June 18 Haywards Heath to Plymouth

Today we are off to Plymouth to see the Moody Blues!  We had a small continental breakfast (I was getting really tired of the big ones), and we were off at about 9:30.  Google Maps sent us north towards London to take advantage of what are supposed to be faster roads (the motorways), but the ring road is notoriously prone to backups… a bit hairy, lots of traffic, but once past Windsor, heading back towards the southwest, it was smooth sailing.  Our route took us Right Past Stonehenge!!  You could see it at the side of the road!  Aaaauuugggghhhh!   Mom can we stop??  The chainlink fence around it wasn’t as far away from the stones as I’d thought.  I raised my camera above it and took some pix.

After a lovely lunch stop at a bistro on the side of the road, we got to our B&B at about 3:30, dropped our bags and did quite a long walkaround, towards the water, through the park to “the Hoe”, the tip of land, round to the Mayflower steps, where the Mayflower left for America, and plenty of other vessels left for other important places, the Barbican, a castle, the big old church, the shopping district, split a pizza and back again to the B&B. 

Just found recently that the Beatles were cavorting around this area (pretty much the same shot as the ferris wheel and tower) during the filming of Magical Mystery Tour!  I recognized the area as soon as I saw it.

The Concert

We saw old friends and acquaintances at the venue.. all of us had pretty good or very good seats.  Within seconds of the start of the concert, I flashed double thumbs up at Justin, then at John and Norda and each smiled back, John with his own thumbs up.  John was smiling a lot my way; Justin was smiling a lot in general.  There were a few small changes in arrangements, longer or changed endings here and there, but basically the same concert as last year.  One big change was the addition of one more verse to IKYOTS, which was nice to hear.  I wonder what made Justin decide to put it back in.  Gordon is back to standing on his throne after a couple of years not doing it.  Graeme did an extra long buildup of chatter prior to Higher and Higher, and people are still laughing at the hair/teeth joke, amazingly enough.  It’s a clever way to gauge how many newbies there are at concerts, isn’t it?  There are now three LED screens at the front, with a little space between them.. This gives a little different appearance to the light show.  They had some new photos, and used the screens to advantage there with three photos at a time.  The lightshow part was also a bit dazzling now that LED screens are used (those are always bright).  Though there was one security woman looking to stop someone who had been using flash, I managed to take 142 photos and 2 videos (Question and Say It With Love) from the 2^nd row center.  Pleased with that.

After the show, several of us from Britain and North America, who had all been to the concert, all staying at the Grosvenor, gathered for after show drinks and chat in the lobby till midnight.  I’ve stayed in the Hoe all the times I’ve been to Plymouth (I think 3 times, maybe 4 – first time at Sneaton’s B&B).  It’s a few blocks walk from the Pavilions venue and a generally nice and inexpensive area to stay.  Even at this hour (going on 1am), the seagulls and guillemots are chatting with each other outside.  Tomorrow, on to Bournemouth – Storytellers and another show!

June 17 Dublin to Haywards Heath

Our last morning in Ireland... a little sad.  But at least there's a week in England to look forward to.

For the second day in a row, in two different places across Ireland from one another, I asked for eggs, beans, and tomato and got eggs, bacon, and tomato.  I wonder if they’re just hearing what they’re used to hearing.  Not sure.  As time passes, the bacon seems to be saltier to my taste, so I’m avoiding it more.  Chocoholic that I am, I’m still enjoying my hot chocolate every morning.  I’m sure I’m gaining weight.  Not happy about this!  Also I’m having more pain in my hips sleeping on the harder beds than what I’m used to.  But I’m in touring mode now, so nothing will stop me!  The Celtic Lodge in Dublin is probably, other than the place I stayed at in Belfast, the most basic accommodation I’ve encountered.  Interesting that both are in Ireland’s largest cities.  And the price was higher too.  But the wifi worked very well and there was hot water, so the basic needs were met. 

Since it was our last morning in Ireland, I looked around with greater scrutiny.  The area north of the Liffey, same as south of the Liffey by and large, was mainly row houses a few stories high.  We went to the local Butlers chocolate shop, as planned, and I bought a few more of the dark mint truffle bars and got them to give me receipts to get my VAT (value added tax – national sales tax) back.  By this time I’d accumulated quite a few different types of receipts for getting VAT back.   I was to learn shortly what a racket this is.

