Dorothy came on Wednesday as scheduled and we have been having new Dublin-area adventures since she arrived.  On Thursday, we went to Dublin City University to see a pre-cast statue in development of Frederick Douglass.  It's really amazing.  It's full of movement and fire, we enjoyed seeing it.  Frederick Douglass used Ireland has his home base for his European activities.  It was a pretty pivotal time for him, and he credited Daniel O'Connell, Ireland's 'Emancipator' with helping him to formulate his non-violent philosophy.  The statue is just resin now but there's fundraising afoot to get it cast in bronze and then it can be exhibited outside. 

On Friday Dorothy and I did a walk on the coast from Greystones to Bray, a route I took first with my friend Mary.  It's a nice 6 kilometer walk.  We stopped for a meal in Bray and then back on the Dart (commuter train) to home, where we quickly dressed for a play that evening.  We saw Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray at the Abbey Theatre.  It was quite well done.  The staging was amazing and the way they handled the portrait and Gray's transformation at the end was the best theater I've seen.  We were dazzled. 

Yesterday we did a guided hill walk in Glendalough, a very beautiful park in the Wicklow Mountains.  It was much harder than the guide we hired let on at the beginning and much more taxing than we bargained for.  As in Mallorca (where we did the walking tour last month) people who guide hikes tend to minimize the effort.  "Anyone can do it..." etc.  This is such a load of BS it's really annoying.  Anyway, it was a beautiful site but after we finished it, I did some research and discovered an easier walk that would have taken us through more historic areas.  Hill walkers think all there is is "the view" and it seems the process of walking isn't their focus.  But we have some great pictures and had a good time despite all of the mindless effort we put in.  As in Mallorca, the guide asserted that we would revel in "the accomplishment" at the end, which I tend not to do.  So what, we made it.  It was grueling when it didn't have to be.  I think that's one of the problems for me going on tours that involve exercise (like biking or walking).  I very much like to do it, but I'm not interested in getting there fast or first or even second or third, and if it gets too much I don't really mind just stopping.  It doesn't make me feel bad at all to say I didn't do the whole thing.  Anyway, it was good to get to Glendalough. 

Today we were debating about doing another walking tour in the city in Temple Bar but all decided that was not very interesting.  Dorothy and I are going to walk to the village instead.  It's already 2:30 and Alan has started making Sunday dinner.  I think it's going to be a quiet evening.

This is Thanksgiving week and we've invited several friends for the meal.  Except for us (Alan, me and Dorothy) all the others are Irish and none have had an "American Thanksgiving" before so I'm looking forward to introducing them to turkey and all the trimmings.  In order to have a pumpkin pie, however, I had to do the pumpkin from scratch (no canned pumpkin here) and I'll have to make the crust (no frozen pie crust either).  The latter is a little daunting because, like hill walking, those who are familiar with it say "there's nothing to it" while those of us who are novices, end up with an overworked crust!  But, pumpkin pie is a must so there's nothing to be done but to do it.

Our trip to Holland was uneventful.  The apartment was OK, except the 'second floor' walk-up was really on the American third floor (which I knew) and the stairs up to that lofty height were very narrow and steep.  We've encountered both of those conditions on stairways throughout Holland so none of it was a surprise but I couldn't get my mind off fire while on those stairs.  Finding the place was easy enough, even though we arrived after dark, at about 9 p.m.  Once on the street, however, we realized that we didn't have a house number, only an apartment number "B" and there were about 20 houses on this little street.  Fortunately we were 'adopted' by a waiter in the nearby hotel and he called the emergency number for the Short Stay Group, the vendor we used to get the apartment. 

We did the Rijksmuseum on the following day, but discovered that most of it is still closed, so we also did the Van Gogh Mile, which is a narrated walk between the closed for renovations Van Gogh Museum and The Hermitage where the collection is temporarily housed.  It was a little disappointing, the Internet links didn't work very well, but the walk took us into some very new areas for us.  On the following day I wanted to go to Delft but Alan was not enthusiastic about a two hour train ride.  I could have gone on my own, but got lazy and was suitably distracted doing research with Alan on locations.  He's just finished a play about an American Expat living in Amsterdam so he needed to identify a few settings.  It was good we did that because he has one character hanging around a small neighborhood square, but there are none of those in Amsterdam.  There are big squares, like the famous Dam Square, but the Dutch don't 'waste' the land they build with green space.  The Dutch have a saying "God made the world but the Dutch made Holland," and this is so right, even in a city as old as Amsterdam you can see that they are still reclaiming the sea for housing.  It's a very interesting place. 

