Why It's Called Dublin (12/01/08)

It's not quite 9 a.m. here on Tuesday, and Jo has left for another bus ride out to the 'burbs, where she is supervising student teachers. I'm waiting for my Theraflu to kick in and drinking Beweley's tea in the hotel room. We still have internet access, so I'll take advantage of that before heading out and about today.

Dublin Castle is right down the road from where we are staying. It looks more like a Palladian-style palace than an older castle, but as I've learned here, what a building looks like from the street is often very different from what's actually there. I'd poked around the outside on my own last week and decided to take the tour so I could get inside to the restricted areas. So I handed over some euros and waited in a yellow and white anteroom where the morning sun came through the window onto a marble statue of Sappho and some late 18th c portraits. Our guide, Daniel, showed up and herded the group up the stairs to the main floor.

Daniel was a seasoned docent, even if he's not yet 30. I always like to hear the "housekeeping" rules a tour guide spells out at the beginning, because it gives an idea of where previous tour groups went wrong. Daniel, who moved like a young James Cagney and was dressed like a Dublin mod, emphasized strongly the need for group unity due to the government use of parts of the building. I'm guessing there have been a few security breaches on his watch, and he wanted no more. He also was clear from the start about allowing very little space in his monologue for questions, no doubt understanding the negative impact of those on a tour's timing.

The main building today was built in the 18th c and used as the viceroy's residence when he came from London as the queen's representative. But it started out as a Viking stronghold and later became the location of a castle built over a period of 10 years or so in the early 1200s by King John, son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquataine. So while what you see from the ground level is mostly the later Palladian-style State Apartments, there's more history lurking underground and around corners.

The residence itself has had its ups and downs, particularly when the Irish objected more dramatically to British rule. At the time of the 1916 rebellion in Dublin, part of the residence was being used as a hospital, and elsewhere on the grounds was a gaol. A plaque dedicates one room to James Connelly, who was brought to the hospital there to have the gunshot wound to his ankle treated so that he'd later be able to stand to face the firing squad for his rebellion activities. As it turned out, the quality of care was a bit low, and by the time execution day came, the Brits had to tie him in a chair at Kilmainham Gaol, up the road. "Twas thought to make the British look even more callous, at the time," said Daniel, who referred to Connelly as a martyred hero.

The main building, known as the State Apartments, is beautifully restored today and used mainly for state occasions, such as presidential inaugurations every 7 years, meetings of heads of state for the EU, diplomatic receptions, that sort of thing. There are Waterford crystal chandeliers and beautiful Irish woolen carpets. Each room is painted a deep, rich color. The hall called St. Patrick's is painted deep blue lined with heraldic flags, and that's where the president is sworn in. There used to be an Order of St. Patrick that held investitures there, but since the Republic of Ireland was established, the Brit-originating Order of St. Patrick has lost its cachet of honor.

The throne room has a massive gold throne upholstered in red velvet. Daniel explained that King George weighed about 350 pounds and required sturdy seating. But by the time the pleasantly plump but quite short Queen Victoria came along, she objected to the indignity of having to be hoisted up onto the throne. So she had it sent out for 6 inches to be taken off the legs, and she had a little matching footstool made.

Queen Victoria, when she visited Dublin, claimed the King's bed chamber for her own and had Prince Albert stationed in the Queen's bed chamber. Why didn't that fun fact from Daniel surprise me?

A mirror in one room, a gift from France, got lost in the shuffle for a century or so after one crass viceroy thought it would make a swell headboard for his bed. He knocked out the glass and used it as a headboard until it got pitched during some political fracas. It ended up sold at a second hand shop for 5 pounds until someone appraised it and figured out what it really was. It's back in the castle now, as a mirror. (It would have been a little over the top as a headboard, anyway, even in the Graceland school of interior design. There's no accounting for taste.)

In the drawing room, where 18th century young ladies waited to be claimed by gentlemen for dances (or spent the whole evening outside the party), there were lovely painted wooden screens for the girls to stand behind so that their wax-based makeup didn't melt from the fireplace heat. More fun facts.

The tour left the residence and walked across a cobblestone courtyard to an unassuming office building. Inside, we went down stairs to a damp, dank area where the foundation of the Norman castle could be seen, along with the moat that surrounded the castle. (Photo is dark and murky, not unlike the remains of the moat itself.)

The first foundation was laid by Vikings who weren't good stonemasons. They came up with a mortar made of oxblood, straw and ground shell and bone that made a putty that hardened. Ingenious, really.

Daniel told the story of Dublin's name. In Viking days, there was a small lake adjacent to the castle that they used mainly for sewage and called "Dubh Linn" (with the Dubh pronounced Dove). Dubh Linn became Dublin. Lovely, eh?