We wheeled our stuff the few blocks to the airport bus stop outside the bus station, giving ourselves a lot of time.  This was to be our fourth time through this tunnel that connects the airport area with downtown.  This sort of thing is not typically that unusual, but this tunnel doesn’t go under water, and takes 5 minutes.  In fact, I don’t even think it even goes underground.  For cars going through this tunnel,  the round trip is 10 euro.  We didn’t pay it, of course, being in a bus.  This trip to the airport took only about a half hour. 

In the airport security line, as with Boston, the lines were short, but here they were particularly antsy about gels and liquids, even the tiny packets of shampoo.  There were no body scanners.  The VAT office was tucked away in a tiny corner (so that people would easily miss it).  I'm sure they're not anxious to give VAT money back.  There were two sets of counters and staff, and a few kiosks over to one side.  I found out, much to my dismay, that there are Three Different Methods of claiming VAT, and it depends on how the store wrote your receipt as to which one(s) you would use.  In my case, I had to use all three (2 different clerks and a kiosk), filling in forms ad nauseum.  As if this weren’t bad enough, just as I was almost done filling out long forms for each receipt that I had, a small busload of Japanese tourists came in with their receipts and were, like me, learning the ropes of these crazy systems.  I was afraid I’d never get out of there.  I asked one of the staffers, who could think this arrangement is a good idea?  She said I would be surprised.  And I am.  (As of this writing, over two months after leaving Ireland, I’m still waiting for the VAT refunds.)

There is a Chocolate Lounge in the terminal (2)!  I had to investigate.  It was almost like a bar type of lounge, but they were serving hot chocolate drinks and such.  They weren’t set up for takeout, but I took away a chocolate mint brownie sold to me on a plate.  I’d wanted ice cream, since they were keeping the terminal on the warm side, but there was none to be had.  I could have stayed and had hot chocolate, but had just done that a couple hours before at breakfast.  In the next stall over from the lounge, they listed chocolate sundae amongst their offerings, and I asked what was in it.  It was hot chocolate!  Huh?  It’s pretty comical how the language is used.

The flight to Gatwick (south of London) was only an hour, but made really uncomfortable by this screaming toddler in the seat in front of me.  It was screaming even before we left the terminal.  I’d never heard a kid scream so loudly and for so long (and for what reason, I couldn’t figure).  At one point I heard the mother say, ‘do you want to see the dinosaurs when you get home’ and the kid shut up.. for a while.  After the flight was over, I saw the kid punching a handheld device (ah, That’s why the crew kept asking people to shut off their devices…)  Ach du lieber!  And here I thought (assumed) British kids were kept under better control than their American counterparts.

I was pretty surprised that all those coming into Gatwick airport from Ireland (and the Isle of Man and Channel Islands) all go to a different line from everyone else, where they just check your boarding pass, and then you get into the country!  Good grief!  Talk about leaky borders!  I guess there are pretty free borders between Ireland and UK all around.  I’d gone from Ireland to Northern Ireland and back without even knowing it.  The other amazing thing was the honor system associated with the customs part of things.  There were two portals you can go .. declaring nothing, and declaring something.  I just walked with Lorraine into the former and there were no officials around!   I wonder if they don’t have problems with folks bringing in diseased or invasive plants and animals, or whether the people who come to Britain operate honorably on the honor system.  I realized I needed some Pounds Sterling again, so checked out an ATM and compared the rates and fees with the money changing office right nearby.  The ATM was about 10 cents better per pound.  Good to know!  We found our way to the train station pretty easily; it was just downstairs, like every airport should be configured!  I started to notice how English society is more multi-national and multi-cultural than Ireland.  I knew that, having seen statistics about how white Ireland is.  Since then, I’ve read how, particularly western Ireland, hasn’t changed much in millennia, and those who constructed and lived in the stone forts and beehive huts, the “black” Irish,  actually came from Spain.  The “red” Irish were Vikings of course.  But I digress.

