The Craic is Over

Our Craic (good time in Gaelic) in Ireland has ended. Our last day was spent wandering through old Galway visiting in the beautiful Galway Cathedral and admiring its stained glass windows.

We then did a bit of shopping. Doesn’t Jerry look great in his new hat?

After the luggage was put in our Mespil Hotel room in Dublin, we returned to the archeological museum to see what we lacked time for the first time. Their collection of 2500-600 BCE artifacts is excellent.

We marveled at the bronze tools and ritual items. The gold jewelry was amazing in detail and construction. Best of all was the museum guide who both entertained and educated us on a private tour of his favorite items in the collection, a magnificent chalice, a gold necklace and a gold boat.

After roaming around the crowded Temple Bar area seeking an Irish dinner,

Sandy seemed to enjoy his time with Oscar Wilde. We then hopped a cab and returned to the Sussex for Irish stew and our favorite desserts.

This has been a wonderful trip and Ireland now has a special place in our travel memory.

Thanksgiving in Ireland

We started the day with a bus ride through the lovely town of Adair where we saw the castle and churches.

At Bunratty we toured the castle. Our guide told charming stories of the uncomfortable life in a castle on our tour through the military room and great hall.

He related the origin of “sleep tight” as a reference to tightening the ropes of the bed so that the occupant didn’t sink to the cold floor. Also “the walls have ears” referred to spy holes where the lord listened to conversations about his castle.

This ancient Celtic fertility symbol was built into the wall.

We then wandered up winding staircases into the priests’ rooms, banquet halls, private rooms and pantry.

We descended the treacherous steps into the dungeon where no one anticipated leaving alive. Guests were ordered to descend twelve steps in the dark. The first eleven are normal but the last step is twelve feet down into the dungeon. Good luck in surviving.

This “leuchterweibchen” is a chandelier with a female figure.

The castle is part of a Folk Park where medieval homes have been moved. These homes belonged to gentry and were furnished accordingly.

With little time for lunch before our next stop, we had to settle on delicious chocolate bars with liquor.

The rain and gale force winds affected our visit to the Cliffs of Mohor but we did manage to see them for brief moments. This view hints at the beauty we only saw through photographs in the Visitors Center.

We had a group dinner for our last night of the tour. The restaurant offered turkey and cranberry sauce in honor of Thanksgiving. After dinner we sipped Irish Coffee and enjoyed conversation with some of our fellow travelers.

A Typical Irish Day

Yesterday at Blarney Castle, the sun shone. Today, rain drops drizzled on our heads as we took our jaunty ride through Killarney National Park. Our driver Michael and his horse Sweeney kept our spirits from dampening as we huddled under blankets and drop clothes and peered out at a genuine thatched roof house located in the park.

Sandy did his best to stay dry, despite the rain.

We rode by the second tallest church in Ireland, sadly used as shelter and burial site for over 300 children during the Great Famine.

Light rain and fog clouded our drive around the Ring of Kerry. Our only dry points were stops for Irish coffee, shopping and lunch. Our driver added to our knowledge of Irish history explaining the bogs, churches, farms and medieval remnants that we passed.

This nautical monument honors St. Brandon the Navigator who legend says sailed in a boat made of cowhide to what is now Newfoundland in 600 A.D. In modern times, another navigator succeeded in duplicating the voyage proving that it could have been done.

The O’Connell Church is the only Catholic one in Ireland named for a lay person. He was a rebel leader who tried to gain emancipation and independence for the Irish by peaceful means. He did succeed in getting the Penal Laws repealed so that Catholics could take part in governing their own country as well as owning property and participating in the professions.

The statue of Charlie Chaplin is here because of his visiting his daughter Geraldine’s home.

Richard Nixon, when he was President, stayed in this home while on a fishing vacation.

What is left of one of the houses abandoned by Irish who left during the famine of the mid 1800s. The Irish will not move into someone else’s house, even though they believe them to have left for good, just in case someone in the family decides to return. The countryside is dotted with ruins such as this.

