Paws for Reflection

Niagara Falls...Your Money or Your Life...

We decided to head up to Niagara Falls today - an easy day trip from Toronto by car.  Or so they say.  One of the prettiest drives in North America, or so they say. You know what I say?  My ass in a clamshell, that's what I say - the idea of my ass fitting in a clamshell has about as much connection to reality as the previous two statements. 

"Easy Day Trip" - what they don't tell you is that it's almost impossible to find a reasonably priced rental car in Toronto in the summertime, and sometimes impossible to find one at all.  We even asked the concierge at the hotel to help us, and the look he gave us said very clearly that he hadn't realized until that very moment that there was a short yellow bus stop in front of the hotel.  

Soooo....needless to say we didn't get a rental car through the hotel.  Ten minutes on priceline.com though, and we were off to the races. Or the Falls.  Whatever. 

Once we got out of the train and picked up the car (in the train station), we found that the Canadians, in all their lovely helpfulness, brought the falls to us!

So, the first 35 minutes of the "loveliest drive" was spent in a torrential downpour, and then the rest was spent passing industrial warehouses and power lines.  I even let my mother drive so I could take pictures along the way. Don't get me wrong, there was a picturesque moment or two, but it just looked like Nokesville, so I wasn't enthralled.

DAMMIT ALL TO HECK!

One good thing that came out of our road trip to Niagara was the discovery of Tim Horton's coffee. Oh. Mah. Goodness.  So delicious - we stopped by one of them on the QEW (the Queen Elizabeth Way) and though there was a drive-thru, we walked inside to get coffee...and THANKS BE TO VALHALLA that we did, because there was gold inside.  Little, round, delicious nuggets of sugary gold...that come 10 to a box. 

*sigh* So good. 

Thus fortified with sugar and caffeine, we took a bit of a detour to one of the numerous fruit stands on the way to buy some fruit to make up for it, and then decided to stop at Niagara-on-the-Lake for lunch. Such a cute little town!  So much great shopping! Such convenient parking!

I think I fell a little bit in love with Niagara-on-the-Lake when the first store I saw was dedicated to cows. A whole store for cows, can you imagine?  How MARVELOUS!!!

Even better, they are CLEVER cows!

The only other criteria for town-love was also present, less than a block from the cow store. 

All in all, we were only there for about 3, maybe four hours... just enough time to see the wildlife...

...and bring some of our own. 

On a side note, seriously, every single squirrel I have seen in Canada is black - are they a different species or something?  Who knows.  

Lou couldn't care less about the squirrels, the stores, or the fact that we were in a different country. Once he saw the playground, the fat ladies started singing, and it was all over but the credits.  

But he's so damn cute you can't help but laugh, and then play along. 

I have actually never seen one of these, where you speak into one tube and the sound comes amplified out of the other.  Mom and Lou went back and forth for a few minutes, with Lou giggling the entire time, and then Mom went to get some of her kinds of toys, to the tune of $1,700.  (Jewelry, you pervs!)

Since Mom had to have both of the rings she bought sized, we walked around a bit more, went to a chocolate store (the. best. dark chocolate. covered. marshmallows. ever.), went to visit the much-touted apothecary (highly overrated, highly odiferous, and run by a highly cranky man. PASS.) and finally got back on our way to Niagara Falls, sugared out and sparkling with new bling. 

Let me just tell you a secret about sugar.  It wears off.  I ate my ass off the whole morning (Ok, not literally, since I'm pretty sure I gained about 4 lbs, and each cheek got about half) but by the time we arrived at the Falls I was *STARVING*. So much so that we stopped in at the Boston Pizza place right by the parking lot, and ordered incredible amounts  of starch, grease and fat. SO savory and fantabulous. 

If you ever have occasion to be in Niagara Falls, or anywhere near a Boston Pizza, you MUST order these:

Cactus Cut Potatoes

• Spicy
• BP Favourite

A BP original. Thin and spicy fried potatoes with a bite. Served with our signature cactus dip blended with crushed chilies, green onion, sour cream and parmesan.

They have a bit of a bite, but they are fantastically delicious - a little bit crunchy, a little bit spicy, and a whole lot more prone to clog up the vital arteries of my heart than the salad.  Oh well, my one turn at living may be short, but it's going to be delicious.
That's pretty much the only thing worth trying at BP - the rest of the food is crap, but the fries were well worth it.  At least they're better than a fast food burger, even if the BK looks cool like this:

Yes, Niagara Falls is incredibly tacky.  Very like Las Vegas, without the charm and super hotties, but with a thousand screaming children hyped up on sugar thrown in.  We came to see the Falls, though, so we passed on Ripley's museum, the Midway game rooms, Brick World, etc., and all of the various attractions that line the main street.  So, off to see the falls we went.  



Let me just give you the low down on Maid of the Mist.  Niagara Falls, split in two by the US-Canada border, is just really a big waterfall.  Not particularly huge, not particularly fantastically unique in global terms, and travelling backwards through erosion about 6 feet a year. Somehow, this spot has become the haven for everyone seeking a truly awe-inspiring experience, but unwilling to sacrifice, sweat or bleed to gain the rush.  So, you pay $15 per person to get on a boat for about 22 minutes, chug-a-lug up to the base of the Falls, and get pummeled by water that is teeming with pollutants and e. coli. (If you think I'm kidding, take a look at this picture.  I thought at first that they had built a little beach to land the tug, but when I got closer I realized that it is pollution that creates a foam build up. ICK.)
Then you wait in line for about 15 minutes...

...get a flimsy rain poncho (that don't work unless you tie the sleeves) from underpaid teenagers who are a) apathetic or b) hostile, depending on how the day is going, and then you board one of the ferries that trundle along the falls, passing each other like cars on the highway.

It's highly commercialized, vastly overrated, and makes your eyes sting something fierce.  It's almost impossible to get a good picture from the boat, and if you're lucky you might get something beyond the solid veil of white that is all you really see through the squint:

But really, what it all boils down to is that in the end it is all totally worth it, if the result is this:

Don't get me wrong, the Falls are definitely picture worthy...



...but all of these pictures were taken from the road along the Falls or from the parking lot. Booya. 
All in all, if you have a little kid with you (or within you!) that doesn't care about pollution, or getting drenched, or monies paid vs. value received, then do it.  It's a once in a lifetime thing (because most people are too smart to get suckered a second time) and a checkbox on the life list.  
All you've got to lose are the fancy electronics you decided to risk on board. 


Lastly, and I promise no more bitter invective on the tourist trap that is the Maid of the Mist, a tip to the ladies: DO NOT WEAR MAKEUP on board.  You will look like a raccoon, and then be self conscious about it the rest of the afternoon, unless you are carrying those super neat makeup removing cloths and a face kit in your bag.  Doubtful?  Check out the water dripping off my chin(s):

'Zackly. 
So, we completed our mission, Lou got to see the Falls with appropriate starry-eyed wonder, and we got to experience our first traffic jam on the way back to Toronto, in such a way that the 9 minute trip took over 3 hours.  I'm going to find that guy that started the "prettiest drive" rumor, and punch him right in the mouth for telling such a big fib.
Back in the city at last, I was *STARVING* again. (Notice a trend here? I eat all the time, everywhere we go. One day I may explode.) We took Frommer's advice and ate at a Greek place near our hotel, and I'm sorry to say it was the first time Frommer's has ever let me down. 

This place was so terrible I came back to the hotel and wrote a review just to make sure other people didn't make the same mistake! So we gave up and left, and went to return the car.  
The weather has been great this week, and though rain was predicted every day this week, today was the only day that it really came down (and how!).  The upside to the pouring rain though is that the evenings are beautiful.  Toronto is a gorgeous city, architecturally, and we've gone out every night to take walks. Some of the buildings, while unremarkable in the daytime, really show their own after dark. 



So we walked around a bit, and finally stopped to read some of the plaques on Front St. on the construction worker's memorial.  Lou ran up and read quite a few of them (he reads SO WELL!!) and was "very, very sad that all those guys died at work".  It seemed kind of an odd but neat memorial, with odd circumstances to many deaths and all of the workers from different companies, but I guess every city has it's quirks. 


The walk was actually the perfect way to wind down the day.  I stopped to take a picture of the old man on a bench statue on Front Street...

...and I got roped into taking about a dozen pictures for a group of german girls playing tourist.  My nephew laughed at me standing there with about ten little digital cameras hanging from my fingers, taking the same picture with each one, but as he said to me this afternoon in the subway, "I really hate to say this Aunt Mel, but you always make us take longer to get back to the hotel. We take longer every day because you take pictures." Of course he immediately demanded his own picture taken with the old man once the girls were done, and he "wanted his own, without any of the nice girls in it." O_O

So he talked to the old man for a while, patted his face, and then said "thank you", and off he went.  I totally heart my nephew. 
We rounded off the day by stopping once again at the ice cream truck, with the same great lady. She is a riot, and complimented Louie on his manners. He really was exquisitely polite, and she was very fun, making him all the more excited to buy his ice cream.

He was practically dancing by the time it was his turn to order, and bless her heart, she played along and gave him the best experience a kid could ask for.  We heart her, too.

