Cork to Galway

Kerry Tattoo Convention

May 28-30
See also a photo album of our adventures in Ireland.

We had rented a car in Cork and had spent a day driving to Mizen Head. Our plan today was to drive around the Ring of Kerry (that's a peninsula on the south west), see Parknasilla (a fancy resort/hotel recommended by our friend Jacquie) along the way and maybe even get over to Dingle (a small town on the next peninsula) before leaving the ocean side and returning to Killarney for the night.

Once again this was a case of distances in Ireland being much longer and roads not as good as expected. It's a couple of hours from Cork to the start of the Ring of Kerry (we were travelling counter clockwise around the peninsula starting in the southern corner at Kenmare) over pretty good roads by Irish standards. Nevertheless, by the time we got to Parknasilla, which is only about a half hour into the Ring of Kerry, Kate was pretty car sick and the jarring on rough roads was causing problems. Nevertheless, we stopped there for a light lunch, a bit of wine and some photos.

Along the way there were tons of rhododendron in blooom. Ireland is very green as advertised, but this time of year the hedge rows were blooming in pink.

We dashed around the peninsula making only a few stops to take some pictures and headed to Killarney where we had a room booked not too far from the downtown at the Dromhall Hotel. Kate rested while I explored Killarney. Again, it's one of those pretty Irish old towns. There's some green space and carriage tours of the town and the parkland. The weather was cool, wet and grey. The town seemed to be a big tourist destination with lots of shops ("Feckin' Ejit" T-shirts caught my eye), dinner shows and pubs advertising live music. Also, a coming Tattoo convention!

We didn't get out to see any music that day, instead we just grabbed some drinks and a bite from nearby shops and spent the evening resting up.

May 29, Killarney to Galway
From Killarney to Galway via Limerick was a pleasant drive on very good roads. The day was grey and cloudy so there wasn't much too see. We had intentions of seeing the Cliffs of Moher on the west coast just south of Galway but the weather was against us. We did stop at the Blarney Mills along the way and noted the small Limerick Airport that had been in the news of late (wrt. Trump, Trump's visit and his nearby resort).

In Galway we stayed at the Harbor Hotel a short walk from downtown. Again this was recommended by our friend Anne who we met later for dinner at Ard Bia at Nimmos on the waterfront of the Corrib river right by the Spanish Arch a short walk from our hotel.

We did a bit of a walk about in the downtown area but it was cool and rainy. We missed the Galway Museum which is near the Spanish Arch. It would have been a good place to get out of the rain.

We enjoyed our dinner with Anne and Michael and they took us further afield across the river and harbor to see some live music upstairs at the Crane Bar. That was another great night of Irish music. When we got home to Canada we were watching a Netflix series "Jack Taylor" about a hard drinking former Galway Garda (police) who hangs around a lot drinking at the Crane Bar. Neither Anne nor Micheal had heard of the series.

Near the Spanish Arch we stopped to see the small monument to Christopher Columbus who apparently visited in 1477.

May 30, Galway to Dublin
Galway to Dublin was uneventful. We stayed near the airport at a modern Premier Inn Dublin Airport in a shopping area called the Airside Retail Park (lots of modern shops -- you'd think you were in North America). Dropped Kate off at the airport in the morning, dropped the car off at the rental agency and took their shuttle back to the airport.

From Dubin, off to Amsterdam.

Cork Ireland

Jameson Whiskey, Midleton (near Cork)

May 26-27, 2020
See also a photo album of our adventures in Ireland.

Cork is another port city on the Irish Sea south of Dublin (I was going to say "a little way south" but distances are deceiving). We were there for a couple of nights and although we didn't see much we did enjoy our time there and found a great live music pub!

We caught a train in the morning at Hueston Station, Dublin and arrived in Cork by the early afternoon (it's three hours by train, bus or car -- that gives a sense of the distance). Not wanting to hump our luggage ever again we caught a cab for the short ride to the Metropole Hotel which backs on the River Lee north shore and fronts on MacCurtain Street. It's a lovely Victorian era red brick hotel freshly done up. Quite nice with conference rooms named after famous writers Shaw, Joyce, Swift, Wilde, Yeats, etc. Included was a large English style breakfast in their dining hall overlooking the river.

