Ok, I've never been to Ireland before. Thinking of taking a trip in August. Well, its one of 2-3 destinations we're considering.

I know many of you have been there, PD several times I think?

What would you recommend? We'd probably have 2 weeks, might combine it with Scotland too.

We went to Ireland in 2003. Loved it.

I wrote up a travelogue on that trip. Let me see if I can find it.

Doolin is known as the center for traditional Irish music.Doolin

The Cliffs of Moher are near Doolin.

Have only been to Dublin. Saw a house James Joyce lived in and did a pub crawl to bars where
Irish authors spent a lot of time. The guides were actors that played different authors and parts of their books. A carriage ride took us past the birthplace of Wellington.

Notes from Ireland:

Saturday:

Nip and tuck there for a while - I was nearly certain we would have to cancel this trip as late as Thursday. Greg's operation went fine though, as did Grandma's pacemaker operation, so we decided to chance it. I left Dave with 11 open jobs when I left, and he is going to have to rise up mighty high to make it all happen. The house job (why, oh why, did I agree to take it?) is busy going sideways on me - the homeowner fired the General on Friday, and announced that all prior contracts are void. I'll have to square that one up when I get back. For all I care, he can rope the damned thing himself.

I'm on vacation.

I realize I am in a foreign country first at the Shannon airport where I am left to stare like an idiot at a coffee vending machine. Priced in Euros, natch, but I could not figure out how to make it work. Oddly non-intuitive, must be British. I felt better when the guy from the gift shop couldn't figure out how to make it work either (his analysis - "bloody hell!"). Cup of instant coffee (Nescafe) is 2 Euro - wow! I hope this kind of pricing is only because of the airport location.

Mick is the tour guide, a small, immaculately turned out man of about 70. He's been doing this for 30 years, and from all indications he loves what he does. He's supposed to be retired, but they keep calling him for the occasional tour. Our group is small - 15 people in a bus that seats 50.

And what a bus! It's beautiful, and brand new. It's Spanish - Salvatore Caetano is the manufacturer - and it's on a Volvo chassis. If Volvo ever decides to market this chassis for motor homes, Freightliner and John Deere might as well close up shop. Very nicely fitted out - nothing like American busses. The upholstery has Irish Setters running across the backs of the seats - very cool. Very quiet, rides like a Cadillac. Mick says that the tour company uses the buses (he's supposed to call them "coaches") for two years and about 200K miles, and then they go on to service on long distance routes.

Weird little cars here - lots of Euro brands we haven't seen in the States in years. Citroens, Peugeots, Fiats, Opels, Renaults and an odd little Spanish car called a Seat. Lots of Toyotas, but most of them are a model we don’t' see called a "Vario". Very few Hondas, fewer American cars except for some English Fords (Focus and Mondeo - kind of a shrunken Taurus). A few Mercedes, including a micro called an A-140. They're small because Petrol is $5 a gallon, and a lot of them are diesel. Roads are very, very narrow and appear to head off in all directions in rather a random pattern.

Sunday

Enter the "Irish Breakfast". When they talked about it in the tour guide, I figured it was like a Continental breakfast, which is really no sort of breakfast at all, just a bun and a cup of tea. Suffice to say that the Irish Breakfast is nothing like that. Irish Breakfast consists of:

Eggs, Bacon (looks like ham) Rashers (sausages - softer than American ones), Baked Beans (Heinz 57 is the only brand acceptable), Black and white puddings (look like sausage patties, don't ask what they're made out of and you'll do fine - they're delicious), Marinated Mushrooms, Potatoes, Rolls, Brown Bread, Cold Cereal, Hot Cereal (Porridge - I never saw the rough-cut Irish Oatmeal), Juice, Coffee, Tea.

We had it every day, although by day three I couldn't face a lot of it and stuck to cereal.

Bunratty (Bun Raite - "Mouth of the River") Hotel. They still speak Gaelic here - all the signs are in both English and Gaelic. There is a law that the license plates must state the county in Gaelic as well. It's not widely spoken, but in some remote areas it is still the predominant language. All of the place names sound so much nicer in Gaelic (they call it "Irish"), and some of the translations are artless, to say the least. Bunratty is one of them.

Hotel looks British, circa 1920's. Filled with that British furniture you find in American antique stores at reasonable prices. It's not the Oak stuff like we have at our house; it's the Walnut variety with the very thin, wavy veneer. Lots of it; set in its natural habitat of red-flocked wallpaper. The lobby smells like Watco oil, and the china in the restaurant looks like my Grandmothers.

It passes as a good hotel in my book, everything works, good beds, very clean. The original building is 300 years old, with wings added on over the years. The lobby is constructed of stacked flat stones; the wings are cut stone covered in a very rough sort of plaster. Daffodils everywhere - seems they grow like weeds here. Huge crows building huge nests in the trees.

