Holidays

Dr. Johnson said of The Devil's Causway: "Worth seeing but not worth going to see."
I know what he means. Too many times have I travelled a long distance at great discomfort to see something touristically famous only either to think something like that or, worse, to think "Not really worth seeing."
Now that I'm ageing I find visiting famous places, seeing famous pictures in art galleries and so on, rather a chore (sometimes a bore). And, these days with the hordes of tourists abroad, I often find that I am in a queue or crowd that is so slow moving that I want to sit down and rest a while, and often, in such a crowd, not able to see that which I had come to see. In Amsterdam I found the Van Goch art gallery so full with people who lingered a long time on each painting, listening to the info over a commentary on cassette borrowed at the front desk, that I could not move along at the pace I wished to go and, therefore, missed a lot of the exhibition by going round groups.
My grandfather used to say "O I don't want to travel anymore, I can read about the places I would like to visit and look at pictures of them." That was fifty or so years ago. I can only imagine what his reaction would be now with all the technical facilities we have at our dispoal: TV travelogues; David Attenborough's nature documentaries; the internet; films......
I used to dream of a holiday I would have liked to take: a Rolls Royce to the South of France, staying at top class hotels of course throughout; a stop at Menton for their small scale music festival (a swim in the clear sea - it was clear once when I was there, don't know if it is now); drive up to Lucerne for the music festival there (I once went up to the box office there and asked for a ticket for that evening's concert - the girl at the box office dropped her jaw and shook her head slowly as if I were a lunatic or a leper); from Lucerne to London, via Paris (to dine of course) for The Proms; from there to Edinburgh for the Festival and then back home.
Dreams, dreams, dreams.