Holiday Trip Strays: The Nice People

This summer I would occasionally post on Facebook about the people I'd met in a given day, noting the delightful life-slices I'd been lucky enough to hear about from all kinds of curious and delightful travel companions. I realized that I never did that for my winter trip, so after the jump, here are a few that linger.

My server at a restaurant on Skye, Canadian by birth but working at this Skye hotel/restaurant with her husband, the sommelier, as they both figured out what they wanted to do. She'd trained in museum studies and worked at the V&A in London (one of the greatest theatre ephemera collections is there - it's on my list for an upcoming trip!) but wanted to push herself to be a creator, and was on Skye continuing to experiment in metalworking and a jewelry-making business she ran. They'd gotten to celebrate New Year's Eve the night before, going out on the lawn with guests of the hotel and setting off fireworks, but on this sunny day all they wanted was for lunch service to end so they could get out into the all-too-rare sunlight.

The Australian couple from my cooking class in Barcelona, whose kids were grown and who take an annual vacation to Europe - a long trip and the only one they take, because the flight time is something like 24+ hours. She was a former dancer (now a ballet teacher), self-depricating about her cooking abilities, which her husband good-naturedly seconded (she'd managed to burn boiled eggs, something so hard to do that our instructor assumed she'd mis-translated what they were telling her). As has often been the case with the Aussies I've met on the road, they were friendly and generous and kind, chatting with me about their daughter (enrolling in one of the major Australian arts universities in a dance program), the impending inauguration in America, and their remaining travel plans. Full of life, a great inspiration.

The Dutch couple I met at my B&B in Skye, who turned up at the Talisker distillery and paid my way in when I wasn't looking. From a little village outside Groningen, they came to Scotland because it felt like the kind of landscape they're drawn to. At breakfast they'd cautiously asked me if Chicago really had the kind of violence they'd heard about, which led to a really thoughtful, complex conversation about gun control, racial segregation, and community policing. It was fun then to see the husband of the couple geeking out at the distillery, the first time he'd gone on a tour like that.

My AirBnB host was a funny, charismatic guy who mentioned the gallery that he works at; late in my stay I decided to drop by for a visit. We chatted about my stay, and about how much the city had surprised me; he told me that growing up in Argentina, he'd always heard great things about Barcelona from extended family who had moved there, and that when he moved he'd had sky-high expectations that still were exceeded. It turned out that the gallery he worked at belonged to his wife, an artist (I now own two of her prints). He laughed and said "There are two kinds of galleries. One is rich and one is crazy. This one is crazy." He then showed me a few pieces of hers that came from ideas he'd had - "Sometimes I make a piece, but she's so much better than I am that I usually give it to her because she'll make it better than I could."

All these people were thoughtful, generous, kind, inquisitive and friendly, and... I feel like we could all be them? Learn from them? WHATEVER THEY WERE NICE THE END