Dingle

After leaving Dublin, I took a train to Mallow, another to Tralee, then a bus out to the Dingle peninsula, which is nearly as far West as you can go and still be in Europe. Dingle itself is a very small town on the coast, and is also known as An Daingean. Technically, since it's in a Gaeltacht, it's supposed to use its Irish name. It's opted not to, however, since the tourist the town relies on would probably just start calling it "the town formerly known as Dingle" anyway.

Dingle has a little aquarium called Ocean World, which is like a baby Monterey Bay Aquarium and includes both native and tropical fish. The tanks and displays are all very nicely done, though there's a severe lack of information anywhere, beyond simply the names of what's in each tank (and even those were incomplete sometimes). The touch pool was interesting, because a lot of the rays, and even a bottom dwelling fish like a flounder or a sole, were all swimming up to the top of the water, almost as if they wanted to be petted. Very convenient, but definitely seemed unusual. There were also some eels that were acting strange. Normally, eels wedge their bodies in between some rocks and just leave their heads out to grab passing fish. In the open ocean tank, though, a green moray eel seemed to have gotten things backwards. It appeared to have its head stuck in a rock, and its entire long body and tail just dangling straight down the outside. Maybe he was new at this, or maybe his head was poking out the other side and he didn't realize he didn't have a whole cave to be hiding in. There was also a leopard moray eel that I actually saw swimming, completely in the open. Again, very unusual, but a swimming leopard moray eel may be one of the most beautiful things in the ocean.

For my dinners in Dingle I ate takeout Indian food on the pier. The place I got it from was called either Sarena or Sareena , depending on whether you believe the sign or the menu. Yummy food, but this place was also interesting for a large sepia picture it had on its wall. It's a photo of the same building 90 years ago, when it had considerably fewer shades of purple on it and didn't serve Indian food. The guy in the picture next to the horse cart was the grandfather of the current landlord, who is now 77 years old.

While somewhat on the subject of food, I'll mention Murphy's ice cream parlor, which had some excellent ice cream with some interesting flavors. The ginger latte was unfortunately much more latte than ginger, but the honey almond cardamon was wonderful.

The center piece of my time in Dingle was my trip around Slea Head Drive, a 30-mile loop around the end of the peninsula with some lovely scenic views of ocean, cliffs and islands. I rented a bike in town and cycled it all, which was a bit of an adventure on narrow, cliff-edge, one-lane roads. Also, it turns out that 30 miles is rather more biking than I'm used to doing in one day, so it left me a little jelly-legged at the end of the 6 hours or so that I was out. But it was a great little tour and much more fun that it would have been in a car, I think.

Aside from scenic views, the other main points of interest around the peninsula were things made of rock. Some of them, like these beehive huts, date back over 2,000 years. The Gallarus Oratory is over 1,000 years old and still waterproof, even without any mortar or anything else besides stone. There are also some good places to see church ruins, and even an old Ogham stone.

One of my favorite spots along the ride was this beautiful little beach. I spied it from a higher lookout point, and decided I should find my way there for my lunch break. Turned out to be non-obvious to find, but an unmarked road leading between two cow pastures (there are lots of both of those in Ireland) got me there in the end. When I got there, I found that a rocky little stream fed into the ocean there and had some lovely grassy areas around it, still in view of the beach and perfect for picnicking. That put one of my favorite environments right next to one of my favorite views and made me very happy.

Relevant Tunes:

• Dingle Bay
• The Dingle Regatta
• The Dingle Polka
• The Rose of Tralee
• The Kerry Man
• The Star of Munster

Home Again, Home Again

After far too long in trains, planes, airports, etc., I have arrived home. The last several days of my trip were good, and will be chronicled here shortly. After I sleep for a while.

Relevant Tunes:

• Farewell to Erin

A Dublin Miscellany

Today was my last day of work on this trip, and I've just recently finished working out (roughly) what I'll be doing for the rest of it. I'm leaving Dublin bright and early tomorrow morning, then spending two nights in Dingle, and two nights in Doolin. Then back in Dublin by Wednesday night, in time for one more swing dance before my flight home Thursday morning. Before I leave Dublin, though, an assortment of things to share....

Getting to my desk on my first day of work at the new office two weeks ago was an interesting process. I needed to get up to the 2nd (=3rd) floor, but the elevators were slow and full of the morning rush of people. So Signor Pezzin led me up on foot: The stairs in the lobby led to a door saying "Ladies WC." Through that, we took the door that wasn't the Ladies WC, but which led down a hallway to a mini-kitchen. Turn left, down a hall, turn left, down a hall, then through a door saying "Gents WC." Find more stairs through there, go up one more flight. Then U-turn to another door and U-turn to my desk. I thought I'd never find my way out on my own.

