Tynanwoods Day Fourteen

October 28, 2006
Day 14: The road to Dublin; telescopes and boiled cabbage

Today we headed out of Corofin en route to Dublin, some 150 miles to the east. It is amazing to realize just how tiny this island is -- the whole of it could fit into North Carolina without touching the Smoky Mountains.

Even more amazing: the fact that we fit everything including the four of us into the Opel Astra we'd rented. Coming from Shannon I had to sit wedged into the passenger seat with four bags stuffed around me; now I had to repeat the feat -- plus what Xtina had purchased on her various forays to woolen stores and the leftovers from our Corofin fridge.

This time we unpacked one of the duffels and put its contents into several trash bags, which I stuffed into any spare pockets of three dimensional space I could find. The bags of food I placed strategically around the feet of the children, along with jackets, backpacks, and assorted toys. They all fit together nicely like Legos, provided nobody moved during the four-hour drive. (Except when Xtina swerved to avoid some idiot merging blindly onto the N6 and her computer bag fell on top of Ava. That wasn't so good.)

En route we took a deliberate detour to Birr, a charming berg smack in the middle of Ireland which features a science museum and a castle belonging to the 7th Earl of Rosse, who still lives there. It seems the 3rd Earl of Rosse was something of an engineering genius; he built what was then the world's largest telescope in 1840, featuring a 72-inch mirror and a wooden barrel easily 60 feet long. He also invented a special set of hoists and counterweights to place it into position and track the movements of the stars. His telescope was used to identify spiral galaxies and map the surface of the moon.

His son, the 4th Earl, built the world's first turbine steam engine and, incidentally, a power plant that supplied the entire town with electricity in 1890. It still works. (Yet do you ever hear about these guys mentioned alongside Edison, Tesla, et al? No. Once again the Irish get screwed.) The museum was dedicated to these two fine gentlemen and the 3rd Earl's wife, Countess Mary Rosse, who was a pioneering photographer in her own right. (And that is your Irish history lesson for the day).

We slogged on to Dublin, arriving at dusk to a cacaphony of noise, light, big buildings, car horns, pedestrians, double decker buses, and traffic whizzing in every direction. After two weeks in the countryside it was like being teleported from a sensory deprivation tank to the Vegas Strip. When we found ourselves trapped in an endless loop around St. Stephen's Green we decided to park and hoof it the rest of the way.

It was a solid half mile to the office where we were to pick up the keys to our apartment -- or would have picked up, had there been any keys to be had. It seems the rental agency had lost the only set of keys to the apartment we'd reserved, and wanted to "upgrade" us to two one-bedroom units instead. We said no, we'd take the apartment and get keys in the morning. So we hauled ourselves back to Grafton Street near where we'd left the car, got some dinner (bad pizza), drove back to the rental office, drove to the apartments another half mile away, and hauled our half-disassembled luggage into our apartment.

The cottage we rented in Corofin was truly splendid. The apartment? Not so much. It's cramped, dingy, in a semi-cruddy neighborhood, and it smells like boiled cabbage. It is, in short, nothing like as it was described on the web site Apartments2book.com (which I would recommend avoiding, unless you are deeply into the Eastern European Experience). It's fine -- we're in Dublin, we didn't come here to hang around an apartment all day, and I've slept in worse places.

So, for those of you keeping score at home: Xtina gets an A for picking our cottage, while Dan earns a D for his efforts securing the Dublin apartment.

Tynanwoods Days Eleven Through Thirteen

October 25 - 27, 2006
Days 11 Through 13: Fossils of varying ages; tourists sans pants

On Wednesday we finally got our first taste of real Irish weather -- cold wet windy and utterly miserable. Twas a day not fit for man nor beast but we set out anyway, to Liscannor on the coast between Lahinch and Doolen, where there was a rock store of some repute. We spent a solid hour looking at rocks, crystals, fine Irish jewelry made from silver and amber, huge Amethyst specimens from Brazil (4000 euro apiece, two for 7000), 350-million-year-old trilobytes trapped in rock, shark teeth, quartz amulets, marble pigeon's eggs, polished rocks, Celtic runes made from wax and slate, and assorted earthy bric a brac. Amazingly we escaped for just 13 euros -- the kids each got a pendant to string round their necks.

From there we went on to Doolen, where there was a craft store of equally high repute and the inevitable Internet cafe. The craft store was closed; the cafe -- located in the reception area for the brand new B&B it was attached to -- sucked as well.

Soggy as labradors we entered Fitz's Bar in Doolens for lunch, which was also brand new. We picked the table closest to the roaring fire. While we ate, an older man just in from the Cliffs of Mohare pulled up a chair directly behind us, explained he was soaked to the bone, and inquired whether we would be terribly offended if he took off his pants? Xtina said OK, but she needed to get out her camera first. He demurred.

It was too wet to do anything else, so we came home to sip ale and sit by a peat fire.

The next day we headed back to Galway and met up with my 20 extremely jet-lagged-but-determined-to-drink-a-pint relatives, who'd flown in to Shannon that morning. We ended up at The Quays, the restaurant where we'd eaten three nights before, in the heart of Galway's shopping strip. The Quays is like a cross between the hold of an 18th century cargo ship and a church: The bar sits in the center of the restaurant, down a bending flight of stairs. The roofbeams are supported by wooden gothic arches; stained glass above and across from the bar brushes aside the darkness with dusty fingers of light. The Madden 20 took up the entire bar and spilled out onto a table upstairs, making the requisite offerings and experiencing the sacraments. Much drink was had, along with scholarly discussions on the relative merits of Guinness vs Smithwicks.

