Selling Stones in the Ground

Stonehenge - a national treasure in England. An attraction most tourists flock to when visiting the UK. As a history buff myself, it was surely to be on my list when I trekked around England, and indeed, one day in brown traveller life, I ventured to Wiltshire to check it out.

There it was - the ring of standing stones, one of the most famous and recognisable sites in the world.  Was I willing to pay the £7.50 (the fee at the time; it is now double the amount) to go in? No. This may seem like sacrilege to many, but no...was not feeling it. Why?

Stonehenge - from beyond the fence.
I have small hands which fit through the fence nicely with my camera. lol.

1. I really was not willing to stand in the line for an hour just to see rocks in the ground
2. I could see the site just fine from where we were standing
3. When you paid the entrance fee, you did not get much closer to the site than if you stayed outside the fence
4. You had to fight up with the dozens and dozens of tourists and one lady complained bitterly later that she could barely get close to the stones
4. It did not fill me with the same sense of wonder I felt when I first laid eyes on the Eiffel Tower or the Leaning Tower of Pisa for example.

So no...it left me a bit deflated and disappointed, but not with any regret. I saw the site very well even from where I was standing outside the fence. I did not feel like being inside would have provided me with any real value. My photos looked pretty good, even though a wire fence separated me from the site. I even posed in front of the wire fence with a big smile on my face. And with my £7.50 still in my pocket, I was able to have a very nice meal later in the day.

Another "this is it?" moment was the tour of Kew Palace (not the gardens, which were a masterpiece, just the palace), Honolulu, and let's not forget the more recent Llandaff Ghost Walk in Cardiff, and these tours in particular have led me to believe that with the right packaging, you can sell anything to a gullible tourist.

Pigeon Point, Tobago

That being said, Trinidad and Tobago has more than its share of natural wonders and it is heartening to see that there is a lot more effort in recent times to create unique tours and experiences for visitors and locals alike. I would love to see more though. I mean, we are not lacking in entrepreneurial spirit as evidenced from the lovely people who charge you to babysit your mobile phone outside the US embassy. Nope. We can do anything we set our minds to. From the natural wonders like the Caroni Bird Sanctuary, Buccoo Reef and Nylon Pool and Asa Wright, to culinary adventures for the foodie traveller, or cultural immersion via tours and day-trips, shows and the like, we have a lot to offer. I mean people are selling spooky ghost stories and drawing pretty decent crowds. We have folklore - great folklore. We have history. We have rocks in the ground - the Growing Stone in Biche. We have amazing cuisine. Diverse and interesting cultural traditions. We have so much! We just need to be a bit more creative and outgoing in terms of how we market these wonders.

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Italy: The End of the Road

By the time we got to San Gimignano, I really think we were too tired to be excited tourists. The sun was unrelenting and we were also faced with a short hill and stairs - no escalators like in Siena, much to my annoyance. But really, the walled city of San Gimignano was breathtaking. The streets were teeming with life - both the tourist kind and the resident kind - with the city's famed towers looking down on all of us. I decided to break away from the ladies and go exploring on my own because I knew I wanted to move at my own pace this time around. I managed to pick up some awesome biscotti for my cousin and tried on some really gorgeous handmade jewellry pieces in a couple of shops. The prices were as hot as the Italian sun, so I made zero purchases but maybe next time.

I made a couple stops in souvenir shops and pitstops, but this was apparently quite the draw and I was loathe to join a line as long as my dress for ice cream but when the boast is that the gelato you're hawking is the world's best gelato and you have a trophy somewhere to prove it...well...I will bite.

I stood in line for maybe only 5 minutes as the staff were probably quite used to this tourist bonanza, and I ordered a buttery flavoured gelato which was fantastic. I took my fat, hot, tired gelato loving ass to a shady nook and people watched until the cone was no more. Then I ran to a standpipe and washed the milky mess off my hands and ran some water over my face and neck and made a slow walk back to the tour bus.

When I got back to the bus, the sea of tired faces, with either water soaked or sweat soaked hair clinging to them was enough to make me laugh. We got on the bus, grateful for the a/c and made the drive to Pisa and thankfully by the time we got there, the sun had been overthrown by some darkish clouds and it was cool and bearable because I will not lie, at one point I was like "F...Pisa!" cause it was so hot. But nothing could have prepared us for how beautiful the Piazza looked as we drove up, with this view.

My Indian seatmate and her dad had made plans to climb the Leaning Tower, while her mum passed, too tired to make it, thus enabling the Canadian girl to get the chance to walk the 300-odd steps to the top. Did I do it? Of course not and had I booked an advanced ticket to do so, I would have sold it cause at this point I was completely exhausted. lol. The other ladies and I walked a bit, did the annoying tourist thing of taking photos, marvelled at the absolute beauty of the Baptistery and the Cathedral and then sat on the steps looking up at the incredible Leaning Tower that til then I had only seen in books and on tv.

It was pretty surreal at that point, that I was sitting on the steps in front of the tower, with 2 Americans and an Indian, having a slushie and staring at an civil engineering  disaster that is celebrated the world over. And I thought, wow, it has been a blessed day.

The bus ride back to Florence was a merry one, with people exchanging email addresses and laughing. I got back to Florence, a little darker, a lot happier, very tired but complete.

Interested in this tour. Click HERE.

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