A little late posting this week...

A little late posting this week, it's Sunday but there's a good reason.  Last week was our first hosting experience in Dublin and it was just great.  We had a lot of fun with our friends and, unless they are just saying it to make us feel good, they had fun too.  Win, win all around.  Enough, I hope, to encourage all of you who are on the fence about visiting us!

Our friends came on Saturday and we spent the first three days of their visit in Dublin.  The first day we stuck close to home because it's usually the hardest for the jet lag adjustment.  That worked out well. We took a short bus ride to the city center and gave them a general orientation.  The following day they went on their own for a walking tour of the city.  There are walking tours every day and each one is different, depending on the guide.  The guides are usually affiliated with Trinity College, Dublin so they are quite knowledgeable and opinionated.  They know stuff and don't mind inserting their own interests and biases in the tour so there's nothing rote about it.

On the third day we went with them to the Killmainham Gaol (Irish again, it's just pronounced "jail").  This was the place where the British kept Irish 'criminals' in the 19th century and political prisoners in the days of the fight for independence 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilmainham_Gaol.  

They had a lot of records and some of the criminal offenses were quite poignant, "stealing potatoes" for example.  Of course there were also larcenies of all sorts as well as prostitution and buggery.  I'm sure it's quite interesting when Americans bring their children for an Irish history lesson and the kids ask 'What's buggery dad?"  Anyway, the goal was fascinating.  It was a horrible place but apparently during the famine, people were committing crimes to get in, so one can just imagine how horrible it was on the outside during those times.  The film In the Name of the Father was filmed there so if you have seen that, you get the idea.  On a happier note, we also did the Guinness Brewery tour, ending the day in the great pub they have at the top of the building with a wonderful panorama of the city.  That was just great.

On Wednesday we left for Killarney by train.  Killarney is a nice city.  Initially I thought that as guests come we would accompany them on trips to places where we'd not already been, but I could see going back there -- and to Dingle -- again and again.  We had fun in Killarney.  From there we did a horse and trap/boat ride through the Gap of Dunloe 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gap_of_Dunloe

Half the trip was in a very small cart pulled by an overworked horse and the return was an open-topped boat through the lakes of Killarney.  On the following day we did a bus tour of the Ring of Kerry.  Both were very nice, although the Ring of Kerry bus tour was 2 hours too long.  

Following Killarney our friends got a car and we drove to Dingle.  It was pouring rain, the first time we really got a lot of rain during their stay.  I didn't like the car trip much, but took a valium at the start and was asleep most of the way.  The car thing continues and it's pretty much a nuisance but valium works good.  Still, I can't think that any kind of cross country tour in a car would be anything but torture for me, particularly since this trip was only two hours!  

Still, once we got to Dingle and checked into the hotel, Benners (good but expensive), we had a great dinner and then went to a pub in which we had the best music and dance experience we have had in Ireland.  The musicians (just a guitar and squeeze box accordian)  were just great.  We had so much fun, and THEN they started a set dance.  It was just great.  

  

The following day in Dingle was great too although our boat tour to the Blasket Islands was rained out.  We and our friends walked around town (in the rain) in the early morning, then it cleared up.  We stopped in the public library and had a good visit with the librarian who was a font of information, then when the rain stopped we continued our walk to a nearby church where a funeral was in progress.  We waited in the back while the exit procession was going on.  They sang "Lord of the Dance" and right there, I determined that I'm going to learn set dancing here.  It was very moving.

Following that, Rosemary noticed a sign encouraging us to visit an adjoining convent with noteworthy stained glass.  What a great find, the chapel was just beautiful.  I could not have asked for more by way of artistry and spiritual beauty, it more than made up for not seeing dolphins!  So, so beautiful. 

http://www.diseart.ie/visitor/harry2.html

All in all, a great, great week.  We both enjoyed hosting and the new experiences.   Our friends come back to us on Wednesday for one night and then we will rest for a few weeks in preparation of Alan's sister and my favorite outlaw, Tom's visit.  (The outlaws are those who have married Balkemas  -- you know who you are an why this in noteworthy).  Those who really know Alan also know -- the Balkemas are NEVER wrong -- still, we outlaws stick with them and with one another in solidarity.  I'm looking forward to a great visit. 

