Coincidental meetings while travelling
 

Have other travellers had coincidental meetings with people they knew, or who knew people they knew, while travelling? Here are a couple of examples from my travels: <BR> <BR>In the 1980s we were travelling with our children in Europe and had dragged them to the Louvre (We didn't do a lot of art galleries on that trip). We were in the room with the Mona Lisa and suddenly my 10-year-old darted away. He came back a moment later to say, "Mom! Mom! There's Suzanne! She's in my class at College Gardens [E.S.]!" <BR> <BR>This year, in early June, we were in the Musee D'Orsay (a trip with no kids and heavy on art galleries) when my sister and I happened to strike up a conversation with a young college student. It turned out her grandmother lives in the same small town in Utah (St. George) where my sister lives.

Well there was this local MP who was a very naughty boy, dumped his wife and kids and moved in with a new lady just down the road from where we live... they took a nice trip (to escape the heat, I think)... well I literally ran right into them as they were leaving and I was entering a store in Reagent St. London. <BR>In London I have also bumped into a couple off kids who were at school with mine, but that's not so amazing concidering that most of the 18-25 year olds I know are now working in the UK. <BR>Oh and here's a funny story... last year when I was in London visiting my daughter (who works over there), we were sitting on the tube and there was a whole bunch of people speaking Afrikaans (I'm South African), anyway they started talking about my daughter, saying how they liked a particular feature of hers. This went on for quite a while. We didn't say a word, just smiled at each other and when they got up to leave the train we politely said goodbye to them in Afrikaans. They were sooooo embarassed that we had understood every word. That was fun!!

My husband and I were sitting on a bench in the Giverny gardens, when business acquaintance of my husband's from our hometown strolled by! He was visiting Paris w/his wife, who was attending a business conference there... 'small world', n'est pas?

I was on a work assignment to the Bahamas and was sitting by the resort pool before dinner, when I recognized a voice behind me. It was my old college boyfriend, whom I hadn't seen for 10 years _ there on his honeymoon....

(1) My wife worked on a kibbutz in Israel in the 70s and had a French female roommate. When they left the kibbutz they embraced and wept and vowed to stay in touch, etc. And didn't. 20 years later we discovered the roommate had married an American and had been living a block from us in the US for the last 10 years. <BR> <BR>(2) At a restaurant on an outer island in Fiji we met six other people (four separate couples counting us) who either knew each other or had common friends or went to school together, all travelling independently. The restaurant seated 20 people. What are those odds?

About ten years after leaving college I was driving down a road near Santa Croce in Florence in a car with Italian plates when I was waved down by a tourist who wanted directions. Believe it or not but it turned out to be one of my best friends of college days. I don't know which of us was more surprised. <BR> <BR>It makes me wonder though how many near misses there are in life rather than actual coincidences.

In London in April, I ran into two former co-workers (a married couple) in Westminster Abbey. I hadn't seen them in about 10 years, since they'd relocated to another part of the country. <BR> <BR>Later that week, in Stratford, I ran into them again.

My girlfriend and I were doing the backpack thing in '85 we were in Salzburg Austria at a youth hostel. We started chit chatting with our roommate who had dated a guy in New York that I had dated in Los Angeles 2 years earlier. It got to be kind of the joke of the hostel, with every girl there claiming to have dated this guy at one time or another.

Deja Vu? We had a wonderful thread about this late last year? I think it was called "small world" or something like that..does anyone else remember? It had at least 100 posts with great stories..let's do a search, shall we?

A woman from my office and I went to Acapulco a number of years ago and, at a bull fight, saw a man from our office sitting a few rows ahead of us with a young woman to whom he was not married. My friend, the unquenchable, yelled hello at him.

Thanks, Sandi, for remembering the thread that was started about 2 years ago. It's called "It's a small world after all!" and it's full of great stories. I'll look now and send it up.