Our worst fears about taking an extended trip were realized when Carolyn’s father, Ray Worden, passed away unexpectedly. He was 89, and died almost instantly while doing what he loved: golfing. During the time I’d gotten to know him, I found him to be a funny, intelligent, sometimes goofy and self-deprecating man with a huge heart, and a keen mind.  He will be greatly missed.

While dying at 89 doing the thing you love best, and doing so after avoiding any kind of extended illness is something to which any of us might aspire, it still puts a huge hole in the heart of this trip.

But our journey to Portugal was already on its way, and it has actually offered itself up as a bit of a distraction despite the loss. While we’re not enjoying ourselves in the same way as before, we are still experiencing a new land with new wonders, and since this blog serves to document our memories so that we can look back and remember what we’ve done, it marches on.

We had rented an apartment through AirBnB about 20 minutes outside of downtown Lisbon. Upon our arrival, the first thing we noticed was that the street in front of the apartment is completely torn up and is under six month’s construction.

The second thing we noticed, after squeezing through the outside door, which may generously be described as “not wide enough for most Americans,” was that the stairway to the third floor apartment might be better described as a ladder.

The door into the apartment was probably designed for leprechauns, the top of it reaches only to my chin.

There is no washer/dryer, dishwasher, oven, or closets, or even hooks for clothes. The TV is about 7 inches diagonal and plays only one Portuguese news channel. The shower is even smaller than the one in the B&B we had in Ireland that I described as reminding me of what it would like to shower on a boat. The plastic curtain sticks to your butt as you try to shower, and if you turn around it pulls along with you, resulting in the floor being pelted by water. The stairs to the bedroom are as steep as the ones to the place; getting up to pee at night is met with a great deal of trepidation. There’s not an unreasonable chance that one of us will end up with a broken neck as we lay at the bottom of the stairs, surrounded by a pool of long-held pee. The walls of the place are thin enough that we have literally heard our neighbors sneeze, and they seem to like talking to each other at 1:00 AM.

Despite that, it’s actually kind of charming and we’re happy to be here. It does, however, remind me of when you read the word “historic” when looking at a hotel. Experience has taught me that it generally means the bathroom will be the size of a closet and it’ll be draftier than sitting on the deck of a boat. But it’s historic! Yes, which means it’s just plain old.

The next morning we had our first meal in Portugal. What we’re finding pretty quickly is that while some people will occasionally speak broken English –and the Portuguese seem generally kind and polite and so will work with you– it is more common than not to find that they only speak Portuguese, or at least not any English. Most signs and packaging are in Portuguese only, so you would be well served to bone up on a few words, and if you’re here for an extended stay, learn a little Portuguese. We’ve had no problem figuring things out, but in our obligatory trek to a grocery store, we found ourselves guessing at what we were looking at as often as not.

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So we wandered around Lisbon just to get our feet wet… literally. It rained for most of the afternoon, including a very serious thunderstorm. So we bought another umbrella and soaked our feet and the bottom of our pants and still very much enjoyed the exploration.

Lisbon is one of the oldest cities it the world, and is the oldest in all of Western Europe. There are places where it looks it, but again, that’s part of its charm. The Portuguese apparently enjoy erecting large statues of their heroes; there are a number of them throughout the city, often on pedestals taller than eight or ten Shaquille O’Neals standing on top of each other.

Their mass transit is pretty easy to navigate. We’re staying in an area called Belem, and all you have to do is catch the “15” train for a 20 minute ride to downtown. It costs a euro. For only a couple of euros, we also ventured in the other direction on a larger commuter train to a place called Cascais, which is a sort of resort area 30 minutes north of town. It has a sandy beach and a nice resort-y collection of shops and restaurants.

It also has a “Jumbo,” which is a store that is, well, jumbo. It reminded us of a couple or four Fred Meyers stitched together, complete with a laundromat, bar, bank, food court, hair salon, and virtually everything you might need to buy in the course of a normal lifetime, including a very large seafood area. Which is a little unfortunate because of the smell that we believe to be their dried salted codfish. We’re not 100% sure because we apparently missed the Gas Masks for Tourists display outside the store, and so we were only able to get so close. It smells a bit like a combination of a fish that has sat in the sun for about two weeks and, well, death. As we approached the seafood area, passing by rows of food on one side and appliances on another, the smell continued to deepen, to the point that if there had been a car for sale for one euro right next to the seafood area we might’ve still turned back. I’m sure it’s something you get used to, but boy…

Next to the Jumbo they had an American-style mall; the first we’ve seen on our entire trip. We noted that in the food court, which didn’t feature any international chains, they actually serve you on real dishes, and then clean up after you when you leave.

Otherwise, it’s a cute area of Lisbon. We’re not hitting the tourist scene, whatever that may be here, very hard. Just wandering about, feeling the vibe of Portugal, and occasionally pondering our loss as we do so.

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By that I mean the driving in Ireland. I have fully given up the idea of trying to navigate without Siri, but even that is problematic.

Virtually every time I’ve tried to chart a course from the house to our ultimate destination, thinking I wouldn’t need the often unintelligible voice of Siri telling me when to turn, I’ve looked at a map and said, “This looks to be a straight shot. Just this one highway change and that’s about it.”

And virtually every time we’ve gotten about halfway there, we’ve ended up, instead, listening to Siri give us about 28 turns and direction changes. At times I’ve had the iPhone balancing on my knee, trying to shift with my left hand without dropping the iPhone on the floor of the car, while Carolyn pokes at a map spread in her lap shouting “turn here! turn here!” while I’m screaming, “What? That’s not what the map on the iPhone is showing!” while Siri’s unemotional voice is telling us to turn down a road whose signs (if there are any) bear no resemblance to what she’s saying, while three Irish drivers are honking their horns and flipping us off (not really, Irish drivers are actually quite polite) all the while trying to enter a two-lane roundabout without creaming someone. (I have no idea why they ever have two lanes in their roundabouts because everyone just treats them as one). We almost got T-boned in a roundabout when I originally and erroneously assumed two lanes meant that they’d actually use them as two lanes. I’m pretty sure the other driver threw a few “feckers” our way, which is the way they say the “f” word.

Somehow we always get to where we’re going (and usually with some very pretty scenery along the way), but the map, Siri, and reality often bear no resemblance to each other.

Today we embarked on a sort of “B” list excursion, having either seen or eliminated all the A-list destinations we could find. The destination was ultimately Waterford, the home of Waterford Crystal and the “Viking Triangle,” which, apparently, isn’t actually the favored instrument played by the 8th century Viking choruses while they sang, “All By Myself” like I thought.

Anyway, our first stop was the Dunbrody Famine Ship (they were also known as “coffin ships”), which is a museum and a recreation of the vessel that hauled multitudes of Irish to America during the potato famine in the 1840’s. During the famine, approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island’s population to fall by between 20% and 25%, and McDonald’s french fry sales even more.