We were quite comfortable in the Metropole and had booked it, in part, because it included a Jameson Whiskey tasting tour. We discover that the distillery is in Midleton (one 'd' in the middle) not Cork and that's a short commuter train ride away. We were just getting settled into our room and headed off back to the train station where we caught a  train out to Midleton (all Jameson Whiskey is made at this single location). It's not too far out, perhaps a half hour or so, and trains are fairly frequent.

We arrived on a lovely sunny day and wandered into Midleton looking for the distillery. There were no obvious signs other than a large factory type building in the distance. The distillery happens to be a fairly long walk on the other side of this small town. There we caught up with a tour which had already started. A young Colleen took us around through the old distillery showing us the malting house (they malt over coal fires), mash tuns, copper stills, barrel house, etc. There's a modern new distillery on the same site (the factory we could see in the distance), but we didn't wander there.

After the tour you got a drink of your choosing in the bar but before that we did a comparative tasting of Jameson/Irish (which is triple distilled), John Walker Black/Scotch (double distilled) and Jack Daniels/Bourbon (single but continuous distilled). I'm not sure if any of these are actually done in copper pot stills anymore -- certainly they don't do that with Bourbons. We had toured Jack Daniels several years ago on a trip to Florida. Anways, I was suprised by a couple of things: firstly I had always thought of Irish whiskey as being rougher/more bourbon like than Scotch and secondly I was surprised that one would drink and enjoy whiskey neat (actually they had cut them all with a bit of water). We've become fans of the Irish Whiskey, Jameson's is available locally. But, cad that I am, I take it with ice to dilute the strength. Connoisseurs dilute precisely with water.

Back in Cork we took a cab and had dinner at the Oliver Plunkett as recommended by our first taxi driver. Downstairs, where we entered, there was a lively crowd of 20-somethings and some contemporary pop music playing. Not what we were after. Upstairs there was dinner and a show of traditional Irish music and some dance. It was a show that catered to the bus loads of tourists -- fine enough but not that exciting. I'd not recommend the place for the food or music.

On our way walking back to the hotel we crossed over the river and stopped into a pub called "Sin e" near our hotel. Kate had researched live music and the original cabbie recommended it. The music there was much more to our liking. There were several musicians, an evolving cast, playing Irish tunes (jigs and reels) -- very few songs. The pub stands next door to a funeral parlor on one side (hence it's name "Sin e" which means "That's it") and there's another live music pub on the other side. We enjoyed ourselves so much we came back the next night.

There were some funny guys at this pub. One fellow asks me, "Where youse from?". And I replied "Canada" to which he comments, "I likes Canadians .... but I don't think I could eat a whole one". Some regulars seemed to be quite pissed and talking blather but I later learned it's the Irish language which only sounds like blather to fools like us. There were lots of friendly folk who engaged us -- you don't need to seek them out, they find you! And they ask you to come back tomorrow, which we obliged.

Cork May 27:
The next day our plan was to take a driving trip to explore the South West corner of the country. We rented a car from a Hertz rental walking distance between our hotel and the train station. I've driven lots of times on the left side (Australia, New Zealand and the UK). We also had Google maps on our cell phone which made navigating much easier.

We made it as far as Mizen Head which is a light house point on the very south west corner. It's not very far from Cork but it's far enough, on narrow winding roads, to occupy a goodly portion of our day. We didn't get as many stops along the way as I might have liked but we did get to see some very pretty towns. And an old Friary too -- with graves scattered around through the ruins.

I recall driving through one village with a narrow two lane road that had been reduced to only one lane with people partking on the side walk. Coming my way was a big truck. I don't know how they manage. And one of the short cuts we took ended up being a single lane road way. A Mini-Cooper coming the other way barreled right on by orcing us into the verge. He should have waited at a nearby lane way for us to pass. That's what we were doing. How crazy to just barrel on through?

