My recent post about the history of Guinness got me thinking about places where we meet. In England and Ireland pub culture is strong so it comes as no surprise that pubs are one of the most commonly suggested places to meet, but there are plenty of other options around. Over the course of a Christmas vacation in Dublin I wrote about some of the more popular meeting places in the city, past and present, and very few of them were pubs. I’ve always adored the Parisian Left Bank coffeehouse culture that provided the breeding ground for some of history’s most distinguished painters and writers. Here are a few more meeting spots from my travels. In New York City, the most romantic of rendezvous points – under the clock in Grand Central.
The fountain in the middle of Antigua‘s Parque Central. There’s always something going on, so even if your friend is late, chances are you won’t even notice because you’ll be too busy enjoying a street performance.
In Rome, the venerable Antico Caffè Greco has been the meeting place of the literati since 1760.
ANTICO CAFFE GRECO ON VIA DEL CONDOTTI
Still in Rome, I spotted these policemen congregating at their own favourite meeting place.
Are you ready to meet up with this week’s challenge and share some of your favourite rendezvous points? If you would like to join in (everyone’s welcome) here’s what to do:
- Create your own post and title it Travel theme: Meeting Places
- Include a link to this page in your post so others can find it too
- Get your post in by next Thursday, as the new travel theme comes out on Friday
- Don’t forget to subscribe to keep up to date on the latest weekly travel themes. Sign up via the email subscription link in the sidebar or RSS!
xxx Ailsa
The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life. – Oscar Wilde
Twitter is my bar. I sit at the counter and listen to the conversations, starting others, feeling the atmosphere. – Paul Coehlo
I can’t tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that art has often judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past has suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. I know too that the powerful fear art, whatever its form, when it does this, and that amongst the people such art sometimes runs like a rumour and a legend because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us, for it is inseparable from a justice at last. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts and honour. – John Berger
Where's my backpack? 