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I left a big chunk out of my Ireland update. That’s because the Aran Island of Inis Mor was the one place on the trip that was new for me, and it rocked, and hence needed its own entry.
We arrived at Inis Mor by ferry, from near Galway. We’d booked a hostel, online, based on a poster we saw at our Galway hostel – it was called ‘The Artist’s Lodge’, and the poster was pretty.
When we arrived at the hostel (depsite crappy directions and signage), it turned out to be what I can only describe as an old farm house. There was no art to be found in the place. Its ‘extensive Irish literature library’ (as advertised on the pretty poster) consisted of a shelf holding a few books about the Beckhams.
There was no one there.
We went up the road to a pub for some lunch, and wandered back down later, hoping to check in. The landlady was there this time, smoking and packing. She didn’t have our reservation.
‘We booked online, yesterday,’ I said.
‘Do you have a receipt?’
‘Um, no, but I have the confirmation email. I didn’t print it but I can bring it up on the computer for you.’
‘We don’t do email.’
‘Oh.’
‘Do you see your name in this book?’ She handed me a notebook with people’s names and room numbers scrawled in pencil.
‘No.’
‘And no receipt at all then?’
‘No.’
‘Well, write your name down here, and you can have beds 4 and 5. Then write down a phone number – not yours, someone else’s.’
‘Um.’
‘I’m going to Galway, will be back in a few days.’
‘Right’.
For the rest of the day other people showed up, wandered around the house wondering if they had a room to stay in or not. When Jenny turned on the hostel computer, a webpage popped up with all of our online reservations noted, our names on a list. The man who was supposed to be running the place for the weekend, we discovered later, was in the pub down the road the entire time.
***
The bleak hostel was easily forgiveable, because Inis Mor looks like this.
We spent the whole of the next day riding around the island on bikes, apparently missing the one big thing everyone goes to Inis Mor to see. We decided (much like when we just narrowly missed the lava tubes of Queensland in 2000) to pretend it didn’t exist.
No matter. We saw a great deal of countryside, cloaked in a grid of stone fences (Who built these things? How long did it take?), and a lot of sea, random farm animals, and cliffs. Beautiful plunging cliffs.
We’d bought beer to drink in exactly that location.
And because the Aran Islands are the home of Aran sweaters, I had to knit a row or two. It seemed only right.
***
Oh yes, and this:
The night we arrived, we walked for ages to find a restaurant that was still open for dinner, and found a place on a hill. The service was crap, and they were out of half of what was on the menu. But just as we were finishing our meal people started filing in holding instrument cases; mostly violin cases, but banjos and accordians too. And then this happened.
Dublin:
I have a question for Dublin: Why is your Guinness so expensive? At a pub down the street from the Guinness brewery a pint of the beautiful black stuff will cost €5.50 – it’s only £3.35 at my pub in Edinburgh. What’s going on? On our first day in Dublin we hopped pubs for the afternoon and into the evening, and when we found a place with 3.75 Guinness we settled in for the long haul. Jonathan, the regular at the bar, gave us his ‘favorite bits of Ireland’ tips. The cute Polish bartender let us play Jenny’s ipod until the band with a cello showed up. Jenny was impressed that I was able to navigate us back to the hostel, but luckily it was the same one I’d stumbled back to several times last June with the boys, so I’d had some practice.
Dublin also tends to like to rain on me, it seems.
So as cool as Dublin can be, the two times I’ve been there I’ve always been pleased to get out and into the rest of Ireland. The rest of Ireland is where it’s at.
Galway:
I was impressed with Galway the second time round. From my last trip I remember mostly lying in the grass, then going out to the pubs, falling down on the dance floor at the King’s Head and stealing most of a pizza from a guy called Eamon.
I forgot that Galway has cute twisty streets full of shops, and hadn’t even made it last time to the wee harbour, the cathedral. Jenny and I had a walk around town, appreciating laid-back Galway after taking the bus straight across from Dublin.
Then, of course, we went to the pubs.
At the first pub we ended up in conversation with an old man who wanted to tell us about all the ‘naughtiest’ places he’d ever been in the world. We were glad when he left.
At the second an entire stag-do took a shining to us. We drank many Guinness.
Belfast:
In Belfast we took a black cab tour; this time, though, from a man who didn’t sound as though his mouth were full of marbles. He was also upfront from the start that he was a Republican, and would be giving us information from a Republican point of view.
It was grand. Jenny has the pictures.
