Day 5 Ireland: ‘Walk up the Hill to see Another Pile of Rocks’ — Gene Thompson

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Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2013 – Back to the Dingle Penninsula. Today we had a wonderful day touring Slea Head on the Dingle Penninsula. We set off in our two cars with the sky, as always, threatening rain. The proprietor of B&B said it was the best possible weather to see the pennisula, because the clouds and rain showers make it all the more dramatic and beautiful. She was right.

We visited a sad little “Prehistoric/Celtic” museum and then some beehive stone buildings. Both were privately run and required admission, and both were disappointing. “Piles of rocks,” Grandpa declared them as he climbed up the treacherous path strewn with rocks and sheep poop.

We did like Dun Beg, a prehistoric stone fort set on a cliff above the sea. It was almost dizzying, with the bright green hills lined with stone walls rising dramatically above a remarkably blue and green sea.

We fought traffic on the narrow, twisting road to a lovely hidden beach, with stunning views of the nearby Blasket Islands. We finally stopped at a pub, Tigh Bhric Pub, recommended by Rick Steves, which was deserted and hosted by a woman who was frosty at first and unhelpful.

We sat down, and then figured out that we had to order at the bar. It turned out all the food was homemade, and delicious, and she wasn’t unfriendly at all, but just trying to hook up a new beer keg.

She said she was from Dublin, “Blown In,” as the locals would say. “You are forever blown in,” she said. Even though she had lived there for years, she said that people would still say of her grandchildren, “Their mother was from Dublin, you know.” She said you also had to be very careful of who you are talking to, since everyone on this peninsula seems to be kin of some kind. She was extremely kind, and brought me a book on local archaeology to read over lunch, and told me all the directions to all the local ruins, which was very confusing. She kept saying I had to make a horseshoe, and that made me even more confused. But because of her, we did visit all those sites, even though our group was getting tired and itching to head home.

And it turned out they were the best ruins of the day. There was the Gallarus Oratory, a perfect, rain-tight, beehive-shaped church 1,300 years old – an early Christian church, basically. Perhaps 12 priests could sit in the tiny interior space. We also saw the low stone ruins of a monastery, extremely evocative with an ancient Celtic stone stele remade into a Christian cross with some creative carvings. This site overlooked the gorgeous sparkling bay, where 300-plus years ago a Spanish armada ship ran around and its 600 occupants massacred were by the English.

We finished at the ruins of an old church, Kilmalkedare, and its haunting graveyard, not to be missed, with ancient writings on steles and tombstones worn down to nearly nothing. It was a 12th century Romanesque church used by the Normans, though the site dated back to much earlier Christian worship, and before that to pagan rituals and rites.

The landscape all over the peninsula was lush, dotted red by fuschias from Chile, growing like weeds. It felt like Hawaii at times, with its vast vistas and lush vegetation. It had apparently once been covered by oak forests, but it was hard to picture that now. So much from the past is so hard to imagine, but so magical to think about.

Editor’s note: These posts are without Rick’s camera because it got wet in LaHinch and died. We’ll try to post some of Alex’s great photos.

Ireland Day 4: ‘He’s in the right place!’

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Bunratty, County Clare, Ireland Friday, Aug. 2, 2013 – Coming up for air on Day 5, late afternoon, after a full day of touring the stunningly beautiful Dingle Penninsula; Mitchell and Alex visiting the Dingle Brewery for their free pints; Rick, Will and Grandpa shopping the narrow streets of this tiny touristy fishing village for train stuff and a hurling stick; Grandma and I catching our breath in the lovely Emlagh House B&B overlooking Dingle Bay.

Whew. Yesterday, we drove from Lahinch to Dingle, stopping at the Bunratty Castle and Folk Park between Shannon and Limerick on the way. We’d read that the Bunratty Castle was a “tourist trap” and “Disneyesque” for its recreations of 19th century buildings and costumed “re-enactors,” but it turned out the criticism was unfounded. The castle itself, dating to 1425 AD, was restored in the 20th century and gives visitors a wonderful glimpse into how high society lived in medieval times. In short, it looked pretty grim to us. Yes, the Earl and his family would be safe behind the massive walls and drawbridge, up on floors beyond the “murder hole” where boiling pitch or oil could be poured on invaders/visitors and the trap-door 16-feet above a bunch of spikes, and the dungeon and the soldiers and all that. But for all that, they lived in cold stone, with claustrophobically winding spiral staircases between chambers, and huge smoking fires. The air quality must have been atrocious.

