Travelling around by limo and only seeing the touristy stuff is hardly the best way to experience another country, IMO.

My GF and I usually make a rough plan about what we want to see and where we want to go, then we rent a car and drive around at our own pace. Wonderful way to spend a vacation. Last August we visited Scotland. Flew to Edinburgh and picked up a rental car, and spent the next week touring the west coast and the Highlands, staying in wonderful little country house hotels with fantastic food and friendly staff. We visited a couple of castles, had delicious freshly grilled scallops with coleslaw from a food van on the pier in Oban while watching the boats coming and going, visited the Oban whisky distillery, took the Harry Potter steam train, spent a night on the Isle of Skye, drove Land Rovers off-road outside Inverness, and spent the night in a castle in a lovely village between Inverness and Edinburgh. Total relaxation, and we met lots of nice people, ate good food and had a fantastic time.

That's my kind of vacation, not being shuffled around all the touristy stuff together with everyone else, their grandma and their dog.

+1 semmern.

That trip to Scotland sounds like it was quite a great experience.

It was. Got the pics on my external HD, will see if I can get some of them posted up

Actually, I wouldn't mind the Executive Service, with limos, five star hotels, body guards, first class seats, and a First World "amenities bubble" if I travelled to a lot of places in the world. Hell, most places in the world.

A huge chunk of our planet and its people are best seen and experienced from behind bullet proof glass in an air conditioned limousine, IMHO.

I'd love to tour the Amazonian basin from an aircraft. That would be awesome. At ground level with the heat and the bugs and snakes and the hostile natives without electricity or clean water not so much.

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Of course if one ever gets a job that has all those things, travel mostly means seeing what minor spins different cultures can put on the same damned conference room layout that is universal. And the work turns out to be kin to kaint and one wouldn't be able to enjoy it if one wanted to.

My last assignment in the Army lead me to some great vacation/tour spots that I got to see driving to meetings or in darkness late at night. In fact it was a running joke that I had never seen the ocean in daylight, which was true until my last two trips. And then I wiggled early departure on Sunday for early meetings on Monday.

That's one of the reasons I always liked visiting Miami. They don't unroll the sidewalks until 10:00 p.m. on South Beach.

Please do, your photos have always been great, and I love to see how others see my country.

Back home in Scotland just now for a few weeks, love to travel... especially going home

I want to see Semmern's Scottland photos, too!

And now I am curious about Alicatt - are you Scottish? It is not ultimately important, but it is always interesting! Just so you know I do not try to dig into areas of people's lives that are private, only where you might be willing to share.

Hmmm, kind of makes me wish that my family had more photographs from when we lived in Vicenza, Italy. So many beautiful vistas that we took for granted at the time.

I never did understand the whole 'Europeans are so rude to Americans' thing. My experiences were the opposite.

I too, have never met a European that was rude to me. Especially in France. When they understand that you appreciate their people, their culture, their language...they go out of their way to be nice to you.

Sometimes, I think, and I'm sad to say, that some Americans experience rude Europeans because alot of Americans act rudely or inappropriately toward them. Not ALL Americans, but it only takes a small few to ruin it for everybody. I've seen it many times. One time, at Notre Dame, I saw 2 American college kids up in the bell tower with the rest of the group. The south bell had a notice on it "Do not touch bell." What did the dude do? Yup, touched it, even though the sign was right there in front of him, in English. A security guy came by and said "Please don't touch the bell." When he left, the American dude mimics the security guard with a childish insolent tone, repeating "Don't touch the bell." Seriously? It's behavior like this that makes others frown upon Americans.

In Mexico, I saw a bunch of guys from Texas telling the wait staff that they can come to Texas and do their yardwork. When someone said something to them about it, all they said was, "Well, you know they'd like it better in the US than here."

A Belgian friend of mine once told me that one thing that they hear alot from Americans is, "We saved them in WWII." He said, "That's true, but the Americans won't stop reminding us about it--and THAT'S what bugs Europeans."
(When people say, "If it wasn't for the US, they'd be speaking German right now," I usually think, "Well, if it wasn't for the French, you'd be speaking English right now--oh wait!" Haha).

It is things like that where it is no surprise that many Europeans act rude toward Americans. Because alot of them have such attitudes or "holier than thou" arrogant discourteous behavior that when they catch hell for it, they can't understand why. And, as an American, it embarrasses me.

v6,
boNes

Point well made bones. Attitude so important especially when visiting other countries and not everyone you have contact with is likely to be friendly - that's true here as well as abroad but you can't let those people get you down or in a position where you also show an ugly side. You say thanks and move on or just say nothing - but you move on and have a nice trip without letting someone else dampen your good time.

British girls love Texas accents.

yea well i love theirs too

I think it's just human nature to view unfamiliar accents as "sexy".

British girls that was, well, <on-topic> while I don't travel that much, been to France, Scotland, India </on-topic>, I keep speaking in some form of English to people from around the world, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Romania, India, China, Singapore, Frankonia, Saxonia (just counting the ~20 people sitting around me). On the weekend seen a report from a poker tournament with a chatty girl from London on the featured table, it was such a pleasure to hear some lines of proper English

Edit: And no, what I hear from Americans is far from how it is meant to sound either (at least to my german ears)

Guilty as charged. Facts in evidence include my wife's accent, haha!

v6,
boNes

LOL, I live 20 miles from one. I've seen it many times there, before and after they built the new building around it, and I saw the Huntsville one, too, back in 1991.

They had an A-12 in the parking lot, too, to my astonishment. Of course, I thought it was an SR-71 at the time because the A-12 program wasn't actually declassified yet! It had just been delivered and was sitting in some handicap spaces with portable fencing erected around it which prevented cars from parking there, I guess, oblivious to the huge jet in front of them, because it certainly didn't stop you from walking up to it.




The Jedi Master

Lucky buggers. Biggest air or spacecraft I see around here are the rare KC-135s unless Airventure is running down in Oshkosh.

Seeing a Saturn V in some form is on the bucket list.

There's a good looking lady where I work who is from Poland and yes, I agree about the sexy accent.

My favourite travel area is the British isles. They speak English ( with the possible exception of some parts of North East England )

I also very much enjoy the New England and Quebec