A stroll in the city

My companion was heading to the antiquities museum, but I didn’t have time to see the museum and still catch my flight, so I decided to stroll down one of the pedestrian ways that criss cross the historic district.  It was about 9:30 in the morning and there was a lot of activity in preparation for a busy day.  Shopkeepers were busy sweeping and scrubbing the sidewalks in front of their stores.  (There was quite a bit of trash in evidence).  Cops were on every street corner in force.  I just looked at the different stores and people going by.  Lots of pedestrians mostly heading toward the central plaza.  I didn’t feel too conspicuous even though I was dragging along my suitcase with me. 

People will laugh at me, but I stopped for at least 10 minutes to watch a trash truck crew at work.  I stood unobtrusively on a corner across the street.  The truck was stopped along a side street with a giant pile of trash bags and boxes behind it.  Two men were in the bed of the trash truck ripping open flimsy trash bags and pulling trash out of them, then all four men in the crew would start pulling out recyclables and sorting them into different sturdy trash bags.  Once they finished sorting, they hauled each of the bags with the glass up to the top of the truck.  They were quite heavy from the way they strained to get them on top.  I was really surprised the bags didn’t break.  A guy on stop started stacking the bags full of glass way up on the top of the truck and tying them down.  I was surprised to see how compact they could get with those bags.

Then they started breaking down all of the boxes and stacking them carefully on a length of rope so they bundle them tightly.  I wanted to stay to watch them load up the giant reinforced bag that they sorted the plastics into, but some raindrops were falling and I didn’t want to get caught in a rainstorm.