Second day in Cork

Well since the first day in Cork was kind of a bust at best (when I told my dad we were here, his reaction was, "Oh god."), I thought we could do better today. I went out for a walk early and got a bit more of a sense of the place. It has potential; what I'm not sure it has is enough money to make all the good stuff happen.

There was no rain forecast today, and out we went. In the morning we went to the Cork City Gaol, a state of the art 19th century prison that is quite beautiful architecturally and as old prisons go, didn't seem quite that bad. It was actually a mixed gender prison and the conditions were surprisingly good, except when they threw a bunch of Republican rebels (in the 1920's, not after the debates) in there and jammed as many as they could in a cell. Some of their graffiti is still visible.

Part of the fun of the place was that they had cheesy wax (or something) figures depicting various goings on.

Aside from whipping, the favorite punishment was to put the prisoners on a treadmill to pump water or grind grain.

Looking for something more uplifting, we then went to the St. Anne's Church of Shandon, at the top of a hill near our hotel. We had heard from the owner of the B&B we stayed at in Kilmare that you could actually ring the bells of the church. Sounded good to me, so up the hill we went. Sure enough, you can ring the bells by pulling on cables. I chose that Irish churchbell standard, "Don't Cry For Me Argentina." You can then climb a narrow spiral staircase  up and look at the bells, but you have to wear those kind of headsets that they ground controller wear at airports, because it's pretty deafening when someone down below is playing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow."

No, I don't have a mohawk, that's the frame

Very loud when you're standing next to it

There's a nice view of the city from the top.

From there we went to, what else, the Butter Museum, tracing the rise and fall of the Cork County butter industry. I will say, the butter here is very good.

Ronnie is excited to visit the Butter Museum

I think our favorite touch was the recorded churning noises you hear as you walk up the stairs. It was actually interesting, in an obviously limited sort of way. And we weren't likely to get such an opportunity again.

We then had a nice lunch at a café near the hotel and then rested in the room for a while, and then decided that we would drive down to a nearby seaside town called Kinsale for dinner. Kinsale is known, at least in Kinsale, for being the gourmet capital of Ireland. Honestly, the food's been pretty good here in general. Too much, mostly, but good, Anyway, I called a few places and got one someplace we weren't crazy about, so we went to our first choice, a wine bar called Black Pig, to see if we could squeeze our way in. It was completely full when we got there. All that was available were two stools by a teeny platform on a column, but then we got to move to two chairs with a kind of box table, and eventually to the bar itself. It was a great meal (especially good butter), and the people in the place just couldn't have been nicer to us and to everyone we saw them interact with.

It really is genuinely friendly here. At the pub the night before, I overheard a guy say he was a bookstore manager in Dublin. Later on, I was standing at the bar near him, and struck up conversation. It was really easy and natural. We talked about the book business and he asked my name and it was really quite nice. There's no agenda. People just want to chat.

That was our experience in Kinsale as well, with everyone we talked to. After the meal, I struggled to drive back to Cork, partly because I got lost, and, not coincidentally, because the headlights on our car are awful. The brights were almost as strong as the regular lights on my car at home, so I had no visibility at any point. It was very hard. All the driving is hard, but this was particularly bad being at night.

But we made it back safely. Tomorrow we're off to Kilkenny.

Just a note on what happened between the Ring of Kerry and Cork

I realized I skipped a little bit. We got back from our drive pretty unhappy. I went out for a walk and checked out the restaurant where we were supposed to eat that evening. I asked the woman in charge where we could see an actual Irish music session in town and she suggested a couple of the less touristy pubs. I checked them out and they were both very small but one was having a session that evening.

So after my walk though this very pleasant town, I went back and we got ready for dinner. We're kind of restauranted out at this point, but this place, The Mews, was very nice. Good food and low key atmosphere.

Then we went down the street to Crowley's Bar and watched 4 women, 2 fiddlers, a flutist and banjo/mandolin/fiddler, eventually joined by a guy who was also a fiddler.

Traditional Irish music is not the most varied stuff you'll see, but I find it very soulful and enjoyed it a lot. It made the day end on a better note, so to speak.

Face down in Cork City

We're in Cork. Cork City, I guess they say- the county is quite large. It's an old city that's clearly had lots of ups and downs and seems to be in the middle of one of those up or down periods. Soe hopeful looking signs, but shabby and poor in a lot of others. It does have a big university and some high tech so there's hope, but it's old and beat too, so you can either do something good with it or not. The place appears to be trying, with mixed success, to reinvent itself as a modern city, within the limits of the geography and infrastructure.

The geography is difficult because it's all hills and marshland. The name Cork comes from some Gaelic phrase meaning marsh. And then there are hills. It's Ireland's second-biggest city, with a population of around 120,000, and has that kind of second city inferiority complex that you see everywhere.

It was a trading town, and the largest exporter of butter in the world at one point (not sure how much competition there was for that at the time). It was fiercely nationalist during the original revolution, which earned it the distinction of being burnt to the ground, so most of the medieval aspects of it are gone.