Dinner last night was at Bunratty Castle - one of the tourist-y things I was not looking forward to. Medieval Times theme place but in a real castle. The castle is the real deal, built 10th century or so, rebuilt in the '60's by Lord Gort, who supplied the Oak timbers for the roof by chopping down a few of the trees on his estate. Bigger than most castles we were to see later, with magnificent framing for the roof structure. Quite a project - the place was falling down when they started.

Harp and fiddle music for the entertainment - beautifully done. All of the waitresses ("Ladies of the Castle" - hardly authentic but you have to roll with it) sing as well, and when they gather to song it sounds like angels. Everyone cries when they sing Danny Boy - why is that? Like Medieval times you get no silverware other than a knife (dagger) and you eat things you can spear. Soup was the best part - some sort of pureed vegetable deal. You drink it right from the bowl - a custom that deserves revival, in my opinion. Drink was Mead (yuck - too sweet) a honey wine of some sort. Would have rather had Guinness. Kind of a goofy theme thing, but I ended up enjoying it in spite of myself.

Monday

North to Galway. This country is all about rocks. Saw the cliffs of Mohr, 700 feet of limestone cliffs rising vertically from the ocean. I can see where the rocks come from - the cliffs are limestone and there is little or no soil on top of them. This terrain is quite barren, not at all what I expected of Ireland. No trees - not a one in the last 100 miles. Soil is so poor that it looks like the Mojave, despite the regular rainfall. It's all quite brown, although the pictures in the visitor center show lots of wildflowers in the spring. Must be similar to the Borrego area - the flowers come up all at once and then they die.

Occasional houses appear to be adaptations of the traditional Irish Cottage. They're the size and shape of a doublewide mobile home, with the front door placed on the long side facing the road. Two fireplaces in each, and Mick says that much of the country still burns peat (he calls it "Turf") for heat. The roofs are slate, with the occasional thatched one still seen. Finish is invariably stucco; construction is either cut stone or block depending on how old they are. It's hard to tell, they haven't changed the style of these for 300 years and they're still building them just like this. Interior walls are block too - has to do with the lack of trees. Must be a real thrill to wire. All of the plumbing runs on the outside of the house.

They're immaculately maintained, almost without exception. Local custom is to asphalt the drive and a 15' swath all the way around the house. I suspect this has something to do with the mud - it's everywhere. Windows are cool - vaguely Scandinavian with one operable pane set off-center to the side of a larger fixed pane.

Lunch - more soup - this one a roasted tomato deal that knocked my socks off. Pureed like the vegetable soup was but far superior to any cream of tomato soup I have ever eaten. Served with the Irish-ubiquitous brown bread that I have never seen in the US. Baked in small loaves and it weighs a ton. In a pinch you can slice it and use it to shingle the shed. It's delicious, and I ate a ton of it while we were there - even brought home a loaf or two. The Internet says it can't be made with American Flour.

Dessert? Bakewell tart! I've heard of these but have never had one. It's a pastry shell, spread with jam and then filled with some sort of a not-too-sweet nut filling. Had I not eaten so much bread, I would have had seconds. I need to find the recipe for this.

Radisson SAS Hotel in Galway. Very slick, very new, very modern. This tour company is setting us up in a much better class of hotel than I expected. Nice view of Galway Bay.

The room reminds me of the cabin on a cruise ship. Everything is built in, very tidy. Shower is a wide spot in the bathroom with a drain, complete with heated tile floor. It's cool to look at, but it doesn't function very well. In fact, the whole room is like that.

Curtain pulls across the shower but the whole room gets wet anyway; reminding me of the all-in-one setups found in cheap motorhomes. There is no shelf in the bathroom for shaving kit and such, so everything keeps falling in to the pedestal sink. The sink faucet has a big wing for a handle - ideally situated to poke your eye out when you try to wash your face. Left eye = hot, right eye = cold.

The towel bar is in the shower, which means that you have to take the towels out of there or they get wet. Being as there is no shelf in the bathroom (and no lid on the toilet; they don't seem to have them here), this means the towels have to be transferred to the bed in order to shower. The room has no horizontal surfaces on which to put suitcases, which means they sit on the floor so they can be tripped on. I wonder if any of the designers have ever spent a night in one of these rooms?

The lobby and the restaurant are spectacular. Very modern in a Euro sort of way. Maintenance is slipping though, and if they don't get on top of it this place is going to look like hell in 5 years. It's the little things that make a modern interior work, and the little things are being ignored here. Still, it's a good hotel - service is outstanding. Everyone seems to go out of their way to make sure you are having a good time - even casual passers-by.