Despite the sad theme, it was a pleasant exhibit, made more entertaining by a lively tour guide and a couple of actresses who portrayed passengers. It certainly makes you appreciate what we have, because that was a pretty rotten stretch of life for many in Ireland, but resulted in America being heavily influenced by the lineage of the Irish.

Anyway, here are our pictures:

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From there we drove to the town of Waterford, which is a bit more industrial than most of the other towns we’ve seen. It is Ireland’s oldest city, and its name is the only one that came from the Vikings, who originally settled it.

Reginald’s Tower is the oldest urban civic building in Ireland, and the oldest monument to retain its Viking name. To this day, it remains Waterford’s most recognizable landmark, so that was our first stop.

Reginald’s tower is the old round thing to the left.

In honor of Mother’s Day, I could help but snap this picture from one of the exhibits, showing that perhaps mothers weren’t always the warm and cuddly source of love and solace they are for us today.

Otherwise, it was a nice little stop and an interesting old tower. Certainly not worth going way out of your way or anything, but we did learn a little history about Ireland, which has a lot more Viking in it than most non-historians might realize.

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Just a block away were a few other attractions. One was the Waterford Crystal plant, which isn’t even a plant anymore since the company went out of business, but then was eventually purchased by Fiskars, and now they make their crystal in other parts of the world, so this is now simply a visitor’s center.

The other was the “Bishop’s Palace,” which is an 18th century residence converted to a museum. We knocked it out in about 45 minutes, but it had some impressive Waterford Crystal items in it which made us feel perfectly fine about missing the Waterford visitor’s center.

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From there we made a short drive and a short ferry trip to Waterford Castle, which is really a hotel and golf resort made out of a converted 16th century castle on an island. Carolyn was quite smitten with it, but it’s not really a tourist destination. Anyway, you can decide if the photos smite you as well.

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So I have to admit that this probably wasn’t the most exciting blog, but hey, we’re the ones who lived it, sparing you the torment and torture of living through the B-level Irish attractions.

Besides, things are going to perk up real quick because tomorrow we’re flying to Lisbon, Portugal!

Before we get into the blog, I’d first like to give a shout-out to me mum on this Mother’s Day (even though they celebrate it on a different day in Ireland), because without her, you couldn’t be reading this blog, because I’d have never been born.

Speaking of not existing, our first stop today was to the Glasnevin Cemetery, which first opened for customers in 1832. It contains some of the most famous Irish people ever, most of whom Americans don’t know because, well, most Americans barely know their own famous dead people.

Glasnevin is the final resting place to a whopping 1.5 million people, almost three times the current population of Dublin, and 1.49 million more than the hairs on Donald Trump’s head.

As you walk into the place, you’re a bit blown away by the huge monuments and the enormity of the place. It covers about 124 acres.

You’d think that visiting a cemetery wouldn’t be very high on most visitors’ must-see list, but it’s truly a spectacle, and was recommended to us by two different Irish folk, and we’re glad they did.

Carolyn in front of the entrance, and another view of the big tower. The tower was nice to have because no matter where you walked on the grounds, you could always see where the entrance was.

Also, the picture on the left is notable for two things: The first is proof that there really can be blue skies in Ireland. No, this wasn’t photoshopped. So far we’ve seen rain, hard rain, light rain, really hard rain, hail, more hail, snow, wind, and today, 70 degrees and sunshine followed by rain and thunder. When they say Ireland’s weather is unpredictable, they really mean it. The second thing the picture proves is that Carolyn really does wear different outfits under her coat. She’s starting to feel a little self-conscious about always looking the same in this weather!

The high wall with watch-towers surrounding the main part of the cemetery were put there as a defense for all the people dying to get in.

Seriously, though, it was actually built to deter bodysnatchers, who were active in Dublin in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The watchmen also had a pack of bloodhounds who roamed the cemetery at night. I’m not sure where they buried the dogs.

As mentioned in a previous blog, Irish law prevents the government from messing with gravestones. Despite that, the above was the exception to the rule; generally the stones and monuments are in very good shape.

I’m not sure how they got all these guys into one grave, but note on the bottom it says “also served prison sentences.” This may be the Irish’s way of saying these guys are headed straight down so just throw ’em in the hole and they can go to hell.

It’s obvious that some families spend more money in the graveyard than others, but these guys really take the cake. I mean, c’mon, they’re only burying a hand? How cheap can you get?

One style of memorial, presumably for family gatherings, is to have a door in the ground. Behind the doors are either rows of urns or caskets, or maybe they’re just family storage sheds, I dunno. One thing’s for sure, it’ll take a skeleton key to open ’em. Har har.

I’m not sure a picture can really capture the extensiveness of all of these graves. But once you’re inside, there are simply tombstones everywhere you look. I daresay I’ve seen more tombstones on this trip than when I delivered Tombstone Pizzas for a living. Which I never did, but it woulda been true had I done that.

The saddest part was this section, called the “Angel’s Plot,” which is where stillborn babies are buried in consecrated ground. Glasnevin is one of the few cemeteries that allows that. The graves are covered with dolls and toys.

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And here are the rest of the pictures of the cemetery.

From there we drove further into Dublin in order to see the Kilmainham Gaol (which is Irish for “jail”). Many Irish revolutionaries, including the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, were imprisoned and executed in the prison by the British. It’s now a popular museum and on most tourist lists as something you should do.

Unfortunately, this was the sign that greeted us. Doh! I guess it pays to read up on these tourist sites a little closer. Apparently you want to book a tour online beforehand.

But hey, we got a couple pictures outside the place.

And this is the entrance to the Museum of Modern Art just across the street, which we also didn’t go into. But it’s a pretty cool entrance.

If it’s one thing we’re both all about, it’s being flexible and adjusting to things on the fly. That’s one benefit of being in one place for a long time… you’re not pressed for time and if one door shuts you just go through another one (or take a picture of it). And so, even though the Guinness Tour was lower on our list because it’s so touristy and doesn’t involve a castle or graveyard, we decided to hike the mile over to the Guinness Tour and do that.

We could hardly contain our excitement. The truth was, it’s not a bad place to visit, but we both felt that the 20 euro admission was a bit overpriced. Sure, you get a “free” pint, but they run you through the store full of their labeled souvenirs twice, and the rest of it is like one big advertisement. It’s polished and well-presented, but not really worth 20 euros each.

The Guinness harp is on display. Surprisingly, there was nothing about the Guinness Book of World Records there at all. It wasn’t until this visit that it dawned on us that the two organizations are related. Should have been pretty easy for them to make their own beer world records!

You have to take a steam bath of your face before they’ll allow you to sample one of their beers. No, actually, this is a place to sniff some of the flavors from the beer, like hops and so on.

One floor is dedicated to their advertising, which apparently included a fish on a bicycle and a whistling oyster. Which made me wonder if it’s really hops they were experimenting with when making up these ads.

They said “butt!”