I don't know if I ever want to be a kid again, but I'd love to experience such exuberant joy over such a simple thing.  I am beginning to think that the secret to staying young is throwing yourself into the experience of every day so hard that by the time you crash land at the end of every day, all you want to do is start all over tomorrow.  These are the days when all I can do is be grateful that life is GOOD.

Discovery Mode - Engage!

So today was a short day.  We had planned to see both the ROM (the Royal Ontario Museum) and the Shoe Museum, but the ROM turned out to be so fabulous that by the time we made it through we were D-O-N-E, done!

For anyone who is ever thinking of going to Toronto - I highly, highly, highly suggest you hit the ROM.  The whole thing is lovely, from the super cool subway stop...

...with it's "statue" columns and "ancient" architecture...

...to the bicycle racks where you store your bike upon arriving. 

There were about a dozen different designs (and I LOVED that every single one was different, instead of using a template), but this one was my favorite (natch):

I also loved the giant Foo dogs guarding the side entrance.  I don't know why I love Foo dogs, I just do. I was enthralled with the ones in Sydney, I loved the ones in San Francisco, and I've got a little one about a foot high guarding a clover patch in my front yard.  I heart them, even though that might be weird.

The museum building itself has recently undergone some renovation, so when you approach it from the subway, it looks all innocuous and stately and very historic building-esque, then you turn the corner toward the main entrance and BAM! - you are blindsided by this:

It's absolutely crazily impressive, don't get me wrong, in a drunken-Spiderman-need-some-suction-cups-to-climb-it sort of way, but So unexpected. At least for me. 

The external architecture is even carried through to the interior, which I thought was neat.  I really like that there was a lot of natural light in the museum, although I'm hoping they're minimizing it's damage to the exhibits. 

(On a side note, when we got to the museum this morning, I noticed that A) the garbage strike was still on...

...and B) Canadians must spend a *fortune* in spray paint, although they're using it fantastically!)

But back to the museum...I won't torture you with a blow by blow of every exhibit (though I did see a torturer or two!), but I will share a few of my favorite shots so that you can get a taste of the museum.

There are mamas and babies...

...and old headless dudes...

...huge honkin' poles...

...and frogs in the nude!

You'll find heart-shaped noses on statues of bone...

...and tiny clay horsemen who never travel alone.

There are fierce metal dragons...

...and warriors of clay...

...and tiny tin soldiers...

...who march every day.

There are ceremonial objects...

...and statues galore...

...and things that you wonder what the heck they are for.

So change up the day...

...with a mind like a sponge and your lips in a grin...

 

...gird up your loins...

...and be a kid once again!

YAY for the Royal Ontario Museum!  

Once we left there, the rest of the day was uneventful. We had a late and thoroughly unimpressive dinner at Canyon Creek across the street from our hotel, which ended up being thoroughly frustrating and disturbingly expensive.  It was lovely weather outside though, and nothing could ruin the ROM glow, not even Lou breaking my new agate bangle bracelet by dropping it on a stone floor.  Poor kid, I thought he was going to have a heart attack.  

All in all, culinary and jewelry tragedies aside, what a lovely, lovely, fantastic day.  I would like to thank the staff at the ROM for taking such care to curate their entire museum in such a way as to interest me even in the exhibits I couldn't give a rat's ass about (such as Wedgewood), simply because they were so well done. I guess when you love your job, it shows - and I'm grateful for it, because my day was stupendous.

If Size Doesn't Matter...

...then why do some people feel it necessary to spend millions on the house they live in?  We went to Casa Loma today, a museum that was once the residence of Sir Henry Mill Pellatt, a financier that ironically lost the house by going broke. (Note to self, don't hire this guy.)  It was HUGE.  The biggest private residence in it's day, the dude spent $3.5 million on it, and Canadians were outraged. (Meanwhile, in the USA, the Rockefellers were spending about $11 on their crib...shhhhhh!)

Getting there was also an adventure - our first full day of navigation through Toronto's public transit system.  Yesterday was the streetcars, today was the subway, the bus system, and the streetcars.  At least it wasn't raining today - Wee!

We started off the day at Union Station (hey! we have one of those in DC!), where I fed my fascination with pigeons, and my nephew let the world know that "Aunt Mel is always taking pictures of those birds." (Thanks, dude. But aren't they fabulous?)

Union Station was quite a bit busier today compared to the ghost town it was yesterday since the train strike ended last night, and Louie finally got to ride his beloved train on the subway. 

We took the train uptown to Dupont station (hey! we have one of those in DC!), and then realized we had to walk about another half a mile to get to the museum.  o_O

The walk was great though - a lot of interesting stuff along the way, though the museum isn't downtown and is kind of tucked away in a residential neighborhood past the Archives.  On a side note, I really like the architecture in Toronto - it's all over the place, and a ton of interesting buildings, sculptures, and edifices that are neat-o, just because. 

Case in point - this door:

The other thing that I've noticed is that there is graffiti everywhere, but the majority of it seems to be artistic, and lovely.  This was my favorite near Casa Loma:

...although I liked this little one too, hidden under a bridge and apropos of nothing:

I'm very sorry you're missing your Blue Jay.  Would you like a pigeon, instead?

(On another side note - I love the street signs in Canada.  We need these in the US.)

SQUEEEEEZE IT! SQUEEEZE IT OVAH!

Anyway, we made it to Casa Loma...which again, is HUGE...

...but has some neat rooms.  The museum is something that my mom very much enjoyed - she's into that period decorating stuff - and though I found it a tad mind-numbing, there were some neat rooms that I enjoyed.  I really liked the Conservatory - and I want one of these in my house. 

The rest of the house, secret passageways included, was a bit staid for me, though Mom and Lou both had a great time.  I got some good views from the top turret...

...but the $32 for two mediocre sandwiches in the cafeteria and the nine thousand children running around on school tours make it something that I would rather have skipped.  

Behold my worst nightmare:

I was forced out into the gardens to escape the screaming hordes, and what a fortuitous escape it was.  The gardens were lovely - meandering paths, secret nooks with benches, follies and gazebos everywhere you looked.  My favorite was the Dragon Tree - I think it's no secret by now that I have an endless fascination with dragons, and this one was super neat, although it took me a minute to see the dragons.  Check it out:

The explanation:

And the close-ups:

(Hairy Dragon Eye Ball)

So, while I didn't get to explore the whole 5 acres of garden - which I totally would if I lived in Toronto, but when you've got a list and a limited time frame, well, you know - we took off after I was done immortalizing the Dragon Tree in film.

Lou was in heaven, since this time we got to take the subway AND the bus.  Oh, to be young again and see public transportation as an adventure, instead of a purgatory filled with yuppies who run over your feet with their strollers and crazy Indian ladies who smell like turmeric.  

Next stop: Ontario Science Center. Home of some really neat stuff.

We spent HOURS here. HOURS.  It pretty much ate up the rest of the afternoon, and if Mom hadn't had a raging migraine, we might have spent even more time.  It was totally worth every penny, and not just for the kid, although right off the bat he was enthralled...

...super excited to run around chasing light rings with the other kids...

...and fascinated by the virtual koi pond.

(OK, I admit it, I was fascinated by the virtual koi pond too. It's only an image on the floor, but the "water" ripples when you walk across it, and the "fish" react to your presence. NEAT-O.)

There were a TON of things to do in this place.  There was a Sport exhibit, where you could have wheelchair races, rock climbing tests, jumping feats that measured your reach - even a slalom course with a full sled and a virtual mountain!

Lou's favorite was the Spy School exhibit - a series of stations that taught you spy techniques, then tested to see if you could complete tasks without getting caught. 

It was pretty cool, although we have now established that my nephew has not even one quarter ounce of the subtlety required for espionage. 

The special exhibit on while we visited was the Lizards and Snakes Alive! exhibit, and though I've seen better in the Smithsonian Reptile House, I realize that I'm lucky to live within arm's reach of a national zoo. This was a decent exhibit for a traveling venue, and I got some good shots.  This was by far my favorite part, but then again I am a sucker for anything involving animals.  

I ran around for over an hour getting close-ups of all the reptiles, and had to seriously bite my tongue at all the parents that not allowed their children to bang on the glass enclosures, but some even actively encouraged  them.  Oh, how I wished to have a pit viper handy.  This woman thought it was hysterical that her child wanted to kiss one of the most venomous snakes in the world, and the more agitated the snake got, the funnier she thought it was. 

I really wanted to bash this kid's mother for encouraging him to suck face with a pit viper.  I kind of hope one shows up in their yard and ends their contribution to the gene pool.

But anyway, after our tour of the reptiles, we took Lou through the space exhibit, which was cool, but much more geared toward the older kids.  Lou could care less about the different spectrums of light, he just wants to crash a rocket ship into Mars. 

By the time we got to Kidspark, Mom was exhausted and had a raging super migraine, so she sat out on the benches and napped while Lou and I ran around inside.  I SO wish we had one of these near - I would take my nephew all the time!  There were a million things to do, touch, taste, see, push, pull, play, etc. Some of them would only appeal to a 6 year old, like the machine that demonstrated sneezes by shooting out a watery mist when you opened the face "door"...(EW!)

