If your vacation falls around the 12th of July, you'd be wise to cross Northern Ireland off your list of possibilities.
Sure, you've heard all sorts of good things about the peace accord and the Shinners and the loyalists sitting down together in government.
You need to further educate yourself by reading A Terrible Beauty, however, to understand what's underneath the facade of happy, smiling faces. And then you'd understand why the north of Ireland is no place to travel.
It used to be the Irish who rose up against discrimination and injustice. Now it's the loyalists who see the past drifting out of their grasp. After a period of relative calm, in which the tourism trade dared to suggest Twelfth of July activities as tourist fodder, the loyalists have been rioting in Newtonabbey and Carrickfergus.
The fighting is said to have begun over the flying of flags that are meant to intimidate the Catholics. Forced to remove the flags, the loyalists starting throwing rocks and setting fires and all the usual mayhem.
Not what you'd want to be caught up in when all you wanted to do was see the Norman castle.
It's like the last, dying breath of an ancient beast that is not going peacefully.
Only about three hundred Orange Order members showed up for the Drumcree parade, and the Catholics in Portadown didn't even bother to stage a counter-protest. Who cares about a gaggle of old men making fools of themselves? There's better shows for watching.
And none may be better than the big loyalist parade in Belfast on the Twelfth. The tension has been building as the Catholics chaff under renewed loyalist bullying, and security services are preparing for the worst.
Not quite the family-friendly fare that has been promoted to attract tourists. No place to be, unless you're an anthropologist chronicling the last days of socially-approved prejudice.
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