They had an impressive video room where they played some of their best ads, some of which were quite entertaining. A deep bass sound like thunder might give some people seizures, it was so loud and bass-y. I thought I was watching The Towering Inferno in a theatre again. That last line just went over the heads of almost everybody younger than me.

I just could help but snap a picture of these three young gals all standing in line, all nose-deep into their smartphones.

We were taken in small groups to a tap, where we were all given lessons on how to pour the perfect Guinness. I kept pretending to screw mine up and would chug the glass and insist on pouring another. After the fourth time doing that, the guide finally caught on and kicked me out of the line.

Despite that, we both got a diploma, which makes me think that it’s not much of an accomplishment, since I’m pretty sure everyone gets one.

Here was our group shot. Apparently we were “The best group ever!!” I’m a little surprised the girls on the right had enough time to look up from their cell phones to have their picture taken.

Afterwards, we took our glasses up to the top floor, where you’re treated to a terrific view of all of Dublin.

 

Very cool taps up on that floor. By the way, we must’ve been told a dozen times before we went on this trip that in Ireland the Guinness is different, and that it’s served warm. Wrong. It tastes the same, and it’s served chilled.

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And the slideshow of the rest of the pix.

On the walk back to the car, we discovered that my last parking job wasn’t so hot, and they had barricaded us in. So we hacked our way through the back, snuck into the car, started ‘er up as quick as we could and then crashed through the barrier like we were in Fast and Furious 18.

Actually, we saw this vehicle in the front yard of one of the houses. Generally, the area around the place didn’t look like the best of all areas. In fact, as we were walking to the tour, we saw a group of ladies sitting on the sidewalk minding their own business, and a car drove by and an idiot inside threw a half full cup of soda at them just for kicks. I guess teenage boys all over the world are brain damaged.

And of course, no visit to Ireland is complete unless you order up one of their famous Irish pizzas. On the back window is the menu. There’s nothing like Irish pizza, let me tell you!

 

 

Kilkenny– I have returned!

 

My most formative years were spent in Kilkenny, and so returning to the land of my youth was quite emotional for me.

What’s that? Oh, yeah, sure… heh heh. The Kilkenny I spent those years in was Kilkenny Drive in Lake Oswego, Oregon, but hey, can it be a coincidence that a country with a St. Kevin also named a town after the street I grew up on? I think not!

The day started with a drive to the Rock of Cashew, which is famous for having really hard nuts. At least that’s what I thought until I re-read it and saw that it was the Rock of Cashel. Cashel can be literally translated from: “castle, as pronounced when drunk,” and Rock means, “What you invariably hit your head on when you’re too drunk to even pronounce that.”

When seen from a distance, the castle is quite stunning. The Rock of Cashel refers to the rock on which this structure is built, not the music they were playing when they built it.

This is the Cross of St. Patrick. Cashel is reputed to be the site of the conversion of the pagan King of Munster by St. Patrick, way back in the 5th century. Centuries later, The Munsters recreated some of the hilarity of that time.

This is a reconstructed example of the kitchen they had back then. The microwave is in the far right corner, just out of the picture.

As usual for these kinds of castles, the view was stunning. 360 degrees and as far as the eye can see.

No, this isn’t the Door of the Day. But it’s a great door, next to the Wife of the Day. Well, all my remaining days anyway.

The castle is being protected and restored; the scaffolding is actually there to hold up a temporary roof they had to install in order to dry the place out.

Considering how old this is (the majority of buildings on the site date from the 12th and 13th centuries), the cathedral is quite impressive. A rope for a bell on top dangled through that hole, so they could let everyone know when the next Taco Bell grand opening was occurring.

Carolyn felt a little cross.

I see dead people. Actually, one of the stories about these graves we got from the tour guide was that by Irish law, gravestones are private property and cannot be touched by the government or anyone except the owner. The tall one at the left is from a family named Skully, and the Celtic cross that was on top was blown off in a storm. They can’t restore it unless a Skully comes forward as an heir and authorizes it. Vin? John? Are either of you Irish?

This gravestone dates back to 1748. Obviously a lot of them were illegible. Irish law allows the remaining descendants to also be buried here, but that’s it. Apparently there are about ten people left, and after that, the graveyard is closed. So in addition to tombs from 1748 and before, there are also current ones in the graveyard.

The abundance of Irish redheads is not a myth. These two cuties were climbing on a piece of the castle that was left in place after it crashed down during a storm, before they started making efforts to fix up the place. I couldn’t find the witch’s shoes underneath it, however. Probably looted.

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And here’s the slideshow of the remaining pix.

From there we drove to the town of Kilkenny, as mentioned, the street name on which I spent most of my teenage years.

You can’t really tell here, but the traffic on the “Medieval Mile” was very clogged. It almost took longer to drive from one end to the other than it did to walk it. The streets are narrow and just nothing about it is designed to handle two lanes of cars.

The highlight of Kilkenny is the Kilkenny Castle. Remarkably, it was essentially a private residence from its construction in 1195 all the way through to 1935, when it was more or less abandoned. It was then sold to the people of Kilkenny in 1967 for £50.

The view from inside the castle. Those are a couple of cathedrals in the distance. But you probably already guessed that.

This is the Hall of Portraits, which they needed before the invention of YouTube.

This is the way it actually looked in the 1800s. When you own a house for almost 800 years, your ancestors are bound to accumulate.

 

In that same room, they incorporated stereo fireplaces so you could hear the fire crackling in both ears. This was produced after they first attempted to make fireplace headphones, which failed disastrously.

This guy was named “Larry Long Arms.” To be honest, this was the first sign we had that the place wouldn’t have the luster of a Tower of London, or the ancient authenticity of Trim Castle.

Because the castle was used as a residence into the 1800s, some of the displays had a Downton Abbey-esque feel to them. I dared Carolyn to go sit on one of the chairs real quick for a great photo opp, but she wisely declined. Given the alarm notices posted all around, that was probably a good thing.

On the other hand, there was no alarm notice on this old toilet, so I took great offense that they chased me from the place when I decided to try it out.

I told them that based on the color of this wallpaper alone, I was already ready to take a hike anyway.

Seriously, the castle was just really so-so for us; it was sort of a combination of Kensington Palace in London and one of the old castles here. I guess we really like the ancient castle thing. So while it was interesting and we were glad we visited, it definitely ranked lowest on our list of favorite Irish castles.

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Here’s a slideshow of the rest of the pix.

In addition to the castle, Kilkenny features the aforementioned “Medieval Mile,” which is simply a charming collection of little shops all scrunched together along a too-narrow street for two lanes. At the opposite end of the mile from the castle, are a couple of cathedrals that are impressive. We arrived too late to get in to see anything inside, but here are the pix we took of them anyway.

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This is St. Canice’s Cathedral, also known as Kilkenny Cathedral. The present building dates from the 13th century and is the second longest cathedral in Ireland.

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The construction of Saint Mary’s was begun 1843 and finished in 1857.

Today we have three Doors of the Day, because they’re all cool in their own way.

