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400 years of Will’s World

10th November 202310th November 2023 funtime65

And as if we need an excuse it’s 400 years of Will’s World… excellent, party on, as we mark four centuries since his folios were first published.

And as the companion the BBC will no doubt ask me for, to support the fine Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius series, here’s his go-to sets.

Anyone for Venice

Venice: The republic of Venice with its rich maritime empire and narrow, sinister alleyways was fertile ground for Will.

And where he set The Merchant of Venice (the clue is in the title) and Othello, studies in anti-semitism and racism.

The lagoon city’s labyrinthine closes remain relatively unchanged since Will’s day.

So visitors with any literary knowledge can conjure up Iago and Cassio, and in the Ghetto the money-lender Shylock.

The prints of Denmark

Kronborg Castle, Denmark: And the inspiration for Will’s most celebrated creation and play Hamlet.

A lookout post at the Royal Danish Castle of Elsinore… between northern Jutland and modern-day Sweden.

Where every summer the Danes put on the play… wherein we’ll catch the conscience of the king of theatre.

Where it be done

Scotland: Where it be done it be done quickly, to misquote Will and Lady Macbeth.

The newly amalgamated Scotland is naturally the setting for Will’s new project, the glorification of King James I of Great Britain.

And helpfully for us he namechecks those dramatic places in the north… Inverness, Dunsinane, Cawdor and Glamis Castle.

Athens is a classic

Spoiled and ruined: At the Acropolis in Athens

Athens: And you’d think that any focus would be on the play which references the classical Greek city, Timon of Athens.

But that tale of the Athenian who squanders his riches on parasitic companions until he is poor and they reject him.

But for real Atheniana we turn to Midsummer’s Night Dream where four Athenian lovers are manipulated by fairies.

Shakespearabbean

Bermuda: And to show that Will’s World, like his imagination, stretched far and wide we’ll take you to an exotic island.

Of course we know Will liked a foreign isle for his characters’ adventures.

From Othello’s travels in Cyprus among others.

While we know too from our own peregrinations in Tenerife that Shakespeare was fond of Canarian wine.

But it was Bermuda where Will sent Prospero.

Inspired by William Strachey’s letter on the shipwreck of the Sea Venture off Bermuda in 1609.

America, Countries, Europe

Tourists going battle class

6th September 20236th September 2023 funtime65

Pitched fights were what passed for live sport back in the day (well, there was no football) with tourists going battle class.

And as is the way with big entertainment, America led the way.

Well, there was the coming ‘attraction’ of the American Civil War.

No seriously for the Great and Good of the capital the first skirmishes of what they never conceived would last four years were seen as a glorious day out.

Ready for battle: The American Civil War

And the grand ladies got their picnics out and their maids to take them down to within view of Manassas in Virginia, 32 miles from the capital.

Alas, this was not the derring-do of frontier adventures but bloody carnage and the tourists even had to hot-tail it back to Washington DC when the fighting got too close.

These days they make capital out of the battle with history tourists able to get up close and personal to the likes of Stonewall Jackson.

And interact with guides dressed up as soldiers.

War, this is what it’s good for

The excitement of close-up coverage of a real-life battle caught on and there were spectators too at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Though we can’t imagine that there had ‘come to dedicate a portion of that field’ to the tourists.

And here in Europe at the Franco-Prussian War, following in a rich tradition where tourists, celebrities including Robert Southey among them, visiting battlefields, post-killing.

Thomas Cook got in on the act too promoting travel out to the Boer War.

Old Boers: At a Boer graveyard in South Africa

All of which is still on the tourist map when you’re down there as I was in the Eastern Cape. And some towns don’t look to have changed since then.

Now thankfully, and again we probably have football to thank for this, real-life battles are no longer spectator sports.

In their place though are recreations, and there’s a classic every year in our favourite region of Greece, Attica.

Where the locals have been refighting the pivotal naval Battle of Spetses, or Armata, from the Greek War of Independence in 1822.

The Armata

Of course you know but just a reminder that Spetses was where Captain Andreas Miaoulis and the captains of Spetses, Hydra, and Psara islands fought against the Turkish naval forces.

While Kosmas Barbatsis from Spetses set fire to the enemy flagship, making the Turks retreat.

The climax of the island’s festivities which take place in the second week of September commemorating the battle on the 8th is the burning of a model of the Ottoman flagship.

But, of course, there are fireworks, concerts, plays and church services with the Virgin Mary to the fore with her birthday also on the 8th September.

Helpfully too and my schoolboy Greek is sketchy, and is only useful 2,500 years ago, they have translations from the Greek into English.

