“You look like a tourist!”
How insulting.
No shorts pulled up to my chest, no fanny belt, no Tilley hat, no athletic socks with sandals, no tour bus nearby!
So ok..I had a camera and…ok I was taking photos of the most popular tourist site in Ottawa, as if I had never seen it before. I was pretty intense, standing like a photo-geek on top of restaurant benches, trying to get the best shot possible of, ok, a pretty touristy landmark, on the penthouse level outdoor bar of the Andaz Hotel in Byward Market. Who else would be there or do this but a tourist?
A Tourist in My Home Town!
As I upload the photos from last weekend I have to concede I am a tourist…a habitual hometown tourist. I have billions and billions of photos of these sorts of things. Even I ask myself, why did I try so hard to get that photo? Why bother?
But with out-of-town friends things look different through their eyes. I love having them here…forcing me to see things differently than I have seen before
Seeing streets I frequently walk, but from a different touristy hotel perspective
Seeing the present through times past
Part of being a tourist I suppose is getting pulled into the history of a place…and I’m a armchair historian…with a layman’s perspective that would make any true historian laugh. Deanna often quips about my watching World War II documentarys: “I don’t know what’s wrong with him <me>, he keeps watching WWII documentaries and he already knows the ending!”
Small Serendiputous Surprises: Would Never Expect It!
We went to the Tavern by the Falls and a band was setting up. I have always had bad experiences with small-venue bands, with them playing too loud and too intrusive types of songs when all I want to do is enjoy good conversation with friends and a good amber beer. But…it was as if I was experiencing this sort of thing for the first time…
Two days later at work, I was in a queue to buy coffee and I recognized that one of the guys in line was the keyboard player for the band we watched. I said hello and remarked how much I loved the performance…so that’s what living in Ottawa is about…in a lot of ways it is a small town…chalk up one to a home-town tourist!
How We Should Always See Things
39 years ago today, I saw someone who changed my life forever
All this happened on the weekend anniversary of a time 39 years ago when I met the most important person in my life. It was so distant in decades of time. It was so distant in thousands of kilometres. I wrote about that first meeting in my journal, seeing her for the first time, in Winnipeg back in 1979, where I was on a tourist’s errand. With her, I am still every bit a tourist, seeing her everyday as if I had not seen her this way before, but with a rich sense of times past and times spent together. Now, along with many serendituous surprises and with great friends like Joerg and Ann, my partner has blessed us with an amazing daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild, son and daughter-in-law and extended family (love you, Debbie) that has made me a home-town family tourist forever.
