All travelogue today. First up...Ireland. This one is kinda long so for those that like the shorter ones, suck it up..
We started our trip in Dublin and had a good swath of Ireland in our sights. This year, we were traveling with our every other year travel partners, the mother/daughter duo of Lady Grey and Chiquita.
Our route from Taipei took us through Dubai and totaled over 17 air hours. Pretty uneventful except for the second leg when I was waiting for the bathroom late in the flight and a mom came up excitedly with her son and asked the flight attendant if they had a bag. Seen this movie before so I took three big steps back and the kid immediately projectile vomited all over the galley.
The Boy's flight arrived near to ours so we met him at the airport and on the drive into town, we saw seemingly every multinational corporation's logo on the buildings. The driver (Shawn...half the dudes in Ireland are named Shawn) said that with Brexit, a lot of the financial institutions view Ireland as the new banking center for the EU as they speak English and are certainly not Brexiting. It is also the hub of tech companies in Europe and their unemployment rate is running in the high 3 percent range, so the place is doing well at this time in history.
Since our clan arrived mid-morning while our partners didn't get in till later in the evening, we had the afternoon to look for trouble. Being a fan of Jameson, thought a distillery tour would be a good way to kill the afternoon. Our pad in Dublin was well situated across the street from St Stephens and a 10 minute walk from everything. Pretty fortunate as I had booked a hotel through HotelQuickly in September, and a week before our trip got an email that not only did they have to cancel our reservation due to "unforeseen circumstances", but they weren't gonna refund our payment, which was in full. Have used these guys before but in looking at the internet, we were not alone as they are going kaput and screwing over a lot of people. Seems like our credit card company is gonna help out with it, but stay away from HotelQuickly. We then moved to the Air BnB scene and had two confirmed places pulled from us. The fourth try worked and we were ultimately happy although the scramble that last week was not the most efficient use of time.
We got distracted (and lost) on our walk to Jameson by detouring through Trinity College. Pretty, but we didn't have time to dig in so left that for another day.
- Jameson is triple distilled (they seem mighty proud of that)
- John Jameson was Scottish
- The Jameson family motto "Sine Matu" (Latin for 'Without Fear') is on every bottle. Working on a family motto for us.
- John Jameson's wife Margaret had 19 children. Oooof.
- When smelling (nosing) whiskey, one needs to have their mouth open. As whiskey is a pungent spirit, this is so as to not burn your nostrils and to be able to smell its true essence. Seriously. It's kinda hard to do without looking like you're waiting for the hygienist to do her worst, but with practice you can make it a little less awkward. My wine guy had never heard this and they don't have a similar process. When I suggested he give it a try one night, the look on his face had me reaching for my zipper if you catch my drift.
The tasting was nice (a comparison of Irish, Scottish and American styles), we adults all had our beverage included with the price of admission and I bought a bottle of 18 year old Redbreast in the store. Suggest if you are in town that you visit the gift shop and skip the tour.
The guide was good. Spent a lot of the time crawling around Dublin Castle that was nice but not imposing. He told us that Obama's lineage has some Irish in it and during a state visit, his helicopter landed on the below grass part of the castle's gardens. The locals refer to him as O'Bama.,,a bit more on him later.
One piece of Irish that we learned that day is the word "craic" (pronounced crack) and it signifies fun. 'That was some good craic' and 'Nice craic' were popular sayings for a couple days, but it didn't have legs with our crew.
The tour ended at the Molly Malone statue. She seems to be the towns mascot and has a lot of legends that I won't bore you with but you can find here. Her statue is a famous landmark and we were told to grab her left breast, which I have also found to be the luckiest one generally.
We left our guide and he suggested that we go back to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells (a famous illuminated bible that I was gonna pass on) and also the Long Room, which is a long room full of old books but did sound cooler than that. One of the other folks on our tour said it was closed for the holidays and that was proven true and we sadly missed that. Poor planning on my part as we coulda done that the day before had I done my homework. 4.0 Travel in action..
The rest of the afternoon we tooled around Grafton Street and the side streets around it. The Grafton environs is the prime gathering place in town and it was super energized with Christmas coming up. Streets were jammed with shoppers, buskers and all sorts of life. Make sure you're within shouting distance when booking your accommodations.