After spending a pleasant hour walking around Kinsale, we got here on yet another grey, dreary day and decided, for lack of any other direction, to walk through the main shopping area. This was part of an urban renewal project, of which there have been many though the years, most recently in the 1990's. As befits those times, it looks like a mall. It was a great fresh food market, called the English Market,

one nice department store and a couple of decent one, but the rest was kind of trashy (GameStop, H&M, etc.). After wandering got depressing we came back to the River Lee Hotel, which is very spiffy and modern. We kind of crashed for a while, after which I went to work out.

The hotel is attached to a spa and to a very busy upscale gym, with a very loud class consisting of someone yelling and everyone else punching things. Outside the room, a spinning instructor was waiting with a pallet of spin bikes. I went into the main gym, which is the kind of urban gym I tend to go out of my way to avoid. Loud, pulsing music, rows of machines, free weights and mats crammed into a corner. It was so loud that I could hear their music over what I had on my headphones. I held on for 25 minutes and then gave up.

We then had dinner in the bar downstairs. It's a pleasant enough bar and the servers were great (our favorite line, the waiter gives Ronnie a bit of her wine to taste and she said, "Oh it's okay, I trust you." And he replied, "Are you sure? I wouldn't."). But the place is infested by fruit flies. They like wine and they like Guinness as well, from the look of things. I've been drinking almost entirely Guinness since we arrive. I know there's a thriving Irish microbrew scene, but I didn't come here for that, and I've made a point of not buying stuff to keep in the fridge, preferring to force myself go to the bar downstairs for a draft if I want something.

I've also tried Beamish Stout, which was recommended by the bartender in Kinsale and the bartender here said he kind of alternates it. It's a bit toastier and less smooth, but good. That was it for the day. Hopefully it'll be more fun tomorrow.

The tipping point

Let's face it, I just screwed up. I was already to skip the Ring of Kerry, with all of its magnificent scenery and hordes of tour bus, but everyone said, "oh, you have to see the Ring of Kerry," and the only day we could do it was today (Tuesday, I think), so we set out to see an abbreviated version of it.

Gotta say, I get why it's a big deal. There just aren't a lot of great mountain/ocean combos to be seen. We left relatively early and went the opposite way of the tours, deciding to do an abbreviated version. Saw some very wonderful things, but the abbreviated version was still too much, considering how much car time we'd had the day before.

Yes, it's quite grand!

On the way back, I figured we might as well take a peek at Killarney, the main tourist stop in the area. I stupidly assumed there had to be some reason everyone went there. More on that later. Getting there was the real adventure.

So rather than go the regular main scenic route along the mountainside, I decided to take the local road down through the valley. For the first 20 km or so, it was really beautiful, and even though it was slow, at least for me the views and the sheep, which were mostly uncontained and wandering on the roadside were worth it.

Unfortunately, we hit a weird kind of tourist jam-up. Suddenly we started seeing more and more people walking along the side of the road. Then a bunch or horse-drawn carts. For the longest time, we couldn't figure out where they were coming from. We were literally in the middle of nothing.

The road was very narrow, though there were occasional turnouts. Sometimes the horsecarts would let us through, sometimes not. It took what was already kind of long and made it seemingly endless. I even bottomed out the car once, with one wheel going off the pavement and making a nasty scraping sound. No obvious damage though (and hooray for $0 deductible!). We finally got past horsecart central (there actually was such a place, not that it was called that) and were able to drive as normally as is possible under the circumstances. That brought us into the snarl that is Killarney.

I'm not just referring to our facial expressions by the time we left, but the traffic. It's so crowded that you could hardly walk and it was trashy touristy stuff for the most part (not that there aren't some nicer shops). Ugh. That put a really bad taste in our mouth, and the hour or so it took us to get back only made it worse.

I'd have to say that was our low point. Too much car time. Too much Killarney. Fortunately, the town where we chose to stay, Kinsale, is a much smaller place and quite nice. So I'll pick it up there next.

Time for a spin in the countryside.

In the back of my mind, I have this little nagging voice that says, "don't ruin the trip to Ireland by spending too much time in the car." These were the couple of days where we kind of overdid it. The first one was necessary if we were going to do our lap; it's not a short distance from Galway to Kenmare, no matter how you dice it. But of course we couldn't just drive there, we had to check out the natural wonders on the way.

And they were, in fact, quite wonderful. I've not found that all so-called wonders are actually so, but that does not apply to either the Burren or the Cliffs of Moher. The Burren is most certainly not to everyone's taste, and to be honest, we experienced only a small part of it, which is conveniently located near a small megalithic tomb.

This is the small version of a megalithic tomb. Random tourist included for scale.

It's these weird "pavements," they call them, of limestone with grooves and ruts and layers and all kinds of shapes, and part of what's cool is that they're all filled with plants. Hundreds of flowers and different kinds of foliage. Really quite remarkable looking. There are lots of things here that make me wish I knew more about geology.

So once we were through the Burren, we headed for the cliffs. Not surprisingly, there was a long, narrow raod headed up toward the cliffs, which we could see was ending in a snarl at the parking lot. Fortunately, I had seen a sign for another car park a bit earlier, so we turned around and went that way.

From either parking lot, the cliffs are a hike. I guess it wouldn't do to let people just park up there. The place where we landed was a mere 800 meters from the cliffs. That doesn't sound that bad, does it? Of course it was all uphill and with what must have been a steady 25mph wind. So it was quite a grind getting up there, and then you had to deal with the windiness on the tops of the cliffs themselves. Fortunately, the direction was onshore, so no danger of being blown over. And really, the spots I took these pictures from had another level about 8-10 feet down, so if I'd fallen I guess I could have hurt my knee or something, but it wasn't dangerous.

