Stay Away from me Lucky Charms, Dammit!

And thus beginneth me second week in Ireland. Initially, I had thought about flying up to Scotland. But throughout this past week, I had decided that there were plenty of areas of Ireland that I had not yet seen. And so I decided to stay. And stay I did. Indeedio. Monday, September 11th I started a five-day trip through Northern Ireland and northwestern Ireland today. I didn't book it until the day before. It's with Vagabond Adventure tours, a small start-up tour company that is aiming to take tourists off the beaten path. Instead of a tour bus, they take tourists around in converted 4x4 Land Rovers, so that they can really and truly go "off the beaten path". It's quite awesome. I stumbled upon it quite by accident. Actually, the credit all goes to Preeti. She noticed their Land Rover while we were at the Cliffs of Homer... errr... Moher, and bugged me to check out the website, and everything sort of fit into place. I wanted to go to Northern Ireland, and they were going. In fact, they hadn't had this tour in many weeks, and this would be the last trip North for the season. It's funny... keep a good attitude and the world somehow conspires to make things work out. Or at least I like to believe that. So, we headed north from Dublin. We were five people in all: Dave, our driver and tour guide extraordinaire; Janine, a paralegal from Seattle; Lucy, a surgical assistant from Holland; and Genevieve, a finance-person-of-some-sort from Montreal (that's Frenchie Canadien). Lucy had actually been on a tour of Northern Ireland with a larger tour company called Paddywagon the week before, but she disliked it so much that she spent her every last shilling to come on this trip. Lucy and Gen had both done Vagabond tours in the weeks past of Southern Ireland. Dave's first task on this trip was to teach us how to speak like the locals: apparently "Northern Ireland" is pronounced "Nor'n Ir'n" up yonder this-a-ways. Each of us had to pronounce it correctly before Dave would continue further. After crossing the border into Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland, we noticed a few neat things to indicate the change: the color of the lines on the road changed, the signs changed from kilometers to miles, and suddenly there were kiosks around offering to change money, no doubt for a nice dandy fee (Nor'n Ir'nders use pounds and not euros - just like them snobby Brits). It was amazing to think that a short decade or less ago, this very border that was now barely marked had been heavily armored during "The Troubles" as the Irish calls it, between the IRA and the Loyalists and British government. But more on that later. No tour to Northern Ireland is complete without a thorough dousing of history, and the history really comes alive here because it's still so very real and in your face. And it will literally render you speechless. The first stop for the trip was to Slieve Gullion (not to be confused with Gollum, of Lord of the Rings lore), which is another ancient burial tomb that sat atop a tall hill. And we had to climb this hill. At one point, someone broke out into "Climb Every Mountain" from The Sound of Music. It was probably me. Now, the very top of this mountain was all rocks, a rocky shoal, if you will. I don't really know what a shoal is, but I like that word. Dave explained that on a clear day, you can see 25% of Ireland from the top of this shoal. This was not a clear day though, and we could barely see each other. The words "Marco" and "Polo" were uttered much. Oh, I just looked up what a shoal was, and it's the complete opposite of what I was trying to describe. I guess I'll have to try and use it correctly some other time. This afternoon, we arrived in Belfast, which is really a very beautiful city. We swung by the Crown Bar, which is a wonderfully decorated old-school saloon, and walked by the Europa Hotel, which holds the distinction of being the most bombed hotel in the world. After some lunch, several of us took a tour of the City Hall, which was celebrating its Centennial. The real eye-opener of this visit to Belfast was the Black Cab tour, which didn't make too much sense, since we were in a cab that was green. I asked our driver, Eamon, about this, and he clearly thought I was an idiot. He got no argument from me on that point, and by this point 4 hours into our weeklong trip together, my traveling companions had also become well aware that I was idiot. A Black Cab tour of Belfast takes you through both the Catholic and Protestant sides of Belfast and tries to explain what's going on in the city and what happened in history. Okay, I can't really go too much further without going into a history lesson. Those of you who don't want none of that thar larnin' schtuff, skip on. But I beseech thee to not skip ahead, because this is incredibly real and has parallels all around us. So, without much further ado about nothing, here goes: Am Awfully Brief and Somewhat Accurate History of Nor'n Ir'n and "The Troubles", by Paraag Maddiwar, copyright 2006 So, a long, long time ago in the late 1100s, the English had taken over Ireland and asked them to get lost, eh, - you know, in a friendly "vacate your property or die" sort of way. Conquests were waged at some point, and the English kings decided that they could grant land to Englishpeople and Scottishpeople, enforceable by the local English brute squad. The Irishpeoples were none too happy about all of this, and therefore many additional skirmishes took place over time. Somewhere in the mid-1500s, Henry VIII of England was excommunicated by the Pope basically for getting a divorce from Catherine of Aragon and remarrying Anne Boleyn. So, he installed himself as the head of the Protestant church and England became Protestant. But the Irishpeoples remained Catholic. In the early 1900s, the Irishpeoples finally were able to kick out the Brits from the majority of Ireland and proclaim independence as the Republic of Ireland. However, not all of Ireland republicized with them - specifically, 6 counties in Ulster (one of four regions of Ireland) were predominantly British Protestant and didn't go along with it, and instead decided to stick it out with the Brits. The problem was that there were still a good number of Catholic Irish peoples hanging out here. It was, indeed, a recipe for issues. In the 1960s, the Catholics were kinda tired of being discriminated against and launched a Civil Rights movement; interestingly enough, this was roughly around the same time of a similar movement by the African American community in the United States. Initially, these were peaceful marches by the Catholic community asking for equal representation in government and equal voting rights and equal access to land and housing and your standard basic rights issues. But tension was in the air, and before long, skirmishes started to take place between the Catholic and Protestant communities and some mayhem was ensuing. So the British Brute Squad came in to maintain order, and the Catholics were initially happy that someone was there