 

Driving in Ireland presents some challenges. Aside from driving on the left and negotiating some incredibly narrow roads, in Dublin you have two additional things to contend with: traffic and non-existent street signs.

When charting a route from where we are into downtown Dublin to see Trinity College and The Book of Kells, this is what I wrote down:

M9 to  M7 -> Turns into N7 -> Turns into R110 -> Turns into R810 -> Turns into R108 -> Turns into R137 -> Try and find some parking.

On Google Maps, it looked like a straight line from when we first got on the freeway to Trinity College. So other than the road names changing every couple of miles, it looked easy-peasy.

Except once you’re on the N7, which is supposed to turn into R110, there are no signs indicating when that happens. And the straight line doesn’t end up being a straight line when you’re forced to turn right or left at some random intersection. Before you know it, you’re heading to Belfast or London via the Irish Sea.

Very few streets have signs on them, and the number of signs indicating that you’re headed toward M50 or M9 or whatever are few and far between. Despite that, one way or another we managed to get close enough to the college and found some parking. Phew!

On our way to the college, we were accosted by these fun-loving Irishmen, who asked where we were from when they saw us taking pictures. After posing for a picture, they began yelling, “Trump! Trump! Trump!” They were clearly either inebriated, brain damaged, or they really hate America.

Trinity College was founded in 1592, just shortly before I was born. It’s the top university in Ireland, and is famous for housing the “Book of Kells,” which we’ll get to shortly.

The campus is quite beautiful, with many old buildings that date back hundreds of years.

This music student took us on a 30-minute tour of the campus. He does the job as a way to assist with his expenses. Like so many enlightened countries, college is free in Ireland, but of course you still need some money to eat and get haircuts. Well, maybe just eat.

This beautiful tree was in the middle of the courtyard, and actually is responsible for helping to keep one of the buildings from collapsing for a third time. Why? Because the campus was built on marshy ground, and the first two attempts in the construction of one particular building ended in collapse both times. Between the river retreating further from the campus and the planting of these… wait for it… imported Oregon Maples… the third time was the charm. The Oregon Maples apparently suck up a ton of water, drying the ground even further. Who would’ve thunk Oregon could have helped Ireland by drying something out?

This is a “sphere within a sphere” bronze sculpture in front of the library. It spins if you push on it, and has matching pieces in more than a dozen places around the world, including Tel Aviv, The Vatican, The University of California Berkeley, as well as the inside the kids play area at a McDonalds in New York. Except the latter one doesn’t spin on account of the Kid’s Meal toy that got stuck in the gears, and is covered in smears of ketchup, milkshakes, and snot.

After going through the tour we went into the library, which houses the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is a famous illustrated book of the Gospels written in Latin, and dates back to about 800 AD. It was named the Book of Kells because it was held in the town of Kells for a long time before being donated to Trinity College. Which means that it’s a good thing that it wasn’t originally written in Intercourse, Pennsylvania.

They don’t let you take pictures of it, but they had a big exhibit with lots of close-ups of the incredibly detailed artwork. Amazing what can be accomplished without computers and the patience of a saint.

But for us, the place that took our breath away was the Long Room, the home to over 200,000 Very Old Books (Or VOB’s, as they’re known in the trade). It is known as one of the most impressive libraries in the world, even surpassing the one in Wilsonville. It was simply amazing… not sure the pictures do it justice, but it actually was a more impressive exhibit than the Book of Kells was for us.

Lots and lots of VOB’s.

The books are arranged by size, which is great for aesthetics, but sure made searching for the book you want a challenge unless you knew ahead of time how tall it was. True story.

Busts of luminaries such as the philosopher Socrates (pronounced So-Krates), who achieved worldwide fame due to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, line the hall.

They also had the world’s oldest surviving Irish harp on display, and is the model for the emblem of Ireland, as well as Guinness Beer’s logo.

This is inside one of the study halls. A pretty cool scene to greet you every day as you walk into class.

They also had the skeletal remains of Bullwinkle on display there as well. Or maybe they were extinct deer, I can only remember so much.

From there we wandered over to see the Dublin Castle. Unfortunately, by the time we got there they weren’t handing out any more tickets for the day. It’s a fully restored castle, unlike so many of the others we’ve seen that have been cleaned up but not restored. We both prefer the unrestored castles that let you in even if you show up at 3:00 PM.

Still, we were able to get into the courtyard. It’s an impressive building, and we may be back to see it later in the trip. Stay tuned! Don’t touch that dial!

From there we went to the Chester Beatty Library, which is an exhibit of the collection amassed by Warren’s brother. I think. Anyway, it was interesting, and free, and I’m sure delights many an aficionado of old religious and Asian art, but it wasn’t really our cup of tea, and we soon wandered back to the streets in order to find our car.

Along the way, we passed by this 400 foot steel sculpture, which was a monument to the 1st place finish Ireland had in the prestigious World Crocheting Tournament held in Serbia in 1988. Either that, or it’s called the Spire of Dublin. My theory is that it’s an example of what it would look like if Google Maps really did plop a real live pin in the middle of the city.

The River Liffey flows through Dublin, and looks great from this angle.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look so great when you look down in it. Apparently “Liffey” ain’t full of “lifey.” At least not anything that wouldn’t star in a horror film.

Today we have two Doors of the Day. The first is Carolyn in her seldom-worn black ensemble in front of a dark blue door. The second is Carolyn in her seldom-worn black ensemble in front of doors in Trinity College.

Lastly, our drive back from downtown Dublin to our house just outside of Kilcullen was something right out of the Twilight Zone. We have Siri on the iPhone GPS, but I like to use that sparingly because even with sparse use, I’m really going to be squinting my eyes, opening them ever so slowly, when I look at our AT&T bill. Hitting the GPS regularly surely racks up the charges, even with the international plan we bought through AT&T, so I tend to turn it on, get our bearings, and then turn it back off.

But since we were in rush hour, and in no big need to get home at any particular hour, we decided to try the old fashioned way of navigating… by map. But not only is Dublin’s rush hour traffic pretty much standstill, the lack of street signs keeps you guessing the entire way. On top of that, long lines of cars get backed up in two lanes, and it isn’t until you get to the intersection that you realize you really needed to be in the other lane. And despite their reputation for Irish friendliness, when it comes to trying to butt in line with a car, most of ’em ain’t havin’ it. Despite that, I got away with it a couple of times, shouting, “We’re just stupid Americans! Get off our backs!”

Anyway, we’re tootling along, moving away from Trinity College and Dublin Castle, and we get a few miles away after driving about 45 minutes, but then have to take a turn we didn’t want, so we drive another few minutes through some back streets, and lo and behold, we’re passing right by Dublin Castle again. I swear we were transported in front of it like in a Twilight Zone episode. 45 minutes to get away from it, five minutes to be right in front of it again.

So I finally gave in, and we turned on Siri and the GPS and she found a way out of town lickety split. It helped that by that time most of the rush hour traffic was already dispersed since they actually know how to get home.

