On the Move - Ireland
We've had such a lovely weekend!
We had to get up quite early on Friday morning, so of course we stayed up
far too late on Thursday night. We've been watching the new TNT series,
Witchblade, and there was a new episode, so we just had to see it. That
made it hard to drag ourselves out of the house by 7:30am, but steve helped
by calling to cheer us on. The tube to Heathrow was uneventful. I bought a
few books and a ham & cheese pannini in the terminal and we made our long
way out to our gate. The flight was quite smooth, but we left the sun in
London and it was just beginning to rain as we arrived in Dublin.
Elana & Brendan were waiting for us as we walked into the arrivals area. We
got money from an ATM and went out to their car. They drove us down to
their home in Dun Loghaire (pronounced "Dunleary"), which is a beautiful
place. They're in the midst of renovating it and still have many changes
they hope to accomplish, but it has the architectural details and
idiosyncrasies that make for a wonderful home. From there we walked around
the corner to a nearby cafe and had a light lunch before heading into Dublin
proper. They took us to the inn they'd booked for us. Number 31 is a very
lovely place, consisting of a Georgian townhouse where our room was and a
more modern gatehouse with a wonderful sunken conversation pit in front of a
lovely fire.
I took a nap while Jason went out for a walk with Brendan & Elana and
figured out the plan for dinner. Jason had to be very persistent to get me
up and moving again. We walked across St. Stephen's Green to Grafton
Street, a pedestrian shopping street like Boston's Downtown Crossing in some
ways. At Kehoe's Lounge (a joke, because our hosts' last name is Kehoe and
Brendan's aunt says that her father owned it once) we met Richard and Mike,
two of Brendan and Jason's cohorts from the C++ committee, and Richard's
wife, Marina. We all headed to a little hole-in-the-wall Italian place for
a very good dinner. Jason and I split a pepperoni pizza as a starter and
then I followed up with the veal in truffled mushroom sauce. Jason had the
ostrich in tangy mushroom sauce. It was tasty enough, but the sauce
overpowered the flavors of the meat so that it was indistinguishable from
the beef in tangy mushroom sauce that Mike had. For dessert we split a
passionfruit flan. Richard tried to convince us all to go meet some other
friends at a pub, but Mike was his only taker.
Jason & I headed back to our hotel, but it turned out we might as well have
gone out. The dorm on the corner of the street was having a high volume
party in their courtyard, complete with DJ and karaoke, that didn't wrap up
until almost 2 am. Jason got to sleep in spite of the noise, but I was
awake until they quieted, reading Robert Silverberg's _The Book of Skulls_,
which I found very interesting.
We made it out of bed in time to have the "full Irish" breakfast of egg,
toast, bacon, sausage and a grilled tomato. That was delicious, our host
was charming, and my parents would have been proud of me for talking to our
tablemates and finding out where they were from. We checked out and met
Elana & Brendan at the kerb at 9:00am sharp. We threw our stuff into the
back end and headed west across Ireland.
Our first stop was at Trim, to tour the castle built by the English viceroy
of Ireland, Hugh de Lacy, in 1178. It was one of the better castles we've
been in, in terms of their work to protect it and build walkways and roof it
without destroying the sense of the ruins. Our guide, Claire, did a good
job of explaining the history of the place to us. Her version of certain
details differed from what I've read of that period, which was quite
interesting. After the castle we wandered down to the Visitor Centre's
craft store and stopped on the way back at the Pastry Kitchen, where we
grabbed a snack and a drink before heading on.
After some circling, due to a lack of maps in the car, we made it to the
monastery complex at Clonmacnoise. Founded in 547 by St. Ciaran, it is a
lovely spot on a bend in the Shannon and even the tourist groups of students
cannot drown the tranquility of the site. We avoided the rain by walking
through the exhibit on the history of the complex and its many stone
carvings while it drizzled and by the time we were done, so was the rain.
After a good wander over the site, including the whispering arch and the
shelter where John Paul II performed mass twenty years ago, we stopped in
the cafe for another small snack before heading on.
We made it out to the west coast and turned north at Galway, heading up into
Connemara. Our destination was the gorgeous Lough Inagh Lodge, where Jason
& I were installed in the lavish Oscar Wilde room, while Brendan & Elana got
the George Bernard Shaw room where they had stayed on their first visit to
the inn in 1996. After showers and naps we reconvened in one of the two
parlours, where we had a drink (Guinness for everyone else and white wine
for me) and considered our options for dinner. Eventually we ordered and
then moved to our table in the dining room.