Friday, our last day in Corofin before we head to Dublin. It was another day of Irish weather, scotching any plans for a last hike among the livestock and limestone. Instead, we packed and headed toward Doolen so Xtina could see the craft store that had been closed on our first try.

En route we stopped in Lisdoonvarna to see The Burren Smokehouse, one of the few attractions with the words "Burren" attached we'd managed to miss. Like the Burren Perfumery, it's a modern establishment -- in this case, a source of terrific smoked salmon and cheese, along with an excellent gourmet shop. We took our booty to Doolen and had a picnic of smoked fish and crackers and goat cheese in our car beside by the crashing sea.

We headed back up the hill to the craft store, which was open but turned out to be a dinky thing not worthy of third-rate airport gift shop. And - yes - we spent more time at the Internet cafe, then headed home for our final night in The Burren.

Tynanwoods Day Ten

October 24, 2006
Day Ten: More dead Irishmen, and some live ones

We spent most of this morning writing and hanging about the cottage. In the afternoon we visited the Ennis Friary, an old Franciscan monastery first built in the late 1200s and later expanded, rebuilt, bricked over, partially torn down, and partially restored over the next 600 years. It was in a jumble of architectural styles, from gothic to quasi-modern. It's famous for some of the earliest medieval art in Ireland; carved figures of Jesus and St. Francis, for example, both of whom looked more than a little like space aliens.

As with every old monastery we've visited, the floor was paved with the gravemarkers of dead monks, so old and footworn as to be entirely unreadable. More bodies had been stashed in wall crypts; these appeared to be from affluent families -- McMahon and Gore were two prominent names -- and dated from the 18th and 19th century.

Then we found Christina's cousin Nora at the photography store. Sixtyish, white hair, but with a twinkling eye and a sharp sense of humor. She took us upstairs to the living quarters above the shop and showed us a wall of old photos, each accompanied by a story. It was a spontaneous meeting, and we were late for meeting up with Xtina's Great Aunt Nuala, so we had to cut our time short.

We then met up with Nuala, her husband Dick, their son Leo, his wife Jenna, and their 16-month-old son Ronan at the Old Ground Hotel on O'Connell Street. (Every major Irish city appears to have an O'Connell Street, as well as an Abbey and a Parnell.) We had tea - well, Leo and I had beer, Jenna had red wine -- and went for a stroll round Ennis, where we confirmed that yes, we had indeed found the home where Nuala and her brother Michael (Xtina's father) were raised.

We had drinks in Brogan's Pub with Leo, Jenna, and Ronan (he mostly slept), then "tea" at Nuala's -- dinner, to Americans. We sat on the couch in her tiny living room and ate cold ham and cooked rashers (like bacon, only much meatier and more flavorful) on rolls with butter, followed by tea cakes with more butter on them. The cholesterol level of the average Irishperson must be 400, at least. Nuala and Dick were very sweet and hospitable -- she gave us cakes to take home, secretly pressed money into Cole's hand on the way out the door, just like my grandmother used to do to me whenever we visited.

Tynanwoods Day Nine

October 23, 2006
Day Nine: Galway by the Bay; of rooks and rookeries


If Dublin is Ireland's New York (I'm assuming it is, we'll find out next week), Galway would be its San Francisco. Located directly across the country on a gorgeous bay, it's sophisticated and international, filled with students and the babble of unfamiliar tongues. Though the guidebook says the population is only 65,000, like Limerick it felt five times larger.

We hung out for a bit in John F. Kennedy park, an ultra-modern greenspace two city blocks square, where the kids played on the most surreal looking jungle gym I've ever encountered -- like it had been designed by Joan Miro with help from Rube Goldberg.

We ate lunch at a sandwich shop inside a food court -- Cole, finally, found a meal he enjoyed -- and wandered along Shop Street and High Street, parts of the old city turned into a open air pedestrian shopping mall replete with pubs and restaurants, buskers and street entertainers.

The gravitional rift proved especially strong here, as Xtina was sucked into every shoe and woolen shop along the strand. Even Cole as affected when we passed a toy store, where we procured a magnetic chess set for Skippy, and a store displaying Halloween costumes.

At one point both kids physically restrained Xtina from entering yet another shoe shop, leaning against her with all their might. She pretended to comply, then cleverly misdirected us all to a joke shop and ran back to the store from which she'd been barred.

Another session at an Internet cafe, where I filed some stuff that was due and Xtina did some research for a story. After a while Xtina left and took the kids back to the Joan Miro playground. When I rejoined them she was sitting on a park bench with her laptop, surfing the Net. Finally, we had discovered the land of unprotected WiFi.

We went into a pub located on the site where Nora Joyce (nee Barnacle) was born, or at least within driving distance of it. While I was up at the bar ordering our usual (Guinness for me, Smithwick's Ale for Xtina, Seven Up -- with ice -- for the kids), an elderly couple walked into the pub and made their way to a table near the bar. They appeared to be regulars.

Elderly man: Give me a tall glass a' the black, Michael.

Barkeep: Sure, sure. But would ye mind if I put a white top on it?