The AT&T charges will be worth it.

Yes, she is. But the keep at Trim Castle is pretty cool too!

We ate dinner at a randomly selected restaurant, and have finally decided that our initial assumption –that European restaurants wouldn’t serve as big of portions as we tend to find in American restaurants– just isn’t true. Here, Carolyn begins devouring an enormous dish of beef and Guinness stew, along with a huge plate of vegetables. So far, while we haven’t visited that many restaurants because we like to travel on the cheap and buy food at the grocery store and eat it at home, the ones we have visited have plied us with enough food to keep us fat & happy. This isn’t a weight-losing expedition boy howdy.

Today we put on our time travelers cloaks and visited some very, very old things. In fact, we visited the oldest manmade structure ever found on earth.

The place is called Bru na Boinne, and dates back to before the Pyramids in Egypt, built some 5,000 years ago. It was amazing to stand inside this thing and see the layers of stones laid with amazing precision and engineering. They moved stones weighing over ten tons from 50 miles away or more. And then piled them on top of each other to create a room, that even after 5,000 years, hasn’t allowed a single drop of water to seep through.

It’s basically a huge mound on top of a cliff that overlooks the countryside about as far as you can see. The outside was rebuilt using the same stones and style in which it had originally been built, but inside, virtually nothing has been changed.

This is the wall on the outside… layer upon layer of rocks that were originally hauled from miles and miles away.

This is the entrance. Most of these prehistoric “passage tombs” have these big rocks in front of them, meaning the ancients had to scramble over the rock just to get it. The circular designs etched into the rocks are a mystery to everyone. In fact, no one even knows what these mounds were really used for.

The window above the door was built solely to allow the sun’s rays to shine into the room at the winter solstice. For five days surrounding the solstice, as the sun rises, it illuminates the room for about 15 minutes. Something right out of Indiana Jones.

 

The area around the mound consists of beautiful countryside. So peaceful and green.

They wouldn’t allow you to take pictures inside, but here’s one from the internet. It consists of a very narrow passageway; at one point, you have to turn sideways to get through. And then you enter a small room, with three smaller alcoves surrounding it. One has a bowl-shaped rock in it, another a flat rock, another, not much of anything. No one really knows what these mounds were used for; they found a smattering of human bones here and there but they may not have been tombs. It’s simply a mystery… but again, to stand in the oldest structure man has ever found on this planet… that was something special!

From there, we drove to the town of Trim, which has a well-preserved castle with a Keep in the middle of it. We went on a tour throughout, presented by a lively Irish lass who made it very entertaining.

This is the keep… our tour took us to the very top.

And this is the house where Jonathan Swift lived, the author of Gulliver’s Travels. This was a view from atop the keep.

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And here is the slide show of the keep and grounds. We finished up the day with that hearty dinner, with more plans set for tomorrow!

For some reason, some of the things I find most fascinating when traveling are the little things (or as the Irish would pronounce it, “tings”); the small differences in what otherwise are very similar cultures.

Especially with the UK and Ireland, we share a common language, and largely a very common lifestyle. Carolyn and I can walk throughout either country, and until we open our mouths to speak ‘Murican, no one has any idea we’re from a foreign land, especially one filled with Heffalumps, Woozles, and Trumps.

In no particular order, these are some of the tings I’ve noticed to be different here:

Everyone knows about driving on the left. Most people know that Europeans use a different current. In the case of Ireland and the UK, it’s 230v 50hz. But here we also see this additional switch, which controls whether the switch to the left is even active. And then on top of that, there’s a smaller switch which controls whether the individual plugs are active. I’m not an electrician, so I don’t know how much of this is regulatory overkill, common sense safety, or conservation… or maybe it’s all necessary because 230v 50hz would fry a blue whale if it touched it the wrong way. No big deal overall, just different.

I got a kick out of these instructions on a bag of microwave popcorn. I suppose if you’re going to distribute anything throughout the EU, you need to be readable by everyone. It does make all the hullabaloo about “speakin’ American” in the USA look pretty silly in comparison. So what if there are different languages that have to be posted? We gripe about adding one, and these people are accommodating 24? (Yeah, I counted ’em.) It’s nice to include as many people as possible, even if all you’re telling customers is that you have to open the damn popcorn bag and unfold it before you do anything else.

This is our (okay, by “our” I mean “Carolyn’s”) second experience with the small combination of washer/dryer. Yes, she’s taken on all the clothes washing duties. Just for the record, I do most of my own at home. But these things are so foreign and hard to work with, Carolyn has graciously been willing to take on the task, and I’m blessed for it.

It has now been named, “Lucifer’s Washer.” It’s a space saver to be sure, but clothes not only come out overheated and wrinkly, but it takes for-frickin’-ever to complete. We’re talking four or five or it seems like ten hours. Of course, she might be hitting the “four hour” button each time thinking it’s the symbol for express wash, but there’s no setting in the world that should make a wash and dry take so long. Clothes have to be started before one goes to bed in the hopes that it’ll be done by the time you wake up, we learned that the hard way after staring at a never-ending cycle through two moon phases.

So if you need to supervise it in order to pull out your clothes immediately after drying, prepare for a long day of listening to Lucifer’s Washer grind on your earballs for hours on end. And just when it sounds like it has stopped, and you get ready to pounce… “whoosh, chugga-chugga-chugga” starts up again, following by some eerie and maniacal laughter you can just barely make out beneath the grinding.

This looks to be a common heating scheme, and it’s actually pretty effective, if you don’t mind bending over to set the temperature. Instead of heating the whole damn house, each room has one of these, so you simply turn it on when you’re in the room and leave the other ones off. It heats up pretty quickly, so I have to imagine that if you’re conscientious about those settings, it reduces energy consumption far better than our heat-the-whole-damn-house-including-every-closet American scheme.

Nothing too remarkable about these switches except they tend to put them outside the doors instead of inside. Imagine that, having your light already turned on before you enter the room? Brilliant! How many horror movie scenes would have to be changed if the US used this scheme? The only issue it raises is that it’s very easy to play a joke on whoever’s in the bathroom. But I think it’s safe to say that joke would probably only happen once in most cases, because, you know, everyone’s gotta pee, and no one should have to face an enraged grizzly, a hungry shark, or a wife who is sitting on the pot and had the lights turned off on her.

I already covered this road construction on a previous blog, but it’s worth noting again in the context of, “why is it America doesn’t pay more attention to what other countries do?” I mean, this is just a solid idea, and a way to eliminate one of the most dangerous jobs we have.

Cars: my take on cars over here is that you rarely see SUV’s, even vans are pretty rare, and by far the most common vehicle is the four-door sedan. My recollections of Italy from nearly a decade ago were that they had a lot more of the teeny-tiny mini-cars that still look a little funny. I haven’t seen very many of those in any of the countries we’ve visited this time. The other point of note is that it’s rare to see a crappy-looking old beater. I don’t know if that represents a more prosperous middle class overall or it’s because of government policies that make it easier to own a newer vehicle, but no matter where we’ve traveled in Europe, the cars look pretty nice.

