One thing I have learned while travelling is that you cannot be shy. Whether you are by yourself or with a friend or in a group, you have to speak up if you want to find out about something or find out where something is located. God gave you a voice to use, so use it. If you don’t, you could be missing out on something great.
Being gluten free, you especially have to speak up. No one can read your mind, so you need to tell them that you are gluten free and looking for options when you go shopping or eat out at a restaurant. I have found it is always better to speak up then to have a slip up and end up in pain. When I was first diagnosed over a year ago, I would go out to eat with friend and they would constantly joke around with me calling me “picky” or “high maintenance” when I asked for gluten free options.
Now, you have to know this about me, I am the LEAST pickiest eater I know. I actually love food and will always love food. I’ll eat almost everything and anything (within reason that is). This is one reason’s why it was so hard for me to “speak up” at restaurants and let people know that I needed special food or a special menu. I never wanted to be seen as picky or demanding especially when 9 times out of 10, the restaurant staff had no idea what gluten is and I had to explain it to them every time. The more I learned about the gluten-free diet, the more I would share this information with my friends. They began to understand the diet as much as I had and before I knew it, they would be asking the restaurant staff for gluten free options before I could get a word in. Here is a small shout out to them.... I am lucky to have some great friends.
And that begins my gluten free travels to Australia. As my best friend, Nicole, and I began our journey to the land down under, we first flew to Los Angeles for 2.5 days which was just a warm up to all the “speaking up” I would be doing over the next few months in an unknown country.
In our short time in LA, we stayed in a great hostel that I would recommend to anyone, HI Santa Monica Hostel http://www.hilosangeles.org/. Great location and great price! We managed to visit Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, The Farmer’s Market, The Grove, Hollywood, Santa Monica and Venice Beach. The Farmer’s Market in the Grove and Santa Monica Farmer’s Market both had some great gluten free finds. We stumbled upon our new favourite restaurant in Santa Monica too (we still dream about that place today). If you are a Thai food fiend like myself, Buddha’s Belly (http://www.bbfood.com/) is definitely a great spot to find a gluten free meal. They have the best green Thai curry I’ve ever tasted (next to the actual curries in Thailand). Sweet and spicy at the same time and the portion size was huge. They even had a gluten free menu (yup, a Celiac’s dream)! This was a great start to my gluten free journey and we would have never found it if I had never “spoken up”.
Seize the day and speak up,
The Gluten Free Passport
No comments:
Post a Comment