angy400

My experience happened in Seville, Spain...while I didnt know this woman ,she was from my town with the same situation I was in, just the opposite..

I went to Seville with my mother and two young sons, I left my 2 year old son at home with my husband.
While sitting in a park feeding pigeons I met an american woman with 2 little girls. Quickly learned we were from the same town. She was there with her father (now remember I was there with my mother) her two young daughters( I had my two young sons with me) and she too left her 2 year old home with her husband( I left my 2 year old son at home with my husband).

I was very amazed how similar our situation was!

Pilates

I was visiting my boyfriend who lived in Florence, Italy. One day he went off to work while I decided to re-visit the Boboli Gardens.

Once inside, I made my way down a hill toward the huge fountain when I saw a familiar face seated on a bench. As I approached him, he looked up and I could tell he recognized me too. I said, "You shop at Pavilions, don't you?" That's when he made the connection. At the time, I worked nights and weekends as a grocery checker for Pavilions. He was one of our regular customers. We both marveled at the "small world".

pavfec

In 1989-90, I worked as an au-pair girl in France. In June of 1990, 2 weeks before I was going back home to Canada, the family I was living with gave me the weekend off so I could visit Paris.

I was at the Arc de Triomphe taking pictures of the view when I heard my name. I turned around and it was a girl who had been in my French class in high school (though she was a year younger than me). She had just arrived in France to begin her stint as an au-pair! We spent the rest of the day and the next day together.

LucieV

February 1970, my younger sister and I backpacked through Europe for 3 months. We spent two nights camping on the beach in Crete, sleeping in the caves. There were only about 20 other people there, so we of course started chatting. One of them turned out to be a guy I went to high school with, though he'd grown his hair so long I didn't recognize him!

SuCo27

This has happened several times to us while on vaca actually. The most recent however...
We were travelling with my grandparents who own a stand at our city's Central Market, called the Herb Shop. My grandfather works it every day and is known to people who shop at market as the 'spice man'.
In the Athens airport, waiting for our luggage, a woman walked up and said 'Aren't you the spice man'? She hadn't even been on our flight...she'd come from another city near us, with different layovers, and just happened to be walking by our baggage carousel.

It really is a small world.

basingstoke2

In the 70's I took a shared taxi from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Striking up a conversation with another English speaking passenger, I learned that he was the brother of my best buddy from High School.

surfmom

In Honfleur, enjoying an afternoon beer around the harbor. Not many Americans around, but an American couple sat down next to us. I started chatting and it turned out they live in the same neighborhood (and have entertained) my bil and sil. freaky!

PalenQ

I have a friend i unexpectedly ran into in San Francisco 3,000 miles from our home town - not that uncommon but the next year i ran into him unexpectedly in Paris as well.

That he was 6 ft nine probably accounted to why i 'ran' into him but still strange not once but twice

job816_2

Happens to me alot. Here's a couple . . .
I did a semester abroad in Israel. On Friday nights you can meet at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in order to be set up to have Shabbat dinner with a local family. The mother was from my hometown; Baldwin/Freeport, Long Island. She also lived 4 houses down from my best friend who she knew well since she used to babysit her. I also knew her brother who was only a year older than me.

Traveling in Amsterdam, my sister and I decide to visit a jazz club. It's a very crowded place, but as I spy the musician, I realize I recognize him. A few year earlier, I was working as a waitress at The Wharf Restaurant on Martha's Vineyard - a place where on Saturday nights the same band plays. Well the musican was the lead performer of that band.

Pegontheroad

I was on an army base in Chitose, Japan, on the island of Hokkaido--really the back of beyond. When I chatted with a fellow at the officers'club and we traded "Where-do-you-come-from-in-the-States?" comments, I learned that he knew two former college classmates I had known at a very small women's college in Spokane, Washington. He had met them where they were living in California.

Can you follow that? Chitose, Japan; Spokane, Washington; and somewhere in northern California.

DinPa

One year we were in Spoleto, Italy sitting at the terrace of our hotel having a drink with friends before retiring for the night and we were commenting on the price of gas at a gas station near our hometown (at that time, it was Reading, Pa) and one of us in our party mentioned the restaurant by name (Tailgaters) near the gas station. The man at the next table turned and said "are you talking about Tailgaters outside of Reading,PA?" and we said yes. He told us he lived about 5 miles from there and always gets his gas at the station!
Dave

grandmere

Sitting around the pool at a small hotel on Mykonos in 1997, we met a family who live in an adjacent suburb of Pgh.; in conversation we discovered we had some acquaintances in common.