Food was very good - fancy restaurant fare of the "small lamb chop on a big white plate drizzled with a bright red sauce" sort. No chance of going hungry though; it's served with a huge bowl of roasted vegetables on the side. This may be a trendy joint, but here they understand that a man's gotta eat. Vegetables are outstanding.

The dessert had some sort of fruit garnish I have never seen before. It looks vaguely like a cherry, but there is no pit, and it's the color of a tomato. I asked the waitress what it was, but she was from East Germany and could only tell me the German name for it. Pretty much flavorless; I doubt I'll ever want to buy any, but what is it? Ground cherry?

Tuesday

Tour around Galway Bay area. Spectacular scenery, still not real green.

You can see that the economy is booming. Big cranes all over town and half of Galway appears to be torn up in one way or another. Mick says it's because of the quality of Irish education and that the country has embraced high-tech industry in a big way. Construction appears to be mostly about moving rocks from one place to another - I've never seen so many rocks. Lots of new residential building on the outskirts of town. They look like American tract developments except that each house is exactly the same as the others. No façade differences other than the color of the front door. Same general layout as the cottages we saw yesterday.

Rode up to the only Fjord in Ireland, rode around in a cool Catamaran with a classy little restaurant inside of it. Hard to believe people live in this part of the country, it's really harsh. Lots of sheep on the steep hillsides, makes me wonder if they grow them with legs longer on one side than the other. Restaurant surprisingly good - great vegetable soup, too. They raise Salmon in this Fjord - lots of it - explains why the dinner menu always offers Salmon and Sharon ranks it as the best she has ever had. The Fjord looks like Lake Mead.

Rocks are everywhere; miles of rock walls, and tumbledown rock houses that Mick calls "Famine Houses", ca. 1800. It appears that if an Irishman stacks one rock on top of another, no one will un-stack them for at least 1000 years. Castles in embarrassing abundance - we've stopped taking particular note of them. 3400 of them in Ireland at last count, and it's not hard to believe. Most of them are complete wrecks, but they're made of stacked rocks and no one messes with them.

This fetish for stacked rocks gets a bit goofy. If a family has a Famine House on their property and they build a new house, they’ll leave the Famine House standing, even if it only has two walls left and is only a foot away from the new house. Some of the Famine Houses see new service as garages with the fitting of a corrugated metal roof, but most of them are just piles of rocks. They even pave the driveways around them, and they pop up in the most unlikely places in the towns.

On to the Village of Cong, scene of the filming of "The Quiet Man". This is some sort of cult flick, and the contingent from Philadelphia are members of this cult in good standing. I'll have to rent the movie - John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, ca. 1951. They have a recreation of the cottage used in the movie and I would like to build one just like it in Palm Springs. Dressed me up like John Wayne and took my picture. The contingent from Philly ran up and down the streets quoting lines.

Tiny village, stream runs through it, very picturesque. Very cool old (Rock!) Abbey; shares space with a rather unattractive new Catholic Church building. Movie actually used the Protestant church building because the director liked the looks of it. They brought the Holy Water fount over to it from the Catholic Church for effect and the parishioners would not enter it until that fount was removed - thought it was cursed. Quaint, and as the tour guide pointed out, the product of an earlier time. When the new Catholic Church was being built, the Protestants (Mick calls them Presbyterians, but I think the denomination is actually Anglican) shared their church for a couple of years. He said he viewed this as progress, but seemed skeptical.

Abbey built 7th century, sacked and knocked down in the 11th, rebuilt in the 12th, knocked down again in the 13th, rebuilt in the 14th and remodeled in the 15th. Now used as part of the graveyard, both inside and outside of the building. No way you could ever see the inside of this in the US - stairs are treacherous and the whole thing could fall down at any minute. Magnificent classical detailing, executed in what appears to be carved limestone.

Wednesday

Winding north and inland from Galway, through counties Mayo and Sligo. Fewer rocks here hut still plenty, more dirt berms and hedgerows. Houses are changing too - more two stories, still only one room deep. Might be five years old, might be two hundred - hard to say. Hedgerows are a prickly bush called Gorse. Mick has no time for it - says it is a sign of bad soil, but it's blooming yellow, and it's pretty. It's also everywhere.

Trees now, green fields and blackface sheep. Lots of lambs - cute. All of the parcels are chopped up in to what appears to be about 2 acres each, probably the size of a normal family plot in the 1800's. Picture postcard landscape - very nice.

Went to a Holy well tucked up in to a little valley. Serenely beautiful, but with a rather tragic history. Seems the little shrine was put there to hide it from invading hoards, it's been regularly sacked and burned (how did they ever get this green stuff to burn?) over the centuries. Mick talked about the "Hedge Schools" - Catholic schools surrounded by hedges for the same reason. He's still angry about all of this, even as he tries to remain neutral.