There's a little church built in 1814 and decorated outside with carved heads of folks like Jonathan Swift, Brian Boru and miscellaneous saints and martyrs. It's butted up against a Norman tower, which is attached to the 18th century building, which is adjacent to a later office building, which is over the original moat...

And of course, this being Ireland, the hard core history tour ends with arrows directing each group to the exit via a lovely cafe and gift shop.

After Dublin Castle I walked a bit and stopped for soup and tea (Oh no. Am I becoming one of those older ladies who does that? Dear Lord.). And then I cut through the old Temple Bar district and out to Wellington Quay, and the down the Liffey to see the Custom House. I crossed over the river at Butt Bridge and walked around the huge building and past the Dublin Brigade Memorial before picking up Abbey St Lower and joining all the pedestrian traffic along there. I love to walk with the residents of a place and see where they go. On Monday afternoon I headed north, stopped at a few little shops and took some photos of interesting things, then crossed back over the Liffey at the Grattan Bridge and headed back to the hotel to meet Jo.

There's a cool bench made to look like a Viking Ship down at the end of Winetavern St. The fore and aft parts of the boat come out of the ground and the benches are in between. Nifty installation on a busy street. Urban art rocks.

I was going to make a few more stops in the afternoon, but I was feeling punky. I met Jo and we went out to find a late lunch. The Moroccan place I'd scouted out turned out not to be open until later, so we cut across Temple Bar district and went back to the Larder. She had a BLT (with Irish bacon, of course; hold the mayo) and I had a warm tuna salad--poached tuna over greens with strips of raw veggies, slices of apples, and a handful of pistachios, in an oregano dressing. We shared a warm mixed berry crumble and a pot of tea. Yum yum. And then we went back to the hotel where I took some Theraflu and a nap.

Jo went out in the evening to meet her colleague and the students for a little event, while I stayed behind and entertained my bronchitis. When Jo came back we considered the available food options, which were limited at that hour (no pizza delivery in Dublin), and she popped around the corner to Burdock's for fish and chips. Burdock's has a wall of fame listing Bono, Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, Bruce Springsteen and a bunch of other celebs among their customers, and there is usually a line out the door for take-away fish and chips. We shared a huge order of fresh cod and chips. Not exactly a light bedtime snack, but oh well. When in Dublin...

And that was Monday. I've been here a week already! I think I could stay a long, long time. I like Dublin. Time to head out and see what Tuesday has to offer.

Book of Kells (11/30/08)

Back in the early 1980s, I saw the Book of Kells exhibit on tour when it came to the Philadelphia Art Museum, thanks to dearest Larry, who got us tickets. Since then, I have remained fascinated by monks and monasteries and illuminated manuscripts and the preservation of scholarly texts against impossible odds. So I knew that when I came to Dublin I would have to visit the Book of Kells again, just because.

Jo and I took a walk down Dame St to Trinity College when we got back from our weekend adventure. We'd been to Clonmacnoise in the morning and returned to Dublin by mid afternoon. Our plan was to get info about tours so that we could coordinate our schedules to see Trinity and the Book of Kells together later in the week. (She's working here, remember. I'm the one on blissful holiday.) But when we reached the entry point for Kells, we saw that there was no queue, and the ticket guy said we had plenty of time before closing, so we decided to go right in. The timing could not have been more perfect.

We could take our time with the exhibit, reading everything up close, before going into the dimly lit chamber where the Book of Kells and the Book of Armagh are displayed. We were able to spend lots of time looking at the manuscripts, with no line looming behind us. It was like having a private viewing. Loved it.

As always, I was amazed by the patient work of the monks who prepared the illuminated manuscripts. It was quite a production, from preparing the vellum from calfskin, to gathering and preparing the plant and insect pigments for the inks, to copying the latin text with sharp quills, to illuminating the text with marvelous--really marvelous--drawings and decorative lettering. And then binding it all up into books. The Book of Kells, comprised of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, was created well over 1,000 years ago and preserved despite all threats since then.

This being Ireland, of course, the history of the Book of Kells contains at least one chapter in which Big Bad Oliver Cromwell, that mid-17th century rat bastard and hardcore enemy of Ireland himself, was the reason for the Book to be carried into Dublin for hiding. About a hundred years later, the Bishop of Meath gave the book to Trinity College for keeps.

So seeing it up close and for longer than usual was a little thrill, coming as it did at the end of a day in which we'd also visited Clonmacnoise. I think Jo was monked out. She's a good sport, but it's no secret that I am far more fond of things monastic than Jo is. At least the Trinity library complex was warm. Dublin's cold and damp do not sit well with her. (Her Philadelphia Eagles earmuffs do make quite the fashion statement here.)