There were wonderful guides on hand (no costumes in sight), explaining how the massive furniture was brought up the winding stairs in pieces (like Ikea, noted one visitor), and how they heated their wine in special iron stands by the fire – Mom loved this detail. We saw antlers from the massive and now extinct Giant Irish deer. The recreated village itself – while lacking the mud and poverty and misery of 19th century Ireland —  was a pleasant stroll and a great chance to stretch our legs. We even dared eat at the on-site pub, run by the McNamara family, who are apparently descended from the original castle builders. And it was a delightful meal, with extremely friendly staff and great food.

We’ve been laughing this whole trip at how grumpy Grandpa is (those of you who know him know what we are talking about) and how forgiving the Irish are of his temperament. The night of our interminablly long seafood dinner in Lahinch, when asked what he wanted for dessert, Grandpa managed to rudely grunt, “Uhhhhh, fudge,” indicating the brownie. Instead of looking at him askance, the Johnny-Depp-look-alike-waiter laughed.

Then at lunch yesterday at McNamara’s Pub, Grandpa loudly declared he wanted a “12-year Bushmills” whiskey. When Daragh, the waiter, said they did not have 12-year Bushmills, Grandpa shouted back that he did, he’d seen it in the window. (Actually it was a dust-covered bottle that was part of the “antique” display). Daragh offered him a local whiskey, which Grandpa refused, again insisting on the “12-year Bushmills!” We overrode Grandpa and told him to order the local whiskey.

“He’s really not grumpy,” I told the waiter, sardonically.

“Oh, he’s in the right place,” said the waiter, winking and heading off to get Dad his whiskey, Dad’s new Irish favorite, Knappogue.

So we’ve come to the conclusion that yes, Grandpa really has returned to his roots, to his people, who instinctively understand him. Although he’d never known until the past few years that he was of Irish ancestry, and had always identified as a Scot, now he is broadening his identity, I like to think. Irish whiskey, which he had never before tried, is actually “good,” according to Dad. Thanks to our cousin and geneaologist Patricia Plunkett Holler, we now know that Dad’s family on his paternal grandmother’s side traces back to the Plunketts born in the 18th century in northern Ireland near Belfast. We will visit there at the end of our trip, but I think Dad has already found his homeland.

Day 3 Ireland: Pitch, Putt and s’Pelunk

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DOOLIN, County Clare, Ireland, Wednesday, July 31, 2013 – With a light rain falling, and three curious onlookers lining the stone wall along the fairway, Mitchell addressed his ball at the fourth tee of the Doolin Pitch and Putt. The hole, protected by two bunkers the size of ancient graves, was fifty-one meters away. Using a wedge, Mitchell blasted a shot high into the iron-gray Irish sky – and landed the ball only about a foot from the hole, earning a thumbs up from one of the watching tourists.

Today was a story of fortunate near misses. There was lazy talk at the morning breakfast table about riding out the anticipated rainy day by lounging around the cozy Moy House, which overlooks beautiful LaHinch Bay, with O’Brien Tower and the Cliffs of Moher far in the distance. However, we decided instead to at least venture out to Doolin and Lisdoonvarna, two tiny villages that play big roles in County Clare. (Note from Courtenay: I’ll have everyone know I was the one – yes ME, known as the instigator of Thompson Torture Tours – to suggest we take it easy. The weather reports threatening severe rains and flooding helped prompt my well-informed opinion. But back to Tour Guide Rick…)

Doolin is a launch point for the ferries to the Aran Island and a center of traditional Irish pub music. In the late morning when we arrived (after a near-miss when I pulled right in front of a car I didn’t see in the oncoming lane), a heavily loaded ferry was pulling away while beer trucks were lined up restocking the pubs. Two deliverymen accidentally turned over a pallet loaded with empty bottles, filling the street with broken glass. And not just any street: The one-lane street we were going to have to travel over to escape the town.