to help maintain the peace. Through a series of events, including the highly unfortunate "Bloody Sunday" (also of U2's "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" fame), the British Brute Squad began to be seen as the oppressors as they quite unevenly maintained the peace. The IRA that we've all heard of started up around this point, and the "Troubles" began, largely a back and forth, tit-for-tat type of battling between the communities. There was virtually complete segregation between the two sides (education systems, housing boards, etc.) and very limited means for thoughtful discourse. When you're bourne into and surrounded by all of this, it's not as easy as it might seem to stand back objectively and cut it out. And neither side wanted to back down. When Margaret Thatcher came into office, she labelled the IRA as a terrorist organization and started treating the Irish-Catholic political prisoners as criminals. This most certainly wasn't helping the situation. Finally, in 1998, Tony Blair and leaders of each community ushered in the Good Friday Agreement whereby both the British and Irish governments publicly proclaimed that they had no claim over Northern Ireland. Though it may seem simple, this was a tremendous symbolic gesture. The region would become self-governing through a power-sharing agreement. Largely, the population was tired of the Troubles and wanted a return to sanity. The fear and mistrust still runs deep between the communities, though, since it's impossible for all of that history to disappear with an agreement. Since 1998, there has been a tremendous decrease in violence, and the vast majority of people simply want to move on. In fact, some locals (or at least tourist guides) say that every tourist to Northern Ireland is a vote of confidence in their peace process. That concludes my awfully brief and somewhat accurate history lesson. Well, perhaps it wasn't so brief. But you all know that I'm a wee bit on the long-winded side when it comes to writing. Hope I have not bored too much. So yeah, back to the Black Cab tour. The communities in Belfast still remain largely divided. In the rougher areas, there's a huge wall (like the Berlin Wall) that separates the two communities. So Eamon took us to each community to show us and teach us. First we went to a sort of slummish-area on the Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist side, and we saw lots of murals celebrating their martyrs and heroes. Several murals were very graphic in nature, showing armed gunmen and the like. Other murals outright denounced Catholics while celebrating their paramilitary organizations (the UDF, UFF, UYM, etc.). Then Eamon took us across the wall and we saw the Catholic murals and memorial gardens, which were much more toned-down. Dave told us later that the Catholic murals used to also be quite graphic, but have been toned down as they have realized that the international community doesn't react so good to pictures of masked gunmen. The Catholics had some other interesting murals: one of our own President sucking the oil from the Middle East with a smattering of skeletons on the ground; another of Frederick Douglass, who spent time in Ireland after escaping from slavery; and another one claiming similarites between the Palestinian community and the Irish Catholic community. Nevertheless, we tourist types were very happy to put the heavy stuff behind us as Dave drove along the eastern coastline of Northern Ireland to a town called Carnlough, where we called it a night. Actually, it was just late afternoon, so I took a stroll to the world-famous Cranny Falls, which are almost a tenth of the height of Niagara Falls! They were nice and simple and peaceful, but I didn't see an easy accessway to the water pool below the falls, so I could not go swimming. And there was much sadness. Genevieve showed up soon afterwards along with some young local friends she had made. One of them made it a point to talk lots about how she was cousins with one of the Dixie Chicks. Quite random. Tuesday, September 12 Okay, I know yesterday's summary was waaaaay too long, but the history lesson is largely over. And I really couldn't write anything without including the history. So get over it already and stop your whinging (French-Canadian and/or British for whining). We continued along the Great Eastern-Northern Ireland Coastal Highway (GENICH for short) for some time this morning. Across the way on the West side we could slowly and faintly make out the mountains of Scotland through the mist. They were spitting distance. That is, if you can spit 20-some miles. For a good few hours, I was just perched on the right side of the land rover staring and sticking my arm out the window with the camera in feeble attempts to take pictures of what were incredible views, only to have the pictures come out mildly incredible. But you know this already, pictures will simply never do justice. Along the way, we stopped and Genevieve and I hopped out for a short hike to meet the others at a really really old church, Layd Church. Much of the structure of the church had crumbled away. It was neat and sorta creepy to walk around and look at gravestones laid down some 5-600 years ago, right next to stones that had been placed down only a few years ago. I've never been much a fan of graveyards though. Kinda gives me the heebie-jeebies. There was an old interesting structure with a loop on the top of it. So Dave told Gen and I to clasp hands through it and he'd take a picture. Then he announced that we were now married. Well, that was pretty simple. And here, my mom's been trying to figure out how to get me married off for some 32 years. Hey mom - that's all I had to do. Outside of the church, there was an old burned out Honda hatchback sitting in the makeshift parking area. So we took a picture for Dave to use as marketing material for Vagabond's Northern Ireland tour. I was thinking that if my buddy Zach had been around, he'd probably be saying something like "It's a Honda; we can bring it back to life." So off along the Eastern coastline of Northern Ireland we went until it became the Northern coastline of Northern Ireland (maybe it was the Northeastern coastline). This coastline gradually got steeper and steeper as small beachlike enclaves gave way to cliffsides. Our next stop was Carrick-a-rede, which is an extremely small island right off of the Northern/Northeastern coast. Being that we are now on cliffsides, the only sane way to get to Carrick-a-rede is via the aptly named Carrick-a-rede walking bridge. Now, the guidebooks advertise this as an Indiana Jones style hanging rope bridge that is very adventurous and daring. Indeed if I were a smarter feller, I'd play along. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out on the island eating a boxed lunch and staring out into the ocean. But about the only exciting part of the bridge was the sine waves that occurred when multiple people on the bridge walked in unison. Sine waves that people like me liked to add to by strategically choosing when to take my next step at an unnecessary force. It's like those ants in the Tom and Jerry cartoon where Tom is relaxing on the hammock and the ants bounce him off. And that annoying little Jerry squeals in delight. One of these days, I want Tom to eat that blasted Jerry. We had lunch on the island and then walked around a bit. There's not all that much walking around to do on the island - it's kinda small. But, as opposed to the lawsuit-happy US, there weren't any real fences on the periphery of the island to save you from plunging to your doom. I got a little too close to the edge for Gen's comfort, so she told me that she was divorcing me. Oh well. Guess I gotta get back to that church... After a brief stop on a secluded hidden beach that the Paddywagon tour had just vacated, we continued along the Northern coastline to what's known as the Giants Causeway. Genevieve and I took the long route to the Causeway from the old and mostly gone Dunsevarick Castle. This is a 7-10km walking path along the cliffside which allows you to really soak in the scenery and offers much more spectacular views in relative solitude than the tourist trap known as the Causeway. And pray tell, what is the Causeway? It's basically a bunch of basalt rock formations where nature demonstrated a geometry lesson by forming perfect five, six, seven, eight, and ten-sided columns and structures along the cliffside and shoreline. It's very strange looking. There's a perfectly logical geological reason for this that I don't quite understand. And there's an old folks tale that Dave related to us that goes something like this (there's lots of mildly differing versions of this readily available from a Google search)... Back in the day, there lived a huge Irish man named "Finn MacCool, a man so large, you could see the whole of Ireland between his legs. He was, indeed, a horse of a man." (Brief aside - that last part is in quotes because Dave had a habit of saying the entire phrase at the mere mention of this fellow Finn, even if he said the phrase a mere few minutes prior. Good times.) So this very large man Finn MacCool, "a man so large, you could see the whole of Ireland between his legs. He was, indeed, a horse of a man", built this causeway to Scotland to fight his rival, the Scottish giant Benadonner. Finn spent an entire week building the causeway, so he was tired and fell asleep. But Benadonner was on his way across. So Oonagh, Finn's wife, did some quick thinking and dressed Finn up as a baby. When Benadonner arrived, he saw the huge baby and figured that Finn must be much much larger. So he ran back to Scotland, tearing up the Causeway in the process. This really happened. It is a veritable fact. I swear it to be true, especially since the US Intelligence Agencies have assured me that it is, indeed, a horse of a truth. Wednesday, September 13 This morning, we all woke up to the fresh smells of the bed and breakfast we were staying in that was situated on a pasture. Mmmm... mmmm... how I love the smell of fresh cowdung in the morning. Nothing like a little wake-me-up. Our first stop this morning was by another beach and did doughnuts in the sand. Wheeeeeeee! I asked Dave if I could drive the Vagabond Land Rover. He said no. Dave sucks. Next, we followed some back roads to a lookout point with some spectacular views. These were backroads that most tour buses would never bring you to. It was, indeed, yet another Vagabond Exclusive. Dave also made sure to check with Lucy to see if Paddywagon had brought her up here the week before, and, indeed, they had not. Unfortunately, up on the clifftop where the lookout point was, there were gale-force winds in effect and a smattering of rain was beginning to take shape. Basically, if you stopped and jumped up, you would land a few inches in front of where you started because the wind was so strong. It was so strong that when we were headed back to the vehicle, I even walked backwards to shield my face. So we walked very slowly and very deliberately as close as each of us were willing to get to the edge so that we could see the mist-covered view, which was still quite spectacular. The lands below were flat as could be, stretching for kilometers and kilometers and dumping into water. Was it the ocean? A river? I don't know. I couldn't tell with all the mist and gale-force winds. But the highlight of today was our visit to Stroke City, which is what some people call the town of Derry/Londonderry. The Protestant/Loyalist/Unionist crew calls it Londonderry, while the Catholics called it by it's olden-day name of Derry. Since everyone was trying to be politically correct, all of the signs say Derry/Londonderry. This got kind of cumbersome to say, so it became known as Stroke City. This was not named as such because people in this town were gluttons and had a high incidence of heart failure, but because "stroke" in Ireland means what we normal people in America would call a "slash". After having lunch in Derry (I had a very large mystery-meat Yankee Burger and a Guinness at some bar), we had a walking tour with a local feller who gave us the lowdown on the city. The city has a full city wall structure that still remains in tact around the old city, and the majority of our tour was along this wall. Derry plays a significant part of the recent "Troubles" history as well, as this was the site of "Bloody Sunday". Beyond that, Derry plays an important role in the history of the country as this was a site of many battles and a famous siege between the Irish locals and the British occupiers. I'll spare the history lesson for now, assuming that you can google it if you are interested. Within a few minutes of leaving Derry, we were back in the Republic of Ireland headed towards the County of Donegal. This is a county that often gets overlooked by tourists because it's not as close to Dublin as most of the other sites. That also means that it is more untouched. So, Dave drove us through the Blue Stack Mountains (no clue why they were named this since they weren't very blue and I didn't see any stacks of anything) and let us out to take a walk by some "famine houses", which were old stone houses that were vacated by potato farming families during the Great Famine. Next, we took a walk with a local dog (I forgot the dog's name, but let's pretend it's Rufus) to an ancient burial site called a "dolman". A dolman is an extremely large flat rock perched atop a few vertical rocks. This makes you wonder how such huge flat rocks got there to begin with. My guess is that they used prehistoric cranes powered by prehistoric hydraulic systems. So Rufus hopped up top of the flat rock, and was soon getting a wee bit too visibly excited. Ironically, local legend has it that making whoopee atop these dolmans (which, remember, are ancient burial grounds) is somehow fortuitous. Tonight's stop was in a small town called Ardara, which is close to the west coast of Ireland. Gen and I took a walk after dinner and stopped in a few different pubs and had a glass of port at each stop. Unfortunately, none of the pubs had any music. So we went back to our