And for tourists going battle class, my Greek odyssey was courtesy of Lufthansa… and quite an odyssey it was too.

Countries, Ireland, UK

Random Quacked Of Kindness Day

17th February 202217th February 2022 funtime65

Where these things come from Heaven knows but where we’re going with this is a shout out to my old pal Julie Hastings who has reimagined it as a Random Quacked of Kindness Day.

And yes, you can have that one Julie.

Hastings Hotels supremo Julie and me share a very important interest…

We’re both quackers about rubber ducks.

And she was good enough both to host me at the group’s flagship Belfast hotels the Grand Central and the Europa.

But also to send me on some from her collection (I’ll come to the many names for a group of ducks in a minute, and it’s not that) after I’d suggested names for her latest novelty ducks.

The Duckess of Cornwall

Lor’, love a duck: Duck and Duchess of Cornwall

When Camilla was visiting… and I came up with the Duckess of Cornwall!

Now Julie rarely misses an opportunity to get her rubber ducks in a row.

And so has been gifting them at the company’s head Offices today at their offices at the side of Stormont Hotel.

It’s a great quacked of kindness in what has been deigned by someone somewhere Random Act of Kindness Day.

There have, of course, been too many to count across my Travels from our holiday providers, our dream makers.

Five friends

Hit the road Zach: My pal Zach from Mississippi

There has been the wonderful gesture from Zach at Visit Mississippi.

He only had a courier bring the mobile phone I had left in a hotel 100kms back, to Jackson, on the MLK50 odyssey in the Deep South.

The hotelier who sent up two bottles of wine and a fruit basket to my room on my Greek odyssey.

After I had bust in on an aged couple post-coitus in the Intercontinental Athenaeum in Athens after I had been given the wrong door pass at reception.

The whole town of Monaghan in Ireland who rearranged their weekends to accommodate us.

When we turned up a week early (I give The Scary One one job to do, one job to do!).

Monaghan mates: And Sherry got us a table

Bertha at reception in Switzerland (it’s a recurring theme) who waived my carelessness in leaving the shower running.

In my rush to join my group and catch the train in Interlaken.

All of which meant water dripped from the ceiling into the breakfast room.

And Julie, of course, who I have never admitted to but it is true.

That I was caught short and was sick on the carpet of her beloved Grand Central Hotel.

After one of her famous hospitable nights watching Van Morrison at the Europa and then following it up with a nightcap (or three) in the Crown Bar.

What’s a group of ducks then?

Now I doubt whether I’ll ever reach the numbers in Julie’s rubber duck fleet, flock, company, diving, paddle, skein or wabbling.

And note to self, enough wabbling.

And on behalf of all of us, well done again Julie for your generosity on Random Quacked of Kindness Day.

Alas, every day cannot be so if you want to get your hands on one of the famous Hastings Ducks then you will have to book a room.

The duck will be free but the rest will be on the bill.

Countries, Culture, Europe, Food & Wine

WTM Holiday Snaps – An ancient Greek modern tale

10th November 202010th November 2020 funtime65

We’re going to have fun in 2021, and high up on the list is Greece’s bicentenary..

And a good day to talk about it though, in truth, every day is a good one to wax lyrical about Hellas.

As the Greeks today set up their committee for the year which marks 200 years since the end of the Greek War of Independence which saw the rebirth of the nation.

It turns out that I’m a Philhellene, which is a lover of Greece.

Which all of us know from our schooldays comes from the Greek word philos meaning love.

Corfu corker

I love Corfu obviously as the island where I honeymooned and made Herself the Happiest Woman Alive.

While I caught up with friends from the Attica region where this old relic had an odyssey of my own before eventually getting to the Parthenon.

Kythera idyll

And bagging an Attica island of my own in Kythera.

The good news is that there are plenty to go around, 6,000 (count them!)

Greece has been held up this year as an example to the rest of us about how to deal with Covid and hence were kept off the UK exempt list.

While other countries fell like dominoes.

And so many tourists discovered the joys of Greece for the first time after switching holidays at the last minute.

Thessaloniki OK

And to the mainland as well as the islands with Greece’s Second City, Thessaloniki, served by Ryanair, EasyJet and Jet2.

As a son of a second city myself, Glasgow, I know why citizens of Second Cities work harder and live harder.

And Thessaloniki is known for its friendliness, music festival scene and as the culinary capital of Greece.

Greek cities and prefectures all will celebrate the Bicentenary next year though some like Thessaloniki arrived late to the party.

In their case 1912 as the Ottomans held onto them longer and that’s a recommendation in itself.

Greek uplift

And the world will be there to celebrate with them.