Earlier, enroute to Galway, we stumbled upon Kilmcduagh Monastery, a series of crumbling buildings dating from the 11th to 14th centuries, alongside a large graveyard with headstones ranging from to that era to present day. The Irish Tourism Mafia hasn't gotten to this place yet; you could simply park and walk around it, or go inside some of the buildings by asking for the key from the woman at the B&B across the street. This monastery featured a free-standing peaked tower 60 meters tall and probably 10 meters wide at the base, with an entrance roughly 12 meters from the ground. It was exactly the sort of tower they used for locking away princesses in fairy tales, though in this case it was a place for monks to take refuge when the monastery was under attack. (Now it is home to a flock of crows.) The fact the monks felt it was worth the time, expense, and difficulty of building this tower indicates just how perilous life was in those times, when a visit from the wrong band of strangers could conclude with your head on a pike.

Last minute info

Maybe you all know about this site,www.tsa.gov, it is the site from the government about airport security, check in and allowable items, but being the slow, behind, do everything at the last minute person that I am, I just checked it this morning and it also has a lot of good info for packing along with visual aids to show what you can and cannot bring in your carry on, how it should be packed, and the amounts allowed and so on. Maybe most of you are all packed! I hope to be done by today too!Not looking forward to the flights but can't wait to see you all. Thanks Dan for the continued travel journal, the way you write is wonderful and I feel like I am already there.
Love, Laura

Tynanwoods Day Eight

October 21, 2006
Day Eight: Off to Limerick; changes in the gravitational matrix and unusual labor practices

[note: xtina hasn't uploaded any pix of limerick yet, so here's a shot of the lake outside Castle Dan]

If Ennis is a small town grown up, Limerick is a big city scaled down. People here look different, dress different, even walked a different way than they do in Ennis or Corofin. The guide book says population is 51,000, but it feels more like 200,000. And just outside the bustling commercial district are some run down bits as well. The guidebook says Limerick can be a bit rough and tumble, and given its bloody history that's no surprise.

We ate scones and muffins and tea at a cafe on Bedford St., then wandered down O'Connell Street for a bit looking for a toy store. A sudden rift in the gravitational matrix pulled Xtina into every shoe store as we passed by; strangely, the rest of us were unaffected, though Ava suffered a similar effect when we passed pet stores.

(To be fair, I felt a similar pull whenever I saw a Guinness sign -- which is to say, constantly. But I battled valiantly against it.)

We found a toy store to replace a toy Ava had lost the day before, then an Internet cafe. Then on our way back to the car Ava discovered she had lost the toy we just bought her, so we retraced our steps to find it, but in vain. We did a major grocery shop at a Dunnes Store, which sells just about everything you could imagine in addition to food. I saw a sign next to the checkout that said "Child Delivery Service Now Available." Damn, these Irish are advanced, I thought. (When I re-read the sign, it said "Chilled Delivery Service Now Available." Apparently I am more jetlagged than I had thought.)

We hit King John's Castle just outside of downtown about an hour before it closed. Built in 1205 by (surprise) King John, it is one of those classic stout tower castles you see in picture books. But it was really just a fort, and not as interesting as the residential castles like Bunratty that show you how people really lived. The castle was under siege consistently for the next 500 years, from the Normans, the English, the Dutch, other Irish, etc. A bloody bloody history.

When we got home, Xtina cooked a lovely Irish roast, with gravy, potatoes, peas, corn, and bread. And I finally succumbed to gravity, adding some Guinness to wash it down with.

Tynanwoods Day Seven

October 20, 2006
Day Seven: A walk on The Burren, a walk through the woods; The Castle Dan

Today we drove up to the place where we first got lost in Ireland, high up on The Burren near the Parknabinnia burial tomb. We parked the car and walked to what we thought was possibly some kind of Celtic burial mound on a hill. We were surrounded by mile upon mile of ancient stone walls, fields, exposed limestone puzzle pieces interspersed with dense turf, and cattle. It felt like we'd landed on some alien lunar landscape populated by an race of super-intelligent cows.

When we made it to the top of the hill we discovered that the Celtic burial mound was in fact an Irish trash mound -- someone had apparently demolished an old stone house and left a large heap of rubble behind. But just beyond the mound was a valley that had been carved out by a glacier 10,000 years ago. We had a spectacular view of farmlands, Inniquin Lough, and a terraced cliff composed entirely of limestone. It would have been the perfect place for our picnic, had I remembered to bring the picnic materials. Instead we trudged back down the hill under the watchful eyes of our bovine alien overlords and picnic'd on the limestone near our car.

In the late afternoon we drove to Ruan, about 5 km from Corofin, just to see what was there. Answer: not much. Just one short street with a couple of pubs and stores and a number of recently built housing developments. So we headed east to the Dromare Nature Reserve 3 km down the road. A gorgeous wooded park surrounding a lake, a landscape 180 degrees different than The Burren not five miles away. We went for a couple of walks in the woods, on the lookout for leprechauns and bunnies (we saw neither). We found the remains of yet another castle, really just one wall left standing, but on the inside of that wall we found the letters DAN carved into the stone. (And by 'carved' I mean scratched into the surface with a sharp rock.) Finally, I had found my castle in Ireland.

That night we came home, exhausted, and turned on Irish Telly. Our choices on a friday evening: a total of four channels, two of them showing soccer matches, one was showing local news, and the 4th station featured a two-hour special report on the sinister world of unethical dentistry. No, I am not joking.

Tynanwoods Day Six

October 19, 2006
Day Six: Stone forts and cigarette butts; the princess emerges

The day dawned gray and misty, perfect for wandering out on The Burren, so we headed toward the ringed stone fort of Caherconnell, halfway between Corofin and Ballyvaughn, and built by a local chieftain sometime between 400 and 1100 AD. Unlike the castle at Bunratty this was a ruin that stayed ruined -- just the bare limestone bones of a few buildings, and less than half of the rock walls that formed the perimeter of the fort. It was smaller than I'd expected, maybe 60 feet in diameter. It didn't take long to take in all that Caherconnell had to offer.