You can see the red hair on the one dude. We were all kinda expecting half the folks around to be ginger and while the percentage was much less than that (we said more than once that the locals look very American), there were a lot of the pale red head types. Invariably, they all had blotchy skin and have to suspect that hemophilia is rife in this land. One more feature of the locals was the women's eyebrows. That any clown would be envious of their creativity would be an understatement.
Was told three different ways that we needed to have drinks at the Horeshoe Bar at the Shelbourne Hotel...it's Bono's favorite!
Was told three different ways that we needed to have drinks at the Horeshoe Bar at the Shelbourne Hotel...it's Bono's favorite!
It was hopping this night but we found a decent spot at the bar. We've been traveling with Chiquita since she was 12, and this year she turned 18. She told the Boy that now that she is legal to drink in Europe, that she wanted to go clubbing with him. Boy and I had a conversation that we should take her out and make sure she gets her fill...and then some...one night. The moms and Babydoll went back to the apartment to get ready for dinner while the three of us had cocktails. Chiquita might have had more to drink but she spent the better part of the time there trying to figure out what to order. Think we ultimately talked her into an Old Fashioned, which she drank but was not impressed. We did not see Bono.
We went to dinner that night at a Pub that was recommended by our morning tour guide.
Pretty sure it wasn't the Old Fashioned but rather the Guinness Pie that had Chiquita making Irish Street Pancakes the next morning. The Boy and I felt our mission of having her over served was accomplished. She was a good sport about it and let us take a somewhat staged photo of the proceedings. Nice hair holding technique.
Old and had seen its better days, but still a great view of the Irish countryside. Here is the thing when you visit Ireland, and Scotland for that matter...every castle or field has several stories about one group of marauders and or religious sects carving through another population. How they keep the players straight is beyond me and I quickly became disinterested in who was killing who cause they were all awful to each other constantly.
The next stop was the reason for taking this particular tour...to kiss the Blarney Stone.
Long held that kissing it gives one the gift of gab, A quote I read was that "Blarney is something more that mere flattery, It is flattery sweetened by humor and flavored by wit. Those who mix with Irish folk have many examples of it in their everyday experience." The Irish are eloquent bullshit artists, which is something we all know if we have talked to any Patriots fan..
This time of year is a really good one to visit cause we were able to climb the castle (127 painful steps) to get to the stone at the top uninterrupted, but along the way saw signs that said that the wait to get to the stone from a particular spot was 60/90 minutes. Our driver said in the summer it can be over two hours. We all puckered up of course.
It's kinda hard to see, but you lie on your back and have to arch a good 45 degrees to get your lips on the thing. They have a couple of dudes there to hold you and there are a couple iron bars, but there is an opening between the ledge and wall that is a 400 some-odd foot drop to the bottom. Jury is still out on whether I have been able to temper my typical abuse into a more flattering tone.
Lovely views abound.
The last stop of the day was at Cahir Castle. Not gonna lie, was already getting a bit jaded with castles in general, but we really liked this one not for its grandeur (although it was is quite good condition), but that we got to walk with one of the docents who gave us insight as to the gory life in the castle.
Had seen them in movies of course, but was unaware that this type of gate is called a portcullis. There were typically two of them and they would lower them to trap an enemy inside and then drop shit (literally) on them through things called murder holes.
The docents last story in the great dining hall tickled us the most. Seems that in one period they figured out how to make pewter and made their goblets out of them. Pewter had a lot of lead in it and that caused poisoning of the skin that created literal holes in peoples faces. They would then fill the holes with wax and cover up the gruesome sight with a ton of white powder. You forever cannot look at a painting of nobility from that time and see the white faces without thinking of that.
It was a good day. Being on the bus gave us a break from a ton of walking and as we were all a bit thrown off with jetlag, periods of nap time were taken by all. I really liked the intermittent history and culture we'd get from the driver. Like when we passed some field where Braveheart was filmed and he was not shy in talking about how much they hate Mel Gibson. What was most informative though was the back story on the Irish Potato Famine.
We all know that there was a disease that affected potatoes in Ireland and that it caused mass death and exodus, but that was the extent of my knowledge. The driver told us that at the time, the Protestant Brits ruled Catholic Ireland and that they owned all of the fertile land with the locals being serfs. The land that the Irish did have access too was poor but they were able to grow the hearty potato to the point that by the 1840's, 95% of an Irish diet was potato. The population at the time of the last census before was 8 million.
