Best Countries to Visit?

[John72953]

I'm partial to Europe and its history. It's where I'm from and I have been fortunate to see quite a bit of it. If I had the opportunity, I would love to discover more of Eastern Europe, especially now that this part of the world has opened up for us.

John

[jadis]

I'm partial to Europe and its history. It's where I'm from and I have been fortunate to see quite a bit of it. If I had the opportunity, I would love to discover more of Eastern Europe, especially now that this part of the world has opened up for us.

John

Yup. I was fortunate to go on a late honeymoon with my wife in the mid 90s to about 11 countries in Western Europe, considering tour rates now have skyrocketed and not to mention the currency devaluation of our country.

My favorites are England, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland. Very memorable attractions and nice people. We took a guided Insight Bus Tour that started in England, crossed the channel to France, on with the continental land and sightseeing tour and then back to England, all in about 33 days. Tiring but fun.

[The Smokester]

The beautiful island of Maldives, with pristine sandy beaches, surrounded by beautiful and lively corals in crystal clear water

The Maldives has some of the best diving in the world.

[rsbeck]

Just got back from Tuscany -- fabulous, but you've got to be willing to walk up some hills to visit these well preserved medieval hill towns. Enjoyed the local wines, Brunello di Montalchino and Chianti as well as many other lesser known Italian white wines like Trebbiano, Grechetto, and Verdicchio, which were all new to me. Beautiful countryside, fabulous old architecture, we saw the final of the World Cup in the main square in Sienna -- what a trip! Several restaurant/bars had turned their flat screen TV's towards the square and there were hundreds of fans surrounding each one. For some reason, each had a different feed and the fans would get their play-by-play seconds apart.

One TV had mostly Spanish fans and another mostly from the Netherlands.

Europeans go nuts over soccer!

One contingent would jump up and go crazy with delight and a few seconds later the other would erupt in fireworks of disgust.

When Spain won, their fans went out of their minds. They started singing, making rhumba lines and then jumped into the fountain and continued the frenzy.

Loads of fun.

We finished in Florence, which also has incredible art and architecture.

[Steve Williams]

Did you get to see The David in Florence

[rsbeck]

Definitely. I picked up a PBS special on the Medici and watched it before the trip -- really helped with Florence. As you probably know, The David is incredible when you see it up close. That Michelangelo dude could chisel!

[Steve Williams]

Did you see the other three at the entrance which shows the emergence from the stone of the character. He was an amazing sculptor

[rsbeck]

Yes -- that was really incredible, too. He was an amazing sculptor. The PBS Doc said the Medici held a grudge against Michelangelo because The David was intended by him as a symbol of Florence against the Goliath of the Medici family. So, part of the reason, supposedly, for the Medici Pope's insistence on Michelangelo for the Sisteen Chapel was to occupy him with painting so he couldn't sculpt.

Dude was a pretty good painter, though, too.

[Steve Williams]

What my mother used to call, "Jack of all trades but master of none". Just kidding

[rblnr]

I agree. Did you get to Inle Lake in the north? It has villages on stilts over the water and floating gardens (fields really). And there are five? small golden Buddha's that are transported around the lake by boat once a year. One was lost lost during a storm but was returned to the temple under mysterious/magical circumstances around which a legend has formed.

But the Burmese people are the main attraction. When I was there in 2001 the universities had been shut down, the senior professors were in monasteries and my drivers and guides were engineers and English literature majors. Since I stayed with the same guys for several days I eventually got to know them. At first, they would be quite cautious since they could never know who might be an internal spy. After a while, they would open up and we had a lot of fun. I was traveling up and down Burma by jet, and members of the military junta traveled on the same jet. That meant that we had to head for the airports long before the plane left since they would close the road when the junta made the same trip just before the plane was scheduled to depart. One time we were late and ended up behind the convoy. Normally we would be stopped but someone made a mistake and saluted my car. The driver turned to me and told me to salute back. So we drove like royalty for the 20 miles to the airport. We reached the roundabout but instead of stopping they asked me if we could go around a second time with all the junta's guards snapping salutes and my guide and driver laughing hysterically.

Have you read the book "Finding George Orwell in Burma" by Emma Larken? It turns out that Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), author of "1984", was a British policeman in Burma during the 1920's. The British were extremely repressive and created a police state with everyone spying on everyone else, a legacy that remains to this day. One can easily imagine that Blair/Orwell drew heavily on his Burmese experiences in his future writing career. At one point in her book Larken described searching for remnants of Blair's legacy in Burma and asks a group if they know of him. After some consultation, they reply: "Oh yes. We call him The Prophet".

Missed this -- yeah, Inle Lake is beautiful and that's a great story. Been meaning to read more Orwell/Burma stuff for a long time now, that's a good reminder.

A favorite place was Pegu. We had to jump off the morning train coming down from Mandalay to Rangoon (Yangon), making sure to catch the night train. Our Burma Airways ticket helpfully said: 'Don't Miss Your Flight!', and as you probably know, overstaying your visa lands you in jail (or did), not something you want to mess around with.

When we hopped off the train, a guy w/a little handmade badge on his chest that read 'Mg Yee, Tour Guide' approached us. We were skeptical as you'd imagine, but he only wanted eighty kyats or so (around five bucks). Turned out he was amazing, took us all kinds of places we never would have found and got to know his family. As the only foreigners in Pegu that day, we had about 200 kids following us around. Very long story short, while waiting with him for the night train, 'Heard it the Grapevine' came up somehow. We taught him the words, and what 'Grapevine' meant -- he got a kick out of the colloquialism -- and soon had a hundred people in the station singing the song. It got pretty wild until an Army officer walked up and told us to keep it down. As he walked away, Mg told us the guy used to be in a rock band.

Anyway, trips to Burma are full of such stories. We actually helped a member of a family we got to know get out of the country and avoid execution. I met him a few years later at a coffee shop on 16th and 6th in Manhattan.


Train stop in Pegu


part of a large reclining Buddha. even w/o reference, you get a sense of the scale