Vacation

What a good decision it was to give format and structure to a summer vacation by taking an academic course! Not simply in Dublin, but in Galway and Cork, Oxford and Cambridge, London and Edinburgh, it is easy for Americans of all ages to find these broad summer courses in the culture of English-speaking countries (they are all described on the Internet), taught by persons with doctorates in the subject and attended by dynamic travelers from around the world.
My wife and I could have spent these two weeks wandering about tourist-packaged Ireland, visiting such foolishness as the Blarney Stone; instead, we placed ourselves in the hands of a great university and its extraordinary faculty. We had a memorable travel experience for not a penny more than an ordinary trip would have cost ($1,600 per person for two weeks) and made all the arrangements by simply going to the Internet and accessing “University College Dublin/summer school.” If you’d like to pursue a similar course, ...