It's been a quiet week, nothing much occurred.  I went to a concert with my friend Mary on Thursday and on Wednesday we went to see the Olympic team return and get kudos from the government, but the ceremony was rained out and we didn't stay to see it.  The rain just came down and the wind was terrible.  It was a complete gale. 

The only thing noteworthy this week is my new addiction to "Big Money" the Irish  Lottery's scratch-off game.  When we were at Glasnevin last week the tour guide said that if we touched James Connelly's casket it would be lucky, so I've started buying these lottery tickets that, in addition to the 'instant win' amounts include chances for attending a TV program and another chance to win a trip to New York.  With about 20 tickets (at 3 Euro a pop) we've won about 20 Euro but also three chances for the TV show and 6 for the NY trip.  Now that I've touched the coffin, I'm sure we're going to win! So, look for us, or at least me, reporting from New York soon! ha ha

Next week promises to be much more interesting.  Our friends are coming tomorrow and on Tuesday we leave for Killarney and the Dingle Peninsula.  Hopefully next weeks post will be much more interesting.  I'm only going to post this today because I want to keep the discipline of doing it on Fridays!

This has been a mostly Olympics week.  We've been glued to our TVs watching and rooting for both team USA and Ireland.  I was sorry to have missed Gabby Douglas get her gold in gymnastics, but delighted with the win.  It was also fun to watch Michael Phelps make history.  We also enjoyed watching Usain Bolt, given our love for things Jamaican.  But, I have to say, I've had the greatest interest in boxing and eagerly watched Katie Taylor win gold against Russia. 

We're also looking forward to this evening's match with John Joe Nevin and the British contender, Luke Campbell.  It was pandemonium on the street yesterday when he won silver.  I knew that John Joe was from Mullingar, the 'big city' near my father's home of Moate, but just learned this morning that he's a 'traveler' -- better known as gypsy in other parts of the world.  Now that all makes sense.  There's a TV show here called "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding" and in addition to young women marrying very, very young in very, very over the top costume, the men are also pretty scrappy.  One of the rites of passage for a young man seems to be to get pretty badly beaten up.  The whole community seems to wholeheartedly support this. My father often spoke of the 'tinkers' -- the much more pejorative term; now I understand what he was talking about.

We didn't go to Moneygall last week after all.  Alan didn't want to make the two hour trip just for a house tour and pint in the pub.  I was disappointed, particularly when it turned out that the Democrats in Ireland had arranged a bus that we could have traveled on, but we didn't learn about that until too late. Instead we went to see "Riverdance" touring yet again in Ireland.  I'd never seen it live before and was surprised at how much I'd seen in snippets on TV.  It was quite energetic, I think Alan enjoyed it more than I did, but the theater in which it was performed, The Gaiety, while small for the amount of action on stage, was quite beautiful.  I'd like to see a play there in the future. 

On Tuesday we went to Glasnevin Cemetery, where almost all of the Irish patriots are buried.  That was quite a place.  The guided tour was quite interesting, including some information about a bombing there in 1970 in which the Ulstermen (the IRA's opposition) tried to blow up the memorial to James Connolly, Ireland's George Washington.  This was interesting because three years earlier -- during my time working for Aer Lingus in New York -- the IRA was successful in blowing up the Nelson's Pillar.  The Pillar was a memorial on the main street in Dublin dedicated to a British hero in the Battle of Trafalgar.  It stood for 160 years as "...the glory of a mistress and the transformation of our state into a discount office".  The IRA were much better with explosives than the Ulstermen because The Pillar is no more but Connolly's memorial survives. Like our Civil War, the War of Independence here lives on, although there is little current animosity toward the British -- except when our guy meets their guy in the ring at 8:45 tonight!

There is a titanium spire where Nelson's Pillar stood.  They call that the "stiletto in the ghetto".  Dubliners are very conscious about north and south of the river Liffey.  Even though it's a perfectly nice neighborhood, housing north of the Liffy, where this statue stands, is less posh than housing south, thus "the ghetto". There's a picture of the spire and Nelson's Pillar here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spire_of_Dublin

In the coming week we are preparing for our first visitors.  They will be here next Saturday and we are busy collecting information about things of interest in Dublin.  After three days here, we will travel with them to County Kerry to tour Killarney and Dingle.  We also learned this week that we will have our dearest friend with us for Thanksgiving.  All in all a good week.  

