travelogues: Ireland 2007
Read about our Irish adventures:
Dublin city is really small. Not only that, but the whole country is really small -- there's only just over 4 million people in the whole place! That's about half the size of the greater Bay area!! [Speaking of size, the whole island is about 27K sq. miles -- Texas is TEN TIMES that size. If you cut my home state of Ohio in half, that would be about the right size, population, and number & size of major cities. Doesn't sound all that interesting, does it? :P]
When I was here in 1980, it was a deeply impoverished country, having never risen out of the slump that started in the early 1800s, when England forced the Irish Parliament to move to Westminster (taking all of high society & most of the wealth with it). I don't recall much in particular, aside from being rundown, except this story: traveling pal Erin & I stayed with a friend of a friend of my mom's, who owned a nice home in the suburbs of Dublin. They had been waiting TWO YEARS for a telephone, and there was no date set yet for installation. The infrastructure simply didn't exist.
So it's small, but wealthy. Prices would be about what you'd expect in SF -- until you remember to convert the euro to dollars, and then you yelp. In the commercial / touristic / cultural center of town (which is even smaller -- maybe 15 blocks by 15?) there are lots of boutiques, record shops, coffee shops, high-end restaurants, and even a few Starbucks'. [That's the only place I can get a "fix"; they don't believe in
decaffeinated coffee here, at all. You all can imagine my dismay at relinquishing my 10-partial-cup a day habit.] The "Celtic tiger" economic surge of the last 20 years is kind of hard to imagine; how can an entire country's economy be turned around after 200 years of depression in such a short time period? Well, think about the benefit of the IT sector in our area; given the comparable geographic size & population of the country, you can imagine that when Cisco & Dell moved in, it helped to shift things very rapidly.
There's a medieval area, dominated by the 1200s-era Christ Church, built on a protective hill just south of the River Liffey. St. Patrick's is just a few blocks south, where Jonathon Swift was a dean. (I'd no idea that so many literary figures were tied to Dublin; I should have known Joyce & Wilde, but Bram Stoker?) One of my favorite spots is the Marsh Library, tucked in behind the cathedral; a library that is essentially unchanged from when it was opened in the 1700s as one of the first public libraries in Europe. Readers would be locked in cages to prevent them from walking off with priceless books. Had a lovely long chat with Robert, one of the assistants at the library, who is a calligrapher at his real job. Having spent the morning examining the Book of Kells, and having been something of a calligrapher myself in my youth, we had an engaging chat, and he tried to teach me Gaelic.
[A side note here about Gaelic: it's called Irish and is still spoken as the first language in small pockets on the western side of the country. Everyone learns it in school and all the public signs & government information are in both English & Irish (like French in Canada) in a valiant attempt to keep the language alive. It's quite unusual sounding; we heard a radio talk show that was mystifying. Truly bizarre was seeing an episode of South Park dubbed.]
Walk east from Christ Church & you enter Temple Bar, reclaimed from decline in the 80s by becoming the new bohemia of the city. You don't have cobblestone streets in Greenwich Village! Keep going & you enter the Trinity College campus, which only started allowing Catholics in the late 1800s, at which time the Church, in a snit, declared it off limits for all Catholics. True integration didn't start til the 70s. (Ireland's history is rife with similar sad instances of chest-thumping that leads to the general populace suffering. Speaking of suffering, did you know the potato famine was not really a famine? Potatoes were the only cropped affected by the blight, but the poor just couldn't afford grains, so they starved. And the government (British) and the church (both Catholic & Protestant) did nothing.)
Trinity also starts the Georgian part of town -- a lot of the late 1700s structures were lost to urban renewal, but there are a few gems. There were 3 parks just south of the campus that were just lovely: St. Stephen's Green, Merrion Square, and the almost forgotten Iveagh Gardens. In Iveagh, there is even a maze, a rose garden, and several statues toppled into the overgrowth in a very artful manner. Walking the parks & sipping tea were my favorite activities; well, that and
sipping fresh, creamy, smooth, toasty,
chocolaty, tea-infused Guiness. While listening to a bunch of "trads" playing a "session" of music.
"Trads" are musicians who play the traditional instruments that give Irish music its distinct sound: First, they have something like bagpipes (actually at least 2 kinds, one of which has TWO bladders you pump -- one under each arm while still playing the notes -- yikes) that are played sitting down (apparently the British had outlawed the Scottish "standing" pipes at some point, so I guess the rebels figured if you could play while sitting no one would notice this HUGE HONKING NOISE COMING FROM YOUR CHEST.) Next are the fiddles, whistles, and traditional drums (which look like big tambourines without the bangles). They also use banjos and guitars. A "session" is basically a pick-up session; no one is paid, just whoever shows up plays whatever they feel like. Usually no vocals, it's all about the instruments. There's also a lot of down time, where the musicians socialize & drink.
Our drive to Cork after a week in Dublin started out fine; driving on the wrong side & dealing with a standard shift with the wrong hand were challenging, but Howard was up to it. We stopped at a deserted little beach along the coast to collect seashells & look at dog tracks. It was a blustery, stormy day, and as the day grew darker, it really let lose, so by the time we entered Cork (after dark) with its myriad roundabouts, it was truly white-knuckle driving. When we arrived at our hotel (impossible to find in a nation that doesn't believe in street signs, even in cities) we were ready to guzzle our Guinesses. Luckily, Hayfield Manor had a bar in the hotel and "the black stuff" on tap!
