I often think about places I would like to visit, but in another time..... <BR> <BR>I would like to stay in a castle in Britain in the mideaval time, travel to China with Marco Polo, travel to Rome when Ceasar ruled the Roman empire and visit the pharaoes in Egypt! <BR> <BR>Where and when would you like to go? <BR>Maybe I will see you there! <BR> <BR> <BR>Kaja <BR>

Hi Kaja <BR>I sometimes think I was born in the wrong century because life in the past sometimes sounds more civil <BR>and civilized. Then I realize I would have had to be born very rich in order to loll about in my gowns and drink tea, and would have had to do without <BR>indoor plumbing, education, <BR>air conditioning, dentists, makeup,dry cleaning, aspirin, and antibiotics. <BR>Still, I would love to be able to spend just a few days in early 17th-century Florence (perhaps drop in on Michelangelo's study, I would certainly have known all the right people) and in <BR>Jane Austen's England. <BR>Nice question.

Interesting question. If I could view the bygone eras from the sanctity of my own living room through our big front window, I think it would be fun to see <BR>really went on at the building of the great pyramids in Egypt. <BR>Or to go back 200 years to the sites of what is now the National Parks of the American West. I would love to have seen Glacier before warming set in and the Sperry, Grinnell, Blackfoot, and other glaciers shrunk to ice cubes. <BR>Or to be in Canada and see the various parks under similar circumstances. <BR>But I would not want to leave my comforts of today. Hard to realize, but I live in better conditions with medicine, heat, air conditioning, sanitation, and dentistry than any of the kings of the past. For example, in the 1930's my great uncle, who was a medical doctor, was powerless to prevent my Uncle George from dying of peritonitis caused by acute appendicitis. There were no effective antibiotics. Today it would not be a problem. So it would be nice to view, but I would not want to live under even royal conditions. (And those castles were exceedingly cold. I remember touring one along the Rhine in March after a very cold winter and my feet felt like they were freezing because the stone floors were so very cold.)

Paris in the 20's and 30's <BR> <BR>London during the Edward/Wally Simpson brouhaha <BR> <BR>Medieval Japan (for five minutes, just so I could see samurai in action) <BR> <BR>Boston, around 1775, just to be in the midst of the rabble rousing <BR> <BR>Same time, Versailles, so I could tell Marie "if you value your neck, don't use that cake metaphor", and wear those cool gowns and fancy-dancy hairdos. <BR> <BR>Somewhere in the Middle East (not sure exact place or time) when they invented zero <BR> <BR>I wished I had been Hitler's mother, because he never ever would have turned out like he did if I'd raised him. <BR> <BR> <BR> <BR>

Love this thread! Agree with many of the previous posters, but think how hard it would have been to get much further than your own city for most of those times! I love that we can move around, and I'm happy that I have lived through the birth of Israel and the rebirth of South Africa within my lifetime. And that I can visit most of the world within my lifetime if I really hurry.

Even with all the drawbacks, you know the little things like, no health care, wacky medical ideas, poor sanitation, rats, fleas, nasty personal hygiene, diseases, lack of female education , appalling and unhealthy fashions for women! I would love to spend a week in Restoration England, the France of Louis 14th, or <BR>my personal favorite, Edward the 4th's England!! What can I say? I am a sucker for pliants, bizarre powdered wigs and eating with ones hands!

I think Elvira should have said "a healthy Hitler's mother." Many historians think the early death of the little dictator's mother in 1907 left a lot of bitterness in his heart and actually contributed to his hate of Jews (her doctor was Jewish). <BR> <BR>I would love to visit the Mayan cities during the 800s-900s AD and see just what they were like, since they are such a mystery. <BR> <BR>Of course prehistoric times to see dinosaurs. <BR> <BR>Paris in the 1920s/30s for me too, plus July 14, 1789 <BR> <BR>Ancient Rome, definitely <BR> <BR>A wagon train headed west to California (and of course, I would strike it rich in gold) <BR> <BR>How many lives do you think I would need to come back from all those places alive and well?

Paris in the 1780's in a salon hanging with Franklin and Voltaire. Israel around the time of Hillel/Jesus/Gamaliel or maybe during the Bar Kochba revolt 130-135 with Akiva. <BR>Philadelphia in 1776 having tea with Jefferson and Madison. <BR> <BR>

This is a very intriguing question! I love to pretend... <BR> <BR> I would like to have been a sultana in a previous life in some desert country...(ha ha) <BR> <BR>- Cleopatra's Egypt <BR> <BR>- the Roman Empire (to see the sublime beauty of the land..and witness characters from history coming to life) <BR> <BR>- To witness the "high courts" of the English and the French...powdered wigs and all <BR> <BR>- to travel on a Spanish Galleon...and to witness pirates on the high seas. <BR> <BR>- Edwardian England (I would love to meet anyone in the bloomsbury group) <BR> <BR>- 1940's Paris--if I could hide in the sewers from the war... (although 20's Paris and lost generation is intriguing) <BR> <BR>- Spain or Chile at turn of the century <BR> <BR>There is so much more, but this will have to do for now. <BR> <BR> <BR> <BR> <BR>

