I met this nice guy in a bar in Japan. Reader, I married him.

I left my camera (expensive)on a bench at a bus stop at Epcot in DisneyWorld, Florida. Didn't realize til 2 hours later! Raced back (by bus) to Epcot, to their lost and found, and there it was! Could never thank whoever was so kind and honest.

In Ireland, outside Galway, in a remote B & B, sat down to breakfast only to find sitting across from me someone I hadn't seen since 9th grade high school (12 years later!).

gertie,
That's a bit amazing.
M

mikemo: Is it? Seems perfectly normal to me. It happened in 1976. 30 years, 2 kids, 12 years in Japan, 13 in London, here we are in Houston...you just never know.

It was the late sixties. We were driving on the autobahn (I think on New Year's Eve) through a nasty storm at some ungodly hour of the morning and were about to run out of gas. Nothing was open and we were desperate. We pulled in at a gas station on the off chance someone would be there. Nobody was. The place was empty, but there was a sort of automatic system--the first and only one I've ever seen--where you could put money in the gas pump and and fill your tank.

This was before credit cards, of course. It saved our lives!

When I was in my mid-twenties, I took a solo trip to the UK. I planned to B & B it, as I had to promise my mom that I would STAY SOMEWHERES SAFE as I was a single female travelling alone and she DID NOT THINK HOSTELS WERE SAFE. Anyways, at my first B & B, the lady owner heard my story. She called a B & B friend of hers in the town that I was to visit next, arranged for a place to stay, and for her to PICK ME UP AT THE TRAIN STATION. So, there I arrive, with a car, B & B owner, her two kids and a nice large dog, waiting for me. That night, she called another B & B friend of hers in the next town on my list, who met me again at the station. This went on for THREE weeks! And, at most of the towns, the lady owner would ensure that I toured the sights at night safely my having her husband drop everything and escort me out around town. Three weeks of this! I felt like royalty. THANK YOU, UK!!!!

This past October we were in Bruges. My husband discovered he had left his new North Face travel jacket on the back of his chair at a restaurant the night before. We both thought the chances were fairly remote that he would see the jacket again. We walked into the restaurant at ten the next morning and there on a hook among the chef's aprons was the jacket. The restaurant, BTW, was very good--De Torres. He also had left a nice tip for the waiter which may have helped!

On 9/12/2001 flowers arrived at our home in New York City from the propietors of the hotel we regularly visit in Provence. The accompanying card stated that they were concerned for us and our family who worked in the Wall Street area. Without their knowing it, my daughter had just gotten out of one the Towers minutes before it collapsed.

This did not happen on our tavels but because of our travels.

Anthony

We ate at a restaurant in Vernazza (Italy) and didn't want to pay with our last euros. Offered a cred card but they didn't want to take it. They told us to "mail" them the money after we get home. Huh? She said they have always gotten the money. Couldn't believe the trust. and of course She probably gets paid a bit extra for her generousity!

I'm not sure if this is as great as some of the others above, but my husband and I had a nice experience in Italy a few years ago. We took the train from Rome to Naples, as we were planning on going to Pompeii for the day. When we stopped in Naples, we almost got off at the wrong train station. An older gentleman was kind enough to inform us that the Circumvesuviana train that we needed to take to Pompeii was at the next station (Naples Central). He must have heard us talking about Pompeii and knew we were getting off at the wrong stop. It was such a nice gesture of kindness from a stranger.

Tracy

In 1997 on a driving tour through Spain with my wife. In Cordoba I stuck our airline tickets and passports under the bed at our hotel (brilliant hiding place) while out to dinner, and of course forgot them the next day. Drove 2+hours to Granada and discovered them missing.

Explained my plight to the hotelier there, and he called the Cordoba hotel (sadly forgot the name), and someone DROVE it over to us that day, almost a 200-mile roundtrip. I was amazed by that generous gesture for a couple of clueless Americans.

In 1999 I was in Positano by myself over Easter. i stayed at the hotel savoia run by 2 sisters. It was Easter Sunday and I went down stairs to have breakfast. while eating the waiter brought me over a box with a bow and when I opened it there was a giant chocolate easter egg with a note that said Auguri Di Buona Pasqua. I asked if everyone got one and he said no it was from the sisters because you are alone on Easter. I thought how sweet-maybe I should convert( I'm not christian).