Lunch in Sligo, a small old town with the main highway running through it. Main highway is about 15 feet wide and Derek the bus driver deserves a medal for getting the bus in there. It's the same in all of the small towns; the motorways bypass some of them but the roads mostly go right through them to keep the tourist trade. Huge trucks and busses rumble through these towns, and it's a wonder than any of them still have mirrors on them. Derek says he has never lost a mirror, and he's my hero.

Good lunch, tuna sand with sweet corn in it (yes!) and a dessert that tastes like Bananas Foster with whipped cream in a pastry shell. I doubt this one is traditional; the Irish don't grow many bananas. Killer soup, of course.

The Kee's Hotel is very fine, ca. 1870. Built by the Millers, purchased by the Kees in about 1890. Lovingly restored and run by the family - run like you are guests in their own home. It's been added on to over the years, and it's a lot bigger than it looks from the front. Had tea in the lobby - a very comfortable space. Rooms are very nice, bathrooms are new. Furnishings look like they brought them in from their own house; all lovingly maintained. Maintenance is spot-on in this place, and there are people polishing brass at all hours of the day and night. It's hard to believe that this hotel has 100 rooms, every time you think you might want something, someone appears to bring it to you. They must have one hell of a payroll. Mr. Kee hovers in the lobby and the dining room, pointing fingers as required to make sure everything is just so. He needn't bother - the staff is first-rate and seems to like what they do.

Thursday

Driving about in County Donegal. Stopped in at Glenveagh Castle, which isn't really a castle at all, but instead is a manor house built about 1860 as a hunting lodge. Built of squared stone in a castle style, spectacular furnishings and artwork inside. Great tour guide, a retired bank president turned antiques buff. This guy knows his styles, and delights in describing them. Massive furniture in massive rooms; designed by a man and it shows; mostly George II and George III.

The house was wired and plumbed for hot water heat in the 50's, must have been quite a job. They've done a very good job of hiding everything, and the remodeled bathrooms are cleverly set up to look like the originals. Baths are all large enough to roller skate in.

I don't recall the original builder, but he was a Yank. The later owner (1900?) was another Yank named McIlheney. He is responsible for most of the interiors, all purchased with money he inherited from his father. It seems dad invented some sort of gas meter, and he did OK on it. I need to look in to ways to inherit money like that - nice work if you can get it.

Glenveagh sits on some 22,000 acres, including the private lake. The history of how he got all of this land is not pretty, but it seems this is the way things went in Ireland at the time. It's mostly forest, but being as Milady got no say as to the interior fitments, she busied herself with the grounds. She did one hell of a job, and the conservancy is doing a great job of keeping it up. The main garden is strikingly beautiful, a meandering walk filled with exotic plants I can't identify. Most of them are not blooming yet, but when they do the place must look like Eden.

What are blooming are the Rhododendrons and the Azaleas. I've never actually seen a Rhododendron tree; they don't grow in CA. 30 feet tall and covered with bright blooms - mostly red. It seems that Rhodendrons have naturalized here (they're from Asia originally) and are now a noxious weed. We should all have such beautiful weeds, but they are becoming a problem on the order of Kudzu. They spray them and chop them, but they keep coming back. The Azaleas are different from the ones we grow in CA; the leaves are smaller and the bushes are much larger.

The house had 76 flower vases and each was filled with fresh flowers every day. This means a big working garden, and this one is the size of a football field. It's all terraced, and although they no longer keep it filled you can imagine what it once looked like. The vegetable garden survives - also terraced in (what else?) rock. Fruit trees were just starting to bloom - seems they were either really fond of pears or that pear trees live forever. Lots of espaliered stone fruit trees.

There are several other gardens, each with a theme. Swiss, Belgian, Tuscan, Asian, etc. Each is filled with exotica, and the Asian garden is all tucked in to a limestone rock outcropping. It's a bit overgrown now, but it's beautiful all the same. There is even a little turret with a winding stairs so you can get a nice view of the lake. The Tuscan garden is a full-on formal deal with white plastered walls set in an oval, with busts set in the niches. Striking fountain at one end.

Friday

Driving up through the south end of Northern Ireland, which prompts some more history lessons from Mick. It seems that this country has been fighting over religion for 1000 years, and they're not done yet. It all seems quite odd to me; they're all Christians, and their differences are largely administrative. Mick refers to Protestants, and then says "Presbyterians or some such". He really doesn't think there are different denominations, and if there are, he doesn't care. Sure enough, a lot of the churches up here are Presbyterian, but more of them are Anglican and there are even a few Methodists. Not a Baptist Church in sight, although I did see a little van plastered with signs for some sort of Evangelical Mission. Mick is trying to hold his tongue, but he's having a hard time of it. The "Troubles" may have subsided for now, but the sentiment has not.

