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Last login: 30 hours agoThamus: Thamus is a 90 year old guy from Ireland.; Likes 5,371 pages, 33 videos, 39 photos • 368 fans • Received 157 reviews; Member since Dec 30, 2005

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Pictures Of Ireland - Travel Photos Covering 800 Miles: Jul 16, 5:58am 33 reviews travel
http://www.popularwealth.com/index.php/pictures-of-ireland

10 classic Greek Island tales | Greece - Times Online: Jul 11, 5:14am 0 review travel, greece, islands
http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/destinations/greece...

Tipperary - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: May 2, 9:55am 1 review ireland, travel, lemurs, thanes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipperary; Where sheep may safely grave My travels take me back to the low-rolling hills of Thomond - or, more accurately South Tipperary. Irish exiles never die - they simply go home and fade away into the Celtic mist. Not that I have any intention of dying or fading, but it's worth doing a preliminary inspection of the lie of the land when you've lived away so long. The picture is a corner of the Tipperary graveyard where my maternal grandmother has lain for most of the time I have been going through my own brief span of wandering the earth. This little corner already looks Victorian, perhaps medieval, or even archaeological, compared to the shiny faux-marble, gold-engraved and spotlessly regimented graves of the newly dead in the "modern" churchyards nearby. It is a startling reminder that not only are our lives brief, but our deaths may be too. These tombstones have grown from new to old and falling, in the same time that I too have moved from new to failing. Not only is grandma gone, but her 11 children are also gone, and even their children are now old fools such as I, wondering how our lives have been slipping past unnoticed. But enough of morbid philosophy. This is Ireland after all, and while we have a relaxed relationship with death (listen to the Dubliners singing Finnegan's Wake), we have an even better one with life. There are pubs not far from this rural graveyard (one of them a regular haunt of Martin Sheen, the faux US president). There is the distant sound of music, and old codgers wait with tall tales about the living and the dead. As the winds whisper through the darkening woods, who knows what sly and evil lemurs lurk in the land, waiting to be lambasted (e.g., viz. EMMUTTMAX, op. cit., ibid.). In their dark castles warrior thanes may sleep still, waiting to be woken by the call to battle. If all that fails, there's still the siren call of the Jameson and the Bushmills... Yes, time to leave the sheep to safely grave. [FOOTNOTE: A stumbler asked me the origin of the title quote here. It refers to a very lovely section from the secular Hunting Cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach: Aria 5, "Schafe können sicher weiden" - "Sheep may safely graze." For the reference to lemurs, thanes and Thomond, see Chronicles of the Celtic-Lemur Galactic War]

Visit Z&rich - Attractions in Z&rich: Apr 29, 6:34am 1 review travel, switzerland, zurich
http://www.visitzurich.org/attractions.html; See Zürich and die, like Jimmy did I'm having a brief stopover in Zürich, the Swiss city usually named in surveys as having the best quality of life in the world (the official rebuttal to tiresome Americans forever boasting about being "the world's best.") Of course, you could argue that Zürich should have been able to get its quality of life right by now, after nearly 2,000 years. But it doesn't always work - Beijing is still working on it. Strange name Zürich - no one knows its origin or meaning. It was probably Celtic but was first mentioned in writing in the second century as Statio Turicensis (Turicum tax station, for the Romans). By the 6th century it was already established as Ziurichi, it's origins lost in the mists of the eerily serene and calm Lake Zürich [right]. We Celts have a later important link with Zürich anyway. Ireland's great genius, the novelist James Joyce, died in Zürich in 1941 and is buried at Fluntern cemetery. We eccentric intra-extraverts also have a link - Carl Jung lived and died in Zürich, and the city isn't a-Freud to honor his memory. Or, as Joyce himself once observed about his daughter Lucia, "she's a girl who's yung and easily freudened."