I started with smoked salmon and capers, followed by a chicken & sweetcorn
veloute (soup). My main dish was the fillet of beef topped with blue cheese
and a port wine sauce. The mains were all accompanied by boiled potatoes in
drawn butter, snow peas (or "mangetout" as they're called here) and
cauliflower in cheese sauce. For dessert I had a brandied pear with vanilla
(instead of the recommended licorice) ice cream. Jason started with goat
cheese with walnuts and mixed greens, followed by the soup, with the roasted
breast of guinea fowl as a main, accompanied by glazed tagliatelle (flat
ribbon) pasta and bits of bell pepper. Elana had the sliced smoked chicken
and capers as a starter, a mixed green salad with yogurt & cucumber
dressing, and the roast duck breast with a pear for dessert, as well. I
think Brendan also started with the smoked salmon, cleared his palate with
pineapple sorbet, chose the guinea fowl as his main and the chestnut and
chocolate teardrop for dessert. We washed the whole thing down with a
couple of bottles of Chateauneuf du Pape wine. After dinner we returned to
the parlour and started a game of Scrabble. I was feeling tired and
anti-social, so after a few rounds, I begged off and retired. Jason stayed
and won, having started out with a huge advantage by opening the game with
S-L-A-Y-I-N-G for eighty points.
On Sunday morning we started the day lazily, with an enormous breakfast.
After cereal, yogurt, fruit, scones, jam and a selection of cheeses, we were
served hot breakfasts that consisted of various styles of eggs, bacon,
sausage, kippers, smoked salmon, potato cakes, grilled tomatoes and black
pudding. No wonder that it was almost noon before we made it out of the
hotel. We headed up to Kylemore Abbey. A gothic castle built by a
millionaire MP in the late 19th century, it was taken over by Benedictine
nuns after they fled their home in Ypres, Belgium, during World War I. We
toured the house and the grounds, including the recently restored, tiny
gothic church, and the mausoleum housing the remains of the original
owners.
From there we drove on to Clifton and had a light lunch (leek & potato soup
and six oysters for me, fried cod for Jason, oysters and chips for Brendan
and lamb stew for Elana) at Fogerty's Cafe before taking the Sky Road out
around the peninsula to enjoy the view of the sea and the islands. After
that we wended our way back to the hotel and went across the road to jump on
the bog by the lake. It's really cool...looks like solid ground, but if you
jump, you can see and feel it move and the person standing next to you can
feel the wave from your impact. It's hard to believe that your eyes haven't
gone wonky, since some part of you "knows" the ground can't really be
moving.
After naps, we took on another fabulous meal in the dining room. This
evening Brendan chose a very tasty and interesting Lebanese red wine that
complimented our meals perfectly. Brendan started with a tart of crabmeat
with fennel, while the rest of us went with the smoked haddock tart with
watercress. Jason, Brendan and I all chose the mandarin orange sorbet,
while Elana had the mixed green salad again. For mains, the others all
chose the sirloin steak served with shallots and a madeira sauce, while I
had the chicken breast stuffed with bacon and wild mushrooms in a marsala
sauce. We were offered potatoes again, but the veg had changed to carrots
and broccoli. For dessert, Brendan sampled their cheeses, Jason had the
vanilla cream terrine with summer fruits, and Elana and I chose the cinnamon
parfait (because "ain't nobody don't like parfait") in applesauce. Our
parfait was more like nougat, but it was delicious nonetheless.
Elana & Brendan were all ready for a Scrabble rematch after dinner, but I
convinced them to let us teach them Hearts and we played a good game of that
and shared some wonderful port and got pretty silly before finally packing
it in around midnight. I had thought I might get to sample the bubble bath
in the little ceramic pitcher on the bathroom counter in our room, but it
was too late for baths.
This morning we made it down to breakfast at nine and after stuffing
ourselves one last time, we climbed back into the car and headed for Dublin,
with a brief stop for some Christmas shopping at Joyce's Craft Store along
the way, and another short stop at The Loft for a quick lunch.
Many people had made comments about the Irish roads, or lack thereof, and
most of the roads we'd been on over the weekend were pretty tiny, but they
were in fairly rural areas and I didn't think anything of it. It was pretty
shocking, however, to realize that the mostly-two-lane road winding through
fields and villages that we spent today on is the main east-west corridor
from Dublin to Galway. The lack of infrastructure is a real problem for the
growing economy and it will be interesting to see how they deal with it over
the next decade and more.
We checked in for our 5pm flight at 4pm, with no trouble, hugged Elana &
Brendan goodbye and headed for our gate. Our plane had an "air traffic
restriction," so we didn't actually take off until 5:23, but after that it
was a fairly easy flight. It seemed to take forever for our bag to show up
on the carousel at Heathrow, but eventually we had everything and could head
for the last leg of our trip. Oddly, there was no passport control in this
direction, although there had been entering Ireland. We got on the tube and
I wrote this most of the way home. We've just passed the King's Cross
station, so we should be home in another fifteen minutes. We've had a great
trip and it's been so good to see Elana & Brendan again and to have them
show us their home and their adopted country. But, as always, it's great to
get home again.
