on 12/11/03 8:47 PM, William Bailey at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Like the movie: If it's Tuesday, This must be Belgium.
That's kinda the way I see it. I never wanted to go on one of those marathon-like junkets, personally. Reminds me of one time when I was working in Ireland. My wife and I had driven over to Blarney Castle. A tour group came rushing in. The guide was prodding these people to climb up and kiss the Blarney Stone, "Hurry, we only have fifteen minutes." You could tell those poor folks were beat! It was like a herd of stampeding......well, not cows, because cattle move faster! But he got them all up and back down about as fast as he could. We slipped into another room in the castle and stayed out their path. As the left, we walked out behind them. I heard the guide say, "Now we're going to Blarney Woolen Mills. We'll have two hours to shop and have a drink." Of course, he most likely got a percentage of all sales there. The funny thing is that Blarney Woolen Mills is only about a block from the Castle (you can see it easily). People who wanted to stay could have walked to the tourist trap. As they were rushed into the parking lot, we saw a sign that pointed to "Druid Ruins". We walked around to it and saw one of the most stirring sights we saw on the trip. They were ancient Druid ruins in a stone circle. We didn't understand a bit of it, but we lingered there about an hour in the heavily mossed area. You could just feel the antiquity seeping in. Obligatory fly fishing - I fished one day on the River Suir and caught every trout I saw. All six inches of him. <g> We also "flyfished: for mullet and caught quite a few (that was hand-lining over the side of the boat with a trace of five hooks, each with a different colored chicken feather tied to the hook....just lashed on. We were fishing about a foot off the bottom and jigging the line. The depth was about 90 feet. (Yes, we were catching bait!) Swimming back under my rock ledge now. Allan