As usual with most of these things there was a recently built information center attached, with a gift shop, a nice little cafe, and an audio visual presentation. It's become clear Ireland pumped a huge amount of money into its tourist infrastructure sometime back in the '90s, and now it's trying to get it back from folks like us.

It was in the gift shop that we came up with a nickname for Ava: Princess Naputhaback. Every shop, every store, every vendor we come across, Ava picks up approximately a third of the place's inventory and says "can I have this, pleeeeaaaase?" And we'd say, 'no, put that back.' Hence the name.

From Caherconnell we hiked half a mile up the road to Poulnabrone, a megalithic burial tomb shaped strangely like the Greek letter Pi, only in three dimensions. There was a tour bus full of French teenagers scrambling over the rocks like ants after a picnic, and an Irish Tourist Board employee who spent his whole time shouting at them to get off the rocks. Cole and Ava spent most of their time leaping from limestone rock to limestone rock, of which there were about 10,000 per square kilometer, and climbing small cliffs. The Tourist Board employee probably would have shouted at them, too, only he was too busy complaining bitterly about the French and their cigarette butts.

From there we headed to Ennis for an Internet cafe and to see if we could scare up some of Xtina's cousins. We found the photography shop where her cousin Nora works and talked to Dick Young, the proprietor (and Nora's former husband), a nice man who knew all about the family but not much about Nora's present whereabouts. Xtina left her email address, and we went to go find out what Irish pizza tastes like (answer: not as bad as you might think).

Maddens-in-Ireland

Maddens-in-Ireland
Hello everyone- I wanted to wish everyone good travel as we are about to embark on this adventure.
Dan and Christina's travel log has made it even more enticing.
Blessings and safe travel.
Maureen

Tynanwoods Day Five

October 18, 2006
Day Five: Spotted Dick is spotted; insatiable ketchup fiends

[Note: Xtina hasn't uploaded pix from Bunratty yet, so I uploaded a gorgeous shot she took of the Cliffs of Moher at sunset.]

We set out for Limerick and King John's Castle, but ended up making a detour to Bunratty instead, where there is a restored 14th century castle surrounded by a theme park. Bunratty is one of those places where tour buses disgorge their passengers so they can pay 48 Euro a head for an "authentic" medieval feast every night at 5:30. I had visions of a Disneyeque faux medieval experience with disgruntled minimum wage employees dressed in Renaissance Faire garb, but was pleasantly surprised.

Bunratty is a real castle with real period furnishings. A scary stone spiral staircase in each of its four towers leads up from the great rooms on the first and second floor and into the various bedroom chambers, kitchens, meeting halls, and the like on the third, fourth, and fifth floors.

In one of the third floor bedrooms we met a nice older gent with a feather duster who was filled with all sorts of fascinating information. For example, the incredibly narrow circular staircase that lead off the master bedroom and up to the castle keep was an escape route for the children of the castle's Lord. If the castle was under siege, the children could scamper up the staircase and then use rope ladders to climb down the walls and hide in the tall grass next to the River Shannon. The staircase was too narrow for anyone wearing armor to follow them. He offered to let our kids try it out, but they passed.

The furniture was not part of the castle (which was in ruins until fairly recently) but was donated by Lord and Lady Gort, local British nobility (after whose family name comes the nearby city of Gort, I presume). They apparently had scads of the stuff. It was all 300 to 700 years old -- poster beds and rotting dressers and huge French tapestries and such -- except for the stag's heads mounted on the walls in the great room, which were found in the bogs around the castle as it was being renovated and were 10,000 to 15,000 years old. It was surprisingly comfortable looking, given the stone walls; it seems even then the rich knew how to pamper themselves.

The castle was surrounded by thatched huts also furnished to late 17th/early 18th century period. In one of them we met an older women dressed in period garb cooking Spotted Dick over a peat fire. Turns out Spotted Dick is a raisen bread not dissimilar to classic Irish soda bread. She was quite nice and had a thick Clare accent -- which became thicker any time someone new entered the hut.

Next door was Bunratty Folk Park -- a recreation of a 17th century Irish town with actual 17th century Irish buildings. It featured a woolens store, a photo shop, and a fine pub called MacNamaras where, naturally, we stopped for a pint.

On our way home we passed briefly through Ennis and ate at a SuperMacs, the Irish equivalent of McDonalds, only they also serve fish and chips. (They are extremely stingy with the ketchup, these Irish; we had to go back and ask for more three times. I think we are now known there as 'the Americans who love ketchup.') We got back to Corofin around 9 pm and stopped at Boffey Quinn, the biggest pub in town and one that featured 'trad' music on Wednesdays. We'd yet been to listen to any music on the trip, so I was really looking forward to it.

We sat in the front room near the bar, huddled in a corner on a bench, not exactly sure what would happen next. After a few minutes a guy showed up with a drum and sat forlornly by himself for 20 minutes. Then a few more musicians showed up and filled in the spaces around him, right next to us. Then a few more musicians joined in, and a few more. There were guitars and banjos and flutes and accordians and drums and recorders and piccolos and even a woman who carried only a purse into the bar but produced from it a set of spoons, ready for action. A couple were in their 20s but most had gray hair if they had hair a'tal. By my last count there were 17 musicians, packed in all around us. If one more had joined the band we'd have been trapped in the corner for the duration.

