When a former student had called and wanted to get together yesterday, I knew that there was no sense trying to do anything remotely close to the hood. Where to go? She lives uptown. I live downtown. The Outlet Mall at the Riverwalk seemed the perfect in the middle kind of place. There was a very good chance that there would be NO crowds and she could actully find a place to park her car. Of course, I was correct.
We were meeting at the main entrance in front of the Hilton Hotel at 1pm. Dodging traffic, bikers, pedestrians, and honking pick-up trucks; I headed out of the hood on my usual teaching route. No sooner had I hit the Lafitte Greenway than the traffic stopped, there was parking everywhere, and there was hardly a soul to be found.
It was a comparative ghost town.
I arrived at the Hilton early. I settled in, but decided to get out the camera and have some fun. One of the big things I learned from Eckhardt Tolle's Power of Now is to enjoy the moment...you are never really waiting-at least you don't have to be!
I got in my share of people watching and wandered around in an area that I rarely frequent. I was surprised to find Winston Churchill there, and discovered that we actually have a British Place very close to our Spanish Plaza.
The International Trade Mart that has been a landmark for forever had a surrealist touch to it, and the red riverfront streetcars made it all the more special in some poignant kinds of ways.
Meaningful and Refreshing!
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