We had to get up quite early on Friday morning, so of course we stayed up
far too late on Thursday night. We've been watching the new TNT series,
Witchblade, and there was a new episode, so we just had to see it. That
made it hard to drag ourselves out of the house by 7:30am, but steve helped
by calling to cheer us on. The tube to Heathrow was uneventful. I bought a
few books and a ham & cheese pannini in the terminal and we made our long
way out to our gate. The flight was quite smooth, but we left the sun in
London and it was just beginning to rain as we arrived in Dublin.
Elana & Brendan were waiting for us as we walked into the arrivals area. We
got money from an ATM and went out to their car. They drove us down to
their home in Dun Loghaire (pronounced "Dunleary"), which is a beautiful
place. They're in the midst of renovating it and still have many changes
they hope to accomplish, but it has the architectural details and
idiosyncrasies that make for a wonderful home. From there we walked around
the corner to a nearby cafe and had a light lunch before heading into Dublin
proper. They took us to the inn they'd booked for us. Number 31 is a very
lovely place, consisting of a Georgian townhouse where our room was and a
more modern gatehouse with a wonderful sunken conversation pit in front of a
lovely fire.
I took a nap while Jason went out for a walk with Brendan & Elana and
figured out the plan for dinner. Jason had to be very persistent to get me
up and moving again. We walked across St. Stephen's Green to Grafton
Street, a pedestrian shopping street like Boston's Downtown Crossing in some
ways. At Kehoe's Lounge (a joke, because our hosts' last name is Kehoe and
Brendan's aunt says that her father owned it once) we met Richard and Mike,
two of Brendan and Jason's cohorts from the C++ committee, and Richard's
wife, Marina. We all headed to a little hole-in-the-wall Italian place for
a very good dinner. Jason and I split a pepperoni pizza as a starter and
then I followed up with the veal in truffled mushroom sauce. Jason had the
ostrich in tangy mushroom sauce. It was tasty enough, but the sauce
overpowered the flavors of the meat so that it was indistinguishable from
the beef in tangy mushroom sauce that Mike had. For dessert we split a
passionfruit flan. Richard tried to convince us all to go meet some other
friends at a pub, but Mike was his only taker.
Jason & I headed back to our hotel, but it turned out we might as well have
gone out. The dorm on the corner of the street was having a high volume
party in their courtyard, complete with DJ and karaoke, that didn't wrap up
until almost 2 am. Jason got to sleep in spite of the noise, but I was
awake until they quieted, reading Robert Silverberg's _The Book of Skulls_,
which I found very interesting.
We made it out of bed in time to have the "full Irish" breakfast of egg,
toast, bacon, sausage and a grilled tomato. That was delicious, our host
was charming, and my parents would have been proud of me for talking to our
tablemates and finding out where they were from. We checked out and met
Elana & Brendan at the kerb at 9:00am sharp. We threw our stuff into the
back end and headed west across Ireland.
Our first stop was at Trim, to tour the castle built by the English viceroy
of Ireland, Hugh de Lacy, in 1178. It was one of the better castles we've
been in, in terms of their work to protect it and build walkways and roof it
without destroying the sense of the ruins. Our guide, Claire, did a good
job of explaining the history of the place to us. Her version of certain
details differed from what I've read of that period, which was quite
interesting. After the castle we wandered down to the Visitor Centre's
craft store and stopped on the way back at the Pastry Kitchen, where we
grabbed a snack and a drink before heading on.
After some circling, due to a lack of maps in the car, we made it to the
monastery complex at Clonmacnoise. Founded in 547 by St. Ciaran, it is a
lovely spot on a bend in the Shannon and even the tourist groups of students
cannot drown the tranquility of the site. We avoided the rain by walking
through the exhibit on the history of the complex and its many stone
carvings while it drizzled and by the time we were done, so was the rain.
After a good wander over the site, including the whispering arch and the
shelter where John Paul II performed mass twenty years ago, we stopped in
the cafe for another small snack before heading on.
We made it out to the west coast and turned north at Galway, heading up into
Connemara. Our destination was the gorgeous Lough Inagh Lodge, where Jason
& I were installed in the lavish Oscar Wilde room, while Brendan & Elana got
the George Bernard Shaw room where they had stayed on their first visit to
the inn in 1996. After showers and naps we reconvened in one of the two
parlours, where we had a drink (Guinness for everyone else and white wine
for me) and considered our options for dinner. Eventually we ordered and
then moved to our table in the dining room.