When we learned on Wednesday morning that Obama won, that was just icing on the cake.  All along I knew the election wasn't as 'close' as the media was presenting.  I was so, so happy it was with both the electoral college and the popular vote.  Maybe now they will start working together, since there's no possibility of 'helping' Obama's re-election if any collaboration is successful.  I hope so.

We returned home late Thursday evening and I did absolutely nothing yesterday.  That's a real challenge for me but I succeeded.  Today I'm planning to take a yoga class and maybe go to a movie.  I should be working on a project that I've committed to have done by the end of the year, but there's always tomorrow!

Our friend Dorothy comes on Wednesday.  I'm hoping that we can get short trips in to Belfast and Cork while she's here. 

Our friends, Judy and Mark, left Dublin this morning.  They were worried about the flight because they were routed through New York and the flights just started operating into JFK yesterday since the hurricane on Monday.  Looks like a real mess in New York, but I checked and they got off OK.  I have only heard from one of my relatives but I'm hoping all is well with the nieces and nephews who make that area home.  I'd say they have other fish to fry this week than checking email. 

We went to the Cork Jazz Festival last weekend.  We met Judy and Mark there on Friday.  They left Dublin on the Sunday before and visited Sligo and Galway on their own.  They really enjoyed that part of the trip too.  This is turning out to be the best arrangement for visits, for folks to arrive in Dublin and spend a few days here, then go off on their own, and to get back together for the last few days.  Previously we did that with friends from Wisconsin.  It helps us to see more parts of the country as well.

The Jazz Festival was just great.  We saw about six different bands and only one was bad. We had a great apartment right in the center of things and so were able to take our time in the morning and do our own breakfast.  In addition to the music, we did two self guided walking tours around Cork and a side trip one evening to Kinsale.  The latter turned out no so good because we left Cork late in the afternoon on the bus and planned to have dinner there, then take in a pub and take the last bus back to Cork at 10:20.  Well, that last bus never came and we had to take a cab.  For me, it was a really bad cab ride and the worst part of our stay because the driver wouldn't turn off the bomp, bomp music he had on the radio. His one concession was to turn it down but then all we heard was the base, even worse! At one point he said that we hired the driver, not the car!  I was really steamed by the end of that 40 Euro, 45-minute ride.  Alan, who was sitting in the front, said he thought he didn't know how to turn it off!  I've asked most cab drivers to turn off the radio and never had this problem before, but I've learned my lesson, I'm going to ask before I get in the cab.

I'm just about to finish a survey I've completed for the Community Foundation of Ireland, a replication of a Canada-wide study called "Vital Signs" in which people across the country answered questions about the quality of life here in Ireland.  I'm pretty excited to be involved in this study and think it should get some good press since it's the first one done in Ireland and a lot people answered.  I'm really delighted to have gotten to be part of this.  Naturally, I'm doing the analysis and the Exec of the Foundation is doing the talking.  I have to present it to her tomorrow.  Explaining the results in a way that she can be confident is the second most favorite thing for me.  By far, the most favorite is doing the analysis.  I really like this work!

On Monday, Alan and I are taking a trip to Holland. We will stay in an apartment in Amsterdam.  This time I am hoping to also do to Delft, the Rijksmuseum and The Hermitage which is housing the Van Gogh collection while that museum is closed.  The last two times we were in Amsterdam the Rijksmuseum has been closed so I'm looking forward to that in particular.  When we return we will have a few days before our dear friend Dorothy comes for several weeks, including Thanksgiving.  We're planning an American Thanksgiving with her and some of the Irish folks we have become friendly with here.  I'm looking forward to it. 

It's a beautiful sunny day today but I have to work!  Still, October has been just beautiful here, dry and crisp.  In fact, Judy and Mark didn't see any day of rain during their whole trip, only a few light sprinkles in Cork on Sunday, amazing for Ireland.  I would recommend that people think about Ireland in the fall rather than the summer, it's so beautiful, and summer is the rainy season, as we learned first hand this year.