Dreaming of Summer Holidays

[fajrdrako]

From the Friday Five:


1. How are you planning to spend the summer ?

Writing Clex. Reading Clex.

Reading books, especially Deepak Chopra and Stephen Pinker and the new Elizabeth Knox novel "Daylight", and Linda Barnes' "Big Dig". (My To Be Read pile is enticingly immense.)

Walking, doing yoga, keeping up my diet, maybe joining the fitness club if it's too hot to walk too much.

Catching up on comic books.

Maybe, if I can manage the time and money, going to see some Shakespeare in Stratford, Ontario. Maybe also going to Toronto Trek. I thought I could avoid the temptation because there weren't any guests I really wanted to see. Then guess what? The guests I didn't care about cancelled - fear of SARS, so rumour says - and their replacements are people I really, really would like to see, like Nana Visitor and Anthony Head. Nana Visitor. She's on my sort list of favourite sexy women.

I'm doing my best to save time and leave from work to maybe go to one or two conventions in October, November and December. We shall see what happens.


2. What was your first summer job?

I was a waitress at the Bruce MacDonald Motor Hotel on Carling Avenue.


3. If you could go anywhere this summer, where would you go?

Durham, England. Or maybe the Channel Isles. Or Cape Breton Island. What, you wanted only one answer?

One thing I'd really like to do, preferably on a quiet island somewhere, is a yoga retreat.


4. What was your worst vacation ever?

Well... though I have many happy memories of it, there was a time I was backpacking around Europe with a friend and I got sick. My health was not good in those days, and I was pushing myself. I had a bad cold in Zurich and flu in Vienna and finally threw up my hands and flew home from Zurich. I was running out of money too: a pickpocket got my train pass in Paris.

Still: It was a fantastic trip and I woudln't have missed a minute and I'm only sorry I was sick in that wonderful, memorable, beautiful city of Vienna.


5. What was your best vacation ever?

Orkney. My friend Anne and I went to Orkney for two weeks. Orkney is a group of islands off the northern tip of Scotland, in the North Sea.







It turned out to be the best and most exciting vacation I have ever had, and we weren't idle for a minute. I wanted to go to Orkney for three reasons:

(1) I remembered my mother's great-aunt, aged 101, showing me a watercolour picture on her wall of Orkney, and saying, as I remember, that she had painted it as a child. After I was back from Orkney my aunt said that Auntie Garner was born in Ontario and had never seen Orkney in her life, and I wondered what was wrong with my memory. Had I got it wrong? Perhaps I remembered it right, but had misunderstood: perhaps it was a picture of Orkney my great-great-aunt had painted from a photograph, or maybe it was by someone she knew. I was about ten years old when this conversation had taken place.

So I don't know if there was a historical family connection in Orkney, but there could have been.

(2) One of my favourite books, King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett, is set in Orkney. The hero, Thorfinn, was Earl of Orkney.

(3) I wanted to see megalitic standing stones and stone circles and Orkney is full of them. And then some.





The Ring of Brodgar


We saw that and many more wonderful things: barrows and the fascinating mound Maes Howe (full of endearing Viking graffitti); more barrows and old tombs and museums; beautiful jewellers; Celtic pubs with good music and dancing; the beautiful and majestical North Sea; Balfour Castle on Shapinsay, with the most fascinating garden I have ever seen; bookstores; a the ruined Renaissance Earl's castle and the ruined Renaissance Bishop's palace; cliffside breeding grounds for sea birds, who flock in profusion; the Old Man of Hoy, which may be the most amazing sight I have ever seen; ruins of Viking farms and churches; Pictish carvings; ruins of Celtic brochs and old Scottish farms. Only on Orkney have I walked in houses that were 5,000 years old, their stone furniture intact.

I could go on and on.




The Stones of Stenness

Comments

[dargie.livejournal.com]

I had a bad cold in Zurich and flu in Vienna and finally threw up my hands and flew home from Zurich

Well maybe that's why you were feeling so bad in Vienna. How'd you manage to swallow them in the first place?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

LOL.

[littledrop.livejournal.com]

Durham, England.

I love when you mention all these places that I go to all the time. *g* Have you been to Durham before? You should really try to make it, it's a perfect little city.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I've been there once, and adored the place. Wished I could live there. I have a cousin there - a teacher - I'm hoping to go and visit her sometime.

Having been fascinated by the writings of Bede, I particulary loved seeing the Cathedral and everything about St. Cuthbert.

A beautiful, favourite place. And I have been there now for twenty years. I must go back!

Yes, a perfect little city.