Some things never change. We drove through a small down, narrow streets, ancient buildings, and came across a public school. There can't be another building like it in Ireland. It's new, it's huge, and it looks like it was built in California. Split faced block - had to be custom. Two story with lots of stainless-steel trim, and fully 5X the size of the next largest building in town. Standing seam metal roof will never survive in this climate. Giant schoolyard, heroically scaled doors and an exotic iron (rusting) fence that must have cost a fortune. A monument to excess, and they could have built a castle for less. Lord knows they have plenty of rock.

The Ulster Folk Park was another stop that I did not think I was going to enjoy. It's a recreation of an Irish town around the time of the Famine, coupled with a recreation of an American (Appalachian) farm town. I envisioned Knott's Berry Farm, but its way better than that. The recreations are spot-on, all furnished and staffed with the friendliest people I have ever met. All thatched roofs, awesome blacksmith shop with a real blacksmith. He really does make things for sale in there. Weavers, Potters, Farmhouses and the original Manor House (small) of the Mellon (Mellon Bank) family. All furnished, fires in all of the fireplaces. The whole place smells like peat smoke, which I am sure is authentic. Nice little church, said to be a faithful recreation of the original. Thatched roofs are problematic; they don't last long and fires are a real issue. It's a good thing they are usually damp.

There is also a recreation of the Irish town, all staffed and stocked. Every one wants you to come in so they can tell you about it. I could have stayed for days. At the end of the town are the "docks" where they have ginned up a faithful recreation of a coffin ship - the sort used to emigrate to the US during the famine. It's tiny, and the number of people they would cram in to it is amazing - a wonder that anyone ever got to the US alive.

You walk through the ship and you are in America. Log houses, split rail fences and an 1850 American street scene. Beautifully executed and much larger than I expected. Nicely restored fire wagon in the firehouse. The place is filled with kids, mostly art students sketching away. The entrance building is filled with first-class dioramas and a lot of nicely displayed artifacts.

Saturday - Sunday

We're in Dublin - a big city. Big and old - lots of Georgian townhouses. Trinity College is here, and the population seems to average about 25 years of age. Shopping district is very crowded, shops are hip. Streets are still very narrow, but there are at least a few with more than one lane in each direction. Phoenix Park is very beautiful, and huge. The Prime Minister's house is in this house, right across from the house occupied by the American Ambassador to Ireland - the name of whom no one could recall.

Hotel is the Burlington, a curious combination of fine old 19th century hotel with a 30-year-old International Style office building built on top of it. It's big - 1000 rooms. The lower floor has 12' ceilings and exquisite woodwork; said to have taken 5 years to trim out and I believe it. Very fine plasterwork on the ceilings. Great Pub with an English Club feel.

The rooms are fine, but not notable. They look like what you would find in any American Chain Hotel. Not complaining - the beds are good, the heat works and the service is first-rate. Maintenance is spotty - think "corporate standard". Not hard to see why; the place is packed. Today it is packed mostly with rabid Rugby fans, Irish and Scottish.

It's the Triple Crown of Rugby, and Ireland has a chance to win it for the first time since 1985. It's a big deal, and all of the Scots are wearing their kilts to participate in the celebration. The hotel has removed most of the furniture from the lobby and installed three additional bars for the occasion. They've covered all of the carpets to prepare for the onslaught. You have never seen so much Guinness in one place in your life.

We watched the match on TV, and even though I can't make sense of Rugby, I was glad to see Ireland win. After the match, the lobby literally filled up with people - so much so that you could not walk through it. Everyone seemed in good spirits, even the Scots who were all vowing to return next year. All agreed that the best part of the match was that England wasn't in it. I don't know how long that party went on, but I did hear some singing Scotsmen come down the hall about 5AM. By 6:30 when we came down, the lobby was all tidy again - remarkable.

We saw a play last night in the old Gate Theater. Great old theater, lousy play. "Dancing at Lughnasa". It's an art thing, and most of it was overacted by half in an effort to give it some life. The author is a big deal so I was supposed to like it, but I didn't.

The streets change name in this town at every intersection - literally. I've never seen a setup like it, and we negotiated it by taxi. The bus system appears to be very good, but the schedules are incomprehensible. The streets all wind back on themselves, and the numbering scheme changes with every street name change. Bizarre.

St. Patrick's Cathedral is magnificent, especially the pipe organ, which was being played while we were there. It's monumentally scaled, and was built and rebuilt over the course of some 1000 years. Marble in abundance, spectacular stained glass, gorgeous woodwork. Awesome.

Even St. Patrick's has a troubled tale to tell. There is another, equally magnificent cathedral about 6 blocks away. One was originally inside the city walls, the other was originally outside. Both were originally Catholic, both are now Anglican, thanks to Henry VIII who appropriated everything Catholic in the country when he found out that the Catholics would not allow him to divorce various and sundry wives.