It was, however, very hard to stand still and take pictures, but here's what I got.

Not too bad, for a bunch of cliffs. And, of course, since human beings are what they are, what do they need to do when they get to the very top of something?

Of course, build a tower. Why? Really, I mean it. You needed to be 40 feet higher on top of these 400 foot-high cliffs? Was the view that much better?

So back down the 800 meters in the wind and finally we were on our way to Kilmare. On the way, we got stuck in a bad traffic jam around the noted tourist town of Killarney, which should have been a warning to us. Finally got there close to 7. Looks like a nice town.

To be continued.

Sunday, and I know it's Wednesday already. I will catch up.

Today was our last full day in Galway. I think we were hoping to feel a little more settled here, staying for 3 nights, but the nature of the hotel and what we were doing with our days kind of prevented that, for me, anyway. I know that people really like Galway, and I can see why. If I ever get a chance to come back here, I'd like to be situated differently and not during race week.

But c'est la vie. Today is Ronnie's birthday and we planned to go to the races to celebrate. The weather forecast was very uncertain, which made it hard to plan, and even though it didn't rain, it was chilly and the crowd was rather sparse (don't get me wrong, there were plenty of people- it just wasn't packed). Ronnie looked beautiful in her dress and fascinator, and I had my new blue blazer and tie, so it would have been more fun had it been more of a scene. We stayed to watch a race, and then headed back to check out the town.

It's a nice little city. Lots of pedestrian streets, as they seem to do well in these old European cities. We had lunch in a nice little patisserie and walked around. Lots of shops and pubs and street musicians. I could see it being a good time. We parked in what they call here a multi-storey parking lot, which was almost big enough to park cars in. Someone was nice enough to jump out of her car and help me back into the tiny little spot off the narrow lane. And I'm a pretty skilled parker, even with the left side thing. Can't imagine how Americans from suburban communities handle it.

Then back to the hotel. The hotel. The fabulous g Hotel. It's an odd place. We've come across this kind of thing before- a hotel with pretensions and intentions of being a 5-star hotel, but just not quite able to put it all together. It's a couple of miles outside the city center, which is fine, but it backs up on a shopping mall of some sort and shares a parking lot with something resembling a Lowe's and a movie theater. So unless you pull in front and get valet parking, you go into the mall parking lot and park by the lift.

The lobby is very glitzy and there are a series of salons with cocktail tables and chairs and finally a room with a bar in it and even more finally a restaurant. On the other end is a nightclub of some sort. It's all done in pink and silver. Our room is huge and luxurious, with a double shower and a strangely long space between the bed and the sitting area (the TV, which is in the sitting area, is easily 20 feet from the bed). I must note that, for the most part, the people working in the hotel were very nice and more than helpful. Just couldn't recommend it for the price.

The "nice" front of the fabulous g Hotel

The trash from my car in the only kind of bag they could offer me at the fabulous g hotel, relaxing in the lobby

They do have a nice spa here and Ronnie was able to get a birthday massage. Then we had a very nice dinner in part of town that was absolutely mobbed, so we walked around and then had simply had enough of it, so we went back to the room.

The next morning I walked around again. Here's the town square and an old cemetery nearby.

Across from the cemetery, there was a vicious argument going on between a young man and woman, the woman sort of running away but still interacting with the guy, and eventually stopping. He was just screaming at her (I'm wasting my f---ing life on you!), I think about someone hitting on her and her not doing enough to discourage it. I really didn't want to get involved (and I was across the street anyway) but I did keep half an eye to make sure it didn't get violent, which it didn't.

And then we headed out of town.

It's that time

It's towards the end of Tuesday afternoon now. Around the time in a trip like this you start to feel a little lost and begin to second guess yourself. Why did we do this? Why go there? Should we have planned it this way? Planned it more or planned it less? Visited fewer places?

How do you do a country in 2 weeks? It's absurd. You hit a few highlights, and then the more you try to cram things in, the more you get frazzled. It's frazzle time. Fortunately, we've done most of the heavy duty driving at this point. We actually could do the rest of the trip with less driving than we did just on Monday, if we decided to take freeways and get place to place.

Vacations like this are almost by design going to be a series of highs and lows. You have a new place and limited time to see it, and so the stakes get raised on everything if you let that happen. I don't always let it, but this is the portion of the show where I'm tempted to do so. But you don't want to overthink it (not that I would ever do such a thing), but really the only thing wrong is we just spent too damned much time in the car these past 2 days.

In closing, (I like the formality of that)) I'd just like to say that this is everyone else's fault. It's obligatory dishonesty. Nobody wants to hear anyone whine about their vacation. It's a vacation, for goodness sake. It's barely even real life. It's just not all unicorns and rainbows though. Okay, got that off my chest. Now time to get back to the trip.

Friday and Saturday, I think

Today is Saturday, I think. Yesterday we drove from Derry to Galway, which is a long drive. Have I mentioned that I'm not enjoying driving on the left side of the road? Driving is not supposed to be relaxing but it's not supposed to make your hands hurt from gripping the steering wheel either. It just wears me out. People say you get used to it but I haven't after a few hundred miles. I guess I have in that I know where to look and how to make turns, and I've gotten very accomplished at roundabouts. But every second takes intense concentration.