The music itself was heavenly. Someone would start -- usually one of the flutes -- and a few more would join in, and pretty soon the whole crew was wailing on some song hundreds of years old, foreign and new to my ears but also achingly familiar. That would go for a while and gradually end, and someone else would start another song. It's hard for me to put this into words without sounding completely stupid, but I began to understand how important music is to the Irish, how indivisible it is from life itself. Between the music and the Guinness I could have stayed all night, but after an hour the kids were passing out and we needed to leave. So we did.

Our Irish Cell Phone

Hi everyone! With 120 hours til we're all together in Ireland, please make note of our Irish cell phone number: 0872187039. To dial our phone from the U.S., dial
011 353 872187039. (011 is the signal that this is an international call. 353 is the country code for Ireland. 872187039 is our phone number.)

This is a good number to leave with everyone at home in case they need to reach us. And there is no charge to RECEIVE calls on our cell phone. Calls to numbers in the Republic of Ireland will be charged at 19 - 45 cents per minute. Calls TO the U.S. will be charged at 1.02 Euro per minute. (To dial U.S., dial 001 then area code then number; the country code for the U.S. is 1. Kinda tells us which country made up the country code list, eh?)

We will pick up the phone on Thursday when we arrive at the Radisson Hotel in Galway. It comes with a 10 Euro call credit. I'm told additional credit can be purchased with a credit card or at shops and post offices in Ireland. It will come with a wall charger and a complicated list of instructions that someone younger than I can probably decipher more easily!

See you soon.
love, kathleen

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that I've made a reservation for dinner on Sunday night in Dublin. We picked an Italian place since I will need to carbo-load, plus we'll probably have had our fair share of fish and chips by then! The restaurant is going to set up two big tables of 14. I had told them 27, which is the tour of 20, the TynanWood contingent, and Laura's 3 friends that will be in the area. Please let me know if I've missed anyone. Here are the details:

Botticelli
3 Temple Bar (cool area, I hear)
Dublin 2
7pm (19:00)
http://www.botticelli.ie/index.html

I hear it's pretty close, we could either walk it, take the bus or cab it.

Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

Love,
Christy

Tynanwoods Day Four

October 17, 2006
Day Four: The adventures of Skippy McBrogue; Dan tries his hand at driving

We started the day by trying to visit the library in downtown Corofin, where there are Internet terminals. And in fact there were Internet terminals. But the library is only open three days a week, and this wasn't one of them.

It was cold and raining, so we set off in the general direction of Enistymon, with no actual agenda in mind. We paused briefly in Lisdonvoorna, modern and seemingly affluent spa town, so Ava could eat a snack and Dan could find a bathroom. This has become our regular routine; every 20 minutes or so Ava snacks and Dan pees.

We ended up driving straight through Enistyton to see more countryside and ended up in Lahinch, a cute little coastal city with two commercial streets, four surf shops and two WiFi cafes. It is apparently a surfers paradise (both sea and Net). Who knew?

We spent most of the afternoon in Mrs. O'Brien's Kitchen, a small restaurant/bar that offers wireless Internet (again at 6 Euro an hour). We ate lunch and drank tea while Xtina caught up on her email. (I'd left my laptop at home). By the time she was through it had stopped raining, so we explored the town.
Cole has taken it upon himself to master a brogue, so when he talks he sounds a bit like the leprechaun in the Lucky Charms commercials. He will also spontaneously break into a fair imitation of a jig (nobody here taught him that, it must be genetic) or will go skipping off ahead of us as we walk. Xtina has dubbed him Skippy McBrogue.

I inquired about the music in the pub, since it boasts the best in Lahinch and featured a constant soundtrack of traditional Irish music mixed with pop. An older gent somewhere on the north side of 60 was sitting at the bar, drinking Guinness at a steady rate and playing the spoons on his thigh along with the music. He asked what instrument I played and I told him "the stereo." I also told him I sang, but mostly to annoy the children. I said Cole and Ava played guitar and piano respectively, and he seemed impressed by that. Later he came by our table to talk to us a bit and impress upon the kids the importance of music. His name was John. He was a small man with white growth of beard and dearth of teeth.

As dusk was falling we made it to the Cliffs of Moher (pronounced "mohair"), a series of deeply impressive vertical hunks of limestone and turf rising 600 feet straight out of the North Atlantic. They are as breathtaking a site as you'll see anywhere on the planet, especially at sundown, shrouded in mist.

Unfortunately, the foothills directly adjacent to the Cliffs were under seige by a small army of heavy construction equipment, and the path leading to them was encircled by a tall chain link fence. The machines were there building "the Moher Cliff Experience," a space-age looking visitor's center -- as if seeing the actual cliffs were not experience enough.

More evidence that the Disneylandification of Ireland is well under way. Of course, as Xtina noted, if this were America the entire island would look like that, and there's be a McDonald's, a Walmart, and two Starbucks across the street instead of cows and rolling green hills.

Also: I survived my first attempt at driving tonight. Two miles from the cottage to the Off License (beer store) in Corofin and back, in the dark, down two largely deserted roads. No casualties to report.

Tynanwoods Day Three

October 16
Day Three: Castle of the tyrant; a street with no numbers

From the driveway outside our cottage, in the hazy middle distance between us and the horizon, we can see a crumbling 17th century tower devoured by ivy. We decided to make that tower the destination for our morning walk. (Note: With jet lag still firmly in place, our mornings tend to be the Irish afternoon.) Half a mile later we'd crossed the River Fergus and hit the main road leading to town, but the tower was nowhere in sight.

