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over again. I’d rather do that than spend $10,000 on a cruise ship where everything is overpriced, overcrowded, and often underwhelming.

The little towns throughout Europe offer an ambience that will rest gently on your mind for days on end when you return home and the grind starts up again.

Those indelible side trips and alternate agendas are even more compelling when the worldclass competition has concluded. To be able to do both makes for the greatest of daily doubles.

Then there are those sojourns to the countrysides, the farms, the endless fields of robust sunflowers if you choose to stay off the motorways and let yourself mingle with the everyday people who are as hospitable and agreeable as you would find in Cordele, Tifton, Waycross, Omega, and Chitlin Switch.

There are countless post card towns and villages on the Elbe River in Germany, the vineyards of France, and the tulips and windmills of the Netherlands. You can visit General Patton’s grave in Luxembourg and you can take boat trips on the Rhine and Danube rivers.

Visiting the sporting venues that make a European vacation especial, and you can enjoy a lot more than the competition. The museums, the local tours, and getting the flavor of the country in addition to seeing the best in tennis, golf, and cycling.

The international flavor of the competition at Roland Garros, Wimbledon, and the Open is unique although all major sports competition today showcases players and performers who hail from addresses across the globe.

Roger Federer, Steffi Graff, Martina Navratilova, and Jean-Claude Killy are among the superstars who became household names the world over. Certainly, in the U.S.

You notice there is no mention of bull fighters in the foregoing. I loved the experience of running with the bulls at Pamplona, but once or twice is enough.

While it is not fixed, bull fighting is a custom where the bull has no chance. In Spain an average of 1-2 matadors is fatally wounded each year while more than 180,000 bulls, some estimates suggest 250,000, die where bull fighting is practiced.

There are plenty of options for sports throughout Europe without going to Pamplona and taking in a bullfight in the afternoon following the running of the bulls in the morning where participants seldom lose their lives. Only 16 have died over the years which is less than what you have in soccer.