# Two sentences from your travel journals. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 30, 2007, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068 "2007-03-30T02:08:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![nikonikosuru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f8ce5/32.png) [@nikonikosuru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nikonikosuru)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/21 "2007-03-30T15:25:48Z")
I’m not as eloquent in my journal, which mainly serves as a way to keep in contact with everyone back home. 3/26/07: “You would think kinako goma would translate into “Buried Treasures that Your Cat Leaves in the Sandbox”, but no.” 3/22/07: “I am eating guacamole made of an avocado from Mexico, garlic from Japan, salsa from Australia, on crackers from Italy; this entertains me.” There are better ones in my journal I am sure, but I’d have to read through a lot of dribble to find the treasures. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Annie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/858c86/32.png) [@Annie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/22 "2007-03-30T15:29:20Z")
[QUOTE=Largo62] England, July 1972. We are driving along the Thames. It’s overcast, but people are lining the banks of the river in beach chairs and chaise longues — clouding themselves, I suppose. [/QUOTE] 😃 Mine, Bhutan, 2004: > [@](#): > > …drive through pretty mountains for 6 hours straight; see a dzong (cathedral), sleep somewhere with no heat but with pretty view of dzong. Bhutan accommodation is nice but sparse. Heat, hot water, electricity: pick two. There are few places one can hit the outhouse-few restaurants or hotels, so we make a vulgar spectacle of ourselves along roadsides. The Bhutanese term for westerners probably translates to ‘they who shit in the ditch”… On a potty stop on the way back to Thimpu, some old nomadic yak herder ladies greeted me with “Hello-You very fat.” The shopkeeper at a cloth store in Jakar had assured me that I was not the fattest woman to set foot in the Kingdom, the King’s sister was much chubbier than me. I was almost touched. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/23 "2007-03-30T16:00:51Z")
This is a cool idea! Trip to India, 1985(I didn’t write it at the time, I was 10, but still) > [@](#): > > I came running up one day to tell my aunts that someone was selling sticks! My aunt went to go see what the fuss was all about, and it was sugarcane. That was my first ever experience with eating the yummy fruit called sugarcane. (Is it fruit?) Trip to Las Vegas, last year (written a week after) > [@](#): > > …but Vegas is exactly how they say it is - empty desert for miles and suddenly this glittering jewel appears out of nowhere…strip clubs, billboards, shining signs, the whole nine yards. ---
**Author:** ![NinjaChick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@NinjaChick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinjaChick)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/24 "2007-03-30T16:16:35Z")
> [@](#): > > I can’t understand this part of the country. The road here was too big and empty; there’s this Big F-in Hole in the ground, and at night you can see for billions of miles. The Grand Canyon makes me feel tiny and insignificant; Arizona makes it worse, I don’t need SPACE joining in that chorus. –Arizona, a stop on a cross-country road trip, June 2005. > [@](#): > > It’s in the high 90’s three days running now and sunny. Something is wrong. –London, July 2006. > [@](#): > > Ways to feel like a really typical ignorant American: Brussels. Everyone speaks, like, five languages here, and here I am with my English, little Spanish, and the ability to say I don’t speak French in French. –Brussels, June 2006 ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/25 "2007-03-30T16:18:06Z")
> [@](#): > > Dunnottar Castle is absolutely the greatest ruin I have ever seen. It still commands the local shore in a way that summons up it’s past. August 1992 on Honeymoon in Scotland. For a look at what I saw: [Dunnottar Castle, near Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire Scotland](http://www.scotland-inverness.co.uk/Chatelaine/DUNNOTTAR.HTM) Jim ---
**Author:** ![Eureka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/74df32/32.png) [@Eureka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eureka)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/26 "2007-03-30T16:21:11Z")
Saturday 1/5 [1996] at 5:09 p.m. [Israel] After we finished touring the musesum, we went to Acre where there is a . dirt and then later the Marmalukes (sp?) built a city on top of it.(Maybe it was someone else instead who built it, I have no idea). * * * I’m not sure where my Africa journal is, or I’d copy a sentance or two about the animals we saw, or the food we ate. ---
**Author:** ![Owlett](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e95f7d/32.png) [@Owlett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Owlett)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/27 "2007-04-02T11:33:43Z")
From a trip to Queensland, Australia, September 2005: “It’s a dozy midafternoon in the single closest place to paradise I’ve ever been. Wilson Island is a coral and sand cay on the Great Barrier Reef, about a 20-minute walk in circumferance, inhabited for the next three days by just six people (one of them our chef!).” From a trip to the Engadine Valley in southeastern Switzerland, July 2006: “In two days here we’ve seen no other Americans, just various Europeans (mainly French- and German-speaking). We saw one man with a T-shirt that said Ocean City, Maryland, but it turned out he was from Switzerland.” and “I’d been struck in photos by how green and grassy so much of rural Switzerland is, but I didn’t realize until I got here that it’s because the main “crop” in many rural areas is hay for the livestock. Veal is a staple on Swiss menus (far more than beef, lamb, pork, or chicken). Dairy farmers don’t raise beef cattle, and they need very few bulls. Thus, calves who are unlucky enough to be born male are used for food.” “A veal cutlet in a cheese and cream sauce is the archetypal product of Graubunden agriculture.” ---
**Author:** ![KRC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/45deac/32.png) [@KRC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KRC)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/28 "2007-04-02T11:54:54Z")
From Wyoming in 2006: On the Wyoming plains were cattle, horses, and antelope and in the skies above blackbirds chased hawks. By the highway was the proud town of Tie Siding. With its market and post office, Tie Siding was almost as large as Korea, Ky., scene of a whole lot of excitement back in 1976 when a girl scout leader cut open her knee on a rock in a nearby ravine and her buddy had to use the town phone to call an ambulance. I don’t know if anything similar, or anything at all, has ever happened in Tie Siding. ---
