Travels with Gunther and Kara

Well, we got up…ate breakfast, packed our bags, said our goodbyes to Gretta and headed off for our day’s sightseeing ending up down near Cork in Ballinhassig. Our first stop was the Clomantagh Castle and ruins right near the Bungalow Farmhouse B&B where we got a couple of snapshots. After that we stopped by up in Urlingsford for some diesel for the car…and attempted to get lunch from the takeaway place that loaned us their phone the other day…but they weren’t open yet so we gave up on that idea. Neil popped into a convenience store for a diet coke for the drive and then we were off.

Here’s a couple of shots of the Clomantagh Castle…it is privately owned and is just a ruin anyway…so all we got was a picture over the fence. The closer shots are of the old abandoned church and the farther away shots are the castle…it mostly looks like a fortified tower with a house added on later. The last shot with the vista and the way, way out there castle like structure was across the road and is just some random castle like structure…but we thought it made a decent shot.

Our second stop was in the Glen of Aherlow. A glen is essentially a valley and this one is located in the middle of the Galty Mountains. Along the way we searched and searched…faithful reader Ron had asked us the other day about Touchdown Jesus. I gotta tell you…we were unable to find that but we were able to find either Dead Ball Jesus or First Down Jesus…it all depends on how you interpret his signal. So Ron…this one’s for you.

According to the sign…it’s supposed to be the Christ the King statue…but I think that First Down Jesus has a sooooo much better ring to it…so FDJ it is. Neil’s been keeping a Roll Tide Tracker for our trip…and we’re up to 8 Roll Tide’s and 1 War Eagle for the trip so far…not bad for 6 days Ima thinking.

Here’s a panorama view from the top of the ridge just in the FDJ parking lot. We’re about 500 or so feet up from the glen floor here and it was a really pretty decent view. Nice sunny day today…a lady we saw right after this while taking pictures at the abbey told us that 2 nice days in a row was a rarity for Ireland.

Our next stop was the Moor Abbey…a Franciscan abbey which was established in 1471 and remained in operation until they were massacred in 1570. The Franciscans returned in 1646 although they no longer lived at the abbey and remained until 1806 when it was again abandoned and it has remained so ever since. It’s just ruins but is better preserved than some we’ve seen this trip. Along the way to the abbey we spotted an Irish RV Park…and there is clearly no way we could get BAT and the house in there…but then the roads woulda stopped us already anyway. The last shot below is of a grave in the church portion of the abbey…you can still see the carved image of Mary over the tomb even after going on 600 years. I included a shot of Connie and Neil standing in front of it…it was taken by the lady you can just see at the left side of the first picture…she was putting up a notification about discounted beer at this weekend’s BBQ Festival.

Our next stop was lunch…which ended up being in the town of Blarney right outside of the Blarney castle which was our final scheduled stop for the day. We ate at the Muskerry Arms and discovered they had Murphy’s Stout…so naturally we had a couple along with our sandwiches…egg salad for Connie and chicken for Neil. While we were sitting there a group of Irish working guys came in on their lunch break…and I gotta tell ya Neil’s vision of the rough and tough Irish working man was shattered…shattered I tell ya. He expected them to eat some manly sandwiches bursting with meat and toss down several pints with them. Instead…they ate some namby pamby sort of sandwich on Ciabatta bread and they drank tea. Tea for criminy’s sake…with milk in it. Tea…for lunch. I tell ya…it was an abomination.

After that was done we discovered that we had parked our car right in front of the Garda substation (that’s the cops)…so we were pretty safe while we ate lunch. Next we headed into Blarney Castle.

Now back to that OSHA stuff. We gotta tell ya…if Blarney Castle was in the United States there is absolutely no way that it would be open to the public. Between the changes they would have to make for the Americans with Disability Act, the changes for safety of both the workers and the visitors, and all the other regulations they would have to meet they would never, never get an operating license. Here in Ireland though…they look at these things with a longer view and just put a sign up at the bottom of the tower stairs that said (essentially)…”enter at your own risk, it’s old, dark, narrow, and steep and if you break yourself too bad.” The castle was built in 1446 and safety and access were way down the list of important building specifications I guess.

We climbed up the 101 steps to the top…Connie was getting a bit panicked on the way up with the narrow, steep steps…closed in sides…and her lack of  depth perception. Neil stayed below her to steady her and she made it up to the top…at which point she looked at what you had to do to kiss the Blarney Stone and said she wasn’t doing it. It involved laying on your back over a foot wide crack leading 150 feet or so down to the ground then sticking your head back and down into the hole where the stone is. She was worried that she would get a vertigo attack on rising…this happens sometimes when she gets out of bed so she passed on it. Neil did it though and she got a picture of him. Here are shots of Blarney Castle and environs. The last two show Neil at the stone and then a ground level shot looking just about vertically 150 feet or so into the crevice where the stone is.

Yeah, the Blarney Stone is kinda schmaltzy I know…but it’s one of those things ya just gotta do while you’re here to go along with the more cool, exotic, non-touristy stuff like Skellig Michael and the Giant’s Causeway.

With that our day was done…we got back to the car and another hour or so down the road drove directly to our home for the next 2 nights…the Ardfield Farmhouse B&B in Ballinhassig…Connie’s destination figuring out process last night got us here with no issues. We met our host Bernadette and got checked in then headed off to Kirby’s Corner Bar and Restaurant for dinner. We quickly spotted Beamish Stout on one of the tap handles and went no farther…two pints each later along with dinner which was Pan Fried Sea Bass for Connie and a steak with mushrooms, onions, and wine sauce for Neil later we came back to the hotel after stopping for some cookies for snack later. Met the horse out in the pasture in front of the house and that was it for today. I’ll grab a shot of the view from the yard in the morning…it’s a pretty nice view.

