21 Comments

  1. Romance of Train Travel – Indie Travel Challenge » Grounded Traveler
    March 23, 2012 @ 9:44 am

    […] The best trains for a social experience are the ones with cabins. A few people in a journey for a few hours in a isolation from the outside world. Conversations start up and change as people come and go. Even in the big open trains with 4 seats around a table, that provides a good way to talk to people. Failing that, the bistro car with a beer is a good place to relax as well. Even if you have to bring your own, you can eat plenty on a journey. […]

  2. Dina
    April 3, 2011 @ 8:35 am

    Great suggestion on eating while traveling. Sometimes I carry around a bag of bread and chocolate spread (great if you can find funny brand that is cheaper than nutella). Since Ryan and I traveling as a couple, and we don’t eat much, we love to cut the expense (and fat) by sharing just 1 meal. We are really bad about breakfast since we are late risers. Or maybe you can say that we do have breakfast, just happen during normal people’s lunch time because we wake up late 🙂

  3. Ali
    April 1, 2011 @ 6:34 am

    I’m like you, being well planned for food is extremely important. My bitchy side comes out if I’m stuck hungry for too long. I try to always have snacks with me, but it varies greatly just depending on what’s available to me.

  4. Krista
    March 28, 2011 @ 8:26 pm

    This post made me grin! I don’t do well when I’m hungry either. I always bring water and snacks when I travel, and make sure I have extra in case others forget. I don’t want them being buggers either! 🙂 I like dried fruit, roasted nuts, bread with sausage and cheese. 🙂

    • Andrew
      April 2, 2011 @ 1:43 pm

      Yup, all of those are on my list. And good reminder about bringing enough to share.

  5. Sabrina
    March 28, 2011 @ 5:37 pm

    I’m a huge fan of snack packs 🙂 Mode of travel doesn’t really influence it too much (except for liquids of course) since you can get stuck anywhere without time or a place to buy anything. And I get cranky without food…

    I always try to have something sweet and something salty with me. For the sweet I like either sweet granola bars or snack size Mars, Snickers, etc. For the salty, I like nuts, crackers (if packed well), or little dry sausages.

    I like your cheese idea! That will go on my next snack pack list 🙂

    • Andrew
      March 28, 2011 @ 7:46 pm

      Yup, we are then similar with the cranky without food thing. I like the salty and sweet idea, and most snacks fall into one or the other category thankfully. Actually for both though make sure you have enough water.
      By all means try the cheese. 🙂

  6. Katherina
    March 28, 2011 @ 7:54 am

    When traveling, I admit, I live on mandarines and crackers (if possible with philadelphia cheese). With this, every sorrow will go away…

    • Andrew
      March 28, 2011 @ 7:44 pm

      OO tasty. Fresh or canned mandarines?

  7. Life Lessons of a Military Wife
    March 27, 2011 @ 5:38 pm

    My vote is always for granola bars…discovering all the new ones in Belgium has been great. They don’t get squished or broken and create minimal crumbs. For some reason, I always pack Goldfish crackers cause they don’t tend to get squished as much as regular square crackers…and they have all the yummy flavors.

    • Andrew
      March 28, 2011 @ 7:47 pm

      I like goldfish. I’d forgotten them as I don’t really see them in the stores here. Granola bars are fine and tasty, but often too small to stave off major hunger. Never a bad thing to have though.

  8. Sabina
    March 26, 2011 @ 7:31 am

    That Nutella looks so good. I haven’t eaten it in ages. I always bring food for traveling simply because I don’t want to pay the exhorbitant amounts that are charged at airports, etc. Bottled water plus peanuts or nuts is usually enough. Maybe even potato chips and/or a sandwich for a longer journey. And okay, maybe some cookies. Perhaps an apple. You’re right – sitting for hours and hours takes energy!

    • Andrew
      March 26, 2011 @ 11:46 am

      It so totally does. My dad describes our travel days as hours of relative boredom and inaction punctuated by minutes of frantic running. And you are right, the cost is another reason to prep beforehand. Even if you are on a train with a dining car, the food is likely microwaved and still pretty expensive.
      Nutella is such a great travel companion. A quick roll from a bakery(or stolen from breakfast) and you have a sandwich.

  9. Gillian @OneGiantStep
    March 26, 2011 @ 12:44 am

    We got very good at the bus snack game during out year away. The go-to was always a full bottle of water (meted out carefully depending on bathroom availability), a roll of Oreo cookies (funnily enough I haven’t had a single Oreo since returning), and some fruit and/or nuts if it could be found. You only need to go hungry once to realize the benefit of planning ahead…and who doesn’t like allowing cookies to be the meal for the day?

    • Andrew
      March 26, 2011 @ 11:43 am

      The bathroom-snack/water relation is another one of those that you only tend to screw up once. Bus bathrooms are inhospitable at best and non-existent or totally repellent at worst. Mmm cookies are a good choice.

  10. Andrea
    March 25, 2011 @ 10:53 pm

    Excellent post topic! Travel days often present food challenges for us. You wouldn’t think a bus station would have little or no acceptable food options but we’ve encountered this heaps. Sometimes we find other days a challenge like Sundays in South America when hardly anything is open. Add heavy rainfall and you’ve got us holed up eating granola bars for dinner in our room.

    • Andrew
      March 26, 2011 @ 11:39 am

      Maybe it is the American commercial mentality, but a bus/train station without viable food seems like a waste of opportunity. Especially as some of the things that I have seen are things like pizza or pasta that is really not portable if you only have a few minutes to change. Maybe it is a different mentality of time. I remember a stop that I thought was going to be a bathroom break that lasted over half an hour in Greece. I bought a sandwich and ran out to sit by the bus, worried it would leave and 30 minutes later people kind of wandered slowly back. The place was a restaraunt/deli thing that had a good selection of stuff though.

      The Sunday closed thing is a problem in Germany too. Only train stations shouldn’t have that issue. Granola bars and beer, I’ve done that for dinner too.

  11. Jeremy B
    March 25, 2011 @ 9:23 pm

    I like to take snacks. Depends on what kind of traveling I am doing. My food choices vary but granola bars and crackers are always good to have.

    • Andrew
      March 26, 2011 @ 11:34 am

      I’m glad you mentioned crackers. I like having them too. The one issue that I have yet to surmount is the crumbs. Between getting squished in a bag in the rush or just simply crumbling everywhere in your seat as you eat them, they can make a fair mess. Bread does this to a certain extent too, but not as much as crackers. Do you have a way to keep them intact?

      • Jeremy B
        March 29, 2011 @ 3:46 pm

        For me, the best way to carry them is to put it in a lunch bag or a smaller bag that you can carry around. With my wife, she always has a purse so much easier to carry small things like crackers without having to stuff them in your bag.

        • Andrew
          April 2, 2011 @ 1:48 pm

          So the trick is to travel with someone with a purse, it seems. 😉 I have that on order. The double bagging of crackers does make sense, but almost ends up in the “too much work” category and just would go for normal bread, but good to know it works.