Lorraine lives in a nice house with a lovely garden out back, and for the first time since I’ve arrived over here, I had time to really relax, not just for a moment to catch my breath, or hide from rain and wind under an overhang.  Laundry!  What a concept.  This was the first time I’ve hung wash on a line since I was a kid, when I lived in a house!  We did a little weeding of the back garden, and tossing into the green “organics” recycling bin (there’s also a blue one and a black one).  Grocery shopping at Sainsbury’s!  This one has signs urging customers to buy things in recyclable packaging.  Reminded me of my PhD dissertation project where I was designing and putting up environmental shopping campaigns in supermarkets in Manhattan 20 years ago.  The literature I designed (and still have 3 boxes of.. looking for takers).  There were so many new (to me) and exciting products.  We got some great food for dinner and upcoming meals, followed by one of the nicest meals here, finished by some Haagen Dazs chocolate decadence, a creation I’ve not seen in the US.  It’s not only deep chocolate, but there is chocolate sauce swirling through it, which somehow remains liquid!   Took pix of the red sunset and I’m hopeful for a nice day tomorrow. 

June 16 - Lisdoonvarna to Dublin

We took breakfast in the same table at The Hydro as the night before; I realize I am wearying of the full Irish breakfast and have sought variations.   Still do like eggs, beans and tomatoes.  I realize the mushrooms I had in northern Ireland were aberrations but delicious ones.

I saw these photographs in the lobby that epitomized the “singles weekend” activities here in September, and made sure to capture them... Just a bit racy, eh?  Looking at the two photographs, it appeared like debauchery run amok, appearing more like Romans and Caligula.  It’s become so successful that other hotels in town get in on the act too. 

Matchmaking Festival Lisdoonvarna:  Smokia, Dopia and Alcoholica

This was to be a long driving day, back to Dublin.  The wind was still and it wasn't cold.  It’s so amazing how quickly the weather changes.  I wish it had been this way up at the Cliffs of Moher the afternoon before.  We would have definitely done more walking around if we could be sure not to be blown down! Lorraine started the driving today on the narrower roads, leaving the Dublin ring road madhouse to me.  So, since this was our last driving day in Ireland, I took a few videos to show different scenery for those who want to get a flavor of driving in Ireland.

Leaving Lisdoonvarna and into the countryside Video

This first video is high in the Burren (limestone karst), the second one shows us coming down the switchbacks showing some of the high hedges that line the narrow, twisting roads.  

Drive through the Burren countryside video

By this time in the tour, I realized that the countryside of Ireland is literally Packed with B&Bs.  They’re just everywhere, in every nook and cranny, even the narrowest of roads (except, possibly, Belfast ;-)). 

Once we got near Galway, the road had turned to motorway, and listed speeds were 120 km/hr, which is something like 75 mph.  I took over driving after lunch.  After doing 120 for a while, 100 seemed like crawling.  Even at 120, many cars would pass us as if we were standing still.  While I'd been driving through Ireland, I'd noticed how the shapes of trucks were narrower and taller than those in the US.  Just thought I'd take this shot of a truck on the highway.

Drive through Athlone town Video

We decided to have lunch in Athlone, a town with a nice looking castle downtown, on the river Shannon.  After a short walk around the cobbled streets, we sat at an outdoor café and ate vegetarian crepes made by a transplant from Brittany.  His accent was an interesting mixture of French and Irish.  His business was called The Celtic Café and featured flags of the six Celtic countries:  Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, Cornwall and Brittany.  That’s why we got crepes. Good stuff!

This time I wanted to get to Dublin earlier than the last time, so I could see more of it.   I managed to take a wrong exit just before the airport, but even that was a stroke of luck since it led us right to cheap diesel, which I needed before dropping off the car.  It was easy to get to the airport, but just a bit dicey in finding our way to where to drop the car (in the lot inside terminal).  We had been given some directions when I signed Lorraine up as a driver, which were partly correct, but only got us so far.  Eagle eyes and intuition got us there.   Got the 747 into town, dropped our bags at the new place (Celtic Lodge, right above a bar) in the midst of many guesthouses near the center of town on the north side of the Liffey river. 

Since it was late afternoon and shops would close, we went out on a long walking tour.  As I had been there for a few hours the week before, it was easy to put something together.  We first headed for the wide O’Connell, street, then along a row of restaurants on the north side of the river Liffey, which  goes east-west, dividing Dublin right down the middle.  We crossed a pedestrian bridge, into the Temple Bar area, over to the City Hall and medieval part of town, down to St. Patrick’s cathedral and park (picturesque), back over to St. Stephens’ Green.  Here are a few of the sights in Dublin.

Above is St. Patrick's cathedral.  To the right is where a number of government buildings are and adjacent to the medieval part of town.  Not sure what this street furniture is to the right, but it did captivate my attention.  Above left is in Trinity College campus.