Our route was semi-scenic, including a drive across an island in the middle of a huge lake, It's best known for having a little cemetery that includes these sculptures, if you can call them that.

It's called the Janus statue, because those are two sides of the same stone and there's a Roman god with two faces called Janus. But it's not, because the Romans were never in Ireland and it's a Celtic deity of some sort.

From there, it was a long slog (almost literally, as it rained for much of it) to Galway, but we made it to the very nice but very odd hotel where we're spending 3 nights. More about that later, but it was already fairly late by the time we go here, so we had dinner and went to bed.

Today, we went to Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands off the shore of Galway. It's a nearly deserted, small island. Why people ever chose to live here is beyond me, but they did, and for a long time. One thing they did here was build a lot of stone walls. I'm not sure why, but there are hundreds of them, dividing the island into a lots of little parcels, which I can only assume were significant at some time.

We rented a tandem bicycle and rode all the way across the this ancient fort called Dún Aenghusa. By the way, a lot of things on this island start with Dun, but only some have the little accent mark. I have no idea why. All the signs are in Gaelic and there's no real way to figure it out. The is huge and made of stone, which is appropriate for a stone age fort. It's dramatically set up on top of a sheer cliff. Again, I don't know what it was they were trying to defend, aside from themselves.

I realize, I never took a picture of the fort. It's a huge circular ring of piled up rocks at the top of a hill strewn with stones place for the express purpose of making it difficult to get at. Fortunately, there's a path through some of the hill but it was not an easy walk up the hill, which I guess was the idea. The views were incredible.

Then we rode back. I'd never ridden a tandem bike before. It was fun. The island is hilly but nothing steep or really hard. I should note that as we've seen most places, there are not a lot of Americans here. We heard lots of languages, some Spanish and French and some unrecognizable, but really as much Irish as anything.

We went to and fro by ferry, which was that weird mix of efficiency and chaos that seems very Irish to me. We ate dinner back at the hotel in one of the many lounges, the 'highlight' of which was a server tripping on I don't know what and dropping an entire tray of food on the floor. He was visibly very upset, like to the point of tears, and our server, who was in the middle of taking our order, ran over to console him. I thought his empathy was very charming. Apparently the guy was brand new here and is a shy young man and was therefore crushed by the mishap. Hope he's okay.

After that to bed. Sunday is Ronnie's birthday. We're going to the Galway Races, but the weather has put kind of damper on that, so to speak. It'll be worth a look anyway.

Returning to the previous flashback

It's getting hard to keep track of days. It was Wednesday night that we ate in Bushmills. The Inn there was very pretty and friendly.

I should stop again to comment on how positively nice the people here. There's nothing forced about it. Between that and the fact that they speak English, it makes the underlying works of a trip like this much easier than most. The food had been pretty good so far too. I can't say every meal has been wonderful, but overall it's been fine.

So eventually we arrived Wednesday night at our B&B, which, in the middle of the night, felt completely out in the middle of nowhere, to a kind of spooky effect. Of course, inside there was nothing spooky about it, even though our room was named after a famous rope bridge that spans a local chasm. The owner was clearly anxious to get to bed, though he was perfectly friendly (of course).

In the morning I got up and walked outside, and of course it looked quite a bit different. Almost breathtakingly beautiful, and speaking of breathtaking, just amazing air. It's always worth taking a moment to sample the air wherever you are. Air should not be taken for granted, and some of it is better than others, and this was one of the good ones. Clean, with a bit of sea smell, and perhaps a touch of some sort of animal manure, but not to the point where it was more than a hint. It was a wonderful thing to get up to.

The breakfast at the Causeway Inn was pretty great. I didn't know B&Bs had menus. I had a pancake topped with bacon and a poached egg.

So what's the perfect way to follow up a breakfast? A visit to the Bushmills Distillery, of course. It was relatively unbusy, because it was before the busses started to show up from Dublin full of day trippers. They weren't distilling anything, but we had a guided tour around from a very well-rehearsed young man, who as an aside advised me to drink as much Guinness as I could while I was here because it wasn't the same anywhere else. We also learned about the very important distinction between Irish and Scotch whiskies, and among the Bushmills varieties. The coolest thing to see was the bottling plant, where you could see bottles get rinsed, filled, labeled, have their caps screwed on, put into cases, an palletized.

And then of course there was the tasting. We were under the impression that you got like a thimbleful, but nope- full portions. Unaware of this, I ordered a tasting and was given enough whisky to allow me to comfortable nap for the remainder of the day, probably a bad idea while I was driving.

From there we went to Giant's Causeway, which I already wrote about, and then on to Derry, following the scenic coastal route. Scenic yes, and uncomfortably narrow at times. Amazing that I didn't hit anything. I can't emphasize enough the danger here. There are plenty of things for which my instincts or training and practice aren't exactly right, but there are very few where everything I know is the exact opposite of what I should be doing. I can get on okay, but I know that if I get in a panic situation there's a decent chance that I'll do something terribly wrong.

Long day's drive from Derry to Galway on Friday. Keep your fingers crossed (or course my posting this on Friday implies that it wasn't disastrous).

