the (unexpected) best part of traveling

totally bit this post idea from cup of jo, but it got my wheels turning about one of the best parts of traveling: doing nothing (or, ordinary things) in a new place, which somehow makes the experience way more magical. what are some of your favorite random travel moments?

- eating a huge dish of bread pudding in my hotel bed while wearing a plush bathrobe during a solo trip to san francisco

- using binoculars to spy on people in the apartment building across the street (and making up stories about them) with my cousin when we were staying in my aunt's parents' apartment in new york

- my roommates and i thinking the back door in our barcelona hotel room was broken until we realized it was actually a window, and laughing until our stomachs hurt about it (...guess you had to be there)

- on the same trip, my tour group was staying at place called chateau camiole in the south of france, about an hour outside of nice. before we left for the six-hour trip from barcelona, we stopped at a grocery store to stock up on meat and cheese and snacks. i'd gotten super-sick a couple days before, and it was the first day i was feeling better, but i was still pretty tired by the time we arrived in france. since we were so far from civilization and it was getting late, our tour director got all of us together in one of the flats, and we spent the whole evening snacking on our meats and cheeses and baguettes, drinking wine, and learning more about each other. it was fantastic.

- the next night, the girls in my suite and i snuggling on one bed, watching an SVU marathon that was totally in french

- riding around aimlessly at night, listening to kanye's college dropout with my childhood best friends during a trip back to my hometown of syracuse in high school

- going vintage shopping while half-drunk on hurricanes in new orleans

- singing along to zayn's "pillowtalk" in a london pub

- sitting with gleni on one of our beds in paris while she tinder swiped

- eating pizza and drinking wine with my mom on the patio of a pizza place in st. augustine as a guy covered "i am the walrus"

 - when my friend requested that "trap queen" be playing as i got into our uber in portland, maine

- eating an incredible ham sandwich at this adorable deli in the adorable town of hood river, oregon where i stopped to charge my phone (weirdly, most of these moments involve food or music)

- on that same day, sitting on the curb in portland with a new dutch friend eating a rice bowl from a food cart

- trading "that's what she said" jokes with a stranger in a SXSW shuttle van