On our way back we ran across a handyman standing out on the road, along with a lab-mix puppy that was literally leaping for joy at the sight of us. (We named him Fergus, of course.) He had little flecks of white paint on his fur; the hand said he'd been painting a wall the other day and the dog had gotten too close to it.

The hand, who was heavyset but probably only about 30, said he took care of the horses for the "Delphi House" down the road from us and tended the lawn for "some millionaires on top the hill." The millionaires' dog then appeared -- Mojo, a King Charles Spaniel if I have my breeds straight. Mojo was promptly set upon in a friendly way by Fergus, but he was having none of it. Mojo was the one who had peed on our car tire the day before.

The hand (who shook our hands but did not offer his name) said if we ventured up the private drive to our immediate left we could see what was left of Cromwell's castle. After dethroning and beheading England's King Charles 1 in 1649, Cromwell made it his mission to exterminate all the Catholics in Ireland and steal their land. He almost succeeded, though many of the Catholics fled to The Burren and were given sanctuary there. It turns out that the shrine we used as a roadmarker to find our cottage was the spot where the English hanged the Irish for being Irish. Needless to say Cromwell was not a popular figure in these parts.

The hand also told us an English colonel had lived in the Delphi House for a while until the IRA showed up one night and slowly bled him to death. This might have happened 200 or 300 years ago, but the hand talked about it with great relish, as if it had happened just last week.

When we finally ventured up the drive we found the towers we could see from our driveway. So that's our view: the castle of the tyrant.

After lunch we drove to Ennis, which features a small but bustling commercial district a half dozen blocks in size and a couple of crumbling cathedrals. The cathedrals are drab, gray, and imposing; on the other hand, the pubs are brightly colored, warm, and inviting. Our mission was to locate an Internet cafe and find the house where Christina's Da was born.

We succeeded in the first quest, locating two Net cafes. Both were poorly lit, overheated, crammed with computer terminals, and run by hopeless geeks. It was computing circa 1988. But we were happy to get a Net connection, even if it cost us 6 Euro apiece per hour.

The second mission was more complicated. Michael Smith, son of the meanest man in Ennis (and now possibly the meanest man in Wilmington, NC), was born 85 years ago at 10 Market Street. We found Market Street easily enough, but few of the buildings had numbers. Stranger, nobody inside the buildings knew their own address. We stopped at several shops along the street, and almost no one could tell us what their number was. We narrowed it down to a housewares store that was probably #10 and was the same type of stone house that Xtina remembered from when she first visited Ireland, when she was six.

We ate dinner that night at Brogans in Ennis, which sported both a fancy restaurant menu (starting at around 20 euro) and a cheaper bar menu. We went for the latter. The kids ordered "cheeseburgers," which were in fact rounded lumps of well-cooked ground beef covered with melted cheese and surrounded by three half domes of mashed potatoes, pureed turnips, and 'inoffensive' peas (Xtina's term). Xtina and I had roast beef with gravy, which was joined by the same accomplices. Once again I was reminded of my youth and not in a good way, though the beef was quite good. More on mad cow disease later.

Tynanwoods Day Two

15 October 2006
Day Two: SpongeBob in Gaelic; 120m caves and two inch maps

This jetlag here is fierce and the air surprisingly dry. Christina and I went to bed at 10 pm local time, were awake for two or three hours in the dark of night, and woke up at 11 am -- but only because Ava had a severe nosebleed and woke us up.

She turned on the TV and found SpongeBob Squarepants. At first we thought all the characters had been given thick Irish accents, when we realized it had been redubbed in Gaelic. Aside from that, it was very little different than watching SpongeBob in American.

More walks up the hill, more cows, more dogs. There are no leash laws here and that strikes me as perfectly fine. Everywhere we've gone so far we've been adopted by a local dog, who follows us and points out the local points of interest -- or, at least, all the things that smell really bad. We've named them all Fergus, after the local river. On our return from our first walk we found a stray in the driveway to our cottage. Fergus took one look at us, lifted his leg and peed on our car's backtire. Apparently it was his driveway, not ours.

On this day we drove 15 km or so to Kilnefora, a charming little town that's home to The Burren Centre and a 13th century church/graveyard and, more important, Linnane's pub, where we stopped in for a late afternoon pint. The owner (a large bearded and balding man with kind eyes named Linnane, I believe) was genial and asked where we were from. There were 5 or 6 apparent regulars inside, all men aged 45 to 60.

At the Burren Centre I bought a "two inch map" of the area. I asked what that meant, and the woman behind the counter held up her fingers two inches apart. Very dry sense of humor here. Turns out it is a map with a scale of one mile to two inches.

From Kilnefora we headed past Leameneh Castle (it looked more like a crumbling dormitory) and up Route 480, a two-lane road through the heart of The Burren. An unmortised stone fence maybe a thousand years old ran the length of the road on both sides, and the softly rolling fields were broken up by exposed limestone jutting up like mushrooms after a rain. We saw ring forts and the occasional rock structure made of the same flint-like limestone as in the fence, only about 1000 times larger. These are apparently the oldest man-made structures in the world.

We drove on toward Aillwee Cave, a 14km long cave discovered in the 1940s by a local farmer, who proceeded to keep the news to himself for 30 years. The cave was carved into a hill by an ancient river and runs 120 meters below the surface, with tiny cramped passageways opening up to wide rooms with stalagtites, internal waterfalls, and steep drops into total darkness. If it's possible to experience both acrophobia and claustrophobia at the same time, I did. Ava clung to me out of fear, as I did to her. Xtina and Cole seemed totaly unaffected. Still it was spectacular, especially after we were back above ground.

