It is always interesting to hear a pro’s experience in the travel world. As I mentioned in the previous posting Andrew Zimmern was at this Adventure Expo in DC. I had the opportunity to meet him and talk for a little. First off, he is a really nice guy – doesn’t come off as pretentious or anything. It turns out that his travel background is pretty similar to mine in that we both had fathers that insisted on the importance of experiencing what the specific place is all about.

In Zimmern’s experience, his family would travel everywhere and along the way they would stop by a specific restaurant that his father had researched to sample their specialty cuisine. He explained how, as a child going to all these different restaurants, there would be the natural tendency to go for the hot dog or pizza or something familiar. His father on the other hand would insist on trying whatever the house specialty was. As a young child, Zimmern learned how myopic the United States was when it came to food. During his presentation, he explained how the US is the only country in the world where fresh milk (straight from the animal) was illegal and where chicken breast comes wrapped in plastic. His childhood experiences inevitably led Zimmern to where he is now, hosting Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel. The success of which, he points out, has to do with the myopic US environment. “The United States is now just getting into organic and around the corner food. The rest of the world has been doing that for centuries…” Zimmern says.

My father was very similar in that not only would he insist we try the local specialties but he would do his best to avoid the luxurious tourism spots – mostly to the dismay of my mother. He didn’t feel that those types of experiences, although they have their place, didn’t represent the people and their culture which we were visiting. My father’s style of traveling introduced to me what the definition of what a traveler is. The details were filled in by other travelers and experience on the road itself provided its true meaning to me.

Here is a bad picture of Zimmern and myself. I was unhappy with the fact that my eyes were closed so I decided to take a picture with the pretty carnival lady from Aruba to make up for it- and to promote tourism to the Caribbean of course! I apologize for the poor picture quality, I had to use my cellphone.