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One time my husband and I took a tour of Oxford U with a “local” tour guide named Caroline. As soon as she saw us she said: “Oh, Americans. I hate taking you around; you’re all so childish.” I can’t say the tour got much better after that although my husband did ask her what apartments Laurel & Hardy had in A Chump at Oxford. I’ll never forget this humorless dame sneering “I have no IDEA where Laurel and Hardy stayed.”

When we were in Belfast, we had a local guide take us around on a bus. She pointed out various buildings of interest, plus the murals painted on several of the buildings and brick walls. Several were memorials to those IRA members who had died. There was one of George Bush with the comment: "America's Worst Failure." Another mural contained a painting of an Israeli soldier pointing his weapon at a Palestinian. Flanking this mural were paintings of two hands with the Victory sign. There was arabic writing on these, and on middle of the mural. I have no idea what they said. At the top of the mural in English was written: "Palestine: The largest concentration camp in the world!! 33 million innocent people tortured, denied their freedom!!"

Of course I was totally offended. This was in 2006.

While on the tour, the guide mentioned that during WWII, Belfast had been bombed by the Germans, and many people were killed. It got me thinking, so when the tour was over, I said to the tour guide, "You seem to have an awful lot of memorials for fallen IRA members, is there a memorial to the people who were killed in the bombings during WWII? She had to stop and think, then replied: "There's a plot with flowers near the site." "No actual stone memorial to remember those people?" I asked. "No" she said. All I could do was shake my head. Belfast is a dismal place, and I wish we hadn't wasted our time going there. I was totally turned off by all the stupid memorials they had to terrorists.