Had to go into the crowded Butlers Chocolate shop to get some chocolate to take home and some hot chocolate to drink – the kind you dip in your hot milk.  By this time it had turned windy and drizzly in the last hour, but we headed into St. Stephens’ green anyway, and did a good circuit, seeing flowers, tree-lined walks, ponds with ducks, etc.  Exiting the northeast corner of the park, we saw preparations being set up in the street (barricades and such) for President Obama’s family's visit to happen shortly.   Making our way back towards our guesthouse, we continued walking through Merillon park, through Trinity College campus, back across the Liffey to the row of restaurants.  

Tonight, Thai was in order, and I vowed to learn how to make the delicious fried tofu with cashew and veg dish that I had.  On the way back to the Lodge we saw that Butlers had another shop just off O’Connell just a few blocks from our lodge.  It's a chain!  We will go there tomorrow morning to stock up before leaving the country.  Writing the notes for this blog, I'm listening to music downstairs, again, of course, in the bar, but they stopped at a reasonable 11:30 pm… unlike my neighborhood in Inwood, Manhattan, where they go till 4 am.

                                                                                                                                  

June 15 – Killarney to Lisdoonvarna

 June 15, Saturday – Killarney to Lisdoonvarna

Woke up to partly cloudy, no rain, so there was hope.  We had planned to go fairly directly from Killarney to the Cliffs of Moher area, but got advice not to take the ferry across the Shannon river at Tarbert, since it takes 40 minutes to get across and they don’t run that often!!  Instead we were advised to go to to Adare, a historic town with 3 abbeys and a castle, then swing around the outskirts of Limerick.  But the car wouldn’t start!  I tried many times and was thinking all bets were off.  I couldn’t even get into the trunk, since the key fob wouldn’t work on that either.  I tried locking and unlocking the doors, and at first it wouldn’t work, but finally  I wore it down.  Noticing I was down to one bar of fuel (i.e. almost none, and maybe That was the reason the car wouldn’t start?), I just put in just a few litres since the gas was over 10 cents higher in this tourist haven of Killarney than anywhere else.  Arriving at the petrol station, there was an old dog (black lab?) lying in the spot where I’d have brought the car for refueling.  Poor thing.  It got up eventually, after I parked a few feet away, and it wandered across the street with lots of traffic, looking neither to the left or right (they stopped).  Car wouldn’t start again, initially, but eventually seemed to behave.  

Adare was as lovely as people had said.  And it was overrun with tourists.  We couldn’t find parking on the first swing through the town, but coming back someone was pulling out in a perfect spot.  On the main street of the village there are thatched cottages with shops and cafes in them, a couple of them with lovely gardens out front.  Poppies are out, among many others; I’ve never seen a purple poppy before!    

We went through the historical museum.  I must admit that I couldn’t follow all the wars, the families, who overthrew whom, etc.  I found some dark chocolate covered mint chocolate bars and bought a few.  Good stuff!  The British Isles tend towards milk chocolate, what with all the land given to cows and grazing, and it’s hard to find dark, or what they call, plain chocolate, but the trend is going in a good direction (i.e. finding more dark chocolate than I used to).  I didn’t know it yet, but it turns out it was Butlers chocolate, the same company as this chocolate café that I found on the Grafton pedestrian mall opposite St. Stephens’ Green in Dublin, which had just closed when I got there.

We headed off in the on and off rain towards Limerick, took the tunnel under the Shannon river to bypass, and into County Clare.  On the right side of the road saw Bunratty castle, which is a luxury tourist castle and folk park.  JFK visited as did the Beatles.  They have medieval banquets, but we had to press onwards past the green fields and farms. Our first stop was in a little town with a pottery workshop, and then on to see the Burren Center, which describes the physical and social history of the area.  The “burren” is a limestone karst area, with active dissolution of the limestone going on underground, caves to explore, one of which is 15 km long!  As the precip gets more acid, with air pollution, the dissolving of the limestone increases.  Clare has a lot of upland, not so many trees.  But there were ancient settlements in the area, nonetheless, as evidenced by the ancient gravestones and circle forts (the pic here is in County Clare in the Burren.. taken from Wikipedia).

