SuperSizing Your Travel
Pico Iyer, a writer much admired by JadedTraveler wrote about the top ten things to do in a strange country, posted on CNN Travel. But we think when he got to number nine, he was grasping for ideas. His suggestion? Go to McDonalds. He writes: The food is cheap and semipredictable, of course, but it’s all the ways in which the place is surprising that you will take home with you. What else are we looking for in travel (and in love and in life) but a tasty mix of the strange and the familiar? In my more frenetic travels, I always considering stopping to eat more a necessary pit stop than a pleasure, like going to the bathroom. I’d just head to where all the locals congregated, which was usually a McDonald’s. (The real New World Order isn’t political, it’s a Big Mac, order of fries, and a Coke.) But I’d still cringe in embarrassment. You shouldn’t eat at places where you have to apologize to the stranger next to you, as one American confided to me in Berlin: “I never eat at McDonald’s at home, but I’m in a hurry.” These days, I only go to the Golden Arches because my Dalmatian really enjoys ordering off the dollar menu. McDonald’s saving grace: this institution has taught the world to clear its table before leaving.