As you know, traveling by myself doesn’t bother me at all—in fact, I like it , but I hate to eat alone. Sitting in a nice restaurant is a social event, not just feeding my hunger. I know I’ve missed lots of wonderful food with my travels because most dinners are street food or something I’ve take back to my room that is mostly not gourmet, or room service. I decided before this trip that I was going to eat in the dining room every night and I requested sitting alone. I also find it exhausting to eat with people that I don’t know all the time—the conversation gets pretty awful sometimes! I have friends who like to go out to dinner by themselves with books, computer or eavesdrop on other’s conversations. I ate 4 dinners totally alone with either, a book, my netbook, my journal or having a mindful meal and paying great attention to what I was eating. No one spoke English, so eavesdropping was out of the question. One interesting aspect to this was to people-watch and, sadly, the majority of the people didn’t seem to be enjoying their companions! The tables for four around me were an assortment of mismatched people—an elderly man with a new ascot every night and his elderly wife who only ate fruit paired with a middle-aged deaf couple who signed and when they tried to talk, it was difficult and almost unintelligible. The other table by me was a 50ish couple paired with two 50ish women. The women talked and the man acted silent bored until silence reigned after a short time. The couple always left dinner first and the women would become animated, chatty and seemed to enjoy themselves much more!
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