VeeBee

I backpacked and worked in Europe for nearly 2 years after college. I met a woman at my hostel in Israel who I travelled with for 2 weeks into Egypt and Sinai..(as a young solo female traveller- I was always looking for friends to travel with in Middle East).. Six years later, I moved to Tokyo after graduate school and walked into my new office to find out this woman also worked for the same company and was on her way back to US. Had dinner and caught up. .... About 8 years later, I was reading a Newsweek (?) magazine article on life and how travel changes a person..and thought the story sounded familiar and looked at the author - and it was by this same woman!! Always planned to follow up with her - but figure our paths will cross again somewhere in the world in the future and we'll catch up then!

katya_NY

I ran into a high school classmate that I hadn't seen in years on Ile de la Cite in Paris.

espinach1

My son ran into his best friend from 6th grade in a bar in Brisbane, Australia. They hadn't seen each other for about 7 years. His friend happened to bring along his t-shirt from 6th grade and they were able to have some good laughs over all the names of kids they hadn't seen in years.

suz12

In the Bush #1 days, we were in Edinburgh at a restaurant and the restaurant owner asked what we thought of Bush. We provided our comment and the only other customers piped up to agree with us. And after asking the where from questions, turns out one of them had worked an a teeny village in Alaska for 1 month the year before with an old friend of mine who lives in Seattle.

Another one. ... We were traveling through the southwest for 2 weeks and were on our way back home. We arrived at Grover Hot Springs near the teeny eastern Sierra Nevada town of Markleeville in the evening. Too late to camp in the park. We slept just off the road in the national forest and woke up early to hit the hot springs before we drove the last several hours of our trip. The only other two folks there were soaking at the other end of the big swimming pool hot spring. As we got up to leave (still early in the morning), we and they realized that it was a good friend of ours from home with his father.

But I think the one about seeing friends in the back ground of a Danish cousin's vacation photo is the best!

Didn't see anyone on my last trip to Europe that I wasn't expecting to see - darn.

hax

On my first trip to Paris 27 years ago, I was strolling the Tuileries Gardens when I heard a voice that sounded familiar. I turned around, and it was my boyfriend's brother! (bf is now my husband.) He lived across the country and I had no idea he was in Europe.

Since then, we find that we run into neighbors or our kids' schoolmates almost every vacation (especially Spring break). We've been surprised to see neighbors in Mexico, Hawaii, Nantucket, Sanibel Island, NYC, the Bahamas, on the plane back from Barcelona, and just last month, our daughter ran into two former schoolmates in Paris and St. Paul de Vence.

taitai

About a decade ago or so I was in the Prado viewing Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. It is a painting I had studied in college. I looked over and standing next to me was my college roommate's best friend who had been in the same Art History class with me and had been in my study group!

taitai

cailin

A number of years ago we were backpacking in Australia and we met a South African guy. We kept bumping into him, and bumped into him again in New Zealand! After leaving him in NZ we did a bit more travelling, and arrived home a few months later. A few days after we got home, we were at a rugby match in Lansdowne Road (Ireland vs South Africa)...and guess who was sitting 2 rows in front of us? Yup!

Graziella5b

This is a little long but extraordinary , we owned the Lafayette Hotel in South Beack, back in the 90. One day the hotel was totally full, all hotels in South Beach were full. One of our guests an American woman had an emergency and checked out late in the evening , a day before her reservation .
An hour later an Italian couple coming from Modena, Italy arrived. They had met at Miami AIrport by chance an Italian lady from Milano and her mother. They were flying between New York and an island in the Caribbean but the airliner left them standed in Miami. They were totally at lost, and ask for help to the Italian man who they did not know. He brought them along to our hotel, asking for a room. Because the women had left in a hurry we had a room . Next morning
the Italian lady from Milano met in the lobby with one of our daughters. Our daughter was studing in the University (FID) and was part time working with
Versace 's company setting an exibition in NY.
Well the lady that come to our hotel was her boss at Versace.! ( She knew we had a hotel in South Beach but she could not remember the name) Amazing?
but true.