Quiet people vacation mealtimes are for people watching.

The hotel dining room is a social place, but not in the way a dinner party is social. Groups generally do not co-mingle, their boundaries are maintained throughout the meal. However, groups are aware of other groups, and adjust themselves according to the space implicitly required for the group. Gregarious groups take up more room by being large (6 or more); and by being within earshot, you are in their space, but their borders are loose and other groups are welcome to orbit within earshot. Quiet couples and singles keep small tight boundaries, inadvertent incursions usually result in an adjustment like the changing of tables or shifting of seats or, in the tightest of circumstances, the angling of seats for minimal eye contact and just a little more elbow room.

Introverts may take extra care in their choice of seat within the buffet hall. Ideally, with a clear view of the breakfast buffet line to determine when to avoid a new wave of diners joining the queue, away from the movement of diners balancing their piled trays and stopping mid-traffic to browse and decide between lettuce or slaw, having clear paths towards food and beverage stations with a minimum of squeezing past or bumping into people, and of course sufficient room to keep group boundaries from overlapping.

Once parked, and when not engaged in hushed conversation with Introvert partners, one may enjoy surveying the room for a variety of interesting behaviours: the man who holds a stirrer (and frequently other small eating implements) in his mouth, the westerner who crosses herself before tucking into her Japanese breakfast, the man who suffered a messy serving of curry rice as seen from a bowl with a caked lip, the introvert couple that switched tables and chose their next carefully, the Japanese family with 2 lookalike curly haired fair-as-snow kids, the young parents who fussed over their child and took turns to make runs for food, the ojisans who met and sat and chatted heartily without eating, the singles who picked the counter seats and gazed distantly as they ate, the obasan whose slacks fit a little too loosely and filled her water bottle repeatedly, the working men who came early in their suits or overalls to quickly eat and walk out into the rain, the western pair of girls all neon-haired lightly-tattooed and facially-pierced visually striking but vocally soft.