hotel pub and had another glass and listened to the country twangings of small feller who was seemingly delighting his small crowd of blue-haired tourists. And then he sang "Sweet Caroline" in the perfect cheesy country lounge singing voice. The blue-haired people loved it. Gen had never heard the song before, and didn't seem to believe me when I told her that everyone in the States sings along loudly in the pub when this song is played. So I sang along too. Thursday, September 14 This morning, we got a late start out of Ardara, and headed back into the mountains. A good portion of the morning drive was stunningly picturesque. We were driving in a valley with steep mountains on either side of us (which, of course, explains the existence of the valley), and there were also some small lakes in valley keeping us company. In the distance in front of us, we could see the ocean and a beach in front of that ocean, since that's where beaches ought to be. And then we passed a mini-waterfall where we stopped for some pictures and I commenced to be eaten alive by the small bugs that hover around waterfalls. Then we turned left. Into the mountains we went, off of the paved road and onto a narrow gravel road that was not-so-aptly named Granny's Pass. I didn't see any grannies up here, nor did I expect to. This was, indeed, yet another Vagabond Exclusive. And Dave also made sure to check with Lucy to see if Paddywagon had brought her up here the week before, and, indeed, they had not. I've run out of adjectives to describe the scenery, so you'll just have to look at the pictures whenever I get around to sending out a link. So just close your eyes and imagine something. It's kinda like Spongebob, except with more natural scenery and green and less annoying voice and yellow. See? That's some darn good imagery right there. We were on our way to the Slieve League mountains, which were some crazy tall and steep mountains that dumped straight into the ocean - in fact, at it's peak, it was about 2.5 times taller than the Cliffs of Homer... err... Moher. That's some pretty tall mountains right there. The difference, I suppose, is that these mountains weren't a pure vertical drop into the ocean, which probably explains why they weren't called the Slieve League Cliffs of Insanity. I suppose you could say that the Slieve League mountainside was, indeed, a horse of a mountainside. If we had half a day here, I would have loved to hike along the edge up to the top - there was a well worn trail to the peak and beyond. Instead, we were probably around halfway up where we were congregating near the carpark. The amazing thing is that there were very few tourists here, because County Donegal is seen as being too far away for most tourists. Silly tourists... the Cliffs are for kids. We took a quick stop to pick up lunch and eat it on the side of the road perched high up another mountain overlooking the ocean. Interestingly enough, we were overlooking an area where Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker had bought a nice house with ocean view. A few years ago, Sir Broderick apparently had a car accident that killed some locals. He was very sad and apologized profusely to the family, and I think he was even forgiven by the family. Wow. I'm boring myself. On our way to the town of Sligo, we stopped off to let Lucy and Janine have a horse-riding lesson for an hour. I did not join, because every time I ride a horse, I feel like I'll never be able to have kids when I finally get off of it and I'm curled up in pain. I'm sure that this must be the horse's fault and cannot have anything to do with the fact that I don't know how to ride a horse all proper-like. So Dave drove Gen and me into the mountains and we saw more scenery. Last stop tonight was Mullaghmore, a small coastal town West of Sligo on a small round peninsula offering spectacular views of the ocean. The waves were really picking up because there was a storm or something somewhere in the world. The waves were just massive - they were, indeed, a horse of a waves. So surfers were very very happy this weekend. But I was not - if the waves weren't so strong, I would've been able to have a surfing lesson tomorrow. So, I took an hourlong jaunt around the periphery of this peninsula. Every few steps, I'd stop and take another picture of these crazy high waves crashing into the side of the peninsula or some funky rock formation. It was stunning. When I got home and took a look at the pictures, they all seem to look the same. Pictures suck. Friday, September 15 This morning, we went to the site that everyone who comes to Ireland comes to see. Yes, we were at Drumcliffe, site of the grave of poet W.B. Yeats. It was small and non-descript, and in all other ways, not really live-altering at all. But, at least the feller had his wish of being buried next to his all time favorite mountain. And that's gotta count for something. Next, we went to Strandhill, a small beach area with a facility that gave seaweed baths. I wasn't all that up for the seaweed bath, so I hung out with Dave and Gen staring at the huge waves crash into the shoreline. Then one of the local shopkeepers informed Dave that there was a beached whale nearby in the next inlet and that we should go down the beach a bit, and turn left to walk over the sand dune. So, we walked down the beach, and then turned left. Except we turned left a bit too late and suddenly our short-cut became an extremely long hike through really itchy armpit-high grass weeds growing in a sand dune. And this was no normal sand dune, it was huuuuuuge - it was, indeed, a horse of a sand dune. As we got closer and closer to our destination, the winds brought an occasional whiff of the distinct stench of a large dead fish. Yum. Unfortunately, the beached whale wasn't as beached as in right in front of us beached. It was beached way out in the water a bit away. Then again, judging from the distance and the stench, perhaps it's a good thing that it wasn't beached right in front of us. From Strandhill, it was back to Sligo, where I bid adieu to the gang. They were all on their way back to Dublin to end the trip. I was on my way to Galway, a town a bit south of Sligo on the West coast. After a short 2 hour bus ride, I was there. In a few hours, my Dublinese friend Shashi joined me. We were headed to the Aran Islands the next morning for the weekend. And that was Friday. Saturday, September 16 We got up early this morning to pack up and walk the whole TWO BLOCKS to the bus stop where we caught a bus to the aptly-named Aran Island Ferries to, wouldn't you know it, take a ferry to the Aran Islands. Our bus was a wee bit jammed. We were standing up the entire time and we were in front of the yellow line. Can you imagine that? It was like we were in Indonesia or something. When we got to the ferry, I proceeded to sit downstairs in the middle of ferry, where the rocking and swaying motion is minimized. This helps prevent unnecessary yakkage of my 12th consecutive traditional Irish breakfast. And I napped. Shashi was bored, so she went outside up top