When the blight hit and destroyed all of that crop, they had nothing to eat and caused massive starvation (estimates of close to 1.5 million died) and exodus (another 2ish millions). The Australian penal colonies at the time were filled with Irish cause it was better for them to be caught stealing food and sent to Australia rather than die of starvation. The real tragedy of course is that this was a direct cause as to why there are so many insufferable Red Sox/Patriot fans now. What stunned was that there was plenty of food to be had but the British landowners that were able to grow other crops/livestock continued to export those products around the world. The British government could have closed the ports and redirected the food, but since the Irish were lowly Catholics and had no economic incentive to give their product away, did nothing. Neglect or genocide? Regardless, there is little wonder as to why the Irish feel less than love for the Brits. The population of Ireland to this day is only close to 5 million. Remarkable. Was talking to Babydoll and how she has to write a term paper on an aspect of British history and suggested this be it. Look forward to seeing what she comes up with.
The next day was December 24th and our last in Dublin. The Guinness Storehouse is touted to be a highlight of any trip to Dublin and so looking on line, found that the Hop On/Off bus had a combo package for it and the Storehouse. It was available for the 24th so we booked our tix and made our way to the closest stop to begin our day. We stood there a good hour waiting for a bus to come. Thinking we might be in the wrong spot, a couple in our group went around the corner to see if there was another stop and ended up in a local hotel. We all met up and the absolutely lovely concierge of the Fitzwilliam was on the phone for us trying to figure out what was up. Seems the Hop people AND the Storehouse were closed that day, yet they clearly took our effin money. What a load. We are still in dispute with them about the money we coughed up. Having seen all the other sights, we had absolutely nothing else to do, so we kinda walked around aimlessly looking in shops when the boy spotted a woman carrying a box of our favorite Argentine cookie the Alfahor. She told us of the South American Shop and we made that our pilgrimage. We got a couple boxes and some nice empanadas to boot, so the day wasn't a total loss. As we are walking, we see this billboard on the side of a bus.
How is that for product placement. Decided to add to my things to do list is to write a children's book with that as the title. It'll be a story of getting ripped off but still finding how to have a good time on a crummy day. Taking pre-orders now.
Christmas Day was next and we were appropriately warned that Ireland shuts down on this day. Most places close down on Christmas Day but nothing like these Catholics. As there are no Jews or Chinese, what are you gonna eat?
This was the day we started our 6 day road trip with the plan to see some of the Irish countryside, cross the straight into Scotland and do the Highlands ending in Edinburgh. Our destination this day was Galway, but the Cliffs of Moher was the thing to see on the way. They weren't kidding about things being closed as we could not even find a gas station willing to pump gas...we were excited to pop in at this highway stop.
The Cliffs of Moher is a pretty big deal as we saw a ton of day trips offered. Fortunately, they can't completely close cliffs and luckily, we had a decent weather day.
We don't have any great photos of it cause it is a giant limestone feature where nothing but the heartiest weed can grow. Stark would be an appropriate word to describe it and it is interesting in its monotony. The lowlands are filled with sheep pastures outlined by stone walls made up of the limestone. Piles of rocks is the height of Irish architecture said I. For whatever reason, this was the day Betty decided to project her work frustration on the local sheep population. Often on this, and every other day we were in the car, she would see a group of sheep and equate them to an office experience. "Those sheep are having a department meeting." was heard many times. She must really hate department meetings.
We did plan ahead knowing Xmas dinner out would be hard to find and as our Galway Air BnB had a kitchen, we bought soups and sausages to have for our Christmas feast. We even snagged Christmas Crackers to open and they all came with paper crowns. A big laugh came when Betty put hers on and it ripped immediately (cause her head is massive and is an ongoing joke with us). It used to bug her but as she knows that her large skull houses such a big brain, she now laughs along with us. Most of the time anyway.
The 26th is another day when a lot is closed, but not all. We had planned to go further north to the town of Derry (aka Londonderry) for the night and to see what we could see along the way. Due to the monotonous nature of the terrain, we decided to eschew the coast and bee line it to our destination. We did stop at Knock Shrine which is a big Catholic Church complex that is a pilgrimage site due to the 1879 apparitions of the Virgin Mary, Saints Joseph and John, angels and even the man himself...J.C. As Lady Grey and Chiquita are Catholics, this got their holy water boiling. We touched the stone where it all went down.