Though maybe at a more social distance than when an international group of us got stuck in an Athens restaurant lift for half an hour.

The philos was all around us.

Uncategorized

Moanday Morning – Travel snobs

23rd September 201923rd September 2019 funtime65

Standing on top of the ancient world, the Acropolis, I reflected that somewhere, somehow, someone will be turning up their nose.

A relative of mine walked the Via Delarosa and said they felt no passion.

While a former Travel colleague thought the Trevi Fountain a wet blanket and the Leaning Tower of Pisa on the decline.

*An old relic… and the Acropolis*. Visit https://athensattica.com

And Big Ben just a clock… it is, in fact, the bell not the clock, but we won’t quibble. See http://www.visitlondon.com.

I’ve yet to walk the Via Delarosa. I have an idea that it will be moving but have an open mind. https://info.goisrael.com/en/the-via-dolorosa.

I love the Trevi Fountain https://jimmurtytraveltraveltravel.com/2019/08/04/see-rome-on-e50/. Also see http://www.romeinformation.it.

And Big Ben and London. https://jimmurtytraveltraveltravel.com/2019/06/23/carole-king-youre-beautiful/.

Now everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

And to share it.

Although in today’s world too many people are only too willing to thrust their own negative judgments on you.

Whether you want to hear them or not.

You need to have something to say and you feel you have more kudos if it involves giving someone or something a kicking.

*Lean of me. Photo by hitesh choudhary on Pexels.com*

It is a growing Travel snobbery that I feel has crept in from the world of food snobbery.

Travel snobbery gives you ownership of a destination or an out-of-the-way natural beauty spot.

You know the type… ‘oh, I went there before the tourists swarmed all over it.’

*Clock this: And listen to the Big Ben bell. Photo by Daria Shevtsova on Pexels.com*

And ‘shouldn’t tourists with selfie sticks be banned?’

Or ‘oh, I hate people who just want to tick destinations off their bucket list, they’re not proper Travellers.’

Now let’s deal with some of those complaints individually:

Not everyone’s cup of tea

*The Louvre which houses the Mona Lisa. Photo by Timea Kadar on Pexels.com*

I get it. If you don’t feel it, you don’t feel it and it doesn’t mean you don’t have a soul.

But is it just attention-grabbing to suggest the Trevi Fountain is well meh?

Really, you won’t be diminished if you just say that you can understand how other people are enchanted by it.

But that you just don’t get that same feeling.

*Some philosophical thinking about New York? Photo by picjumbo.com on Pexels.com*

I mean I was underwhelmed when I first set eyes on the Mona Lisa.

I’ve been thinking, when I’ve been drinking, is it because there is so much pressure to be impressed?

You can go one of two ways.

Either be bowled over by it because subconsciously you feel you should.

Or rally against it because you don’t want anyone to tell you what to think.

Are we really taking control of our own thought processes?

OMG… I’m turning into Carrie Bradshaw.

Those selfish selfies

*Peak enjoyment: Get me up the Jungfraujoch*

A favourite post-holiday grumble is that you can’t get anywhere near the site because of selfie-stick holders.

And let’s call it like it is, or point the finger at the naysayers to call it as they see it…

They’re usually Asians.

Now one of the stranger things I’ve seen on my travels is a group of Chinese visitors at the Tiso shop on top of the Jungfraujoch railway https://jimmurtytraveltraveltravel.com/swhisskey/

I was told by my Swiss guests that they were buying their watches and taking selfie pics there so that they could show them off to their friends and family back home.

*Closer to the sun: And the Tiso watches in Jungfraujoch*

Which was worth shelling out the extra cash.

Now I’ve been lucky enough to be given a number of selfie sticks on my travels.

But they’re all sitting broken in a drawer now, more plastic!

Nor do I really know how to use them. I’ve backtracked and stopped using them.

And there’s a great by-product you get to talk to real live people when you ask them to take your pic.

Buck it list?

*Closer to God: The Vatican. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com*

We all of us have limited time on this planet.

And we all want to see the world’s great landmarks.

At the same time.

In the same place… the Sistine Chapel.

Yes, people shouldn’t take photos with flash. But what to do… confiscate phones?

*It’s all a bit of fun until someone gets blocked. Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com*

It does detract from your enjoyment when the stewards whistle snd holler when yet another person flashes (the camera on their mobile).

It’s overtourism, and while it’s unrealistic that we can cut the numbers visiting the chapel, and I wouldn’t want to…

We can let in fewer people at any given time, reduce the time you’re there and create more slots.

Simples.

MEET YOU ON THE ACROPOLIS