In addition to the scarcity of fast food outlets, with only an occasional big M providing the eyesore of its promise to deliver excessive and fatty calories to the populace, it’s also quite a distinct change to not see huge shopping malls and grocery stores and have-everything stores the size of small towns populating the landscape. There are far more individual “ma and pa” shops everywhere. Part of what makes Europe so fascinating is that you can go from country to country and see different ways of life and architecture and languages and so on. The U.S. would be quite a different tourist destination if every state did its own thing as well. But alas, we’ve got to have those billionaires, so every city gets the same malls and eight fast food joints per person and the same mega-businesses. Europe’s a lot more interesting to visit as a result, not to mention healthier with people less worried about working even more hours so they can buy more stuff.

We haven’t turned on the telly all that often during this trip. I do always enjoy getting a peak at the overall experience in different countries, especially the commercials. For my money, no one does more interesting and crazy commercials than Japan. It’s as if their way of convincing customers to buy something is to be as silly as possible and appeal to the level of a five year-old. It’s actually very cute… in a weird way.

Here, humor is the most common theme, but otherwise there isn’t that much difference in commercials between here and the US. I was curious to see whether commercials were mostly Irish or imported from the UK. Most of them are Irish. There’s a smattering of British accents as well as American, but mostly high production values apparently produced out of Ireland, for the Irish.

However, one constant that seems to be on no matter when you turn on the telly is Britain’s Got Talent. It’s as ubiquitous as Judge Judy (which I mention because yes, she’s on here as well) or the way Gilligan’s Island and Star Trek used to be in the ’70’s, or maybe America’s Funniest Videos today. They even have a Britain’s Got More Talent, which is a sillier offshoot but apparently created because Brits and Irish can’t get enough of the premise. I don’t know if what we’re seeing are repeats or if this is the High Season when all these winners are picked for some later elimination shows, but it has almost always been on when we’ve surfed the telly. I’m sure Britain’s Got Even More Talent is waiting in the wings, soon to be followed by Britain’s Got Even More Talent Than The More Talent We Promised Before.

One of the commercials we just saw advertised was health care insurance for about 30 euros a month. Keep in mind, this is on top of the free national health care they already have, I think it gets you moved up the queue quicker. Meanwhile, in the US… well, you already know what you’re paying for health insurance in the US.

Anyway, as I’ve gazed over the people throughout the big European cities as well as the countryside, I’ve been struck at how reasonably prosperous and content everyone seems to be, even though their big, loathsome, horrible, gonna-kill-all-jobs governments provide far more services than we do in the US, such as health care. The number of homeless people or beggars we saw in Amsterdam, Paris, London, and Dublin was almost nil. I’ve walked past more homeless people in Portland on one block than we’ve seen so far in every place we’ve been, combined.

It seems as if these countries are willing to say, “You know, we’ll be content with having a larger and medically treated middle class with a built-in retirement program at the risk of having a few less billionaires.”

According to the World Health Organization’s rankings, including the responsiveness of said care, the finances, level, and distribution, the number one country for health care in the world? France. Italy comes next. UK is 18 and Ireland is 19. The U.S.? 31st. Keep in mind that the US spends more per capita than any country in the world, and by quite a bit. Despite that, according to the CIA’s World Fact Book, the US is 57th in the world in infant mortality, right in between Serbia and Croatia. There is no western European country worse than we are. The worst? Afghanistan, predictably.

My favorite data point as to the efficacy of any health care system is how well we keep our children alive. Keeping young ones alive is perhaps the paramount imperative of any species. So how where does the US rank in keeping children five and under alive? 44th. Again… we spend the most, but are 44th in the world at keeping our five year olds and under alive. This all accumulated pre-ObamaCare, which provides just baby steps in the direction the rest of the civilized world has already traveled. Sure every country has its problems, and no system is perfect, simply because they’re all human, but when we have something to compare it to, it’s worth looking at the comparisons. Just sayin’.

Okay, end of rant. But when I see health insurance advertised over here for 30 euros a month, the statistics that are so easily accessible to evaluate which direction we should be pushing our own health care become all that more real and obvious. For those of you who believe the politicians’ screams that even just ObamaCare has brought our country to the brink of economic oblivion, do me a favor. Show a piece of data that supports that. Anything. Email me, whatever. If there is no data, then perhaps it’s time to ponder that maybe the U.S. isn’t always smarter than the rest of the world, and we could learn a thing or two, eh?

In the end, we’re all largely the same, and we want the same things. It’s nice to travel over here and have that confirmed. With all the political gamesmanship and lying going on in today’s American election cycle, sometimes it’s nice just to come over and see that people are just living their lives and all the other nonsense is just that.

Road Trip!

After spending part of one whole day in our new home sitting back and relaxing, we got cabin fever and had to get back out there to see the sights. We decided to head out west, specifically to the Dingle Peninsula (which we only saw from across the water as it turned out, dingleberries that we are), the Ring of Kerry, the city of Cork, and of course the Blarney Castle, which we actually added to our itinerary once we were out there quite by accident.

It’s about a three hour drive to get across the country east to west. Fortunately, there is a very nice highway for most of it, where you can go 120km/hour (75 MPH). They drive the way the Italians do… if you’re in the right lane you better be passing someone. There aren’t as many speeders here as there are in Italy, but if you’re in the right lane and someone comes up on you, you better get to the left pronto. It’s efficient, everyone understands it, and other than some congestion in Cork, the highway moves very quickly.

So Carolyn isn’t going to have known the following until she reads this entry, but it’s actually quite entertaining to be traveling with someone who gets so excited about everything she sees. I think the combination of her being a designer as well as the excitement of seeing things she only dreamed of seeing creates an exuberance that makes the whole trip rather joyful. She thinks I’m continually annoyed with her for being so interested in everything, but actually I’m not at all. In the end, she’s cute and loving and sweet and our love for each other continues to grow the longer we are together.

Of course, her enthusiasm also means that the picture-taking is nearly non-stop. Which is great for us in the long run, since we can pore through all the pictures in our old age, squealing with delight while she says, “Remember when I took a picture of my boots in the car?”

Indeed, one of the phrases that may I hear over and over again in my sleep is, “Maybe you should take a picture of…” It could be a house, a field, a business sign, a duck, a sheep, more sheep, even more sheep, a road, a landscape, the same landscape from two feet to the left, more of the house that was next to the landscape that I didn’t quite get enough of… you get the picture (literally).

