Our Group
Hover over each face to put a name with the faceLike the other Rick Steves trips I've been on, this one had a pretty good mix of travelers. For some, this was their first ETBD tour although they might have been on other tours. Others, like Robin and I had caught the Rick Steves bug and hadn't been able to shake it. One couple was on their 12th Rick Steves tour. We all joked with the discount given for previous tours, pretty soon Rick Steves would be paying them to travel. They weren't done for the year however. After this trip they were going on a African safari. That's my kind of traveling!! One member of our group has even been on an Antarctic tour.....that's a true adventure! I don't think that will show up on Uncle Rick's list of tours for a while.
We had a nice balance of couples, singles and different ages. We went from college age to.....well.....somewhat past college age. We also had three generations of one family. That is really great! What a wonderful family memory.
Geographically we had a good chunk of the U.S. covered. And while the Left Coast was well represented, all in all we had travelers from nine states including Virginia and Maryland.
And there are wood ships,
The ships that sail the sea.
But the best ships are friendships
and may they always be
Pat O'Connor (on the right of course!)
Our intrepid leader, Pat O'Connor got the travel bug in 1981 when he spent five months backpacking in Europe using (of course) Rick's first edition of his "Europe through the Back Door" Guidebook. Hmmm....I wonder if it's an autographed first edition. Pat has been with ETBD since 1997 and began leading tours in 1999. He is part Irish (no kidding!) and part German. So rather than slight any member of his family, he leads Ireland tours in the spring and Germany, Austria & Switzerland tours in the fall. After his Ireland tours finish he spends some time bumping around Ireland on his own, doing research for the Ireland tour book, which he co-authors. The rest of the year he can be found in Edmonds, Washington working on the Ireland guide book and daydreaming about faraway lands.
Sir James
Sir James, otherwise known as James Finn, is a good Irish lad from County Kerry. When he's not showing off his coach driving skills on the wrong side of tiny Irish roads James lives in Annascaul, just up the road from Dingle. James was a fun member of our group. If we needed a local's take on something we could bounce it off him. And he was always ready with an Irish joke.
