The Accidental Tourist

How can the sure and steady traditional orthodox commercial life, be indefinitely extended everywhere, as you travel across the globe?

Would it be prudent to ubiquitously apply local standards irreducibly, regarding low key American cuisine, in Paris, London or Amsterdam?

That's precisely what Macon Leary (William Hurt) sets out to do as he travels the globe, writing helpful guide books for queasy tourists who'd rather not try international food.

He arrives in a select location and seeks out uniform Americana, and transmits the wholesome data back to his audience in waiting.

He's somewhat reserved and shy and never really has much to say, his comfortable life rarely ever changing from ye olde cradle to uptight grave.

But his son meant everything in the world to him and after he passed definitive woe emerged, his wife (Kathleen Turner as Sarah Leary) unable to endure the silence, their once practical marriage ending. 

At a new neighbourhood dog shelter a talkative maiden asserts herself thereafter (Geena Davis as Muriel Pritchett).

Presenting newfound romantic possibility.

And sundry improvised alternatives. 

I wonder what the stats say about travelling abroad, do most tourists want to try French food from France or would they stick to homegrown favourites across the pond?

My main reason for wanting to travel is to try local food from other countries, to just feast in Mexico for a week or indeed in France, Japan, or China.

Leary's books are mainly for business peeps who would rather not be travelling to begin with, so perhaps several of them wouldn't be definitively experimental, but I still wonder what the stats would be would they really still go to McDonald's while visiting Berlin?, certainly mind-blowing that people have such options, even if they seem somewhat monotonous.

People are defensive about their tastes and don't respond well to critical prodding, a lot of the inquisitive time, I gave it up long ago.

In my youth I didn't like to try new things but then found myself working in restaurants, and through habitual freeform snacking found I loved so many different things.

Unfortunately, people are often quite fussy about how they eat and want to prove they've precisely adapted to local custom, and attach corresponding snotty rules to dinner which generally makes things rather awkward.

Imagine turning something as cool as going out to eat into a stilted textbook pretentious reckoning.

I had a friend kind of like Ms. Pritchett long ago.

Those were enticing experiments.