Parker Potter is a former archaeologist and historian, and a retired lawyer. He is currently a semi-professional dog walker who lives and works in Contoocook.

My wife, Nancy Jo, and I have done our fair share of traveling. We’re not the most adventurous knives in the drawer, so we gravitate toward travel situations with a measure of structure, such as shore leave from a cruise ship rather than solo backpacking in Parts Unknown. Yet, some of our most satisfying travel experiences have been unplanned happy accidents.

Many of our happy accidents have been delicious. On a month-long trip to China, we did some destination dining at top-rated hot-pot restaurants in Hong Kong and Xi’an. But mostly, we just ate at the first place we saw after we got hungry, and that strategy yielded only one bad meal and two mediocre ones, both at tourist spots, the terra cotta warriors site in Xi’an and the Great Wall in Beijing.

Apart from those three clunkers, we ate dishes we’d never even heard of and had extraordinary meals in the most unlikely places: grungy little mom-and-pop holes in the wall, nearly empty restaurants, stalls on the street in Xi’an selling lamb on skewers, and a place in Jinan where the wait staff were all asleep under tables when we walked in. Getting first-rate food when all the warning lights were flashing was a tasty lesson in not judging a book by its cover.

On our China trip, I also had a happy accident that had a silk-purse-from-a-sow’s-ear quality. In Beijing, we wanted to see the Forbidden City, and a Chinese friend we were traveling with said we should take a city bus to get there.

Unfortunately, the bus she selected let us out at the exit from the Forbidden City, not the entrance in Tiananmen Square. As a result, we had to walk several miles around the outside of the Forbidden City. That got us inside so late in the day that they were already starting to push visitors through, to get us all out by closing time.

When we got out, I was a bit miffed and when our group was deciding on the best mode of transportation back to our hostel, I just started walking. Our Chinese friend protested, but, as another member of our group predicted, I was the first one in our group to make it back to the hutong where our hostel was located.

Moreover, having the experience of being a lone white guy walking down sidewalks filled with people who didn’t look like me was eye-opening. It gave me a tiny taste of, and a great appreciation for, what it must be like for members of racial and cultural minorities in this country who live in a society in which not so many people look like them or share their stories.

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My best happy accident took place in Changsha, China, the capital of Hunan Province. We wanted to visit the Provincial Museum, which housed an exhibit featuring a mummy and the grave goods recovered from a 2,000-year-old tomb.

The same friend who later misdirected us to the Forbidden City took charge of getting us to the museum in Changsha. But rather than getting directions to the museum, she got directions to the archaeological site from which the museum’s grave goods had been excavated.

After riding a city bus and walking five or six blocks through the wholesale ceramic district, acres and acres of bathtubs, toilets, and sinks (imagine a Home Depot on steroids ) we found ourselves at a big hole in the ground with a few educational panels and a skeleton crew of docents. No mummy. No artifacts.

But here’s the happy part of the accident. The people who worked at the hole told us that the museum we wanted to visit issued timed tickets first thing in the morning, and had probably sold out for the day. But they also told us that if we told the people at the museum that we were American archaeologists (three of us were) and had airline tickets for the next day (which Nancy Jo had in her backpack), we could probably get into the museum.

We took a taxi from the hole to the museum, used the strategy suggested to us by the fine folks at the hole, and spent the afternoon exploring a world-class museum we would never have gotten into but for our “mistake” of visiting the hole first.

Finally, it is worth noting that you don’t have to cross an ocean to have a remarkable happy accident. One of my all-time favorites happened on a long weekend with my family in New York City. Walking north from breakfast at Russ and Daughters on the Lower East Side, we stumbled upon a Mexican bar that had opened early to show the Mexico-Brazil World Cup soccer match. Standing on the sidewalk and watching the match through a window with a crowd of people who cared deeply about soccer was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

So, what are the keys to maximizing your chances of having a happy accident while traveling? Be flexible. Be open. And be on foot. I have found that most of my best travel experiences have happened when my feet were on the ground.