Street Life

[Magpie]

 I was once one of those American tourists.  Though I had read enough George MacDonald not to make the "Loch" mistake and we were warned in advance about the haggis.   However, we were a high school folk dancing troupe from Kentucky with a leader whose pronunciation of "tour" rhymes with "cur" so I'm sure we probably wrecked our own special brand of havoc.  If it's any consolation, it was magical?

I loved this poem.  It's so true that as a tourist you forget that people actually live there year round.  Visiting such a well known place feels like visiting a movie set, everything looks just how it's supposed to, and the people walking around just seem like background extras to provide ambiance.  Or like when you visit a reenactment and the characters are going about pretend lives all for your viewing pleasure.  I would imagine it could get old.  But I also imagine it would be worth it to be neighbors with Nessie.  

Nessie isn't real you know Quix...
Errmm... Yeah, when I wrote this I thought of all the times that I was a tourist. The 18 year old me who was in Amsterdam wearing a bandana and a tie-dye t-shirt and holding a map looking terribly lost must have looked just as touristy, if not more, than the ones that I see now. I still can't believe that I didn't go to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam... Damn, I'll never forgive myself for that.

Thanks for reading,

Mark