Cyas.

Today was a really, really good day…the best we’ve had on our trip by a large margin.

To start with…the weather was beautiful. We’ve been mostly dry but cloudy and overcast through the first 4 days of the trip but today was brilliant blue sky, temps in the 70s, a little breeze to keep it pleasant and no humidity to speak of.

We arose at 0630 and after waking up sat down to breakfast with our host Gretta right about 0800. Yogurt and granola (normal for Connie and tropical fruit for Neil) we had some poached eggs and bacon on toast along with pretty decent French press coffee…Gretta makes better coffee than the Kilronan house did. Once that was done we reorganized our luggage a bit so we can leave two of our bags in the car while on the driving portion of the tour…much easier to get in and out of hotels that way. Once that was done we headed out on our travels…but before I get to that Connie insisted I post another picture of the waterfall from yesterday…yesterday’s post was a closeup and she wanted one that showed the entire series of falls in relation to the cliffside for a sense of scale. The total drop is probably 250 feet but as you can see it’s one of those cascading sort of falls with no open drop. Still gorgeous though…and while a shot in bright sunlight would have been nice the gloominess really sort of brings out the Irishness of this country…it’s a lot like Scotland with more overcast days than not and lots of fog and gloom…which just makes for moody photos.

With that done…let’s get into today’s travels. We essentially did a loop south then east then north back to our starting point and hit a couple of nice spots along the way including one of the must do’s for Connie. Our first stop was at the Catholic Holy Cross Abbey in Holy Cross. This abbey dates from 13th century and was abandoned for many years before being reestablished as a functioning parish in 1975 and restoration work has been ongoing since that time.

Our second stop was the Rock of Cashel…which turned out to be a huge rock out in the middle of a valley. Back in the day it started life as a castle…then once the land was pacified it was converted to a cathedral. The buildings date from the 11th and 12th centuries and are pretty much in ruins now…roofs and ceilings are gone and lots of fallen stone. There is a conservation effort underway but it’s a preserve, not restore process at this point.

The view from down on the valley floor…clearly it was a great place to have a defensible fortification. After that is the corresponding view from atop the rock.

And some views inside the ruins and around the grounds on top of the rock…including some photos of 9th and 11th century altar equipment.

Moving on from there we stopped by Cahir to check out cathedral from afar and the castle…including a moat with swans in it and a Great Blue Heron on the river which forms part of the moat.

From there it was off to lunch at Sean Tienney’s Pub in Clonmel…where we had a great chicken sandwich and a couple pints of Bulmer’s Cider. Yum.

From there we drove on over to Waterford and visited the Waterford Crystal Showroom…we decided to skip the tour as the showroom would be closed by the time we were done and Connie only wanted to look at the pretties anyway. Didn’t buy anything…she wouldn’t buy anything without Neil’s approval and he thinks that Waterford Crystal is mostly ugly. The few things he does like are all super expensive (like more than $10,000).

Finally; we headed back toward the hotel and stopped in Kilkenny for dinner. After stopping…we grabbed a few pictures along the riverfront after parking the car.

After that we headed into Matt the Miller’s Pub and Restaurant which is in the round turret shaped building in the sort of foreground on the far left side of the last picture above…and had what we was far and away the best beer we’ve had in Ireland and the best meal we have had here as well. Kilkenny Cream Ale…sort of like Guinness in consistency and fine creamy head but more of a medium red ale instead of a stout. Outstanding. Dinner was two appetizers…stuffed mushrooms and oriental chicken wings, each came with a small salad in the middle of the plate. Following that was the best bread and butter pudding we’ve had ever had outside of what we make at home. Irish bread pudding is a lot more bread and less custardy…exactly the opposite of the bread pudding that Neil grew up with his mom baking…but it was really, really good. Topped with some cream sauce and vanilla ice cream. Even more yum than lunch or the beer…really, it was that good. The three dishes we had were much more restaurant quality food than your typical bar food you get in pubs.

Finally, a couple of shots of the mare and foal living in the fields outside our B&B here at the Bungalow Farmhouse.

Now I know ya been thinking about that title and wondering to yourself “Just what the heck is he talking about.”…so I’m a gonna tell ya.

If you had to pick an Irish song that everybody knows your first choice would either be Danny Boy or that other song…you know the one that talks about it being a long way to someplace? Well, despite the song and despite any other evidence to the contrary…it ain’t a long way to Tipperary, it’s just 6 kilometers. It was like…and then it was like…and then we were there.

So…yeah…it ain’t as far as ya think it is after all. Tipperary Ireland…a nice little town and we even found a hardware store to buy another AC outlet adapter for ourselves.

Cyas.

Today was an interesting travel day to say the least. We got up early and after breakfast checked out of the Kilronan Guest House and headed off to Hertz to pick up our rental car. It was about a 1.4 mile hike but we got there in 20 minutes or so and picked up our VW Golf then headed out.

The good news is that we didn’t kill either ourselves or anybody else. The bad news is that the combination of driving on the wrong side of the road, driving from the wrong side of the car, and Connie’s navigation issues made it a really interesting couple of hours until we made it out of Dublin, figured out the whole driving things, and figured out how to make the navigation work.

Driving on the wrong side of the road wasn’t too bad…you just have to remember that everything is backwards and have both driver and passenger pay attention to make sure you don’t get into the wrong lane, turn in the wrong place or anything like that. With our previous experience in Saint Croix and the UK…this didn’t work too bad. Driving on the wrong side of the car caused more of an issue…because figuring out where to position yourself in the lane is sort of disconcerting since it just doesn’t look right from the other side of the car. Nonetheless…we persevered and headed out.

