BS: Your Best Vacation Ever

Subject: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: Mickey191
Date: 18 Oct 03 - 02:54 PM

Would you like to share your memories? Where, when & with whom?

Mine was a great trip to Nova Scotia with my husband in 1993. The beauty of the countryside, great people and Halifax are still fresh in my mind. In a seaside park one day, a family of 5 or 6 entertained with Irish music, accordians, fiddles. penny whistle & step dancing. it was a delight.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: GUEST,pdc
Date: 18 Oct 03 - 06:56 PM

Haven't had it yet. I've been trying for years to get 3 days away -- alone -- preferably in autumn, in a cabin on a beach, with a fireplace, and a 3-foot stack of good books. No sound except the tide and the birds, no radio/TV/phone, no one calling me for anything. Walks on the beach on a cool grey day -- alone -- the books, the fireplace, hot cocoa when I get back.

But alone. (There isn't a woman on this thread who doesn't understand that, I'll bet.)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: GUEST,KT
Date: 18 Oct 03 - 06:59 PM

I had a fabulous time in London last year, thanks to Micca and catsPHiddle!!!
KT

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: Padre
Date: 18 Oct 03 - 10:36 PM

After returning from Desert Storm, spent two weeks in St. Vincent, where we saw the whalers of Barrouallie that the Boarding Party had sung about for several years. Just the idea of sand ending in water was a treat! (BG) Wonderful fresh seafood and lots of cold beer!!

Padre

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: sledge
Date: 19 Oct 03 - 02:39 AM

My Nile cruise was fabulous, went during the hot perios of the year, not too many others to compete with during the visits, the monuments close up were stunning, a real change from just seeing them on Discovery.

The company on the boat was a marvelous mix of nationalities, very Agatha Christie.

Cheers

Sledge

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 19 Oct 03 - 03:30 AM

Cook Islands for my 50th birthday in 1993. I'd wanted to go there since I read about it as a child. Enjoyed it so much despite cost & distance we went back in 1995.

RtS

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: Amos
Date: 19 Oct 03 - 08:47 AM

Cruising the Greek islands on a chartered caique as a young man, with a mess of Frech university students. And, almost 40 years later, diving the underground tunnels beneath the Yucatan jungle alongside of my 13-year old daughter, the most amazing diving experience we've ever had before or since.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: LilyFestre
Date: 19 Oct 03 - 09:39 AM

My greatest vacation happened in 1991. I had met my husband to be a few months earlier, we were both still in college and were facing a week of finals. Stressed beyond belief, we decided to take a road trip and leave everything else behind us. We hopped in the car, I looked at him and asked which direction? He said, "Oh, let's go north." Off we went. We crossed over into Canada and stopped for a pizza. Much to our delight (and surprise), everyone spoke French. We did not. We had fun ordering our pizza and feeling like we were a world away! Later that evening, we found a hotel and stopped for the night. The cost of the room was a shock, but we figured we were in Canada and the exchange rate was the cause of the difference. We paid for our lodging and found our room. On the way, we noticed the pool. Being that it was winter, we hadn't packed any swimming suits. Did that stop us? NO WAY. We splashed and played around in the pool in our jammies. We had the entire pool to ourselves. In the morning, we hit the road. As we turned out of the parking lot, I found the reason for the steep room prices...we were at a ski resort....we just hadn't seen the mountains due to the darkness!!!!!! We pressed on. Later that morning we found ourselves in Montreal. We drove around (no map, of course) and decided that we should get a room somewhere and take a look around. It started to snow. Big fluffy flakes! We went for a walk in the snow and discovered that we were staying about a mile away from Olympic Park. We also found an insectatarium. We went in and stayed for hours. Can't believe it myself, but we had great fun looking at bugs from around the world!!!! Later, we found a mall of sorts, went in and had our picture taken in one of those little stands you might find at an airport. We were soaking wet, red cheeked and in love. (To this day, those little black and white photos are my favorites!) The evening was spent at a little Italian restaurant.

We flew by the seat of our pants, never knowing what we were going to to or where we were going to land, but it turned out to be the best vacation ever!!!!!!!!!!!

Still smiling from the thought of it all...thanks for asking!

Michelle =^..^=

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: Mickey191
Date: 19 Oct 03 - 11:04 AM

Lily, That was a great story--got a bit teary thinking of what that meant to you & the sharing of it with us. Some of our best times were with a packed suitcase & no map--He'd say where to? I'd say 'Let's go get lost." Those were great times.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: Mickey191
Date: 19 Oct 03 - 11:07 AM

To Michelle, Who is NOT Lily. Sorry.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 19 Oct 03 - 10:34 PM

Mine is the one I have been on since March 29, 2002 when I retired. I have been travelling for a great deal of that time (see Denver Airport thread). I also just got back from four months up at Yellowstone National Park.

Wow!

CB

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: Deda
Date: 19 Oct 03 - 10:58 PM