Another cool looking thing on the road to Derry (aka Londonderry) was Grianan of Aileach. We never learned how to say it so do your worst. ("Said to be") a 5th century BC pagan temple, it is on a commanding hillside with 360 views, is in great shape and was fun to climb on and around.
And of course I peed on it.
We took this photo of our rig and us here. You can see how loaded it was. We had zero room to spare and Babydoll was stuck in the way back with all our luggage packed around her. The legroom in Sputnik would have been a luxury for her. Fortunately she does not get carsick and have to call out that she did not once complain about her situation once.
Derry (aka Londonderry) was 15 minutes away and between here and there is the border into Northern Ireland. The Backstop.
This is a significant spot for lots of reasons as it is the physical spot where a lot of history and history to be made intersects. The Good Friday Accords, Brexit, Catholic v Protestant and all the associated violence in the name of power comes together. Plus, Euros and kilometers immediately change to Pounds and miles.
Picked Derry (Londonderry) as the place to stop as it was a border town that had a history of division and that the old center of town has the old city walls completely intact, which is very rare anywhere. The non-UK Irish call it Derry while the Northern Ireland Irish call it Londonderry
Plan was to check out the town and have dinner. The walls were quite impressive with the path very well maintained.
What struck us most was the change in the look and feel of the people. Northern Ireland is still Irish right? We only had about 28 hours in Northern Ireland so maybe not fair to judge the culture, but we all thought that the locals here were way rougher than in Ireland proper. As we were walking around, packs of the young were roaming and being loud and rowdy. The dudes all, and by all I mean all, wore black Adidas track suits, had the cropped neo-fascist haircuts and would shout to the winds things like 'Fuck the Queen'. Their "dates" had that trailer trash charm that I thought was limited to the rural south. We found a place to eat dinner that seemed nice but was filled with the older versions of the young rebels. Fat. The women had this tendency to match the color of their sweaters to their eyebrows. It was someones b-day party cause we saw the balloons and by the look of them, they had to be well over 50, but when they sang the birthday song, it was stated that it was the woman's 40th. Introduced a term the kids hadn't heard before but they seemed to enjoy...rode hard and put away wet. Change the accent and I woulda sworn we were in a trailer park adjacent Applebees in Florida We took a taxi back to the hotel and it's obvious to the driver that we are Americans and he tells us he goes to Vegas every year with a woman he called his partner. We're talking about the signs of the division of Ireland we are passing and Brexit and such and make a comment about us Americans having our own similar issues these days. Dude launches into how much he agrees with Trump about the wall cause of all the homeless he sees in LA when he passes through on his way to Vegas. Perhaps out of fear of my long history of angering the Irish with my 'little comments' but was still amazed at my restraint in not telling him how much I agreed and that I still lament how we didn't treat the dirty Irish fleeing starvation a century ago the same way we feel about the Mexicans cause we wouldn't have to listen to all the Boston sports fans now. To paraphrase Dear Wormer from Animal House, 'ignorant, racist and Irish is no way to go through life son'
This was the first night of our trip that we stayed in a hotel and so turned on the local TV for the first time. As I'm flipping the channels stumble across one showing sports and Hurling is on. What the hell is Hurling and how have I not seen this before? It's baseball, soccer, rugby and Aussie Rules football all rolled into one. Amazing. It's only played in Ireland (with some small clubs in places where there are a lot of Irish) but I was absolutely hooked. It is the oldest sport on record to be still played. When we got home, looked it up on YouTube and watched the entire 2018 Hurling Final from start to finish.
If you are a sports fan at all, dial that up and tell me I'm wrong. The game is awesome, but the packaged pre-game intro that describes the historic rivalry between Cork and Limmerick has a couple moments that will give a chuckle, like when they describe the local food item that is the passion of each town, one being a potato dish and the other being a different potato dish. Not sure I have time to add another sport in my diet, and the Hurling package online is much more to buy than NFL or MLB, but don't be surprised Betty if you see a charge on the credit card in the not too distant future.
Our last day in Ireland, Northern Ireland to be exact, was the next day. We had a day on the road so decided to make a quick b-fast stop this AM at the McDonald's near the hotel on the way out of town. I mention this because the food we have had on the trip so far has been mediocre at best (and poisonous in the case of Guinness Pie) so was OK throwing down a sausage biscuit. Not a huge shock cause Irish food has a reputation of being bland and uninspiring, but there is reason for it. I also mention it cause the Mc Donald's had a killer word search game that Babydoll and I completed successfully.