After Kells we walked up the stairs to the longroom of the library, where the oldest books in the Trinity collection are stored. The stacks got filled so that by the mid 19th century, architects literally raised the roof and built what is essentially a vaulted second story onto the existing room. To see 200,000 or so books, all quite old and quite valuable, all in one place, is amazing. The room is lined with marble busts that create a sort of pleasing symmetry. There's also a harp that by legend was carried by hero Brian Boru into battle, although that fact is iffy. (In any event, I learned later that he died in that battle, so the harp, had it really been with him, was not exactly his good luck charm.) That was cool to see.

Larry would have liked the special exhibit of botany books on display from the collection. Seed catalogs from the Netherlands, c. 17th century; illustrated flower-growing manuals from long ago; textbooks on propagating seeds. All very interesting. One book had beautiful drawings of tulips that you would have drooled over, Lar. (Hence keeping the books under glass in display cases.)

Paul would have found penmanship resonance in some of the pocket books written in a miniscule hand. :)

My favorite thing in the long room was a book on canon law, written around 1400 (by hand, of course) by Giovanni Calderini. It was a hefty text. On the very last page, the very last line, in Latin, was Explicit hoc totum propina da michi potum. Translation? This is all finished; give me a drink. He'd underlined it in red. I laughed out loud. Giovanni had a good sense of humor. I imagine that if you're spending most of your life copying out manuscripts, you gotta know where to find the chuckles.

We traded euros for some excellent Trinity College swag before the store closed down for the day. Good gifties. I may need to go back.

After, we walked up Grafton toward home, and my ear caught the song being sung by a busker playing his guitar AND a drum contraption he'd rigged up on his back. It was one of my favorite Billy Bragg (old London busker himself) songs, A New England. He followed that with a Van Morrison song. I had to toss some coins into his case for that treat, even if the tempo was a little manic to keep the various instruments playing at the same time.

And the holiday lights across Grafton are just magical.

We stopped for hot drinks at a little French cafe where the snoot factor was, how you say, a tad high for the product being delivered. But they were alternating the first David Grey CD with c. late '70s Bowie, an interesting combination; and there were fresh red carnations on the table, so I got over the fact that the service was as bad as the coffee. We won't bother with that place again.

Sunday was a fine, fine day. I wish I had some chant on my iPod.

What I Like About Dublin (So Far)

So I've got a little bronchitis happening today, and after spending most of the day out and about, I decided to sit tight and stay warm this evening while Jo is off doing an SRU activity with her colleague and the kids. I'm quite the nuisance with my hacking and nose-blowing and Kathleen Turner voice. We've got internet access at the moment, so I'll do some blogging.


Weird thing about blogging: I'm not sure who, if anyone, is reading what I write. I just click and send the words into cyberspace. But it is such fun to write about all our adventures that I keep doing it. (Ellen, you were right--I dig this blogging thing!)


So this morning I did the tour of Dublin Castle--more on that later. And then I stopped for tea at this little place on Dame St that I've been to a few times already. The coffee is abysmal and the tea is just adequate, but I keep going back because I like to walk through the narrow double doors and into the long, narrow shop--it can't be 10' across in the front, and not much more than 15' in back. I like the place. In fact, I like a lot about Dublin. So while I drank tea, I started my list:

Things I Really Like About Dublin

Narrow double shop doors with brass handles, and not being sure whether to push or pull to get in or out.

Creaky wooden floors everywhere you go.

Pureed vegetable soups served steaming hot with dense, grainy brown bread.

All the bridges across the River Liffey, each with a name and a history.

The inevitable presence of some kind of Viking or Norman foundation beneath or behind so many buildings.

The garlands of lights ending in chandelier-style fixtures across Grafton Street, at twilight.

How excited Dubliners seem to be about Barack Obama.

The cheeky humor (humour) of tour guides.

Seeing the decorated Christmas tree in the window of the apartment opposite the hotel room we're in at the moment; actually, all the signs that December is upon us.

Impossibly skinny-legged boys and girls in tight jeans and big boots, with floppy hair and snug wool coats.

Walking down Dame St past all the people waiting for buses in the evening.

Strongly brewed Beweley's tea with milk. Also, the tiny silver teaspoons that come with the tea.

The way guys catching a smoke in doorways invariably respond to my request for directions with, "Right, love, here's what you want to do..."

Mothers pushing their babies in strollers everywhere, fearlessly, and how the babies seem quite content.

All the languages being spoken, everywhere I go.