After a lunch of shepherd’s pie, we went to see a demonstration of border collies doing their work as sheep herders.

Three of us dined on hamburgers at the International Hotel. By the way, the Irish have made an art of French fries. They are always good and sometimes even better.

Looking for evening entertainment, we went to the local cinema to see Tower Heist. Review: amusing and entertaining.

To warm up after our walk back to our hotel, we had Irish coffee and Baileys coffee. Lois must have been warm because she had three scoops of ice cream; Sandy must have been fairly warm since he had ice cream on his apple pie.

Waterford and Blarney

Our first stop on the bus tour was at the Waterford Crystal Factory. Unfortunately, a few years ago, the company went into bankruptcy. The factory still makes some specialty goods but most of the glassware is now made in Eastern Europe. What remains are items like the People’s Choice Award.

We walked along watching the step-by-step process from firing the glass through etching the finished product.

This cutter showed such pleasure in his work that he claimed he would do it for free.

The etcher let Anna Lee lift a piece and she found it quite heavy.

This was the third glass blowing experience for us in five weeks, Museum of Glass in Tacoma, a small but very good operation in Auburn, and now Waterford. It’s a good thing we really enjoy glass art. Speaking of Tacoma, Waterford has a piece with a refracted finish created by Dale Chihuly on his visit a few years ago.

Our browsing through the store made our charge cards tingle but we resisted temptation.

We walked about Waterford for a bit taking pictures of historical objects like the statue of Meagher who created the Irish flag and lost one of the brief battles with the British.

Then it was on to Blarney where Jerry improved his gift of gab by kissing the stone. The castle is a fascinating relic well worth the climb.

We were fortunate to have blue skies making the views spectacular.

After settling in in Killarney we walked into town where a couple on the street recommended Stonechat, an excellent restaurant with delicious lamb shanks and seafood dishes.

The Tour Begins

For the next five days our travels will be via a bus tour of the island. Our bus ride took us by St. Patrick’s Cathedral with its Parade of Literaries (great Irish writers).

The main architecture of Dublin is Georgian. Each attached home is three stories high with a basement. The main floor has wide windows to view the street, the next two floors have windows that lessen in size. To distinguish these identical homes, each owner could paint his door a different color and change the design of the fan window. Street lighting was provided by a candle lantern over every fifth doorway.

Our major stop was back at Trinity College to view the amazing Book of Kells kept within the Old Library which dates back to 1732. The Book was written by monks over 1000 years ago. It contains the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It is “lavishly decorated,” with illustrations accenting the written words. The exhibit includes explanations of the artistry of the book including sources of the ink, vellum, and pens. Three additional ancient religious books are also on display.

Beyond the exhibit of the Book stands the Long Room of the Old Library. The narrow room has 200,000 old leather-bound volumes stacked up on two floors each 14 shelves high. Busts of major scholars including Socrates and Plato line the central aisle.

If you remember Star Wars and the Jedi Library, this library is the basis. George Lucas asked for permission to film in the library and was refused. He send in a crew and took hi def photos then used CG to recreate the library as one used by the Jedi. That led to some litigation. Jerry thinks he won.

The bus then took us on to the medieval town of Kilkenny. We stopped at the castle then walked in a light rain down the main street of town to the local church. The shops had a full variety of goods including an old fashion butcher shop. Lots of fun.

We then proceeded to Waterford, the oldest town in Ireland. After our group dinner at Dooley’s Hotel, Jerry and Anna Lee took a brisk walkabout enjoying the holiday decorations. Then we all enjoyed a brief performance of Irish music in the pub.

Dublin

Sometimes it’s what you don’t plan that is the best plan of all. That was how our days in Dublin went.

We started by walking up to St. Stephen’s Green and enjoyed the lovely park. Then we hopped on the Hop on, Hop off bus for a short ride to Dublin Castle.