...which of course my nephew LOVED, and proceeded to open the door about 15 times. Some of them, though, are cool for all ages, and I saw easily half of the parents absorbed in their own activities while their kids ran around.  There was a really neat series of water tables that Lou loved, where you could build a series of locks and control the water flow, with deeper pools and sliding panels.  Yes, he got soaked.  I liked the giant pin panels, like the ones you find in the gag store and press your hand into, but HUGE.  Lou and I both had a great time pressing our hands and bodies into those, then running around to the other side to see what they looked like. 

It was just a really neat place.  

Lou wanted to stay there forever, of course, but Mom ended up really not feeling well, and so we headed back to the hotel for an early night. We put Mom to bed, covered her eyes with a cool washcloth, and headed out to East Marios for dinner, where Lou proceeded to eat almost nothing but managed to almost cover the entire floor in grated cheese.  Thank God the waiter was cool, and Lou was in funny man mode, with his inescapable kid logic about why he should get dessert without eating any dinner. O_O

It's nights like this that I realize how much I love my nephew, and how glad I am that I'm not a parent. 

Oh Canada, Oh Canada...

...your maple leaves are lovely!  

This is the song my nephew and I have been singing for weeks in preparation for our trip here to Toronto. We haven't gotten beyond that one verse, or even carried much of a tune, but it's been fun to sing a little ditty to keep the big TO in the forefront of our minds.  

Well, here we are.  Mom and I went to the Brad Paisley concert last night, with Jimmy Wayne and Dierks Bentley, and the show was fantabulous. But all that fantasticalness didn't end until after 11, and so it was midnight before we got home.  Midnight, dude.  And we had to leave for the airport at 5.  And of course I hadn't packed...are you crazy?  So I packed.  I got to bed at 2:30 this morning, and I got up at 4:15 to head to Dulles. By 4:18 I was ready for Canada to secede from North America and break off into the sea like California keeps threatening to do.  

I admit I even ate donuts from 7-11 this morning, regardless of my current nutrition kick, because at 5 am in the car with my brother, my nephew and my mom, it was either an eclair and a chocolate donut or 20 to life in the Federal pen for multiple homicide.  

Man, that sugar went right to my brain. I was almost quasi-human by the time we rolled up the terminal. The flight was uneventful, thank God, and the United people can be forgiven for the extreme lack of hotties on the plane, since I was definitely not looking my best this morning.  None of that really matters though, because when I looked out the window - there it was.  A new landscape. No matter how often I travel or what new places I go to - I still get a little teeny thrill in the adolescent section of my brain every time I go someplace new, and it goes a little something like this:

YAY!

This morning - my Yay! was here:

Lou was a little wound up (though he got the most sleep of all of us) and almost as excited as I was to see land.  He was very firm in telling me that Lake Ontario was not a lake, but was in fact the ocean, since it was "100% huge."  He then proceeded to tell me I was crazy when I told him that we had gotten the sharks that were carrying our luggage from that ocean.  "Don't be silly, Aunt Mel.  Sharks don't carry luggage - they EAT it. Duh."  

Allllrighty then.  

(Lou, by the way, is a camera HOG, unless he's in a mood, and then he lets the paparazzi know that pictures are a privilege.)

 

In any event, we arrived safe and sound in Toronto, and got to the hotel in one piece.  We're staying at the Intercontinental Rodgers Center, and already I love it.  Sometimes the bigger hotel chains are hit or miss, but these guys are on the money.  It's beautiful, there's no lines, the staff are all on top of their game, and best of all, they brought out the big guns at the first sign of the cranky six year old we towed in from the street.  Within seconds of us getting to the counter, he had a cup of crayons, a "check-in" sheet to fill out, a gift backpack full of goodies, and his own "check-in" counter. SCORE.

So check-in was painless, which is always nice. (Every one I know who has children just nodded. Just FYI.) 

We haven't really planned our itinerary for this week, but I wanted to hit Kensington Market today, since on the last Sunday of every month the city shuts the neighborhood down to traffic and makes it a pedestrian only zone.  Apparently, it's usually chokingly crowded, but the intermittent pouring rainstorms today cleared everyone out, so the brief periods of sunshine we enjoyed were refreshingly elbow-in-the-kidney free. 

All in all, though I didn't take time to explore all of the really cool vintage shops (present company had NO interest), I really like Kensington.  The houses are all very colorful...

...the gingerbread and house adornment is out of control...

...and there are some there that just make you look, and look, until you finally admit that you just don't get it. 

All in all it's a cool place though. We walked around for a few hours, I bought some really odd and random things in shops where we hid out from the rain (I'm not sure that I really need a pink glass salt bowl or an oxidized copper Mexican wolf head bell...but they're cool.), and I found some things that were we not in a recession, I would buy just because. Just because they amused me, just because I can't believe someone spent money to produce them, or just because I know that one day I'm going to have to participate in a Secret Santa gift exchange, and this would be the perfect revenge. 

Then I ran around and photographed all the graffiti...

...even the stuff in the Cheese Store window...

...(along with my trusty sidekick, who only wants to race down alleys as long as he's winning)...

and we people watched like fiends. And, oh, my friends...was there some people watchin' to DO.  Here are the highlights:

The parking police, who only seemed to be concerned with the parked vehicles in front of fruit stands. Every single time I saw this guy he was in front of a fruit stand.  Maybe he's trying to get more fiber?

My nephew was impressed with this lady, who was carrying two juvenile iguanas, and wearing another one on her head.  I tried to get a front shot, but she was moving at a good clip... but I would be too if I was carrying three scaly bags of testosterone laden reptile aggression. 

And last, but not least, my favorite of all of the sidewalk vendors. I have NO IDEA what they're actually selling, but I'm pretty sure it comes accompanied with a mantra on peace, love and understanding, with a few Buddhist/Maoist/Taoist/Marxist thoughts thrown in for flavor. 

My only complaint about the afternoon in Kensington is that I noticed that all of the trash cans were overflowing, and there was trash piled in every available alley space. There were even trash cans that were wrapped in restaurant cellophane, to keep anyone from adding any more trash.  I found out later that there was a trash strike going on, which explained it, but all I can say is THANK GOODNESS it wasn't hot out, or the smell would have been all I remembered. 

Kensington, all in all, was 110% worth the street car ride up there.  We stopped by Chinatown on the way back to the hotel...

...and I am SO GLAD that there is not a hardcore neighborhood like this in DC - the fruit alone would make me go broke.  We bought Rambutan, plums, donut peaches (yay! Donuts! Uh, wait, what?) and all kinds of deliciousness that we usually can't get at home.  The stalls in Chinatown here were so colorful I really just wanted to hose everything down so it was glistening and spend about four hours taking pictures.  Although I got enough weird looks taking the few shots I did that I recognize the idea is impractical (especially since one of the vendors was negotiating with a woman to buy a box of mangosteens...for $160!!!).

But they were so pretty.  My favorites were the mangosteens...although I have no idea what they taste like...

...and the Dragon Fruit.  No idea what this tastes like either (and it's ridonkulously expensive, so when I eat everything I already bought, we're coming back for this and the mangosteens), but I'm a Dragon in the zodiac, with all the weaknesses therein implied, and so I covet it. Prrreeciousssssss.....

But we didn't linger long in Chinatown.  Mom and Lou were both exhausted, (although I was carrying everything, and isn't the Sherpa supposed to be the first to throw in the towel?) and so we headed back to eat and crash.  I stopped for a minute to enjoy a young man very emphatically telling a pigeon to cross the street...

...but didn't get a chance to snap off more than a quick shot since Mom and Lou were already heading for the street car.  

All in all, our first day in Toronto went smashingly.  The weather was bearable, the people are great (even the odd snaggle toothed man who sold me the pink salt thingy, who "has an aunty in Fairfax and may come back down to visit now that Dems are back" but welcomed me to Canada with a great conversation and a hug when I left), and the view from our hotel room cannot be beat. There's a little something for Mom and I...

...and a real live working Tidmouth Sheds train depot with a rotating roundabout that kept my nephew enthralled for hours, and fed his train obsession marvelously. 

Toronto, I heart you.

Kerry Me Away to Dingle Town...

So far I'm loving Ireland.  It's been chilly and the light hasn't been great, but everyone here is so fabulous, and the scenery has been magnificent - the farther west we go, the prettier the country gets. 

We spent our first night in Dingle at Mary O'Neill's place - and it felt like we had it all to ourselves.  Mary is lovely, as is her son Stephen (though he's engrossed in sport for the most part and is hard to tear away from the TV), but her place is SPOTLESS.  It's also deceivingly huge inside, much to my chagrin, since I'm the one that ended up lugging all the suitcases upstairs.  It didn't seem like any more than a few stairs when I volunteered - that'll teach me!

We decided to pass on the Ring of Kerry, as mentioned earlier, and drive the Ring of Dingle instead (Ring of Dingle, Ring of Dingle, It's a Merry Little Jingle! - Sorry - it just makes me want to sing!).  Mary advised us that we could drive the entire thing in about an hour, but mentioned that we might take a bit more time if we stopped for pictures and such.  I think it took us a little over five hours, so not too bad, although Mom got a little antsy about keeping on a schedule. I can only imagine what the Ring of Kerry would have been like - we never would have made it to the end!