We've had a few adventures close to home this week, pathetically, one of them was to IKEA.  Several months ago we noticed that a bus was destined for the store.  I don't think I've even seen a public bus destined for a particular store before so we thought this must be an event that we couldn't miss in our Irish sojourn.  Sure enough, the bus terminated at the only IKEA store in Ireland; and it was a destination.  There was a large children's play room, a big cafeteria and acres and acres of retail space.  There was nothing else around.  It is in a warehouse location close to the airport.  We'd only been to one IKEA in the Washington area and it was nothing like this.  The store was packed, I was sure that there were people like us making it their day's adventure.  We bought a few things, had a bad, kid-filled lunch and came home.  It took 6 hours.  I wouldn't do it again but I have to say it was an interesting experience.  That store has everything, except what we were looking for as our excuse to go:  a butter dish and a meat thermometer, too old fashioned I guess, everything is modern in IKEA.

On a more fun note, I spent yesterday walking with a friend between two seaside villages, Bray and Greystones.  The path is one that's been around since medieval times and it was a beautiful, scenic walk.  Both are summer escape villages.  Bray is popular with the people from Northern Ireland in particular.  Seems that when the parade season (in July) happens in the north and the protestants and the catholics provoke one another with their marching many of the year-round residents flee to Bray.  I can see why, it has a wonderful beach but kind of a Coney Island feel, with rides and hucksters and fatty food vendors.  Greystones is much more upscale, no midway just what I picture when I think of a Victorian get away.  The walk between them, 6.2 kilometers (about 4 miles) is unspoiled and undeveloped it was just beautiful.  It is a cliff walk that hugs the sea the whole way.  We had lunch in Greystones and then took the train back one stop to Bray where we picked up my friend's car.  It was a really nice day and we didn't get rained on.

Tomorrow we are headed for a day trip to Moneygall, Obama's ancestral home.  He's a rock star in Ireland and he's put that little village on the map.  We will take a two-hour bus ride from Dublin and then take a tour of the home is great grandfather left and have a pint in the pub.  Tomorrow is his birthday and the Democrats in Ireland are putting on this bash.  It should be interesting.  Yesterday, during lunch I spoke to a man who asked me if Republicans ever come to Ireland.  I wondered myself.  Surely with the performance of Mitt Romney in this region last week, he'd be hard pressed to hold his own with the Obama fans.  Apparently by the time he got to Poland, he was done with Europe entirely and his press secretary told the reporters there to 'kiss my ass' when they asked him about his gaffs in England.  That didn't go over too well, although there's plenty of amusement about it. 

The other thing I've been doing this week is making arrangements for our first visit from America.  Friends from Wisconsin are coming and we will entertain them here for several days before we all go off to Kerry.  Unfortunately we will just miss the "Rose of Tralee" festival, which concludes on August 21st, but our plan is to do the Ring of Kerry and spend two nights in Killarney and one in Dingle.  In all of my trips to Ireland in the past, I have never seen this part of the country.  As anyone who has done the traditional tour of Ireland knows this is one of the 'must see' areas, so I'm looking forward to it. 

This has, thankfully, been a quiet week.  Not much going on.  I finished and sent off the survey that had me so tied up on Sunday and then wrote the report on my trip to Liverpool and followed-up with the people I met there. 

Over last weekend, Alan and I saw 4 movies.  A new one on Friday, Nostalgia for the Light, which I wrote about last Sunday and then 3 films that were the complete works of Irish filmmaker, Pat Murphy:  Meave, Anne Devlin and Nora.  The first two were 'feminist' films and while I enjoyed Meave, about a young woman trying to escape 'the troubles' and her family in Northern Ireland in the 1970's and the second about a woman who was involved in an Irish uprising in 1798, both were over long and not well edited.  The third, Nora, was Murphy's last film and by far the best, a much more theatrical (rather than 'film student') movie about Nora Barnacle Joyce, James Joyce's wife.  It starred Susan Lynch as Nora and Ewan McGregor as James Joyce.  The last was also long but much better edited.  The filmmaker, Pat Murphy was there for the screening of all three.  I thought I would enjoy that but she seemed to feel it necessary to talk before each film about 'what it is about' and I found that distracting, I would have much preferred hearing her comments afterward.  Anyway, it was interesting to see the entire filmography (to date) of one person.  I would definitely recommend Nora if you can get hold of a print.  I do believe it's still available, the other two can only be seen through access to the IFI archives. 

