If liquorice panna cotta represents those travel experiences that slip through your fingertips, what about those unexpected or unplanned moments of wonder?

It’s taken awhile but we’ve now come up with an expression for them…

It’s like grapefruit wheat beer… you never knew it existed, you weren’t sure you liked the sound of it once you heard about it, but you give it a try and it turns out to be really really good, maybe even better than the fruity cider you’d asked for but they didn’t have (true story, sampled for the first time at an OMD gig in Birkenhead in October 2021).

You can make plans before you travel, but those grapefruit wheat beer moments are sometimes the ones you remember the most.

It can be a beautiful view, or an amazing restaurant. A chance encounter or a new exhibition, opening today or closing tomorrow. A footpath that you follow without knowing where it will emerge.

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Some of my favourites are…

• Meeting Lori at a backpackers in Thames in 2000 and driving with her in a $75 car around the East Cape, watching the sun rise from NZ’s most easterly point… I was meant to catch the bus straight to Gisborne!
• Finding a little theatre across the road from my hostel in Christchurch in 2004, and catching the last night of a play I’ve never seen advertised before or since.
• A lunchtime theatre experience in a shopping centre in Dublin – Edgar Allen Poe, soup and a cup of tea – we only found out about it because we got a bit lost trying to find something else.
• An immersive Monet exhibition in Berlin – we came across the gallery completely by chance and spent two hours lost in the world of impressionism
• An exhibition about the Finn Brothers (of Crowded House and Split Enz fame) in the museum in their home town of Te Awamutu (just south of Hamilton on North Island of New Zealand). There was double delight as there was an unexpectedly beautiful rose garden too.
• The best ever sharing platter at a pub in Chester – a great place to shelter from the rain
• A walk on a lovely sunny day to Aber Falls, after an unexpected lunch and gin tasting at the Aber Falls Distillery – we got off the bus!

Don't Stop Exploring