I started with smoked salmon and capers, followed by a chicken & sweetcorn
veloute (soup). My main dish was the fillet of beef topped with blue cheese
and a port wine sauce. The mains were all accompanied by boiled potatoes in
drawn butter, snow peas (or "mangetout" as they're called here) and
cauliflower in cheese sauce. For dessert I had a brandied pear with vanilla
(instead of the recommended licorice) ice cream. Jason started with goat
cheese with walnuts and mixed greens, followed by the soup, with the roasted
breast of guinea fowl as a main, accompanied by glazed tagliatelle (flat
ribbon) pasta and bits of bell pepper. Elana had the sliced smoked chicken
and capers as a starter, a mixed green salad with yogurt & cucumber
dressing, and the roast duck breast with a pear for dessert, as well. I
think Brendan also started with the smoked salmon, cleared his palate with
pineapple sorbet, chose the guinea fowl as his main and the chestnut and
chocolate teardrop for dessert. We washed the whole thing down with a
couple of bottles of Chateauneuf du Pape wine. After dinner we returned to
the parlour and started a game of Scrabble. I was feeling tired and
anti-social, so after a few rounds, I begged off and retired. Jason stayed
and won, having started out with a huge advantage by opening the game with
S-L-A-Y-I-N-G for eighty points.
On Sunday morning we started the day lazily, with an enormous breakfast.
After cereal, yogurt, fruit, scones, jam and a selection of cheeses, we were
served hot breakfasts that consisted of various styles of eggs, bacon,
sausage, kippers, smoked salmon, potato cakes, grilled tomatoes and black
pudding. No wonder that it was almost noon before we made it out of the
hotel. We headed up to Kylemore Abbey. A gothic castle built by a
millionaire MP in the late 19th century, it was taken over by Benedictine
nuns after they fled their home in Ypres, Belgium, during World War I. We
toured the house and the grounds, including the recently restored, tiny
gothic church, and the mausoleum housing the remains of the original
owners.
From there we drove on to Clifton and had a light lunch (leek & potato soup
and six oysters for me, fried cod for Jason, oysters and chips for Brendan
and lamb stew for Elana) at Fogerty's Cafe before taking the Sky Road out
around the peninsula to enjoy the view of the sea and the islands. After
that we wended our way back to the hotel and went across the road to jump on
the bog by the lake. It's really cool...looks like solid ground, but if you
jump, you can see and feel it move and the person standing next to you can
feel the wave from your impact. It's hard to believe that your eyes haven't
gone wonky, since some part of you "knows" the ground can't really be
moving.
After naps, we took on another fabulous meal in the dining room. This
evening Brendan chose a very tasty and interesting Lebanese red wine that
complimented our meals perfectly. Brendan started with a tart of crabmeat
with fennel, while the rest of us went with the smoked haddock tart with
watercress. Jason, Brendan and I all chose the mandarin orange sorbet,
while Elana had the mixed green salad again. For mains, the others all
chose the sirloin steak served with shallots and a madeira sauce, while I
had the chicken breast stuffed with bacon and wild mushrooms in a marsala
sauce. We were offered potatoes again, but the veg had changed to carrots
and broccoli. For dessert, Brendan sampled their cheeses, Jason had the
vanilla cream terrine with summer fruits, and Elana and I chose the cinnamon
parfait (because "ain't nobody don't like parfait") in applesauce. Our
parfait was more like nougat, but it was delicious nonetheless.
Elana & Brendan were all ready for a Scrabble rematch after dinner, but I
convinced them to let us teach them Hearts and we played a good game of that
and shared some wonderful port and got pretty silly before finally packing
it in around midnight. I had thought I might get to sample the bubble bath
in the little ceramic pitcher on the bathroom counter in our room, but it
was too late for baths.
This morning we made it down to breakfast at nine and after stuffing
ourselves one last time, we climbed back into the car and headed for Dublin,
with a brief stop for some Christmas shopping at Joyce's Craft Store along
the way, and another short stop at The Loft for a quick lunch.
Many people had made comments about the Irish roads, or lack thereof, and
most of the roads we'd been on over the weekend were pretty tiny, but they
were in fairly rural areas and I didn't think anything of it. It was pretty
shocking, however, to realize that the mostly-two-lane road winding through
fields and villages that we spent today on is the main east-west corridor
from Dublin to Galway. The lack of infrastructure is a real problem for the
growing economy and it will be interesting to see how they deal with it over
the next decade and more.
We checked in for our 5pm flight at 4pm, with no trouble, hugged Elana &
Brendan goodbye and headed for our gate. Our plane had an "air traffic
restriction," so we didn't actually take off until 5:23, but after that it
was a fairly easy flight. It seemed to take forever for our bag to show up
on the carousel at Heathrow, but eventually we had everything and could head
for the last leg of our trip. Oddly, there was no passport control in this
direction, although there had been entering Ireland. We got on the tube and
I wrote this most of the way home. We've just passed the King's Cross
station, so we should be home in another fifteen minutes. We've had a great
trip and it's been so good to see Elana & Brendan again and to have them
show us their home and their adopted country. But, as always, it's great to
get home again.