The Ring of Dingle is beautiful - absolutely breathtaking - and I am doubly, triply glad that we went before the summer tourist crowd began, since the roads were all but empty, the beaches pristine, and the winds clean of anything but salt and sea. 

Our first stop, random and the result of an impulsive U-turn down what looked at first like a driveway, was Ventry Beach.  They say that the Dingle Peninsula has some of the most dramatic beaches in Ireland, with long expanses of sand and wind-swept rock that are inhospitable to swimmers.  I didn't quite hear the theme song to "Jaws" playing in my head, but it was definitely quiet, and mostly deserted. 

 

I spent a little while on the beach, while Mom and Linda waited in the car, out of the cold.  I went down mainly to take pictures, exchanged nods with the old man (a local) who was walking purposefully up the beach, and looked for shells.  The water was excruciatingly cold, so I didn't venture in to look for shells after the first nanosecond of skin contact with the water, but Mother Nature obliged by washing a lovely specimen up onto shore for me.

The only other inhabitants of the beach, though it was late morning, were the gulls...

...and the lugworms.  I wasn't sure what they were at first, but there were piles of lugworm sand everywhere. I took a picture of the one shaped like a heart, of course, even though lugworms are about 8 inches long and kind of gross.  The sentiment seemed to fit. 

I actually would have liked to hang out on the beach for a few hours, in spite of the freezing cold, but Mom and Linda were waiting, so I hoofed it back up the beach and we got back on the road.  

The drive was phenomenal - even if we hadn't stopped to see a single thing, the road around the peninsula winds along the edge of the coast, a narrow ribbon of asphalt with its edge dropping off into the sea.  

Surprisingly, though the edge was steep and the waters brutal...

...there were very few warnings along the way.  We did see one sign at the beginning of the drive...

...but it didn't seem to dissuade the tourists.  

As a side note to the above picture - these guys were CRAZY.  The edge was literally inches from where they were standing, and they were clowning around and taking pictures while their womenfolk yawned in the car.  I like to think of this as Darwinism in action, and even the gulls were a bit leery of the lunatics on the wall.

I know, seagull dude, I know.  

There were quite a few spots where I wish I hadn't been driving - there were so many moments where I wanted to take pictures, but the roads were extremely narrow, there were very few pulloffs, and the tour buses have right of way.  There were some moments when I was able to improvise, however. There was a beach near Slea Head that I wanted to capture, but the nearest unoccupied pulloff was in front of the giant crucifix that marks the westernmost point of Ireland.  

There was a little bit of a view of the beach from the Slea Head pulloff, but it wasn't as close as I wanted, even with my super-fantaz-great telephoto lens...  

...so I improvised, Irish style, and created my own photo opportunity.

Mom and Linda were good sports about being perched at a 45 degree angle on the side of a hill sloping into the ocean, just so I could take pictures of the beach...

...and the ever-present sheep. (Seriously, there are about 4 sheep for every one person in Ireland.)

I wanted to go down onto the beach itself, but it was actually really cold out on the edge of the world, and so we stopped at Tig Slea Head Cafe before continuing on down the coast, where we all had tea and shopped a bit.  There wasn't anyone else there, so it was quite nice to sit and chat with the shopkeepers.  This is definitely a place that I'd like to spend much more time in.

You Kinsale Away With Me...

So...waking up early didn't work.  I blame it on the bar. And the cider.  And the jam session.  And the fantastic mushroom soup I had at Jim Edward's pub, at 11 o'clock at night.  Then again, why blame anybody - who the hell gets up early on vacation (except me, usually?)

In any event, we were up and at by 9(ish), and after partaking of Jimmy's lovely breakfast we were off and at'em. (As an aside, the breakfasts that we've had in all the little B&B's here in Ireland have been marvelous.  I am eternally in love with Irish brown bread, Mom is hoarding Irish butter by the pound, and I am reminding myself every day that living here would be bad, since I would eventually collapse the Cliffs of Moher with my weight if I ate brown bread every day.  Although I wonder how much I can fit in my suitcase if I leave all my clothing behind...)

We got a little bit of an economic reality check as soon as we left Jimmy's - right around the corner from his place is the office of Social Welfare Services, and even at 9 am, the line was enormous.  I'd heard that the Irish economy wasn't doing very well, but this was the first hard evidence we'd seen of any problem existing. 

Then again, two blocks down the street (I love these little towns where you can walk the whole shebang in under twenty minutes), there was a bustling market going on. We decided to come back to it around lunch time, and have a stroll around the town first.  We stopped to get a little puppy love, from a gentleman taking his boys out for a walk (and to see dogs on a leash is very uncommon here, but these beasties were young'uns yet)...

..and then we went to see another church (yes, yes, it was lovely, and medieval, and you know, church-y).  Post-church going, and per Rick Steve's advice (best book so far!), we stopped for a historical stroll with Don Herlihy.  I had thought up until this point that the excellence of guides here was something intrinsic to the OPW offices, but Don blew that supposition right out of the water.  He's a licensed guide, fer sure, but doesn't work for OPW and still managed to make a 90 minute (Irish time, so more like 2 hours) walk incredibly interesting and worthwhile.  He's a very genial man, who started off our chat by finding out where everyone was from, and if we had any particular interests - my interests, for example, are more geological in nature - I could care less about Spanish armadas, but I will talk about limestone and shale formation all day long.  Linda and Mom, on the other hand, wanted the people side of things, and would probably have fallen comatose in the harbor with any more than glancing references to the historical significance of sedimentary deposits and rock striation.  I'm not sure why the couple from Canada was there, but they were fun, so why worry?  Don's walk was quite nice, not only because there were only 5 of us, but because he managed to balance both the physical and the popular history of Kinsale in such a way as to not have anyone face down and drooling on the sidewalk.  

We started off in the harbor (natch, since Kinsale is a harbor town), and he gave us a bit of history on the formation of the natural harbor, and the history of the "End of the World", the western most harbor and last refueling point for sailing ships prior to the discovery of America by our favorite Genoan, Chris Columbus. (And did you know that the RMS Lusitania was sunk off the coast of Kinsale? Wicked!) 

(I personally thought starting at the harbor was a bit amusing, since the tide was most definitely out, and you could tell who'd closed down the pub last night.)

Home by 11....

...and last one out the door.

All in all, it was absolutely lovely.  The weatherman had predicted thunderstorms, and apparently the Irish school of meteorology follows the same program as the American one, since the skies were overcast all day but there wasn't a thunderstorm to be had.  Not that I'm complaining, don't get me wrong - we walked all around the town, learning bits of history...

...enjoying the locals...

(Don greeted this guy by name)

(and introduced us to Tony, who stopped his loud machine so we could hear Don talk - fantastic!)

...and even making new friends. 

(in case you can't see him, here's a closeup.  He was SUPER cute, and didn't bark at us once!)

Without a doubt, Kinsale is a fabulous and charming little town, where even the graffiti is sweet!

(There were apples chalked on buildings all over town.  I have no idea why, and no one seemed to know who had done it, but how fabulous is it that the Irish version of a marauding building defacer runs around drawing apples in white schoolhouse chalk? I love this country!)

Then again, they make up for it in strange parking signs.  I saw this on the street, and wasn't quite sure what it meant - can you only park there if you ARE a doctor?  Or if you're visiting the doctor?  Or if your last name is Doctor?  It wasn't in front of a doctor's office, or even near a hospital, so that only left me more confused.  Good thing it was across the street from the pub...then again, maybe it's for people that go to the pub, and who know they're going to need a doctor later on that night?

After the super-fantaz-great walk with Don, it was about lunchtime, so we decided to hit the market. Looking back, (and having to bend sideways to see around my hips) I can see that this was a bad idea. Not only because of the Raspberry-Something-or-Other tart that Mom got (O.M.G.- I am not a fan of cakey tarts, but it almost made me *drool* on myself), or because of the delicious chicken skewers we had for lunch, or even because of the to-die-for chocolate pastry that Linda and I sampled (and sampled)...but mostly because of this guy:

Nicest guy ever, who in fact also does the evening "ghost tours" of Kinsale, but who is so unassuming that you would never recognize the face of pure evil that he wears underneath, until you see the wares he's peddling:

We were first in line, but as it all looked so delicious, we let another woman go in front of us (mistake, as it happened, since she was just as indecisive and ordering about 34 kilos of cheese - see how I live, and you learn?  Lesson from Kinsale - just cut to the cheese).  Anyway, Cheese Man offered us samples of all of the cheeses to help make up our minds, and I fell in love with the local smoked offerings. Luckily, I am the only one that likes smoked cheeses, so we didn't end up getting alot of those, but we did end up buying almost 2 kilos (a little over 4 lbs) of cheese.  All of which I have now safely ensconced in my backside.  

The best part of the descent into Cheevil (Cheese Evil, for those that have problems with contractions), was the little piece of Beezlebubian deliciousness called Stout Cheddar. If you look at the picture above, it's that mottled or marbled piece in the lower right hand corner...and if you've ever had the pleasure of tasting it, you may have to wipe the drool off your screen to see it clearly.  It's this lovely distinctive cheese where they take the local cheddars, which are a bit sharp, but very smooth, chop them up, and then combine them with Guinness Stout, and age it into a cheese. 

