(FORTUNE Magazine) – I was lost on Mount Brandon in Ireland after tailing three energetic Amazons to the peak. Picking my way along the spine of the summit, I eventually met up with a banker in hiking boots, which right there tells you something about the reach of the global financial marketplace. As he was showing me the escape route, I asked him what stocks he liked. "CRH," he said, pronouncing the "H" like "haitch." "Does all the major roadwork in the country." Already I was fascinated. I'd driven through enough Irish potholes to imagine CRH would be busy for the next 100 years.

On earlier trips abroad, I've followed the wife through naves, apses, and pottery shops, with my mind on one subject: where to find a kiosk that sold the International Herald Tribune with yesterday's closing prices. The laptop has put an end to this yearning. Now I can get the latest prices from any hotel room by plugging into the Internet. The time I would have spent looking for the paper I can use to explore local buying opportunities and visit local stock exchanges. The global financial marketplace has put the joy into world travel.

As the wife and I counted sheep, drank Guinness, and photographed those piles of rocks the Irish call "ancient beehive huts," my thoughts were never far from CRH, which stands for Cement Roadstone Holdings. With all the roadwork ahead of it, I imagined this obscure company (I'd never heard of it!) could turn a modest investment into an Irish castle by the end of the century.

Before CRH, our plan was to visit the ancient Book of Kells manuscript in Dublin, a rather dreary prospect since the Book of Kells is not publicly traded and there's no way to make a profit on it. But now I had an exciting alternative--visiting Smith Barney. I dialed directory assistance from a public phone in a Dublin mini-mall, but my stateside broker wasn't listed. "I guess Smith Barney hasn't gotten here yet," I said to my wife. "I'll have to find somebody else to ask about CRH."

Before I could decide whom to call next, a clerk at a nearby coat-of-arms stall (Family Crests While You Wait) introduced himself as a fellow investor and CRH shareholder--this was two for two on chance encounters with CRH bulls. He gave me the name and number of a friend of his who works as an analyst for an Irish brokerage house.

Whenever you are out of town and feeling lonely, call an analyst. It's cheaper than a 900 line and a lot more titillating if you have an ounce of passion for a capital gain. In what other profession do you find people who will gladly spend 20 minutes on the phone with a stranger seeking free advice, at the suggestion of an acquaintance he bumped into at a mini-mall? No doubt it helped that I said I was a financial columnist from the States, but this fellow didn't stop to ask for details. He was so happy to talk to somebody about CRH he launched into an enthusiastic dissertation on every aspect of the company.

Before we hung up, he had given me the names of three other enthusiastic analysts with whom I spent another hour chatting about the great balance sheet and the steady growth in earnings. In addition to the oral report, they faxed or hand-delivered their latest written comments to the hotel, along with annuals and quarterlies from the company, so by late afternoon I had collected enough material to fill a briefcase.

By now, it was quite apparent that CRH is more than a filler of Irish potholes. It has annual sales of $3 billion, a third of which comes from the U.S., where it is a major player in asphalt, patio furniture, concrete seats for sports stadiums (including the Olympic stadium in Atlanta), tempered glass for high rises, drain pipes, manholes, and conduits for underground cables. Its 35 U.S. subsidiaries own quarries in several states, and it has paved many highways, from New England to Utah. It also makes roads on the Continent.

You know you're in a global marketplace when the local yokel company you've targeted for research turns out to pave your freeways back home. Discovering CRH was something like walking into the back of the Parthenon and thinking you'd discovered a new ruin.

More than 40% of the shares are now owned by non-Irish investors, and the stock trades in Dublin, London, under the symbol CRH and on Nasdaq under the symbol CRHCY. Three of the four analysts said it was a great long-term prospect but a bit overpriced at present, having enjoyed nearly a 50% run-up in the past year. I decided to wait for a pull-back to add it to my portfolio.

To get some relief from museums, stock fans can visit more than 100 stock exchanges that are open for business around the world. Dublin's dates from 1793, and the building dates from 1876. Most of the trading is done on computers, but the trading floor is housed in a wedding cake of a room that contains a dozen black telephones and a chalkboard where the prices are recorded twice a day. It's the financial version of Fenway Park.