The concept of stopping in mid-morning and mid-afternoon for tea and a some wonderful carbohydrate snack.

The cobblestone streets in some districts; all the alleyways and medieval street patterns.

How no matter how gruesome the history being presented at a particular site (church, prison, wherever), there's always a lovely little cafe serving tea and something nice at the end of the tour.

How Dubliners can put you in your place with one wry comment and let you know that they'll not be taking you nor anyone else too seriously.

That's a start...

Sunday at Clonmacnoise (11/30/08)

There was frost on the fields, the berms of the road, and the north face of roofs we passed as we left Galway on Sunday morning. In the rural communities toward the center of the country, horses and cows gave off visible fogs of breath. By the time we reached Clonmacnoise, at the river Shannon, we stepped off the coach into a crystal clear blue-sky winter morning, quiet except for the kids' low conversation and the mooing of cows up the hill from where we waited for John to signal us into the site.

Truth be told, I am a travel geek who would choose monasteries, churches, museums and tours of historical sites over just about anything else. With Clonmacnoise, I hit the motherlode.

Imagine being St. Ciaran, who founded Clonmacnoise in the mid 6th century. He was interested in learning, and the route to an education was through the church. So as a young man he set off for the western islands and entered the monastic life, got himself educated, and then returned to central Ireland. He picked a spot not far from the river Shannon, accessible mainly along an esker, the gravel ridges that push up through the boggy lands and have formed, over time, the basis for most roads in the region. He created a place for learning and prayer that was not easily attacked by enemies. Smart monk.

Ciaran himself succumbed to one of the plagues before he reached 35. But Clonmacnoise survived all kind of raids and attacks by the usual suspects in Irish history--the tribal groups, the Vikings, the Normans (such disrespectful hooligans, all of them). Over the centuries, new chapels and schools were built at the site, the nobility of Europe sent their sons to be educated there, and a tradition of creating art as prayer was established. It became a pilgrimage destination and a place where kings and bishops and other Very Important Men visited while alive and were buried when they died. One famous grave today is that of King Rory, who died at the end of the 12th century. Of course, this being Ireland, the Brits swooped down in the mid 1500s and ruined the site. But it managed to survive burning towers and looted coffers and the usual slings and arrows, even into the Victorian age, when the graveyard was a popular picnic ground. (The Victorians were a strange lot.)

So anyway, we visited Clonmacnoise (without a picnic basket) on Sunday. It was another of those sublime experiences I am having in Ireland. I got to see the carved stone crosses--the original ones, moved indoors for preservation, as well as the copies outside. I saw the cathedral where King Rory (last name O'Connor, or am I making that up?) is buried and where the pope before the current one visited in, I think, the '80s. I climbed in and around the various stone chapels and outbuildings still standing, but without their wooden roofs. I read marvelous old and not-so-old tombstones in the frosty-grass graveyard overlooking the Shannon. It was just wonderful.

Jo and I tested the whispering door, designed so that priests could hear confessions of plague-ridden pilgrims outside the church rather than let them in where they'd infect everyone. Very cool architectural design element: One person whispers into the corner of the door frame and the sound is carried very clearly to the opposite side of the door frame. Even if I didn't have the plague, if I was a pilgrim who'd traveled long and far to get to Clonmacnoise, I'd opt for the whispering door feature at confession time.

One cool item in the museum display: a lucite box containing all the bones found during excavation that were used by the monks to practice their carving skills before they took to stone. Their carving on the crosses tells stories and is instructional as well as inspirational, so they'd want to get it right. Imagine carving bone and then stone as your life's work. I suppose that if you got to do it at Clonmacnoise, you'd welcome the opportunity.

Of course, mostly men inhabited Clonmacnoise. The nuns who showed up eventually had their chapel about a half-mile from the main cathedral and smaller church buildings. I'd like to know what kind of scut work they were assigned to do for the boys up the road.

But be that as it may, the monastic site is something to behold. We had the good fortune to be touring it alone on Sunday morning, without the distraction of touristy hoardes. The stillness in the cold air on the last day of November brought the mystical nature of the place into focus. I just loved Clonmacnoise. I'm including some pics so you can see why.

To the Cliffs and Back (Saturday, 11/29/08)

Lahinch is known as a surfing town and a golfer's town, but it was on the beach and not the links that the SRU group gathered on Saturday morning. Climbing out to the big rocks that look out over the rolling waves, Jo and her colleague sat among all the students and held the SRU banner for the group photo. We camp followers joined them for photos next. John and his girlfriend Lydia, along for this weekend adventure, had everyone's cameras dangling from their wrists and did their best to get a group photo onto each camera.

