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The photos for the entire trip have been updated and posted, links to hotels and some attractions added, and the corrections made to the blog posts. Look back by choosing the country from the CATEGORIES list ----------------------> or simply click the button below to start back at the beginning. Thanks for reading along. Next trip: ?
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Ireland In WeeKa's Rearview Mirror Well, we liked Ireland a lot better than the UK. We had better food overall, Gail liked the people best of all, and her favorite place was the Dingle peninsula. I liked Galway a lot, and the night in Kinsale was the best. The day walking the beaches and seeing the Dingle area was pretty nice, however. There are a lot of cute places to see. Lucky us, we had the sun, but it can be pretty wet and cold. We met some really interesting people, and enjoyed great music. That being said, I don't plan to return a second time. Again, I missed the things I love about mainland Europe: the great food, cafe sitting, spectacular places. The "feel" of it all. But I am glad we came and found out. 23 July 2013 Up early to get to the Dublin airport. We have to drop off WeeKa and catch a flight to Paris. So far today is not working out well. I slept bad last night; the midges are out this time of year, and they bite, so you have to keep the windows closed. OK except there is no way to cool off the room, even sleeping on top of the sheets I am too hot and sleep fitfully, have a nightmare. I should have figured it out right there to just stop today and click on reset. But no, I kept scrolling through with the mouse. I found out there is a hold on my credit card. Possible fraudulent activity. I have to call them collect. OK, a hassle, but hopefully not a problem. So I tried at the Dublin Airport, at a pay phone, but the operator refused to try to connect me unless I gave him a credit card number. I explained that was why I was calling, that the credit card company instructs me to do it this way, so he hung up on me. Twice. Now I am getting mad and a little tense. Guess I'll have to work on it in France, since we have to board. Well, we board with no problem and the flight is short, but we hit the worst turbulence ever. Upon arrival in Paris we whisk right through border patrol (Bonjour! WHACK!) and I spy a pay phone, so I carefully follow the instructions I got in the email from Capital One... But no, the call, it cannot be made. Click. It's pouring rain as we exit the airport to the Roissy bus. OK, but we abandoned the umbrellas back in Ireland. However, the cooling rain feels good. After catching the underground from Roissy to Ecole Militaire, we arrive easily at our motel, the same one we stayed at five years ago, Hotel du Champ de Mars. The owner is very glad to see us, as we are her, but... Your name is Scott? No? We are not on the book. I am hot, sweaty, angry, but hold it together and show her our emails, which clearly show we have a room booked. A little hem and haw, and she can let us see two rooms, one on the third floor, one on the fifth. The one on the third is larger, less stairs to climb, but no view. On the fifth, however, we look out at the street below. The room is smaller but we take it. It is only when we are actually in the room, unpacking and cursing the day, when Gail opens the windows wide and says, Look!" And there, right before our eyes is the Eiffel Tower. First stroke of good karma. Now, lest you think I am a total idiot and somehow cannot follow the simplest directions from my credit card (Quote: "From overseas, contact an overseas operator... call 1-804.... state it is a Collect Call from CapitalOne Customer") let me tell you this: I figured, who can help with this? Why, a bank, of course. The first bank the lady could not get a call through, even after spending tome Googling overseas calling instructions. Second bank gave up right away. Third bank, can't call. I am about ready to step in front of the next taxi when we spy one more bank, Societe Generale Bank. I found a manager who found an English speaking manager who was A. fascinated by my iPod and B. willing and ready to help. It took about fifteen minutes of steady calling and trying things and suddenly! there was a voice at the other end! Bad news: turns out I am in Florida right now on a buying spree. Worse news: the account is closed, though this is really good news as they stopped the fraud, but bad news as in HELP! I AM IN EUROPE WITH LITTLE MONEY! OK. Take a breath. Can we get an emergency card? Hard to tell, a few days, need an hour on the phone (the bank is closing, the nice lady wants to go home.). can we issue it to a family member who can express it to you? Let's see, we are here four nights, Bern two, Interlaken... Nope. Well, the good news in the end is that the account is closed and I am not out any money. Bad news: I have €100 and change, and one ATM card. I can get €380 a day, and if that card goes bad... Fortunately I have an emergency BofA credit card buried in my pack. Unfortunately I cannot remember my password to the account and am locked out (you need to log in to set up a travel notification). Call the 800 number, says the website. Goddamnitalltohell. So I notified my bank I would be withdrawing more than usual and my fingers are crossed for the next two weeks. At about 18:00 I gave up. Just exhausted, dehydrated and registering about 99 on the PissedOff-o-Meter. Gail grabbed my arm and we walked over to the Eiffel Tower, sat on a bench and remembered our first time in Paris. I can walk these streets by memory; we have no map but