Travel game: spot the impractical shoe

One of the games my husband and I always play when we travel is: spot the impractical shoes. It's classic. You will always find someone wearing highly impractical shoes no matter where you go. In Paris, impractical shoes are everywhere you look, despite the cobble-stone streets and dog-poop covered sidewalks. In Amsterdam, it was the unforgettable transvestite tottering on 5-inch heels and little else, coming just a wee bit close to one of that city's famous canals.

Now that we have children, our travels don't take us nearly so far. But the game is just as fun. With the kids, it's: "spot the clicky-clocks" (their word for any high-heeled shoe). Like many little girls, ours have a natural bent for dressing up and wearing the most glam shoes whenever possible. My mom is a favorite visitor of theirs, because heels are the only kind of shoes she wears. Hers are mostly sandals, since she lives in Hawaii, and they come in rainbow colors. It's not surprising that they ooh and aah over these shoes, try them on and help my mom decide which ones to wear. The only shoes my husband and I own are very drab earth tones: brown, black, black and brown, and brown and black. All with sensible, athletic-type supportive soles. Merrells, Keens, Clarks. Our feet truly belong in Portland.

So while out hiking on our weekend getaway, after what we thought was going to be fairly painless 2.2 mile loop of Wahkeena Falls to Multnomah Falls, but what actually turned out the be 5.6 miles of lots of up, down, up, down, up, down and switchbacks, what do we spot? Yes, you guessed it: impractical shoes. In the form of flip flops. If you've ever hiked the trails up and over the Multnomah Falls lookout, especially after you get past the 1.1 mile paved path to the overlook, you will know that the trails are steep, rocky, often wet and muddy, sometimes mossy and always a bit beyond the abilities of the flip flop. Even the old running shoes that I was wearing were a bit lacking in the foot support department after 5 miles.

I was happy to see that the majority of the people in extremely impractical shoes seemed aware of their limitations and never made it past the "Kodak Moment" spot just beyond the parking lot on the Multnomah Falls foot bridge. As for the hiker in flip-flops. I can only imagine that his dogs were barking at the end of the day, but I do thank him for allowing us to play our special travel game.

Does your family play any fun travel games?

Comments

[Elizabeth]

I've played that game with a friend's daughter age 10 in the same location...I used the "impractical shoe" as an explanation for why she and her mother fought over what she wanted to wear and what was appropriate for a 10 y.o. girl to wear. (And why she should sit back an listen lest she make the same mistake!)

Our most recent travel game was "Why do you think this spot is itchy?" Is it a mosquito bite? Chigger bite? Spider bite? Poison Ivy? I actually missed my sugar ant infestation...because they don't bite!