We created our own pub tour of Belfast, because we had to fly out of Dublin the next morning and were catching the midnight bus. To occupy ourselves we drank Guinness in various places. The first place was full of men watching horse races, until a man carrying a pile of plastic bags came in and started demanding to watch Coronation Street. Jenny said she saw him combing his eyebrows. We moved to the other side of the pub for a bit, and when we left, all the other patrons gave us a big wave goodbye.
The next pub played nothing but Garth Brooks, and smelled like a barn.
A few more pubs and even a pitcher of cocktails later, we made our way to the bus. It dropped us at Dublin airport at 3 am, and we made an unsuccessful attempt to sleep on the floor until our plane left. (Our plane to Berlin. Germany.)
A few weeks ago, Ireland played Scotland in the Six Nations Rugby tournament, here in Edinburgh. The Irish flooded in, selling green scarves and hats up and down the Royal Mile, generally taking over.
I had to work the night of the game, and though our pub generally gets quiet after the kitchen closes at 10, that was not the case Irish Rugby night. The back of the pub was full of middle-aged Irish people, and around quarter-to-last-call, a group of about six 20-something Irish boys came in, wearing green rugby jerseys. Suddenly, one of the men up the back started singing a traditional Irish folk song, and his friends all joined in. Then, the young Irish boys countered with their own – in harmony. Soon they were all singing loudly, together, then dancing in our limited floor space.
Once they’d sang every Irish song in existence, they decided they should sing songs from all the other Six Nations teams – Scotland, England, Wales (in Welsh), France (a heart-felt but brutally butchered Allouette), and Italy (That’s Amore).
A group of just-old-enough-to-drink American tourists were also in the pub, and loving the show. As they got up to leave, one of the Irish blokes announced ‘The Americans are leaving!’, and suddenly, like out of a dream, all the Irish stood up, raised their arms forward, and started singing ‘Oh Danny Boy’ to the American kids. It was like watching a Broadway musical, only better. As they left, the Americans filmed the display with their digital cameras.
It came to the sad moment when I had to end the party, and standing on a ledge behind the bar I waved my arms in the air trying to get everyone’s attention. One of the customers did it for me.
‘Excuse me everyone, but these ladies have been very patient with us this evening, and it’s time we got out and let them close!’ I wanted to do no such thing, but such is licensing laws. The old men started clapping and singing ‘Cheeri-cheeri-cheerio!’, and the young men stood in two lines along the bar, with their arms up forming an arch way. The old men got down on their knees, and ‘walked’ underneath it to the door.
Before they left, everyone came over to apologize for their rowdiness, give a kiss on the cheek, thank us for putting up with them. I, who hadn’t stopped laughing for an hour and a half, thanked them for being so entertaining. Some checked to make sure I’d get home okay. One of the guys took off his Ireland scarf, and put it around my neck.
Once we’d closed up, I was walking home, and when almost there I heard a voice from the crowd in front of one of the bars: ‘Hey! It’s the girl from the pub!’
The six guys in rugby shirts appeared. They insisted we take group photos.
….
Last weekend, another group of young Irish folks came to the pub. They came in several days in a row, and were there one night when Jase, Jenny S. and I stopped in on a ‘Yay Jenny’s done uni classes’ pub crawl. We were several pitchers of Tennents in, and told them to meet us later at the Bank Hotel down the street. When they showed up, we were attempting to kareoke ‘One Week’ by the Barenaked Ladies.
They bought us a round of tequila shots. They bought us a round of Baby Guinness (Kahlua with Baileys on top). We don’t much remember the walk home.
The next day, they were back in the pub again. They were heading back to Ireland, and had 16 bottles of Heinecken they couldn’t take with them, so they left them with us.
…
On St. Paddy’s day, we were at a pub called Dropkick Murphy’s, dancing to a live band. Jenny S. noticed that they had all the Six Nations flags on display above the bar – except that instead of having the English flag, they had the Irish flag twice.
Bwaahahahaha!
Jenny A. will be here in 12 days. We will be in Ireland in 16 days. Yessssssssss.
We went to the Giant’s Causeway, land of funny rocks, to the Bushmills Distillery, oldest distillery of all time, and to Belfast, where a guy named Walter gave us a black cab tour of the city, and showed us a lot of the murals from The Troubles, immortalizing people who were killed or who played a part, people from the IRA.
That’s the briefest of all summaries, but I’ve taken way too long to wrap up my tales of Ireland, and I’ll sum in up with this:
In Belfast, we said goodbye to Squidget.
Apparently they weren’t bothered that we dripped honey on the backseat. Whoops.
A pictorial of the rest of the journey:
We crossed into Northern Ireland without seeing so much as a sign, let alone a border, but suddenly there were British accents on the radio, and the shops accepted pounds.
