I love food. I spend the majority of my day reading food blogs and trying to figure out what I want to bake next. Really my devotion to cuisine makes a lot of sense because travel and food are the perfect marriage. What better way to get to know an area, a country, a town, etc then by sampling the local cuisine. Alton Brown from the Food Network has an awesome show Feasting on Asphalt that takes exploring road food to a new level. There will be many blog entries dedicated to food, because what you eat while you travel is nearly as important as who you travel with. One food and travel obsession from my childhood is especially vivid; the quest for vending machines.

I don't know when or why I started to seek vending machines out, but at some point in my childhood I started keeping a large collection of change. I would save up as much loose change throughout the year that I could to use on our summer vacations. I am willing to admit that much of that change was stolen from couch cushions, the laundry room, etc. I don’t know what the thrill was for me. Maybe it was just seeing how the products changed from state to state, or maybe it was just that I was allowed to snack on things that I didn’t normally eat at home. Also, at that point in my travels we were camping and rarely ate out at restaurants or bought a lot of souvenirs. Vending machines were just kind of a cheap thrill I for me, and I was easy to please. My mom has never let me live down the time I got so excited to find a vending machine with playing cards and toothbrushes. See what I mean, I am easily entertained.

I have heard that in other countries there are vending machines that sell fantastically random things like beer and fishing tackle. I might start a separate bank account to save up for the day I come across one of those machines. Anybody else this crazy for vending machines, or seen interesting vending items?