Mizen Head has some lovely views (albeit quite windy) and you have to do a bit of walking up and down stairs. Kate's fitbit watch recorded her as having done 60 stairs in one day. Most of those we chalked up to bumpy car ride up and down the narrow roads.

Back in Cork we had dinner reservation at the Paradiso, a vegetarian restaurant recommended by Kath and Scotia. But we were running late (driving anywhere takes longer than expected). We phoned ahead to let them know and to see if they'd hold our reservation. But still got in later than we promised. In any case it wasn't that busy.

When we got to the Paradiso, it's on another (south) branch of the Lee River, we were driving around trying to find a parking place. We stopped at the restaurant for some guideance which was fortunate. The maitre de told Kate that you could park on any of the streets in the neighborhood but .... you're not from around here are you? There are no parking meters, you're supposed to have a parking pass. And how do you get a pass? Well, you have to find a convenience store and then .... Fortunately he then remembered that there was a parking garage across the river and we parked there. I guess street parking just isn't something tourists are supposed to have.

We had a nice dinner. I recall some pasta made with nettles and some grilled tofu. It's vegetarian. But one of the better to be found.

Our last night in Cork found us back at Sin e for more music.

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As it turns out we really didn't get to see much of Cork. But we did find a great pub!

Dublin Ireland

Oscar Wilde at EPIC

May 23-26, 2020

See also a photo album of our adventures in Ireland.

Kate's annual KBS conference was in Utrecht, Holland this year. We decided to make a little side trip on our way there to explore a bit of Ireland -- we've never been and both of us have Irish roots. Long ago roots, but roots none the less. It's a beautiful country and well worth exploring. We found that a week in the south wasn't enough for us even though we had scaled back our plans from "let's see it all". You would have to live there for a life time and even then you won't see it all.


Dublin Arrival (May 23):
We flew in and out of Dublin arriving from Heathrow (we had made a day trip whilst there to visit our second Mom in Woking) and leaving for Amsterdam.

In Dublin we humped our luggage from the airport north of the city by bus to the Connolly Train Station and then city Metro/DART to the Sandymount Hotel. Others have good luck staying at AirBnB sites, probably a better idea if you're there for a long stay. We were just in town for a couple of days.

The Sandymount is an older Georgian hotel (or pasting of some old Georgian homes) with reasonable conveniences a little south of the city center. Anne, our chum from Glasgow, had recommended it as there is a car park (we didn't rent a car until Cork) and it is convenient to the city DART system. We road the DART from Connolly Station just north of the Liffey River to Landsdown Rd. some 4 stops south. Connolly Station is the busiest in the city with rail routes from the north and the DART on multiple platforms. It's named, since 1966, for James Connolly of the 1916 Easter Rebellion who was a martyr for Irish independence. There's lots of subtle Irish history you become aware of as you visit Dublin. I came out of it knowing that the English have a lot to answer for -- sorry, Mom.

Dublin May 24:
We had a DART pass and a Dubliner hop-on/hop-off pass that we picked up at the airport. That made it convenient for us to explore the city. Our first day we took the DART to the Tara Street station on the south bank of the Liffey and walked the short distance to Trinity College for a tour recommended by our friends Kath and Scosh.

At the college we went with a tour group shepherded by a graduate student in a faded college gown. You can tour the campus alone, it's not that big, but she helped to explain a lot: the founding in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth II in an attempt to secure a Protestant bulwark in a conquered Catholic country; the history of Protestant vs Catholic admissions (Catholics are only lately allowed by the college and by the church); the history of women's admission; and lots of trivia around traditions. The other part of the admission to the tour was access to the Book of Kells and to the Long Room of the Old Library. Our chums Kath and Scotia had recommended we take the tour and see these.