I know exactly where to go, where we are. We touched base with the Rue Cler, thought about one café but ended up at another, the Le Campanella (Doorbell) where we sat on the sidewalk in the warm evening and had a 2005 Chateau Calissanne (from Provence), cassoulet for me and salad for Gail. We tasted and said no thank you to €50 Chateau Neuf de Pape, not because it wasn't great, but who can afford that? We started in at 20:00 and here we are at 23:00 still sitting, now in the dark, sipping wine and watching Paris unfold. This. This is what we have been missing all summer in the UK. The lights, the people. Great, not good wine and wonderful food and bread without even trying. The "Wooo-Ahhh" of the sirens, the quiet conversations going on all around us, the smell of cigarette smoke and perfume, the endless parade of people going by. Even the air; the thick taste of the wine. God, it feels so great to be here again. We lingered as long as possible. I sure hated to finish that last swallow of wine. At midnight, after the sparkly light show on le Tour Eiffel, the cafés are still packed and going strong. The stress slowly blew away in the cool breezes. Tough day today, but. Tomorrow is a new start. 22 July 2013 We gathered at the kitchen table downstairs for breakfast, talking with the hosts as they made it. The home made scones were the best yet. After hugs all around, we headed out. So we zipped up the M8 to Cashel, to see the Rock of Cashel. A few notes here: First, I did not suddenly develop a lisp or have too much to drink. Second, it is not a rock. Third, it is a Castle built on a rocky outcrop, started about 300AD which then turned into a cathedral about 1100. It was abandoned about 1700 and what you see now are the partially restored ruins. Using your imagination to put it back together, it must have been quite imposing. The St. Patrick's Cross in front is from the 12th century, the crosses in the graveyard are only 200-300 years old. The tallest, most ostentatious one was hit by a lightning bolt and is now an ugly stub. There is a lesson there. Here is an interesting fact: The St. Patrick's Irish cross has the circle around the top to help support the arms and to remind you of the sun, thus appeasing the Celts who worshipped the sun. We sped down side roads to Kilkenny. It is a cloudy but 22 degree day, so it is rather muggy and heavy feeling. We had a lunch of soup and wine at the Left Bank Pub, under the Kilkenny Castle, along the Parade. The Parade is the wide, main road-entry to the castle grounds. The pub is a huge, block long old building, with high ceilings, dark wood and brick walls, wood floored interior, and room after room of bars: a TV room bar, an intimate bar, lunch bar, dark smoking bar, whiskey bar and so on. The interior is like a maze. Kilkenny is a medium sized city, easy to get in and out of, with two main streets both leading up to the Kilkenny Castle, which is about 500 years old. The castle is in a U shape because one side was destroyed in a battle; now it opens to a fantastic huge grassy lawn. After a couple hours, we drove on listening to the radio. The big news is Kate, Princess Kate, is in the hospital in London having the new third-in-line to the throne. Did you know that when she gives birth, a royal scribe will write it on parchment, dash out of the hospital, give it to a driver who, with full police escort will rush to the palace to hand it to someone who will take it in to the Queen. Now, talk about a waste of taxpayer money... What's wrong with sending a text message, or just making a call? "Hello, Queen Mum? It's me, Billy. It's a boy, we've named him Tad. Prince Tad. OK, thanks, mum. Let the world know, OK?" So every hour now we get a birth update. I can't wait for the ceremony announcing his first poop. But, I don't think the British are all that nutty, after all we have the Kardashians. We finally arrived down a dirt road, to our home for the night, Glendalough, in the Wicklow Mountains just south of Dublin. We are staying in a five room guesthouse, along a river in a heavily pine-forrested valley, near the fantastic ruins of a monastery. The monastery was founded around 500AD, raided by the Vikings, then destroyed by the English about 1400. There is a 100 foot tall round tower, with the door about twelve feet up. They used it as a bell tower and safehouse for their valuables. It is really cool wandering among the hundreds of graves, looking at half ruined buildings and wondering how it looked when it was all still intact. Many of the gravestones are blank now, the names weathered off or so covered by moss and lichens they are impossible to read. Others lie in shattered pieces. I hope the relatives who treasured these memorials to their loved ones are gone now; I am sure they would be heartbroken to know time erases all. Not many places to eat out here, so we end up at the Wicklow Heather, and have a decent meal of crayfish and prawns to start, then a "Supreme of Irish chicken" with crispy Parma ham, wild mushrooms and spinach. Gail has a nice selection of vegetables and a side salad. For some reason my credit card doesn't work, so I pay cash and we head back to turn in early. Tomorrow we catch a flight to Paris. 