We could only take pictures in the bar at Bushmills, because everywhere else in the distillery the use of a camera might cause the alcohol in the air to ignite. Apparently.
Walter, our tour guide, showed us the Peace Wall in Belfast, that seperates Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods. Its gates still close every night.
***
G doesn’t want me to tell people he reads poetry, but as we lounged in the grass in Galway one afternoon, he handed me a copy of this, that he kept in his notebook. I copied it down, and refer to it often.
Ithaca
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon — do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.
Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber, and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.
Always keep Ithaca on your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what these Ithacas mean.
- Constantine P. Cavafy
Apparently I’m trying to draw the Ireland blogging out as long as possible, because it’s been two weeks since I got back now. On with it!
In Galway, we lounged.
Mike is a genius packer who not only fit ipod speakers in his bag, he also brought a hammock. We read. We wrote. We napped. We ate…wait for it…peanut butter and honey sandwiches. (I know, I was also shocked).
After one particularly revelry-filled night in Galway, Dustin announced that he’s written a song about Squidget in his dream. We really loved our car.
Driving north of Galway we saw some of the most striking scenery of the trip. Squidget hugged the curvy roads through green mountain ranges, and narrowly missed the spray-painted sheep that liked to eat the grass right beside the highway.
In Clifden we stopped at the tourist office to ask how to get to our next destination – the holy mountain that people climb all the time.
G nudged me at the counter. “Hey, you ask where Mount McKinley is.”
“Excuse me, can you tell us how to get to Mount McKinley?”
“McKinley?” The tourist-office woman was perplexed.
“You know, the one that people make pilgrimages to every year…” G said.
“You mean Croagh Patrick?”
“Yeah…sure…Croagh Patrick….”
“Now that I think about it,” he said later, “Mount McKinley is in Washington.”
Having heard that some people climb the mountain barefoot, Dustin decided to give it a go.
The guide book said the walk to the top took about two hours. I took one look at it and decided it was going to take me all day.
Jeff, Mr. Uber Athlete, made it up in just under one hour. Dustin, with no shoes, took a little longer. By the time I got up, after picking my way carefully up the very rocky peak, it had been about an hour and a half. Not bad.
It is very hard to keep up with three boys on bikes, when all three of those boys also play NCAA Division 1-level hockey. They are in shape. I am not.
We rented bikes in Killarney, from the fastest-talking Russian on the planet. He had our money, ID, had given us our bikes, shown us the map of the park we wanted to ride and was back in his building with the door locked behind him in 26 seconds. Flat.
We rode for quite awhile before realizing that we were on the walking, not the biking, path, and that we were going the wrong direction. We decided not to let it bother us.
We found a waterfall…
The boys frequently had to stop and wait for me to catch up. Occasionally one of them would ride along with me and my tired, tired legs.
“I like going your speed,” G said, at one point. “It’s relaxing.”
Outside the pub one night in Killarney, after being escorted at closing time out the back door, Mike and I met a chipper local and asked for advice on where we should next steer our car.
“Go to Dingle,” he said. “And you gotta to see the Burren.”
Until the next day when I looked it up in our guide book, I was sure he’d said “The Burn”. I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to know what that was.
It turns out The Burren is where Ireland gets its rocks. We’d been wondering, as we drove along, how so many houses, fences, churches, castles could all been made out of stone. Ireland must be out by now, we’d mused. Not so. I don’t know if we have any good pictures of The Burren, because the roads were so narrow and windy there was no place to safely stop and take one. Add that to Dustin’s theory of going as fast as possible, and our attempts to get pictures out of the car windows were fairly futile. Let’s just say there’s rocks there. Lots of them.
What we did get pictures of was our next stop – the Cliffs of Moher. 
(First though, we had a peanut butter and honey lunch with Squidget).
Sure you can see the Cliffs only from within the safe confines of the tourist-approved area, but no one actually does that.
(G enjoyed making Jeff nervous by getting as close to the edge as possible).
We all kissed the Blarney Stone. We all pretty much said we weren’t going to kiss the Blarney Stone, but once we got to the top of Blarney Castle, and were inadvertantly standing in the line to kiss it, we felt it’d be pretty silly to not do it. Really.
You have to lay on your back and kiss the thing upside down, after hundreds of grimy backpackers and elderly tourists have done it ahead of you that day. I wonder if they sanitize it after closing time.
The Blarney Stone is supposed to bequeath eloquence upon you, or give you the “gift of gab”. We mostly felt like…we’d kissed a slimy rock. We didn’t pay to get copies of the pictures.
On from Blarney we stopped at Waterford to tour the Waterford Crystal facility. This, I swear, was the boys’ idea.
