Local Flavor

Where are your favorite local places to go when you are traveling? You know, the places that really give you the “flavor” for the locale, so to speak. I have a colleague who always goes into Laundromats and supermarkets when he goes to a new city. He believes that you can always know the character of a place based upon those two shops.
In Williams, a little town about an hour south of the Grand Canyon, I ate at a small Mexican cantina on the first Friday of Lent.
In London, I had to purchase some emergency feminine protection items. However, I first had to ask a passing stranger where to find them. The bond of womanhood kind of overrode the barrier of strangeness between the stranger and myself.
In Toronto, my traveling companion and I took his car to a local auto shop to get his “check engine” light investigated.
But I think that the best one was this: In Putney, I attended a Sunday service at an Anglican Church of England and then met friends at a local pub to watch the football game. We each ordered a pint and bet 2 quid on the game.
I like to imagine, when I’m on the road, that life in that city is my life. That the places I go and things I do when on a trip are no big deal, they’re just part of my life. I could be a typical Londoner who lays a quid on the football match and celebrates with a pint. It’s fun for me to imagine that’s life, a life so different from the one at home, a life seasoned with the local flavor.