Three.
One. 1975, American spouse is living on a kibbutz in Israel, has French roommate. After they return to their home countries (spouse to San Diego) they correspond for a time, then stop. 1995, living in Seattle, they run into each other at the supermarket. She met some guy from Seattle around 1980 and moved here. She lives a block from our house. Spouse went to high school with the guy.

Two. Traveling with Scottish friends we check into a tiny hotel in Sarlat in the Dordogne region of France. Only other guests are an American couple, who ask for menu interpretation services. Upon questioning it turns out they live two doors from my parents in California. What's their itinerary in Europe? Well, en route to visit their son, who's spending the summer playing semi-pro baseball in Italy. (Yes.) Our Scots friends ask, where's he living? Tiny village (200 souls +/-) in Tuscany. What address? Behold, in the flat right above the one occupied by Scottish wife's best bud from school, now married to an Italian.

Three. Spouse and I are overnighting in a wee complex of cabins in Banff National Park. Go to breakfast, sit next to couple that we introduced to each other, he American, she Canadian, five years previously. They are now living 3000 miles apart. They had arranged an assignation (both single but woowoo) and only ended up at this place when they ran out of gas and light.

my husband and i live/work in nj (work for same company). we take a vacation driving up the california coast. we're in los angeles at the start of our trip, waiting to get into the jay leno show..and there is someone we work with!
a few days later, we make it up to san francisco. we're in a street car doing the tourist thing..and there is the same guy we work with!
that was just too weird.

A few years ago we were traveling from southern Missouri to Wisconsin and stopped at a McDonalds in Hannibal . While the kids were eating their happy meals, my brother and his family walked in! They were driving from Minnesota down to St Louis for a few days' vacation.

I studied abroad at Sheffield Hallam Univ in England for 3 months in 1998. One of the friends I met there was from Spain, Veronica. While she was studying at SHU, her boyfriend was traveling Europe with his friends. I saw one picture of him. At the end of my studies (Veronica is still at SHU), I meet my boyfriend in London to travel Europe with him. About a week into our travels, we are checking out MANY places to stay in Florence, Italy. At one of the hostels, I see this guy coming through the door -- Veronica's boyfriend! He had no clue who I was, and was totally taken aback when I said his name -- what are the chances that I see a picture once, never meet the person, and then happen to not only run into him, but recognize him!

I was in Singapore on a business trip and was one of the 1st people from my group downstairs at the hotel at our appointed time. One of my co-workers saw me, introduced me to someone and told me to share his cab as he was going to the site and our group was one too many for a cab. I jumped in the cab and met an individual from my company who turned out to live in my hometown less than a mile from me. I work with 60,000 people and have never seen the man at work or around town since!

My cousin has seen someone she knows in every theme park she has ever gone to. Disney, Hershey, 6 Flags (2 times)
It's amazing.

In Maui for honeymoon this past May and was at the Old Lahaina Luau. While in line for drinks, my wife ran into her previous boss, in Maui attending a wedding.

Water taxi from Paradise Island to Nassau - guy sitting accross from me asked, "are you from Illinois?"

I said yes. I tried to think where I knew him from - then realized we had officiated the Illinois State High School Track and Field (discus) the year before.

We wanted our friend Fran to photograph our wedding. He couldn't, because he was heading to France two days before our wedding date. Because we were going to France on our honeymoon, we said, "Maybe we'll see you there."

We spent several days in Paris, where occasionally we joked, "Hey, there's Fran." Then we took the train down to Avignon. After checking into our hotel, we decided to get something to eat in the town square. We were checking out the menus when my wife looked up and said, "Hey, there's Fran." And I said, "Uh huh." And she said, "No, really--there's Fran." Yes, Fran was headed for the French Riviera and had decided to stop over in Avignon that night.

I called a man about renting an apartment who has my brother's name. He tells me he has a sister with my name. Then he asks me my sister's name and it is the same as his other sister's name. Weird.

About 3 years ago we were in Disney World standing in line to see one of the characters, when this family was in front of us and the gentlemen says to my hubby- I know you, you brought your car into our gas station to fix your flat tire. Mind you, hubby hadn't been there in a few years to that station, but he remembered my hubby. Funny isn't it. You never know who you may run into especially in another state.

We went to Orlando in July when my daughter was 4.

In September, my husband took her to a new Gymnastics class where we live in NY.
The teacher said she recognized my husband even though they had never met.

As it turned out, we were in the background of her video tape at the Little Mermaid attraction at Magic Kingdom!

Early in my working life I spent 2 dreadful years as a US Customs inspector. Saw thousands of people every day. Never ever ran into anyone I knew. That's weird.

But I did once clear an Irish citizen who happened to have the same first and last name as me (not so strange as my parents are both Irish born). I glanced at her date of birth and strangely we had the same birthday - day, month and year. We were both the same height, weight (roughly) and have green eyes and brown hair- again not so unusual as we are both Irish. So I said this is a funny coincidence as we have the same name and birth date. She looked at me very strangely and said "Wow- what's really strange is that I am a customs inspector too" She was an Irish customs inspector on vacation. So we shared the same name, same birth date, same phycical description and the same occupation. Very freaky.