I'm happy to say I've had numerous "nice unexpected things."

I'm not sure this was the nicest EVER, but it's a wonderful memory. Two girlfriends and I were in Italy, taking the train. Of course we had all grossly overpacked, and one of us--not me I swear--had luggage that she could not lift above her head onto the rack. The three of us were trying together and a gentleman came up and proceeded to lift all our luggage for us. We then chatted with him for the duration of the trip. He was a Senegalese immigrant and told us he enjoyed talking to us because his English was better than his Italian. (His English was excellent, by the way.) So we talked and talked about his experiences as an immigrant in Italy, missing Africa, culture shock, etc.

When we arrived at the station in the evening he went and found a taxi for us and negotiated the fare. We tried to offer him a ride, and he just said, no, it was enough to really talk to people who seemed interested in his life. He told us to enjoy our trip and walked off into the night.

My wife and I and our three children, 17, 14 and 7, just got back from a European trip that included three days in Dublin. We went to the Guiness Factory the first day. We checked our coats, did the tour and then went back to claim our coats. The attendant was a young women, about 20-25 years old and was very friendly. I told her that this was our first time in Ireland and asked her what an appropriate tip might be for her since I didn't want to seem ungrateful for her services. She said smiling, "Sir, you don't need to tip me. This is Ireland and the Irish love Americans!. It was very heartening to hear that and it was nice that my kids got to hear something so genuine.

Small coastal village in Spain (Calpe)many years ago. Wintering with practice wife, and four kids, two of whom were twins.

Went for a ramble down by the beach with the girls in their twin stroller. Got hot later in the morning, and I took off my sweater/jacket and hung it on the back of the stroller. It must have fallen off along the way, but I did not miss it until late in the day. The pockets were stuffed with my sunglasses, some money and my passport.

I thought, "No way will it be there, but I had better look, anyway." I retraced our path, to see the sweater carefully draped over a stone wall where some passerby had placed it. Every item was still in the pocket.

I still am in debt to some annonymous Spaniard.

One of the nicest thing was an answer to my blunder. I was working in Costa Rica's cloud forest and going to the USA. When I got to San Jose, where I was to spend the night, I discovered that while repacking my handluggage I left behind both my EU passport and my US "greencard". Uff. I called a coworker in Monteverde, who first retrieved a key to my cabin from my housekeeper ( after a "nice" hike in the night), next trekked to my cabin in the jungle and got my documents, and then got up at 5 am the next morning to see if someone familiar was taking the bus (so she would not have to take a 5 hour trip - one way - herself) to San Jose, found a person, and called me to tell me who had my documents. So all I had to do was to get to the bus stop at the airport before the bus got there and take my documents from a lady frantically waving them from a bus window whole 30 minutes before my scheduled departure. ... Embarassing for a seasoned traveller, but what a sweet gesture.
And another nice thing that just happened to me: my daughter invited me on a three week trip to Japan with her in June. Just as I was planning a leisure extension of my business trip to Ecuador. Hmm.

nukesafe.. what is a "practice wife"?

Lincasanova,

A "Practice Wife" is ones first, or "starter" spouse, with whom one is allowed to make all of the foolish and painful mistakes young folks are prone to commit. Some folks feel the need to have more than one of these when they don't pay attention and learn the lessons they should have learned the first time around.

The delightful end result is the "current wife" --
though my Tammy insists she is my "FINAL WIFE"! (She is, too.)

My latest travel delights are from my last trip to Berlin in November. First, I ran into an old co-worker that I hadn't seen in four years on a plane from Amsterdam to Berlin. We recognized each other, but we weren't sure so we kept on looking each other from a distance. He finally asked me if we had seen each other somewhere before - and sure enough, we used to work together!

And the second one was during one of the tours that I took of the city, I met a super cool German guy from Limburg who kept on volunteering to take my pictures during the tour that we started chatting. We actually really hit it off that we decided to spend the remaining of our day together exploring Berlin after the tour ended. We went to see the Reichstag, the Christmas Markets, the Sony Center, the Checkpoint Charlie. We went to dinner, had dessert at the Adlon Hotel, and drank glusswein in every single Christmas markets that we passed by. That entire day with him turned out to be one the nicest time that I have ever spent with anyone, so I was grateful for the experience.