and watched the rescue team glide down from an overhead helicopter on a training mission. Or something like that. I was asleep, so I had to take her word for it. There are three Aran Islands - Inishmore, Inishmaan, and Inisheer. That's Gaelic for Great Island, Middle Island, and East Island. Truly, the talent for aptly naming things is something that is in the Irishpeoples blood. We checked into our bed and breakfast, except that they didn't have any rooms available when I made a reservation, so they let me rent out an apartment that the owner had for a pretty cheap price. While it may not have quite been a deeeluxe apartment in the sky, it was still pretty sweet. Except we were only there for a night, and couldn't really enjoy having our own kitchen very much. Oh well. I didn't really want to cook on vacation anyway. So, what is there to do on the Aran Islands? Go for a bike ride. And since neither of us had gone bike riding in a very very long time, this was the perfect time to spend an entire day bike riding. After teaching Shashi the basics (never slam your front brake only, especially when you are moving semi-decently fast, else you get tossed quickly head-over-handlebars), we were on our way. But, what stuck out about this island? There were endless stone walls everywhere. And they were tall and quite close together. A lot of the roads we were riding along were narrow as well, so it felt as though we were in a giant maze. A maze that never ended. It was quite creepy. I was starting to not like it very much. But then we got to Dun Aengus. This island is relatively flat other than the occasional molehill, but apparently it all rises up to a point on one of the edges of the island - this at the old fort/castle/whatever known as Dun Aengus. And the edge of this side of the island is pretty much a cliff all the way down. So, many more cliff-like views were had. The wind was blowing up at us from the ocean as well, so it made for a neat sensation to lie down on the ground looking over the edge of the island down to the ocean below with the wind in your face. Like Superman. On the way back, it started to rain. Shashi has a tip for everyone out there. When biking in rain, try not to wear a pair of shorts that could turn a light shade of transparent when wet. She spent the ride back to the hotel/apartment with her jacket around her waist. Sunday, September 17We had thought about renting the bikes for a full day and taking them out this morning, but by the end of the ride yesterday evening, my butt was sore from the seat and Shashi couldn't move her quads. So we figured we'd be best served to turn the bikes in early. Today was a pretty bland day in all. Mostly travelling. And we took all sorts of modes of transportation. We took a ferry from the Aran Islands to the mainland. A bus back to Galway, and a train back to Dublin. And a taxi from the Dublin train station to downtown. Except when I got downtown, I learned that all of the mid-range priced hotels (there are no cheap ones from what I could find) were charging exorbitant prices and were sold out due to the impending Ryder Cup. So I found a room at Trinity College in a dorm room. Except it was more like a jail cell than a dorm room - cinder block walls, fluorescent lighting, narrow enough that you could reach both walls, a shared bathroom, and escape-proof windows. Monday, September 18 Bad weather finally caught up with me on this, my last day in Ireland. So I grabbed a book, went to a cafe and then a coffeehouse and read a book. Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Then I went to the Guinness Storehouse for the brewery tour. Except that it wasn't really a brewery tour. You paid something like $15 to go on a self-guided tour through a set of exhibits that explain how the beer is made. But no tour of the actual brewery. But at the end, you get a free Guinness, though you did just pay $15 bucks for the supposed free beer. I got to learn firsthand though how to pour the perfect Guinness. So now I can watch the barkeeps next time and point out the error of their ways. The free beer is generally consumed on the top floor of the exhibition building, which has a wonderful 360 degree view of the city. While we were up there, the skies cleared up enough for me to see across the land of Dublin. This evening, I booked some tickets to what I thought was a play. But it turned out to be a stand-up comedy show. Oh well... it was called "Jesus: the Guantanamo Years", with the premise being that Jesus returned to earth only to not get past U.S. Customs (being a man of Middle Eastern descent) and was detained in Guantanamo. I thought this was a pretty funny basis for a play. But not really a stand-up comedy act. I'm a bit of a stand-up comedy snob, and I didn't really think it was all that great of a show. Well, that concludes this trip. I hope you've enjoyed reading all of this as much as I've enjoyed writing it. Then again, it's really not all that much fun to write. That's why it took me do darn long this time. But it's a lot of fun to read later on, so it's worth it. Next year, I'm off to Kilimanjaro - likely for the first two weeks of September like this trip. If you're interested and serious about being interested, let me know. I'm going to try to book flights and such a bit earlier than later. Since the hike will only be a week's worth, I'm going to look into a safari for the other week, or something like that. Toodles! Tidbits: 1. I don't think the French Canadian accent sounds like a Canadian accent with the French "ze" added in random places. I never once caught Gen finishing a sentence with "ze eh?". Imagine my dismay. Also, never tell a Hollander (the Hollish?, Hollandaise?), even jokingly, that they are an American-wannabe. Them's bad idea jeans. 2. Apparently the European teens have brought back an old fad with a bit of a twist. Remember back in the 80s when it was cool to roll up one pant leg? Well now, these crazies tuck in one pant leg into their sock. Just one. Not both. I almost went up to one of the idiots to say, "Ummm... excuse me, but your pant leg is in your sock." It's like the fad here in the States where people like wearing their collars up. It takes every amount of restraint that I have to not go up to them and fold the collars back down. It makes them look like yuppie Draculas. 3. All of the signs in Ireland are written in both Gaelic and English. Though very few people speak Gaelic. About the only places that Gaelic is spoken is in the boondocks of the country. 4. For whatever reason, all bars are required to post standard government sheets on the window with the price list that they charge for their beer and liquor inside. 5. Irish drivers are really polite. On these roads, you're allowed to use the shoulders as passing lanes. Except in Ireland, the slow drivers will move over into the shoulder allowing you to pass them on right side (remember - they drive on the wrong side here).

The Luck of the Irish be with ye