This is where our day took off in a wonderful direction. We joined what we thought was a twenty-minute free history walk that was actually a three-hour free walk filled with history told with an Irish twist by our guide, Robbie.

Because of him we learned that there is no coach house behind the wall labeled “Coach House.” Instead the wall was built to protect Queen Victoria’s delicate eyes from the derelicts who lived nearby. We learned that the Dublin Castle is really a guest house for visiting dignitaries such as Presidents Obama and Clinton and others of high rank.

Leaving the Castle and passing the apartments where J. Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) lived and worked, we ventured passed Christ Church, one of the two “cathedrals” in greater Dublin.

We then wandered up Temple Bar (not a place for service of alcohol but a natural levee for the River Liffey). Robbie pointed out a plaque on Carlisle Bridge (the only bridge in the world wider that its length) in honor of poor dead Father Pat Noise, who never existed. Dubliners staged a protest when town leaders removed the plaque forcing its return.

Near the bridge is the Millenium Spire, the tallest spire in Europe, finished in 2003, a bit late for the celebration.

The Irish, with their gift of language, love rhymes and plays on words. Among the more acceptable nicknames for the spire are Stiletto in the Ghetto (it is on the poorer side of the river) and the Binge Syringe because of its cost. In front of the Spire is a statue to Daniel O’Connell, leader of the Catholic emancipation and a role model for Gandhi and M. L. King. We also wandered passed the Molly Malone's statue, otherwise known as the Tart with the Cart.

We then went to the campus of Trinity College, built in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I to properly educate the Protestant minority who were being adversely affected by their exposure to Catholics. The school didn’t allow Catholics to attend until the 1700s. Legend has it that the bell of the Tower only rings if a virgin passes beneath and if anyone else walks under it, they will fail their exams.

After a brief respite to refresh with coffee and yummy scones, we continued along Temple Bar back to St. Stephen’s Green where we saw the horrific Famine Statue.

There we learned the Irish starved amid abundance. The crops they grew belonged to absentee British landlords. The Irish could only eat potatoes which were being destroyed by the blight so they starved while providing food for England. Their other alternative was to emigrate which vast numbers did though not without great risk during the voyage. This was one of the many stories of the wars between these two countries.

We were worn out from walking and settled into a corner of the Duke Pub where we were refreshed by Guinness (men) and water (women). Then most of us dug into the traditional fish and chips followed by apple crumble with ice cream.

This dinner prepared us to join the Literary Pub Crawl. Actors Derek and Colum led us on an oratory journey around the downtown area. They enacted scenes from Samuel Becket (Waiting for Godot), Oscar Wilde, Brandon Behan and other great writers.

Ireland has had four Nobel Laureates for literature (can you name them?)

There was a quiz following the tour and Sandy won second prize.

We continued our history lesson in the morning with a tour of the Kilmainham Gaol, both a traditional and political prison. Men, women and children, imprisoned for crimes ranging from murder to stealing a loaf of bread, were kept in silent isolation until the famine when the cells overflowed with starving people seeking prison as a way to get some food.

Anna Lee and Lois even tried on a cell for size.

Political prisoners filled their own section of the prison following the 1916 Easter Rising. Sixteen rebels were executed following the failure of the fifth attempt to gain independence. After these executions Irish leaders did sign a treaty with England giving 26 counties independence; the other counties (with a large Protestant population) became Northern Ireland.

After the gaol, we took a brief run-through of the archeological museum to see the Viking display. As museum lovers, this quick visit was very frustrating, we hope to find time later to go back.

In the evening we gathered to meet the rest of our tour group in preparation for our five-day drive around Ireland. A large part of the group is from New Jersey, much to Sandy and Lois’ delight. We celebrated our great day in Dublin (sunshine!) with a return visit to Sussex Restaurant where we toasted our trip with another chocolate pannecotta and a wonderful Figgy Sticky Toffee Pudding.