Navigation was another issue…we have a GPS app on our iPhones that sort of works but it doesn’t quite work like the Garmin app we’re used to using works. Combine that with a lack of understanding the Irish road numbering system and we had several (5 actually) navigation oopsies in the first couple of hours…but by lunchtime we had pretty much figured it out.

Our day consisted of a sort of counter clockwise drive through the Wicklow Mountains National Park…but then National Park has a little different definition here. In the US…when a park is established the government buys or uses eminent domain to get ownership of the entire block of land that’s going to be the park. In Ireland…they buy as much land as possible and the little pockets of land that either the owner won’t sell or the price is too high they leave in private hands with some restrictions…so you sort of get a hopscotch park. Can’t say it works any better or worse than our system…just different. We did see lots of land that was grazing sheep commercially where as in the US the sheep would all be wild. Other than that…the park looks a lot like the landscape in Montana or Wyoming…except the foliage is heather instead of grass and it’s mostly green instead of mostly brown.

Anyway; a few pictures Neil grabbed.

Following that we headed off to our next overnight stop at the Bungalow Farmhouse B&B. First off we had trouble finding the place…driving back and forth through Freshford and stopping at several places to ask…but we finally found it. Then we knocked on the door, wandered around the farm, hello’ed a bunch and concluded nobody was home. We drove back over to Urlingford and found a phone where we called the owner. Gretta said she was there the whole time…but had been doing laundry so maybe she was in there and just didn’t hear us. Anyway…we drove back over and got checked in. Gretta made it all better with a glass of wine and then we headed into Urlingford to Butler’s Pub for dinner. A couple of pints of Guinness each and Duck for Neil with Smoked Chicken Creamy Penne Pasta for Connie and it was pretty good. Headed back to the B&B and had some apple pie and tea before heading off to a shower and bed.

Cyas.

Well…another day, another adventure. After breakfast we headed off to Mass. Our destination was Saint Nicholas Parish which is pretty near where Saint Patricks cathedral is; so we hopped on the on/off bus and then off at 11. After a brief episode of going the wrong way down a dead end alley we arrive at the church about 0900 for the 1000 Mass…and discovered that despite their website showing an 0830 mass as well there was nobody there and the doors were locked up tight. Before we could start looking the parish secretary drove in and told us they haven’t had anything but an 1130 mass for almost two years. She was kind enough to point us in the direction of the nearest church that did have an earlier mass; Saint Catherine on Meath Street was maybe a half mile away so we hiked on over. There was nobody inside yet…but at least the doors were open so we took that as a good sign…Neil grew up going to Saint Catherine back in Mobile many eons ago. We grabbed a couple of snapshots from inside…again, we really wish we could have heard the organ play as it was pretty impressive looking.

After Mass we walked another 1/3 of a mile or so to the Guinness brewery to catch the on/off bus again after grabbing what we thought was a scone but turned out to be a sweet currant biscuit (and it was still pretty good…we had it for afternoon snack). We stayed on the bus for 20 minutes or so until getting around to stop 21A for the Old Jameson Distiller. Jameson is just one of many Irish whiskeys…what makes them different from Scotch is that they’re triple distilled instead of double distilled and the malted portion of the barley is roasted using coal or natural gas instead of the peat which the Scots use and which gives their whiskey the smokey characteristic flavor. What makes Irish different from bourbon is that it’s barley instead of corn and it is aged in used barrels that were previously used to age bourbon, port wine, or sherry wine. The resulting aged whiskey is mixed 500 barrels of each type after it’s aged and then let to sit for a few days to blend before bottling.

We signed up for tour G…which was starting in 23 minutes…and wandered around the gift shop for awhile. When the tour started first up was a movie, but before that our tour guide needed 8 volunteers to serve as whiskey taste testers in addition to the Complimentary Ounce of Jameson Whiskey at the end of the tour (enough with this complimentary drink drivel…the tour is 14 Euros which is about 26 bucks so it really ain’t complementary at all. Amazingly enough…she had exactly 8 volunteers out of maybe 70 people on this tour…Neil couldn’t believe the others turned down extra free booze…but anyway Neil had his hand up in a nanosecond and was selected for the taste test.

What we learned on the tour was the Jameson whiskey is made essentially the same as Guinness beer…the only difference is that beer is casked for sale and whereas whiskey gets distilled and condensed to concentrate the alcohol and remove impurities. The output goes into another still and then another one…hence the triple distilling. AllIrish whiskey is triple distilled today but the triple process was pioneered by John Jameson after he founded the distillery in 1780…just a few years and maybe a half mile from the Guinness brewery so I’m guessing they were sharing secrets since they were not in direct competition.

Jameson comes in 4 varieties varying only in the amount of aging. The normal stuff goes out after 5 years but they age additional batches for 8, 12, and 18…and the price goes up commensurate with the age as by the time a barrel is 18 years old they’ve lost over a third of the volume that the barrel started with.

We did see the original cat which killed an average of 25 mice a day to prevent them from eating the barley back in the 1780s…when he died the brewery workers stuffed him and put him on display…proving that there is a decent use for a dead cat. Here is a shot of it as well as a couple other brewery shots.

Then we got into the tasting room…the distillery itself has been moved down to southern Ireland near Cork where we’ll be later in the week and the original distillery turned into a warehouse and showroom with a reconstruction of the distillery using some original components…but nothing is actually distilled here. In the tasting room everybody got a glass of Jameson to sample and the 8 volunteer testers each got a sample of Scotch, Bourbon, and Jameson to compare. I can’t say that they stacked the deck as they had Johnny Walker Black scotch and Jack Daniels bourbon but they tested away and unanimously voted the Jameson the best…although actually they were all good, just different. Jameson is the smoothest of the bunch but didn’t have the smokey taste of the scotch or the caramel and vanilla taste of the bourbon. All were good. In recognition of their accomplishment; each tester was given a certificate declaring them to be an official approved Jameson taste tester…with a certificate and everything.

