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Thread: Flying

  1. #51
    Senior Member SteveinMN's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yppej View Post
    I have travelled abroad when I was younger. It was fun but seeing tourist sites is not a wonderful life changing experience, and quick tours where your interactions with the locals revolve around them earning a living off your tourist dollars are shallow. It is different if you are living abroad for an extended period of time, or if you get to know immigrants and their culture in your home country for an extended period of time.
    I don't think it has to be a binary choice: "If this is Tuesday, this must be Belgium" trips or mini-residencies. True, if all one does is stay at the hotels that cater to travelers and eat at McDonald's and the Hard Rock Café and just gaze at the major sites from afar, a "life-changing" experience likely is not in the offing. But one can be in a country even briefly and get more of a feeling for it than you could from a coffee-table book or Trip Advisor.

    I still remember very clearly my first visit outside the U.S., to Japan. I remember going through the clouds as we descended, seeing all the lights and signs in a language I did not know, and, for the first time in my life, lining up at immigration under the sign marked "Aliens". I remember visiting a restaurant there for dinner and not knowing any of the local customs. I remember figuring out the Japanese train system so we could visit Tokyo, even for just a few hours, and walking the streets of Akihabara and the Ginza and realizing that the Shiseido store looked just like Macy's back home. That wasn't a long trip at all but it was long enough to leave a deep impression that reading books and Web sites would never have given me.

    I think the key is to get off the highly-beaten track and talk to people. On our recent cruise, people got off the ship, got on the cruise-chartered bus, and went to Blarney Castle. We got off the ship and wandered through the part of town by the port; admittedly not deep into Ireland, but we walked through grocery stores and sat at a coffee shop and listened to nearby conversations and talked to shopkeepers. Great insight into a culture? No, but at least a little, and nothing the Blarney tourers ever got to see.
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  2. #52
    Senior Member SteveinMN's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Teacher Terry View Post
    IL, anything you recommend we see in Scotland?
    Not IL, but we loved our tour of the Highlands. Beautiful country and it's a little sad to see it chewed up bit by bit as "bedroom communities". A friend of mine and I visited a whisky museum in Edinburgh and participated in a whisky tasting, ate haggis at a local café, and visited the castle and cathedral. Glasgow has several museums of interest and is only about 50 miles from Edinburgh. Some friends of ours toured the Giant's Causeway and enjoyed seeing the rock formations. The people-watching pretty much everywhere was great (if you're into that kind of thing)! If we'd had more time I would have liked to visit a whisky distillery and the coastal areas, like Skye and Islay and who knows what else may have stricken our fancy? Getting to some places pretty much requires driving, though, so we'd need more time than we had on the cruise. A taste and enough to decide if we needed to return.
    Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington

  3. #53
    Senior Member iris lilies's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Teacher Terry View Post
    IL, anything you recommend we see in Scotland? APN, not flying is not low hanging fruit. When we worked we didn’t get enough vacation to drive across the country to see my mom. Now retired we sometimes drive but it’s exhausting and usually cheaper to fly with gas, motels, etc plus safer. Many more people are flying internationally than ever because the price of tickets have gotten so cheap. A a bunch of people on a plane probably is better than everyone of them driving. I would love for us to have high speed trains like Europe does.
    To see in Scotland? Edinburgh, I guess. The Royal Mile from the military castle, centuries old, to the royal palace, also centuries old, has a variety of touristy, shopping, and historical places of importance including the coffee shop where Jk Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book. Eat lunch at The Witchery (dinner reservations are booked months in advance.)

    Depends on what you like. I had a narrow focus on Scottish Baronial architecture, so every chance I got to see those small castles, I took. The last time we were in Scotland was ten years ago. DH, my brother and his wife, and my cousin made our own tour of largely places associated with The Stuarts. I was most charmed by Falkland Palace which I had never been to, its gardens and chapel. I also greatly enjoyed Stirling castle, a military castle complex with a renaissance building. It had been decades since I visited Stirling. On that trip I really gained appreciation of renaissance style.

    I won’t be able to tell you anything that the tourist guides won’t mention.