New York City: The Waldorf Astoria - Traveller Reviews - Its the Waldorf=Astoria…: Mar 22, 3:28pm 1 review travel, new-york, waldorf-astoria
http://www.tripadvisor.ie/ShowUserReviews-g60763-d93618-r14119517-The_Waldorf...; 'It's the Waldorf=Astoria, and it's splendid'

Economist.com - Cities Guide: Feb 3, 3:00am 0 review travel, israel, cities, tel-aviv
http://www.economist.com/cities/citiesmain.cfm?city_id=TLV

http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.php?id=34536&archive=1: Oct 4, 2007 1:42pm 1 review travel, sea, cyprus
http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.php?id=34536&archive=1; Aaarrr! Is that a drunken parrot? So I've been off on my wanderings again - this time for a week in Lemesos, Cyprus (it used to be Limassol) where, for some sins I'm unaware of, I was dispatched to take part in an international maritime conference - "Cyprus Maritime 2007." I can now hold a dinner table spellbound (frozen in horror) with informed opinions on container-borne minor bulk, and the even more riveting matter of regulatory pressure on marine trade during a credit crisis. But enough of the interesting stuff. As you can see in the view (right) from my hotel balcony, life by the sea isn't all parrot jokes and Hello, Sailor. (Actually it was a self-catering apartment in which I catered for myself with copious drafts of health-giving Five Kings Cyprus brandy to wash away the taste of bilge-water baloney). Cypriots are among my favorite people in the world - sharp, hospitable and hilariously funny. I once lived in Lemesos aeons ago when it was a sleepy little carob kibbling town (look it up) and the sea splashed over our shoes in the seafront cafes on the side of the coast road. Now the sea has been pushed a kilometer out to.. well, sea, by reclamation. I was hard-pressed to find old haunts to photograph among the towers of prosperity brought by tourism, hi-tech, offshore banking and Greek ship owners sailing under the Cyprus flag. Lemesos is the biggest shipping port by far in Mediterranean transit trade. The conference was in an ancient carob factory. Victorian English foundry machinery, with its belts and flywheels, was still in place, making for a great atmosphere into which was fitted a modern convention center. Next door is Lemesos Castle, where Richard the Lionheart married his lover Princess Berengaria of Navarre in 1191. Richard was on his way to the Crusades in Jerusalem when a ship carrying Berengaria and his sister loanna, Queen of Sicily, got separated from Richard's fleet by a storm. The ladies put safely into Lemesos. The Byzantine governor of Cyprus, Isaac Comnenus, was a nastry piece of work and first tried to hold the ladies to ransom, and then refused them fresh water. When Richard arrived, he was somewhat pissed off, and proceeded to conquer Cyprus and put Comemnus in chains, ending the Byzantine empire's rule there. He married Berengaria in Lemesos Castle and for a wedding present, he gave her Cyprus. A year later, the couple sold the island to the Knights Templar. So, back to my Five Kings brandy. Ah yes - why the name? In 1363 no less than five kings met with the Lord Mayor of London, Henry Piqart, in the building that today houses the Vintners' Society there. The five royals met to discuss various matters of state, such as trade, Crusades - and wine. The wines served at the banquet were from Cyprus and were highly praised by one and all. There is a painting by Fortunino Matania titled "The Five Kings Symposium", used in advertising for my brandy. It represents the meeting hosted by Lord Mayor Henry Piqart. In the painting are King Waldemar of Denmark, King John of France, King Edward III of England, King David of Scotland, and King Peter I of Cyprus, who went on to capture Alexandria in 1365. He was in London in 1363 to hold talks with John II of France about a proposed new Crusade. Aarrr! Enough salty sea-farin' fables for one night, me hearties. [PICTURE: Ships wait in line to enter harbor, Akrotiri Bay, Lemesos, Cyprus. © Thamus 070926]