After that we had some lunch…pulled pork and tuna melt sandwiches before hopping on the bus and heading over to the Viking/Medieval section of town (this was where the original settlement was). On our arrival there we were originally going to go into the Viking exhibit named Dublina (although it should have been Dyblinn since that was the real original name)…but we got distracted by a couple of really old churches and figured that Dublina was a tourist trap anyway so we skipped it.

The first church was Saint Audoen Catholic which was founded by Polish missionaries and is a still a Polish church…it was built in the early 1840s and was pretty cool. Here are a couple of shots including one of the patron saint it’s named for…he was Polish and died in 400something. Again, what a nice organ and we wished we could have heard it.

We then walked next door to what we thought was the original church before it was replaced by the larger stone one…and found out it was also Saint Audoen…only this one was Anglican and has been around since the 1100s with several expansions. The walls are almost touching and they look like they’re associated but are completely separate.You can just see the tower and about half of the church in this photo. Once we went inside we saw another really great organ…and our estimation is that this would be the best one to have heard of any we’ve seen this weekend…although it’s not as large as some of the others it is relatively much larger in proportion to the space it needs to fill and would be really awesome to hear…you can see there are only 15 or 16 rows of pews and it’s maybe 30 feet wide. There was also this really cool looking eagle book holder as well.

After that we stopped and had our scone/biscuit thing for snack and decided we were tired so we hopped the bus again…but had to ride almost the entire way around the loop (got on at stop 11 and rode to the start/end at 23 then back to 7 to get to the hotel). We listened to the remainder of the guided tour spiel that we hadn’t gotten yet then stopped at a pub for a Guinness (hey, Bryan said he was buying since it was Father’s Day) and had a basket of Home Fries for dinner…then headed back to the hotel with a stop at another pub for another half pint of Smithwicks for Connie (Neil was full already). As soon as I post this we’re headed down to the lobby since Remy offered us an Irish Coffee and that seemed like too good of an idea to pass up.

Tomorrow we pickup the car and head south via the Wicklow Mountains National Park, some other stops probably and then stay near Killarney for 2 nights.

Cyas.

Today was a good day of seeing cool stuff…and I gotta tell you we iz tired tonight. Our day began with breakfast in the hotel about 0745 and by shortly after 0900 we were on our way. We walked about 3/4 of a mile up to the Hop On Hop Off Dublin bus stop, turned our vouchers in and got our 2 day tickets and hopped on the bus. Our first conclusion was that the drivers are really, really good…whipping large double decker tour buses in and out of narrow little streets and around corners at speeds far in excess of what Neil would do with BAT and the house which are about the same size in total.

Once we got done being amazed we got off at our first stop…Dublin Castle. Strangely enough…this turned out to not really be a castle at all but a used to be sort of castle that had been reconstructed on the same site as the original castle. It turns out that Dublin wasn’t built by the Irish at all…nope, it was built as a raiding base by the Vikings who named it Dyblinn and it didn’t come under control of England until well into the Middle Ages. Once they were kicked out by King John of England the original castle was built in 1204 to help pacify the natives and defend the territory. In the late 1800’s it became essentially the seat of government for the city and almost all of the rooms in the former castle (which by this point was more of a palace than a castle anyway) were converted to more modern use…arrow ports sealed up and modern furniture and conveniences added. We headed in through the main gate and made our way to the church that is attached to the castle.

This is the Royal Chapel of the Dublin Castle and was originally built in the late 1100s with the current stone edition being built on the same site in 1814. We took a gander inside and concluded that this would be a super place to hear the Saint Saëns Organ Symphony…check out the pipe organ in the loft in the last shot.

From there headed into the courtyard of the second castle to bear the name…the outer limits of the courtyard roughly correspond to the walls of the original castle. We skipped the castle interior tour as almost all of it has been converted to modern uses and so isn’t very castle-y inside.

Next door to this castle is the final castle built on the site…this was was built next door instead of the old one being torn down. it’s the only one that actually looks like a castle today but it’s pretty small and was mostly used as a palace and not a fortress anyway. Again though…it’s been converted to city offices and other than the outside isn’t very castle-y either.

From there we walked another half mile or so west to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral…this is an Anglican church. Saint Patrick came over in the 500s to baptize the heathen and performed many baptism ceremonies at a well on this site. The water source still exists and is roughly on the site of the fountain at the right side of the picture below.

We headed on into the cathedral which was built in 1191 and were pretty wowed by the interior.

The last two are the stone found covering the original well during an archeological excavation in 1901 and the attached Saint Patrick’s Choir School which was founded in 1492.

From there we hopped back on the bus and made our way to the Guinness Brewery and Storehouse located at Saint James Gate. After again exchanging our vouchers for tickers which entitled us to the walking tour and a “Free Pint of Guinness” (Neil kept wondering how it was free if you had to pay for the tour…it seemed to him that it was just paid for in the price of the tour; but I digress again. Sorry ‘bout that…it’s an inherited family trait that I share with Gunther). Anyways…our first stop was on the ground floor where they have the original 9,000 year lease for the property that Sir Arthur Guinness signed in 1759…this was the only stop with a tour guide. You can’t see it in the photo…but trust me his signature is on the lower right hand corner and it’s the same signature that you’ll see on each of their cans and bottles.

