Yesterday I walked down to the waterfront. Pier 61/62 is closed – loaded down with construction for Summer Nights at the Pier – so I walked south to the piers with the tourist shops.
I watched things happening in the sound. A boat headed out from the next pier and let someone out into the sky on a parasail that had “Visio 2000” printed on the side. A single jelly fish inched its way through the water. A couple, speaking German, walked by.
There’s a semi-enclosed area filled with as many plastic tables and chairs as will fit. Scattered among the tables, there were a handful of tourists sipping beers, sometimes with dazed looks in their eyes. There are places like this everywhere I guess. A gaudy spot for tired tourists to sit when they’ve walked to far, have had enough museums for a week, or killing a couple of hours before going to the train station next train – considering what they’ll do in the next city.
I did that last summer – Champs-Elysées, the Mexican restaurant in Vienna, and the Franz Kafka Cafe in Prague? If I did, that’s not how I felt. I felt really good (when I wasn’t figuring out if it was correct to seat myself – yes – or pay for my tea immediately – sometimes), worn out in a good way, confused but not defeated. I’ll have to explain this better another time.
Later I went to the film festival screening of The Princess and the Warrior at the Egyptian. The director and the star of the film were there for a little Q&A after – they were the German couple I’d barely noticed at the pier.