It's no secret that my best friend, Missy and I love to travel. We met 25 years ago in the parking lot of a Winn Dixie grocery store in Valdosta, Georgia. I was in college there and she was home on Spring Break from Pepperdine in Malibu, CA. I thought she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen and never imagined that we'd grow up together and travel the world.
She put a damper on that for a few years when she got married and had 3 boys back to back. But I think we've pretty much made up for that in the last 6 months as we have been to Italy, Tuscany, Rome, the island of Capri, Spain, the South of France, Nice and Monaco. Tunisia is in Northern Africa. I hated it, she loved it. We spent a week in Paris in December, with 5 of our best girlfriends in a rented apartment on the Seine.
As many places as Missy and I have traveled to, we both have such a huge love for Ireland. Come Spring and Fall, we both feel a need to go there, to have some fish and chips and a pint of Guinness. Her middle child was doing his class project on Ireland and my 18 year old nephew, his Grandma's favorite child (my only nephew) is about to graduate from high school.
I talked my nephew into telling his grandma that he wanted nothing more than a trip to Ireland with his favorite aunt and Missy talked her son into telling his Dad that it would mean the world to him to go with his mom and me (his Godmother) to Ireland to complete his school project.
I always enjoy a weekend trip to the 
New Orleans, founded in 1718, has many long standing traditions. During the holidays, many of these still exist and there are even a few new ones! There is always a reason to have a celebration in New Orleans but from November - January, traditions and celebrations truly shine.
Sounds a bit like Bilbo Baggins but when you are journeying around the countryside of south-western England, you are likely to come across many fascinating places and people. Their history stretches back to the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons and the Romans – each race introducing new cultures, different religions and ways of cultivating the land. So a hodge-podge from the past still exists although much has been sanctified and blessed into a greying sameness by the more prosaic and mundane English civil service that seems to run most things in this present day and age. But whilst there is still a King and Lords of the Rings, and folk with imaginations like me who can paint with pictures and words, beauty and good can be found wherever you journey in the U.K. and beyond.
Well, the first thought I had driving through the streets of Edinburgh (and then later by train on the Royal Scotsman) is that the most impressive thing about Scotland is the great big hairy-chested men that roam about - similar perhaps to the “We like great big hairy- chested men – we are the senior class” which we used to sing about so wistfully at Marlborough. Now I know about which I sang! Seeing these critters who do indeed roam the streets in thin tee shirts and shorts when the rest of the world around them are dressed in sweaters and jackets, only remind me that they toss trees (the Caber Toss) in contest at the Highland Games and that in Clan Fightin’ Days of Yore, they would tear off their kilts to go into battle - running naked through the heather and the thistles. Into Thistles? Naked? Who would dare pick a fight with these manly men?