Over the next couple days we drove leisurely through the area around Cork, returning to "The Manor" every night. Every town was fetching; every countryside vista was lovely. Mile after mile of luscious, green grassy rolling hillsides, with hedgerows & stone fences dividing pastures into 2-4 acre lots. There appeared to be about 1 house (charmingly ancient, of course) for every 10 lots, and a few lots would be occupied by cows, sheep, or horses. We stopped to see a stone circle at Drombeg - kind of a mini-Stonehenge. These are everywhere in Ireland - those Celts were very industrious. There was an English couple there, and together we futzed with the "alter" offerings left by previous visitors, finding everything from a 1964 US half dollar (remember those?) to incense to a girl's hairband. As we walked away, the skies opened up & we all got soaked during a vicious 4-minute hailstorm! Hmmmm.
In Skibbereen, we ate delicious fish at the aptly named Fishy Fishy Cafe, sitting next to a beautiful Irish babe (the rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed, blonde-haired infant kind). In Kinsale I purchased a sketchbook & pencils - my first since high school. I figured a good way to start "slowing down" and relaxing would be to take the time to really look at things; sketching forces this. There was an urban "lough" a short walk from "The Manor" with diverse water birds; I wanted to draw the funny-legged coots but never got the chance.
In one of the myriad tea shops we patronized, I dropped my extra coins (who needs a 1-, 2-, 5- AND 10-cent piece?) into a can promoting a sanctuary for donkeys. I got to thinking about it; dogs & cats I can see, but who needs to rescue donkeys? So I checked on line to see if the organization was legit... and the next day we were driving up to visit
The Donkey Sanctuary in Mallow, Cork. Apparently, the country is still rural enough that a LOT of folks use & keep donkeys, and hence there are lots that need rescuing. Did you know that donkeys are small, adorable and, unlike horses, love for perfect strangers to come up & fuss with them? Within minutes I was kissing Lorraine over & over right on her soft downy nose; Willie followed Howard across the entire paddock to get pets.
After a few days we drove on to Killarney to take in some mountainous scenery and especially the "Ring of Kerry" - a very popular route around the Iveragh Peninsula. We spent a day, but you could take a dozen; there's even a walking route of about 200 kilometers! Every corner we turned I was thinking "Oh, this is so beautiful, I want to live here!" Then we'd turn another corner... and I'd have to repeat myself. We checked out the "working" Kerry Bog Museum where we got to see old-style thatched-roof stone houses, with the chimneys open right up to the sky (no flues, no caps, rain comes straight in). Piles of peat, I mean PILES, were everywhere; I guess you can burn a lot of peat. This was the only place in all of Ireland where we saw Irish wolfhounds. Even in ads, when speed was being implied, we saw setters, golden
retrievers, everything but a wolfie. At the Bog Museum the staff were busy building a nice BIG dog house for their 2 teenage boys, who were very sweet.
Another couple days & on to The Old Ground Hotel in Ennis, County Clare (also home to the city of Limerick). I really liked Ennis: quite a lovely village with well-incorporated 17th-century buildings and a long walkway along the river where I indulged in my favorite pastime: feeding the birds (illegal activity in SF!) The pigeons & ducks & geese were at a disadvantage, being limited to one media (air & water) where the terns, masters of both, did quite well. Surprisingly, a raven showed up every day but was too shy to get much that I offered (I finally found a use for all the damn toast inevitably served at breakfast.) The geography north of Ennis is much starker than what we'd seen previously, including a barren rocky area called the Burren. The dominant limestone is called Doolin, and is characterized by dense thickets of worm-hole casts! It's used in construction everywhere, quite dramatically in the visitors' areas at the Cliffs of Mohr. The cliffs themselves are on a grand scale; 700 feet rising right up out of the stormy crashing Atlantic.
You'll note that we spent over a week in just 3 counties: Cork, Kerry, & Clare, a geographic region of about 200 x 200 miles. That tells you something about the beauty of the region, yes, but it also tells you something about Irish roads. Or, I should say, "roads". To their credit, the Irish are trying to do something about it, but all it really seemed to amount to was road construction & traffic slow-downs everywhere we went. We ultimately came up with this understanding of Irish maps: a dirt road makes it onto the map; if there's asphalt, it's marked a secondary road, if there's lines on the asphalt, it's shown as a highway.
Other observations:
- The days are extraordinarily short; light at about 7:30 am & dark by 4:30 pm. I guess we're substantially further north than SF.
- In the hardware stores, they sell moss killer right next to the Round-up. Moss grows everywhere -- roofs, gutters, all sides of a tree (not just the north), on top of signs, you name it.
- The Irish burn a lot of fires; even in the hotels, every lobby had a fire going. They seem to use exclusively coal & peat, neither of which I'd ever seen before. The peat is cool -- very light weight, but solid; it looks like a handmade brick of dirt. Coal, unfortunately, smells like trash burning with a hint of fresh asphalt - ugh.
- I must get Mom a recipe for brown soda bread; it's served at every meal and is delicious. Peculiarly, it is never toasted. It's served as part of the traditional artery-clogging Irish breakfast of fried eggs, fried bacon (our ham), fried sausage, fried meat puddings, fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms and buttered white & wheat toast, but the brown bread is never toasted. I bet it's awesome toasted.
- We saw very few dogs, and those we did seemed to roam free even in the cities, which was quite unnerving.
- With prosperity comes construction, and there are buildings going up everywhere. Sadly, they seem to be quite fond of plunking down developments of ugly, boxy homes -- identical right down to the paint -- in the middle of a serene spread of fields. The result is that there are these expensive (but ugly) looking homes right next to a herd of cows. None of the homes are clapboard; they seem to be stucco in either beige or soft yellow. I don't know if they're built of stone or concrete or what.
- Irish drivers are very courteous, unhurried drivers, forgiving to a fault, and quite a pleasure to share the road with. Except for tailgaters. They'll stop traffic in 2 directions in order to let some poor slob complete an 18-point parallel parking job, but god forbid you're doing the speed limit on a 2-lane road with limited visibility. Gotta pass gotta pass gotta pass!
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