O_O

If I had been the person to invent this, my heirs would have inherited as infants, since my arteries would have closed up shop shortly after it's discovery. It's THAT good.  We bought about a quarter round, and I snarfed almost all of it in the next two days.  I would have eaten more, but I didn't pack any pants with elastic waistbands, and public nudity is illegal even in Ireland. 

Back to the market - I'm not sure if the market is everyday, or if we happened to luck out and be there on market day, but even without the cheese - No Can Live Here, Unless Become Gargantua Girl.  The main culprit in the end was not Irish brown bread or Stout Cheddar, but these delicious things called Twister Cakes. 

They're about 10 inches tall, hollow, and basically a rolled up strip of dough that comes off as you pull in a big spiral.  They smelled soooo good, and I *did* walk past the booth about 4 times before I bought one, so I probably worked off the first bite.  Maybe. There was coconut, or powdered sugar, or almond, or cinnamon...what to do, what to do?!?!? I went with the cinnamon, since Mom and Linda both liked it, and that way they could help me eat it, if they could get their fingers past my snapping teeth.  It was delicious, it was memorable, it was something I'd never seen before, and it was utterly consumed within nanoseconds.  (I do have the memory of it safely stored in my fat cells, however, so I will be able to enjoy it for years and years to come.) *Sigh* 

Post-market extravaganza, we headed up the hill toward Charles Fort, taking Don's advice to drive the harbor road, despite the construction.  See what happens when you listen to the locals?  It may take you an extra 15 minutes to get there, but you end up with lovely views.

Even though the thunderstorms had held off, it did turn out to be a very windy day, and here's where our new "let's go with the flow" style of planning takes a turn to the darker side.  Charles Fort (one of the two forts guarding Kinsale harbor), is TWELVE ACRES of historical goodness.  Twelve. Acres.  Did I mention we'd just come from stuffing ourselves nearly insensate at the market?

Hmmm...daunting. 

Well, maybe it's best that we wander the ramparts - that'll alleviate the guilt when we eat the rest of the cheese later. 

Though I won't go into the history of Charles Fort, other than to quote Fodor's and tell you that it's one of "Europe's best-preserved "star forts", encloses some 12 cliff-top acres and is similar to Fort Ticonderoga in New York State", I will tell you it's a pretty great walk for a pleasant afternoon.  Not having a helicopter handy, the best aerial view I can give you is the one OPW displays (again with the greatness of OPW - they are MONEY!):

There was also a neat map of it inlaid into the ground...

...with all of the important parts CLEARLY marked. 

I love it.  

So, we wandered the ruins...

...joked a bit about having Big Guns (which I sure as hell don't after all those pastries and cheese... good thing there were some at the fort!)...

...almost stood on the ramparts (just kidding - this is strictly VERBOTEN!  Although I *did* lean over the edge as far as I could...)...

...and enjoyed the view of the coastline.  

Every tourist website will tell you that the recommended visit for the fort is about an hour, and I'm here to tell you that the only way you're going to accomplish that is if you bring a Segway with you, and even then the ground is so uneven that you'll probably end up being pitched into the bay within the first 15 minutes, so toss that idea right out the window.  

Perhaps it's a different vibe in high summer when the land is choked with tourists, but there were probably only 20 or so people here when we came, and we were there for a while.  There are a ton of buildings to explore...

...vantage points to climb up into...

...secret nooks and crannies to avoid without having a full-body Biohazard suit...

...and impromptu wind tunnels to get blown through, although I'm pretty sure that this is unintentional and will only happen on a windy day.  Coincidentally (or perhaps not, depending on the odor), this tunnel leads to the restrooms. 

All in all, though I wasn't really into the history of the place (Mom ran around reading all of that information - I haven't read any historical stuff since I finished my history minor in college...), but it was a very nice afternoon.  Linda enjoyed the breeze up on the ramparts of Devil's Bastion (natch, given her traveling companions)...

...while Mom read up on the past, and I indulged my secret love of photographing pigeons.  No, I don't know why they fascinate me, they just do.  Don't judge me. 

Even with the 20 minutes Linda and I spent marveling at the tree growing inside one of the buildings (yes, an actual full-size tree - perhaps deposited by the pigeons?)...

...we still got on the road while it was light to head to our next destination - the Dingle Peninsula.  I kind of like that they don't use Daylight Savings here - it was after 6 by the time we got underway, and we still had hours of daylight to burn!

The day was great - wandering a small seafaring town, eating our weight in cheese, traipsing through derelict buildings that are centuries old...and what would a drive through rural Ireland be without at least one sheep giving us the old "Huh... Tourists!" glare?

There wasn't too much more activity to the day - Mom and I are usually pretty frenetic when we travel, but there was so much driving involved in this trip that we ended up taking it sort of easy.  We didn't even eat out on our way to Dingle Town, but instead stopped at a local grocery (and those who know my Mom's frugal ways won't be surprised by the name at all...LOL)...

...where I found out, to my horror, that Hannah Montana is indeed taking over the world.  Run for your life. 

After I recovered enough from the trauma to continue driving, we headed straight to Dingle, no more detours.  (Well, except for a few minutes at Lahinch Beach...but it was SO worth it, even though sticking my fingers in the water resulted in immediate frostbite...

...and there was an old man there walking his dog.  I was so focused on getting the shot that I didn't notice the dog standing on the rocks below me, looking directly at me, until he barked.  Of course, he immediately took off, and I missed the shot, but he was super cute, with a super wide grin, and covered in sand from running in the surf. )

So, another day of our vacation bites the dust, and we've arrived in Dingle Town, perched on one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world.   I can't wait to get started, but for now I need a nap, and it's time to call it a night. 

If you thought I was kidding about the piano player...

...here's the video evidence to prove it.  This is your glimpse inside a real Irish pub, with an Italian playing American blues.  It's a bit early in the evening (this was filmed on Monday about 8pm, maybe, before things got really rollicking), but it's a glimpse.  Enjoy (since it took me forever to figure out how to make it work - LOL!), though give it a minute to load, since the file is 20MB.

 

Kilkenney, Kilkenney, but Leave Cartman Alone...

Well, Kilkenney is done.  Our stay at the Club House Hotel was grand, and the lovely Ian took care of everything, from getting us dinner to taking our bags up both flights of stairs, to making sure we had internet and breakfast in the morning.  On top of all that, he was good looking, too.  I may have to move here.

We went off to Kilkenney castle first thing, since it was only about 2 blocks from the hotel.  One of the things that I like about Ireland so far is that almost all of the “heritage sites”, like castles and such, are located fairly closely to the town, and you can walk to almost all of them.  It’s really rather nice to have them all so conveniently nearby, since we’ve been spending entirely too much time in the car as it is. 

In any event, we walked up the way to Kilkenney Castle, and I wasn’t able to get any good pictures since the entire roadway in front is under construction, and so there are fences and pylons and orange signs all about – not very photogenic.  I did take a few pictures of the interior courtyard (even a few that indulged my love of the pigeons)…

…and even a few of the interior of the castle before a guide told me that photography was not allowed.  Oops!

The castle was interesting, but not overwhelming, and it’s been self-guided ever since March.  The guides are still there, but now they simply are available for questions rather than leading tours.  We did end up chatting with one of the ladies in the portrait gallery, which has a fantastic wood ceiling that is built like the hull of a Viking longboat and painted with intricate detailing on the wood.  Again, the OPW tour guides make all the difference.  The ceiling is nice when you simply look at it as a period piece, but once you learn that the wife of the late baron commissioned it, and the details of her life, it brings it so much more vividly into focus.  According to the guide, the baron and his wife were one of the few love matches of the day, in a time of marriages for political or financial gain, and she was grief-stricken when he died.  She took to walking in the local forests to deal with her sadness in losing him, and all of the bits of foliage painted on the ceiling are plants that she brought back from her walks, and insisted that they be included in the mural.

We were done with the castle in shortorder, and since the weather was a bit drizzly and grey, we decided to go across the way to the Kilkenney Crafts Council, a little plaza directly across the street from the castle that showcases Irish artists.  There was quite a few marvelous things there, and I discovered a new artist, Anna Nielsen, that I am definitely going to be following up on once I get home.  I can’t afford any of her stuff here, but perhaps once the exchange rate gets better I might be able to pick up a piece or two.  I did buy one little coaster that was marked €1.75, and I handed the woman a $20 in USD, since you could pay with cash and I was running very low on euros...she hands me back €12!  I was like "what the f..." - the exchange rate was so bad that my €1.75 coaster cost almost $6!  I was half tempted to ask if it came with an egg and some mayonnaise.  I spend, you learn.  Pay in euros, always, unless the exchange rate is phenomenal, and always ask beforehand what the exchange rate *is*.

Post crafts bonanza we ended up walking around Kilkenney a bit, which is a charming little town, and in some ways reminds me a bit of Venice and some of the older cities of Europe, with all of its little passageways through between streets.