Unusual Hotels of the World : Online Guide of the Worlds most Unusual & Unique H…: Aug 5, 2007 1:17pm 237 reviews travel
http://www.unusualhotelsoftheworld.com/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/berkshire/6564923.stm: Jul 24, 2007 1:20pm 1 review uk, travel, reading
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/berkshire/6564923.stm; Reading rhymes with shredding I may well have discovered the most boring ugly place in the civilised world - Reading, Berkshire, England. Signs on the road into the "town" say "Reading Centre" so I assumed we were heading for a library. No such fucking luck - it was only the downpour-soaked centre of Reading, and that rhymes with shredding, which is what this journey from hell was doing to my nerves. From door to door and back to door, this was Route 666 and Satan was the tour guide. First, the planned trip was cancelled by the clients I was supposed to meet (this was last Thursday evening). Then they reinstated it one hour before takeoff, requiring a screeching ride to the airport and much yelling at Israeli security goons and airline staff in the scrabble to reach the closed departure gate. Six hours later we land in the worst British weather disaster in 100 years, with torrential downpours, flooding, landslides, transport chaos and so delightfully on and on. Then my client morons switch the venue of our meeting from London Mayfair to fucking Reading, 70 km west of London in the rapidly filling Thames flood plain. That means cross Heathrow from Terminal 4 to Terminal 2 and find a coach to Reading - all trains are being canceled. After a three-hour crawl through the wet suburban gloom, I exit the bus with luggage, get promptly drenched to the skin while tramping around looking for the obscure and bleak Novotel. The bar is closed, the staff are bored, the place is deserted. Time for bed. So things will look better in the morning? Not quite - the TV news announces: "The weather today is going to be especially atrocious." Breakfast isn't bad. The clients postpone our meeting from 10 to 11, then to noon, then to 2 PM. The rain pours, I read The Master and Margarita, feeling certain Mikhail Bulgarov's devil has stepped out of his pages to reorganise my life. The clients now call to suggest I move a massive pile of documents I have brought to another hotel meeting room for 3 PM. I avoid the temptation to call them fucking mindless assholes and tramp 2 km across town in the rain (you're right, no taxis). At 4 PM they call and say they're stuck on the M4 freeway and will be there for at least two hours and then they are going home. They're sorry I've flown specially from Israel, but hey, that's global warming for you. I chuckle with manic glee and hope the fuckers spend the night up to their axles and testicles in muddy water, preferably freezing. I hump the huge box of now useless documents back across town, pausing only to note the ugliness of the dump and the unfriendliness of the few natives lurking beneath sinister umbrellas. I repack the documents, discover the clients have failed to arrange payment for the hotel as they had promised, and put the ludicrous bill (including a fat penalty for not checking out at noon) on my own credit card. It's now 5:30 PM, my flight out is at 10:30 PM, 70 km to the east, across the Thames flood plain, so I decide I'd better start moving. The trains are cancelled. Incoming airport coaches are stuck somewhere between Hell and Reading. There seems to be a clamor by hundreds of people trying to get to the airport. For once I'm sympathetic - I wouldn't be surprised if the entire population wanted to flee this fucking town. Eventually, we're packed on a lone bus and crawl off to Heathrow. The airport is a shambles. Around 130 flights are being cancelled, the crowds and queues stretch as far as the eyes can see - in all directions. The check-in machine rejects my ticket. I hunt down a surly, bad-tempered British Airways minion who is informed by his computer that I do not exist. "Your reservation has not been uploaded." That's it. He leers - "but I've priority wait-listed you." [CONTINUED BELOW]

kathimerini.gr | home page: May 19, 2007 1:52pm 2 reviews travel, greece, athens
http://www.kathimerini.gr/; In the shadow of Socrates I popped off to Athens for a few days to practice my Greek and do my bit to support the Retsina industry. Sometimes I don't know what to make of Athens. Is it the tired, noisy and soulless concrete jungle it appears to be when you tramp around the chaotic streets in the blistering heat? But then I recoil in shame from such a thought - Greeks without a soul? What a heresy; might as well say Greeks without a history. And then dusk falls and the Parthenon on the Acropolis towers above the darkness in its floodlit splendour, and the cafes and bars and art shops of Plaka leap into life and music. The exasperating grey length of Stadiou Street by day is gone and the charismatic lights of Plaka beckon from beyond a nondescript corner of Filhellion Street, like Narnia hiding behind the wardrobe. History and mythology join you for a stroll along the sides of the ancient Agora where your can almost feel the Athenian bustle of 2,500 years ago still living. As indeed it is, in the excellent and crowded little restaurants that line the streets beyond the protected sacred sanctuary. Evening has broken out at last, and business is over. I toss a coin into to the cup of old bouzouki player sitting on the street, grab an ouzo from the white marble bar at Brettos, and start the serious work of studying the Taverna's menu. My old friend Costas looks up at the Acropolis and says, "Socrates is looking down on us." He pauses and suddenly says, "We should all die young, in our glory. We are not important, life flows on eternally before us and after us." Ah, those Greeks. Now this is the Athens of Athina and Dionysus indeed. How could you doubt it. [PICTURE: Shadowy figures under under the impressive and colourful shelves in my favourite Athens pub, Brettos in Plaka. © Thamus 070518]