  4. #54
    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by iris lilies View Post
    To see in Scotland? Edinburgh, I guess. The Royal Mile from the military castle, centuries old, to the royal palace, also centuries old, has a variety of touristy, shopping, and historical places of importance including the coffee shop where Jk Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book. Eat lunch at The Witchery (dinner reservations are booked months in advance.)

    Depends on what you like. I had a narrow focus on Scottish Baronial architecture, so every chance I got to see those small castles, I took. The last time we were in Scotland was ten years ago. DH, my brother and his wife, and my cousin made our own tour of largely places associated with The Stuarts. I was most charmed by Falkland Palace which I had never been to, its gardens and chapel. I also greatly enjoyed Stirling castle, a military castle complex with a renaissance building. It had been decades since I visited Stirling. On that trip I really gained appreciation of renaissance style.

    I won’t be able to tell you anything that the tourist guides won’t mention.
    I agree with IL.. review the tourist guides. I think Edinburgh Castle is a must-see in Edinburgh. If you're into castles, I also enjoyed Holyrood (I wanted to get to Stirling, but we never made it). If you don't mind heights you can climb up the Walter Scott monument (my MIL was able to climb up but needed to be carried down).

    If you get out of town, the drives are beautiful. We drove up the west coast through Oban up through Glencoe which was just amazing--magical. I've never been to Loch Lomond, but is also supposed to be beautiful.

    We never made it all the way up to the Scottish Highlands, but Aberdeen is supposed to be beautiful and of course there are whiskey distillery tours if you're into that kind of thing. If you have any interest in golf, visiting St. Andrews is interesting and it's a cute town to walk around.

    Glasgow is another major city, and it's getting nicer and nicer, but it was never known to be a real tourist site because it's historically been an industrial town. There are some museums there--I'm a big fan of Charles Rennie MacIntosh, and there's a museum devoted to him there.
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  5. #55
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    I would guess that not flying is more likely if people hate to travel. I doubt most people sacrifice for the environment. I know people like that. Or people that traveled so much for work that they are sick of it.
    well it's hard to say as it's a continuum, only maybe the homeless are kinda sustainable.
    Trees don't grow on money

  6. #56
    Senior Member Teacher Terry's Avatar
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    Thanks everyone for the tips on what to see. We are starting to make a list but will need to focus on just a few areas as we only have 6 days there and don’t want to spend too much time driving. We really want to see some castles. When we were in Rome besides seeing the main sights we walked the side streets and would go into some smaller churches. Also fun to eat at tiny restaurants that were Trattoria’s.

  7. #57
    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Teacher Terry View Post
    Thanks everyone for the tips on what to see. We are starting to make a list but will need to focus on just a few areas as we only have 6 days there and don’t want to spend too much time driving. We really want to see some castles. When we were in Rome besides seeing the main sights we walked the side streets and would go into some smaller churches. Also fun to eat at tiny restaurants that were Trattoria’s.
    Let's wait to see if Ishbel chimes in! I'm sure she'll have great ideas for sights as well as restaurants.
    "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
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  8. #58
    Senior Member iris lilies's Avatar
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    I’ve spent time in the Highlands, I know Inverness pretty well in fact I probably stayed there longer than any other place in Scotland.Aberdeen area has the best small castles. Craigievar is fairytale perfection.

    If I were going to Scotland and I liked castles I might make an effort to stay in a Scottish castle overnight. The problem is that so many of them are just hotels with a bit of castellated architecture. Others are just big houses. The two I would’ve highly recommended are now closed now to overnight guests. I think Castle Leven outside of Glasgow always look
    s Extremely interesting but I cannot personally recommend it.

  9. #59
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yppej View Post
    I never said I travelled over 50 years ago.

    Interesting that you equate having your picture taken since you are white and a novelty as being an "advocate for the USA." If you were African-American, Latinx, Native American or Asian-American would you still have been an advocate?
    Went back and you stated you are still checking out places where you have lived for 50 years.

    You, obviously, missed the point! I was something they were not used to seeing. Any nationality unique to them could have been an advocate. Why are you making a big deal out of my being white? That was not the issue.

  10. #60
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    Quote Originally Posted by Teacher Terry View Post
    Wow frugal that’s a lot of countries. People get it or they don’t.
    My thought is those people do not like to be out of their comfort zone OR have not found the type of travel they would enjoy.

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