A motley foursome—Alex, Mitchell, Will and I—teed off at the Doolin Pitch and Putt, a rolling course with holes averaging about 50 meters and tiny, postage-stamp greens. We got in eight holes—the last of them providing an awesome view of the Cliffs of Moher and an unidentified castle—before the rain came pounding down and chased us off the course.

Soaked for the second day in a row, we made our way to Doolin Cave, which seemed to hold the promise of shelter. Everyone except claustrophobic Courtenay followed the chatty guide and descended the slippery 125 steps into the cave, where we put on hard-hats and followed a gushing underground stream through a low tunnel about 100 yards. The tunnel opened up into a large cavern, where Europe’s largest stalactite, which look like a dirty-white curtain pulled open, hung more than 20 feet from the ceiling. It was actually pretty cool.

We were hurried out by the guide, who kept warning about the gushing water and said we’d be safe unless it got more than knee high. We thought he was kidding, but when we came back the underground stream was only inches from a grated bridge and water was everywhere in the tunnel. After we climbed out, they closed access to the cave, canceling all further tours for the day. (Note from Courtenay: I sat in the lovely café sipping tea on a sofa, read a book and watched the waters rise. By the time the spelunkers returned, the water had pooled around the rental car so bad I had to get in through the back car door and crawl over the seats.)

We made our way to Lisdoonvarna, my favorite name for a town so far. We had a great pub lunch of inch-thick hamburgers, fish and chips and beef stew. As I write, the kids and Grandma are playing dominoes, the blue sky is edging back in over Lahinch Bay and O’Brien Tower is a dark bump on the horizon. Sun is streaming in through the windows, and it’s almost uncomfortably warm and extremely muggy. Summer has returned for a moment, and dinner calls.

Postscript: Dinner at the noted seafood restaurant, Barrtra, was quite good, but extraodinarily slow-paced. We were there for several hours, much of it looking into a bright setting sun. Afterwards, as we stumbled out nearly three hours after we arrived, Mitchell commented that it was the first meal that he ever had that left him with jet lag.

Day 2 Ireland: More wind, more rain, Moher Cliffs

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Lahinch, County Clare, Ireland, Wednesday, July 31, 2013 – The sound of rain and the comforting voices of my parents quietly murmuring in the room above us woke me this morning in this beautiful spot by the sea. We all slept well, feeling much more clear-headed than yesterday, almost like it was really our first day in Ireland.

We ate a delicious Irish breakfast around a big oval table in the dining room – pancakes and berries, a bagel with coils of locally smoked salmon from Lisdoonvarna, fresh pastries, eggs benedict, lots of hot coffee – just what we needed to steel ourself for Rick’s first day as our tour guide. His description of the day ahead: “We are going to see some old stuff, and then some really old stuff.” Thank you, Tour Guide Rick.

We boarded our cars, one with a brand new 140 Euro front tire, thanks to an amazing mechanic in Ennis named Brian (M&M auto shop in case you are ever in need), and set off for the Burren, an expansive landscape of rock  that is an ecological and archaeological treasure in Ireland. The limestone, from the Irish word “borieann” for big rock, is an example of (for you geologists out there) a glaciated karst with underground caves and rivers.

We walked through Kilfenora Cathedral, which has roots back to 560 AD, just after St. Patrick legendarily entered Ireland to bring Christianity to the island Some locals in Kilfenora recently spent eight months researching the tiny town’s history and have documented 1,500 years of trauma and drama in what looks like a very sleepy town today. A volunteer guide (and one of the researchers), whose pale but bright blue eyes and shock of white hair looked quintessentially Irish, told us the legend of a local woman warrior who married a succession of men, who quietly disappeared, leaving her with all their lands. The cathedral itself dates to the 10th century, and there are beautiful, weathered Celtic crosses from the same era. It was raining hard the whole time we were there.