Derek told me that both Cathedrals are nearly empty on Sundays, as there just aren't that many Protestants in Dublin. He thinks it's a waste, and who can blame him? Derek thinks the Anglicans should give one of them back, and his opinion echoes that of Catholic Dubliners going back 500 years. It's never going to happen, but it should. There is currently no Catholic Cathedral in Dublin - hard to believe.

Dublin has a big shopping mall, enclosed - American style. It's filled with everything you would expect to see in an American shopping mall, including most of the same "middling" brands. Even Sharon found it boring, and she likes malls. The big deal store around here is Dunnes - it will put you in mind of a Wal-Mart. Big, over-lit, sterile and cheap, with most of the good coming from China, etc. There are articles in the paper bemoaning the fact that Dunnes stores are killing the local merchant. Some things are universal.

The Jameson Distillery tour is not a tour of the Distillery per se, but is instead a tour of a recreation of the distillery built on the site of the old one in downtown Dublin. Very interesting, and it smells like baking bread - yum. Good tour and they've salvaged a lot of the original stills and such. Tour ended with a request for volunteer taste testers and I stepped right up. They gave me 5 half shots of whiskey, one of Jameson (natch), one of Bushmills, one of Paddy (both made by the same company - Irish Distillers - but in different locations), one of Jim Beam and one of Johnny Walker Red. I think I was supposed to sip it, but why waste it? Down the hatch. This was followed by the complementary shot of Jameson that comes with the tour, and as some in the group did not like whiskey, I got to drink theirs, too. What the hell, I'm not driving, and I like the stuff.

I don't generally drink whiskey at noon, and it's a good thing I'd had my Irish breakfast. That is a lot of whiskey, and I'm out of practice. I felt pretty good after that, although being in Ireland, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to feel like singing or feel like fighting. Best that I felt like shopping, because that is what we did for the rest of the afternoon.

The price of things in Ireland is very high. A magazine is about 8 Euros, gas is .90 Euros per litre, a new Ford Focus is advertised at 13,000 Euros. Newspapers are 2 Euros, our average lunch of soup and bread in a little café was 10 Euros or better. Soft cover books are 15 Euros or more in the regular bookshops. The dollar is weak against the Euro ($1.23 per Euro - it went up to $1.29 while we were there) but even without this factor, I don't see how people afford to live here. Wages don't seem much higher than American wages (going by the classifieds) and the taxes are a lot higher to boot.

There is no property tax, but there is the VAT of some 17.5%, and an income tax after a certain level of income. Lots of little taxes too - like the tax stickers you have to put on your trash bags so they will be picked up. 4 year college is free, medical care is free, but just as in Canada, everyone complains about how long the waiting list is for elective surgery. It must work somehow; most of the cars are less than 5 years old, and business is booming.

Sunday we went to Glendaloch - "Place of two lakes". It's in a gap in the mountains, and reminds me of the Great Smokies. They've reforested a lot of these mountains with something that looks like Lodgepole Pine, and they're doing well. There was a mist coming in over the top of the mountain while we were there - stunningly beautiful.

It's a monastery and townsite - 1000 years old more or less. Nice big tower; seems St. Kevin was fond of them and after they built his they formed a group to build them for others. St Kevin is also said to have come up with the Celtic cross - a Christian cross wrapped by the pagan symbol for the sun to entice the natives. Must have worked - they're all over Ireland. Catholics are nothing if not adaptable.

The church has one of two remaining stone roofs left standing. This is not a rock roof like a California rock roof; it is a roof literally made of rocks. Brilliant piece of engineering, this - they built an arch inside strong enough to hold the rocks and then threw about 3 feet of rock on top of it. There is even a rock bell tower on top of that. It's made 1000 years so far, and no leaks yet. I'm not sure what they will do if it develops one.

Nice old grave yard, and a decent interpretive center. This townsite was really something in it's day - master-planned to a fare-thee-well - right down to a mill wheel for grinding grain. Picturesque little stream running along one side of it and a lot of locals pushing carriages and running their dogs. Chatted with a few of them - charming people and there is a laid-back feel to the way they talk. Lots of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, who seem a bit scatter-brained, but are friendly enough.

Monday

The Kilkenny Ormond Hotel is a first-class deal. It appears to have been a redevelopment project as it is a very modern structure with a parking garage set in amongst 500 year old stone buildings. They did a nice job of carving it in to a hillside, and it doesn't look bad at all in the setting. It's faced in a black slate - nice.

THIS is what a modern hotel is supposed to look like. The lobby is stunning; immaculate, modern but not austere. It's done in a marbles I don't recognize - one buff and another gold. Lots of walnut trim, cool light fixtures, leather upholsteries on oversized club chairs. Our room is just perfect - clean, modern and very convenient. They've thought of everything in this place - even heated the bathroom mirror so the steam won't obscure it. The staff is very accommodating, and seems to want to help. This never happens in American hotels, although the Ormond is part of a chain that includes Le Parc in Los Angeles, so I may check in to that one for one of our weekend getaways.

