Faremax: Travel Forums

Anyone else here vegetarian?  If so, do you find it a real pain when you're travelling?

I have a horrible time - not only am I veggie, I'm allergic to olive oil, so it can take AGES to find anywhere good to eat.

How do you cope with it if you have special diet requirements?

Given the option I am vege.  I must say kudos to airlines--if you tag your booking they will accomodate any reasonable requirment.  Only on big planes you then get served as mush as 45 minutes beofre seatmates which can be embarrassing.  Airports, trains and bus station are much worse so I carry some food with me.  Otherwise it depends where you go.  Depending on the area I somtimes give a religious reason for not eating meat as this is received more sympathetically by people like hotel staff.

I hadn't thought of giving a religious reason, I'd feel a bit silly trying that (I'm one of those people who can barely tell a white lie to avoid offending someone without blushing) but if I get desperate I might! I got sent to Germany for work once, and they put me up in a posh hotel where all options were either meat, or were soaked / drizzled with olive oil. I was really ill for the first few days, then gave up and just ate cheese sandwiches on the walk back to the hotel for the rest of the fortnight. I felt like an idiot just drinking at meal times with everyone, but the hotel were no help whatsoever :(

With cheap hotels I don't push it to avoid having spit as a condiment.  But premium price hotels (i.e. when my work-related host is paying) that emphasise service are a different matter.  IMHO dealing with waitstaff is not use at all once you have determined they have no food you can eat as they have no control over menus and aren't paid enough to care--they will just step behind a potted fern for a minutes and come back saying nothing could be done.  However service oriented hotels will have a conceirge and they have both the power and inclination to make things happen.  Even if it is only the fanciest cheese sandwhich you ever saw.  I general angle for something humble to embarras them like an omlette, sandwhich or ploughman's lunch--no way in hell they don't have the ingrediants and the know how to do that.  If you are laying down close to 500 dollars a day for a single room what os the issue with making a sandwhich for a guest.  In the UDS I like to drop a few stats on them like 7% of Americans describe themselves as "usually vegetarian" and 3% as "always".  Not an insignificant market share for a large hotel.  The advantage of being on the job is that I know my company booked hundreds of people with them and so they don;t want to risk losing the account.

The hotel I was referring to wasn't as high class as the ones you are mentioning, but it was a 'good' hotel.  I didn't want to push it as I was staying with senior colleagues who all frowned upon me making a fuss for some reason.

Maybe in future I should be more forceful :)  

I was vegan for a good portion of my life and started eating meat when I was pregnant. During travels I would always make my needs known, and tried to steer groups towards restaurants that were veggie friendly. I never had a problem myself and had some of the most wonderful dishes on travels. And yes the airlines are fantastic but it sure is a pain in the butt when I got served 20 minutes before my daughter. So she's trying to eat my vegan food and then I get her chicken nuggets.....

Do they still do it that way on many airlines? (Serve special diets before the regular food). Last time I flew they brought everything out at once, although they over-estimated the number of vegetarians on the flight and had too much veggie food and not enough for the meat eaters. I was quite suprised at how hostile people were when they didn't get their chicken. You'd think that the only two diets were 'veg only' or 'meat only'.

Yes, they still do this at least on the airline I normally fly with. I hate it-they really should consider the children before other special diets.