Next stop was the Cliffs of Moher on the rugged west coast of the county.  It’s a regular tourist attraction, complete with road signs directing one there, big parking lots, really well done ultra-modern exhibits inside talking about the geology of the cliffs, the science of climate change, impacts of that on species, and a really neat video, which you can stop motion or speed up on how Ireland, and all the other land in the world, has moved around the globe over the eons of time.  It’s now known that Ireland was once in the southern hemisphere, moving later over the equator, and then to its present position, so rock types in Ireland vary all over the map, as it were.  I’ve been seeing this considerable variation from day one.  One thing I didn’t realize before this trip is that Ireland was not always part of the continent or landmass of Europe; at one point it was part of North America.  All of the land mass in the world was once Pangaea, but before that, Ireland was on the other side of the ocean.   Fascinating.  In the last many thousands of years, as the miles of thickness of ice from the glaciations pushed northern areas downwards, and then glacial rebound slowly occurred as the ice retreated.  This is how the wave cut sheer cliffs came to be.

Finally moving out to the cliffs, the wind seemed like it could be near hurricane force at times, much worse than up at Slieve League a few days before, where the wind was louder than my narration of the panorama video I took at the top.  Here at the Cliffs of Moher, which are about 1/3 as high as Slieve League, I was literally blown backwards as I walked forwards, and pelted by water that was picked up from puddles on the ground and thrown around.  I had wanted to get out to the end of the promontory where there was a building / fort, and it would have been nice to walk the path you see on the pic to the right. I don't easily get pushed back, but the wind was just too much. Thanks to the wonders of zoom lenses, I was able to get a better look at the fort. It was also colder than it has been, and almost thought I’d need gloves and scarf.  There were lots of buttercups on the hillsides.  I'm guessing there's no vegetation more than a few inches high because of the exposed nature of the cliff area.  It was hard to really appreciate the true colors of the cliffs because it was so heavily overcast.  But this gives me a good reason to revisit.

Next stop was the little town of Doolin, which was in the middle of a 2 day folk festival.  We’d thought to grab dinner there, maybe with a view of the shore, but the town was packed, and nowhere to eat (we walked in on a hen party at one point, and a packed pub at another), so we moved on to Lisdoonvarna and our hotel. 

The Hydro Hotel, is old (1800s) and big (110 rooms) and grand.  The town is the site of this annual matchmaking ritual that takes place in September.  More on this tomorrow.  In the beginning, and similar to the grand Muckross house in Killarney park, this hotel was where aristocrats, who came to the area for hunting and fishing, would stay. This is the first hotel in Ireland to have hot and cold running water in 1948, hence the name Hydro!  It stuns me that this would be the first one to have this (that is, in this location, and not Dublin) and that it would be so recent.  We’d found out during the Muckross house tour that this grand house with 26 bedrooms and an ingenious and intricate system of more than 30 distinct bells physically connected by cords to a basement room, for the owners to summon specific servants in every room, didn’t have electricity until the 1960s.  I’d thought that the story of Glencolmcille was anomalous, the story of a priest starting a campaign to bring electricity and water to his home area, starting in the 1950s.  But all this gives indication of just how poor a country this has been.  I’m also realizing that all the woolen stores all over Ireland with handknit sweaters and socks, with styles that are so very thick (think off-white, knitted, thick sweaters), are due to the rough nature of the weather:  wet, damp, and windy a lot of the time, and only a wood or peat fire to keep you warm.  It gives me great appreciation for those who lived before the modern conveniences, some even in my lifetime. 

For simplicity we had dinner in the hotel.  The language of the menu was first in German, then English – not sure why.  Noticing again how the portion size in Irish restaurants are HUGE.  We have heard how American portions are huge, but these are even bigger (maybe a holdover from those days without central heating?).  Veg almost always includes at least two or three of the following:  carrot, turnip, and broccoli.  Of course there are lots of potatoes.  My tortellini were about 3 times the size of those in the US.  With all this food, there was no room for dessert this night.  We spent the rest of the night repacking for the upcoming flight to Gatwick day after tomorrow.  I realized that I need to send the drum I’d bought in Sneem back separately (was never going to fit in the luggage).  Since it’s light and came in a box, it should be easy enough.  This hotel is also having trouble with wifi, saying they’ve called someone to come on Monday.  I find this altogether too casual, especially from the first hotel in Ireland with the advanced technology of running water.  Also, interestingly, the temperature of the shower water was lukewarm.  At least the Woodlawn House in Killarney had intermittent wifi and hot water.  Tomorrow we head to Dublin.