Speaking of travelling back in time, has anyone else been watching the PBS series on the "1900 House"? It's my new favorite show -- a family is living in London in a home painstakingly restored to 1900 standards, complete with the clothes, food, stove, plumbing, etc. that a family in 1900 would have had. Takes some of the romance out of the idea of living in the past, but it sure is fascinating! The poor mother is spending 3 days a week on laundry alone, and is keeping her kids out of school one day a week just to help do the wash. They haven't mastered cooking food properly without any temperature controls, so the youngest boy won't eat any of the food. The father is slicing his face to bits every morning on the old-fashioned razor. The whole family reeks because they can't get any hot water. No TV, no electric lights, nothing used that would not have been available in 1900. And then there's the corset issue -- ugh. It's fab to be able to have the vicarious experience by watching them rather than actually having to go through it.

I would love to go back to Elizabethan England and spend my days at the Globe Theatre. <BR> <BR>I would also wish I could visit England in the late 14th century. I am reading The Age of Plantagenet and Valois and it sounds like a fascinating time. <BR> <BR>I too would like to see the Roman Empire in all its glory. Maybe witness the beginning of the end, hang out with Constantine for awhile! <BR> <BR>And what I'd give to meet Jane Austen.

I'll play but only if I can have it two ways. I want to live with the Etruscans and then carry their alphabet and language forward so we would know more about them. And I want to be with Will, Shakespeare that is, to prove he was the only one, living, true genius, albeit an anomaly because he was so brilliant. And I would like to have been Sylvia Beach's assistant so I could have seen the birth of James Joyce's Ulysses. And tangentially hung out with Gertrude Stein, Picasso, et al.

Above suggestions are great. My personal wish would be to visit east coast of USA in early 1776 to witness Thomas Paine write the Declaration of Independance before giving it to Jefferson and Adams. Or to witness Wilbor Wright invent the Airplane; to witness Philip Rice or Elisha Grey invent the telephone. <BR>

Console yourself Art. We've observed Al Gore invent the internet....

I'd love to hear Mozart perform or see him conduct Don Giovanni or listen to Beethoven or hear Bach playing a fugue. <BR>I'd love to go to a castle like the one in Segovia when Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand were crowned. <BR>I'd love to see how the building of Stonehenge or be there for the building of a great cathedral like Salisbury.

Lisa, I am enjoying the PBS series you mentioned, and I am making my kids watch, too. Yikes! No incandescent lights, dangerous equipment, coal burning stove, no thermostat on the stove, no pain medication during childbirth, no Fodor's travel lounge. The list of missing items that we take for granted is endless. The horror! <BR> <BR>Anyway, I would want to go back to Rome and have season tickets at the Colisseum. I promise I would always vote thumbs-up for mercy, if they really did that.

This is a common theme in science fiction, usually complicated by the fact that after a time there are thousands of people on the Forum steps watching Caesar get it, or on Calvary watching the crucifixion. Still, it’s fun to speculate. Sorry for any somber choices, but there you have it. <BR> <BR>Venice on the day Marco Polo returns; <BR> <BR>Santa Sophia cathedral (now Hagia Sophia mosque) for the last Kyrie Eleison before Constantinople falls to the Ottomans; <BR> <BR>Omaha Beach on D-Day; <BR> <BR>Jerusalem on Israeli Independence Day; <BR> <BR>On the Mall in Washington DC for Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech;. <BR> <BR>In Mission Control in Houston when Neil Armstrong steps off the LEM. <BR>

Good comment on the internet, lola. <BR> <BR>I have to confess that in none of the following scenarios do I appear (in my mind) in less than merchant status: <BR> <BR>Prague, when Mozart conducted his Don Giovanni there for the first time. <BR> <BR>St. Petersburg, during Catherine the Great's Time. <BR> <BR>Vienna, at a ball when Strauss Jr. conducted. <BR> <BR>Washington DC, to meet President Lincoln <BR> <BR>Charlottesville, Virginia, anytime President Washington was passing by; would also try to catch Jefferson and watch him interact, at home! <BR> <BR>Berlin, in the late 1920s, to catch the intellectual and social ferment, but not the full-fledged Nazi era. <BR> <BR>Venice, during Palladio's day. <BR> <BR>Gee, I could go on and on. Somebody else's turn now.

I second kk on St. Petersburg, during Catherine the Great's Time. Only I want to be a court lady [or one of the stable boys]

Oh, s.fowler, you naughty girl! But you do have a good point.