From there we gradually made our way up through the World’s Largest Pint Guinness Glass…the exhibit internal shape is that of a pint Guinness glass. As we headed upwards we passed various displays telling you how they make Guinness. It’s made up of a secret mixture of barley, roasted barley (which gives it the coffee flavor it has) and malted barley (which is barley that is dampened and allowed to sprout then roasted to stop the sprouting at the right stage of growth), yeast that is the same strain and version that Sir Arthur used, and water. Contrary to popular belief it doesn’t come from the river but is piped in from the Wicklow Mountains about 20 miles south of here. The brewery takes in about 2 million gallons of water a day and has a total beer output of about 750,000 gallons a day. That’s alotta beer. In case you’ve always wondered what barley actually looks like (or even in case you never wondered that at all)…here’s a shot of Connie holding up a handful of grains of what Neil called Beer on the Hoof. They use 15,000 tons a year of barley including about 70% of the barley grown in the entire country. They also made a big deal about how rare the hops they use is and how hops only grows in two regions of the world. The fine print on that particular sign did say that the two regions were between latitude 30 and 55 both north and south of the equator…this amounts to about 40 percent of all the land in the world Neil guesses from his old Navy chart reading days so it’s hard to call that “2 regions of the world”…but I digress again (gotta stop that…er, nah.)

We learned all about the special water, carefully followed brewing recipe, yada, yada, yada. What it comes down to is that all real beer…it has barley, hops, yeast, and water. None of that wheat, lemon peels, fruit or any of that other jazz that trendy brewers like to add. What make it Stout rather than an Ale, Red Ale, IPA or Pilsner is just in how you treat the barley before you ferment it, how much hops you add, and some of the timing elements during the brewing process. Along the way we passed a whole bunch of ship models…this one is of a barge that was used to ferry the barrels from the brewery down to the wharfs at Dublin (back then the brewery wasn’t located in the city as the city was smaller) for shipment overseas.

There was also they 12 foot tall hand carved replica of a pint Guinness glass…Neil thought they were going to  go into a whole bunch of rigamarole about how the glass was specifically designed to bring out the flavor and beer esters in the final product…but they didn’t. He’s always thought that whole specially designed glass story was hogwash anyway…he thinks they mostly they designed a glass that looked cool and came up with a story about it to encourage sales of auxiliary merchandise to the publicans. The sculpture even has this white shroud on top and is lighter colored towards the top of the glass to simulate the colors of an actual pint once it’s pulled (the technical term for filling your glass from the draft tap).

Oh yeah there was this series of old Guinness advertising stuff too…Neil thinks he got the pose right. 

We stopped on the 5th floor (which is actually the 6th including the ground floor…but then that’s how the Europeans label their floors as I discussed last night). The funny thing was that our entrance into the facility was on floor -1 or what we would call the basement…but it wasn’t below ground level so we wuz confuzzled a bit ‘bout that. Lunch was Beef and Guinness Stew with carrots in it and mashed ‘taters (real ones, not those powder things you see in the US a lot…Connie really loved them) on top along with some Guinness Brown Bread…this was actually more like cake in texture and had raisins in it and a crunchy sesame and sunflower seed mix on top…but it tasted pretty good especially with real butter on it. We split a Coke to go along with it then headed on up to the 7th floor (there wasn’t any 6th floor…no idea why not) where we could get our Complimentary Pint of Guinness in what they called the Gravity Pub. They didn’t ‘splain why it was named that…but Neil and Connie figured it was because once your pint is pulled about 3/4 of the way full and put on the bar top to rest it starts with about the top 2/3 looking a medium tan color due to the head. As the head bubbles disappear the little bits of beer associated with the former bubble walls turns coalesce back into beer droplets that they fall through the rest of the head into the beer portion. This looks a lot like falling snow and the head starts to disappear as the brown bottom rises…anyway they figure the Gravity thing goes back to the whole looks like snow falling thing…but who really knows.

You had a choice of a Pint, a Half Pint, or a soft drink. We could understand why one might order a soft drink…say you didn’t like beer (yes, there are actually people who don’t like beer…seems amazing but it’s true)…but who would order a Half Pint over a full one. Go figger that one out…we have no idea and we only saw 2 or 3 of the Half Pints being out of maybe 1,000 we saw distributed during our time there.

The other attraction of the Gravity Pub is the full 360 degree view of Dublin from the top. We didn’t take any pictures as they generally don’t turn out very well when you take them through glass…but guess we really shoulda done it anyway. We did  get a friendly guy at the next table to take a photo of us quaffing an original Guinness Stout mere yards from where it was produced. The picture of just Connie with the small glasses isn’t of our Complimentary Pint…but was from our short time at the  Guinness Academy where we learned the proper way to taste Guinness. We always thought you just drank it but…turns out we were incorrect. One first sniffs it to inhale the esters then takes a swallow then breathes out through your nose…or some such malarkey…Neil thinks that doesn’t make a lick of sense, no more than that whole specially designed glass line. 

After that we headed down and jumped back on the bus to toe Old Jameson Distillery and Warehouse, passing the Irish White House on the way…only to find out that at 1430 the next available tour was at 1720. Deciding that waiting 2+ hours wasn’t happening today we got back on the bus and off at Trinity College where we went to see the Book of Kells.

What is the Book of Kells you say? Well, it’s this hand lettered on vellum book from about the year 900 that contains the four gospels (Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John). It’s one of those Medieval books that is termed “illuminated” with all the fancy calligraphy in the lettering and the ink drawings/paintings on the pages to help illustrate the text. Cost us 20 Euros to get in (about 36 bucks)…and they wouldn’t let you take pictures of the darn thing. I know that flash photography damages old books but they coulda allowed non flash…but then most of the tourist morons don’t know how to disable the flash on their phone cameras anyway. We went ahead and looked at it…and it’s just an old book. We also got into the main portion of the library where there are about 900,000 other old books…these they would (mostly) let you take pictures of except for the special ones in the exhibit cases in the middle of the library. These were from a Brian Bonu exhibition…he was basically the first King of a semi-united Ireland back in the late 1100s to early 1200s, right about the time that the Vikings were tossed out. In reality…his forces defeated the Vikings, not the British ones. Unfortunately he was killed not during the battle itself but sometime shortly afterwards in his tent…supposedly he was murdered according to contemporary accounts but they didn’t say for sure. Anyway; we got some nice photos of the library itself and the other old books that you were allowed to take pictures of. The old books that you can take pictures of are on shelves like you can take them down and read them…but they’re behind some of those celebrity velvet rope barricades that you see at trendy hipster clubs…Neil wondered what you would have to go through before they let you check one out. In his opinion…they were just old books.