We drove on to Ballyvaughn, yet another charming small town, and had dinner at Monk's overlooking Galway Bay -- seafood chowder and fresh mussels from the bay and, of course, beer. Then we (or rather, xtina, who has been a real trooper behind the wheel) drove home, to drink another pint and sit by a turf fire, watching Irish Telly.

Tynanwoods Day One

14 October 2006
Bad eggs and curious cows; jet lag as a form of temporary insanity.

Arrived brain dead and sans half our luggage at some ungodly predawn hour in Shannon Airport. The children were zombies and proceeded to fall asleep on the benches in the airport as we waited for our missing bags to arrive on the next flight. (They did.)

We spent an extra two hours in the airport letting the kids sleep while Xtina uploaded photos to her travel blog (Shannon has free but slow WiFi service) and I wandered aimlessly with his WiFi sniffer, unable to find a place to plug in my battery-impaired laptop and connect. Xtina lead the sleepwalking children to our rental, an Opal Astra, into which I'd stuffed our bags into every conceivable pocket of spare room.

Xtina drove, which is the only reason I am alive today to record these thoughts. They drive on the other side (not the "wrong" side) here, the roads are very narrow and the Irish are nearly uniformly in a hurry -- 100kmh on the major roads is far too slow for these folks. I had excellent views of the roadside shrubbery as Xtina hugged the edge of the pavement, trying to allow the tarrying locals to pass while avoiding head-on collisions.

When I dared look back at the road I shouted the occasional instruction -- "We're coming up on N85, then we need to look for R472" -- to which Xtina invariably replied "No numbers while I'm driving, please!" and WHOOSH, another truck would come barrelling past us.

We made it to Ennis in about 20 minutes and managed to find our way to Corofin in another 20. We saw lovely countryside, quaint yet modern towns, and various crumbling castles along the way -- apparently the O'Brien and Macnamara clans threw up castles around here the way they build condos in California.

Corofin is one-and-one-half street town, population 320 according to our guidebooks. Our rental cottage was somewhere on the outskirts. Our instructions were to "turn right at the grotto (little shrine), take the second right after that, and look for the sign that says 'Ciel na Ciollte'." We found the shrine (a stone wall with a lifesize statue of The Virgin in front) and tried to follow the rest of the directions. We ended up 25 minutes later hopelessly lost, on a barren promontory between two distant farms, surrounded by cows and the Parkabinnia wedge tomb, a burial memorial about the size of a dinner table and roughly 6000 years old give or take a century. We had accidentally stumbled onto The Burren, our ultimate destination.

However, we were nowhere near our cottage, the kids were still asleep in the back of the car, Xtina and I were barely conscious, and we still had two hours to kill before we could check in. So we headed back into Corofin to find some grub.

We peered into one bar, where the locals directed us to the Inchiquin Inn, the only place serving food before noon. The locals were less than the friendly warm and welcoming Irish I had expected. Of course, they've just endured high tourist season and we all looked like extras from Shaun of the Dead.

I ordered the full breakfast, which consisted of sausage, rashers (a ham-like bacon), fried bread, black and white pudding (don't ask), some form of potatoes that were supposed to be hash browns but weren't, and canned baked beans piled atop a fried egg the shape and consistency of a hockey puck. I was reminded of the food I ate while growing up, but not in a good way. Mental note: No more meals at the Inchiquin Inn.

We took a new route on the way back, passing the Shrine and heading into equally beautiful countryside and more crumbling castles. This time Xtina spied a sign saying "Irish cottage rentals" and followed that. We followed this road for a kilometer or two until we found the sign 'Ciel na Ciollte' on a stone wall. Our 'cottage' was a modern three-bedroom home perched on a forested hillside, overlooking farmland and gently rolling hills to the horizon. It was gorgeous.

The owner Noel was still inside with a mop, but he let us in and gave us instructions, none of which I could understand through his accent. It turns out that when you plug something in, you have to turn on the outlet using a switch, then turn it off again when you're done. If you want a hot shower, you must turn on the electric water heater first. To flush the toilets you need to pump the handle five or six times. If you want a fire in the fireplace, you have to find some 'turf' to burn. It's all very sensible from an environmental point of view but totally unAmerican, and thus a little hard to get used to.

We all took a nap and then went for a walk up the hill just before dusk. We got a beautiful view of the Inchiquin Lough (lake), saw more crumbling castles, passed more cow farms. Through a break in a hedge we passed a field of cows and waved. They looked at us. On our way back down the hill six or seven of them were lined up next to the fence, peering at us. They got a good look at us, nodded, and moved on their way. I swear I could hear one saying to another in a charming Irish lilt: "Americans. See, I told you. Damned tourists."

Ready....... I think.

Ok folks,

Just finished my last race before the big one in 2 weeks. I ran a half marathon today in Staten Island. Ran with a friend of mine who is running the NYC marathon in 3 weeks. He is usually faster than me, but stuck with my pace the whole time, and we ran very consistently. I felt great at the end and actually beat him to the finish. I'm a little sore so please keep on me about stretching during the few days before the marathon, especially since we'll be on the bus quite a bit. I am hoping to have a nice cool day (no rain please) for the race, but I'll take what I get. I checked the Dublin marathon website and it said that they have over 10,000 entrants. So much fun! I can't believe it is almost here. See you all soon!