I love these - it always feels like a passageway to another world to me...like you'll walk through the arch and there will be a whole separate universe waiting on the other side.  Maybe it's from watching too many episodes of Mr. Rogers when I was a kid, with his train to the Land of Make Believe, but I can never walk by one of these without holding my breath a little in anticipation. 

Another one of the things that I like that seems to be particular to Irish small towns is the double colored door.  It may be a holdover from when the buildings were used for some other purpose, but I like the two doors close together, each painted a different color.

 

(I also like the attitude of the Kilkennians, which is posted prominently in several places.)

After our short stroll through town, where we decimated the “Everything for €2” store (like our dollar stores at home) and stocked up on candy bars and crisps, we headed up the street to St. Canice’s Cathedral, again within comfortable walking distance.  I don't think I've been in any town in Ireland yet that you can't do almost everything on foot.  St. Canice's wasn't much different than most of the other churches we've seen - the church itself was pretty, and though we didn’t go inside since there was an active service, the graveyard was a bit different than those we’d seen before. 

The church itself was in very good shape…

…and there were several very pretty crosses in the yard, including one near the caretaker’s cottage that was overhung by a beautiful tree, some sort of hanging wisteria or weeping willow.

n

I myself like the oldest crosses, that tend to be really simple and small.  Few of them are inscribed, or they are so old that the inscriptions have been worn away by time, but there is something about them that speaks to me – vestiges of a life lived so long ago that names no longer matter, but whose existence is still marked and remembered.

We walked around a bit, paying our respects to the dead, and saw about five million celtic crosses, and a ton of tombstones whose writing was illegible.  We found a bit of humor in one gravesite, where a man buried both his wives next to each other.  I hope that they liked each other in life!  We didn’t find his gravesite, but got a good chuckle out of both of his ladies being side by side.

There was also an angel in the St. Canice’s yard, and until I saw it there I hadn’t realized how few angels there are in the graveyards here.  This one was the first I’ve seen, and there was no name on it, nor date of birth or death – only a small poem about Death taking the flowers away.  I assume the marker is for a child, though it stands by itself in a corner of the green.

After St. Canice’s, we headed back downtown (all five blocks of it) to collect the car and head out to the Rock of Cashel.  We had debated skipping it, as we are spending more time in the car than anticipated, but we decided that since it was on the way, we would make the time to see it. 

 

Long, arduous travel story later, we arrived at the Rock in the pouring rain, 5 minutes before they closed for the day. (We should have known something was up when we were the only ones in the parking lot, besides a local cat cleaning himself.)  To say our tour was hurried might be the understatement of the century, but the Rock is not actually just a rock, but a castle and a series of buildings built ON the Rock of Cashel, none of which have roofs.  So perhaps only having a few minutes to explore wasn't such a bad thing. I know it was driving me crazy trying to keep the water off my lens!

After we blitzkrieged the Rock, we headed down the N8 (instead of the goat trails), and found that just because Ireland deems it a "highway" doesn't mean it's any wider than your car or paved particularly well. 

We've been down this road before, and I think that's where the rear axle went.  I'm very glad that the car had a lot  of body damage when we picked it up, 'cause otherwise I'd be paying quite a bit out of pocket.  I've been driving in ditches and through hedges and over mountains... and even the GPS has shown me off the road more than a few times.  Oops. 

So, thanks to our reprise country tour, we were a bit later arriving in Kinsale than we wanted to be, but we were still there before dark.  Thank God, since we ended up having to stop and ask a lovely couple for directions.  On an aside, I love love love the people in Ireland, since everyone waves when you drive by, and our two minute request for directions ended up a ten minute conversation with the couple walking by - they directed us to Jimmy's B&B, the San Antonio, that was right across from the Old Presbytery.  We'd missed it coming in from Kilkenney, as the road was closed from the other direction and there was only a bit of Friar Street actually open, of course from the opposite side that we were coming. (Better than when we left, though, as they'd closed the road completely and we had to maneuver past a giant hole in the road and several pylons...have I mentioned how glad I am that there is damage marked on the rental car form already?) 

u 

Jimmy's place was nice - his parents ran the B&B for many years, and he took it over when they passed on, though he's a musician by trade.  He's a bit of a bohemian figure, and fully embraces the Irish habit of interjecting to show that he's listening - participatory listening, even here in Ireland - holla! We were a bit disappointed to not hear him sing - he only plays at the pub every other week, and we'd arrived in an off week. BUT - he actually gave me one of his CDs, and he's quite decent if you like traditional Irish music.  We listened to it on the roads out of Kinsale, and had a grand time singing along to "Lizzie Lindsey" and the other tunes on the CD. 

Once we settled in, Jimmy gave us a bit of a "pub talk" - a rundown on what was going on in which pub, and what to expect and where to go. He recommended both the Ceac, (pronounced "Chock") and the Shack for a pint.  He also let us know that the tourists drink from about 7 until they are schnookered by about 10, and the Irish start drinking about 9:30-10, and are home by midnight.  So, naturally, we went out about 8:20, and ended up at the Ceac, as they had live music.  It ended up being the proprietor's night to play, and he was quite good - but his piano player was amazing.  He was playing "St. Theresa" by Joan Osborne when we came in, then went into "Revolution" by Tracy Chapman, and followed that with an absolutely stellar rendition of "Fragile", which I believe was written by Jimi Hendrix, but redone by Sting a few years ago.  Talk about a diverse selection! The proprietor (whose name I don't remember, sorry!) and the Italian (whose name I never knew, but I'd have liked to have it, along with his phone number - mrow!)  switched off singing, and they both were excellent.  They actually opened up the floor for a bit, and one of the locals gave an amazing rendition of "Valerie", by Amy Winehouse.  Jimmy and his girlfriend Noreen had joined us at the pub, and he asked me if I wanted to go up, but hellllllll no.  I can't carry a tune in a bucket, and if I'm going to get thrown out of a pub in the Emerald Isle, it's not goin' to be for singin'.

The pub sing was a rollicking good time - the Italian was a friend of the proprietors who was in town for a visit, and they basically had decided to have a jam session that was supposed to go from 7 until 9, and ended up going from about 5 after 7 until almost 11 o'clock.  The whole pub was dancing, everybody was singing backup on the chorus (yes, even me, though badly) and they just kept on keeping on.  There was a funky version of "Peaceful Easy Feeling" that segued into a few Elvis tunes, then a Fats Domino tune that morphed into "Kiss" by Prince, and back to Muddy Waters.  The Italian had the spotlight for a while, and from the way he rocking out the blues, he had to have spent time down in Louisiana or the South.  He was amazing, and though I had only intended to go for a short drink, I ended up staying even after Mom and Linda had gone to get dinner.  My pint of Bulmer's was too soon gone, and the music was still rolling, so I added a Bulmer's longneck to the toll...(the pints are the big bottles, and the longnecks an American sized beer).

I was pretty disappointed when the music finally wound down, but I think I would have stayed all night, and I'd already been drinking for quite a while without having eaten for most of the day.  I joined Mom and Linda for dinner at Jim Edward's pub, a really nice place about a block from the Ceac, but as usually happens when I drink, I ended up chatting the whole night away, and only eating a little tiny bit.  Oh well, I may have gone to bed a little too tipsy to realize I was hungry, but the night was more than worth a few hunger pangs.

 

Holy Goat Path, Batman!

It’s been beautiful weather so far – a little overcast in the mornings, but sunny and gorgeous by noon – and today was no different.  We finally left the hotel a bit late, since we had to repack all of our suitcases, and then Mom and I went to get the car from the car park a few blocks up on Fleet Street.  Let me just tell you – it was easy to get there when we parked, as the streets were all going in our direction, but the way back kind of felt like  a driving tour of Dublin, with all the one way streets.  It literally was a 10 minute walk there, and a 15 minute drive back. Whew!

So once we were all packed and ready, we started off the morning the Irish way…with a Guinness.  The Guinness storehouse is on the way out of town, and we stopped by simply to shop. No tour necessary, thanks – I don’t much need to know how you make it – just build it, and I will come drink it.   My seat in the pub can be my own little personal field of Dreams, and after a few pints every man in the bar will start to look like Kevin Costner.

So we came to the Guinness storehouse…

…we shopped (and I almost bought Dora a headband with a Guinness hat on it)…

…and we conquered before moving on.

Guinness Factoid (from Aisling at OPW) – the harp is the national symbol of Ireland, and the Guinness harp is deliberately backwards, with the straight shaft on the left.

So, we were off again shortly thereafter, following the taxi drivers directions to leave via the Dublin Mountains.  It was a beautiful drive up, though the roads were narrow and winding, but once we reached a high enough height, we could see out over all of Dublin, and we could even see the sea in the distance.

We drove for quite a while, perhaps an hour, through winding roads and little villages, roundabouts and one way roads that somehow handled two way traffic.  The scenery was quite pretty…

…but I don’t know that my passengers saw much of it, as I think they had their eyes closed.   I love to drive, and I even love to drive in DC, so driving on the back roads in Ireland was like Christmas – the speed limit (when there is one) is usually about 80kmph, and they are really good about telling you when that speed will get you killed.

