Don't Know Much about Geography...

I've decided that passport stamps, like tattoos, can become addictive.  It took many moons and

several "Year(s) of the Passport" for me to actually get my passport, then once I got it, it was another couple of years before I actually used it.  But I did.  Of course, we all know how that trip worked out for Rose... leaving a body part, in bits no less, in Scotland and all.  I didn't really get to see much of Scotland.  I saw the countryside from the train window, but I was in pain and feverish, so I can't claim that I took much in.  I saw the city from the train station to the hotel, then from the hotel to the hospital, and then hospital to the dorm where we stayed while I awaited being able to leave the country, then the dorm to the train
station.  So I'm sure Scotland is a very nice country, and while I can wholeheartedly recommend going there for emergency surgery, I just don't think spending a week at the hospital was a good way to acquaint myself with the country of (some of) my forefathers.

I want to return.  My mother, who graciously bankrolled the previous trip, is no long up to doing the airport 5K, running from one gate to another, so she is out as a travel companion unless we can get where we're going by car.  I had two options: 1) my friend Annette and B) my sister Holly.  Well, sorry Annette, since Holly had actually suggested that we might like to go back and see all that we'd missed before, I asked her first and she was game!

So here we are now, Me, Holly and her hubs Tom will be traveling on Fourth of July - there's nothing quite like being in a different country on the Fourth of July, or as Europeans call it, Friday... although technically, we won't arrive until Saturday morning, so we'll be spending the bulk of the Fourth in the air skipping time zones like a stone in a pond.  Tom, for those of you long-time readers, is the Tom of the Dear Tom feature which appeared during the blog entries regarding mine and my niece Natalie's vacation to Gulf Shores in 2010.  He knows a lot and what he doesn't know, he's not afraid to make up.  Anyway, he was invited to go as me and Holly's chauffeur as neither of us wanted to drive around in a foreign country.  Since he'll be along to share his "wit" and "wisdom," the Dear Tom feature may rear its ugly head again in future posts about this upcoming trip.

The plan is to spend one week in Ireland, see if we can find us some Lucky Charms or a pot of gold.  Tom's friend Bill will be joining us on this leg of the trip.  I gather going to Ireland is on his bucket list.  I don't plan going into details of the trip at this time because a) I'll probably be blogging about it then, and don't want to bore you; and 2) we don't really have any firm details set.  We know where we'll be laying our collective heads each night and that's it.  We learned on our previous trip that a lot of the universities there rent out dorm rooms during the summer and other breaks super cheap, relatively speaking, and you get breakfast in the dining hall!  So Holly and I spent an evening a couple of months ago plotting out our plans, and making room reservations!  If nothing else, we'll have a good knowledge of the university dorms!

The second week will be spent in Scotland.  There are a couple of things

I'm really looking forward to.  First, we're going to spend the night in a castle!!  I'm a big fan of time-travel romance novels, and while one of my vacation dreams is to find a dead body on the beach, meet a cute detective, solve the crime and live happily ever after, the other of my vacation dreams is to be in England, or Scotland, or Ireland, you know, somewhere in that general geographic region, and fall and hit my head on something and wake up in another century, meet a cute dude and live happily ever after.  Of course, with time travel comes the issues related to germs, food prep, bathrooms (or lack thereof), and no air conditioning... so of course the end result is the cute dude would come back to today's time to be with me, of course.  Anyway, spending the night in a castle gets me a little closer to that possibility.  Especially since I've been to various beaches multiple times and have yet to discover a dead body.  The dead jellyfish doesn't count. 

The second thing I'm looking forward to is going to the Battlefield at Culloden.  There's a really good series of books (time travel romance) that I adore and the first book of which is being made into a TV series later this summer, and the Battle of Culloden plays a big part.   Plus, it just wouldn't be a Barger Vacation without going to either a cemetery or a battlefield, so this is a must!