Love,
Christy

Maddens-in-Ireland

Maddens-in-Ireland
Check the website for Uncle Bill and Uncle Marty- lots more pictures are added by Kathleen.
Dan and Christina are about to land in Ireland.
see you all soon.
Maureen

A Quick Guide to Irish Phraseology

Here are some phrases you might find useful in Ireland (courtesy of christina, who else?) Especially these first few:

"Mo sheacht míle grá thú" meaning "My love seven thousand times".

For the more restrained, "Mo ghrá thú" meaning "You are my love" or "My love" or even "I love you", would suffice.

Just in case the accents do not appear as they should, the words are:

Mo = my,
Seacht = seven (sheacht in this version after "mo"; the "h" silences the "s"),
Mile = thousand (the "i" is accented, pron. "meela"),
Gra = love (the "a" is accented, pron. "graw" ),
Thu = you (the "u" is accented, pron. like "who" in English).

Some other interesting phrases include:

Go n-eiri leat :Good luck to you (That things will rise to you)
(fada -accent on the e and i of eiri): Goh (short 'o' not as in go) n-iri leath:

Go n-eiri an t-adh leat: The best of luck to you (That luck will rise to you)
(fada's as above and also on the 'a' of t-adh): Goh n-iri an tah leath

Go n-eiri an bothar leat: Have a good trip (That the road may rise to meet you)
here there is a fada on the 'o' of bothar.: Goh n-eiri an bohar leath.

e.g.:
Sin is pronounced shin (this,since)
se(fada on e) is pronounced shay(he)
si (fada on i) is pronounced shi(she)

whereas
saor (cheap, free) is sa-or
sa (in) pronounced as in the 'sa' of sang.

Conas taoi?: How are you
Con-as taii: Con-as.

Slan:Goodbye (with a fada on the a)
Slahn (ending pronounced as in dahn)

Slan leat: Goodbye to you (one person): fada on 'a'
Slahn leath

Slan tamall: Goodbye(Goodbye till later) fada on 'a' of slan
Slahn tam-al

Slan go foill: Goodbye for now (Goodbye for a while)
Fada on the 'a' of slan and the 'o' of foill:
Slahn go fo-ill

Genealogy and Clare Co.

[Yes, this is yet another post from Christina. (I may not know much about text messaging, but at least I remember the password to Blogger.)- dt]

I have been emailing the guy who runs the Tour Clare site about practical matters of staying in Clare. He lives in San Diego and works at a boating magazine there. But still manages the site with his partner in Ennis. (Send him an email if you like. He is delightful. Tell him we are in the same trip. He was most helpful and asked me to spread the word about his site.) Anyway, there appears to be a great many genealogy resources on his site. There is also a museum near where we are staying that specializes in looking up genealogy stuff. Let us know if you want us to find anything for you or whatever. We will be down the road from it for 2 weeks!

Send a text message to my cell phone to reach us: 910.200.5266. (Or Dan's but he is a bit puzzled by all this text messaging stuff. Is it a chick thing?) Go to Cingular.com and click on send a text message if you don't like sending from your phone.

We leave Friday morning!

Slan go foill,

Christina

Essential Reading for All Ireland-Bound Travelers

Yet another site that christina has uncovered in her research. Don't leave the states without reading A Guide for the Un-Initiated to Buying Guinesss in an Irish Pub.

Step #5 seems particularly salient:

A good pint can distinguished by a number of methods. A smooth, slightly off- white head is one, another is the residue left on the inside of the glass. These, surpise surprise, are known as rings. As long as they are there you know your're okay. A science of rings is developing - the instance that comes to mind is determining a persons nationality by the number of rings (a ring is dependent on a swig of Guinness each swig leaving it's own ring). An Irishman will have in the region of 5-6 rings (we pace ourselves), an Englishman will have 8-10 rings, an American will have 17-20 (they sip) and an Australian won't have any at all as they tend to knock it back in one go!

I look forward to knocking back a few with you all over on the other side.

Slahn go fo-ill

DT

A nice bit of Irish Slang

this comes by way of christina, who's been boning up on her Gaelic slang as well.

Undy-grundy (n): wedgie

And here are some phrases I don't know how I managed without so far:

As rough as a bear's arse
As scarce as hen's teeth
As sick as a small hospital
As small as a mouse's diddy
As thick as two short planks
As useful as a lighthouse on a bog
As useful as a cigarette lighter on a motorbike.
As useless as a chocolate teapot
As useless as tits on a bull

Roller Coaster

Maddens-in-Ireland

Well folks, I've got good new and bad news. The bad news is, Chris & I have to cancel our trip to Ireland. We are so disappointed. I just received a shipment from Amazon with guide books and maps and was really getting into the planning. Oh well.

The good news is we've been selected to adopt someone's baby boy, due November 7th. We'll be parents in 5 weeks if all goes well. Crazy, eh? There's still some risk things won't work out but what will be will be. I'll keep you posted and know I'll be thinking of you all with envy! With love, Cathy

Tour bags

Maddens-in-Ireland
Be on the look out for your tour bag. They were mailed yesterday.
See you soon.
Maureen ✈✈✈

3 weeks!

Maddens-in-Ireland
Hello all you fellow travelers. This link is to one of Phil's websites with packing tips for the inexperienced. Some of you may already be packed. Mostly I am still fretting over how much to bring. Hope this is helpful.

As for the packages, I have not gotten them out since it became rather daunting. You will get them this week. There is an itinerary in the bag, map, brochures, insurance info if you purchased it, luggage strap and tags and a tour bag that is too small for most useful purposes. See you all soon.