The Riverwalk in San Antonio definitely could've inspired Providence's, per Gene's comment, but there is simply no comparison due to the climate difference. When I left yesterday, it was 94 degrees and the humidity was swirling. So what do you do with a Riverwalk in that situation? You build it below grade, so it's nearly always shady. Plus there's a profusion of tall, muggy-loving, flowering plants everywhere along with the smell of something clean and green that's rotting. And everything is in Spanish, with the English translation in smaller type (sometimes). In short, the experience is nothing like the comparatively sterile Waterplace Park of Providence.
Ah, 94 degrees! It made me dizzy, since I haven't experienced that in over two years, but goddamn was it wonderful. (I've only fainted once in my life, when I first went to N.C. for college and was covering the rededication of the un-air-conditioned law library for the school paper. In case you're wondering, it's kind of like a head rush at first -- my vision was staticky. Then orange, then green, then purple and I managed to find a carrell to collapse quietly in. Then of course black.)
Part of what made it wonderful was that I was in air-conditioned splendor every single place I went, the entire week I was there. I only had to experience the heat when I chose to. God bless the largesse of the pharmaceutical industry. I was in town for a humongous rheumatology conference. They had poster sessions every day and I believe my friends in academia would be amazed by the quantity of posters. The aisles of posters went on and on, farther than the eye could see, much like the file cabinets or beehives of older episodes of "The X-Files." They were numbered from zero well past 1000.
And of course, I have a story. I went to a bookstore because I had nothing to read on the plane and there was this amazingly irritating girl who worked there, talking on her cell phone. I could write some of the things she said, but you wouldn't get the grating voice. Suffice to say she was on the phone just because she, and presumably the person she was talking to, was passing time at work, and not because there was any actual conversation to be had.
Finally she got off the phone and that was when I heard a quieter conversation closer to me. "The only way to get rid of God is to read these books. Yesss. Yesss. The seraphim -- trinkets -- yesss. They make people believe. Yesss." Needless to say this guy did not work there and did not have a cell phone, let alone someone to talk to about these topics.
