I just came back from a holiday trip in Japan, and I feel I will keep many good memories from that experience. One of them was waking up at 3AM and start hiking around Mount Fuji for sunrise. This felt quite like a unique experience, out of the beaten paths and I’m glad we did it!
What’s one good story you’ll keep from your last trips?
Toss up between saying BVI a year after Irma, it was so quiet and empty. We spent the day on the beach at Bitter End (its absolutely amazing now its reopened) and if you know that beach its never empty except we had it to ourselves. Went to a bar in Little Bay and just spent the day hanging out with the owner, only ones there, told to help ourselves to beer from the fridge and had dinner with them. BVI is never that quiet during main season, its usually busy to packed.
Other one is Antigua during COVID, quiet beyond belief. Restaurants only allowed to do take out, so they would bring you the meals to your boat. Had a BBQ of the best steak and lobster on the main beach at Barbuda cooked just for us. Last night they opened up restaurants for dine in, only customers at this fancy Mexican fusion restaurant on the beach. They were so happy to have people back, ended up sharing the head chefs bottle of (very expensive) wine as we chatted at the end of the meal.
Most of my favorite holiday stories are when we have gone somewhere and its empty of tourists and just pretty quiet overall.
I feel you, there is nothing worst than a place full of tourists doing the same stuff… It just feels so unauthentic… Unfortunately I had that feeling in Japan’s most popular spots.
Yeah Japan is awful for that and the tourists have only gotten worse with their behaviour over time. I did the main spots of Kyoto once, biggest mistake of my trip.
If you avoid the popular spots entirely then its usually pretty easy to find places that are more authentic. But its been a few years since I last went, its a very tough holiday for me as I am coeliac and the Japanese just do not take gluten allergies seriously (they had something like three people in five years diagnosed in total) so I have to self cater the entire trip.