Connie thought the Book of Kells was cool and spectacular and fantabulous…Neil thought that this was the worst possible way in the world to waste 20 Euros…but was glad to go since this was on her must do list and since she agreed to climb the 600 steps to the top of Skellig Michael and cross over the 90 foot long 68 foot high rope bridge to Carrick-a-Rede that are on his must do list.

While in the library after the Book of Kells exhibit…Connie had some rib cramps and we had to go outside. We sat on a bench and he rubbed her cramps vigorously as that helped them. They were on both sides just under her bra band…and the vigorous rubbing made her boobs bounce to and fro. Her cramps were almost cured…and then she thought of what the other people standing around saw as he vigorously shook her boobs to and fro…and this started another whole set of cramps…which resulted in more vigorous rubbing…which resulted in more boobs to and fro…and so on and so on for about 10 minutes. Finally they settled down and we headed outside and caught the bus back to stop 7 near the Kilronan Guest House. We had a Smithwicks for dinner along with a piece of hot Apple Tart with 2 Scoops of Vanilla Ice Cream…and a great dinner it was. Following that we walked home and were ready for rest when we got here.

Tomorrow we’re off to breakfast then to Mass at a church near Saint Patrick’s Cathedral then over to the Jameson distillery to try again. We’ll get registered for a tour and if we have to wait we’ll just have lunch while we are waiting. After that we’ll most likely take a walking trip through the Viking section of town and that will complete our Dublin Fun Stuff™. Monday we’ll be of to the Kilkenny area about 75 miles south with some stops on the way for sightseeing and lunch.

Cyas.

Hello…allow me to introduce myself. My name is Sir Winston Paddington Nigel Gerheart Bear. You’ll find a snapshot of me below but let me give you a few tidbits about myself and my contributions to this blog over the next few weeks.

My friends call me Nigel…everybody else calls me Sir Bear…as they should since I am a Sir of course. I’m briefly taking over the blogging duties from Uncle Gunther as he’s hefty frame is simply too large to easily fit into luggage. At least that’s what they told him…I think it’s because he’s a bit of a staid, stodgy old kinda bear and you need a more refined outlook to properly appreciate and chronicle the adults journey over here in the Emerald Isle.

So let’s get right down to business.

After leaving yesterday from Junction City around 1000…they drove over to Kansas City and stopped at Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ for lunch. As we expected fro previous visits…it was outstanding although they did eat too much…but then given the consequences for their supper as you will see shortly it’s a pretty good thing they did.

They arrived at the airport afterTravel Woe #1…which turned out to be a non issue although not without 15 minutes or so of serious angst on Connie’s part. She decided to check on their flight status after they left the Oklahoma Joe’s for the 20 mile drive over to the airport. They knew their flight departed at 1735 which would get them to the departure lounge 2 hours or so early. She called up the United Airlines site, punched in the flight number and it said that the flight to Newark was leaving at 1430 or approximately 45 minutes from when she was reading the site. Neil immediately sped up the Mazda to attempt to make the flight while she grilled him about misreading the actual flight departure time. He assured her he had done no such thing and showed her the confirmation paperwork…so she did some more checking and discovered that the flight number of the later flight had been changed and there were two flights to Newark…the earlier one which they would not have made and the later one which matched their scheduled departure time.

After that was taken care of they continued to the airport, parked in the Blue Lot in area C3, got to the terminal and got checked in for both the US and international flights and checked their luggage through to Dublin. On arrival at the gate they grabbed a Newcastle Brown Ale draft from the Heineken Bar and waited…and waited…and waited.

Our scheduled boarding time of 1700 came and went…and there was no plane at the gate. Turned out it had been delayed previously and didn’t show up until 1742. After a quick turnaround of the aircraft we boarded and took off just about an hour late…entering Travel Woe #2. This one looked to be more serious as instead of an hour and 20 minutes on the ground in Newark they now had a scheduled layover of 20 minutes…they weren’t worried about making their flight but given the short turnaround figured they would have no luggage on arrival in Dublin.

The pilots made up a few minutes on the way to Newark so on arrival at the gate and exit from the plane they had 23 minutes before the scheduled departure…and they arrived at gate C36 (all the way at one end of the terminal) and needed to get to C136 (one gate short of the completely other end of the terminal. So they took off running (and alternatively walking since Connie got winded on the way) and made it to the far gate with 11 of their 23 minutes left to spare. Neil ran ahead the last couple hundred yards to plead (if necessary) for them to hold the door but luckily for us the plane was broke (albeit a minor broke) and didn’t leave until 20 minutes after the scheduled time. The gate agent assured us that the luggage would make it given the amount of time…especially as the distance the luggage cart had to traverse across the apron was only about 10% of the distance that passengers had to run between the two gates.

So we got settled…along with another half dozen or so people who turned up later than we did…and enter Travel Woe #3.