Kilkenny is booming, and there is a lot more money here on the East side of the country than in the areas we were in before. More business, less agriculture. More Mercedes, more fine restaurants. Small-ish downtown with narrow streets is hopping, and there is a sign on one that says it's available to let (600 square feet) for 4000 Euros per month. That's a whole lot of sweaters. 8 cranes on the skyline - this place is going cosmopolitan in a big hurry.

Took a tour of the Waterford factory. It's a very high-class factory - clean, modern and bright. I had expected to see the cut-glass vase making machines, but they still do every bit of the work by hand. The apprenticeship to be a cutter is some 10 years, but you couldn't run fast enough to give me that job. It's all cut pretty much free form on giant grinding wheels. Amazing that they can do it at all, not to mention the precision with which they do it. The one-off sculpture area is really something. 30-year veterans, carving in glass with die grinders. Exquisite work. I bought a nice bowl there - it's not Waterford (too fussy for me) but is instead from their subsidiary in Poland. It might be machine made and I don't care. It has Fuscias on it, and it's beautiful.

The surrounding land is much richer here - lush and green. Starting to see cattle and horses, more trees. Perfectly tended fields that can only be described as lovely, even as I need to stop using that word in the US. It's a word used commonly in Ireland by both men and women, but it sounds a bit odd now that I'm home. This is what I expected Ireland to look like.

Marvelous Castle in Kilkenny, this one is newer/larger than any I have seen and constructed of squared up blocks. It was closed to tourists by the time we got there, as was the design center. Too bad - I would have liked to see them both. We strolled about the grounds a bit - very large and well tended. Popular spot for the locals to walk their dogs and fly kites. There must have been some sort of convention in town; we saw several sets of quadruplets and triplets. Their parents should be candidates for Sainthood. I can't imagine traveling in one of those little vans with four kids, each two years old.

Tuesday

It's our last day, and I am sad to see this end. I have to go back to the real world tomorrow, and I'm not ready. Beautiful countryside between Kilkenny and Killarney; I had expected to grow tired of it but I never did. We decided to skip the Ring of Kerry tour as we have had enough beautiful scenery and wanted to do some walking. We ended up at the Mucross house - another 19th century manor house, beautifully preserved. 126 rooms, 64 fireplaces, situated on 20+ thousand acres of National Park. I thought the gardens at Glenveagh were spectacular, but this place puts that one to shame. Whoever laid it out must have studied Capability Brown - it looks like his doing. Acres of rolling lawns, a beautiful stream gardens, lots of winding paths through the trees. Magnificent Scotch Pines - ageless. Lake on the property has a little island in it and is surrounded by mountains. The view from the grounds is pretty enough to make a travel poster out of.

The house is amazingly well preserved, right down to the Broadwood straight-strung grand in the music room. It had been remodeled around the turn of the century in anticipation of a visit from Queen Victoria. A whole new suite of rooms was added on the ground floor because she was afraid of fire and would not go to the second floor. When she finally showed up, it was with her own 4 poster bed and 100 servants in tow; this despite her imploring her hosts in an earlier letter "not to go to any trouble on her behalf".

The lady of the house worked in watercolors - the tour guide (a Scottish woman of considerable bearing and a no-nonsense delivery) called them "Aquataines". Very beautiful work, as are the engravings hanging throughout the house. The house has more of a feminine touch than Glenveagh, although the rooms frequented by the men (especially the dining rooms) are in a dark, heavy style. The drapes in the main hall must weigh 1000 pounds. Very cool built in shutters on the inside of every room - they stack in to niches in the paneling. Waterford chandeliers throughout, of course.

Walked about the grounds for an hour or two then back to Killarney for the final bit of shopping. I like Killarney best of any of the towns we have visited. It's a big town, but retains its quaintness. There is a lot to see, and it's very clean.

We made it to a pub on Monday night - waited that long to allow the smoking ban to kick in so Sharon would go. Great music, great time. There was a guy playing an Irish bagpipe - the first I've seen. They also had a guy on the Celtic drum, several different whistles and a few instruments I didn't recognize. I bought a Guinness for a traveling Scot and had a friend for the evening. We alternated rounds and stayed out way late.

Our hotel for that night was the Killarney Plaza. Another first-class place, done up in an ornate style with stained glass trim. It's also quite new, and impeccably maintained. I'm impressed with the hotels the Tour Company has chosen - this is the economy tour. The deluxe tour with the "nicer" hotels costs nearly double what we paid. Derek says the "nicer" hotels aren't really "nicer" at all, just a bit more unusual. Some of them are in castles, which he describes as nice castles filled with so-so hotels. The downside of those places is that they are miles out of town for the most part, so once you get there, you're pretty much stuck. Maybe I'm not as fussy about hotels as some, but there hasn't been a clinker in the lot of them.