Was looking forward to today as we were set to visit the Giant's Causeway. The area we visited this morning is on the northern coast of Ireland and the route we took started with a stop at Dunluce Castle. Another castle that was in ruins. It's spot on the rugged coastline made it a nice spot to climb on and take photos.
The information room had clothes to dress up and pretend you were from back in the day and am so glad the Boy will always take the bait.
The Giant's Causeway is so magical. Geologically, it is a series of 40,000 interlocking basalt columns produced by a fissure eruption 60 million years ago. There are a few places that you can see this kind of formation but nowhere near as vast or amazing as these. As a geology geek dating from Mr Morehead's 5th grade class, it was amazing to touch and see. Doubt the others in our party had the same feeling, but they offered audio tours that explained the geology and another that told the fables and that seemed to be popular with them. As you can see from the photos, you can understand why the prehistoric peoples had to come up with something to explain them.
Right near the Causeway is the Bushmills Distillery but sadly, as with all of the whiskey distilleries in Ireland and Scotland, they close up shop for the two weeks over Xmas and it was closed. I like Bushmills too and after wineries, these distilleries are interesting to look at so if you do get into this neck of the woods, plan on visiting them and tell me how it was.
As a Bushmills stop wasn't in the cards, looked at the tours they run to this area and one of the stops is the rope bridge called Carrick-a Rede. Not gonna tell you how to say this one either.
Not far (about 25 minutes south) is a place called The Dark Hedges. Have never seen a second of it but it is a prime filming location in Game of Thrones. Some in our group were into it so we made time. A road with beech trees making a eerie tunnel and could see why it would make a popular movie location. Not in its most spectacular late December of course, but you get the gist.
Our ferry to Scotland departed at 7:30pm so we had time to do a drive around Belfast for an hour or two. Wanted to spend more time here but all the travel guides indicated there wasn't much there there. The one thing I wanted to do was take a tour they offer called the Belfast Troubles Tour. They take you to the dividing line and sites between the two factions during the fight between the IRA and Brits. There are a bunch of murals from those times that are still maintained and we did a drive by of some. Don't think I did a good job of explaining their significance or the history very well cause like most of the history we heard along the way this trip, the fight between different parts of Christianity seemed idiotic and really just boils down to a power play and money grab. The Irish murals showing solidarity with other oppressed minorities in South Africa, Palestine, etc. are powerful as a quick Google search can attest. Think I should have budgeted time for that in retrospect.
As with last night, the population in Belfast looked rough around the edges. It was dark out but the spirit of place made even darker. I know that is hard to say just from sitting in the car and getting out for dinner only, but the impression was strong for all of us.
The ferry ride to Scotland was 2 hours and 20 minutes and was on a boat that was so deluxe that it is hard to describe properly. Pretty empty this time of year, the thing had a full restaurant, movie theatre, massage room, and everything short of a casino, which they might have had but did not see. I made a 4.0 Travel mistake four years ago when booking train tickets between Vienna and Budapest where we did not have reserved seats and we had to sit on our luggage in the aisles for the 2.5 hour ride. My travel partners never forget to bring that up as we are heading to a train station or whatever and in their telling, that 2.5 hour train ride gets longer with each passing year. I heard it described as a 4 hour trip this time. In an effort to shut them up, upgraded the gang to having recliner seats for this ferry ride. They seemed satisfied, but still brought up that time in Vienna when...
One last thing about the Irish...my opinion of them going in had been formed over the last 40 years of getting into altercations at Irish bars and with green Red Sox hat wearing Bostonians at sporting events. Since we left the island have said a bunch of times to folks that have been to Ireland that I found the Irish in their country to be way less offensive than those found around the globe and the uniform reply was agreement and that they knew exactly what I was trying to say. I was very guarded going in but at every turn, their charm and demeanor made me drop it.
That's it for Ireland. The next installments shouldn't be as long but you never know. One last thing about Ireland...was working on my Irish accent throughout and just could not find a cadence that I liked. Whenever I would try to say a sentence in their accent, would channel a Lucky Charms commercial by saying yellow moons and green clovers. I finally hit on a phrase that works and would be happy to share it with you next time we're in person. If you see me, just ask how much money is in a Leprechaun's pot o' gold and I will reply "Tirty-tree taousand, tree houndred und tirty tree dollars. Don't ya know."
It's funnier when I say it out loud.
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