We then visited a 10th-century ring fort built of stone, of which 45,000 are found in Ireland. They were not really forts but places for families and livestock to live. Apparently, the bigger the ring fort the higher the status of the family. By this time, the rain had really taken hold. All of us were soaked. Will, who wore shorts that we had warned him not to wear, was the only one who didn’t have pants soaked from the knee down for the rest of the day!

We then visited Poulnabourne, an amazing neolithic burial dolmen dating to around 3,800 years BC. Thirty-three children and adults were entombed there, under a tripod of stone holding a massive capstone. Almost 6,000 years old, earlier than the pyramids and Stonehenge, they are oriented toward the rising sun. Other dolmen in the Burren are oriented to the setting sun. It was lovely, but the rain was so hard that it was almost comical as we slipped across the deeply cracked limestone. It was once a spiritual place, and I could see that, but for the tour buses disgorging the umbrella-sheltered tourists. I think the time to see it is perhaps in dead winter, with no one else around.

We then drove to the lovely town of Ballyvaughan, the most picturesque village we have seen so far. We wished we could have spent time there, but we had a lunch reservation (thanks to Tour Guide Rick) at the Tea and Garden Rooms, which was the perfect shelter from the storm. The food was delicious, and we realized we were the wettest people there – except for the poor couple in bike gear who were truly soaked. After driving these roads, I can’t imagine biking them. There are signs that say “Speed limit 100 kph, Drive safely” right before the road narrows to basically bike-path width and stone walls close in on you from both sides just before a sign announding “Severe Bends Ahead.” And you’re like, really? 100 kph, drive safely on a hot wheels track? And don’t even talk to me about the tour buses. Dad keeps screaming at me that I’m getting too close to the rock walls, and I’m like, well, it’s better than hitting the oncoming traffic.

On to the highlight of the day. We were discussing at lunch whether to go to some 50-degree caves in our wet clothes and shoes or whether to go to the B&B and get dry clothes or whether to go to the Cliffs of Moher – the most iconic sight perhaps in all Ireland, and one which Mitchell declared he would not leave Ireland without seeing – and Will declared in his turn, “Let’s do it now and get it over with.”

We drove through a lovely green landscape dotted with unnamed (to us) stone ruins and cottages and destroyed castles to the Cliffs of Moher, which hundreds of thousands of people visit a year. We all walked up to the O’Brien Tower, which I thought looked like a cheesy recent construction for tourists but turns out to be an early 19th century attempt for a local landowner to impress his friends. Will and Grandma climbed the tower to view the 600-foot high cliffs, which curved away to a dramatic drop to the ocean below. Rick and the kids then walked a two-mile loop south to see other dramatic view of the “angry sea,” as Tour Guide Rick descibes it. By the way, he broke his toe yesterday on a chair in the B&B, and he didn’t even complain all day until we got home, and we could see that the blue contusion is reaching up his foot like gangrene. “Angry gangrene,” as Tour Guide Rick describes it.

To be serious, the Cliffs of Moher were one of the more beautiful natural sites we’ve ever seen, despite the tour buses. It was great to hear all the different languages of the visitors, and to know that this was not crowded by Beijing standards. By those standards, it was a ghost town.

Ireland Day One – Punctured Tire, Punctured Foot, Intact Spirits

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 We checked into the lovely Moy House bed and breakfast, a early 19th century summer house with beautiful views of the ocean, complete with horses running along the grassy banks leading down to tide pools. We were greeted by Seamus, who tried to explain to Dad the overwhelming merits of Irish whiskey compared to the weak slop produced by the Scots. Dad was unconvinced, but Seamus threatened him with a good fight if he caught him drinking Scotch whisky (no e) while he was here. Dad is sampling some, I think as we speak, in the house’s “honor your bar,” as Will calls it. More like a library with chess, cards and yes, lots of whiskey.