21 July 2013 The Germans, so quietly eating breakfast until I greeted them with a hearty "Guten morgan" then we got the story about their twenty years of cycling through Ireland for a month every summer. Twenty years! They must be crazy. The two American girls came down to breakfast, they had cycled the 30KM over from Killarney yesterday and it about killed them. "Uphill the whole way." They called around and found someone last night to take them and their bikes back today. The sun is coming in the big window in our room, the hills in the distance are glowing soft green, and the huge tree out front spreads its arms wide, inviting us to sit in the shade. The church bells toll for mass, the sheep baaa and a cooling breeze drifts through the window. I can feel the rocks standing warm, impassively marking time in Kenmare Stone Circle. They say it is our time to move on. WeeKa is getting thirsty, so we top him off and head to Cork, through the hills on winding roads; cruising tunnels of trees, then plunging blindly into one lane rock tunnels through the rocky shoulders of the mountainside. We passed through cute, colorful town after cute, colorful town; in fact, if you want to see Ireland at its cutest I'd suggest a drive on A71 along the coast, Kenmare to Cork. As we got further along it got cloudy and cool, looks like our streak of hot sunny days has ended. At least it isn't raining We had no idea where we were going in Cork, and followed some Gaelic signs to what we thought was going to be the Cork Town Center but in fact turned out to be the Cork Jail. The old historic jail. So we sat for a minute deciding what to do when a lady came up and offered us two free tickets to tour the jail. Her teens inability to get out of bed by 11:00 was our good luck. It was fun to visit the jail, exciting to think about being flogged for drunkenness, or kept in a dark cell for years for prostitution or perhaps failing to pay the electric bill (at home they merely cut the power and then place liens on your home while they work to evict you... from the home that you own outright). I tried to make history "come alive" for Gail by locking her in a cell, but she'd have none of it. So, we scammed up a map of Cork and cruised in to look around before committing to parking fees and walking. Cork itself seems old, tired, worn down, with a greenish river running through town to dump into Cork Bay. We decided to just move on. We had a little trouble finding our way out of Cork, but eventually we were on the road headed to Cobh, famous as the last place the Titanic stopped before it stopped again in Iceberg Alley. Cobh is another cute, colored town, though a little more dramatic with the big cathedral perched high on a cliff. John F. Kennedy Park down on the waterfront was overflowing with flowers, across the street was a square with the Lusitania shipwreck memorial. There is a Titanic museum, Titanic plaques all around, and the Titanic Bar and Grill. I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, so we decided to stop in for a light lunch of smoked seafood chowder, vegetable soup, and a glass of wine. The soups were perfect on this cool grey day. We had to retrace our steps back to Cork then south to our town of the night, Kinsale. Cork is the big tourist town around here, God only knows why (because Lord sure doesn't know) but the residents of Cork go to Kinsale for a nice break. Kinsale is set up around a U shaped harbour, and is full of the requisite colored houses, ship - themed gift shops and Irish cuteness we are getting used to. Our guesthouse is also a bakery. We are hoping for a great breakfast. The owner is the funny sort of older lady you love to be around; while I was checking in with her daughter (who is about my age) she came in looking for something, put her hands on my hips and slid me over like a chair, found the thing she wanted, then moved me back into place. I paid the €80 for the room, and she insisted on giving me €5 back. "Tom tells everybody it's eighty, but it's really seventy-five." she explained. "Thanks for paying up front. The electricity will be turned off when you return." We had a laugh, she hugged Gail, complained about men and their lack of wanting to shop, then reminded us, as we were leaving, to be sure to eat a lot for dinner. "Then I don't have to feed you as much!" And we all laughed. Lovely. Brilliant, she is. It didn't take long to walk the harbour and the three streets of the town, and so we ended up in a great corner window seat at Apèritif, a wine and tapas bistro. We spent a nice couple hours people watching as we drank a nice bottle of wine and tried out things like (First round) Boyne Valley blue cheese gnocchi, and a Rustic bread board with tomato chutney, sun blushed tomatoes, goats boilie and roasted red pepper humus. Second round: (Ed only) flash fried king prawns, bok choi toasted sesame vegetables with sweet soy reduction. Round three: cod goujons (like fish and chips with an Irish name and light breading). Nice light dinner of little foods, spread out over two and a half hours... time to pub hop! Our fingers crossed for some good trad music, we walked across the street to The Silent Banjo and struck gold. It's hard to describe exactly what happened next, but here goes: It's about 22:00. Accordion music, light, and a couple people spill out of the pub onto the dusky, almost-night streets. I push in, out of curiosity, and there is a little band playing trad; a girl fiddling, guys on guitar, banjo and accordion, all about twenty years old, gathered around a table with a blonde girl sitting in the midst, keeping time. I spotted an open place against the wall opposite, and I'm not sure if I stumbled and did a quick-step shuffle, or perhaps Gail and I just look so young and energetic, but we no sooner got to the wall when the blonde came over with a huge smile and asked if we were the Irish dancers? We laughed (Baby, if you saw me dance, you wouldn't be asking.) and after a real quick introduction she was teaching Gail the steps. Well, that didn't go too far, but they were