophy

Most of the time when I am traveling I photograph my meals like I think a lot of you do. It’s a nice reminder of what the different types of food you had plus for me I can often remember the taste and experience ( good or bad).

This picture below was taken in Sticky Fingers a restaurant operated by Bill Wyman (former Rolling Stones guitarist). It was fate that brought me to this restaurant. While I was walking around Kensington, London for the first time in my life I was listening to the BBC podcast of Adam and Joe ( pretty funny radio duo) and they were discussing Sticky Fingers the restaurant. As I was walking through Kensington and looking into every side street for photo opportunities and I saw Sticky Fingers and knew I had to eat there.

Below is a picture of the first meal I ever had in Tokyo was in Ueno, Ameyoko market. I found this small restaurant hidden underneath a train overpass and it had plastic examples of their food outside so I knew I wouldn’t have any problems ordering food. I went for the Tonkatsu (pork cutlet) and it was the best I have ever had.

It looks interesting to put the two images together.I like seeing what I didnt eat and how much of a mess I did or didn’t make. As I mentioned before I suspect alot of people take pictures of their food, but I wonder how many take a picture when they are done eating. Maybe this is not as pleasant as a full plate of food but I think it can be just as interesting.

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I pick up various travel guides from the library, go through the attractions, write down the ones I I want to see and see if there is anything more off the beaten path. I always keep my eye open for popular town square’s, markets and more alternative areas with second hand shops and cozy coffeeshops.

It is not down in any map; true places never are.  ~Herman Melville

Then I go online and go through the regular sites like travelwiki, tripadvisor and virtual tourist. Another helpful resource is flickr and searching for that particular city and sorting the results by “interesting” and see which areas look fascinating and photogenic.

I google using key words like “of the beaten path” “unknown” “secret” “to do” “event calendar” city name. I have discovered some really neat places like this. Also most cities keep an event list on what is going on during that time and a lot of them are free.

This may seem like silly advice, but I have noticed allot of people tend to just go to the main attraction of a certain city without really thinking if it is something that interests them or not, just so they can snap a picture and say they have been there without considering the time they have wasted and really cool places they have missed. Often when I look at the crazy long line for the Mona Lisa in the Louvre or the long line to go up the Empire state building I wonder if all those people really want to be there.

In the end what I am getting at, that often the most interesting, authentic places aren’t the main big name attractions and a bit of research can help you identify and locate some of these hidden gems. But in the end the best piece of advice I can give to find the good spots is to “Get Lost”.

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