It creates a lot of work for me to sort through them and organize them for the blog, but in the end, I love her for it because we’ll have an extensive pictorial documentary of this once-in-a-lifetime trip, and who can complain about someone being so excited to be where they are, wanting pictures of everything possible? Of course it’s not practical to have a video camera taped to your head so you can record the entire trip in order to relive it in its entirety some time in the future, but in a way that would be pretty cool, as long as you could edit and fast forward quickly and easily. Traveling with Carolyn is the next best thing in any case. I tease her once in a while, but deep down she’s a hoot to travel with, and we’re having a great time. I couldn’t ask for anything more than to be with someone who largely wants to do and see the same things I do, and is all the more excited about it.

Because of the volume of pictures, this will be organized with a brief summary of the main points of interest, and then a series of slide shows for those interested enough in knowing what it might be like to make this trip, just short of watching an entire video taken from a camera taped to our heads.

Since the drive is rather long, we decided to book a night in a B&B out in the area. We found one called the Hillcrest House. It is run by a kindly woman who has been doing it for 37 years. It was easily the best lodging value I’ve ever experienced in my life. For 60 euros (currently $68 or so), we got a room, a tea with lots of goodies upon our arrival, and a delicious breakfast of our choosing the next day. I had to order the Irish breakfast because we’re in Ireland. It included “black and white pudding,” which is a rather tasteless concoction that also includes pig blood mixed in. But otherwise the meal was delicious and filled us beyond capacity for our upcoming adventures of the day.

Here we are having tea upon our arrival:

While the value of the Hillcrest House was incredible in terms of the price, the room was quite small, with twin beds that had footboards, which meant my 6′ 3″ frame didn’t quite fit, making for a fitful night’s sleep. The shower reminded me of what it would be like to take one on a boat. And the owner kept the house very, very warm. She didn’t seem to mind our wandering throughout completely naked in order to accommodate the temperature (the only other visitors were a German couple, so we figured they’d be very accommodating to nudity since they practically invented it), but we were fortunately able to open a window and cool our room down to less than Saharan levels so that we could be fully dressed while in the privacy of our own room.

One of the main things that strikes you while you’re there, whether inside the place or out, is the quiet. It is just completely quiet. That is true for a lot of places in Ireland… if you want to get away from the noise… come to Ireland. It’s quiet. Ssshh. I’m typing too loud!

After depositing our bags, we got back on the road to drive what’s called “The Ring of Kerry,” which is largely a sightseeing tour that includes the coast and a series of small towns and some ruins and such. The Ring of Kerry drive is included in the slideshow below that consists largely of the various sights we saw while driving.

The next day we drove to the quaint fishing village of Kinsale, which gets its own slide show below. We also visited Fort Charles, which gets its own slide show as well, and looks like this from the air. It took me fifty-five tries throwing my camera up as high as I could with the timer on to get this picture, so I’m rightfully proud of it.

After Kinsale and Fort Charles, we headed up toward Cork, and noticed some signs to Blarney. Blarney hadn’t been on our itinerary for this trip only because we are still geographically challenged, and, to be honest, its current reputation moved it down our to-do list some. The Blarney Castle and Blarney Stone’s reputations have suffered as a result of the “kissing of the stone” being a bit silly and overblown, which is true. In Rick Steve’s book on Ireland, he even downplays the castle saying it’s underwhelming and just barren inside. On that, we couldn’t disagree more. The grounds were beautiful, but the castle itself was a wonder to behold and walk inside.

Indeed, Blarney gets its own slide show and individual pictures with comments.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get an overhead shot of the castle out of fear that they’d mistake my hurled camera for a drone and shoot it out of the sky.

Here’s the site that greets you after you walk past the entry. It’s quite imposing and impressive. The castle, not us.

Once inside, walking up this very narrow staircase is not for the faint of heart.

A little known fact is that the early Irish invented the plastic skylight.

This is where you lay down to put your head under the wall to kiss the Blarney stone.

Here’s a man, not me, who is doing it. There is absolutely no risk, other than if you’re too old to get back up off your back. But kissing a stone that has been touched by the lips of thousands upon thousands of people before us? Ick.

But here’s the main reason I especially didn’t want Carolyn to kiss it. With the gift of gab she already has, if the myth were true, she might never again, in her entire life, ever stop talking.

This was called “The Murder Hole,” where they could pour boiling oil or rocks, etc. on invaders if they made it past the walls. It’s also where Carolyn feared I might throw her if she’d kissed the Blarney Stone.

A very unusual tree in which the branches are growing downward. Apparently it’s a great place to gather eggs because the birds build nests upside down and when they lay eggs they just fall to the ground.

The Blarney House. Carolyn wanted to make an offer on it for a second home in Ireland.

They had Druids back then, but apparently in Ireland the Druids made their Stonehenges smaller, and with plastic. But their sound systems did go all the way to eleven.

The sign says, “The Rock Close.” They were right.

They had signs throughout the castle, including this old one at the entrance of the master bedroom that must’ve been posted by the queen:

Again, Blarney was a sight well worth seeing. The old medieval castles are fascinating, with Blarney being one of the most interesting we’ve seen. And that ain’t no blarney!

After Blarney we drove through Cork, which is Ireland’s second biggest city, and on to Kinsdale, which is extremely picturesque. We didn’t spend any time in Cork other than driving through it, but we saw this impressive row of buildings, although we have no idea what it is:

We also spotted this road construction, which impressed us enough to take a picture because of the clever way that they handle the traffic. Instead of road crew standing there looking bored while smoking a cigarette, and otherwise risking their lives to stop irritated drivers from driving past them despite their lazily held stop sign, here they have a light with a timer. When it turns green, you go. When it’s red, you know exactly how long you have to wait. Why we don’t have those in the U.S. is clearly a failure of either European marketing or the willingness of American to embrace change.

So here is the Blarney slide show:

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And here is the Kinsale slide show:

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And here is the slideshow of Fort Charles. Quite an impressive fort, built in the early 1600s, and the site of some of the most important battles in Irish history.

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The last slide show are simply all the sights we saw as we drove across Ireland. You can easily summarize what we saw with one word: green. Everything’s green. Green green green. And then more green. But it’s beautiful, and gentle, and serene. And green.

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Speaking of green, they even use sheep here to mow the greens on golf courses!

We couldn’t resist this greeting card, seeing as how we’ve gotten lost multiple times on this trip. We’ve always found our way home, and sometimes have had a whale of a time being lost!

 

We arrived at our new Irish digs after a slightly confusing drive from downtown Dublin. I have to say that “slightly confusing drive” while driving in Ireland is probably a redundant phrase. When you factor in driving on the left hand side plus the congestion of downtown Dublin and highway numbering strategies that don’t make a lot of sense to a foreigner, let’s just say that when we pulled into the driveway, we both exhaled rather deeply.

The house is charming, and is on the property of the equally charming couple, Pat and Una, who own and manage it. We had a very nice chat with them upon our arrival, but I don’t remember anything they said because all I heard was their lyrical Irish accent, which we floated on like they were singing a siren’s song and we were sailors ready to crash into the rocks to hear it. They could have told us they thought either of us looked a lot like Donald Trump and we would have just smiled and asked them to keep talking.