Lydia is someone with a quick smile and a soft voice that blends Irish English with native Slavic accents. She has lived in Ireland for six years but was born in Communist-controlled Latvia and lived in the Soviet Union into her adolescence. She says that she never knew anything other than the Communist culture until then, and when she began to realize that had options, she focused on getting out and making a better life for herself. One gets the sense that she has worked very hard to reach that goal, that she is like the thousands of immigrants to Ireland we see in Dublin, working hard at the lower-paying jobs and getting themselves established in a new country. Their immigrant story is similar to that of anyone leaving one country with the hope of finding something better in another. It's part of my own family history. I am in awe of such courage.

From Lahinch we were aimed out to the Cliffs of Moher by way of Liscannor. The focus of the early morning touring was rocks.

Out on the Dingle Peninsula, as in most regions of Ireland, rocks rule. If a farmer wanted to work the land at all, he'd first have to clear his field of all the rocks. This could take a lifetime, and then his legacy to his children would be a cleared field for them to farm. Sheila explained that it was long believed that the women carried the big rocks to the men, who then built the walls that divided one farm from the next. This view fits with the traditional Irish view of women as inferior to men and so best suited to a life of servitude. I'm guessing that the establishment of Christianity stripped women of the power they enjoyed in ancient Celtic life and relegated them to lesser roles that the male-dominated Catholic Church was only too happy to help them maintain. Old habits die hard, but Ireland does have a woman as president today. But I digress. Sheila said that it may have been more likely that the men, who were physically stronger, lugged the rocks off the fields and that the women directed the construction of walls and dwellings. Makes sense to me.

Toward the Liscannor region, in County Clare, the rock walls change. Where in other parts of Ireland they are made of craggy round rocks, in Liscannor it is flat, relatively smooth rocks that are used for construction. We learned that the stone rose in mountains from the sea a kajillion years ago and contained the fossils of wormlike creatures that give Liscannor stone its distinctive appearance. It was mined in the 19th and early 20th centuries by expert stonecutters who would lift off each shale-like layer and split it laterally to make transportable slates. The stones were loaded on boats called "hookers" and exported out of the region and around the world. Liscannor slate is of varying shades of grey, and with rounded ridges where the worms used to live. It's very nice indeed.

We learned some of this from watching a video about Liscannor in a place called the Rock Shop, where an opportunity to spend euros followed. I picked up a cool-looking fossil and thought I might get it for my 10 yr old niece Emma, but then I imagined her telling me that the fossil was not, in fact from the west of Ireland but from someplace in the South Pacific, because Emma would know such things.

Next it was to the Cliffs of Moher, those 600' high rocky cliffs that face the Atlantic Ocean and turn up in most travelogues about Ireland. Used to be, tourists could climb up, bucking the strong winds and lie on their bellies to look over the the edge. I myself fully intended to do so. But in the past couple of years, somebody made the decision to build in some safety features to protect tourists from their own foolishness. Seems that particularly lightweight tourists, including an unfortunate Japanese traveler, were more susceptible to the wind and went over the edge, literally. Yikes. I have considerably more ballast, but having felt the winds on what others said was a relatively calm day, I can appreciate the walls and walkways they have installed. We climbed all along the cliffs and saw them from different angles. Standing there, looking out at the cliffs and the sea beyond, I had that strangely comforting sense of being one very small piece of a very big mechanism, of being one nanosecond in a timeline stretching before and beyond into infinity. And then it was time for potato leek soup in the visitor center. It is important to maintain perspective, after all.

The road toward Galway had us pass through the Burren, a vast region covered with limestone and little else... or so Oliver Cromwell thought. The Big Bad Meanie Cromwell, collectively loathed by the Irish, would exile his enemies to the Burren to perish. He is quoted as referring to the Burren as a "savage" place with "neither water enough to drown a man, nor tree to hang him, nor soil enough to bury." But people have made a life there, as evidenced by 5,000 year old manmade structures and more recent real estate across the Burren plateau. I remember a documentary about all the flora and fauna that thrive amid the rocks, but it is cold November now and not much appeared to be growing. Still, there were signs of green. The landscape is lunar, quite dramatic.

We drove through Lisdoonverna, where they have an annual matchmaking festival for the region's farmers, who are widely believed to be inept at entering into marriage, arranged or otherwise. I'm thinking that you'd have to put together a pretty good relocation package to lure a prospective spouse out to the farm in this region. The views are striking, but between the sheep shearing and cow milking and rock arranging, and the rain and sleet, and the mud... yeah, this ain't Green Acres.