LAHINCH, County Clare, Republic of Ireland, 4 p.m. Tuesday, July 30, 2013 – Long flights and tough travelers were greeted by a rainbow outside the plane as we descended into the green of Shannon, on the west coast of Ireland. Rick commented that we might find that proverbial pot of gold. What we did find was a proverbial windswept coastline, with crashing waves, rocky shores and crazy tourists in the surfing town of Lahinch swimming in gale-force winds. We were reaching for our rain jackets as they were running down a concrete ramp into large breakers that reached as far as piles of huge boulders along the shore – crazy!

We are all exhausted, but I am pleased to report we have had our three bouts of bad luck out of the way. First, when we arrived at Moy House, we discovered the black Mercedes we had rented (the much more modest car we had reserved was unavailable) had a flat tire. Seamus directed us to a repair shop, which is fixing it and hopefully Budget will pay for the new tire, since it was clearly damage caused by the previous renter. And I didn’t even want this car! Then, the wind ripped my favorite scarf from my neck, but Will miraculously spotted it in an alley as we were leaving town. Finally, Alex got bit on her foot by a yellow jacket – she had never been bitten before, so we were relieved she apparently has no bee allergy. Seamus got her ice, and all is good.

 We are now watching the surf, about to head back into town to pick up our repaired tire and drag our very tired crew out to a pub for dinner. Rick hopes to see the Cliffs of Moher after dinner, but I’m not sure everyone will last. 

Kinosaki: A yukata for exploring, a voice for radio

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By Will

Today we went to a small town in the mountins (this blog post will be shorter because we spent so much time eating an enormous dinner that I’m tired and do not have much time to write it). It is called Kinosaki.

We got there and went up in a tram ride to the top of the mountain. There was a strange guy in the tram who seemed to have been doing some drinking. He said: “Some of you speak Japanese and some of you don’t, Ha ha!” and to Mom,  “You have a good accent for radio, not for TV, Ho ho.” We got to the top to see a beautiful view of the Sea of Japan, which I’ve never seen before.

 We came down from there and went to see some sights in town and hit some gift shops. After that we went back to hotel and relaxed for a while before putting on our yukatas and going out. We were in these like… uh… elavated wooden shoe thingys (geta) that were just about as easy to ice skate in as to walk. We went to dinner at the ryokan we had sooo much food. We had: crab,pickles,rice,beef,vegtables,tofu,soup and whatever that was. Our server, a really nice woman named Keiko-san, brought us endless amounts of food. We were ABSOLUTELY STUFFED when ice cream finally came for me.We went back to the room and went to bed.  

(Mother’s note: Will used a lot of his Japanese today and charmed Keiko-san and many others that he met along the way.)

THE END

Zen and the Art of Maintaining Your Cool — and Your Gag Reflex

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By Will

KYOTO, Japan, November 27, 2012, 9:28 p.m.–Today was a  really fun day but I am just going to tell you about the “experience” we had at vegetarian dinner at a Zen temple. We got there and took off our shoes at the entrance. The monk told us where the bathroom was and I thought we were supposed to GO there so everyone went to the table and I went to the bathroom. I put on these slippers and then got lost. I finally found our table.

For one, we had the whole room to ourselves and chairs were not just ANY chairs they were super awesome puffy rotating chair thingys–they were GREAT. They first brought out a plate of many different small pieces of beautiful food (I had NO idea what it all was). And we took turns picking what we were going to eat. So far everything was pretty good. It was lots of tofu and different things. We came to this little bowl of fried peas. The peas were great plus you could eat the dried seaweed bowl (Uh.. well I HOPE we could because we DID)

Then came out this pink thingymabop. I thought all the food so far was GREAT so I did not expect any TROUBLE from it. I went ahead and took a great big BITE out of it. I chewed and chewed and… AAHH It was worse than pancakeflabbergast! I gagged in front of everyone. Man I SERIOUSLY needed a emergency banana.

I managed to eat it. After that it was pretty good for the rest of it. We had some pickled ginger (that’s pretty spicy) and…I probably should have NOT eaten it in ONE bite I was not feeling GrEAT after that. There was rice and stuff but I did not eat much. We got a cab back to the hotel and Dad and I went to the hot baths. And I came back and wrote this blog, while we watched a crazy Japanese dancing competition.