We had a few narrow misses anyway, from cars coming around blind curves at top speed (usually halfway in my lane), but the Irish like to live, and drive, dangerously. I’m sure that coming back to DC and driving in Northern Virginia after this will seem like I’m driving Miss Daisy in a school zone.

We meandered about, driving along, listening to the TomTom tell us to “in 400 yards, take a left” (and WHO thinks in yards when you’re driving?  I was like “this one?” “no, keep going” “this one?” “no, keep going” “THIS one???” the whole time).  Much of what we passed was closed, since Monday was the Irish version of Labor Day, and most businesses were closed for the bank holiday. We finally stopped for lunch in some little town (no idea what the name was) when we saw that this place was open:

We didn’t end up getting lunch, as it happened, since the pub was hosting a private bachelor party, and according to the barman Hyle, hadn’t served food in “nigh on two years, since the road changed to take them off the main path.”  So, no Irish Home Cooked Food, Daily or otherwise.  He sent us down the road and two towns over, and told us to look for the castle, which was a good restaurant.  Saying “look for the castle” to a tourist in Ireland is like telling someone in DC that it’s “next to the Metro” without giving any further detail.  We drove two towns over, and stopped at this place, which was next to a big, gorgeous gothic stone building that kind of looked like it might be a castle.

Well, it wasn’t, the Castle restaurant was an actual turreted castle on the outskirts of the other end of town, but let me tell you about lunch at this place, since I can serve as a warning to others.  When you look at a menu in Ireland, and in very plain handwriting it says “Farm fresh eggs with mayonnaise” under the sandwich menu, do not be fooled into thinking that this is a colloquialism for egg salad.  It is not, and they aren’t kidding.  You will end up with AN EGG, covered in mayonnaise.

I scraped all of the mayonnaise off, since I despise it, but still ended up having an egg for lunch, with a bit of shredded lettuce on the side.  The best part was that Mom had a ham sandwich and Linda had chicken, which she generously shared with me after I stared morosely at my single egg for a few minutes, but my lunch was still the most expensive, at a whopping €6.  I probably could have gone up the road to a farm and bought the whole chicken for that amount of money, but instead we stopped at a roadside inn and had the most expensive single food item I think I have ever eaten.  I can’t cry fowl (ha!) because it was clearly listed on the menu, and I assumed it meant something else, but let that be a lesson to you.  I live, you learn, from my €6, egg-shaped mistakes.

After lunch we headed off to Clonmacnoise, an ancient abbey that is incredibly difficult to find.   It wasn’t in the TomTom, and all of the books simply gave directions like “20km from Athlone or 22km from Ballinasloe” – neither of which were in the TomTom either.  But we eventually found it, thanks to the little brown road signs that direct people to local attractions, and I’m very glad we did.

Clonmacnoise is one of the earliest Christian sites in Ireland (circa 6th century AD), founded by St. Ciarán (pron. Kieran), and it’s right on the delta of the River Shannon.  It’s also one of the largest ruin sites in Ireland, and has about 10 churches, 2 towers, and several hundred gravestones, many of which are Celtic crosses.  It’s an absolutely beautiful site, with a really interesting history that they show in an audiovisual presentation in the visitor’s center.  St. Patrick preached here when it was founded, and it is said that Charlemagne actually studied here.  It was a bit windy out, and chilly, but I must have taken 400 pictures while I was here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the things that I found most interesting about Clonmacnoise is that it is still an active site. St. Ciarán’s day is a big festival here, one of the churches is still used for active services, and the locals come here to picnic when the weather is nice. 

I definitely recommend a side trip there – though we didn’t get to see the exhibits inside, as they close the visitor’s center quite a bit earlier than the site, it was still a gorgeous place and well worth the visit (and it’s included on the OPW Heritage card! Score!).  It’s just a teeny bit difficult to find, but you could always as one of these guys, since they’re everywhere.

The rest of the day was spent driving to Kilkenney, which was an adventure all in itself.  We again decided to take the scenic route, which took about 3 and a half hours to get there, which is about two hours longer than it would have taken us on the highway.  All I’m going to say is thank God we had the TomTom, and somewhere in the world there is a guy in an office watching satellite feed of our trip, going “Hey guys! Come look at this!”.  We literally went over the river (Shannon), through the woods (the Slieve Bloom Mountains) and though we didn’t see grandmother’s house, we did pass through some peat bogs where they were actively harvesting peat. 

 

I thought that was kind of neat.  We ended up in the Slieve Bloom Mountains, though they weren’t in bloom, and it was beautiful. 

I don’t know the actual elevation, but my ears were popping, so it must have been fairly high up.  The best part of the trip was the roads the TomTom took us on – most of them were very narrow, very rural and climbing ever higher.  Mom was a bit nervous, since she doesn’t like heights AT ALL, but I was just glad that the roads were paved.  Of course, as SOON as I mentioned that aloud, the TomTom took us here (and yes, this is a two lane road):

Oh. My. God.  We went on this road for about 15 miles, and it was CRAZY.  The road was incredibly narrow, had potholes that almost swallowed the car, and the brush on the right hand side concealed a drop off that pretty much fell down the mountain.  We did run into another car up near the top, and after we waited for the driver to finish talking to an old man walking up the mountain, I ended up backing down the mountain for about a quarter mile before we were able to get to a point where we could both go around.  He was laughing at us the whole time, and as I pass where he had been I saw that he had been sitting in a big roundabout, and my harrowing trip backwards down the hill had been totally unnecessary.  Live, and learn from my bout with gravity.

 

We did finally make it out with our lives, and though I enjoyed myself thoroughly, I think Mom was tired from clutching at her chest a la Redd Foxx on Sanford and Sons. There was no Elizabeth on the mountain, but Mom saw Jesus everywhere, or at least she greeted him frequently. 

However you look at it, as a perilous adventure or as a rural delight, I think at the end of the day, the view was definitely worth it, though my pictures don’t nearly do it justice. 

 

Day Two in Dublin...

So here we are, on our second day in Dublin, and nothing is working.  None of the adaptors ended up working, so we’ve got a dead laptop, two dead “global” phones that have no network access, and one camera battery that is only half charged. 

CRISIS MODE: ACTIVATED.

PREPARE FOR CRISIS……*glug*

PREPARED.

I can’t do too much of that, since our hotel is violently decorated and I might have a seizure if I go there drunk.  I mean, violently.  There are several pieces of oversized furniture that look like something left over from Alice in Wonderland, juxtaposed next to wonderful replicas of French antiques, sidling up next to plaster statuary left over from a safari.  It looks like a kitschy hotel that dropped acid and threw up Art Deco in Northern Africa.  (On the upside, the rooms were huge and clean and there was a pub sing at 2 am in the lobby on Saturday night, with Christmas carols, Elvis, and Neil Diamond all making an appearance amongst the traditional pub songs.)

We actually had put together an agenda for our days in Dublin, but that pretty much went out the window immediately.  After the electronic meltdown of the previous evening (is this sounding familiar?  Yes, I touched it all, and it all immediately imploded.) our first order of business was to replace all of our adaptors.   We dropped Linda off at Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, and on the advice of the concierge, who was fantastic, we walked down to Grafton Street looking for a store called Argo’s.  More on that in a minute, since we actually got a bit sidetracked by the Vodafone store.  Neither Mom nor I could figure out why the phones wouldn’t work – we both have “global” phones, and both of us had checked with Verizon and been assured that our phones would work in Ireland. 

Tsk, tsk, Verizon – Liar, liar, phone monopoly pants on fire.  You lose – no network in the Republic of Ireland at all, only in Northern Ireland.  Once we established that it was in fact the communistic anti-freemarket policies of Verizon at work, and not some deep failing on the part of BlackBerry (natch, since I’ve since found out my Storm issues are the fault of Verizon, and not RIM), we descended upon poor Laura at the Vodafone store, to get a new SIM card and hook up our European service. 

Wait for it.  Wait for it.

The SIM card didn’t work. Shocker.  Laura, bless her customer-service oriented heart, dialed up Verizon for us in the US, and we tried to get the phone unlocked – except that it was only 5:30 in the morning Stateside, and the peeps at Verizon don’t clock in until 6 am.  DOH! So, off we went to Argo’s.

Let me tell you about Argo’s and how we so need one of these in the US.  It is this basic box shaped store of about 1,000 square feet, with a bunch of catalogs (think the olden days Woolworth catalogs of 2,000 pages) on bar type counters, with a little order form and a stack of pens.  There are a few cash registers, and a big serving window in the back with a deli-style number counter.  You basically find what you want, write down the catalog number, and take it up to pay for it.  The ticket is generated in the warehouse, and they bring it out to you at the window.  Isn’t that FABULOUS?  Great prices, since they don’t pay overhead, and stellar service.  It was a totally fantastic experience, and we got exactly what we needed.  They even brought me out one just to show me so that I could make sure it was the right one.  We bought three, just in case, but all three were only $20. 

CRISIS PARTIALLY AVERTED.

Then, after conquering Argo’s, we headed back to Vodafone.  It’s after noon, Verizon should be open, and hopefully since we’re calling their global support direct number, we won’t be on hold for 13 years. 