CIE does a really good job with these tours. The other tourists we spoke with felt the same. There is no way we could have done this trip for what we paid - the whole thing averaged to about $100 per day, including breakfasts and dinners. The hotels would cost us nearly that. I kept looking for where they were going to cut corners, but they never did. Absolutely nothing went wrong, everything happened just as it was supposed to.

I want to go back.

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Life is short. Play with your dog.

I had a business trip to Dublin about 22 years ago. I never got out of Dublin and only had a little time outside of work.

Traffic was a nightmare. One taxi driver told me that a few decades earlier, Dublin looked at what was happening in other big cities and saw that no matter how many roads you build, latent demand becomes real demand and traffic is always bad. So they just stopped building roads. The road from the airport to downtown was a four-lane arterial most of the way. The public transit was pretty good.

The Guinness brewery tour was interesting, but pretty well packed with tourists.

The Book of Kells was very cool, but the line was kinda long.

The James Joyce Museum was good, but would be a lot more interesting to someone who was really into James Joyce.

Pub food was great. Some meat; lots of potatoes.

I wanted to go to the Peterson Pipe factory (then in Dun Laoghaire, now in Sallynoggin, one suburb over), but didn't make it there. I think I did make it to their main store.


I'd love to spend a lot more time tooling around the country. It looks lovely.

I'm half-way through the first week of Steve's travelogue. I'm riveted, but I need to look at work stuff for a bit.

Great reading!

Well, I can't improve on Steve's brief travelogue!

I was in Ireland first in 1967 when much of the place was barely electrified and my relatives lived in a thatched-roof cottage whose only power source was a peat-fired stove. Their grandchildren have Ph. D's and live all over the UK. That's Ireland's history over the last sixty years in a snapshot.

More recently, we took two trips to Ireland within the last decade, spending the bulk of our time on the west coast between Kerry and Connemara. I have posted some pictures/videos in the past. Scenery is gorgeous, people are friendly, lots to do if you like to hike, and don't be afraid to drive aimlessly and just discover stuff.

Here's a little album or two:

Ireland Sampler 1

Ireland Sampler 2

Here's a little video of the trip to Skellig Micheal, which is a rocky island off the coast of Kerry. It's an early medieval monastic site that's not easy to get to. Only a hundred or so people are allowed on the island per day, and only in good weather. Its most recent claim to fame is that it was the site for filming of The Force Awakens & The Last Jedi. It's the site of Luke's island sanctuary on Ahch-To.

Journey to Skellig Michael

And a little video from Connemara, north of Galway. We stayed in an 18th century castle refurbished as a hotel ... place called Ballynahinch.

Three Days in Connemara

Lots of beautiful still photos at the end of the video.

The Force Awakens

I found a little video about JJ Abrams' choice of Skellig Michael as a site for filming.

If you want to go there, book in advance. You don't just show up and look for a "ticket office." There are a set of boats that have the right to ferry people over there, and once a date is sold out, that's it.

It really is a beautiful place. Great pictures!

One tip I would offer would be to go off season if you can. IIRC the season starts in May and we were there in April, which is why we pretty much had the bus to ourselves and never encountered a crowd.

As Mick pointed out, "No one comes to Ireland for the weather so why not?"

When traveling for pleasure, I almost always travel in the "shoulder" season. April-May and September-October. Kiddos are back in school and the weather isn't too bad in most places.

Ok now I wanna go to Ireland.

Thanks y'all.

I feel like I've already been there.

Steve,

I finished reading your travelogue. I enjoyed it very much.

You would really enjoy reading Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island or In a Sunburned Country.

I’ve read them both and enjoyed them very much. Right now I’m reading the one about the history of the American language and it’s good too.

What would be fun would be to read Jon’s travelogue of the same trip. Reading through mine, I see that it’s mostly food, construction and urban planning.

And I should have gone over it for typos and punctuation before I copied it here.

Brian, Margaret and I spent about 10 days there back in 2018. Did the triangle drive, Dublin -> Galway -> Cork -> Dublin. Loved it.

Cliffs of Moher, a pint in a Limerick pub sitting across from King Johns Castle along the River Shannon, Trinity College for Book of Kells and the library, Wicklow Mountains National Park, some perfume/farm thing in the middle of nowhere near Galway that Brian and Margaret found, and of course the sights in the three major cities of our triangle vertices.

And of course my major advice is don´t hurry anywhere. It´s much better to relax and enjoy what you see than to rush to see ¨everything¨.

Enjoy the trip Jon! You guys will love it.