Hello all. It's another mass form letter from me. Which can only mean one thing: I'm on vacation again. Actually, I was on vacation but am now at home, so my apologies for the delay. Feel free to attempt to garnish the wages that I get from this travelogue. So, where did I decide to go this time? I figured that it was time for me to really buckle down and explore my roots. Yes, Ireland has a long history dating back many many generations of O'Maddiwarty's. Oh yes, I'm traveling for week 1 with my friend Preeti, who has been very anxious to leave behind her residency in the thriving metropolis we all know as Lansing, Michigan (that's the state capital, folks) to go to a far off land and relax a bit. My understanding is that it was a successful week for her as well. Monday, September 4th I arrived at the airport today and went to get my rental car - something I thought I had gotten a steal of a deal for: $184 for a week in a Passat. Not bad at all. But there was a minor catch - apparently, as of September 1st, Mastercard stopped covering rental car insurance for Israel, Jamaica, and Ireland. Why oh why Ireland is on this list is beyond me. And the friendly folks at Europcar wouldn't rent without insurance or without charging the value of the car on my credit card up front in case something should happen. So, we ended up paying for the insurance from Europcar, which was about 1.5 times the car rental cost. Makes a horseload of sense to me too. The week was not starting well. So off we were in our newly rented Nissan Primera (kinda like an Altima, Passat-ish enough) to the Wicklow Mountains just south of Dublin. Task one was learning how to drive. These people drive on the wrong side of the road: since we in the U.S. drive on the right side of the road (not the left), it stands to reason that in the UK/Ireland, they must drive on the wrong side. So, I was back to figuring out which side of the steering wheel had the blinkers and which side had the windshield wipers, but more importantly: how to operate the stick shift with my left hand. This indeed required an unnecessarily large amount of concentration to will my left hand into the correct position. My old roommates have witnessed my feeble attempts to throw a football with my left hand. It's less than pretty. The other thing that I think we take for granted is the fact that we "learn" where the right side of the car is in the US. When the sides are reversed, it's not so easy to transpose that "learning" to the other side of the car. But don't worry, oh reader, no accidents were had, thereby completely wasting the money we spent on the car insurance. Damn. You know, I kinda wanted to wreck the car to at least get some value from that lost money. I mean, might as well, right? We went to a town called Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains, where some saint founded some monastery in the mountains and there were a bunch of ruins made of stone. Okay, okay. That's not a very good description. But it was rainy when we got to the ruins, and I was in no mood (carryover from the morning's insurance shenanigans) to give a flying monkey about it. The mountains were pretty, and we had a nice hour-long walk by some lakes. That's really about it. Back into the car, we drove and drove and drove through very narrow roads towards Waterford, where we were hoping to stay the night. But the jetlag finally caught up to me, so we stopped to grab a bite to eat in a dumpy town called New Ross. If this was New Ross, I didn't want to go anywhere near Old Ross. The tourist information centre folks told us straight up that about the only thing to see in New Ross was a schooner that was parked right outside of it. And I saw the schooner as we walked into the tourist information centre. Impressed I was not. Why they needed an entire staffed tourist information centre to begin with was a bit confusing. The only place to eat in this town was a new 2-week old Indian restaurant. And the food: imagine Green Giant frozen spinach for a moment. Now heat it up and throw some curry sauce in it. That's the saag paneer. Preeti didn't find much paneer in her dish. And the inside was a bit cold still. Ick. But the decor was muy impressive. At the centerpiece was a small orange candle-holder with Jagermeister imprinted on it. Preeti asked the owner-dude if she could have it (well, it was kinda cool-looking), but he told us that he got it from the owner of a nightclub that he moonlights at and didn't get enough for all of the tables to begin with. So he could ill-afford the one on our table to give Preeti. Better than this centerpiece were the "Martha's Vineyard" emblazoned water pitchers that our glasses were filled with. That's a bit more on the random side. Those resourceful Indians... Tuesday, September 5th We did end up getting into a B&B in Waterford for last night, but only after the very friendly and helpful folks at the Travelodge told us that we could save money by getting breakfast for free at a B&B instead of getting a room with them. The Irish people are strangely helpful. How the Travelodge manages to stay in business with such friendly business-giving-away-staff-people is quite baffling. Maybe they get kickbacks? So, why are we in Waterford? To go to the Waterford Crystal Factory. Go figure. It was very convenient that they located the factory in a town with the same name. Otherwise, I think all sorts of confusion would occur, and you could be assured that some hilarity would ensue. So here's the skinny: crystal is basically glass with some lead oxides and other top-secret special sauces blended in to make it authentic "Waterford". We got to watch as a fruitbowl platter thingy was bent into shape by a guy using a wet folded newspaper as his tool of choice. We also saw a bunch of glasses made through a blow-mold. Then we saw the etching and engraving processes required to turn the crystal base structure into art. It was actually pretty neat. And I learned a few things from the gift shop where our tour surprisingly ended. 1) Marquis is a brandname that Waterford contracts out to a firm in the Czech Republic - Marquis branded items (like my little crystal thing I got from P&G for 5 years of service that was worth 20 Euros) are generally of lower quality, probably because they contain fewer lead oxides and not quite so much special sauce. 