Answers on a postcard please

[hawkwing_lb]

I'm just wondering: If there was a place in the world (other than where you are now) you'd want to a) live, or b) visit, where would it be?



b) Visit. Visit. Not just one place. Lots. Senegal. Russia. Sri Lanka. South Africa. Peru. Montreal. The south of England. Wales. Mont-St-Michel, France. Rome. Venice. Crete. Rhodes. Mongolia. Ile de la Réunion. Alexandria and Luxor, Egypt. Copenhagen. The USA (except it rather scares me).

Everywhere.

But if I had to pick just one? France. France for three months' worth of visit, from the Pas de Calais to the Pyrenées. On foot, by bike and by train.

a) Mayo. Even though I'm Dublin born and bred, Mayo has it.

(Though I admit, if I was a wealthy millionaire, I'd like to have a home on Italy's Amalfi Coast, too.)

Comments

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

On a postcard, eh?

Well, to visit: Scotland, England, Wales, more of Ireland, lots and lot of Europe (with trips into Eastern Europe, particularly Transcarpathian Rus), all of Canada.

Don't be scared by the US. USians love the Irish.

To live? Canada. It used to be more expensive than the US, but that's a much lesser concern now (I make enough money to live on). It's all that's good about the US, and hardly any of the bad. One never hears about the "Ugly Canadian Tourist", eh? Plus then I get to end every sentence like this, eh?

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I'd like to visit the US, to be sure, but the other side of the Atlantic has a rather scary attitude towards... guns.

(I am nearly as intimidated by everywhere else outside Europe: if it's not guns, it's... insects. Or both. Just the US scares me more than anywhere outside of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.)

Canada, eh? I've never heard of the 'Canadian Tourist' at all (but at least two of my lecturers are Canadian, so I suppose 'Canadian Tourists' must exist).

You mean to say there is such a creature as the 'Ugly American Tourist'? :-)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Oh, guns. Well. You have a point there. What attitude might that be? I don't know if you're thinking of the same thing that I am. :-)

In defense of this country, let me point out that fewer people actually have guns, and of those, only few carry them. We don't have men with submachine guns standing guard at the border, as they used to in Ireland....;-) Sure, the police officers wear guns in holsters on their belts, but that's not the same as waving it around.

I don't own a gun. I'm not anti-gun, as my perception is that guns are tools that are handy for some people. If I felt I needed a gun, I'd get a shotgun and use that for protection. :-)

In fact, the insects are scarier. At least you've missed the 17-yr cicadas, until they come back. ;-)

Yes, Canadian tourists do exist, but they are so stealthy and quiet that you'll miss them if you blink.

The Ugly American..usually male but can be female, overweight, loud, with appalling fashion sense, laden with cameras and bags of overpriced tchotchkes. Arrogant, argumentative, and obnoxious.

We send them out of the country, to scare away the potential tourists. If you come here, you find out the real Americans are quieter, friendlier, and more prone to offering shirts off backs and the like. ;-)

[davefreer.livejournal.com]

Got no steenkin' postcards. We keel all the tourists, so more postcards of the young topless Zulu maiden ( a big seller, very cultural)

She's right about the Americans, (and the guns - I never saw one on the last trip till I got back to SA) They're... overwhelmingly nice to visitors :-)

My list... New Zealand, Oz, especially Tasmania and the coast of the northern territories, Ireland (grin not Dublin. it's a city. All cities are alike to me) Scandinavia - Finnland (monty python advertising!) Tierra del fuego. The Falklands. The Shetlands. Iceland... Is there a pattern here? (Well, I have visited the US,UK, some of Europe, and some of Africa before)

Live... if politics would let me alone 7000 ft up a mountain surrounded by 10 000 acres of wild mountain land in the Eastern Cape.
Otherwise... Tasmania, or New Zealand. Maybe a remote bit of Ireland or Scotland. Or the Falkland islands.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

We keel all the tourists

::hastily scratches S.Africa off her list::

There is a pattern of islands, Dave. And isolation :-).

Though if you're ever passing through Dublin, I can show you some bits (admittedly not the citified ones) that aren't so bad (though they're shrinking yearly) :-).

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

It's the fact I live in a country where owning the things is illegal that makes me view countries that in parts allow private ownership of assault rifles with extreme trepidation, I suppose :-).

(We haven't had armed forces on the border for at least the last ten years, thnakfully. And I'm equally grateful that our police force mostly doesn't need to be armed.)

Cicadas... they aren't poisonous, are they? :-)

Trinity college gets lots of tourists. Fortunately most of them are reasonably polite. Now, the not-tourist American I know who's taking the same course I am at TCD, he's arrogant and argumentative :-).

Well, real people are generally nicer than their stereotypes, aren't they? :-)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Yes, it would tend to make one rather trepidatious. Mind you, I don't go around with guns myself, so seeing guns (other than on police officers) is a noteworthy occasion. As for the polis ;-) my understanding is most of them never fire their weapons in the line of duty. It would be nice to be in a country where they didn't have to carry weapons, but the US is much larger and much differently oriented than other countries, so unfortunately there's been a need for them to be armed.

Anyways. :-)

Cicadas are not poisonous..I think..but they are noisy and have this unfortunate tendency to fly at oneself in a most unexpected manner. Plus, when the 17-yr ones hatch out, they all go at once, so you have these masses of noise-making flying cigars. Well, small cigars. Pieces of cigars. With red eyes. And wouldn't you know it, but it's the males making all the noise.

Much like your American classmate, eh? If he gets too arrogant or argumentative, ship him off to someplace nasty -- for us, eh? Tell him you know this vet who makes house calls and is a dab hand at vasectomizing primates. ;-)

Oh, and if you go to South Africa, just disguise yourself as a student. Nobody bothers students, yanno -- no money in it. ;-)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Tell him you know this vet who makes house calls and is a dab hand at vasectomizing primates.

I shall hold that advice in reserve :-).