So by mid-afternoon we made it to Galway, city of the tribes, where folks speak Irish (Gaelic) and the old part of the city is laid out on the medieval street pattern. We checked into yet another nice hotel, the Forster something or other, and stowed our gear in the room. Jo and I went walking around Galway, making it about as far as Eyre Square before the rain started. (JFK spoke there in 1963.) We ducked into an indoor shopping mall, all decorated for Christmas and full of Irish mall rat kids, and came out the other side onto a cobblestone street that is part of the hub of the city. You can go up one street and down an alley, then back around another street, and another alley, and you're still in the central part of town. There are colorful signs coming off two and three story buildings, all with ground floor businesses.

We were in time for the Saturday street vendors, selling everything from scarves to fish to jewelry to wicca supplies. From a leather worker whose booth was full of Very Nice Stuff, Jo got a beautiful belt embossed with a Gaelic pattern. I found a sweet pair of handmade copper and silver earrings that will be someone's gifty in a few weeks.

The streets were very crowded. There was harp busker, a woman playing the traditional Irish harp, on one corner. Jo spotted Santa in the crowd near her. I could hear Irish being spoken all around, and by young people, which I thought was cool. We window shopped and went in and out of some of the stores. Down one lane, Jo looked into a graveyard outside a church tucked behind two perpendicular rows of other buildings, and her eagle eye spotted that the long-deceased man shared her birthday, January 11th.

We were hungry, so we found McDonough's, a seafood place John had recommended, and ordered chowder for each of us and a kabob of fish with chips to share. While Jo waited for the food, I grabbed us seats at an indoor picnic table where two young woman were tucking in to huge pieces of fried cod (I asked) and a mound of chips. They were chatting with two older women who took the benches across for them. One of the girls was talking about how broke she is and the dilemma she faces as Christmas approaches: "So I says to m'family, you's can have a crap prezzie now or mebbe sometin' better after." The older women assured her that her family could wait. We ate our very tasty chowder and wished we'd ordered the cod like the girls had. The woman next to me heard our American accented English and wished me a nice visit in Galway.

Galway is known for its pubs and "trad," or traditional music, at night, so I was all geared up to go back out after a little rest. But Jo has been hacking, and the bug I've been valiantly fighting for a month now decided to establish itself in my chest during the day, and I was feeling punky. So with much angst about missing Galway's night life, we decided to stay out of the cold and damp and get some rest. Sometimes it just sucks being mature.

So we stayed in and I started the Z-pack I'd gotten from my doc "just in case" (because bronchitis is, for me, one of the ultimate buzz kills). We watched bad Irish TV until we found the movie Some Mothers --the one with Hellen Mirren playing the mother of one of the men who was part of the hunger strike that killed Bobby Sands in Belfast in 1981. I'd seen the film before and was glad to watch it again. It's a good one.

So what did we learn on Saturday? That worms moving across the ocean floor today may end up on someone's foyer floor in a million years. That a hooker along the Irish west coast carries stone and not STDs. That the Burren gives new meaning to the idea of desolation. That farmers in the west of Ireland need wives. That they speak Irish in Galway. And that sun and rain mix in Ireland so that when you look up to the grey sky for a sign of what is to come, as we did along Eyre Square in the afternoon, you're likely to see a rainbow to remind you that something better is coming, and what's here in the moment is quite all right, as well.

If This is Dingle, It Must be Friday (11/28/08)

We headed out of Tralee on Friday morning with a new passenger on the coach, a local guide named Sheila, who provided the narrative for our trip out to the Dingle Peninsula. She told us about the Rose of Tralee competition held there annually and pointed out a small monument in Tralee dedicated to Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. This being Ireland, the Rose of Tralee contest does not include a swimsuit component. From the way Sheila described it, the competition winner is invariably charming, wholesome, virtuous and, although contestants come from around the world, usually Irish. Jo and I decided we will not enter next year, just to give the other girls a chance.

It was a cold morning but the sun was shining and the clouds were huge and white against crystal blue sky. Spectacular day. There was snow on the low mountaintops outside Tralee. Sheila said that doesn't often happen. The cold weather here is making news. Single digit Celsius readings are a big deal. (European Travel 101: to convert C degrees to F degrees, add 10 to the number and double it.) (P.S. Our server at breakfast in Galway on Sunday used the word "desperate" to describe the cold. She'd be so unhappy waking up in western PA at this time of year, wouldn't she?)

The Irish harvest their abundant wind and convert it to electricity. We see big white wind turbines grouped together on hilltops as we travel along. The design is quite pleasing against the sky. (In the middle of the country, where all the peat bogs are, the Irish convert peat heat to electricity. Those plants are not quite as pretty to look at as the windmills.)

