Ireland: Dublin to Amsterdam to Seattle, er, make that to Minneapolis and then to Seattle (part 2)

1:04 pm (Minneapolis time), somewhere over the Atlantic

No such luck with a long layover in Amsterdam.

We apparently made up some of the time lost on the ground during our flight. We were supposed to arrive at 12:15 and we were on the ground at 1:00. Still, my flight to Seattle was to leave at 1:15. The KLM agent told me they had already booked me onto a replacement flight and sent me to the T4 transfer station.

When I got there, I had to wait for a couple people, and then the agent said if I ran I would still make my Seattle flight, but the gate was… yes, you guessed it, the further one from where we were. I would have to cover 2 blocks of terminal in 8 minutes, with two carry-ons. Like Hell. (The last time I tried that, for a redeye flight to Chicago a year ago, 7 of us made it – only because the flight was 15 minutes late leaving – but they had given away all but 3 of the seats, and two solo travelers snapped up two of them, leaving me and Rusty and a family of three with no solution.) So I walked as fast as I could manage, and an agent met me about 100 feet from the gate saying she had just turned away another traveller. Could I have made it if I had actually ran? Maybe, but I think karma would have said “No” and left me just a sweaty upset mess.

So she sent me back to the T6 transfer station. Unlike the T4 one, this one had people in line. Lots of people. It took me just under two hours to get through the line (and by then, the number of people in the line had almost doubled; poor people in the line at that point!). At which point they couldn’t find me in the system. They eventually did: I had been rebooked after all, as the original agent said, on a flight to Minneapolis and then to Seattle. Which was scheduled to leave… wait for it… 2 hours 10 minutes after my original one. Also known as “in about 10 minutes”. Also known as “if you run, you can make it.” Also know as… you guessed it, back to the same gate, the farthest one away! Argh!

So I hustled (a little running, but not much) back to gate E22, and got on. The flight was still boarding 10 minutes after it was supposed to take off. I think a bunch of people got shuttled onto it late like me. But at least I’m on the flight. Unfortunately, that also means another layover in Minneapolis before the next Seattle flight. Best guess is as much as 4 hours. I was originally supposed to be back in Seattle at 2:35 pm, now it’s going to be close to 11:30 pm.

So much for any hopes of either a pleasant Sunday or staving of reverse jetlag.

Watched Chicken Little on the flight so far. Useless waste of an animated film, almost nothing to recommend it. Will probably watch Cars and Juno, too, unless I can sleep some.

The baby on the Amsterdam flight shut up once we were finally in the air, and then started up again after we landed. This flight has one of the same sort: wailing until we were in the air, fortunately sleeping now.

Ireland: Dublin to Amsterdam to Seattle, er, make that to Minneapolis and then to Seattle (part 1)

11:09 am (Dublin time), somewhere over England

Boy, it doesn’t take but one experience to show you how much airports suck.

Make that how much American airports suck.

With a 9:40 am flight to Amsterdam, I caught the 7:55 bus to the airport from the City Centre. I know, that’s less that a two hour window, and in the States they always recommend a minimum two hours, three if you’re flying internationally. (Which is utter bullshit, of course. The only time you need two hours is if you’re flying a hub airline before 8:00 am on a business day. And I’ve not seen any reason to need an hour beyond that for international flights, since there’s nothing extra you usually need to do.)

I would guess (based on the number of terminals and the number of posted flights for a Sunday morning) that Dublin’s airport is 1/2 to 2/3 the size of Seattle, with of course vastly more traffic going International. At the Dublin airport, they don’t have separate ticket counters for checking in for each airline, which in the States leaves some deserted and some utterly mobbed. Instead, in Dublin they have check-in areas allocating different departing flights to different areas. Can you imagine: load balancing! Efficiency! And thus my wait for a check-in machine: zero people. My wait for checking my bags: zero people. My wait to have the security person check my boarding pass and passport: two people. My wait to go through security: zero people. (And they didn’t make me remove my shoes, either.)

In other words, the absolute best check in and security experience you can imagine in today’s environment. Less than 10 minutes from arriving at the check-in area to being through security, at 8:20 am.

On the other had, Aer Lingus still sucks. Same lousy legroom, same hawking of perfume and charging for beverages. But let’s add in that the seats in front of the exit rows don’t recline, so I’m having to turn sideways to uncomfortably type this. And the various regular announcements are both spoken in English but from a tape in Irish, and the speaker is right over my head, so I have to plug my ears every time an Irish announcement comes on, or go deaf.

But that’s not the worst of it. There’s some sort of a threatened Aer Lingus strike in the air, and that apparently has take the effect of either a slowdown or a sick out for the baggage handlers. Which means we boarded on time… and sat on the tarmack. 40 minutes after we were scheduled to take off, they finally fired up the engines… and we sat for another 25 minutes before we finally left.

(And yes, there was the requisite crying baby, wailing the entire time.)

You’ll recall that coming through Amsterdam, we had a two hour scheduled layover than turned into five hours. Going back (me today, Mom and Grandma on Tuesday), we’re only scheduled for a one hour layover.

I’ll pause to let you do the math…

Yup. My flight to Amsterdam is now scheduled to arrive after my connection home departs. (Even at the 40 minute late mark, I doubt they could have transferred my luggage in time.) Which leaves me at a loss for how long my delay will be in Amsterdam; depends on how often Northwest and KLM leave for Seattle (not sure which I’m taking back; check-in in terminal said KLM – Royal Dutch Airlines – but boarding pass says Northwest, which we flew to Amsterdam last week; they are partners, obviously).

Mom did buy Trip Insurance, so that will be my first thing to check when I get there. I think it doesn’t kick in until there’s a 6 hour delay or some such, though. (And whether it gets me anything, or just reimburses here, I don’t know.)

The cynical yet hopeful side of me says “Maybe they’ll bump me by 12 or 24 hours, and I’ll have to (get to) go into Amsterdam for a period of time, maybe even having them put me up for the night.” Damn, I’d hate that.

I’m reminded that the guys I was originally in the row with on the flight to Amsterdam last week expressed that they couldn’t imagine having to get on another flight after the long one to Seattle, implying too much stress and annoyance to handle. I think I get what they meant, now.

Ireland: Dublin (part 4)

2:55 am, Dublin (at the hotel)

Next paragraph is a sex one again. Read or skip at your leisure.

Well, I never made it out to the pubs. I got “ordered in” via Manhunt, and went out to the apartment of a couple locals. A little leather hood, a little restraints, a little spanking, and little fucking, a little getting my dick sucked by an additional guy who was there, and little (but not enough!) ass play. I had been thinking about going to the local sauna (bath house), the Boilerhouse, but back to the hotel after 2:00, that’s not going to happen. (And their cover is steep, anyway, so I’ll just save some bucks, er, Euros.) Wish the scene had lasted longer, but I can’t complain.

I noticed that some of the crossing lights on O’Connell count down the seconds until the signal turns green for you, as opposed to the stateside method some use of counting down how much time is left. I suppose that has its value, in getting people to wait a few more seconds rather than stepping out into traffic because they’re in a hurry.

There’s a soap store just around the corner on Henry Street that is truly putrid smelling. It’s some sort of a hand-made cosmetics place, but there is an odor from it which wafts down onto O’Connell, even at 2:30 am, hours after closing. It smells like a huge vat of Palmolive; totally turns my stomach.

My goal for the evening is to stay up later tonight/this morning, and only get a few hours sleep. That will prompt me to sleep early on the flight back, and hopefully get back closer to my typical weekend schedule (waking up late morning) to ease myself back through the jetlag faster. We’ll see if it works.

I have to catch a bus to the airport at about 7:30 am tomorrow, for a 9:50 flight to Amsterdam. Then it’s a 1 hour layover there (cross fingers!) and back to Seattle, in at 2:35 in the afternoon. I’ll have to take the bus back home, but that’s fine. (If it isn’t raining, of course. Weather report doesn’t predict that for Seattle right now.)

Ireland: Dublin (part 3)

7:17 pm, Dublin (at the hotel)

The Irish Stew was mediocre – underseasoned and soupy – but the side salad, a mix of green salad and slaw, was pretty good. And the bread & butter pudding with hot custard was quite yummy.

I’ve taken over 120 video snippets so far on the trip, amounting to 20 MB of space, somewhere around 90 minutes of video, I suspect, ranging from 3-4 seconds up to 8 minutes. I’m going to be editing this stuff forever! (Actually, I’ll try to do minimal editing, just chopping useless seconds from the start and end. I’ll stitch a bunch of the short pieces together into longer bits, with interstitial headings, probably ending up mostly 30 second to 2 minutes each, which will make for better YouTube viewing and will keep me from embedding 100 videos in my blog.)

Ireland: Dublin (part 2)

5:48 pm, Dublin (at the hotel)

It took me a while to find the Archaeolgical wing of the museum, down on Kildare Street. I had to wander around the Trinity College area a while, before I found it with the National Library and Leinster House (where Parliament and the Irish Senate meet). Since it faces the square of Leinster House and that square is all fenced in for security, the museum gets short shrift; you can’t see much of its front.

I did get to pass by the statue of Molly Malone, the fishmonger (or perhaps prostitute) from the song of the same name (also know as “Cockles and Mussels”), the unofficial anthem of Dublin.

I only got to see the museum for about 30 minutes, so I stayed on the first floor, with the prehistoric exhibits, including the Bog Men (people ritually murdered and buried in the peat bogs, preserved for hundreds and thousands of years), the Hill of Tara, and a artifacts like cauldrons and gold work. I was especially impressed by the torcs, which I had always assumed were fairly thick stretched bars of gold, but many of them were very fine spirals of gold instead, created by making a three- or four-flanged ingot, heating it, and twisting it while stretching it.

My last trip to Europe, some photography was doable in museums, so long as it was flashless. Apparently absolutely none is allowed in the National Museum of Ireland, though, as I got reprimanded for using my non-lit digital video camera. Oh well, I got a couple bits of video today from in the museums, but I didn’t try to “cheat” after the reprimand.

Dinner soon. Flanagan’s next to the hotel serves Irish Stew, and I haven’t had that all week, so it’s time. And then a nap before going out, maybe.

Ireland: Dublin (part 1)

2:28 pm, Dublin (at the hotel)

Made eyes at a couple bearish types at Pantibar and The George last night, but nothing beyond that.  Came back to the hotel around 1:30.  (Pantibar is named for an MTF transsexual performer, and I guess owner of the bar, Panti.  Part of the decor is red women’s and men’s underwear as light diffusers over the lampshades.)

My hotel room is a top floor garret room, with a single bed tucked into the corner.  A pretty lousy bed, truth be told: thin useless pillow, and a mattress that you can feel all the springs in.  The bathroom isn’t too bad, though, and there’s wireless, and ultimately, it’s a room in the City Centre area at not too expensive a price.

The view out my tiny window pretty much just shows the top floor of the building across the street, although I can also catch a view of the Spire.  The 120-meter tall Dublin Spire was erected in early 2003 as a replacement for the 138-foot Nelson’s Pillar, which had been blown up by the IRA in 1966 (possibly to commemorate the Easter Uprising of 1916).  It is a silver spike narrowing from about 10 feet at the base to 6 inches at the top.  The top several feet has white LED lights at night.

After breakfast, I took the tram back to Collins Barracks and visited the Decorative Arts wing of the National Museum of Ireland.  They have on display a reconstruction of a Viking longboat originally built in the Dublin area around 1042 and sunk (along with several other boats) in a Danish fjord some 50 years later.  The boat was reconstructed using period tools and techniques, taking 44,000 man hours to complete, and then it was sailed back to Dublin by a crew of 65, with stops at several locations along the way in Denmark and Norway.

The museum also has a display about the Easter Uprising of 1916, which led to Irish independence 6 or 7 years later.  Via other displays at the museum, it’s clear that such uprisings occurred every 20-40 years, going back into the 1700s and before.  Not that this tells modern American audiences anything about what to expect when occupying Iraq, oh, no.  (Basically, the local always want an occupying force out, and every generation will fight to get rid of the oppressors.)

Other displays include a look at Irish soldiers around the world, going back to 1550.  Much of it centers on Irish brigades in World Wars I and II, of course, but there are large parts about the Irish during English colonial days, the “Wild Geese” Irish expats serving in continental European armies in the 19th century, and the Irish brigades in the Boer War, the Spanish Civil War, and even the American Civil War (mostly on the side of the Union, but there was an Irish regiment out of Tennessee fighting for the South).  Interestingly, one ploy to strive for freedom from British rule in the 1860s was an Irish invasion of Canada (!) through Niagara, New York; the Irish beat the Canadian militia at the Battle of Ridgeway, but fell back to the States on rumor of British troops arriving.  Here is more info that you want about the event.

Other exhbits that I saw included Irish silverwork, Irish coins, and a some miscellany from the general collections, including a fabulous dress done by Charles Worth, founder of the first house of couture in Paris.  (I have a friend who studied couture in Paris a few years ago.)

Coming back, I wandered through the large pedestrian shopping mall that runs from Jervis to O’Connell, to the Spire.  Bought some souvenirs: three t-shirts, a mug and a shot glass, and some shortbread and chocolates; some for me, some for others.
I opted to not go to the Guinness Storehouse, when I found out that the tour was €14.  Half that would have been fine, but $20 was too steep for me.  I’ll probably be sorry later, and have to come back to Dublin someday. 

Shortly, I’m going to head out to the Archeological wing of the National Museum, on the south side of the Liffey.

Ireland: Killarney to Mallow to Dublin, and in Dublin (part 3)

10:11 pm, Dublin (at the hotel)

Wandered down to the Liffey and hit Forbidden Planet.  Came back with a dozen miscellaneous back issue from their overstock bin at 25 cents each, and a copy of Justice League Legends, reprinting part of “The Lightning Saga” and a couple issues of Justice, including a new cover for my anal-retentive Legion collection.

If you don’t want to know details of my sexual escapades, just skip the next paragraph.

I hooked up with a Dublin guy early in the evening via Manhunt. (He’s actually from “the north”; don’t know if that means Belfast/Northern Ireland or not.) Ended up as and interesting encounter: he asked me to put on some of my leather – I only brought a vest and some boots, to keep the weight down – and that plus a nice fat dick made him want me to fuck him.  No problem. Except that he’d never been fucked before (and hadn’t done much fucking himself, I gather; I guess he was mostly an oral guy). Fat dick + cherry ass = probably quite he memorable time for him.  (Moreso because of the piercing. I only have the 6-gauge curved barbell in, so nothing nearly so dramatic as if the 2-gauge ring were in, but still, multiple new sensations for him!) Did he like it? Not sure; he had some definite pain, and he didn’t know what he should be feeling (and I could barely tell him, it’s been 18 years since I was in that place), but he stuck with it like a trooper and eventually decided he just needed to jam himself on down. (First time I’ve deflowered a guy, to my knowledge. He took it easier than some have, though!)

After that, I headed back into Temple Bar – past the actual Temple Bar, in fact and had dinner at a Chinese fast food place (duck in plum sauce) and then a Nutella and ice cream crepe and coffee for dessert.  On the way back, stopped in the Temple Bar Trading Co. shop, or the side that was open, which was all Guinness stuff.  Mugs, chocolates, refrigerator magnets, sure.  Soccer balls, rugby balls, t-shirt, okay.  Soft-boiled egg cups? Slippers?  Underwear?  Oy! (Or is that “Oi!”?)

My mother observed that she wasn’t picking up the Irish accent as readily as she has with other accents on past trips.  Me either, and that surprised me at first, although I’ve noticed it creeping in more the last couple days.  I suspect it’s because we’ve had three of us to reinforce each other’s American speech modes. Now that I’m on my own, I’ll be picking it up much faster, I’m sure.

I’ll be heading out to the pubs in a bit.

Ireland: Killarney to Mallow to Dublin, and in Dublin (part 2)

2:58 pm, Dublin (at a hotel)

We arrived in Dublin a bit early, I think. I pulled my suitcase out into the terminal, got a chicken, cheese, and stuffing panini, and then hopped on the tram for a €1.50 ride to Abbey Street, less than two blocks from my hotel.  Makes me look forward to when our light rail in Seattle will be done, next year.  I’ll be able to catch a bus less than a block from the house, switch to the tram after about a 5 minute ride, and then take a 20 minute ride right to the airport. It will take a bit longer (and take more timing) than just getting in the car, but it will generally be quite convenient.

I’m going to go out for a bit and wander O’Connell Street, and probably down to Forbidden Planet. I expect to hit both Guinness Storehouse and the National Museum (for the Viking exhibit) tomorrow.

Ireland: Killarney to Mallow to Dublin, and in Dublin (part 1)

12:25 pm, Killarney to Dublin (on the train)

Yesterday’s trip took us toward Cork, to Blarney Castle (and the Blarney Stone), probably the most famous tourist attraction in Ireland.  We drove toward Cork, then took the scenic route on the north side of Inishcarra reservoir, then into Blarney, where we had lunch.

Blarney Castle has large grounds, the castle ruins, a “rock close” (a garden path through some large boulders), and a manor house built a couple hundred years ago.  There are several stops and viewpoints around the grounds, explaining various history bits, including a cave with alleged tunnels to Cork, Kerry, and the lake; the dungeon, likely castle well, and kennel; the lake, where valuable gold plate was said to be tossed to keep it from the hands of the British (the lake was drained in the 1800s, but no sign of the plate was ever found); the lookout tower, and so forth.

Perhaps the most striking aspect was how small the castle actually was. A basement and an entry room; rooms for the Earl, his daughters, and the priest; a “family room”; a banquet hall; a kitchen no larger than my own; and a couple garderobes (privies).  That’s it.  Presumably any guards and staff were housed outside the castle, but the image of one housing dozens of people inside is completely blown away.

Being there in February, the manor house was closed to tours, the rock close was technically closed as they were building a new boardwalk for it, but by going up the exit steps, I was able to get in and see all I wanted to.  In truth, there probably should have been a reduced entry free, since perhaps 1/3 of the site was unavailable. On the other hand, one of the guidebooks showed the line to kiss the Blarney Stone in spring or summer, with people lined up solid all around the battlements and around the banquet hall below. In contrast, while I was in the castle proper, there were maybe a dozen others in there as well, such that I could go to any part and linger or backtrack as desired.  And since Mom and Grandma couldn’t negotiate much in terms of steps well, and were getting a bit worn down by all the driving, I don’t think we would have done much more there if it were available.

And yes, I did kiss the Blarney Stone.  With that added gift of eloquence, now you’ll never get me to shut up.

We returned via Mallow and Rathmore, then stopped at the Lidl (closer to a Fred Meyer, perhaps, than anything else in the Northwest; grocery store plus some other stuff) to get the making for dinner. I made pork chops, quiche lorraine (okay, baked a pre-made one of those), and beets, plus strawberry trifle cups for dessert.

Friday morning came a bit earlier, as I made oatmeal and scrambled eggs with bacon (ham) and bits of pork chops I had salvaged the night before, pre-cooking. And then a scramble (heh) to the train. The ticket to Dublin was €33 ($50, about the same as a ticket from Portland to Vancouver BC, maybe), purchased from the Irish Rail website; purchased at the station, it would have been €62!

The more I’ve travelled in recent years, the bigger a fan I’ve become of using public transportation — the El in Chicago, busses and subway in New York — but cross-country rail is a whole different level. But it’s been an enjoyable trip — except for the persistent rattle in something above the window next to me.  The cars are clean and modern, with little tables and even a food service cart coming through the aisle. (It’s also a faster trip than by car, I think, with only two stop between Mallow and Dublin.) Miles and miles of green Irish countryside going by, nothing much to see.

We should be in Dublin in 30-40 minutes, I think, and then I’ll catch a cab or bus to Lynam’s hotel on O’Connell Street, where I’ll be for the next couple nights. I’m going to try to start shifting my schedule back around the clock, staying up late tonight, sleeping late tomorrow, and staying up late and probably sleeping very little on Saturday night, so that I’ll knock out on the plane to Amsterdam and then back to Seattle. I’m scheduled back in Seattle at 2:30 pm. The aim being, then to wake up the equivalent of late morning on Sunday (like I usually would) and being back to something close to my usual weekend schedule, minimizing the jetlag coming back. We’ll see.

I’ve got the starts of a couple play sessions for this evening set up already, although how well they’ll play through remains to be seen.  (As is always the case with such.)  Being “fresh meat” in Dublin will probably help boost them to working, of course.  First one will likely be 6:30 pm or so.  A lot will depend on Internet access at the hotel or close by.

Ireland: Killarney, Blarney Castle, and Mallow

9:34 pm, Killarney (upstairs at the cottage)

An unusual thing I’ve noticed here in Ireland is that hot air hand dryers are everywhere in toilets.  I have only seen a single paper towel dispenser all week. In part, I suppose that this is a marker of how much forest (and thus paper products) we have in the States, vs. how little they have in Ireland.  But I also wonder if hot air hand dryers are more “green” (as they have always claimed to be).  There would be a larger overhead in the creation of each dryer vs. that of a paper towel dispenser, and there are ongoing electricity costs and higher regular maintenance costs.  But on the other hand, day to day usage is just electricity.  No need to stock and load paper towels, no need to truck in paper towels, no need to do everything required to create paper towels, and no need to dispose of paper towels (and I bet relatively little are recycled).  When you think about it, there are a lot of costs involved in the day-to-day “maintenance” of the towel dispenser.

Oops, out of time to write of today’s trip now, will have to do that first thing on Friday.

Ireland: Killarney, the Ring of Kerry, and the Gap of Dunloe

7:19 pm, Killarney (upstairs at the cottage)

The weather was bright and warm today (it’s supposed to rain again tomorrow), so we drove the Ring of Kerry today.  We headed up to Kilorglin, then along the north edge of the Iveragh Peninsula, along the south side of Dingle Bay which had been so nasty a couple days ago but was now very calm.

The Ring of Kerry is quite definitely the big tourist road in the southwest region.  While much of the road is but two narrow lanes, it would still be navigable by a tour bus, which much of the Dingle and Beara peninsulas were not.  We only saw one tour bus all day, though (February is well outside the season); that probably made for a nicer trip, with far less traffic.  There were several patches of road construction along the way, including major work in Waterville and Castlecove; getting ready for the season, no doubt.

We stopped for ice cream in Castlecove (and I also bought a 2 CD set of Merles Haggard songs there), and then lunch in Kenmare, our third trip through that very nice little town.  We also shopped at the Kerry Wool Market shop there.  I bought a sweater and a ski cap; a bit expensive at €90 ($135), but they are wool and the only major souvenirs of the trip I’ll have.  (I also bought a €10 made-in-China-from-acrylic-yarn Ireland scarf in Dublin on Saturday.)

Rather than take the route back from Kenmare we’ve done twice, or back through the National Park, we went down into Black Valley and through the Gap of Dunloe.  Single-lane track the entire way (about 20 km), past sheep and farmhouses and looming upthrusts of rock; it was as close to a natural rollercoaster as you’ll find.  This time, I had the video camera with me and I recorded several snippets of driving on the dashboard of the car, including a full 8 minutes of harrowing drive through the Gap of Dunloe.  (I figure if I play it double time and add an Irish jig soundtrack, I’ve got the potential for a really cool and popular viral video on YouTube!  Remember that you saw it here first!)

We’ll be going into Killarney to the Danny Mann again shortly, so I can have my nightly Guinness and e-mail.  One of the bartenders is starting to recognize me!  (I was there until closing last night.)

After coming home from the pub each night, I’ve been watching DVDs I brought with me. So far finished Pretty Woman, watched Season 1 Episode 2 of Stargate: Atlantis, and two episodes of Season 1 of Will & Grace.  Maybe some Queer As Folk Season 4 tonight?

Finished Before Dishonor today.  Peter David is a great writer of Star Trek novels, tying disparate bits of continuity together into a superb whole, and doing it with dialogue that always seems note-perfect. (He does Worf to a “T”.)  Although I’ve watched little Star Trek since the very start of Voyager, and thus haven’t seen either of the big Borg episodes referenced in this book, nor several of the lesser episode references – and didn’t know many of the secondary characters, at least one of whom is from an entire series of Star Trek novels that he has done – I never felt like I was floundering, drowning in a sea of unknowns.  (It was also a pleasure to see several of his creations from when he wrote the comics for DC Comics who are based on rec.arts.comics denizens from the time show up here: Admiral Galloway and the TNG-era descendants of TOS-era security personnel Meyers and Boyajian make cameo appearances.)  And of course, when he made the pivotal reference to a Kirk-era TV show enemy, two words was all I needed to have a “Holy crap!” moment.  Connecting with your reader to do that with just two words, that’s good writing.

We’ll be going to Blarney Castle tomorrow – probably taking the north side of Inishcarra Reservoir and avoiding going into Cork at all – and then north to Mallow and back to Killarney.  Only about 10 miles is road we’ve been on before; much of should be pretty good road, except maybe the part along the reservoir.  It’s supposed to be rainy all day tomorrow, based on last night’s weather widget forecast.

Ireland: Killarney and the Beara Peninsula

6:20 pm, Killarney (upstairs in the cottage)

The weather was nicer today, and we headed to the Beara Peninsula, south of Killarney and Kenmare.  First we backtracked to Kenmare by the route we had taken back from there before, then drove the north side of Beara Peninsula along the Kenmare River as it widened out to the sea.

Unfortunately, I left my video camera at the cottage by accident, so no videos today.  Sigh.

The color of the waters were beautiful – green and a rich medium blue – and the landscape was fantastic, with limestone everywhere.  (And sheep, plenty of sheep.)  We stopped several times to view the water landscapes, plus at a ruined house that must have dated back 200 years and a similarly aged ruined church (Kilcatherine, I think) in the midst of gravestones, even with gravestones in the church itself.  There were a myriad of small featureless stones in amidst the ones from the past century which looked likely to be headstones from decades and maybe even centuries ago, when easily-weathering limestone is all that could be used.

A long portion of the road was again single lane, for several miles, although it never felt particularly dangerous due to there being sheep pastures and houses frequently along the way.

After a late lunch in Castletownbere, we went a little further out to the local castle, the ruins of Dunboy Castle (destroyed in 1602 because O’Sullivan Bere was in rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I) and the being-massively-renovated Puxley Castle (burned in 1920 by the IRA, now being restored into the Dunboy Castle Hotel).  The signage there answered one of our question about why people had settled out on the near-barren, windswept coasts: because the Normans forced them from their ancestral homelands and this was what was left.  The O’Sullivan clan had been forced to this area; we had seen that name abundant on gravestones earlier in the day.

We drove back on the south side of the peninsula to Glengarriff, and then over Caha Pass and through Turner’s Rock Tunnel, a series of one long and four small rough-hewn tunnels carved through the mountain rock.  We stopped briefly at the Bonane Heritage Site, where there were recreations of various Bronze Age-style sites, but we would have had to walk a 3 km uphill trail, so we stuck with just viewing a crannog (hut in the middle of a pond) and a short hike up to a viewpoint to see the valley spread out below us.

Finished The Ringworld Throne last night, and as I expected, it didn’t have as good an ending as I wanted. A big part was the character names; previous books had two or three Ringworld characters with odd names (Harloprillar, etc.), but this one had a dozen or more, making them difficult to track.  There were also large chunks of story in the last 50 pages which were either viewed by the characters rather than involving them directly, or which were related second-hand.  I got the feeling that Niven had more story than he could fit in, and ended up summarizing chunks to move things along instead of them maybe dragging.

Ireland: Killarney, Tralee, and the Dingle Peninsula (part 2)

11:45 pm, Killarney (at the kitchen table)

It was very windy and rainy all day.  The most dramatic part of the day’s trip was the drive over Connor Pass, down into Dingle.  Very rocky, and only one lane for a couple miles, which included a very tight squeeze past a van coming down in the other direction; now I know the meaning of “wide spot in the road”!  Probably a good thing that there was no visibility off the side of the road due to major fog/clouds, so we couldn’t see what were avoiding falling off into.

We stopped in Dingle for gas and snacks, deciding not to go out on the loop at the tip of the peninsula, figuring that it was so icky, we wouldn’t really enjoy it.  On the way back, we stopped near Inch, where the wind was whipping Dingle Bay (right off the Atlantic) into a frenzy.  We tried to have lunch in Castlemaine, but the pub advertising “Good Food Served Daily” apparently had a different meaning of “Daily” in mind than we did.  We ended up with Fish & Chips at an Irish fast food chain joint called Micko’s in Kilorglin; I also had “curry fries”, fries with a glop of curry gravy on them.  (Pretty good, actually.  Not that far from poutine, I’m sure.)

(“Kil” – “Cill” in the Irish – means “church”.  Nothing to do with a battle site or anything like that.)

I have a couple rules when traveling:

• You can eat at any restaurant, even the lowliest dive or chain restaurant, but you can’t eat at any one (or any chain) twice.
• And you can’t eat at any place that you could eat at when at home.

So no Burger King or Subway, but White Castle and Long John Silver’s (or Micko’s) are fine if you’re from the Northwest.  I make an exception for “necessity foods” like coffee – Starbucks is fine anywhere (although if there a chain like Caribou, I frequent it instead of Starbucks when in Chicago and DC).  I also sometimes make an exception for brunch vs. dinner (in places where there are not a lot of breakfast options), since the meals tend to be so different.

Almost nothing was open in Killarney at 8:30 on a Monday night, and we didn’t want anything horribly fancy.  We ended up at a local Chinese place.  I can’t get Mom and Grandma to do Indian (which is why I went ahead and had the Chicken Curry for lunch yesterday and the Curry Fries today).  At the supermarket, I noticed Uncle Ben’s (apparently the same brand as in the States) has Curry and Korma sauces here.  I wonder if I can get those in Washington?

Other food experiments today were an apple soda called Cidona (not worth trying again) and a Moro bar, chocolate around caramel around a chocolate and crunch (malt?) center (pretty good).

Finally got my e-mail program set up to send and receive.  Good thing, since there were 90 items with the work e-mail on Thursday-Sunday, and 280+ on one work-related list I’m on that I’ll have to wade through in big ass chunks.  I also started posting these blog entries, with retro timestamps to echo when they were written, not when they were uploaded.

Checked out just what “black pudding” is via Wikipedia (blood sausage; blood plus fillers like oatmeal).  I had it a couple days ago and ate it (because one must try things like that when travelling, right?); it was okay, but nothing I’d write home about.  (Oops, too late!)  I also looked up “craic”, a term I’ve seen used by Irish boys on a couple cruise sites.  It’s nothing kinky, seems to mean roughly “fun”  – “I’m a young, craic guy” – and comes from the same root as “crack”, a term we rarely use that way in English any more.

Tomorrow will probably be the Beara Peninsula, I think, or maybe Blarney Castle and other areas near Cork, although my mother has no interest in actually going into Cork or other cities.  If the weather is clear, we might do the Ring of Kerry rather than waiting for later in the week, lest it rain again.

Ireland: Killarney, Tralee, and the Dingle Peninsula (part 1)

10:40 am, Killarney (at the kitchen table)

Went to the Internet café last night, late, for just 35 minutes.  Barely made a dent in my accumulated e-mail, but made sure the Rain Country folk knew I was alive, and replied to a couple work items.  Then went to the Danny Mann pub to use their wireless, and got through a bunch more e-mail.    Should haven set up the e-mail program while there to just download all my e-mail, to take care of offline, but didn’t think to.  Tried to update QuickTime on the computer, but failed to get a good enough connection.  Looks like I need an XVid codec to view the videos I took on this computer, but the one out there for the Mac won’t run on a G3, so I’m out of luck; I can store them, but not view them except on the little Flip camera.  I’ll have to wait until I get home to do anything more with them.

We’re going north to Tralee and then out on the Dingle Peninsula today, about another 120 miles of driving, it looks like.  No idea what the roads will be like, of course, and thus how fast the trip will be.  It’s also windy and rainy, so it may be a slow trip.

Looks like I’ll finally finish Larry Niven’s The Ringworld Throne today (I actually finished it on Tuesday).  I’ve only been working at it in spurts (when I travel) for a year and some.  Not as good as the previous two novels in the series; doubt I’ll get the fourth one.  I think the plot is scattered; the parts with the vampire slayers and the parts with Louis and Hindmost and company are only sort of intersecting, and there are too many pieces missing from the latter plotline for me to do more than stumble along.  Maybe everything will come together in the final 40-50 pages, but I’m not confident that it will be a satisfying conclusion.  And then I can get back to the second half of Peter David’s latest Star Trek novel, Before Dishonor, also lain fallow for a couple months.

Ireland: Killarney and Kenmare

6:40 pm, Killarney (at the kitchen table)

Today, we drove down to Kenmare, through the Killarney National Park.  We stopped at Lough Leane and walked up to the Torc Waterfall, then travelled further along.  The roads were incredibly narrow and winding, and the speed markings were as high as 100 km/h (60 mph), absolutely ridiculous for those roads; 40 km/h (25 mph) would have been more appropriate.  Later on, we stopped at Ladies View, named for the reaction that Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting had when viewing the Lakes of Killarney from that spot.

Kenmare was a nice little town.  We had lunch and stopped into a linen and lace shop and into two wool shops.  Kenmare is on the Ring of Kerry drive, so we’ll go through there again later in the week.

Driving back, we took what looked on the map to be a lesser road, but we knew it couldn’t be any worse than what we had been on.  Indeed, it was technically longer (length-wise) than the N7 through the park, but only took us half the time due to much easier road.

We stopped at the grocery store again for snacks for tonight and a few other things.  Included in this purchase: Nutella, and honeycomb ice cream.  Never had them before.  (Nutella is chocolate-flavored hazelnut butter, next to the peanut butter; not nearly as flexible as peanut butter due to the cocoa in it.  Honeycomb ice cream is honey flavored with crunchy bits of toffee or seafoam or some such.  Yummy.)

Going to definitely get into town to the Internet café tonight.

Ireland: Dublin, and Dublin to Killarney (part 3)

11:46 pm, Killarney (same location)

Coming back after dinner later, Mom missed the final turn to our cottage.  It was dark.  But she would miss it again at dusk on Sunday, too.  Turns out she was counting the speedbumps rather than the streets, and was remembering the original count from Saturday night.

Had quite good fish & chips for dinner, at a pub which eventually had traditional Irish music playing, after the France v. England Six Nations rugby match.  Watching that – I’ve never seen rugby before, and I still can’t figure out what prompts a new throw of the ball (a “scrum”?) – I can sure see why rugby is popular in the gay community these days:

• It’s a drinking game.  Every one of the British players (not so much the Frogs) looked like he’d be downing a pitcher of Guinness or Foster’s or something more British after the match.
  
• It’s hyper-masculine.  It’s like “tackle soccer” or “football without the rest break after every 30 seconds of play”.  Yes, Virginia, gay guys do fetishize extreme masculinity.  (Well, natural masculinity, as opposed to fake shit like pro wrestling.)
  
• It’s off the radar in America.  Gay guys have to be either bleeding edge or at least sharply non-mainstream, at least until the mainstream catches on.  Doesn’t matter if that’s facial hair, showtunes, or sports; rugby is so much easier to embrace when Joe Average Straight Guy has at best a passing awareness of it.
  
• Beefy boys in shorts and sweaty shirts tackling each other en masse, pulling at each other, unobtrusively grabbing who knows what bits of flesh along the way.  Good lord, it’s almost an orgy!  Who needs the bathhouse?
  
• September 11.  Rugby got a huge boost in the gay community due to Mark Bingham’s involvement in stopping the 4th plane on 9/11.  A genuine gay hero makes rugby a gay sport.
  

After the game was over, but before Mom was ready to leave the music (we had to eventually in order to get to the SuperValu before it closed), I went a-wandering.  Hoped to find an Internet café, but both I found closed at 10:00 (one had already locked up at 9:45 when I got there, grr), so I haven’t checked my e-mail yet and told anyone I’m actually here and intact.  Found a music store and bought some cheap CD reissues (4 for the price of 3 at €3.99 each): Pam Tillis, Dolly Parton, Mickey Gilley, and Charlie Rich.

Don’t know what we’re doing tomorrow.  Maybe driving the Ring of Kerry (I assume that’s some long route around the county) or going to the Dingle Peninsula; I think I read that there are some archeological ruins up there.  If not tomorrow, then later in the week.

Should find the train station tomorrow and get my ticket for Friday morning.

Ireland: Dublin, and Dublin to Killarney (part 2)

7:44 pm, Killarney (upstairs in a cottage at Old Killarney Village)

We took the City Tour in the late morning, on one of a fleet of “hop on, hop off” double-decker busses.  We got on at Parliament House/Trinity College, then off at Merrion Square, St. Stephen’s Green, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but then rode the rest of the way back to O’Connell Street.  I’ll probably come back to the Guinness Storehouse tour next weekend.  Had luck at the Cafe Royale at a Best Western on O’Connell Street, sitting under the TV showing the Birmingham v. Arsenal soccer match.  Every pub around was getting packed full for the Six Nations rugby match of Ireland v. Scotland, held there in Dublin that afternoon.  So many Scots boys in kilts, everywhere!  (Looking forward to Utilikilt weather in Seattle again!)

We bussed back to the B&B to pick up the car, then drove from Dublin, through Limerick (rather, just to the south of Limerick), and then to Killarney.  Nothing special about the drive itself, although large portions were just one lane in each direction.  Mom’s driving was better, probably because she got used to the car.

It got dark about 20 minutes before we got to Killarney.  The place we’re staying is outside Killarney, so we missed the turn off and went all the way to the town center, then backtracked and asked directions.  Then almost missed the turnoff going the other way, then just missed the side road from there, and then missed the check-in office.  No big deal on any of that, just one little whoops after another.

We’re heading into town in a few minutes to get dinner and visit the grocery to get all the necessities for the next week.  Maybe find an Internet café, too.

Ireland: Dublin, and Dublin to Killarney (part 1)

9:40 am, Dublin (again, on the bed at the B&B)

Dragged myself out of bed at about 9:30 last night, swigged a cup of instant (ewww!) coffee, and caught the bus to the City Centre.  Fortunately, lots of folks were getting off at a couple spots, so I knew when to exit – right on the O’Connell Street Bridge over the Liffey River.  From there, I walked east along the south side of the river (Aston Quay and Wellington Quay), trying to find Georges Street where a couple of the gay pubs are.  Finally got to Parliament Street and remembered that Georges didn’t come all the way to the river, so I found where I was going in short order.  Passed by the Dublin branch of legendary UK comic store chain Forbidden Planet; I’ll get back there next weekend.

Had a Foster’s at The Dragon, and then a Guinness at The George, where I met a couple guys from London (Fraser and I think it was “Fahmi”).  Chatted with them a bit, then headed across the river.  Tried to find Out on the Liffey, but it is closed according to the guy at The Dock Sauna (a gay bathhouse, attached to Inn on the Liffey; no, I didn’t go in).  So I went to find Pantibar (formerly GUBU [short for “Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre, and Unprecedented”, a quote from Taoiseach Charles Haughey, referring to a double murder in 1982; although the original quote is apparently not gay related, as a name fort a gay bar, it is almost as good a repurposing as “santorum”]).  I got rough directions, but couldn’t find it until I stopped at a straight pub and got better info.  Had a Guinness at Pantibar, and eventually started to fade; too little sleep does that.  Met and made out with a guy named Declan there; maybe I’ll get the chance for more when I’m back next weekend.  (Told you I’d pay for the lack of sleep.  Otherwise I would have gone back to the George with him and his buddies and well, who knows!  Always a shame to pass up potential goodies.)

Walked to O’Connell Street to try and find the hotel where I’ll be next weekend, but no luck.  (Didn’t see it on Sunday when we were by there in the daylight, either.  I think it’s a block further up.)  Caught a cab, who I was sure was taking me completely in the wrong direction, but poof, there we were back by Porterhouse North and I was in bed by 1:30 am.

Ireland: Seattle to Amsterdam to Dublin (part 3)

5:15 pm, Dublin time (on my bed at a B&B)

Once we got to Dublin and got the car… more adventures.  (Also lots of Scots boys in kilts.  More on that later.)  First we got a little bit lost trying to get to the M1 (the freeway), because of having to take a roundabout route (which went around several roundabouts, naturally), dumping us in the parking lot of a shopping mall.  Blame a cruddy map from the rental place, and not the best signage.  Signage got worse, though, as it was nearly impossible to figure out what cross street we were at most anywhere in Dublin, or even that we were on the street we thought we were on.

I’m a bit concerned about my mother’s driving.  Her MS leaves things a bit uncertain, and driving on the left side doesn’t help (although she’d done it before).  She kept changing lanes in the roundabouts without signaling, and in generally, she drifts far to the left, sometimes right onto the line (which scares you a bit when you’re on that side of the car; wait until there's a rock wall there!).  I’m sure she must have cut some other drivers off or edged close to them.  We’ll probably be better once we’re out on the N7 to Limerick tomorrow, though, rather than in the city.

But we finally made it to the B&B… and the owners weren’t there!  (Of course, they had expected us 3+ hours earlier, so we weren’t overly surprised.)  We made our way to the pub across the street, and got the lady at the attached hotel’s front desk to call the B&B, by which time they had returned.  Whew.

Wind is blowing like a demon, almost strong enough to blow my grandmother over.

Now we’re going to head out for dinner at a nearby pub (Porterhouse North; I had “Beef ‘n’ Stout”, a cross between beef stew and shepherd’s pie), and then I expect we’ll crash.  I’ll try to just nap a few hours and then go out to the gay bars, er, pubs, although we’ll see if I can actually drag myself out of bed to do it.

Ireland: Seattle to Amsterdam to Dublin (part 2)

11:45 am, Dublin time (somewhere over England, sitting sideways in the airplane seat)
(3:45 am in Seattle)

It was looking like the 12:00 time was bogus, since the next listed flight was actually 13:10, but they got us on our original plane and got us out around 12:20.

The coffee was lousy, by the way.  And a “Large” was about 10-12 ounces, so it was way overpriced.  Decent apple cake, though.

Aer Lingus has the least leg room of any plane I’ve ever been on.  My knees touch the seat in front of me. If my thighs were 1/2 inch longer, sitting would be difficult.  Is this where I make a leprechaun joke, since I’m going to Ireland?

Screaming kid on the flight.  There was one on the flight to Amsterdam, too, but that one shut up for most of the flight.  I honestly think that parents should not only have to buy a separate seat for any kid under 4 years old, they should have to pay double for it.  Anything to convince them to just stay off tightly packed transports until the kid is old enough to not scream like this.  (Yeah, I realize that he’s probably in some distress from pressure changes.  I don’t care: the parents’ “need” to travel with the tot is abusing both the kid and the rest of us.)

No inflight magazine, just a “sell you snacks and perfume and jewelry and other stuff” catalog.  But the snacks listing really shows we’re in a different country.  Beyond the easy stuff like scones and shortbread biscuits, there’s a “Full Breakfast” (sausages, bacon [ham], black & white pudding [blood sausage with oatmeal filler, and an oatmeal sausage without the blood], tomato, sauteed potatoes, farmhouse brown bread, butter, marmalade, fresh orange juice, and a hot drink; €8, roughly $12).  And two sandwiches: chicken & stuffing, and cheese & spring onions (€4.50 each, about $7.50).  Nifty.

When the beverage service rolled out, I became further convinced that Aer Lingus is a budget airline on the same level as Skybus in the states. First flight I’ve been on where you had to pay for the beverages.  €2 ($3!) for a soda or a cup of lousy airplane coffee!  Watch for this level of cheapness to hit the main carriers in the states within three years.  I’d love to predict Southwest first, but I’m betting on Delta or American jumping before them.  At least with Skybus (“Pillows are just $10!  Blankets are extra!  But maybe you were lucky and got the $20 ticket for this flight!”) – emphasis on “bus” – you kind of expect it.

What the fuck is up with the flight staff hocking duty free stuff on the flight itself?  No, I don’t want to buy a full-size bottle of liquor or a watch from the stewardess.  What is this, Times Square in the 1970s?  (“Psst, buddy!  Wanna buy a Rolex?”)  This one, I can’t blame on Aer Lingus, since Northwest did it, too.  I wonder how much volume they actually sell?

Ah, the kid finally shut up.
…And then started up again 10 minutes later.

Ireland: Seattle to Amsterdam to Dublin

10:30 am, Amsterdam time (at a kid’s table in the Amsterdam airport)

(That’s 1:30 am Seattle time, I think)

Leaving Seattle and getting to Amsterdam on Northwest was pretty uneventful.  Watched Brother Bear (pretty good), Bee Movie (mediocre), and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (nowhere near as good as the first, and scattered with the three subplots – the defeat of the Spanish Armada was almost an afterthought – but Eric Bana was sure pretty to look at) on the flight.  Had three meals (or two and a snack, if you prefer); fairly typical airline food, although with airline food being so rare these days, pretty good airline food.  Got a pair of seats to myself, which was nice.  Slept maybe 2 hours of the 9 total, though (but we got to Amsterdam at the equivalent of midnight or so, so what do you expect?).  Yawn.  I’ll pay for that later.

We were supposed to have a two-hour layover in Amsterdam before catching Aer Lingus to Dublin, but there was engine trouble which first delayed and then cancelled our flight.  Grrr.  We’re to come back in another 30 minutes, to wait for the next flight (12:00, rather than our original 9:40).  I’m expecting/fearing that this will mean everyone on our flight is now on stand-by for the noon flight, and thus probably only 1/4 of us will get on.  We may be stuck here in the Amsterdam airport all day.  (That’s how it would work in the States, to be sure!)

Bought some mini-cheeses to snack on, and a new pair of cheap earphones at the duty free place, since the ones provided by the airline were crap and my own in-ear ones broke during the flight.  Debating whether to buy some overpriced non-Starbucks coffee or not…

Ireland

I am going to be in Ireland from February 21-March 2, traveling with my mother and grandmother to Dublin and then to County Kerry, centering on Killarney.  My grandmother’s family was from western Ireland, apparently mostly around Galway; family name of Finnerty.

I’ll be writing blog posts offline and posting them as I’m able, along with some accompanying video snippets added later one, once I can edit them.

Flying into San Francisco Airport

In the winter or the spring?  Don’t bother.  You’ll be sorry.

SFO (San Francisco’s airport) has only two runways.  Add a little bit of weather — and in that part of the Bay Area, that means fog, more likely than not — and one or both runways can close down in a heartbeat.  This, of course, causes a domino effect of flights being late or outright cancelled.

In December, 1998, I tried to get back to the Bay Area from vacation in Seattle.  Perhaps you heard about the SFO closures that time.  Some flights ended up landing in Sacramento, Reno, or even Los Angeles.  (One airline even landed in Sacramento and abandoned the passengers — “This is as close as we can get to San Francisco.  You’ll have to get the rest of the way on your own.”  What fun!)  I ended up having to stay in Seattle for two extra days.

In April, 1999, I tried to get back to the Bay Area from a weekend trip to San Diego.  Guess what happened?  Of course, matters were compounded by the airline I was flying — Southwest — being unwilling to tell passengers anything more than “might be delayed,” even when United passengers were coming over to see about flights since their airline had cancelled everything into SFO that morning.  Anyway, after missing standby to Oakland and getting the next to the last seat on a flight to San José — and being wedged into a “party seat” with one other man and four obese women (who were fun to talk to, despite the tight quarters) — and then waiting in the cold for a shuttle bus and then the commuter train for about an hour, I made it to my destination about four hours late.  I fortunately had no luggage to check; those who did had to chase it all over the Bay Area, adding yet more time to the delay.

The end result?  During the winter and spring — mid-December to mid-April — if you can avoid flying into SFO, do so.  The odds of having weather problems is high, but they drop significantly if you fly into either of the other major airports in the area (Oakland and San José).  And truth be told, neither of the other airports is especially less convenient than SFO (depending on where your final destination is, of course) — and they can even be cheaper!

(Oh, and don’t get me started on how I dislike flying out of SFO!)