One Hundred Facts About Pink Cupcake In 100 Days: Day Seven

I adore vacation memories. Of course, I love the vacations themselves, but cherish even more the memories they create, and it's usually not the big landmarks or sights that I remember most. From China, whilst I of course have vivid memories of the Great Wall, the Forbidden City et. al., I have equally striking memories of the banana splits that my friend and I ate in a hotel in Guangzhou, as a welcome departure from nothing other than the local cuisine which we had eaten 3 meals a day for six weeks. I can picture that banana split now. I can also picture the hotel bar in St Petersburg where my husband and I drank 'Soviet Champagne' served from a silver ice bucket for £3 a bottle! That certainly helped our discussions of the breathtaking art that we had seen in the Hermitage that day.

Lest it seem that all these memories are related food and drink, that's not quite true. (Although I could go on about the amazing Buddhist restaurant that provided a tranquil retreat in Prague, or the most amazing Indian restaurant I've ever been to (and which had the biggest bathrooms ever) in Tallinn...but I have to stop before I salivate too much. ;)) It's more to do with finding the special and unusual in everyday experiences in unfamiliar surroundings, as opposed to just focusing on the touristy aspects. For that reason I love strolling around supermarkets and all manner of other shops in other countries. I like looking at the photographs in hairdressers' windows. I like watching local people go about their day. I also like the surrealness (is that a word?!) of slightly odd happenings in unfamiliar places...Like the ferret I saw strolling through the old town of Krakow, or the checkout assistants in Novgorod, Russia, who looked like they'd stepped right out of the Foo Fighters' Learn To Fly video, or being the only English people (and English speakers) in a pub in Zakopane, Poland during a power cut.

I guess what I love about the memories that travelling leaves me with is that they are both the expected (the museums, galleries etc.) and the unexpected...the ones that always bring a smile to my face.