Every summer for ten years I took my kids to Maine, for about two weeks each August, to a house that I had inherited, on an island where I had first gone when I was 2 weeks old. The island is about 125 acres, and includes 90-some-odd houses, a post office, a restaurant/town hall, a church, a library, a tennis court, a lot of wild blueberries and rasberries, two swimmable beaches, and some five miles of sidewalks. There are no private cars, and the houses have no phone jacks, so we never had a phone there (cell phones were coming into use in the late 90s). We'd have to haul groceries over from the harbor, on the ferry that ran every hour or two. The island is only inhabited in the summer, it is a place for vacations. I consider that it is the village that raised me. There are people there in the summer who remember me as a tiny child, and remember my parents, and my father's mother, and all my siblings. When I sat on the porch I could see the baseball field, the church, the library, the cove, a lot of pine trees, a few birches, and, often, spectacular sunsets. I could hear children's voices ringing out over the field with amazing summer clarity. It often seemed to me, especially at dusk, that I could hear voices from decades past, calling "HeyyyyyyyyyYAymos..." And my kids got to swim in the cold Maine water where I swam as a kid, and they got to pick and eat wild rasberries and blueberries, and walk the circumference of the island on the rocks and beaches, and hear seagulls and smell low tide.
Best of all, the house was mine, with my (other) brother John. I could fill it with guests, with my kids' friends, with nieces (Barky included) and nephews. I could be more of a hostess than life allowed me at any other time, and I had a community there. (Community isn't always the people you love the most; it's about accepting each other, warts and all, and being accepted, just because we're all on the same island.)
It was a dream and I loved it, but it was way beyond my means. There were times when I was worrying about my summer house in Maine and I was living in subsidized housing 50 weeks out of the year. Finally the taxes and the cost of upkeep became utterly prohibitive, and my brother couldn't keep carrying me, and we sold it -- as the poet says, "With all my heart, but much against my will". But God was extremely kind, and sent me my husband the same year that I had to sell the house. Truth is, I'm hard put to say which takes up more room in my heart.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: Mickey191
Date: 19 Oct 03 - 11:14 PM

Coyote Breath, Did you get my PM from last week?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: muppett
Date: 20 Oct 03 - 06:34 AM

The 1st time I went to Ireland (the West coast) on my own in 2000, during the day time I cycled or walked through the breath taking countryside, then in the evenings I sang & drank in various pubs including Matt Molloy's in Westport. I stayed in hostels and throughout my stay I bumped into a whole bunch of wonderful people and not just the local population, but fellow travelers from numberous countries from around the world, a number of who I'm still in contact with. I'd been to Ireland once before then, but with friends & was restricted in where I went & I've returned several times since & still enjoy doing so, but that time in 2000 was still the best.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Oct 03 - 08:48 AM

I dunno -

--one of my visits to Ireland, perhaps the one last year when there was four inches of snow in the Conor Pass?

--driving something like 1,200 miles on Vancouver Island?

--the Juneaus/Sitka/Haines/Ketchikan ferry jaunt in 1987?

--or the 3,600 miles we drove around Alaska and part of the Yukon in 1998?

--or my honeymoon in Canada, when my wife tried to bribe a US Customs officer by offering him a bananna?

--or the jaunt through Death Valley and that part of California?

--or this weekend in the Tetons?

--or the times I've been San Francisco, or Toronto, or Montreal, or Vancouver?

--or the monthlong camping trip in 1982, when we drove all over, from Nebraska to Alberta and back to Ohio?

--or Christmas in Williamsburg?

--or messing about up in East Anglia?

--or the trip to the south of France and the cave at Lascaux?

Heck, they've ALL been good!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: Mr Red
Date: 20 Oct 03 - 06:00 PM

The best holiday i ever had was a week on the Shropshire Union canal. I chose the Llangollen Branch so we could go over the Po ntcysyllte Aquaduct. 175 feet up and looking over the side of the boat you see, water in the distance, freaky I hoped then they drained the bridge for emergency repairs just before we embarked - that was me and ex-wifey. Not a recipe for best holiday but the tranquility and separation from roads and cars and the lack of options in direction took me into another world and four days later I realised I had forgotten all about the "work" that had funded this bliss. I suspect the canal is a little more crowded than in 1976. I never got to cross the aqueduct - even walking on the towpath.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: DougR
Date: 21 Oct 03 - 02:00 PM

The one I just returned from a couple of weeks ago. We spent a week on the west coast of Ireland and a week in London. The weather was good, and the scenery spectacular! We definitely will return to Ireland, and we really enjoyed London too.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Oct 03 - 02:08 PM

Green Bay Nova Scotia for two glorious weeks in Late Sept. 2000. Most of the summer tourists had left and the beaches and walks were grand. The water was warm, the chowder excellent and the scenery spectacular. It is not a fancy resort. The cottages are rustic, to say the least but it all just fits and lets you know that the sea is the star of the show in this place...oh to be there now. I have a picture of Green Bay on my desk and whenever work gets me down I just stare at that beautiful place.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Oct 03 - 02:32 PM

Hi pdc... go to Green Bay Nova Scotia..sorry I hadn't read your thread before posting. It sounds just your kind of place..go in the early autumn.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: GUEST,John
Date: 21 Oct 03 - 08:56 PM

I was 19 and playing gigs with my guitar at Pedigree Corner, a pub in Co. Laois. The boss asked me to do a month resident PIANO player at his hotel in Tramore, a seaside resort in Waterford. My total piano training came from a 7" Jerry Lee Lewis record of What Did I Say. I took the gig, had a chalet on the beach, meals and drinks in the hotel and a small amount of money. That was 40 years ago, Its time to go back there.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 01:16 AM

Mickey 191, yes! see yer PMs

CB

Subject: RE: BS: Your Best Vacation Ever
From: Big Tim
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 11:08 AM

Probably the first time I ever went "abroad": in 1965 when I was 20. Hitchiked from Scotland to Nurembourg in Germany to visit my penpal -Heidemarie!

I've been round the world a few times since then(Nashville, New Orleans, Niagra Falls, Petra in Jordan, sailed down the Nile, visited the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Jerusalem, floated on the Dead Sea, Tunisia, France, Spain, Norway, Greece, Turkey, Croatia, Slovenia, Prague, etc, etc,) but that first trip was probably the most exciting.

Next year we're booked to visit Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania.

"There's a helluva lotta travellin' got to be done"! (Woody).