We headed out toward the Dingle Peninsula with a stop at Inch Beach. My jaw dropped when I saw it approaching and realized where we were. If you know the film (or "fill-im," as they say here), Ryan's Daughter, then you've seen Inch Beach. It's that broad stretch of gorgeous beach where Robert Mitchum's character, the schoolmaster, walks with his students on the day when Sarah Miles (it's Sarah Miles, right?) is having a rendezvous with the British soldier, in the dunes. The fill-im was set in and around Inch Beach, in Dingle, which Sheila told us was, until recently, considered to be the "back of beyond" in its remoteness. It's still not too developed, and I would live there in a heartbeat (if I could have a half-dozen residences to travel among during the year... and if I could persuade Jo to live somewhere without cable).

So we got to walk on Inch Beach on a clear, stunningly beautiful morning, and I had another one of those moments of incredulity that I am actually in Ireland. It hardly seems real, sometimes.

























All the signs as you travel west are in Irish first, English second. That's been the law since about 2000, Sheila said. In an attempt to preserve Irish language and tradition, Irish is taught in schools now, and all college students are required to pass an Irish language exam before they graduate. (We heard young people speaking Irish (Gaelic) in the streets of Galway over the weekend.) I am beginning to recognize some parts of words ("Baile" is town, as in Ballyvaughan, and "kil" is church, as in Kilkenny). The Gaelic names got Anglicized here when the Brits moved in. Kind of the way they went to India and made turned Mumbai into Bombay. Bad, bad imperialist Brits. This is Ireland. I'm joining the mob (and pretending not to ignore, for the moment, my own country's imperialist tendencies).

We stopped briefly in Dingle, a fishing town founded by the Normans and currently busy with maritime industry, and, in better weather, tourists. It's got colorfully painted buildings lining narrow streets that wind up from the docks. All kind of boats are docked there, and even in the drizzle that had started to fall by the time we arrived, it had that fresh fish and diesel fuel smell that I love. Note to brother Frank: You would love Dingle. You would have ditched the group, pulled on your foul weather gear and talked your way onto a boat for the afternoon. Me, I'm happy taking photos of boats and fish monger barrows.

From Dingle we drove out onto the peninsula, where the vistas were nothing short of awe-inspiring. What a breathtakingly beautiful part of the world the Dingle Peninsula is! Huge sky, vast sea, massive clouds, steep cliffs, rugged sheep and cattle, snug cottages, squalls giving way to rainbows... I don't have the words to describe it. I'll post some pix so you can see, too.



















I'll put more pix together and give you a link to them later, now that we've downloaded or uploaded or whatever you do to get them from the memory card to the laptop. (Guess who handled that technology maneuver? Hint: Initials are JML, not AML.)



We went along very narrow roads, stopping from time to time to see what we could see. Sheila said the original roads were made to be about two cows wide, so two farmers coming from opposite directions could each take their cattle past the other's. The roads aren't much wider than two cows now, so John's driving was even more impressive than it had been (and that is saying something!). The man has nerves of steel.




Slea Head, the westernmost point of Europe, has a crucifixion statue looking out to sea, at a bend in the road. The Blasket Islands lay just beyond--as far west in Europe as you can go.

We saw some beehive huts--small, round dwellings made of stones placed without mortar, where ancient monks lived. There were three or so standing on an impossibly steep hill that had been cultivated as grazing ground for sheep. That the huts have withstood centuries of wind and rain, not to mention human and farm animal traffic, testifies to their amazing construction. While I was snapping pix, I wondered what it was like to live in one of those huts. But I didn't wonder long, because John told us that the owner of the house adjacent to the huts gets ornery and comes out and makes tourists pay 2 euro for photographing her property. Seems fair to me, but she didn't come out in the rain while we were there.

We made a stop at the Mulcahy pottery studio, overlooking the bay. It would be so cool to have a business like that on the peninsula. Of course, I'd need to produce something that people want to buy, so that might be problematic. He makes pottery; she weaves things; together they sell it. We've seen his pottery in shops in Dublin. It's really nice. So nice, in fact, that we bought some and had it shipped home.

It was unsettling to see the "famine huts" along the road--tiny little stone dwellings where whole families subsisted during the famine years in the 19th century. Can't imagine such hardship. We are so soft, so untested. It is believed that St. Brendan set sail from Dingle Bay in the 6th century, in boats made of wood and lanolin-treated leather, and reached North America. The courage of such an endeavor--seeing the cliffs of the Dingle Peninsula receding in the distance as he sailed away--gives me shivers.

