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.