Poking around

Tourist Tuesdays.

Rick and I have declared that one day, the time we check out something, anything. It is taking poking to an art form.

Sometimes life interferes.

This week it was Tourist Thursday and we visited the Philippe Patek Watch museum.

I've a system of visiting a museum. When I lived in Boston, I had memberships at several museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, located a few blocks from home. It was so easy to drop in, look at one or two things in detail and leave until the next time.

When one is in a city for only a short time, the Boston approach doesn't work. Coming back may be never.

But some of the method sticks. Rather than try and see it all, I focus in on a few objects. At the pig museum in Stuttgart with 48,000 pigs, I wandered until something caught my attention and then I really looked it.

I try and read what is available. More than once, I've worked my way through the French or German only to discover the English and I'm lazy enough to prefer my mother tongue.

All our tourist destinations don't have to be a museum. Sometimes, just wandering around leads to all kinds of discoveries: a plaque saying what happened, a carved doorway, a plant, a waterfall...the list is endless.

Yesterday as we searched for the museum, we walked by the river. I was intrigued that the current was faster than usual and by the pattern of the current.

Nature's art prepared us for the workmanship created by humans at the watch museum. I imagine the craftsman placing each pearl, the painter using a tiny brush to make the hair on the woman look realistic. All the time the watch maker was working on the inside.

Not sure where the next Tourist Tuesday (or Wednesday, Thursday or Friday) will lead us. Guaranteed we will find something of interest as we poke around the world.