There was rain and some sleet as we drove back from whence we came, toward the town of Dingle again, and then on to our next destination(s). John has been playing Van Morrison CDs on the coach, and that makes me happy. Except that he fast-forwards over "Gloria" (G-L-O-R-I-A Glooooria...) every time. Probably wants the group to stay relatively mellow while he's behind the wheel. I'll never hear Van Morrison the same way again, though. Just sublime, as we move through the Irish countryside.

When we made a quick pit stop on the way back through Dingle, Jo and I scooted up the main street through the rain to a grocery store to get some sandwiches. There was a Nirvana song playing in the store. Did not expect to hear Nirvana in Dingle.

Back on the coach, John played a video about Tom Crean, whose pub, the South Pole Inn, we were going to pass that afternoon. Crean is a local legend because of his involvement with Antarctic exploration with Shackleton and Scott. He was part of the 1914 expedition on the Endurance, with Shackleton. So another note to brother Frank (whose borrowed copy of Shackleton's account of the Endurance experience is on my bookshelf in Grove City): I saw Tom Crean's pub. How cool is that?

We passed through the town of Listowel en route to the ferry at Tarbert, and we crossed the River Shannon from Tarbert on our way to Lahinch, where we spent Saturday night. The sky was darkening over a broad vista of rocky beach and crashing waves as we came into Lahinch, a little seaside-y kind of town. Not Seaside, NJ. More Victorian seaside-y. In fact, we stayed in the Atlantic Hotel, built toward the end of the 19th century and utterly charming, from the plush lounge with the fireplace, to the thickly carpeted stairs and warren of wallpapered hallways, to the gleaming brass fittings and curtained windowseats. Just a lovely place to end the day. I am a total sucker for civilized niceness. I may daydream about living the monk's life in a beehive hut, somewhere overlooking Dingle Bay, but I'd have the nickname of Brother Cranky by sundown on the first day.

Dinner was served in the pretty dining room of the hotel. The menu made choosing difficult, but we both started with a rich chowder full of all kind of fresh swimmers and scuttlers. That was followed by an entree best described as roasted chicken breast over a layer of some kind of stuffing with fruit in it, over a thin slice of baked ham, over very creamy mashed potatoes. Yeah, it was good. (Anyone care to venture a guess on the points value of that meal so far?) This being Ireland, one of the side vegetables served was a plate of fried spuds (a.k.a., chips). I passed on those, partly because I'd already consumed a few pieces of the grainy brown bread that is in every bread basket here (I tell myself it's high in fiber). And also because I knew there was an order of profiteroles coming with coffee later. (No, I'm not clairvoyant. I know because I ordered all three courses myself.)

Re profiteroles: What is not to love about itty bitty walnut-size creampuff pastries filled with chantilly cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce? Six of them, to be exact? Someone in the kitchen of the Atlantic Hotel in Lahinch, Ireland, fully comprehends the concept of profiteroles. I respect that in a person.

We went out to walk after (read: walk off) dinner, but the town is very small and it was drizzly, and besides, we wanted to find some live music at a pub, and we heard that there was some next door. So we went there first, and we heard music coming from the back, and the lad in front said to go into the back room, but what we heard there was Elvis singing, and we knew that, most likely, he was not live. So we went across the road and down a-ways, and we ran into some of the SRU kids in that pub, helping one of the guys celebrate his 26th birthday, and there was live music... but it was reggae, played by local Lahinch lads. Not quite what we were looking for. So we went out to another pub, but we struck out there, too. So we climbed the stairs back to our lovely room at the Atlantic, and Jo watched bad TV while I blogged a big and rationalized the eating of profiteroles with a vow that the ones at the end of our excellent dinner were the last I'll have for a long time. Big sigh.

Somewhere during the afternoon we deposited Sheila back near Tralee and sent the Dean and his lovely wife off to the train to Dublin so they could return to PA the next day. There may have been some non-essential spending of euros along the way. It's all a blur. John packs a lot into a weekend trip! So much to take in and process. But such a wonderful Saturday it was!

More to follow, if you'd care to come along...

Celebrity Status... Or Not

Great story related by one of Jo's student teachers, from her Irish supervising teacher, or co-op:

Seems that the co-op and her friends were out one night at a pub, and who should be outside for a smoke when they went outside for a smoke but Bono. Yeah, that Bono--U2 lead singer and internationally known humanitarian effort kind of guy. So the women chatted with him and his American friend outside the pub awhile, and when they all went back inside, Bono sent over a round of drinks for the women. And then the gals asked Bono if they could have a photo with him, and he said sure. So they had their photo taken. And then Bono left the pub. The women were talking about it at the bar when the bartender asked them why they hadn't wanted to include Bono's American friend in the photo. The women didn't know who the guy was. The bartender had to tell them it was Bruce Springsteen.