Waterford Crystal makes a lot of famous sports trophies, and custom makes items for celebrities, along with all the bowls and wine glasses they sell. Our tour guide at one point indicated three shelves holding golf trophies, one of which was missing.
“It was here yesterday, I don’t know what happened to it,” she said.
Later, at the examples of custom celebrity pieces, she said they used to have Larry Hagman’s crystal cowboy hat, but she wasn’t sure where it had gone either.
“I’m sure it’ll turn up,” she said.
We thought about swiping Garth Brooks’s crystal boot. They wouldn’t have missed it.
Dublin had redeeming qualities other than the Guinness brewery. One was Sam, the Aussie who worked at the desk at the Bunkhouse Hostel, who led us bravely to the Temple Bar district each night. Also a plus was Booze2Go across the street, where you could buy off-license by shouting your order through glass at the staff, who would assemble your order and slide it to you in a drawer.
We also managed not to get hit by a bus, which I consider an accomplishment.
Other pluses for Dublin:
+ 24-hour Burger King stationed neatly between Temple Bar and our hostel. Good for both late night snacks and bathroom breaks on the way home.
+ Our introduction to the Lisbon Treaty issue, by banner-waving protestors outside the General Post Office, site of the 1916 uprising.
+ Hen/Stag-do season. This meant packs of women in bars dressed in matching t-shirts or Moulin Rouge getups, and men in the streets with feather boas and dresses.
+ First hearing ‘Galway Girl’, a song that would become a favorite on the ensuing road trip. Unfortunately the man who played it in the pub largely interpreted Traditional Irish Music to include John Mellencamp. And the Irish love Johnny Cash, specifically Folsom Prison.
By the end of the weekend we were aching to get out of the city, and on Monday we got to pick up our rental car. Dustin picked up other-side-of-the-road driving quickly, which may or may not have been helped along by his philosophy that if you don’t know what you’re doing, just do it faster.
The car needed a name, and as we cruised out of Dublin, Dustin declared it “Squidget!”, a word presumably pulled from thin air. It sounded good, until the boys decided it wasn’t manly.
“It needs a middle name, like Crusher.”
“Yeah, or Thunderdome.”
The Thunderdome is a building in Dublin, whose name they liked to randomly say in a Hulk Hogan voice.
“But it’s Irish, so….O’Callahan,” Dustin concluded.
Our silver Ford Focus was thereafter known as Squidget Thunderdome Crusher O’Callahan. And it was good.
Keeping with the theme of giving slogans to countries, here’s another one:
Ireland: Hard On The Liver.
Also, one Dustin will appreciate:
Ireland: It’s Very Green Here.
Dublin, unfortunately, was awful. It wasn’t Dublin’s fault. It started out with me arriving on June 4th, expecting the boys would arrive June 5th, at 5:30 a.m. After waiting until noon with no sign of Jeff, Dustin or Mike, I sent a frantic facebook message saying WHERE ARE YOU, before realizing that they left the States on the 5th, and wouldn’t actually arrive in Ireland until the 6th. Oops. It was drizzly and awful all day, and instead of seeing anything I went to the theatre to watch Iron Man and eat popcorn to take my mind off my stupidity.
For the rest of the day I stressed about having nowhere to sleep the next night, because my hostel was going to be full, though after some cancellations I ended up being able to stay there anyway.
The next morning, the 6th, I got up fairly confident that the boys would arrive. I took my book to the hostel lobby around 7 a.m. and waited. Jeff showed up shortly afterwards, and I was so relieved it took a minute to realize he was alone.
Dustin and Mike were supposed fly from Buffalo to Boston where Jeff was waiting to catch the flight with them. They didn’t show, so he got on the plane by himself, after a quick call to dad saying “If Dusty calls, I went to Ireland”.
Right. Crap.
Mysteriously, a travel companion I didn’t even know about, Ben, showed up during breakfast. So at least there were three of us.
At 7 a.m. the next morning I went downstairs again, to find the missing two were downstairs having breakfast. Their flight from Buffalo to Boston had been cancelled, and they’d caught the same flight the next day.
Finally, everyone was in Dublin. And when in Dublin:
go to the Guinness brewery.
(The boys in order: Jeff, Ben, Dustin, Mike)
We checked the barley
(apparently Guinness buys two-thirds of all the barley in Ireland, and it’s all “of the highest quality”).
We learned how it’s brewed. We read the history. We tasted.
To get through Guinness, you travel up seven floors, on the top you get a free pint.
You have to wait until the beer is completely black before you drink it, or people will yell at you. Well, Ben will likely yell at you.
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