If I Had A Pony
SOME WINDOWS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS. There are some windows where I can’t wait to close the drapes so I don’t have to see what’s on the other side of the glass.
I’ve stayed in places where the view outside the window was a brick wall or another window looking back at me. Those are the windows that get the drapes closed immediately.
I know it’s not the best photo ever taken.
On our recent odyssey we had mostly good windows – windows with vistas of the ocean or of grazing sheep or meandering rivers. The exception was the one place where the view was a parking lot. Those drapes stayed closed for two weeks.
One of the best windows was the one we had at our hotel smack dab by the Dublin airport. A location like that is not one where you would expect to find good windows. The saving grace of this window was what was between the hotel and the runway. About ten yards from the hotel parking lot was low wooden fence and a pasture. In that pasture this past Sunday morning were about ten horses – and their newborn foals. The foals, that looked so small next to the mares, followed their Mommies on still shaky legs. They didn’t wander off because every few minutes they attempted to nurse while the Mommies grazed.
I looked at the enclosed area the horses were in and saw that there was a spot, right by the hotel parking lot, where there was only a very low metal gate. If one of the horses had decided to roam she could easily have stepped over the gate and be inside the hotel lobby in seconds. 
That would get the attention of the hordes of German tourists who seem to in the hotel by the Panzer Division.
I spent a couple of hours sitting by the window in our room. I just sat there watching the horses and the airplanes – each oblivious of the other. Each with their own distinct beauty, but it was seeing all of the foals getting around on spindly legs, staying close by the mares, and ignoring the whine of the jet engines overhead that made me stay in my chair, smiling, and rating this window as one of the best we’ve had in a long time.
There is a busy hotel, then a pasture with horses, the commercial jetliners are coming in and 
landing constantly – and the horses don’t even bother to look up as the planes fly by. They are used to the din and the roar, and because the mares are calm the newborns are not the slightest bit skittish.
You can’t always say the same about me. That Sunday morning I went down to the lobby to get a decent cup of coffee and my nervous system was jangled by Germans checking out and screaming children playing tag in the middle of it all. It was just too early for me. What did they think I was – a horse?
Down the Hall on Your Left 