The Book of Kells is a very old, highly decorated, manuscript in Latin from the early Christian church containing four gospels. There's quite a good exhibit with lots of panels showing what pages from the book look like and the checkered history of Viking raids, thievery and worse. There's a glass case with the book itself opened to a page but it's very hard to get near to and not that clear anyways once you get close.

The Long Room of the Old Library (the Book of Kells exhibit is in the ground floor) comes after the exhibit. This is jam packed with rare and ratty old books on two levels. At each level the books are organized in stacks with the bigger heavier books on the lower levels and the smaller ones at the top. How do you find anything? You don't! There's a master index to locate the row and shelf number. It's an interesting place and well worth a visit.

After the tour of Trinity College we walked through the Temple Bar (it's an area of town, not a single "bar") and crossed the Ha'penny Bridge over the Liffey for a late light lunch at The Woolen Mills (recommended by our nephew Darren). I was a little surprised by the day time drunks in the Temple Bar area and glad that we had not stayed in that part of town -- you wouldn't get much sleep.

The Ha'penny Bridge and the River Liffey had separated the traditonally very poor Northside Dublin from the more wealthy Southside Dublin. The poor could be very poor...

"According to The National Archives of Ireland, by 1911, Dublin had some of the worst housing conditions for the urban poor of any city in the United Kingdom, with some 835 people living in just 15 houses."

We hopped onto the hop-on/hop-off tour bus and did a bit of the city including a quick peek into the old City Hall. Some of the drivers were hilarious telling outrageous stories. The Irish do have a "gift of the gab". We jumped off at Hueston Station with the intention of catching a street car over to the Connolly Station and then the DART back to our hotel to freshen up.

That day the Spice Girls were having their kickoff concert at Croke Park for their reunion tour (minus Posh Spice). The stadium seats some 80,000 devoted Spice Girls Fans -- moms of about 40 or so with their young daughters (nary a dad or Old Spice Guy anywhere in sight). This really mucked up our transit plans as Hueston station is the main station for people arriving from the South and West while Connolly was the nearest station to Croke Park and also the main train station for people arriving from the north. It took forever to get a tram over to Connolly Station and when we finally did we were squeezed in like sardines in a can. At Connolly it was very busy with fans arriving and we gave up on ever getting back to our hotel.

Instead we found a nearby pub, the Celt, that a friend had recommended. We had dinner there and enjoyed a singer who played guitar and sang Irish classics. Kate met some younger women (too young to be Spice Girls fans, too old to be daughters of Spice Girl fans) one who had a "F*ck Off Kate" T-shirt -- she was a Kate.

At the end of the day we walked back to Connolly Station just as the Spice Girls concert was clearing out. We talked with a few of the fans on their way home.

Dublin May 25:
We took the DART from Sandymount to the Tara Station on the South Bank of the Liffey. From there we walked along the north bank to the EPIC museum. Along the way we passed the Customs House (a grand bit of Victoriana) and stopped for a while at the Poverty Memorial and the Famine Statues.

The potato famine of 1845-1849 was a desperate time in Ireland. The Famine Statues are a frightfully moving reminder of how bad it was. I'm reminded of "Thousands are Sailing" by the Pogues:

"The island it is silent now, But the ghosts still haunt the waves. And the torch lights up a famished man, Who fortune could not save"

Just a bit further down the river there's a "coffin" ship (replica) you can tour. Of those poor souls who set sail for the better places many did not get so far "that they could change my name".

The EPIC museum is set underground in an old warehouse along the Liffey shore. It's a modern, recently opened, museum dedicated to Irish Emigration. Because of times like the Irish Potato famine the Irish have emigrated all over the world. Both Kate and I (and probably everyone else as well) have a connection to Ireland. Sometime that connection is because of immigration -- Kate's Graham connection got to Ireland from Scotland and of course there's all the British who came to Ireland. It's a very interesting museum that we recommend. There's lots of displays to engage the visitor and there's many rooms to navigate through. It takes quite a while to see it all -- so much so that we took a mid way break and had lunch on the ground floor level at a very nice restaurant, the "Ely Bar & Grill".

