Today we’re going to be talking about dining in the dark. Are you ready to make every day an adventure? Let’s begin. So what is Dining in the Dark?
My kids had this event last year, and apparently it’s a whole thing that is sweeping the world. Well, I don’t know about the entire world, but it’s certainly been popularized in many different cities in the United States and even has now flown into many cities in Europe. So what exactly is dining in the dark? My son’s teacher, one of their teachers, this really amazing guy is blind. He was not born blind.
He has an incredibly rare illness that literally took away 90% of his vision within a three year span. And he has become this huge advocate for climbs volcanoes, he climbs mountains. He’s planning on doing Mount Everest, he’s on Kilamat, Mount Jarrah blind. Right. So his whole thing is advocacy and also opening up the minds of people to see things differently.
And he’s also very big on NPOs and funding for nonprofit organizations. And he took over a class in my kids’ school where they had to raise funding for the school. So it was more of a whole project. And he came up with dining in the dark because he’s been to others, even though for him, dining in the dark is a normal thing. Here’s what dining in the dark is all about.
It is literally you are dining in the dark. But as far as being blind, they put a blindfold on you. And the majority of the places that offer this, it’s not really restaurants. It’s usually venues. They turn off the entire lights.
Everything is completely black so that all your other senses come to life. And we did that in our school because the kids school that my kids go to is on this huge farm. But they also have a restaurant on. And it was dining in the dark night. And you could find these, go and check.
Just put it in dining in the dark, an area that you’re either visiting or even buy your home. You’ll be surprised. There’s quite a lot of options already. And the way it starts, as they put these blindfolds on you. And for us, we had to have a reservation for the amount of people per table so that we kind of go with the group and it’s really cool like that.
And we are led to our table. And this specific event, there were like three or four different restaurants that sent different dishes for you to eat. And at first, when you first sit down, it’s so awkward. Being a lead is so awkward, but you start to really get inside the person, the blind person’s world, literally. That’s what it’s about, even though it’s supposed to heighten your senses.
And for me, this was an extra important thing because my grandmother has been blind for the majority of my life, and she was diagnosed also at the age of 20 with a rare illness that she was told that by 65 years old, she would be 100% blind. And by 65, that’s exactly what happened. Today. She’s almost 95. For the majority of my adult life, she has been blind.
So it really allowed me to even go further into what her world is like. And it’s really difficult, right. The helplessness being taken, the need for help, because you need help all the time. So also on top of your tasting senses, the rest of your senses are also coming to life. So once you’re sitting down, then you’re hanging out with your friends and you’re talking.
And it’s really interesting because what happens is you don’t know if they’re listening to you. Obviously they are, because you could hear them, yes or no. But a blind person, and they’re all in the same boat as you blind, literally. But in the real world of blind people, the other blind people don’t know if there’s anybody even standing next to them or if they’re listening to you, if they’re paying attention to you. And that makes you feel even more self conscious and self aware.
So all this is coming up before we even sit down and have our first dish. And our first dish comes out and we’re having a blast. By the way, it feels like all these scents are heightened, but it’s really fun as we do it as well because it’s just such an internal adventure on top of being an external adventure. So the first dish comes out, and we have no idea where our Forks and knives are. Half of us are just going with our hands, and it feels fine.
But if you think of it, in reality, a blind person would be doing that same thing. And it’s just not suitable for the others to do. Right. And you start to understand that, wait, we can’t judge them. They really can’t see your thoughts.
And it’s that extra, right. And then within the second dish, because at first you really are tempted to remove your blindfold. You really want to try and squint to see if you could see through. But within, I’d say 20 minutes or even 30 minutes, it becomes normal. You don’t even think of the blindfold at all.
If you need to go to the bathroom, ask somebody to help you and walk you to the bathroom. And even inside the bathroom, when you could totally remove your blindfold, somehow you just don’t. And it becomes very natural. And the sense is, yes, they do completely wake up and there’s all this on top of it. But for me, it was more of the overall sensory of my mind, the shifting in the mind.
It was an incredible internal journey, which I really recommend everyone to go and do. So my recommendation is to make every day an adventure, seek something different. Seek out something different for you to eat and for you to do and dining in the dark is the best way to begin. If you guys enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and definitely share and remember you could get a lot more different ideas all in on my website travelexperta travel expert with an a dot com and make every day an adventure start now.