Our seats were occupied by this guy and his son and their clearly past the limitations of the carryon rules crap. Turned out that they didn’t like the seats they were assigned and just picked out some near the rest of their family and expected whoever was actually assigned those seats (on a completely full 757 no less) to just move. Connie told him to get the Fark out of her seats and he did, complaining loudly all the way. Neil hit the head about 10 minutes later and the guy showed up again asking her if his seat was taken…at which point she agin run him off. We were left with just his teenage son in the window seat and we had the middle and aisle seats in row 29 just aft of the wing.

After taking off 20 minutes or so late they finally got around to serving dinner about an hour and 20 minutes after take off…which meant that we didn’t get supper until 0100…which definitely did not make our day. We then tried to sleep…but the A/C wasn’t working well despite the exterior temperature being -61F…Neil didn’t really understand how the inside of the plane could be sweltering with the outside air was that cold; all they needed to do was introduce some VENTILATION and the heat problem would have been solved.

After a hot night with no sleep…a halfway decent albeit late supper and some fruit and a croissant for breakfast we landed to overcast weather in Dublin and a temperature of mid 60s…this is pretty much the forecast for the rest of our time here. We figured out how to catch the bus to our hotel and after boarding the Air Coach Bus #700…a quick half hour five stop trip later we got to to the Kilronan House Guest House and checked in. Desk attendants Remy and his French intern Clementine (that’s Clementine with an een sound on the end and not an ine sound like Clementine in the Oh My Darling, Oh My Darling song) quickly got us registered for our 3 night stay and our luggage delivered to room 19 on the second floor…which is actually the third floor to us Colonials as we count the first floor…in Europe the first floor is the Ground Floor and the First Floor is up the stairs.

By this time it was 1300 and we were exhausted…so we opened the windows, pulled the drapes closed and had a 2 hour nap to get us at least partially refreshed. Our plan was to make it as late tonight as we can then get up in the morning with hopefully a full night’s sleep and our internal clocks working on Ireland time…at least that’s the theory…I’ll let you know later how successful the theory converted to practice.

Arising from our nap we headed across a local park named St Stephen’s Green founded back in 1663 by Lord Ardilaun; Sir Authur Edward Guinness (yes, that Guinness). We grabbed a few shots as we walked through it to the Temple Bar area of Dublin right next to Trinity College. The first shot is the train station near our hotel which looks like it dates from the earliest days of train stations in Ireland, the second and third are of the cottage at the entrance to the park and the steeple of the Unitarian Church across from the cottage and the remaining ones are from the park itself.

We then arrived at our first beer stop…a pub named Grogan’s. Nothing really spectacular about it but we were trying to get away from the 10,000 square foot ‘pubs’ that catered to the tourist trade in the Temple Bar District and it was the first one that looked more like a local pub. Here were are with a Beamish Stout for Neil and an O’Hara’s Irish Red Ale for Connie. Mighty tasty indeed.

After that we were tired and remembered another pub we had passed with traditional Irish food on the menu so headed back there for dinner at J. Sheehan’s of Chatham Street. Neil grabbed a photo and we headed inside…according to the sign it’s only been open for 75 years so Neil was expecting them to still be having a Grand Opening Celebration.

We decided we wanted a lighter brew for our dinner…so based on the nice taste of the O’Hara’s Irish Red ordered a couple of O’Hara’s Irish Pale Ales…and again they were mighty tasty. We split a platter of Fish and Chips (hey, it’s Ireland) which was also mighty tasty.

As we were sitting there enjoying our beers…Connie noticed this barrel end hanging over in the corner of the bar.

As we had quaffed several pints of this stuff on draft in Kentucky a couple of weeks back we chatted with the bartender a bit about it then took the picture…of course taking the picture resulted in more conversation and we met our first two Irish friends…Paul Mather and Crocodile

We watched a bit of the World Cup match involving Mexico and then headed home to the hotel. Grabbing a quick picture of the entrance sign we had a shower and watched TV until our early bedtime.

One last thing…I can happily report that the Legend of the Alabama Crimson Tide has made it here to the Old Country. We was walking around in the park and Neil had a ‘Bama shirt on and this young lady says “Roll Tide!!” Gotta love it. She sorta had a local accent and not a Southern one…but mebbe she’s just abeen here awhile.

We’ll do some planning for our two days in Dublin the morning before setting out on our touring.

Cyas.

Well, the title really tells it all…

Our plan was to head west about 35 miles to the Big Muddy National Wildlife Refuge on the south side of the Missouri River for a 3.2 mile hike along the Little Muddy Loop Trail. We got there OK and after spraying our legs with bug repellent since there are a lot of ticks in the woods started off on our hike. About a quarter mile in…we stopped and sprayed the rest of us as the skeeters were pretty numerous. We got to the first pond…and saw precisely nothing. Hiked another quarter mile to the second pond…more of the same. Entered the wooded section along the dike where we thought we would have some river views and you guessed it…nothing. No river, no wildlife, no nothing. There was a serious number of downed tree limbs on the trail from the storm that rolled through the other night and after about 300 yards of climbing over them we asked ourselves if we really wanted two more miles of this. The vote was unanimous…we would gladly climb over them if there was some payoff at the end of the hike but with no river or wildlife out decided it just wasn’t worth it. So we backtracked to the car and decided to call it a day.

Heading off to our second destination of the day…the Les Bourgeois Winery and Bistro. This is situated on the bluff overlooking the north side of the river just about opposite where we were hiking. After parking we wandered down to the bluff edge and grabbed a few photos.

Looking at the last shot which is a pano of the river…we were about 250 feet up and were hiking in the woods right across the river…it’s pretty easy to see why we couldn’t see anything as the woods are really thick right to the edge of the river.

By this time the Bistro had opened and we had a nice lunch looking out the windows overlooking the river…a Waldorf Chicken Wrap for Connie and a French Dip for Neil…along with a nice glass of wine each. Both were good although we really had to stuff to finish them…since our hike got cancelled we were having lunch at 1100 instead of our planned 1300 and it really wasn’t quite lunch time yet. After lunch we headed home and had a nice nap for an hour or so.