It was 1988, my first trip alone to Australia. I was walking down the street in Cairns and a girl is walking towards me wearing an Illinois t-shirt. (I'm from Illinois) I said, are you REALLY from Illinois? She said yes. We had dinner together. She was traveling alone also, and was also a teacher like me! Turns out, we lived about 70 miles apart! We kept in touch for a short time after coming back to USA. It IS a small world.
By the way, when I travel I try to find "twins" to the folks at home. I've decided everyone has a twin out there somewhere. I've noted a bunch of them in my travel journals.

Fifteen years after I graduated from high school, I was in the Atlanta airport waiting for a flight to Philadelphia. A man approached me and called me by my maiden name. I knew he had to know who he was talking to because my maiden name is not a familiar one. Plus, we were about 600 miles away from the small rural town I grew up in. It really made my day when he told me he thought he recognized me from across the way, but he KNEW it was me when he saw me smile. Turns out, he was my high school chemistry teacher.

My brother, who's 53 and lives in Portland OR recently called Northwest Airlines to arrange for some upgrades. The customer service agent told him that there were no first class seats available on either of his flights, but that he should check again at departure gates. At the end of the conversation the customer service agent asked if my brother's middle name was "Richard." Turned out that she was my brother's girl friend in the ninth grade (in Nampa, ID). She now works in Northwest's Miami reservations center.

When my brother checked in at the outbound departure gate, both upgrades had already been confirmed.

what are the chances? i went to n.y.c for the w'end from poughkeepsie when i was in college. the plan was to visit family, and hopefully to meet up with my friends that went to colombia and marymount. had a nice dinner w/my sister and cousins, but got the answering machine (b.c...before cell phones!) when i called my friends to make plans to meet up. spent most of the night at a bar on 108th w/my cousins as it was his "college" bar he said...on the way out...none other than my friends from columbia and marymount!!
it was only then i remembered my cousin went to columbia too. n.y.c is such a small world!

I had friends (Jacki & Kevin) in town this weekend from Tucson (I live in Baltimore). We met up with some other friends (Molli & Mike), who are more like close acquaintences.

Mike happened to mention to me that he'd been in the Air Force. I told him that Kevin had also been AF.

Once they got to talking, it turned out that they were both in the same squadron, stationed in Greece at the same time and worked on the same kind of plane, one in the air, and one on the ground crew. One's last name is McCue and the other's is McQuarter, nicknamed McQ.

There was an interesting article in the NY Times a couple of months ago, about there being no coincidences.

Okay, so mine aren't that interesting, but they're curious in that there are three, and each has to do with football! In 1994, I'm walking down Lower Regent Street in London on lunch break from my summer internship from grad school, and I bump into the wife and daughter of my college football coach. In the Des Moines airport in 1998, I ran into the father of my teammate from college with whom I used to share a room on our away-game trips (he's now the recently-fired head coach at the U of Washington!). The third is only marginally travel-related, but it still has to do with a small world and of course with football, so bear with me. In 1999, my wife and I travelled to San Francisco (see, there's the travel part)to visit with her sister and sister's husband, whom I had met for only a few minutes at our wedding the previous year. It turns out that my new brother-in-law and I had actually been high school football teammates in New Jersey. The year after we played together, my family moved away to Florida. I eventually met my wife when we worked together in Florida, and we now live in Washington, DC. His family moved to Chicago the year after mine left New Jersey. He met his wife at Georgia Tech, and they now live in SDan Francisco.

We did a 10 day tour of Costa Rica back in 1999, over Thanksgiving. 2 couples, the other man is a friend of mine from high school. We were always the smart *ss guys, you know, anything can be made fun of in a non-offensive way. Anyway, our first full day we drive to the volcano north of the capital. There are lots of places to stay and eat. We check into our cabins and head for a restaurant that someone had suggested. At dinner, my buddy and I immediately locked on to a boisterous fellow at the next table. He spoke with a thick Dutch accent, and went on and on about his great world travels.

We made a few smart remarks to our wives about him being Commander McBrag from the old cartoon, etc.

Anyway, when we checked out the next day "Dutchie", as we had named him, was checking out of our place as well. Huh, what do you know. So we are off to the nxt destination, which is an all day drive around a huge lake and up an increadibly rocky mountain road. Speeds topped out at 5-10 MPH kind of road. At the end of the day we check into our extremely remote hotel in the cloud forrest of Monte Verde. We head to the bar, and who is sitting at the bar, holding court with his tales of great travels, but "Dutchie". He recognized us and asked what had taken so long for us to arrive, because he knew when we had check out that morning from the previous night's lodge.

I told him of the 100 mile journey arounf the lake, and up the mountain road.

He responded "Well that is quite admirable to drive all the way around the biggest lake in the country, but realize that it was completely unnecessary. We took the auto ferry straight across, and we've been here for hours".

Dutchie trumped us in front of his galley of listeners.