Bill Bryson on the joy of foreign places
“Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and receiving a large unexpected check in the mail, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset, pausing to gaze in shop windows or at some church or lovely square or tranquil stretch of quayside, hesitating at street corners to decide whether that cheerful and homey restaurant you will remember fondly for years is likely to lie down this street or that one? I just love it. I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city.”
–Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There (1992)
November 12th, 2004 at 8:00 pm
It gave me chills the first time I read that quote straight from the book, and it gave chills again.
November 15th, 2004 at 9:32 am
How true. I have spent many of my Fridays for the past few weeks popping my head out of the Underground in London at a different point every week. This city truly feels like a new city every week. Not being from here makes it feel as if it is a place to be explored again and again.