Getting out of Dodge-Londondodge

It's Friday morning and I am writing now because I'm just a little freaked out.

We stayed Thursday in the clumsily-named Derry-Londonderry, which is either part of Great Britain, part of Ireland, or both, as the hyphen would suggest. What it doesn't suggest is a system in equilibrium. One of the more recent landmarks is the Peace Bridge, a truly pretty pedestrian bridge that crosses the River Foyle (though honestly, I like the sound of River Liffey, which is in Dublin, so I've been calling all the rivers that). Once across the river, you're in a big empty area, which is perhaps filled with merrymakers on a warm summer day, but this was a cool cloudy day, and it was deserted. They do have a lot of graffiti here, some of it partisan and some of it pleading for tolerance.

Then I walked back. We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant and went to bed. I slept badly.

Derry is a walled city. In fact, it refers to itself as The Walled City, so I decided to take a morning stroll around the wall (you can walk all around the city up there). I've been in lots of medieval towns and been up on the walls in a couple. The warfare aspect of them just always seemed very distant. You're up on a hill and you're defending your hill from the assholes in the walled city on the next hill. Although the wall was built, I think, in the 17th century, it continued to hold a place in the culture of the city all the way through The Troubles, so all the historical markers are relatively recent.

Pretty cheery stuff, eh?

The city is not very big, though it sprawls a bit once you get outside the walls. It seems kind of poor, especially compared to Dublin, which bustled from very early in the morning until late at night. Here nothing was open, everything looked kind of shabby. One of the big downtown stores is a burnt out shell, who knows why. No energy at all, at 8:30 on a weekday morning. The only place I saw people were at the bus terminal.

None of these things would have bothered me by itself, but the combination made me incredibly anxious.

So what do you thik could possibly calm me down after all this? I went in an supermarket. A Tesco to be specific. I bought a Dairy Milk bar and some peas and some carrot batons, which are what I guess I'd call carrot sticks. And I paid with some of the British money that I got. Gave the cashier and 20 pound note and some coins and she gave me "fuffteen" and 20P back.  And that did make me feel a bit better. I'm ready to leave though.

Yes, the italics are a Calvin and Hobbes reference

At this point, it's hard to know whether to work chronologically or backwards, so my chosen literary device will be the flashback, so I don't have to pick.

The last two days have been packed. Yesterday was, if I must say so myself having planned it, not optimally planned. I got scared off by the stories of having to get to a particular site an hour outside the city by first thing in the morning in order to be sure to get one of the very limited admission tickets. So I signed us up for a tour that would guarantee admission. There was nothing wrong with the tour, but it left us back in Dublin at 5:00 instead of an hour north, which was the direction we wanted to go, at 3:00.

Today, on the other hand, worked pretty much perfectly, including the weather for once. Yesterday it rained on and off the entire time we were at the sites we were visiting. More props to the umbrella.

What we saw was this, a place of mystical significance called Tara (no sign of Scarlett or any of the O'Hara's anywhere).

And this, a spot called New Grange.

New Grange is what they call a "passage tomb," so called because, according to our archaeological guide, because it has a passage in it and they found human (cremated) remains inside. It's hard to describe the scale of this thing, but you can see people on the right which give you an idea. It was built somewhere around 3600 BC, which would mean probably before the Great Pyramids. I can't argue about the passage part, but nobody is really sure if it was actually a tomb. It could have been a mall for all we know.

There are a bunch of these things around Ireland, but this is one of the few where you can go inside. Pretty cool. The passage goes in 19 meters, a fraction of the diameter of the thing, which is almost perfectly round. Nobody knows what's in the rest of it and probably never will. They only found the one passage by accident. There's an opening above the door where, at sunrise on winter solstice, the sun lights the passageway. Another passage tomb nearby is lit on the equinoxes.

The entrance to New Grange is behind this stone.

The three interlocking swirls on the left are unique to this site. It's a logo! Nobody actually knows what any of this stuff means or who these people were, but it's clear that among them were some megalithic age marketing people. Ronnie is quite sure that they're boobs, which considering that the main feature of Tara is a phallus, makes perfect sense.

Today, we were someplace else entirely. 

This is called Giant's Causeway. The mythology behind it is kind of dumb, even for mythology. Something to do with giants fighting about something. Why they needed a causeway and didn't just use boats like everyone else is a mystery for the ages. Maybe it's just another 50,000 phalli. 

For some reason, spell check didn't correct that. Is it really a word? Cool. By the way, that's Ronnie sitting in the middle of the phalli.

Honestly, this whole place is crazy. There's nothing that I've seen like it anywhere. I know that one of the things people have said about it is that they're disappointed that the columns aren't bigger or just that it's overall too small, but those people have to be Americans. No other culture would think that this incredible formation is unimpressive just because if its sheer size. And let me tell you, a lot of the formations here are huge. This has got to be well over 100 feet tall.

And one last thing about it, I know it's cool because I heard a whole bunch of little kids and a whole bunch of teenagers walk up and say, "Wow, this is cool."

So back to yesterday. We found ourselves in Dublin at 5 and needing to drive 150 miles north. We called the B&B where we were staying that evening, and they said they'd be out until 10:30, so we figured we had plenty of time. But getting out of town was really hard. Even if I hadn't been driving on the left it would have been hard, and it hardly mattered because we were barely moving anyway. 