2) All of the Wedgewood dinnerware that my old roommate Scott bequeathed to me is some pretty high class stuff. A small plate runs something like 12 Euros, and here I got most of an entire set of it for free. However, the newer stuff says that it's "Microwave and Dishwasher Proof". The stuff I have is about 40 years old, and clearly is not anything proof (including Marcus-proof). I was on my way to the counter to protest this point, but Preeti pulled me back thinking it would be a losing proposition. She's probably right. The funny thing is that they still sell the same style, so I could replace the broken pieces. The next event for the day was to go to the Blarney castle outside of Cork. The key event here is to lie down on the ground on your back and drop your head underneath to kiss the Blarney Stone, along with the 3 billion germs lingering around from the previous visitors who have undoubtedly frenched the thing and/or hocked loogies. To get to the Blarney Stone, we had to walk up very claustrophobic spiral staircases in an old castle (Blarney Castle, to be precise) for 6.34 flights, where the Blarney Stone all of a sudden appeared to be more like a Blarney Wall than anything else, with a section of floor conveniently missing in front of it to allow your head to dip down under it. The prize for kissing the stone is the gift of gab - allowing you to talk your way out of anything. I'm just baffled beyond words. Very strange indeed. Wednesday, September 6th We got up this morning, grabbed breakfast and a Subway sandwich for the road, and headed out for Mizen Head, the most southwesterly point of Ireland. On the way, we passed all sorts of neat scenery - mountains and rolling hills rife with those picturesque mortar-less stone walls running all criss-cross around the landscape. My thought had been that these stone walls were erected primarily for land division purposes or to keep animals in a particular enclosure. Later I learned that the land had so many stones in it that the olden-day people had to oull them out and do something with them to make the land usable. So they made walls. Within these walls were mostly cows and bulls, and plenty of sheep. Preeti noted that some sheep had a splotch (technical term) of blue paint on their backs and some had pink splotches. I decided that this was the way that the farmers could tell if it was a male sheep or a female sheep. Then she found sheep that had 2 splotches of blue on them. These, I decided, were the gay sheep. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And then she found some with a splotch of blue AND a splotch of pink. We surmised that these must be sheep that would have been welcome on the set of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. More interesting than the walls and animals that we saw were the town names. Names like Innishannon, Gaggan, Bandon, Ballineen, Skibbereen, and my personal favorite: Ballydehob, which quickly overtook Gobbledegook as my favorite word. When we arrived at Mizen Head, we saw the ocean south of us. And it was nice. Then we paid about $5 to cross a pedestrian bridge out to the old lighthouse and some random establishment out on the rocks and we were be-smitten by the views. The establishment was downright creepy though - this is where the lighthouse keeper used to live, so they tried in vain to turn it into an exhibit, complete with a couple of "experience" rooms sans light so that you could try to imagine what it must have been like for the lighthouse keeper to live in a creepy place surrounded by plasticized fake rock walls, a painted blue sea floor, with only the light of a ten-inch black light as your guide. Wow. After Mizen Head, we headed up to the Beara Peninsula. The southwestern portion of Ireland basically comprises of multiple peninsular fingers jutting out from the mainland into the Atlantic ocean. Some peninsular fingers are fat and some are skinny. Mizen Head is the first peninsular finger, and Beara Peninsula is the third, of five in total. The fourth one is the most famous one - the Iveragh, also called the Ring of Kerry (no relation to ex-US presidential hopeful John). The second most famous one is the fifth finger, the Dingle peninsula. About all there is to do on the peninsular fingers is drive around the periphery on the wrong side of the road and stop every five minutes and oooh and ahhh. Which is what we did. And lots of it. The nice thing about Beara is that it's just as scenic of a drive as the Ring of Kerry, but far less touristed. So our oohs and aahs took place in much more serene circumstances. If anyone has driven the PCH in California, these peninsular drives are similar except the roads are narrower and the landscape changes to include valleys, cliffs, and mountain views. Okay. Maybe they aren't so similar. But it was worth a shot. Thursday, September 7th This morning, we drove around the Ring of Kerry. It wasn't extremely different from the spectacular views around the Beara Peninsula, but we figured we might as well drive it since we were already here and there's nothing wrong with having more spectacular views, right? Also, the tourist buses normally drove it counter-clockwise and we would be going clockwise, so we wouldn't be stuck behind throngs of them. Though, I suppose, now we had to face them head-on on narrow roads. Despite our fears, the traffic wasn't actually very bad. I love traveling in low season. I highly recommend doing this whenever possible. After the Ring of Kerry and some nice cheap lunch, we headed to Tarbert to take the aptly named Tarbert-Kilkee Ferry across the bay to Kilkee. It was either that, or drive inland about 85 km and then back on the other side. We chose wisely. From Kilkee, we drove up to the Cliffs of Moher. When I first saw the name, I thought it said the Cliffs of Homer, but unfortunately I was wrong. It's more unfortunate for the storepeople there though; imagine the merchandise that they'd be able to sell with a picture of Homer yelling "D'oh" and tripping over the edge of the cliff. Maybe I'll get someone to make me one of these shirts. That's just pretty damn funny. Anyway, the Cliffs of Moher were pretty darn high - about 213m high of sheer verticality plummeting into the ocean, to be precise. Again, this being low season, there weren't too many tourists there, but more than enough. It was about 7pm by the time we got there, which was perfect for viewing the sunset. Preeti and I walked the length of the paved footpath, which ended abruptly though there were several more kilometers of cliffside to be walked along. Instead, an sign blocked our way asking us politely to not go any further. Preeti obliged. In true Paraagian fashion, I did not (as did many many other able-legged tourists) and ventured out. I was still a safe distance from the cliff edge (no unnecessary risks taken - I promise, Mom), and my destination was a lighthouse tower thingy in the distance at the very end point of the cliffs. After 30 minutes of fast-paced walking, the lighthouse tower thingy was not seemingly any closer to me, and I noticed that there were no longer any tourists ahead of me. So I turned around and joined Preeti to watch the sunset over the ocean. I got lots of pictures of this so that you can enjoy it as well. (Rachel - this might be a good one to print out for the wall as well.) Friday, September 8th By the way, did I mention that we had absolutely phenomenal weather so far? I don't think I did. By way of this short paragraph, I'll consider it mentioned. Today we headed towards the town of Limerick to go castle-hunting. First up was Bunratty Castle, which, of note, hosted the World Down Syndrome Swimming Championships in 2006. Must... not... crack... joke... too... politically... incorrect... By the way, I didn't see any swimming pools around. So who knows how and where this contest took place. Bunratty Castle is a folk theme park type of thing that tries