I’ve seen some beautiful, awe inspiring breakfast views during the half century years I’ve ventured aimlessly through this oft idiosyncratic existence. For instance overlooking Lake Windermere from the restaurant of the Bowness’ Olde England Hotel. Accompanied by comforting warmth from late spring solar rays in Cumbria, a sight that in conjunction with my full English fry up was as close to breakfasting utopia as you can get….. As long as you’re not a vegetarian of course!
Additionally, I’ve breakfasted alfresco in similar warm meteorological conditions at a Boulevard Saint Michel cafe on the left bank of the River Seine in Paris. Croissants with coffee consumed while people watching Parisians meandering through an area where for centuries art and creativity of many forms has been embraced passionately. A love of the creative I likewise enjoy, which on some level leads me to regard those Bohemians as kindred spirits.
GJ Strachan has also enjoyed a first meal of the day sitting outside a St Peter’s Square eatery in Rome. Located close to the Vatican, my ambient companions the hundreds of passing tourists and worshippers bringing with them an anticipatory buzz consequential of embarking on a papal homage. I’m not a religious man, however I respect and these pilgrims, accepting and appreciating the comfort they clearly obtain from their faith. Despite indifference to religious advocacies, I found infectious the excitement overtly gleaned by these theists at visiting his Holiness’ abode.
I’ve also had the good fortune and opportunity to breakfast overlooking Venice’s iconic canal systems, Bruges beautiful city square, beachside at a UAE cafe, a diner on NYC’s Broadway, along with numerous eateries skirting numerous resorts on the Mediterranean Sea. Views that add to the enjoyment of your first meal of the day, regardless of how basic the breakfast you select. Even plain old tea and toast takes on a higher plateau of tastebud tantalisation when partaken in the presence of aesthetically beautiful scenery.
In adulthood I’ve experienced undoubted serendipity with my existential opportunities for breakfasting in sight of these alluring canvases during global travel. However, this morning’s close hand views of Niagara Falls from my hotel restaurant blew the views referenced above out of the water. as the top dining visual accompaniment I’d ever witnessed. Today’s breakfast sight the only one from the back catalogue of my previous enchanting petit dejuener views that isn’t man-made.
Viewing the sheer volume and power of the water emanating down the waterfall from Lake Erie manifested notions regarding the wonderment of nature……. I just hope for the sake of the state department’s environmental budget Lake Erie isn’t on a water meter.
Witnessing this topography evoking thoughts that Mother Nature, an oft cruel matriarch, does at times reconcile her dreadful acts, such as earthquake, flood and famine with awe-inspiring environmental and geologically spectacles.
Natural geological attractions like the Barnsley Scar – A limestone gorge in the shape ex-Yorkshire/England batsman Geoff Boycott’s*** testicles which attracts people from as far as the outskirts of Barnsley. This physiographical feature mysteriously appeared in the mid-1970’s in miner Frank Tarbuck’s back garden in the Cudworth area of the South Yorkshire town, allegedly after Boycs 100th professional cricketing hundred.
*** – Boycott a local lad from the Barnsley village of Fitzwilliam.
Anyway, enough of this nonsense I’m at a Oshawa family home of my Elizabethtown hosts and need to get off my laptop.
