1 comments about FreeToDo Travel Guides - UK and Ireland (Free to Do).

1. I have had a very negative experience with this seller. In September 2007, I paid to run an advertisment in the Free To Do book. I sent my check to Free To Do for £250 and did not hear from the seller about the status of this order. Over several months, I tried numerous attempts to contact Mr. Ronald Hogg and Lynne Hogg. My emails were not replied to. I finally got a hold of them in April of this year. I expressed my concerns and asked for a full refund.
   Mr. Hogg agreed that he would send my refund by express mail in April but I have yet to receive it and I am still trying to get my money back. After several attempts again by ME to phone and email this company, I still have not received my money back!

No comments about Snowdon: The Complete Guide.

No comments about Ireland from the Air.

No comments about Horses for Courses: An Irish Racing Year.

No comments about RECOMMENDED COUNTRY HOUSES SMALL HOTELS, INNS AND RESTAURANTS GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 2007 (Johansens Recommended Country Houses, Small Hotels and Traditional Inns: Great Britain and Ireland).

No comments about Postcards from Ireland (Postcards from...Series).

3 comments about No News at Throat Lake: In Search of Ireland.

1. Rural Ireland has never been funnier! This is a gem. Donegan captures Irish country life and the quirky Irish themselves. It's not a book that says, "READ ME," but you'll be awfully glad you did.



2. This is a fun, enjoyable book. Donegan is a self effacing man, but one who has an an ecclectic, and noteworthy series of achievements for a young man -- rock musician, golf writer, and journalist for a internationally known newspaper. Having visited Donegal and been charmed, he decides to abandon his mainstream life in Britain and embrace bucolic rural Ireland.

   Of Irish extraction, in typical Irish fashion, he mocks his own inadequacies and pitfalls. As his Irish period proceeds, he recognizes his naiviete in assuming that he would be embraced by and acclimate to Donegal society. He is such a likeable guy that you can't help smiling while reading of his daily struggle to make friends and to be seen as professionally credible. His descriptions of striving to make the team in Irish football are hysterical and endearing -- you both admire his persistence and his brutal honesty in sharing his mediocre performance. After a long period during which he is beginning to break into the local culture he recognizes that he is lonely -- not only for a companion, but also for the life he sought to escape.

   Great descriptions of the laconic, iconoclastic locals. Having myself lived in a rural area where we only began to be accepted by the locals after seven years, I could identify with Donegan. However, he is kind spirited and not resentful -- he recognizes and appreciates the cohesiveness of Donegal society. Good stuff, with a solid underlying message.




3. In an attempt to escape the artificial and crazy life of modern life for a more simple way of living, Lawrence Donegan moves from Glasgow, Scotland to Creeslough, Ireland, a small rural community. The book details the year he spent living there, working for the small community newspaper and playing for the local Gaelic football team. Though it sounds like this might be an amusing book about a fish out of water, about a big-city guy adapting to small-town life, it's not really as amusing as it sounds. The author adjusts to his new life and learns the ways of small-town life. Period. And it's not really that entertaining or amusing. There's some funny anecdotes here and there, but not as many as you'd think, and it ultimately took me quite awhile to get through this book.

2 comments about The Ulysses Guide: Tours Through Joyce's Dublin.

1. A unique, creative volume, both a guidebook to contemporary Dublin (circa 1989) and the Dublin of Joyce's "Ulysses", and a guide to interpreting the text of "Ulysses." The book contain eight tours of Dublin corresponding (though not strictly chronologically) to the inner and outer voyages of Leopold Bloom on "Bloomsday," (June 16, 1904) the day chronicled in "Ulysses."

   A great deal of the text is included, along with explanations of Joyce's historical, religious, place-name allusions, as well as information on how to follow Bloom on his walking and riding tour of Dublin. (Bloom walked, took trams, trains, and hose-drawn conveyances, today's visitor is told how to use DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) to negotiate Bloom's wanderings that day. Some of the city remains as it did in 1904; others have places have changed, partially as a result of being mentioned in the fictional "Ulysses." For example, Sandycove Tower, which was a real tower in 1904, and is the initial setting of "Ulysses." It is now the site of the "James Joyce Museum." The bar of the old "Jury Hotel" (one of 60 actual establishments mentioned in "Ulysses") has been transported to Zurich and renamed the "James Joyce Pub!" And some things apparently do not change: The brothel setting of "Circes" is still "one of Dublin's danger areas where street crime is common...and [the area] should be treated with caution." Because Joyce set "Ulysses" in the Dublin he knew, and based many of his characters on people he knew, the walking tours transcend (as does the book) the objective "what's there" and the subjective "how did Joyce write about it."

   This is a truly remarkable book, fascinating for those familiar with "Ulysses," and/or those who are taking either armchair or actual tours of Dublin. Includes many cites from the book (with excellent annotations and references to places in Dublin), anecdotes about Joyce, maps of the walking tours, three appendices (including "The Movements of Leopold Bloom and Stephan Dedalus on 16 June, 1904), and a useful index. Very highly recommended.




2. A unique, creative volume, both a guidebook to contemporary Dublin (circa 1989) and the Dublin of Joyce's "Ulysses", and a guide to interpreting the text of "Ulysses." The book contain eight tours of Dublin corresponding (though not strictly chronologically) to the inner and outer voyages of Leopold Bloom on "Bloomsday," (June 16, 1904) the day chronicled in "Ulysses."

   A great deal of the text is included, along with explanations of Joyce's historical, religious, place-name allusions, as well as information on how to follow Bloom on his walking and riding tour of Dublin. (Bloom walked, took trams, trains, and hose-drawn conveyances, today's visitor is told how to use DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) to negotiate Bloom's wanderings that day. Some of the city remains as it did in 1904; others have places have changed, partially as a result of being mentioned in the fictional "Ulysses." For example, Sandycove Tower, which was a real tower in 1904, and is the initial setting of "Ulysses." It is now the site of the "James Joyce Museum." The bar of the old "Jury Hotel" (one of 60 actual establishments mentioned in "Ulysses") has been transported to Zurich and renamed the "James Joyce Pub."

   Because Joyce set "Ulysses" in the Dublin he knew, and based many of his characters on people he knew, the walking tours transcend (as does the book) the objective "what's there" and the subjective "how did Joyce write about it." It is truly a remarkable book, fascinating for those familiar with "Ulysses," and/or those who are taking either armchair or actual tours of Dublin. Includes many cites from the book (with excellent annotations and references to places in Dublin), anecdotes about Joyce, maps of the walking tours, three appendices (including "The Movements of Leopold Bloom and Stephan Dedalus on 16 June, 1904), and a useful index. Very highly recommended.

No comments about The North: From Down to Donegal.

1 comments about Collins London Street Atlas (Collins British Isles and Ireland Maps).

1. This street atlas is amazing. I have the AZ atlas and the Philip's OS atlas, but this one is much better than both of those. I was extremely fortunate to happen on this at the Oxford Services on the M40, and helped me negotiate London with ease, which is a lot to say for a foreign traveler. Firstly, it has a lot better coverage, literally everything inside M25 and bonus things i.e. Welwyn Garden City, Guildford, Windsor, etc. The entire domain of the GLA (except a square mile of easternmost Havering) is covered. No other atlas does that. Secondly, the clarity is amazing. Yes, the Philip's map is has a slightly more intimate scale, but these maps are sharper than those. These are the source maps for the London: A Photographic Atlas. Lastly, it shows a lot of pertinent information that other maps, especially the A-Z Map, lack, e.g., borough boundaries, the road color scheme, etc. Buy this, you won't regret it.