having a good conversation, long enough for her to lose her seat. OK. So a table in the corner opened up, and the people leaving gave us the stools, and the blonde returned to reclaim her seat. Gail and I decided to stay and enjoy the music, so I grabbed us a beer and glass of wine. We were talking about how nice the girl was, and Gail said, "I wanted to ask her..." so I went over to her and said, "hey, we're on, like, this long trip, and my wife would like some girl talk time, I mean, if you don't mind?" And she smiled really big and said, "OK" and went over to my stool. So I took her seat to save it for her, and so here I am, for the next hour or more, sitting right with the band, talking with them between songs. Meanwhile, Gail is back in the corner just having a great time with her new friend. It is so interesting to watch the group play, and how they cue off each other, and when the accordion player stepped it up man did they get on a roll. They usually play together as a group, travel to the different pubs, learn the traditional songs growing up but then improvise during the playing. I got along well with the guitar player, he asked if I play (offering me his guitar); I said no, but I wish my son was here because he fiddles, plays guitar, drums and all by ear... I was thinking of Dennis, my road trip buddy, how he would eat this up. They were interested in California, and our trip... somewhere along the line I bought them a round of drinks as they were out, and another for Gail and her friend. Gail, in the meantime, was finding out about the girl, who is from the midlands and friends with the accordion player. She plays too (and in fact played a number or two later in the evening). It was just a real great time, I mean, I could "feel" the music. Anyway, we eventually traded seats back and if that had been the end of it, well it would have been a fantastic night. But as we sat and started to catch each other up on the news, the guy, then the lady behind us started talking with us. Locals. Interested in California. "I have been in California," says the man. "San Francisco, Yosemite, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. It is such a beautiful state." I agree. But the lady knows about California, even where Redding is. She lived in the US for two years, eventually working as a CDF firefighter, and she loved it. "I'd like to go back some day." So I wondered if she was working in forestry now? "No, forestry is so boring over here..." and we went on to talk about how different National Parks are in Europe vs. the US, how forests are managed differently, and so on. Yea, so what are you doing now? She is a teacher, different age kids every year, whatever she is assigned. She loves teaching, it is not boring. "Tell me, is it true? That many teachers in the US work a second job?" Oh yes, I tell her, in fact I work a couple extra jobs. But it is very common. She shakes her head, throws back a swig of beer. "I can't imagine working more than I do with the children. We are paid very well... we have heard about this and none of us can imagine it, working a second job. Why don't they pay you in the US?" and I did not have a good answer for her. The thing to remember here is that this is a teacher, in a country that has implemented austerity measures imposed by the IMF and EU, so government spending is way down, and she is wondering why I am so poorly paid in comparison to her. More interesting comments: They spend more time in the primary grades teaching the Irish Language than they spend teaching maths. The old people use Irish, but young people (our age, say 50 and under) never use it after school. They also spend fifteen minutes a day teaching religion. I asked if it was a mix of religions or what; no, it is the official state sponsored Church of Ireland (Anglican-Catholic mix). Somehow I do not think this would sit well at all with the people who want "god brought back in school" in the US. Interesting. Well, I went to the loo, and when I returned Walter and Nora were sharing the table with us. They live just out of town, she is s nurse and needed to get into work at 5:00 next morning, but Walter was very interested in California. Then he confided in us: Obama is Irish! Big smile. This is a big joke in Ireland, they like to claim him as O'Bama. Anyway he went on to say how the Irish love Obama, how he has worked to restore the world's confidence in the US, and how he and the Democrats really respect others in the world and keep their promises. Then he went in a tirade about "When you put the Republicans in power..." and the lack of respect and other issues he saw. I won't go into detail, but it was a pretty long list. It is so interesting to hear, once again, the foreign view of America, and it is not always as flattering as we like to think. I hate to say it, but most of the people we meet are much more in touch with American issues, and worldwide politics in general, than we are. Quick: who is the current British Prime Minister? If you don't know even that, you don't know the biggest ally of the US. (As a side note, if you don't like this discussion, take it up with Walter. You know where to find him. I am the listener and reporter.) Well, the band wrapped up around midnight, there were hugs all around. Walter and Nora slipped off home, Gail and I finished our drinks and watched the bar close, the lights go off, and we helped clean up a little before thanking them for a great evening. It actually felt a little sad, a little lonely to walk home alone, just the two of us in the dark streets, quiet along the harbour. |
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