After that Neil decided to wander over and get some more bird pictures…it turned out to be a nice sunny afternoon so he figured he could get some less grainy, more sunlit shots. He was reasonably successful…more shots of the Ruby Throated Hummingbirds, some of a Blue Jay and a White Breasted Nuthatch.

Once again…there were 30 or 40 of the hummingbirds buzzing around the feeders…unfortunately the one that had the nicest light out in the sunshine was empty…hopefully the owners will fill it back up and there will be another sunny day for more pictures.

Dinner was leftover pizza…but we had so much left over that we saved 2 pieces for lunch tomorrow. It’s supposed to rain all day but Connie has a last few letters to send out for her students and Neil has some relatively large files to download so we’ll probably run up to the library for awhile and then maybe hit one of the local winery’s for a sample…ya never know. Guess Neil will have to figure out something for dinner tomorrow…we’ll look at the store in town and see if we can find a piece of fresh fish to cook maybe.

Cyas.

We had a pretty decent couple of days. Tuesday after our arrival we had leftover Pepper Steak and then Wednesday Connie did a bit of work. After that Neil just didn’t feel like cooking so we headed out to the Old Post Office Bar and  Grill in town…a couple of Fat Tire Ale’s and a meat/veggie flatbread pizza later we were happy and headed home.

This morning we added up our days here, checked the weather, reviewed our options for Fun Stuff©…and then headed off to the Winston Churchill Museum here in Fulton.

Our first thought was…”why is the Churchill Museum here of all places.” What we discovered was that after WWII was over old Winston was invited here to Westminster College to give a speech…there’s an annual lecture series here funded by an endowment. Churchill came and gave turned out to be a famous speech about the dangers of the Soviet Union…and essentially predicted everything that happened during the Cold War. Anyway…after his death in 1965 the College decided to put up a museum in his honor. To house it they had a church from London that was burned out during the Blitz dismantled and moved here to Fulton…where it was rebuilt to house the museum in the basement and a church on the main floor.

Before we get into that…I wanted to put in a couple of sunset shots from our time at Carlyle Lake…not outstanding sunsets but better than none I guess.

So…let’s talk about the church a bit. It was originally built as the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury and was founded in the late 11th or early 12th century in London. Sometime before the 16th century it received an endowment from the late Alberman Bury of London, hence the name change from the origin Church of St. Mary the Virgin. The church continued serving the city of London…surviving both the English Reformation and the Restoration and became one of the prominent London Puritan parishes in the 17th century. On September2, 1666 the Great Fire of London started, burning for 5 days and leaving the church in ruins. The church was rebuilt and enlarged between 1670 and 1677 under the direction of astronomy professor Christopher Wren. The church then remained pretty much unchanged until WWII…when it was burned again during the Blitz…and due to lack of funds was left in ruins until the late 1960s. At that point it was dismantled and the columns, stone from the outer walls, and stone from the lower portion of the tower were shipped to the United States…no charge for the shipping as they were used as ship’s ballast during the transit…then carried via train to Missouri. The present church was rebuilt to basically Wren’s design and the museum was constructed in the basement.

We learned an awful lot about the life, times, and achievements of Winston Churchill…including several offbeat items that he was largely responsible for.

First up…you know what a tank is, right? One of those armored vehicles with treads…everybody knows that of course. What you might not know is that the idea was first championed by Churchill before WWI and where the term tank actually came from. As Paul Harvey would say…here’s the rest of the story. What we now know as a tank as originally called a land ship since it was the British Admiralty under Churchill that was responsible for developing it. To keep the invention a secret from Germany in the pre-WWI days…it was referred to as Water Closets for Russia…but then somebody noticed that this might be abbreviated as WC’s for Russia…WC or water closet being the British term for a toilet. Since this was considered a poor name…the Admiralty started referring to them as Water Tanks for Russia…which eventually got shortened to tank and the name carried forward to today.

Next up…we found out why the boss in the James Bond 007 novels was named M and the chief geek was named Q. It turns out that back in the early days of the Cold War the two main British intelligence agencies were  MI5 being the Security Service and responsible for domestic security while MI6 was the Secret Intelligence Service and was responsible for foreign intelligence. The first head of MI6 was Captain Mansfield Cumming…who happened to sign all of his documents with just a capital C. This practice was continued by his successors and was very likely the inspiration for 007’s boss being named M.

We also got a couple nice shots of the church interior as well as one of a piece of the Berlin Wall that was added as an outside display at the museum…since Churchill largely predicted what would happen during the Cold War the directors thought it was appropriate. We also got a free piece of the Berlin Wall since this is D-Day weekend as well.

With that…we headed home and had dinner…Neil made Sauerbraten out of the last of the Pepper Steak…it tasted pretty good. After that he wandered over near the campground office since the owners have a bunch of hummingbird feeders outside…and did get a few shots of them. There were a couple of dozen flitting between the various feeders…I think they’re all Ruby Throated Hummingbirds…the males have the red throat feathers while the females do not.

They’re a little grainy…but it was almost dark and Neil pushed the camera ISO…or effective sensor speed…up to it’s maximum of 6400. Even then he could only get the shutter speed down to about 1/500 of a second…hence the blurriness in the hovering bird’s wings…which are actually moving at about 80 beats per second. He wanted some stop action shots…but not today, hopefully we’ll have a brighter day before we leave and he can get some better lit shots. He likes these pretty well though.

Tomorrow we’re off to a hike at a the Big Muddy National Wildlife Refuge and then lunch at a winery across the Missouri River from here…then home for leftover pizza from last night for dinner.

Cyas.