So wrong.  It took about 45 minutes, three phone calls (on Vodafone’s dime, bless them) and dire warnings, new terms of agreement, and a promise to sacrifice my firstborn child on the altar of service agreements to get Verizon to unlock my phone so that we could spend €20 to get a new SIM card, complete with local Irish mobile number.  Mom couldn’t get one, as she didn’t have her handset with her, but I’ve now got a number on the Vodafone IE network, and can make local (Irish!) phone calls from my cell. I know it’s a small thing, but I’m pretty excited about it actually, and probably will be right up until I get home and find out that Verizon has found a way to charge me a million dollars for having my phone abroad.
 
Grafton Street was an experience – it’s a pedestrian only street with a lot of boutique shopping, which is all pretty uninteresting, but it’s a GREAT place to people watch.  The local ambulance corps were out soliciting donations, so I ponied up a few euro…

 
…and noted once again that I would hate to work out of the back of a European ambulance… they are TINY!  I compare our big monsters to these little buses, and I almost cringe when I think how cramped the back must be. Sadly, they can’t even use the money to by new units, since there is NO WAY in hell that our type units would fit on these streets.

The local firehouse, incidentally, was next door to our hotel, and though I chatted up the local firemen a bit, I didn’t get a chance to tour the station.  They did have a slight incident shortly after our arrival where one of the bay doors collapsed on a truck, which is hysterical in a universal coincidence type of way, since a similar thing recently happened in my own station.  Really, what are the odds? 

In any event, I recommend Grafton Street for people watching.  There were buskers of every kind, from a gentleman sculpting sand into a puppy…

…to a crazy, ripe-smelling old man who strummed a guitar without actually playing anything and railed at me for taking his picture without paying him (and I wonder if he’s related to the mentally ill man who yelled at me this morning for taking pictures while talking on a cell phone [prior to my Vodafone hookup]?)…

…to real, live, honest to goodness Irish musicians who were playing a lovely tune as we walked by.  I actually dropped quite a few euro in their basket, as the music was quite nice, and I feel bad for the lady who hauled her huge harp out to Grafton Street to play amidst the crowds.

Walking around trying to solve logistical issues is hard work, as is being berated by crazy people, and so though we had hoped to avoid the tourist areas, we ended up in Temple Bar for lunch.  Temple Bar itself is a giant red building that you really can’t miss, with giant painted beer advertisements and a lifesize painting of the founder and his wife, both with a drink in their hands.  They are quite clever, I think.  They don’t actively discourage smoking, but their “ashtrays” are on the wall, about chest high, and have only the smallest slit in the top to dump your ashes.  What human being on the planet is going to be able to drop hot flaming ash into a hole the width of a nickel after a half dozen pints of the stout?  Tricky!

Although on second thought, I’m not sure how clever that really is, since the crest for the city of Dublin is a bunch of castles on fire.  Oops.

 
 
But in any event, lunch was great, at a little café across the street with wonderful Irish stew and the best brown bread I have ever tasted, but what really made my stomach happy was this place:

They had the most marvelous tarts – strawberry and plum and chocolate pear with almonds…deliiiiiicious.  They actually had good ones for lunch as well, salmon and leek and vegetarian tarts, but the ones that caught my fancy were loaded with sugar and terribly bad for my figure.  I ended up getting a chocolate scone that looked more like a biscuit, but sent my tastebuds into spasms when I ate it.  I desperately wanted to try the cupcakes as well, since they looked so pretty in their finest dress-up frosting, but I figured that might be going a bit overboard. Dang it.  Too many of those, and I’m going to end up here:

(The secret of the Queen’s tarts is that you’ll be Queen sized if you eat more than one!) After gorging on the gorgeous tarts, we finally made it over to Dublin Castle, crossing several streets without crosswalks in a daring show of American bravery (or tremendous stupidity, if you’re at all familiar with Dublin traffic…). 

Dublin Castle was another surprise – again the tour was wonderful.  I have been astonished by the quality of the tours given by the OPW, and Aisling (pronounced Ashling) flawlessly held up the standards set by PJ and Maeve.  The castle is a bit of an anomaly, since much of it has been rebuilt and restored after fire, and is mostly Georgian in nature.  A bit too frilly for my tastes…

…but there were parts of it that I definitely enjoyed – such as the “petticoat mirrors” near the floor under the large mirrors in the Great Hall – nothing like having a built in failsafe for checking to make sure your undergarments aren’t showing and that you aren’t branded a hussy.  If only they’d invent something like this that applies to the “whale tail”. 

I liked the subtle digs in the portrait gallery – the figures most well-liked were hung up front and well-lighted, while the least liked man in the room, General Cornwallace (of American history fame in the US War for Independence) had his portrait hung in the very back corner, and deliberately placed lower on the wall than all the rest.  Take that!

I also like that they knew not only that Mom and I were coming, but that we’d stopped at the Queen of Tarts, and they had a chair ready for us that could accommodate all the ass we brought.  I’ve always had my own zipcode, but now I’ve got a big velvet throne as well.  Sweetness.

Irish hospitality has been phenomenal since we’ve been here, and the only thing I’ve decided I like better is the Irish sense of humor.  This came out in force at Dublin Castle when we got to the courtyard, as there is a statue of Justice above the gate that is a bit of a private joke in Dublin –

She was placed there (facing inward toward the courtyard, with her back to the city) to represent the English, as the building was an administrative HQ for the city, and the cheeky Dubliners quickly wrote a ditty about her, that goes something like this:

There stands Justice,
Mind well her station,
With her face to the Castle
And her ass to the nation!

Hysterical!  I also think it’s funny that the scales she holds are the real deal, and when the rain would fall they would become uneven.  Holes were eventually drilled to allow the water to drain, but I can only imagine the fodder that the unevenly balancing scales provided to the political papers back in the day. 

There are still parts of the original medieval Dublin Castle left, and if you ever want to know the origins of the expression “beyond the Pale”, start there, but they were small and not very impressive. 

Speaking of not impressive – we swung by Christchurch Cathedral at Mom’s behest later that afternoon, and…well, here’s a picture.

Perhaps I have become spoiled by visiting the great Cathedrals of the world – I have been to Notre Dame in Paris, St. Patrick’s in New York,  several in London, and some in Australia that in my mind blow Christchurch away.  It’s very pretty, don’t get me wrong, but I have seen SO MANY that a church is a church is a church, and I tend to prefer the small local chapels that have taken on the character of their congregation.  I have seen a dozen small chapels, some hundreds of years old, since arriving in Ireland that I like immensely better than Christchurch.

We did quite a bit of walking today, I will admit.  We were on our feet for over 7 hours, and all I actually wanted to see was the gold on exhibit at the Irish museum.  We headed there after Christchurch, but of course got distracted by a whiskey store on the way, and Mom and Linda ended up “tasting” whiskey for a while, and I bought a birthday gift for a friend who is a rabid Jameson fan.  There are free whiskey tastings every day in Dublin, and I can only imagine loving the stuff – it would be impossible to work for a living.  I’d stop by for a “tasting” at 10 am, back at 11, have one at lunch to whet the whistle, come back at 2 for a nip, 3 for a dram, 4 for a wee bit more, 5 for a taste on the way to the pub, and then I’d fall in a cab and pour myself home. 

The guys at the shop were fantastic though, and we learned quite a bit about how whiskey is made, the differences in taste, and the casking process.  I still don’t care for it at all, but at least now I can say that I know a bit about it. 

We did make it to the museum, at 4:55…

…only to find out that the museum closes at 5 rather than the 6pm listed in the guidebook.  They did let us in to see the gold exhibit, but we weren’t able to stay past closing.  They gave me access to the exhibit for free, so I’ll share with you my experience:

It was quite beautiful, actually.  I was quite disappointed to have missed it, but I’m going to be on the lookout for some replica pieces while I’m here.  You can never have to much gold, and I’m definitely true to my zodiacal sign of Dragon – I’m addicted to the shiny yellow stuff.

Museum disappointment aside, it was a very full day.  We ended up doing just a wee bit of window shopping on the way back to the hotel, but everything was quite pricey and seemed mass produced.  I haven’t been very impressed with Dublin shopping so far – it seems everything is SO stereotypically Irish as to be overly mass produced.  I haven’t seem much of the local craftsmanship that is affordable to someone of my income level – I’d love to be able to spend thousands, but it just ain’t happening, and everything else seems made in bulk and shipped from Taiwan. 

The end of the day came sooner than I’d like, and since our dogs were barking big time from our day of walking, we decided to take a cab to eat.  We found a great place called Madina – Indian food that came highly recommended.  We took a cab ride over there with a great guy, who gave us some fabulous tips on driving out of Dublin through the mountains (again using pubs as main direction anchorpoints) and dropped us off four blocks from the restaurant. 

If you get a chance while you’re in Dublin, and you like Indian food, EAT HERE.  Their mutter paneer was, bar none, the BEST I have ever tasted.   Everything I ate was delicious, and an enormous amount of food that fed all three of us with leftovers was less than €60.  Can’t beat it with a stick, and we walked back to the hotel feeling pleasantly sated without being overstuffed.  It was a beautiful night, the company and the food were fabulous, the day was chock full of new discovery, and really, what more can you ask for on vacation?