As those of you who are my faithful readers may have noticed, I stopped doing the blog for a while. Although I loved doing it, it does take an enormous amount of time and I began to think of it as a chore. I would spend hours and hours on an entry and then feel as though I was posting it into the ether as I very seldom got any feedback on it. In the past couple of months, however, I have received several messages and emails from people (some of whom I don't even know) asking me to start it [View Full Entry]

---

---

There are some places that one has such a clear picture of that it feels as though one has already been. In my mind, Marrakech was one of those places. I knew what it would look like; I knew what it would sound like; I knew what it would smell like. I could not have been more wrong. I had a very romantic notion of it. My guidebook describes it as having the pros of cons of both Africa and the Middle East. In my limited experience of both of those places, I have to agree. My trip did not start [View Full Entry]

---

---

A few weeks ago, I was talking to some of my friends (one of whom is Scottish) and telling them how excited I was to be going to Scotland to see the Highland Games. I told them that I had always wanted to see the men “throw the big stick”. “What are you on about, mate?” “You know, that thing where they throw that stick that looks like a telephone pole.” “For the love of God, Bohner. It’s called tossing the caber. Please promise us that you’ll get the terminology right before you turn up.” I promised that I wouldn’t [View Full Entry]

---

---

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much of good whiskey is barely enough.” -- Mark Twain (who else??) In spite of my latish night, I was up with the birds. I tried to lie in for a while, but nothng doing. I think it was because I was moving to a different part of Scotland today and was excited to get going. I packed up Nessie and hit the road. First stop on the agenda was Cawdor Castle. Although not that impressive, it is famous for being the castle where Macbeth killed Duncan. Being the good English major that [View Full Entry]

---

---

"Could ... an undiscovered animal as large as the Loch Ness monster possibly exist? The answer is yes. Animals previously unknown to science have been found more than once in the past hundred years. For instance, there's the megamouth shark (megachasma pelagios), a fifteen-foot-long creature weighing nearly a ton. The first specimen was discovered on November 15, 1976, when it was found entangled in the drag anchor of a U.S. Navy ship. The new creature wasn't described scientifically until 1983 ... The megamouth remains the only species in its genus, and the only genus in its order." -- [View Full Entry]

---

---

Don’t you love clouds? I love clouds. They are so different from what they appear to be. Flying over them, I always want to sink into that billowy, white softness. The reality is so much different. In the middle of a cloud, it is always cold and wet. Good thing I love clouds, because I hate heights. The love of the former got me up a mountain this morning. I had to go in a gondola that was swaying in the wind. I kept looking at the cloud, imagining that it would be billowy soft if I fell into it. I [View Full Entry]

---

---

“O ye'll tak' the high road and I'll tak' the low road, An' I'll be in Scotland afore ye' But me and my true love will never meet again On the bonnie, bonnie banks O' Loch Lomond." - Old Scottish Folk Tune Up far too early. Can't imagine why I can't sleep. So, I turn on the BBC who are promising a beautiful day, fire up the old laptop and wait for the coffee arrive. It does; I kill more time; I eventually get to the point where the tourist things will be open. I wander down the lobby only to [View Full Entry]

---

---

The last few days have been all about changing plans. I was meant to leave for Scotland yesterday, but the day after Verona became lost time. Sensory overload, on top of too much wine and too many late nights, required me to take a day off. So, tenUK pushed everything back a day for me and I took off this morning. Isn't the sound of an alarm clock going off at 4.00 worse than the hounds of hell?!? But the reason that I like taking the first flights out in the morning is that one arrives and can have a whole [View Full Entry]

---

---

I woke up this morning unable to believe that we had come to the last day of this trip. The weekend simply flew by and, as I finished up the packing, it felt as though we had just arrived. What a difference the leaving was from the arriving! After breakfast, we all went down to the coach and climbed aboard for the relatively quick journey to Padua. We drove through the less historic and less beautiful parts of Verona and then out into the countryside. We passed the Soave vineyards, from which a lot of the copious amounts of wine we [View Full Entry]

---

---

THURSDAY, 21 AUGUST I am waiting in the BA queue at Gatwick when a voice behind me says, "Hello, I'm Michael." Before I have a chance to say something really witty like "So?", I turn around and see that the man behind me also has a Martin Randall badge on his bag. Thank God, I think to myself. For once I kept my mouth shut and won't have to spend the next four days apologising to one of my tour mates. "Hello." I smile as I shake his hand. "I'm your tour leader. It's nice to meet you." Wow! Dodged that [View Full Entry]

---

---