But we made it out, and drove and drove. First city streets and motorways (aka expressways) and then other major roads with occasional roundabouts (roundabouts deserve their own post) and finally country roads. And at around 9 we finally neared the town of Bushmills, where we were going to eat dinner while we waited for our hosts to arrive, and as we approached the town, we were stopped by an extremely friendly policewoman who pointed out that there was a parade in progress and that we could not go any further.

Now you may ask, why would there be a parade going on in Bushmills at 9PM on a Wednesday night, but you would only be showing your ignorance. Bushmills is in Northern Ireland and this is what they call marching season, and there are politically oriented parades all the time. So we had to park the car a half mile from the restaurant and walk, crossing between the bands, to get out dinner. So we ended up not getting there until almost 11. A very long day.

Taking a break now. Time to plan tomorrow's drive.

I survived the first right turn

After a rest from all that walking and standing around, I went for another walk. This one was more directed, because I was going to go rent a car. It was a half hour walk, and I've learned enough in my 29 hours in Ireland to know it's a good idea to carry an umbrella no matter what. As it turned out, had I walked slightly slower I would have really needed it. As it turned out though, the downpour started about 3 minutes after I arrived at the garage.

I got the car and ventured out into the wrong-side world. There's a reason that there are signs that say "Look Right" at the corners and that even the rental car itself has a sticker on the windshield that reminds you to drive on the left. It's simply unnatural to drive on the left. That's why nobody else in the world aside from the British and their acolytes (willing or unwilling) do it. It's against God's plan. That makes it inherently dangerous.

So out of the garage I drive, into the pouring rain. Fortunately, I had to go straight for a few minutes, which was enough for it to let up. I finally reached a turning point, and patiently waited to make a right turn through traffic. Honestly, I think that letting people like me who've never driven like this rent cars is insane. All my instincts are going to be not only incorrect, but the exact opposite of what they need to be.

I did make it back to the hotel unscathed, so that was good. We then walked down to the famed Temple Bar area, where it seems like every rowdy college kid visiting Dublin was milling around. We had no particular interest in joining in, but walked around until it began to rain, at which point we headed back to the hotel. Again, good to bring an umbrella everywhere, so we were fine. I've noticed though that, I guess because of the combination of locals and tourists, that there's no instinct for passing on the sidewalks. The locals want to veer left and the tourists veer right, so there's no flow.

At that point, we were kind of pooped and not wanting to stand and watch more music, so we ate at an actual restaurant, which was very good. Then back and to bed. It was a pretty long day and tomorrow will be even longer. So far, jet lag isn't preventing us from sleeping and being awake at the appropriate times. Hopefully that will continue.

Day 2 was not just a walk in the park.

Before anything else, I need to say that although this is a very nice hotel, its wifi in the room is really lousy. It pops in and out and goes from slow to fast to nonexistent in a matter of minutes. It's fine in the lobby, but not here.

Today I got up a bit early and took a walk around St. Stephen's Green, a park across the street from the hotel. I don't believe Stephen himself had anything to do with the green, in spite of the possessive. I think I'd heard that the Guinness family donated the park to the city and it's a very nice place.

There's a pond somewhere not in the picture that would be pretty with less garbage floating in it, but it doesn't seem to bother the ducks. Which reminds me, they don't have Duck Tours here- they have Viking Tours, with the same kind of vehicle and you have to wear Viking helmets while you ride, and no, I'm not kidding. They all yell something out as they pass the hotel.

Anyway, the park is very nice first thing in the morning. I'm sure it's nice most of the time, but it was very pleasant and quiet when I was there. There are lots of statues and lot of little nooks. Here are my favorite statues.

 

I like the first one, of Robert Emmet, because all it says about itself is that it was donated by the Robert Emmet Statue Committee and then names the committee members. The right one is a Henry Moore and it's of Yeats, or at least that's what it says.

So after than nice little walk, I came back and had my first Full Irish Breakfast. That's a thing, though it means slightly different foods depending on where you are. Mine had eggs, Irish bacon (kind of like thin Canadian bacon, but in strips), sausage, broiled tomato, sauteed mushrooms, potatoes, and black and white pudding, which are kind of like little discs of something grainy- one white, one dark, both tasty. That was a lot of food and I didn't really come close to finishing, but I gave it a good try.

Our first stop this morning was Trinity College, home of the Old Library and the Book of Kells. The Book is much older than the Library, though nobody knows exactly how old. Over 1000 years ago. It's an illuminated manuscript of the four gospels, considered to be among the finest of its sort, and it's very famous and people line up to get a peek.

The problem with this, of course, is that it's a book. It's small and old and in a case so you can't turn the pages. So there's a very nice exhibit before you get to the book itself where you learn about Irish scribes and how books like these were made. Interesting. Then you go into the room with the book, which is a single rectangular case with a crowd around it. People tend to be a bit pushy here, and I mean that literally. There's no hesitation to encroach on your personal space and try to squeeze by. I think that may be a tourist thing more than an Irish thing, but I do know that last night at the pub I was standing getting napkins and one person tried to squeeze by me in front and one tried to simultaneously squeeze by me behind and they were both annoyed that I didn't get out of their ways.