There are a few sets of "airlock" doors I go through regularly here, two doors with just few feet of space and nothing else between them. The ones at the top of the stairs here in my hotel are relatively airtight, and not latched, so when you open one, it opens the other a little and then drops it closed again. I always imagine a ghost that lives in that tiny little space between the doors, and vacates it for you to pass through, so he's leaving through one door just as you're opening the other. Very polite little ghost, not wanting to frighten anybody.

Some random teenagers on the street the other day told me I look like Gerry Adams, an Irish politician. I disagree.

There's a smoothie shop nearby called Zumo. Last night I got a discount on a smoothie because I pronounced "açaí" correctly, without prompting. The fellow working there proceeded to tell me all sorts of interesting things about açaí, like how you can't grow it anywhere but Brazil and they'll only export juice and pulp. It's also apparently used for lots of things, including treating children with dyslexia, and it fills the role of "the viagra of the amazon." Somewhat along those lines, this place offers "boosts," like Jamba Juice does. It has the usual expected ones, like energy boosts, immune boosts, etc. It also has one specifically for hangovers, as well as "love factors" for women and men. I suppose the latter probably includes açaí.

Apparently, Polish has recently surpassed Chinese as the second most commonly spoken language in Ireland. (Or third? I can't remember if it beat out Irish or not.) I would probably never have guessed either of those two languages for being so high up the list.

So far I have not had my umbrella out even once since I've been in Ireland. I realize this is completely atypical weather and I should not get cocky about it. However, if I make it through one more week like this before I go home, I'm going to consider writing to the newspapers and asking for a medal or something.

On a related note, as I write this, the weather report has just said we were going to have a warm, dry, sunny weekend. With occasional, heavy, thundering showers.

The house cleaning service here at the hotel always leaves all the lights on. It doesn't waste energy because they don't actually come on until I get home and put my key in the slot that turns the circuits on. But still, it means that the first thing I do is going around turning off most of the switches because I don't need everything at once. I could understand this if they, say, needed the extra light for cleaning purposes. But this extends all the way to the little light on the Mirror of Insecurity in the bathroom (the magnifying one, so you can enjoy your blemishes IMAX style). A couple times they've even left the TV on. Sheesh. If it weren't for the fact that they also replenish the tea supply, I'd just leave the "do not disturb" sign out the whole time.

Anyway, that's it for now. Any further updates of note will probably be from California, after I get back.

County Wicklow

Today's trip was a Wild Wicklow tour down through County Wicklow, south of Dublin. Though on the way we drove out to the coast to see Dublin Bay and Dun Laoghaire. We don't exactly have resort quality beaches out here. I only saw one with actual sand, and it didn't even reach the water. Still, I guess you make do with what you have.

From there we passed through Ireland's rich-and-famous area, which is fun if you like being told that people you've heard of (or haven't) live nearby. From one particular vantage point, we could see the houses of both Bono and The Edge (from U2), as well as Enya's castle (!), and the homes of various other people I've forgotten. There was also the place where the former Mexican president lives after running off with a bunch of money, and where the Canadian ambassador owns the most expensive home in the country. More exciting than all the name-dropping on this part of the trip, though, was my window of the bus repeatedly swinging within centimeters of walls and trees as we wound our way along the narrow roads. We stopped for a coffee break at some little shopping center somewhere, too, but that was just dumb, so I'm not going to get into that.

Then we got into County Wicklow, heading up into the Sally Gap between the Dublin Mountains and the Wicklow Mountains. The scenery is perhaps different later in the spring, but right now there's a lot of dark heather, with splotches of yellow gorse, rather than all the green you might expect in Ireland. There were also some large burned areas. Apparently some controlled burns got out of hand yesterday and spread before the fire department could get the fire out. We saw a couple patches still smoking.

The lookout point over Lough Tay had some lovely scenery, though, if you could hold on to the mountain without the wind blowing you off it. This lake has such dark water from all the peat bits floating in it that it's nicknamed the Guinness Lake. Someone even trucked in some sand at one end, to mimic the head on a pint of Guinness. I ventured over to the other side of the road as well, to try to go into the forest, but the trees were so pointed, scratchy, and closely-packed that I literally couldn't get in. Right before we had to leave, though, I found an opening that lead to what would have been a great hike up the mountain. No time for it, unfortunately.

This area of Ireland has been used for filming lots of movies, including Braveheart. The reason a Scottish movie got filmed in Ireland is that a canny Minister of Arts offered Mel Gibson the use of the entire Irish army as extras for the battle scenes, free of charge.

The Glendalough monastery was very similar in concept to Monasterboice, though larger and with some more complete buildings. This afternoon I was more interested in the hike out to the two eponymous lakes. We had about an hour and a half for this, which would have been fine if we just wanted to get out there, see the lakes, and come back. But it turns out that the mountainside there is covered with lovely trails which I probably could have explored and enjoyed for the better part of a day.

Overall, a less ringing endorsement for this tour than the previous one. If I had my druthers, I'd skip most of it and just spend a good long time in Glendalough, hiking around. But still, I enjoyed getting out to see the area a bit.

Relevant tunes:

• The Wicklow Hornpipe
• Sugarloaf Mountain
• Anything by Enya or U2 :-)

The Valley of the Boyne

This was my weekend for day-trips out of Dublin. I don't usually do the whole tour bus thing, but it seemed a handy way to get to a few interesting places without having to get a car and find my own way around. Yesterday's trip was north of Dublin to Brú na Bóinne. (I want to do a limerick rhyming that with "annoyin' ya," but wasn't sufficiently annoyed by anything there.)

Monasterboice was the first brief stop at the beginning of the tour. Some of the largest and best Celtic crosses are there, which is its main claim to fame. Other than that, it's a graveyard, a crumbling abbey wall, and one of the round towers you find around Ireland that were used for hiding from Viking raiders back in the middle ages.

Newgrange was the centerpiece of the day. It's a stone tomb that's 5,200 years old, dating it to before the pyramids. Over 4,000 years ago it fell into disuse, gradually crumbled into the hillside, became overgrown, and was forgotten. Then in the 1700's it was rediscovered and excavated enough to go inside. It was left completely open to the public for 200 years, though, so the rocks now bear various kinds of more modern graffiti as well as the ancient carvings. It wasn't until the last century that it was fully restored and protected.

For the large size of the mound, the interior is actually quite small. You can go inside, but not take photos. A tiny passage way leads into the middle of the mound and opens into a tiny room with three alcoves and a high, domed ceiling. That's it; the rest is solid rock. But on the winter solstice, for 17 minutes at dawn, sunlight will come in through an opening above the entrance, creep down the passage, and fill the entire chamber with light. The chamber currently has electric lights installed that let the guide do a simulation of this, which gets across the concept but not, I expect, the feeling. I was also disappointed that she seemed careful never to let the lights go completely out. Even when turning out the main lights before the simulation, they had just barely faded when the new light came in. I would have liked to have had a few seconds at least to really get the feeling of being completely encased in stone and darkness. But it's a fascinating place to be in, regardless. They're holding a lottery this year to determine who actually gets to be in there at dawn on the solstice.

Our last stop was the Hill of Tara. Since the visitor's center there doesn't open until some time in May, we got a different sort of intro to the area. The proprietor of an antique bookshop squeezed us all in among the shelves, turned out the lights, and gave us a slide show. He had some excellent pictures on cracked and dirty slides, including some of the excavations in the 1950's and of the British Israelites who tore the place up looking for the Ark of the Covenant, all accompanied by dramatic and entertaining narration. Probably more fun that whatever the official visitor's center might have had.

The Hill of Tara itself isn't actually so much to see when you're actually on it, though it's fun to ride the rise and fall in the land like waves. There were also too many people crawling over it to get the proper feel for it, much the way I remember feeling about Glastonbury Tor. But I did go out to see Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny, which is said to roar three times if touched by the true high king of Ireland. I touched it, just in case. A sheep bleated somewhere off in the distance, but I don't think that counts.

I also took a short walk down a little road where none of the other tourists were bothering to go. And so I got to see a little holy well there, with no one else around. It had a gate right on the side of the road, and all it was was a trickle of water coming out the side of the hill, down a pipe, and over the edge of a rock. I liked it because it was just sitting there modestly, doing its own thing and letting everyone else get distracted by the main sights.

Overall, this tour was very worthwhile. It was a nice, efficient way to get around to several of the main sites in this area in one day, filled with history, stories and jokes during the bus rides (props to John "His Grace" Bolton, the driver and guide). It was a Bus Éireann tour, if anybody out there is looking to go on one.

Relevant Tunes:

• The Battle of the Boyne
• The Boyne Water
• The Soul of the Limestone Rock