If I’m going to be completely honest, Manchester blew away my expectations. I booked my trip as a stopover point, an easy gateway to fly into before heading to Scotland. Sure, it makes up a large portion of the UK’s second biggest metro area. Yes, it has been an economic and industrial power, so dominating…
Few things are better than a stroll along the Thames on a pretty day. With blue skies and a temperature in the low 70s Fahrenheit, this is London at its June finest. The south side of the river, especially, is wonderful, and full of amazing things to see and do. My day here is focused…
It is amazing how a room full of faces, many of which don’t even have full bodies connected, can be a window into history. But so it is here in Room 1 of the National Portrait Gallery in London. In this narrow room on the third floor of the museum - which is where you…
With my guided tour of Sicily coming to an end, it is time to head to part two of my 2024 Europe trip. I’m flying from Sicily up to Manchester, England to spend several days before moving on to a month in Scotland. I’ve never been to Scotland at all, and even within England I’ve…
Guided tours are not my normal way to travel. I am someone who prefers to do things on my own, with long periods in a single location leading to a relaxed pace. However, the opportunity came up to travel with Overseas Adventure Tours (OAT) to Ireland with my aunt, so I took it. OAT is…
Today was a difficult day for me, and not because of the ever-present Northern Irish rain that has insisted on following most of my trip here. I am in Derry (also called Londonderry, but more on that in a few moments), the second largest city in Northern Ireland. It is a beautiful town, the best-preserved…
From the tip of the stone columns jutting up into the Inner Seas which connect the Irish Sea to the North Atlantic between Ireland and Scotland, it is easy to understand why locals might have thought this to be created by a giant. The hexagonal basalt columns can in places look very much like paving…
As residents and local tour guides are quick to point out, “most ships built in Belfast did not sink.” It’s a funny statement that needs making because, unfortunately, this former shipbuilding superpower’s most famous ship did sink. On April 15, 1912, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and went down. More than…
It feels wrong somehow that tourism can come out of violence, fear, pain, and death. And yet, here I am on a traditional Belfast black taxi tour joining dozens of other such vehicles, all filled with visitors like me taking photos of a place that only twenty-five years ago was home to some of the…
It’s time to head back to Europe! Of all the places in the world, I probably like Europe best, so I am very excited to have about three and a half months there this summer and fall. As I mentioned in my introduction to the trip, I’m dividing it into three for the purposes of…