I need to SEE!

I have always considered myself to be a homebody. 

From the time I was little I have never been comfortable very far from home. But I've come to realize that "home" is not the defining factor.

It's not the fact that I'm away from home that makes me uncomfortable, it's the setting.

I don't like big cities, or crowds, or all the hustle and bustle that comes with them. But I'm perfectly fine in small towns, like the one I grew up in, and even on my own in the middle of the woods. As long as I'm not exposed to the crazy hyper energy that just pumps off of urbanites, it hurts my soul.

But anyway...On to what is rolling around in my brain...

So, I was reading a book the other night that is set in Ardmore, Ireland.

It is a small fishing village, right on the bay, in the south eastern region and the way that it is described just struck a chord in my brain. It sounds so beautiful and magical that I just need to see it.

See!? Isn't it lovely?

I need to go to County Waterford, Ireland and plop down on a stool in a pub with a pint of Guinness and just watch. Watch the people, the locals that just go about their lives as they have for years, and the tourists that constantly check their watches to make sure they're on schedule for whatever activities they have planned.

I need to wander the fields, the hills, the GREEN, for hours just looking, breathing, thinking. Taking it all in.
Then I want one of the locals whose family has been born and bred there for generations to wonder, "What in the world is that crazy Yank doing?" then stop and talk to me so I can talk to them about everything and nothing all at once.

Then when I've done and seen all of that, I want to go to London.

BUT...I don't want to go to all the tourist traps (but I would have to head to Kings Cross Station and, you know, get my picture between platforms 9 and 10. Oh...and walk down Baker St.)

But I don't want to see Buckingham Palace. I don't want to see the Tower of London. I don't care about Big Ben (we have big clocks over here too). 

I want to see the less touristy side. I want to find a cafe that isn't in a guidebook, that's not publicly advertised. The type that only the people who live there know about yet it still does wonderfully because the locals love it and keep going back.

I want to get a cup of tea and some biscuits and sit in a seat by the window and again, just watch.

Watch and see what differences I can spy and what similarities there are. 

And someone REALLY needs to figure out this time travel business.

OR, you know, The Doctor can swing by my place and choose me as his new companion. I wouldn't complain ;)

Because there are a lot of things I want to do that can't be done today.

I want to visit ancient Egypt and watch them construct some of the buildings and monuments that still stand to this day.

I want to attend a wonderful masquerade ball in Venice during the Renaissance.

I want to be a flapper in New York in the 1920's.

I want to be a pin-up girl in the 50's.

I want to go to Woodstock in 1969.

As I was typing this up, I realized something. What it basically comes down to is that I want to be any place or any time that's not 2014/2015 Mainland USA where people chant, in reference to killing cops, "Put wings on pigs", "Pigs in blankets smell like bacon" and they cheer when police officers are killed execution style in the streets they fight to protect. 

Where people refuse to get jobs because they get more money sitting on unemployment. 

Where young adults are drowning in student debt because the cost of a decent education is astronomical and there are no available jobs in their fields.

The state that our country is in is pathetic and I don't see it improving any time soon.

Maybe my trip to Ireland is going to happen sooner than I think.
We shall see.

"Farewell, wherever you fare, till your eyries receive you at the journey's end!"

-Hobbit