Breakfast

Breakfast anyone?  Yes, please...

The one meal of the day that I enjoy most when I am away.  Great hotels throughout the European cities that I have worked serve a great breakfast.  When traveling for business I stay at Hilton Hotels.  Why Hilton rather then any other?  Well, for one thing they have the most incredible beds that seem to wrap you up and hold you all night long.  For another, I am a HH member and get all those lovely benefits that make business trips a bit less business-ee.

The thing I miss most about living and working in Europe is the traveling.  I have yet to travel domestically since my return.  However, the commercials are off putting.  Check your luggage for free?  Excuse me?  You mean you pay to check your luggage here?  Humm....I did know I had it good in Europe, but I wasn't quite sure how good.  And, what's this about paying for your seat, and water?  I thought purchasing the ticket secured you a seat.  Silly me.  I did travel on Jet Blue when I first arrived.  Sorry about that - forgot.  It was great.  I loved it.  I purchased my ticket on line, and opted to paid $10 extra for extra leg room.  Extra leg room only meant that I wanted to be in the front and away from the maddening crowd.  On my return flight I was with other business travelers who - very much to my surprise - carried on their own dinners and proceeded to open up their plastic bags and utensils and very matter-a-factly began eating.  I was amazed.  The only flights in Europe where I saw that was on Alitalia and Olympic Airlines.  Now that was an experience!  But those where Southern Europeans...you expect that!

Well, getting back on subject.  Breakfast is still the one meal I love to eat when I am away.  Sadly, for now, I have no business trips planned, nor do I have any romantic getaways in the near future.  So, I will have to wait for someone to come visit and hope they stay in Manhattan at some ritzy hotel.  Then, I could meet them for breakfast, arrive a bit early, sit at the tables with the clean white tablecloth's and cloth napkins.  Have the waiter take my order for coffee with warm milk, and just sit there taking in all the sights and smells of a good hotel dining room.

That is how silly I am.  I like to be spoiled and pampered.  I love when a man is a man and knows how to treat a lady.  I appreciate all the finer things in life that money can buy.  And...right now I have none of those things.  But...one day - when the world rights all the wrongs and I am standing tall once again, I will travel to destinations I have yet to travel to, and meet people who I have only dreamed of meeting, and sit at a dining room in a posh hotel and order my coffee with warm milk.

Did I neglect to mention that I do not actually eat the breakfast.

No, I do not - but I adore the smells and presentation as others are being served.

For me it's what's going on around me - not necessarily in me.