At the end of our visit we discover meaning of "EPIC": Every Person Is Connected. And indeed we all are.

From the EPIC Museum we caught the hop on/off shuttle to see more of the city with a view to visiting the "Little Museum of Dublin" near St Stephen's Green which was recommended by our nephew Darren. We crossed the Samuel Beckett Bridge -- it's shaped like an Irish Harp -- into the Docklands and Grand Canal area. The Docklands are no longer slums and warehouses (cf. the EPIC Museum and the Convention Center renewal along the river), instead it's all modern brutalism -- office towers of concrete and glass.

The Little Museum of Dublin really is a little museum. It's a narrow Georgian rowhouse with exhibits on three floors. The first had an exhibit of etchings by James Malton (a Brit) from the Georgian era with biting commentary. The top floor had a U2 exhibit (one of Dublin's more famous exports), a press room and a bit on a famous mayor "Alfie". None of those took much time at all. The best part was a conducted tour of a couple of rooms on the second floor. If you, and we recommend you do, do not skip the conducted tour!

The tour guide was quite entertaining. He came in dressed as an scruffy academic in a jacket with elbow patches, bow tie and glasses. He proceded to welcome us to a 3 hr tour which would start with an hour of his poetry readings -- the first of many jokes. The two rooms we toured are chock a block full of interesting artificats and models. There was a model of the Nelson monument from near the GPO on O'Connel St -- it had been blown up several times by the Republicans and has since replaced by the Millenium Neddle/Spire. Which didn't go up on the Millenium and people wonder "What's the point?". He also engaged the visitors: Who has read Ulysses? Only one had. Do you remember what it was about? No, just that it was long and boring. Then he gave us a 28 word precise of the book and pointed to a copy of the book left open to the last page -- many give up after reading only a few pages. You can say you've read the last page.

Another couple of stories. Does anyone recognize this fellow? Yes, it's Brendan Behan. He's a famous Irish drinker with a writing problem. He was going to Canada because he'd seen an advertisement to "Drink Canada Dry" and thought he'd like to give it a go. He was commissioned by Guinness to write a snappy slogan (no he didn't write "Guinness is good for you") and did so for a case of Guinness a day. Which he proceded to drink through every day for several months. After a while the Guinness folk asked if he had come up with a slogan. Well sure, "Guinness gets you drunk". They didn't use it.

Anyways, the tour guide at the Little Museum was very funny. He had us in stitches (they've bought the building next door to expand, so I guess we'll be the Not So Little Museum of Dublin).

We had a short list of restaurants we were thinking of for dinner in the area and asked his for advice, he confirmed our suggestions and sent us to Fallon & Bryne a short walk away. We had a nice dinner there. If you go, the restaurant is on the second floor -- the ground floor is a gourmet market.

That evening we wandered over to O'Donoghues Bar for some live music. It's just down the road a bit from the Little Museum (on the same street that's the north side of St Stephen's Green). Just inside the door there's a little snug where musicians played Irish music for tips from the audience. We squeezed in with them, and as the evening progressed and more musicians arrived, we were slowly squeezed out. It was one of the better nights of music on our trip to Ireland.

Dublin May 26:
The next day we took a taxi to the Hueston train station where we took a train to Cork. There was no way we were going to hump our luggage around given our arrival experience!

England

Click image for more photos ...

On our way to Europe for Kate's KBS conference we flew through Heathrow airport. There are a couple of reasons: 1) there's a convenient day time flight and 2) we get to visit with an old chum.

Jean, our second mom, who I first met back in 1979 on a biking trip to England, is still living on her own in the nearby town of Woking. Jean is my best friend's mom -- Martin Fry who attended grad school with me.

We rented a car for the day and drove out to see her before flying on to Dublin. We had a lovely lunch at a nearby pub and enjoyed a sunny afternoon in the garden at her home.

Ps. English folk have gardens, not back yards as in Canada. "Yards" is for junk yards. So mind your P's and Q's.