**Author:** ![Sunrazor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sunrazor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunrazor)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/29 "2007-04-02T13:03:47Z")
Sept. 10, 2001 (off the coast of Alaska) Had a wonderful day touring Ketchikan – hope the photos of the totems turn out, they’re almost mystical. Tomorrow, the Inside Passage. I don’t want this to end – but, after tomorrow, back to the same old stuff. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/30 "2007-04-02T14:19:10Z")
> [@](#): > > Sept. 10, 2001 > > …after tomorrow, back to the same old stuff. Yeah. ---
**Author:** ![KRC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/45deac/32.png) [@KRC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KRC)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/31 "2007-04-02T21:52:50Z")
From Kanab, Utah, in 2004: I got a chicken Caesar salad at the restaurant and then we went to a gift shop next door where I bought a refrigerator magnet with drawings of bluffs, arches, fireworks, and Mormon tabernacles and the slogan: “Utah—land of contrasts.” As we started to leave town I noticed an odd sign. I looked again and sure enough the sign read “Testicle Festival.” I alerted Dad to this and we stopped to take pictures and then to discuss just what a testicle festival might be. This being Utah, I doubted it was a male strip show and suggested it might have something to do with a mysterious delicacy called “prairie oysters.” Seems some country folk have the habit of eating livestock, er, uh, bollocks. I guess it’s a great way to get together with your friends and neighbors and have a ball. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/32 "2007-04-02T22:35:39Z")
Someone on this plane has farted bad enough to make we wheeze- Over Edinburgh 2005 Steam trains create a lot of soot- Scotland 2005. ---
**Author:** ![Katriona](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/katriona/32/113_2.png) [@Katriona](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katriona)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/33 "2007-04-03T00:42:31Z")
My dad and I kept diaries that we merged after the trip with our photo albums. Tuesday, August 10, 2004 Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Jack the Ripper Walking Tour Dale is quite flummoxed over Wendy’s obsession with seeing the Boudica statue near Westminster, and is left wondering just how many pictures of it one person needs - dangling the lure of the Jewel Tower finally pried her away from the Celtic Queen. Wendy was too busy gawking around Whitechapel to note the step down where the sidewalk ended, and made a giant fool of herself when she stepped off and rolled backwards, almost making a perfect strike of fellow tourists! ---
**Author:** ![Katriona](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/katriona/32/113_2.png) [@Katriona](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katriona)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/34 "2007-04-03T00:45:29Z")
[QUOTE=What Exit?] August 1992 on Honeymoon in Scotland. For a look at what I saw: [Dunnottar Castle, near Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire Scotland](http://www.scotland-inverness.co.uk/Chatelaine/DUNNOTTAR.HTM) Jim [/QUOTE] Oooh, that’s my “family castle!” Well, my Keiths came from Stonehaven, nearby. I haven’t seen it live yet. It’s on the list! ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/35 "2007-04-03T02:25:29Z")
“Easily the dirtiest hands I have ever accepted food from, without a moments hesitation I popped the ball of roasted barley into my mouth, no thought of consequence. The sincerity of the hospitality, the pure heart of the child cook, his glee at finding me in his kitchen seemed to fill, then overflow, the room and then the entire valley below the monastery.” Ladakh, (_Little Tibet_ ), Kashmir, India 1989 ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/36 "2007-04-03T02:35:10Z")
[QUOTE=Katriona] Oooh, that’s my “family castle!” Well, my Keiths came from Stonehaven, nearby. I haven’t seen it live yet. It’s on the list! [/QUOTE] You’ll love it when you get there. Such a beautiful and scenic area. ---
**Author:** ![FilmGeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@FilmGeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FilmGeek)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/37 "2007-04-03T02:47:17Z")
California, 2005 > [@](#): > > That was quite possibly the worst night I’ve ever experienced in my life. (stuck in traffic in the Donner Pass of all places, for 8 hours, we went 4 miles) Nevada, 2005 > [@](#): > > It’s a giant ice penis. (it was a giant ice penis.) ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/38 "2007-04-03T07:35:10Z")
From a trip to Singapore in '86 > [@](#): > > This was the first time to be be with two women. Keiko’s knock-dead gorgous and I’ve always wanted to get in her pants, and we were talking about sex all day so when we were drinking in the room she got all hot and bothered. She. . . Unfortunately, the two sentence rule just kicked in or I’d share the rest. What? You wanted real journal entries? ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/39 "2007-04-03T08:02:04Z")
It continued to get bigger and louder: blue spheres with silver rings inside them; red spheres that turned white, then dissolved into dozens of sparkling, twirling fountains; blue rings with green figure-of-eights; giant expanding Saturns, hundreds of metres across, now rattling the windows in their frames. The balls of fire leaping towards us from out of the black sky, filling our entire vision, eventually became hallucinogenic in their magnificence, and behind the display, lights whizzed crazily up and down the skyscrapers, and searchlights and lasers fanned through the smoke. (A non-existent for anyone who correctly identifies where and what.) ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068/40 "2007-04-03T08:28:07Z")
“If Frodo had to choose, he would have vacationed in Mordor rather than spend a night in Luxembourg.” - entry after an unpleasant stay following a flight with Icelandic to Luxembourg in 1972 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-sentences-from-your-travel-journals/398068.md?page=3)