The people you meet when travelling

Tim O’Reilly published a post on his blog O’Reilly Radar today about bumping into people you know when travelling.

It hardly ever happens to me, but the few times it has happened, it has been in the most unlikely places, which usually freaks me out something chronic!

It is the weirdest feeling to meet someone you know, in a place where you expect to be enjoying the anonymity of being a stranger to everyone.

The weirdest encounter, I have had by far, was when I bumped into my aunt and uncle in Paris. I surprised Dawn on her birthday with a day trip to Paris. We had taken the Eurostar from Waterloo early in the morning and had just enjoyed a quick lunch close to the Paris Gare du Nord station.

After lunch we decide to go to Montmartre and as we are walking up the tourist-filled stairs to Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, I see my aunt and uncle walking down the stairs. Even though I recognise them, I just cannot believe my own eyes until we are standing face to face. It turned out that they had been on a coach trip to southern France and had a two-hour stop-over in Paris as they were making their way back to Denmark.

Normally I only see my aunt and uncle once every 5 years at weddings and important birthdays. They live in Denmark and I live in the UK, so it was a very strange coincidence that we should bump into each other in France. In particular as I was only there for the day and they were only there for a few hours. But it has given us something to talk about when we meet at infrequent family occasions.

For Dawn it happens all the time, for me not that often, how about you, what is your weirdest encounter?

TAGS: the people you meet, travel

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