Great vacations, an historical perspective.

To appease the demons of Mid Life Crisis I have decided to tackle a new career.  At first I was going to buy a sports car, but couldn't make up my mind between the Toyota Prius, and the Ford Fiesta.  Hey, MPG has to count for something.  Motorcycles, and parachuting, and white water rapid rafting, and gator wrestling, and bull riding, and all of those things that are potentially very painful are out of the question.  So, a new career is a good choice.  

Here is the beautiful bit, I can start this new career, which pays absolutely nothing right now, while keeping my current position which pays me pretty well.  The best of both worlds.

I have decided to become a historian, :"a student or writer of history."  It is a great field to get into, because there is so much history, and it seems to go on forever, literally, there are books, and more books, whole shelves filled with books, just dedicated to the past.  Plus, it offers a unique opportunity to attempt to explain life, and that is why I started this blog in the first place, so long ago.  

One week from today I will be on vacation, and recently I found out the writer of one of the best blogs around Mike Raven from The Blog of Thog will be on vacation even sooner so it only makes sense (to me, anyway) to take the angle of Vacation Historian, everybody needs a fresh angle, right?

Genghis Khan visits China.

It was around the year 1207, and the Steppes were beginning to close in on the Great Khan and his people. It was decided that they would pack up, take a little trip, things were going well at home, and visiting China to the south might be nice.  

At the time China was one of the worlds most advanced empires, and had wonderful shops filled with fantastic clothes, entertainment, food, and culture, What well armed, nomadic Mongol army wouldn't love to vacation there.

After trekking across vast plains that seemed to merge into one great, endless, infinite expanse of unchanging, monotonous, landscape, with thousands of kids all saying "are we there yet?" "can we stop so I can go to the bathroom?" "why is he touching me? stop touching me."  The mighty Khan had just about had enough.

Stopping for a bite to eat, "I will take a Kung Pao chicken, two egg rolls, and a Coke, please."

"Is Pepsi OK?"

That was more than the Khan could bear.  "Do you think the Flail of God has endured these many, endless days of childish bickering, exorbitant prices, hours and hours in the saddle to settle for Pepsi?"  And the problems began. 

Tomorrow we will discuss Attila's Quest for The Perfect Italian Bistro.