Their property is quite large and filled with cows and some horses and a whole flock of rabbits. Maybe you don’t call a bunch of rabbits a flock… but if they all were to back up at the same time, you could call it a receding hareline. Har Har!

This is the house from the outside, and our VW Golf, which is a great little car despite having the stick shift for its manual transmission on the left.

The first morning the two of us went to get into the car, we both opened the wrong doors at the same time, looked up at each other, and busted out laughing. Ah yes, the driver’s side is on the right.

Here are some views from the house looking the other way, from inside the main kitchen/dining area window. Quite a gorgeous view, all the way to Ireland’s second tallest mountain. I don’t think one would ever get tired of such a view.

And here’s what I look like working on the blog (and work stuff) from our kitchen. The house appears to be fairly new, and after being in a couple of small apartments and hotel rooms, feels positively like a mansion with its three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

I tried to ride this noble steed so Carolyn could always remember me riding up on a white horse in order to rescue her from the flock of killer rabbits, but had to settle for this photo instead.

So for our first Irish excursion into the countryside we decided to visit the area called Glendalough, which features an ancient (we’re talking 6th century) cathedral and monastic settlement, founded by none other than St. Kevin.

But first, we had to get there by car. And by driving on the left. With the driver’s side on the right, with the gear shift on the left, and the windshield wipers on the right, on two lane roads that are about as wide as a typical one-lane road in the states and generally no idea where we were at any given time.

On the drive, Carolyn was snapping pictures right and left in order to collect a sense of the Irish countryside. It is green, and beautiful, and only bisected by these teeny tiny roads. Here is a short slide show to give you a sense of the countryside.

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Said roads are occasionally inhabited by some of the many sheep that can be seen just about everywhere. We even noticed a sheep pumping gas at one of the stations. Anyway, when driving on these roads, you certainly can’t afford to be distracted. In addition to almost creating a freezer full of lamb chops, one with a backwards “VW” imprinted on it, we also rounded a bend and nearly rear-ended a bicycle rider. You really have to be a little nuts to be riding a bike on roads with no shoulders and that can barely accommodate two cars.

Once we arrived at Glendalough, we were treated to a nice little tourist attraction which featured a fairly large cemetery, as well as a tower, a church, and the remains of a cathedral. The stone construction makes it look as if the church will stand for another 1,400 years.

Anyway, if you’re interested, here’s another slide show of all that we saw. Warning: It’s about 45 pictures so it may take some time to load.

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It’s not often I find a saint named after me, much less an ice cream cone.

Afterwards we went inside to escape the hail. It hailed off and on the entire visit. Carolyn had herself an Irish coffee and I couldn’t pass up a locally brewed St. Kevin’s Ale.

Do you like sheep? If so, you’ll love Ireland!

Aaand just to prove that Carolyn is not the only person in the world to get excited about doors, I couldn’t help snapping a picture of this postcard, which will also serve as our closing Door of the Day picture:

 

Why a picture of frying meat? I took the picture because the fan for this stovetop was on the other side of the kitchen, and the stove was right beneath some curtains. Just a little odd. Maybe the steam from the stove feeds the meat-sniffing plants above it.

Another weird appliance was the toilet: it had to be cranked at least 6-7 times up and down real fast before it developed a head of steam and got everything flushed. We were a bit panicked that it wasn’t going to be pretty until we figured out that little technique.

The orange juice concentrate they use here comes in a bottle and it is called “high juice squash.” At first I thought it was a combination of orange juice and squash. But I think that’s their synonym for “concentrate.” You mix it 4 to 1 just like with the frozen concentrate.

As you can see, we do home cookin’ while we’re traveling. It’s great to rent an apartment and bop on down to the grocery store instead of eating out all of the time. Neither of us are particularly “foodies,” so this is a great way to extend the travel dollar, plus you learn interesting things about their everyday food too.

So to close the book on London, we did enjoy it immensely. The friendliness of the people continued to impress: we had to drag our two (and too) big suitcases on about a ten minute walk from the apartment to the tube. They generally have no escalators or even lifts (elevators) in those stations, so I approached the three flights of stairs with two 50 lb. suitcases in either arm ready to suck in a deep breath. Suddenly out of nowhere a Prince Harry-looking chap stopped and offered his assistance. I would have been dumbfounded anywhere else, but I’d come to expect such courtesies from Londoners. If it had been in Paris, and it was a 98-year-old woman trying to haul a steamer trunk like John Candy had in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, they would have sneered at her as they jostled around her. Maybe spit at her too, plus maybe throwing a few stones and kicking the trunk while calling her names. Okay, they weren’t that bad, but I’d have been very surprised to have gotten the same offer in Paris.

We were just really impressed with Londoners in general. Good show, cousins!

And so off we go to Dublin. We took the train to the airport just like we were London professionals, and had an issue-free flight from London to Dublin. Once in Dublin, we were treated to the same kinds of courtesies we’d gotten used to in London. The information desk was friendly and informative, but then when we got a little confused down on the road, we asked a driver sitting in a bus a question about where to pick up a different bus. Not only did he provide great information, as we thanked him and walked away, he even pulled up beside us in his big bus, and elaborated even further, moving his bus slowly along to match our strides. For a moment I thought he was going to say, “Ah, the heck with ye. Jump into me bus and I’ll take you there meself!” So far, the Irish are definitely keeping pace with the Londoners in the courtesy department.

We’re staying in a nice old hotel that first opened in 1824. Here is the front of the hotel:

We took an initial walkabout around the hotel just to get a feel for Dublin. It suffers a bit by comparison with Amsterdam, Paris, and London, which, to be fair, are cities that will put most around the world to shame. It’s a nice city, but we’re not going to spend a whole lot of time here because the main focus with Ireland is to get into the countryside and explore all of that. It’s time to relax after the hectic pace of the big cities.

The hotel borders a park called St. Stephen’s Green Park. It’s a beautiful park that appears to be appreciated by Dubliners, as we saw many couples and families in the grass with picnics and/or blankets.

As you can see one of the first purchases we made in Dublin was a nice wool hat for me. My bald pate gets a little chilly in the cold wind, so now maybe I look a little more Irish or something, although we hear the Irish really do like Americans, so we’ll be unabashedly tossing our American accents about. But that Irish accent… it is truly music to one’s ears!

Carolyn had long dreamed of having an authentic English afternoon tea, and the hotel had a very nice one, so we had made reservations for that and spent the rest of the afternoon being proper Englishpeople. We had several types of tea as well as some delicious sandwiches and four separate desserts that were, well, you know, they were desserts!

That’s about it for this day: mostly a travel day. As is tomorrow in a different way; we’ll be picking up a car and driving to a house in the countryside. I’m sure it’ll relieve all two of our readers that we probably won’t be posting daily like we have been, because the idea is rest and relaxation, with of course occasional road trips. If we find somethin’ pretty, we’ll throw it up here. Unless, of course, we find a proper Door of the Day: