St. Kevin? Really?

When we came to Ireland, we had four nights of accommodation booked, and after that, we knew what we wanted to see, but we were not certain of our route or itinerary. It’s not my preferred way of travel, but in the off-season, you can do this. We knew we had two nights in Dublin, and Pete needed to be in Wexford to play a gig the third night. Then we would head further into the country to stay at a farmhouse near Ardfinnan. After that, there were no set plans. This was a compromise between Pete and I; between his ability to play-it-by-ear and my inability to relax unless I knew where I would be staying that night.

From the car rental office in Dublin, we were heading south to Glendalough, a monastic complex about 75 kilometers away. In order to get there, we had our Ordinance Survey book, our Michelin map, and luck.

There are five kinds of roads in Ireland. M roads, N roads, R roads, L roads, and all the other roads. M roads are motorways, N roads are National roads, R roads are Regional roads, and L roads are Local. Each of these roads has its corresponding speed limit, and in total, there are five different types of speed limits: town and city (50km), national road (100km), regional and local (80km), motorway (120km), and special (30km or 60km). I can tell you now that most sane people in America would not drive 80km (50mph) on a lot of those R and L roads, let alone the 100km (62mph) that is in place on those N roads. Often, the only noticeable difference between the R, L, and N roads is the absence or presence of a white line down the middle. When you are flying through the coutryside in a pillbox on wheels with a 10 foot high stone wall on your left and cars coming at you on your right down a 12 foot wide road, 50 miles an hour feels very fast.

We took the M50 around Dublin from north to south and got off on a likely looking R road. Being used to looking for exits based either on numbers or on the largest closest town, I thought I would be all right, as they seemed to be using both. But I missed the exit I was looking for, we took the second, and none of the towns on the signs were the ones I thought would be there.

We finally made it to the little town of Enniskerry, which I could find on the map, and in which I knew we simply had to find the appropriate R road, so we could be on our merry way.

Let me tell you now that the R roads are not always marked.

I found myself falling back on "I think we should be going that way" more than I would have wished, especially given the imminent peril in which I continuously felt myself to be. Finding ourselves in the parking lot of Glendalough was a fantastic relief. We were planning on getting our Heritage Card there, touring the site, and then getting something to eat in nearby Laragh.

The Heritage Card is a 20 Euro card akin to our National Parks Pass: an annual pass that gets you into all Heritage Sites in Ireland, which are managed by the Office of Public Works. It’s quite a deal if you are going to be visiting a lot of them; most sites are 2-5 Euros per person, and they can add up. To me, it seemed like a good idea, even if we did not make it to a value of 20 per person: it’s good to contribute to public parks and historical sites.

The woman at the counter in the visitor centre did not seem to agree. We said we wanted one, she said they were cash only, we did not have quite enough cash, so we needed to go into town to get some. She proceeded to try to discourage us from buying one, and then told us that if we did not want to use anything in the visitor center, we did not even have to pay there if we did not want to. But, we want to pay. We want a card. We decided to go in to town to get cash and some food and then come back.

The first restaurant was teeming with seniors and bus tours. It was cafeteria style and very noisy. We liked the interior of the place and its pubby atmosphere, but we wanted a menu, we wanted to sit, and we wanted to relax. The drive had been harrowing for me, and I didn’t want to navigate anymore. We walked down the street to a little restaurant called the "Wicklow Heather" that was much quieter and more expensive. It was a nice lunch of stew, seafood chowder, coffee, and tea to go with the rather rainy day that had developed over our drive down.

Rain at Glendalough seemed appropriate. Though it was not as awe inspiring as I was lead to believe from the photographs, the grey misty raininess gave it more of a feeling of age and isolation appropriate to its history. Even relatively people-free, there were too many people, it was too close to the road, and not remote enough. It’s like pictures of Yosemite: it seems far away from everything, but what is happening behind the picture is a bustling hive of humanity. This place must be a zoo in the summer. All the same, it is amazing what humans have built.



Glendalough is a monastic complex founded by St. Kevin (St. Caoimhghin) in the 6th century. It sits in a dramatic valley in the Wicklow mountains, and is named as such: glen of the two lakes. There is a 30 meter tall round tower and numerous stone churches and crosses. This was the first of our many visits to places of Irish antiquity, and it was one that I did not want to miss. I figured we would need a couple of hours to poke around, and we could well have done with more: the mountains host many hiking and walking trails, but time was not on our side for such things, and neither was the weather.

The place is crawling with photo opportunities. I crouched in a roofless stone structure, looking through a window that perfectly framed the oldest stone cross in the complex, looking for a shot... when a group of German tourists came along and took turns... hugging it. Yes, hugging an old, wet, grey, rock.



But I can file this little ritual with other things I don't understand, like throwing coins into fountains or, at Glendalough, into the stream that borders the monastic complex. Is it wishes? Wouldn't it be more productive to save up those most likely selfish dreams and perhaps donate a sum at the end of the year to a charity? Maybe if you hug a cross and toss a 20p piece in the water, you will live forever and escape the vengeance of an irrational god, and I am totally missing out.



It's not only a country's history, scenery, and people that are fascinating and worth observing and noting; the little things can be equally engrossing. Signs, for example. The way in which different cultures choose to denote things of importance can be odd sometimes to the outsider. Highway signs and the like are usually quite similar, but more specific signs for the public good can be quite funny to me. The one on the edge of the upper lake at Glendalough was excellent.



I am not sure exactly what is going on here. Am I not supposed to throw myself into the lake? Will the rocky shore of the lake suddenly drop out from under me? If I get too close to the end of the lake, will it suck me in. In any case, I decided to keep my distance, and we left Glendalough in one piece.

The Only Redhead in Dublin

During the short break between pubs the previous night, we had chosen our breakfast on the strip of paper pinned to the door of our room. We were the only people in the breakfast room in the morning, and P.J. brought us coffee, eggs, toast, and beans. This was our second and last full day in Dublin, and there were many more things that we wanted to do. We caught the bus into the city center and made our way toward the National Museum. The block consists of a compound of Parliament and the National Museum (Archaeology and History), Gallery, and Library, respectively. It’s a bit of an unattractive maze with a central car park and black iron gates rather marring the facades of the buildings themselves and making it unclear how to enter them.

We chose the National Museum first because we wanted to get a better sense of Irish History, and as this is where “all archaeological objects found in Ireland” end up, apparently, this seemed like a good choice. The building itself—from rotunda to mosaic floors, carved wooden doors, decorative moldings, vaulted ceilings, and inlaid stone fireplaces—is exquisite in an of itself, and I spent a lot of time checking out the architecture. The exhibits cover Ireland from 7,000 BC through the late medieval period, including gold jewelry recovered from bogs, Neolithic tools and pottery, and an exhibit of bog bodies.

Yes, Bog Bodies. This was the bit I enjoyed most, I believe, because it is macabre and strange. Bog Bodies date from 8,000 BC to the early medieval period in northwestern Europe. Be they sacrifices, executions, or offerings, it’s pretty safe to rule out accidents: hundreds of people didn’t lose their way and “accidentally” get tangled up in ropes or belts that strangled them or fall on knives that cut their heads off, slit their throats, and hacked their limbs. One would think that people would move far, far away from bogs if they were so effectively dangerous.

When we left the museum, we realized that we needed to make our way toward the Guinness Storehouse, if we wanted to make it there before closing. I sighed at the National Library as we walked past with its banners announcing a W.B. Yeats exhibit waving in the wind, beckoning me to enter. There was no time; the Storehouse was on the other side of the city center, through the medieval section, and down the road apiece. We decided to catch a bus, so we figured out which number we were looking for, found the route, and decided to walk until we saw one. We walked the whole way.

The Guinness Storehouse is actually more of a working demonstration. Housed in a storehouse built in 1904 for the fermentation process and located on the massive grounds of the Guinness Brewery at St. James Gate, multimedia displays take the viewer through the history and process of brewing Guinness. As we walked back through the narrow streets leading to the Storehouse, passing a black gate inscribed with “Guinness” in large white letters, and signs leading you in the right direction, I said to Pete “I can feel the presence of the Ring.” I was first date nervous, excited about something I had been looking forward to far a long time. A facsimile of Arthur Guinness’ famous 9,000 year lease on the brewery is embedded in the floor in the central rotunda, and after you get your ticket and pass through the doors to the display, you are greeted by the words “The essence of Guinness is all around you.” That’s a glorious thing, indeed.


You travel up and through seven stories of Guinness, modeled on a giant pint glass, learning about water, barley, hops, and yeast—the four ingredients; Arthur Guinness—the fifth ingredient; and the brewing process. The Master Brewer guides you though this process on video, self conscious hand gestures included. After watching Talledega Nights on the plane, I could not help but think of Ricky Bobby as I watched the brewer’s hands waving slowly yet emphatically near his face, seemingly unconnected to his words. Pete asked if I thought he was an actor, and I answered that I would hope that Guinness would have enough money to hire a better one. Lord knows, my tab alone could have paid for it.


It was during the displays on the brewing process that I learned that there are other kinds of Guinness, which have been kept from me by oceans and marketing. There’s a Foreign Extra that has more hops and more alcohol and is shipped to places like the Caribbean, and there’s a Brewhouse Series, only available in Ireland, it appears. The Brewhouse available in the tasting lab on the first floor was called “Northstar,” which I found to be particularly perverse and taunting, given that we are from the Northstar State. Were there a way to smuggle a keg of this home, I would have. It was very, very tasty.

The display on the “Craft of the Cooper,” showing how the casks that carried Guinness were made, was informative, especially the revelation that when a new cooper was initiated, he was placed in his first completed cask along with anything they could find on the floor, and rolled around and around the cooperage. At one point, the brewery employed 300 coopers, and after the brewery switched to metal kegs, many of the casks were made into furniture and sold.

Apparently, on the third floor, there’s an exhibit which “challenges visitors to look at their own drinking habits and recognize the fine line between enjoying yourself and drinking to excess.”

We didn’t go in there.

We did peruse the advertising display at length, however, being highly susceptible to marketing.



Last, but not least, is the Gravity Bar, on the seventh floor. Here, you get your complimentary pint of Guinness along with a 360 degree panorama of Dublin. It’s quite spectacular, and the place is buzzing with people. But the real gravity of the gravity bar is the amount of unfinished Guinness. We all know that people can’t resist a free thing, but the half, three-quarters, and almost entirely full unfinished pints lolling around on tables was shocking and disturbing to me. If you aren’t going to drink it, don’t get it. In fact, if you have never had Guinness or you know you don’t like it, why are you here? I know, it’s a historic place, and everyone tells you to go, but I don’t think I would visit Budweiser just because I was in town, because I don’t care. And if I did, I would drink the free can of beer they gave me at the end. I sat in horror, watching as person after person set their pint down and left. I watched one woman take her pint, standing there with her shoulderbag, take a tentative little sip, lean back over to the bar, set it down, murmur “Thanks” with her simpering, pursed little lips, and walk away. For chrissake, at least reduce the waste a teensy bit: get a freaking half pint if you are going to be such a girl about it. I could have sat there longer and savored another pint, enjoying the view, if it were not for this travesty, and I don’t think they would have appreciated me finishing all the left over glasses.


Later that evening, in a pub not far from the B&B, discussing the day’s events and tomorrow’s plan, I realized that, so far, I had not seen one single redhead. I seemed to be alone in Dublin. I had been expecting to fit in here, what with all the romanticizing of the Irish and the stereotypes, but apparently, all the redheads have moved to St. Paul.

The First Pint

The First Pint

Do—DO—pee before you get onto a bus in Dublin City Center. The buses are numerous, but they are not speedy. Once you are on one, you will feel like you could have walked faster, but if you have to pee so badly that you are afraid to breathe, you don’t have much of a choice. The buses are mainly double-deckers, and you can get good views from the upper deck, but, again, if you have to pee worse than when you were 11 years old in the back seat of the car on the Chicago tollway, crying into your pillow, and the only things you can see are rivers and fire hydrants and pubs that probably have toilets, you probably are not enjoying the scenery.

After we left Trinity College, we walked over to St. Stephen’s Green, down a busy shopping thoroughfare. Things started to look familiar, and Pete noticed that it was because we were walking through locations from the charming movie “Once.” Inside the main gate of the Green was the spot where the guitar player caught and wrestled down the junkie who stole his busking money. Trust me, the movie IS charming.


Dublin is buzzing with people. It’s a bit of a shock to the system when you are in the dream state of the early hours of international travel, and the consistent and jumbled drone of humanity was a little overwhelming. I did not come to Ireland to shop, and generally, shopping is not a pastime in which I care to indulge. I was having a bit of an “oh the humanity” moment, and it did not take long for us to decide that we wanted a pint, and that we did not want a pint in Temple Bar or in any of the pubs off the main drags: it was too much input. We settled on a little pub called “Grogan’s Castle,” and seated ourselves at the bar. The lovely bartender, Mary, was humming a lilting tune, there was local art on the walls, and people were calling each other by their first names, eating toasted cheese sandwiches. We were the only tourists in the place, which was what we wanted. We spend plenty of time around Americans in America.

We ordered a pint of Guinness and shot of Powers each.


In Dublin, expect to pay the same amount in numbers for goods and services that you would pay in America. This is not a deal. Two pints and two shots was the same amount of Euros in Dublin that we would hand over in dollars at the Dubliner in St. Paul. Pete looked at me, holding up a pint, and said, smiling, “This is where all our money is going to go.”

Cheers.

It was lovely. Everyone kept going on to me about how I had never had Guinness because I had never had Guinness in Ireland, and it had become a bit wearing. While it was true that this Guinness tasted different and better than the Guinness in America, it was not an experience that blew me away and left me staggering, ready to pack my bags and move. What makes the difference is that they pour it right, they drink it a lot, and you are in Ireland, not down the street from your own house; it’s 4:00, you are on vacation, and it’s time for a pint.

That pint went down successfully and quickly, and it was time for another. It was 4:10. We had meant to have one pint and then head back to the B&B as we had not even been into our room yet, but we were also on vacation, and one was simply not enough. We talked about what else we wanted to do in Dublin and had the cell phone debate.

Before we left, we had decided to buy a cell phone for traveling. It would have cost us around $120 dollars, we would have had the phone for other people to use when they travel overseas, and it would be cheaper than renting one. In Ireland, you don’t buy a plan, you buy time, so there would be no commitment. Our phones were not compatible, so we turned them off in Newark. I had located the store for our purchase, and it was not far from where we sat drinking. We asked each other what we thought about it, and we both wrinkled up our noses and shook our heads: we did not want a cell phone. Sure, we could more easily call ahead to book our rooms, and our cat/house sitters could reach us if they needed to, but then so could everyone else, if we called them even once to check in. It would be nice to have a break from ringing phones. Heavenly, in fact, for me, considering that every time the phone rings, I think I am in trouble.

Another pint later, Pete did not come back from the bathroom. It was nothing biological, it was just that he overheard a group of men talking behind us, and most of their conversation was about music. He pulled up a chair with them and eventually had me move over from the bar. Turned out, these young men were in a band; one of them had lived in Minneapolis; another was a naturalist interested in birdwatching; and the other was wearing a stripey jumper his (now) ex-girlfriend had knitted. We would have a lot to talk about. I found out what road atlas to buy (Ordinance Survey), what bird book to get (Collins), and Pete got some music recommendations.


We also gained a new, and now favorite, phrase. A pint or two into the conversation, I noticed an odor wafting over the scene. Stripey Jumper caught a whiff as well;

“Who opened their lunchbox?” he said.

This was both funny and embarrassing because I knew it was Pete. Pete heard him but was baffled. I don’t know if he was looking for an actual lunchbox, or if he had not understood all the words, but he questioned the phrase. It took a moment, and then I said to him, clearly, “He’s asking who farted.”

I think it was nearing 7:00 when it was either time for another pint or it was time to go. I decided that we really should head back to the B&B and actually check into our room, and we most likely did not need any more pints, considering that we had not slept in over 24 hours and had not eaten since noon. I’m so unreasonable.

We made our way toward the bus stop in that heightened yet hazy drunk-in-daylight state of which I am not too fond, and though I had used the pub loo more than once, the seven or so pints I had consumed seemed to have caught up with me all at once. By the time we reached the bus stop and began our wait, I was dancing in place and whining. Of course, our bus was the seventeenth bus to arrive, and it was packed, the streets were jammed, and we crawled back toward our neighborhood. Painfully. I figured that we could probably stop, have a pint, and get back on the very same bus. We were about six blocks away when I spotted a corner pub which I had noticed on our way in to city center, and which was, of course, painted blazing yellow. I said we had to get out. Now. I could not make it back to the B&B. We went in, Pete ordered two pints, and I limped and skipped to the toilets. The aftermath of this sort of pain and discomfort was one of such great relief, that I don’t remember ever being happier.

We arrived at the guesthouse, fumbling with our bags, trying to work the key, and be quiet and not giggle, even though it was only 8:00. There’s something about staying in a stranger’s house that is a bit odd, and I did not want our host to know that we were wasted. It would be like your parents seeing you come home drunk.

The room was lovely, our things had been brought up, and all was well. But we still needed to eat dinner. We walked down the street to a restaurant that we knew was open and ordered from the odd menu of pub food, Chinese, and curry, as well as two more pints. I think. Pete was so tired that he was actually falling asleep at the table, and the copious amounts of stout were not helping the situation. When he went to the bathroom, I was worried that he would not come back, and I would have to get the waiter to go in and wake him up. Then I worried about how I would get him the three blocks back to the B&B. He returned, however, and we paid successfully and made it home. After a shower, some instant decaff, and a little Sky News, it was bedtime.

Pete still has no idea what he ordered at that restaurant.

Random Scary Thought

Do you ever think about how much of yourself you leave behind? I am not talking about impressions or neat little stories, I am saying that I am leaving behind a lot of DNA on this plane.
Pete said that this was one way that someone could make another one of me.
“No thank you.”
“Be fun for me. At times,” Pete smirked.
“But I would never get along with her.”

Small Wonders, Equally Small Worries

September 25, 2007

I never thought I would be happy to be in Newark.
I know.
It’s an easy joke.
Bit of a low blow, really.

But it has not been the most auspicious of beginnings.

Checking in at the Minneapolis airport, my information did not match, and I had a moment when I thought that my reservation was not going to be there at all. The magic of computers is that they can both cause heart-stopping woe as well as breathtaking relief. I still don’t know what happened, but the nice, blonde lady at the counter punched some information into her seemingly very old terminal, resolved the situation, and I was checked through to Dublin.

The night before, at home in St. Paul, we debated back and forth about luggage: to check or not to check. Pete was bringing his guitar, Woody, and we figured we would just bring everything with us on the plane. That way we did not have to worry about things not making the connection in Newark. You can imagine our joy upon realizing that the plane was an 18 row by 3-seat little wonder with enough room overhead to hold a vanity bag. At the Jetway, we hastily removed computer, reading material, and purse, and Pete watched in anguish as Woody moved slowly down the conveyor belt in what we hoped would not be a death march. Next time, I check ahead and pay attention to the kind of plane I am on.

To further the comedy of errors, my in-flight magazines clearly had fruit juice spilled on them, and Pete’s flight card was stuck to the cover of his magazine, which was removed from the pages, by a fairly new piece of chewed Doublemint. These are not terrible things, in and of themselves, but they strike me as signs of inattention, which is not what you want from your airline, especially if you are a nervous flier. Every little thing can seem like a bad omen, even if your analytical mind doesn’t believe in that sort of crap.

The woman behind Pete had boarded the Houston 5:05 pm flight and was mad that they had let her do it. I thought, “Grab some personal responsibility, lady. First of all, why would you be boarding at 3:50 for a 5:05 flight? And secondly, you sat on your own take-away cup of tea that you put on your own seat. Who are you going to blame for that?”

These things made me feel anxious and uneasy.

Overly dramatic, I know, but we do lead a relatively privileged life. Our worries are comparatively minimal and almost unbearably silly.

As planes do not have dealer or maker logos like cars, let alone hood ornaments (I think that might interfere with wind resistance or something), I did not know what kind of plane I was on, aside from the fact that it was unexpectedly small for a flight to the east coast. Once I found a flight magazine that was not sealed by gum or pink, warped, and crinkly with fruit juice, I discovered it was plane from a Brazilian manufacturer that I had never heard of, which also did not inspire confidence.

Once in the air, the densely packed though not terribly thick band of clouds below us gave the illusion of safety, like an airbag. I was not always a nervous flier; I have developed into a nervous flier. It has a lot to do with knowing what you have to lose, which has a lot to do with actually having something of great importance to lose. This thing of great importance is my life with Pete. I try to remember Pete’s advice: There’s nothing you can do. All of this is out of my hands. But Pete is already on vacation, and he has been for a while; I am not. I’m already a bit of a worrier, and the last few days had been nothing but go, go, go--absolutely chock full of to-do lists. I was feeling a bit put upon. At this point, with all that behind me, I had moved on to my immediate worries: once we landed in Newark, there was the connection to make to Dublin. Once there, we have to make it to our B&B. I would be able to relax for a couple of days then, or at least a day, until we had to pick up our car.

Sad, really.
It’s nice to know that a country awash in Guinness awaits me.