Hey Pandas, What’s One Thing You Miss From A Place Where You Grew Up?

Fireflies. They're disappearing everywhere due to urbanization and have never seen one where I live now. It was a summer thing to go outside after dusk, chill and watch them.

I've been living in the UK, but I grew up in San Francisco. I love it here, but I miss a lot of stuff.

The ocean

The weather

The diversity

Going to Chinatown to buy ingredients. You can't very many Chinese ingredients here

My cat. (And my family as well :p)

my youth

I miss the changing of seasons. Grew up in New York and now live in Florida. Sometimes miss snow, but mostly the tree colors, smells, and relatively nice temperatures. Now it's humidity and sweat, or just cold enough to frost the grass.

I miss the trees! I watched so many of them grow. One of my favorites was a huge willow we used to climb. I still remember the best places to sit and how it felt like a secret place.

I am originally from Rio de Janeiro, but now live in Philadelphia. Besides family, and the people of Rio, what I miss the most is fruit. Like fresh fruit right off the trees. Apples and melons are fine, and you can get nice oranges here, but real mangoes, coconuts, avocados, and papaya are nowhere. Just the tasteless ones at the grocery stores. Also, fresh fruits of the sea. We could walk to the beach and the little shops would buy fish from people fishing nearby, and they'd cook it up and serve it right there. What I don't miss is the extreme poverty and intense crime.

Nature. I grew up in northern Minnesota where few people live. Good fishing and hunting and lots of space to breath. Georgia is nice but crowded in comparison.

The food. Southern California has so much diversity in the food scene (naturally, because it has so much diversity in its population). I now live in a very rural, very homogeneous area and the food is awful. FOOD!!!

Everything. I miss our family farm.

The creek! Or "crick" as we called it. It wound around our small town. The water was green from algae, and it smelled like fish, but it was our playground. Fishing, swimming, wading, catching minnows and crawdads and tadpoles, finding shells and pretty stones. I'd like to go back there just to smell the stinky water and turn over rocks to see what critters are underneath.

The beautiful scenery of New Zealand, especially the gushing clear rivers, deep blue lakes and safe beaches of the North Island. I live in Perth, Western Australia, now and though the beaches are beautiful, they have sharks and stingers .... And it's so very hot in the summer, especially now. But I can't afford to move back and all my family are here so I stay.

I grew up in Asheville, NC and returned in my late 40s. I miss the local vibe and the community first atmosphere. Over tourism has downgraded my current experience.

Grew up in the UK, live in Germany. I don't miss a lot but I really miss the humour and chatty Edinburgh ladies on the buses!

I moved from Melbourne to a regional town 1.5hrs away. I miss the access to public transport. We have a bus service and train here but the bus routes are more limited and the train goes to Melbourne, which would be good if they ever completed track works. At the moment with busses replacing trains most of the way, it takes 4 hours! I didn't even get my licence until I was 27 I didn't really need it that much with all the transport options.

I also miss being half an hour from multiple beaches and having more options for grocery shopping, especially gluten free food.

Better than Boullion isn't just better, but infinitely better than boullion.

I miss living on a farm 7-8 hours from where I live. Is was just good there, but now I live on another farm sooooo otherwise..... its goodd :)

Lived on St. Croix for a few years as a kid. While the food is a close second, particularly the fruit, I really miss the beaches. But in my hometown of Richmond VA, I miss exploring the woods and eating berries off the bush.

Grew up in western Pennsylvania. I miss the piroghis that every church sold every Friday (my mom helped make them), the 24" submarine sandwiches that all the school clubs sold throughout the year (I helped make them), the pizza places where you could get a single slice, and very much I miss the Coney Island style hot dogs. Man, it's a wonder I'm still alive.

When I was a kid (age 4 to age 10) We were lucky enough to live overlooking a river - this is in commuter belt UK, so pretty unusual - and the riverbanks were open meadows with wildlife, wild plants and plenty of opportunities to fall in the water/get covered in mud/stung by nettles and all sorts of great stuff. It was a rather Enid Blyton existence.
At the end of our road was a stream, over the stream an ancient wooden bridge, over the bridge on the left was a boathouse and on the right a paddock containing Zack the Donkey.
Apples and carrots were compulsory to feed Zack on the way out and the way back.
Whenever I think about that period of my life I always remember Zack, he was so pleased to see us - or more likely the apples. He'd run over braying excitedly and I loved it.
I have a great fondness for donkeys because of Zack and am so grateful that part of my childhood taught me about animals and trees and that wasp stings are not fun.
So many kids now are not able to run free as I did.

I grew up in Flint, Michigan and now live in North Carolina. I miss Flint style coney dogs, everywhere else will try to call what they make as coney dogs but they are nothing more than chili dogs. When I do go back up there always make sure that I have one.