Ahhh, the holiday season. That special time of year when too many people over-stress, over-shop, and over-spend, all for the sake of giving the perfect gifts. Do we select a gift from a mass-produced list that goes to other family members, or perhaps something a bit more special? Maybe we chose something the gift receiver wouldn’t purchase, or an item they didn’t even know they needed, but we wanted to buy. Maybe the question to ask is “why am I giving this gift in the first place, and what Continue Reading
London, a story in the making
As soon as I began talking to Mina, I knew my cast of characters was complete. An Iranian born architect now working in Toronto, she was the perfect person to design the house with the secret room that led to a hidden passageway. How serendipitous that we shared a bench and began talking while waiting for our tour of the Tower of London, two days before our trip ended. I already had Irina, the Bulgarian beauty who greeted every guest at our hotel with her mile-wide smile. She monitored the Continue Reading
“Today’s rain is tomorrow’s whiskey”
If they gave awards for the country’s best, Scotland would win the following: Our Scottish holiday started with the beat of a bass drum leading a 45-member pipe band in their colorful red and black kilts in the 2023 Pipe Band World Championships. It was quite by accident that we discovered this was happening in Glasgow after we landed there for our two-day rest between the end of our Ireland tour and the beginning of our Scotland tour. But we snapped up two tickets to the Friday Continue Reading
What I’ll remember most about Ireland
When someone mentions Ireland, what do you think of? Green countryside? Red-hair? Celtic dancers? Potatoes? I’ve just completed a 14 day trip with CIE Tours that included Northern Ireland in addition to the Republic of Ireland and what will I recall the most? The storytelling and humor, no question. The line between the two is often blurred, and Irish whiskey is only occasionally involved. The stories, emotional but also humorously uplifting, and the jokes, casual and natural, captured Continue Reading