to recreate the olden days, much like Colonial Williamsburg. They had authentic olden-day people complete with olden-day garb, living like the olden-days burning peat bricks in their fireplaces for heat and to cook on. And every once in a while, one of the olden-day doors to the olden-day buildings would open up into a non-olden-day souvenir shop. It was a spectacular blend of new and old. My hats off to the genii who came up with it. The centerpiece of the Bunratty Castle folk theme park type of thing was the restored Bunratty Castle itself. Apparently, someone named Earl used to live there - many of the rooms had his name on the door: "Earls Closet", "Earls Private Chapel", "Earls Kitchen", etc.. After Bunratty Castle, we went into Limerick and toured through King John's Castle. A life-size figure of King John greeted us at the doorway. He looked like that uber-creepy Burger King feller with the perma-smile in those really creepy Burger King commercials that give me the heebie-jeebies. In one of the rooms, they had some French life-size figures that looked like 80's hair band rock stars. This castle actually had some real history to it though, and they put a lot of effort into explaining the significance that the castle played during the war in Ireland between Protestant Dutch William the Orange and Catholic English James I for the throne of England. On our way back to Dublin, we stopped off in the town of Nenagh, to get some food and drive by the P&G plant so that I could get an obligatory photo of the outside. I'm such the company man. Back in Dublin, a friend of mine hooked us up with a sweet hotel right in Temple Bar, which is an area in Dublin where lots of the bars and restaurants are. Very sweet. Dublin seems to put a much higher priority on pedestrian-only streets than we do in the US. In fact, I can't really think of too many areas at all that are pedestrian only in the US. In Europe, it almost seems that most larger cities have pedestrian malls of some sort. Maybe that's why we're overweight Americans... Though it was a Friday night, Preeti and I had dinner, watched some street performers who didn't appear to be particularly good at what they do, and just strolled around the area soaking it in and getting a lay of the city. Saturday, September 9th Today was explore Dublin day. We began by heading over to Trinity College to go see the famed Book of Kells, which according to Wikipedia, is an ornately illustrated manuscript produced by Celtic monks around 800 AD. By the way, I'm still not certain if Celtic is pronounced with a hard or soft "c" sound - I've heard both from Irish-speaking Irishpeoples. But back to this manuscript, the exhibit showed the extreme amount of effort that went into making such a book - from making the pages to procuring the ink (some of which came from a stone only found in the Middle East) to the elaborate artwork. From there, we went to the Long Room of the library, which interestingly enough was quite a long room. That wasn't the cool part though - this room was chock full of really really old books. And they were organized in an interesting fashion - large books on bottom, small books on top. No Dewey Decimal system here. The next stop was the Christchurch Cathedral. Cathedrals are always neat places to be - very peaceful and quiet. This cathedral was no different. Well, there were a few things that were different on display. For example, they had the bones of a cat and mouse encased in a display - these creatures apparently got stuck in an organ piper and become mummified. Good times. And the cathedral came complete with a spooky grotto underneath where all sorts of characters were buried. Come to think of it, there were just way too many graveyards in Ireland. But I suppose that's what they get for living in a country with a civilization older than 400 years. (Native Americans didn't entomb their dead, from what I understand.) Next stop was Kilmanheim Jail. We learned that this was the first jail that was designed to reform criminals rather than simply contain them. This jail was designed to give each inmate his/her own room, and to only be allowed to speak to guards and not to other inmates. The idea was to force the criminal to think about and reconsider his/her crime. While this may have been a good idea, it didn't work out so well. The jail was frequently overcrowded. In fact, during the Great Famine of 1846-1851 (not to be confused with the Splendid Famine of 1078 or the Marvelous Famine of 1425), many poor Irish people were committing crimes on purpose to get into the jail so that they could at least get some food and shelter. It being Saturday night (and Preeti's last night in town), we decided to hit the town with my local friend Shashi, who took us to a nice place to eat and hooked us up with a great pub/club. Sunday, September 10th Somehow, Preeti managed to wake up this morning and make it to the airport. I, on the other hand, slept in. And then continued to sleep in. Finally, in the late afternoon, Shashi joined me and we drove up to the ancient burial mounds in Newgrange just north of Dublin. These burial mounds were created in something like 3000 BC. There are actually three sites up here: Newgrange, Knowth, and Dowth. Unfortunately, the Newgrange tours were all sold out, so we were left with going to Knowth. Knowth's burial mounds are not quite as impressive as Newgrange, but they are moundy enough, indeed. All in all, the combination of the dreary weather (it finally came) and the tiredness from the night before dampened any fascination that I might have had for this archeological site. But the views were fantastic from atop the mound, that's for sure. Okie doke. That's all for now. I'll try and get the next installment out to you in another week or so. -Paraag Tidbits: 1. The Irish Road-Maker People (RMP for short) really love their roundabouts. I kinda like those roundabouts too. Preeti and I early on decided to try and say roundabouts like Irish people would, but the best we could do was the faux-Canadien "roundaboots". And then we exploited every opportunity we had to say it. 2. Don't try the black pudding if you ever go to Ireland. It's not really pudding. I didn't fall for it either. But I was afeared, very afeared. 3. In Ireland, a mobile home is not a sign of a hillbilly dwelling. They tend to be vacation homes for the middle class. So it was really strange to see a beautiful coastline or picturesque city with a trailer park in a prime location. Given my Kentucky roots, my mind couldn't even process this complete reversal. 4. Johnny must have had an Irish brother named Eddie. There are Eddie Rockets restaurants populated all over Ireland. I never went in, but my guess is that they served black pudding too. 5. The Euro really sucks. Or rather, the exchange rate sucks. Funny story. Okay not so funny, but you've read this far and so you might as well stick it out. I kept calling them Pounds instead of Euros the entire trip. Okay, that reads very unfunny. But I already wrote this and hit the "send" button, so it's too late to delete it.