So my rule is if you are standing in a crowd around something in a museum, if at all possible stand behind children or teenagers. Those people have the attention span of a flea, so while a 45 year-old might linger for a few minutes, the kids will be out of there in 30 seconds tops. The book is very cool. I like illuminated manuscripts, and this is a good one.

From there, we went into a long room called, sorry, the Long Room. 

Pretty long, isn't it? It's an old library of textbooks, according to the guide. He was describing all the bay and shelf labels, which are necessary to locate any book because the books are sorted by size, not by topic. Also, the lower level, built in 1712, is almost 200 years older than the upper level. He said that the students are allowed to request a book and they can have it from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM and read it in the little nook all the way in the back on the second level. We also asked hm about whether the room is climate controlled, to which he replied by pointing to an open window. He said that they do check regularly.

From there, we went to the National Museum because they had a Vermeer. It was incredibly beautiful, as they all are. What a treat to find one here. By this time it was only early afternoon and I had more adventure in store, but that's enough for now, I'll fill in the rest of the day later.

First dayish

Our flight could not have been less eventful. We got into Dublin at around 8:45, and then did the usual, get bags, get local cash, get a cab, off to the hotel.

The cab driver gave the first hint that this is a different kind of country. Not that people in Amsterdam have what you'd think of as attitude, but they're kind of cool. No sense of cool here. Everyone is just right out there. I mentioned to the cabbie that I was a bit nervous about driving on the left side of the road, and for the entire rest of the trip he was explaining to me how I should handle particular situations. He also pointed out pubs and shopping areas (for the missus- actually he mentioned this even before we got out of the airport). The then mentioned that he had a crick in his neck and that it could be cured by a good grab and twist (he didn't say this, more kind of demonstrated) and that the wife was looking forward to doing so.

We got to our hotel, which couldn't be more convenient and centrally located, and amazingly, our room was actually already available. So up we went, down a surprisingly long hallway, to our very pleasant room. After a nice 3 hour nap, I went out for a walk around to see what's the deal around here.

There's a nice coffee bar just next door, and lots stuff all over- shops and pubs and official buildings and pubs and fancy restaurants and pubs. And pubs. A whole lot of people had to be concerned that they and their friends were not going to be able to get something to drink when the mood struck them, so they clearly made sure that this couldn't possibly happen. I needed to get a plug adapter, because I forgot, Euro or not, Ireland is not totally part of Europe. It's still (somewhat unwillingly) part of the UK and uses those weird UK plugs. So that was my big purchase.

Once Ronnie was up we made what can only be called a pilgrimage to the Guinness Storehouse, probably the best brewery tour where you never get inside the brewery. The brewery is right next door, because Arthur Guinness was stupid and/or clever enough to lease a huge decrepit downtown factory on 100 acres (or hectares, I forget which) for $1 per year for a term of (now hold your jealousy New Yorkers) 999 years. So the beer thing worked out pretty well and they use a different part of the complex for actual storage, so the old storehouse is now a self-guided tour and celebration of that stuff that is Guinness Stout.

It was actually quite a lot of fun- I'd recommend it. They illustrate all the processes and then teach you how to taste it, and then they have several bars where you get to see how a pint should be poured and get to enjoy it. I was really impressed with how they handled a massive number of people without the thing feeling crowded. Only the bar we chose was crowded. But I'd recommend it highly.

We then, and only because the taxi driver suggested it, went shopping. It was pretty pleasant, considering it was showery, as it was on and off all day really. The famed shopping street, Grafton Street, was pretty mall-like, but the department store, Brown Thomas, was very nice. Ronnie bought some pretty jewelry by an up-and-coming Irish designer. Then back to the hotel to rest up a bit and then to dinner.

Even though our systems were used to a completely different time zone, we got ourselves out to dinner, which was mediocre but certainly filling, and then we stayed for a round of Irish music. The music part was fine; it's impressive how a guy with a guitar and another with an accordion can fill a room, but they had dancers with them who performed every other song and they were really fun, especially to be standing right on top of them. You could feel the percussion as their feet hit the floor and it was a good time. The Guinness was pretty good too.

At this point, we were beginning to get tired and headed back to the hotel. For a trip with no expectations, it was off to a very promising start.

Off we go

We're off to Ireland for two weeks. We've been talking about it and kind of planning for a while now, but we're going in with no particular goals or expectations except for a few things we want to do and see.

For what I've heard, Ireland is a good place to have that kind of vacation. Everyone raves about how nice the people are and the beauty of the scenery, and it sounds almost like you can't make a bad choice unless you stay in your hotel room all day. Or turn the wrong way into a roundabout, (Clockwise. Clockwise!). I've actually watched a video on how to do it (it doesn't look that hard).

We're not used to traveling this way, but it seems like a fun thing to do and the timing worked out nice to go to the Galway Races, which are supposed to be great, on Ronnie's birthday.

So we'll keep our eyes and ears open, listen to some music, maybe even join in sometimes, and explore for its own sake. Sounds like a pretty good trip to me

Why I look tired sometimes.

Today I drove down to the Brandywine River Valley to go see an osteopath. I have periodic trouble with my back that requires a spinal adjustment, and this guy is able to fix it in about 15 minutes and it lasts for about a year or so.

