In the springtime, though, we took advantage of a wall of floor-to-ceiling glass doors that opened onto a large brick terrace and a lawn running down to an almost-empty pier.
Usually, come September, this Somerset seaside town is winding down as the summer revellers depart, the pier empties and the ice-cream sellers shut up shop.
The white security tent adjacent to the pier stood empty, while five officers of the United States Park Police sat idle in their vehicles nearby.
The hospice is close to where it all began, on her 18th birthday, when she saw the Sex Pistols play an empty hall on Hastings pier.
"No," he said wheeling empty barrels along the pier where we were waiting for a boat to take us to Mallaig and the train south, "That's just a normal night in Inverie".
Not far away, J1 is another one of the remodeled old piers, its empty top story of concrete pillars and floor converted last year to make room for yet more exhibition spaces and a restaurant.
They found the jet alone, tied down to the barge and surrounded by a pier full of empty chairs.
The choice of the Poulakakos family could breathe commercial life into the city-owned pier, which sat empty and decaying for decades before the city ceded control of it in 2008 to the Battery Park City Authority.
The enormous and largely empty Brooklyn waterfront warehouses and piers that can be seen from promenade at Brooklyn Heights are evidence of this shift.
Viewed from a boat, it is a dismal landscape evoking New York's maritime and industrial past -- rotting piers, bulky warehouses, empty factories, vacant lots.