That all went as well as having to drive 45 minutes with a backache can go. Then I saw this truck.

And then it happened. Who would think that the back of a truck would set off such a chain of thought? First of all, I always thought the leader in door opening solutions was the arm. And really, who even knew this was a thing? There are leaders and, by implication, followers in door opening solutions? And not just on a national basis. It's on a global basis. Global. All over the world, people are opening doors and these people are leading them in how to solve the problem of opening doors.

I wonder what they consider to be the greatest threat to their dominance in door opening solutions. I suppose there could be an global uprising against doors; that would be bad. I wonder if they are good at all of the different kinds of door opening solutions. Or are they best at the ones that open towards you or the ones that open away from you or the ones that slide into little pockets or revolving doors. I wonder if they have a research team whose goal is to keep them on top of door opening solutions. Maybe the next big thing in door opening is for the door to disappear into the floor, or maybe thinking further down the road, the door simply dematerializes and rematerializes once you've gone through it. And are there main rivals the second leading purveyor of door opening solutions or the leading purveyor of door closing solutions?

Now, some of this may strike you as interesting or funny or good way to pass the time on a 45 minute car ride, but my brain does this all the time whether I want it to or not. And yes, it's sometimes funny, it's sometimes interesting, but it's exhausting. I think that's part of why I enjoy my job, why I might enjoy any job is because it limits the scope of things that I can be thinking about it any particular time. I free associate constantly during class, but that's class. When I'm preparing, I'm outlining, organizing and trying to figure out what will make for a successful lesson. I'm not free associating then, and I'm certainly not thinking about who's going to be the leader in door closing solutions next year.

Vineyard weekend. The long bumpy empty part.

We’re off for a weekend in Martha’s Vineyard. Taking a different route this time. Instead of flying, which was over $900 round trip, we drove up to Quonset, Rhode Island, where we were taking a ferry, known (to themselves anyway) as the Fast Ferry. The ferry was scheduled for 1PM, and as usual, I was stressed out the day before about the prospect of getting through New York at around 9AM. But we left at 7 and hoped for the best.

Almost shockingly, things worked out great for the drive. We hit a bit of traffic here and there, but made it in a shade under 5 hours, which was pretty remarkable. I’ve gotta say, driving up I-95 from the Jersey Turnpike all the way up to Rhode Island is not anybody’s idea of a good time. The George Washington Bridge is an impressive and reasonably nice-looking bridge (would probably be beautiful if it weren’t choked with cars), and it is by far the visual highlight of the whole 250 miles or so.

The whole trip was aided by using EZ-Pass, of course, which has eliminated the need to stop at toll booths. It also yields my favorite useless road signs- in the Express lanes, where people routinely pass through at 60 miles per hour, do you really need signs that says “DO NOT BACK UP”? I think the laws of physics prevent that.

So we got to the ferry terminal, if you can call it that, though it was disappointingly not a quonset hut, about an hour before departure. That’s a long time to wait, and it reminds me of the frequent traveler’s dictum, if you never miss a plane, you’re getting to the airport too early. IOW, if you get to the airport so early that you’re always sitting around for an hour or more, you’re wasting time. Clearly there is an optimal arrival time, if you weigh the relative unpleasantness of sitting at the airport versus missing a plane. But it’s tough to predict how long a 250 mile drive around rush hour passing through New York is going to take. I was okay to wait.

Eventually, the ferry came in. It’s a nice-looking boat, a big catamaran. People started to line up, so we joined in early so as to get the best possible seat, whatever that meant. The boat was pretty nice inside, but as soon as we started moving we started to hit some big swells, making it feel a bit roller coasterish. It didn’t bother me particularly, but a number of people started getting seasick, running to the bar to get barf bags and/or running outside. I didn’t actually see anyone throw up, but many folks were looking with like they just had or were about to.

Fortunately, the ride smoothed out after a while and we cruised over to Oak Bluffs, where the crew instructed us all about where to stand and how to line up and get our bags as we debarked. As one would expect, this elicited chaos, with half the passengers scrambling to get their bags before docking so that they would not have to go in the order that they were assigned. We were among the first to board, so we were among the first to debark too, so we needed no such scramble.

Then a taxi van (all the taxis on the island are passenger vans) to the house, which was open and waiting for us. After a bit of settling in, we went out shopping and bought more groceries than I have ever bought at one time. And then we kind of settled into the house. I say kind of because this is not a house for 2 people. This house was designed specifically to handle a large bunch of people, which is what always buzzed around here during what you might call my parents’ glory day. This was from the mid-80’s to late 90’s, when lots of business associates were also social friends and would tend to gather here, along with our families, culminating with a summer-end weekend party for anywhere from 50 to 180 people (not all staying in the house itself).

That ended when my mom started showing ALS symptoms, and it was a kind of slow decline from there. But I don’t want to dwell on that (right now, anyway, plenty of time for that stuff). The point is that the house felt incredibly empty. I don’t think Ronnie and I had never been there before without some other family members present. It was kind of eerie. The pictures I’m including look like things you’d take of an empty house you were showing for sale, but it was as occupied as it was right then. In retrospect maybe I should have taken one with Ronnie in it for scale, but I think you get the idea.

That ended on Saturday afternoon, which is another story.