Last night, Thursday, we had guests in.  I met Mary on a walk in Sandymount and we have done several things together since meeting in May but this was the first time she met Alan and I met her husband, Tom.  We have a lot in common, having married the same year, no kids and a similar experience with the loss of our mother.  I hope this friendship endures passed our time here in Ireland.

This morning I did my first volunteer activity, a meeting with The Community Foundation for Ireland as a member of a steering committee trying to develop a survey instrument and method for assessing the 'vital signs' in Ireland.  It was quite interesting and I hope it turns into a long term study that will help decision makers better understand the social and political environment in the country.  It could be a big thing.  I hope so.

Finally, we are busy preparing for a visit by friends from the states.  They will be in Ireland from August 18th to the 30th with several days in Dublin and then we will go with them to Kerry to the tourist mecca  the 'Ring of Kerry', Killarney and the Dingle Peninsula.  Then they will go off on their own for a few days and then return to Dublin before they leave.  We are excited to have our first guests!  Following that, Alan's sister and brother-in-law will come for three days on September 24, then in October we will do a walking tour in Majorca in the first half and, later in the month,  have other guests for 10 days during which we are planning to go to the Cork Jazz festival.  So, all in all, it's good to have this quiet period, which I expect to extend into next week.

I'm sooo close to getting back to a 'normal' retirement schedule.  It's been a hectic and stressful six weeks since that compensation survey I've been working on closed.  Last night -- this morning -- I was up until 4:20 fixing a major glitch in the last bit. 

Last night we saw a movie at the Irish Film Institute -- Nostalgia for the Light -- a really good but very slow movie about Chile, astronomy and the aftermath of the brutal Pinochet dictatorship there.  You wouldn't think the latter two things would go together but the film maker did a great job in equating them.  One of the really thoughtful ideas he touched was that people, in Chile in particular but elsewhere as well, have a lot of interest and empathy for the challenges astronomers face in trying to piece together the ancient past through the skies but have little patience with the women who quest to find the remains of their loved ones that 'disappeared' during Pinochet's brutal regime.  They tell them "It's the past, forget it, we're focused on the future, we're tired of hearing about it!" That really made me think.

This was the first unscheduled outing since the work started getting the survey book together.  It was premature.  When I came home to what I thought would be just putting the finishing touches on the tables, I discovered a huge formatting error that affected every page.  It would have been a nightmare if I were asleep, but I was awake, it was real, and I had to deal with it, so stayed up until 4:20 a.m. to do it.  I hope to have this thing done and sent off this weekend so they are able to prepare it for publishing next week.  I will be so glad when that's done.

Following my last post, Alan and I left for Liverpool, where I spoke at the European & International Association Congress.  The speaking went well, although I was not so happy with my duties as chair of the membership stream for the conference.  I didn't have enough advance information about what that entailed and there was a lot of winging it along the way, a condition that makes me very uncomfortable.  Anyway, my part was good so it was a learning experience.

Alan and I were in Liverpool in 1983 on our way to Dublin by ferry from London.  It was a dirty, gritty, scary place then.  What a transformation!  The head of the Liverpool Convention and Visitor's Bureau mentioned that in the last 10 or so years the city has been transformed.  Technology and the business around technology has helped it to leapfrog from England's warehouse to a high-tech powerhouse. I was very impressed.

I didn't realize it in 1983 but there is a great deal of beautiful architecture there.  They call it the city that slavery built.  I was happy to see that they do not shirk from their terrible history in that sorry trade.  Mostly, in the 16th and 17th centuries they were warehousing people on their way from Africa to the Americas.  We took a very informative open-top bus tour during a break in the proceedings of the Congress.  Alan also got to go to the Beatles Museum.  I would have liked to see the childhood homes of both John and Paul, but the only way to get in them is on a heritage tour which only operates Saturday to Wednesday and we left on Tuesday.  But, back to the architecture.  In addition to some very old public buildings there is one of the largest Anglican cathedrals in Great Britain and about the ugliest, but apparently impressive inside, Catholic cathedral I've ever seen.  They call it Paddy's Wigwam.  At first I thought it was Brits being insulting to Catholics but it seems everyone calls it that.  It's brutalist architecture stands out in the otherwise traditional built environment.  I tried for a picture but couldn't find a good one, Google "Paddy's Wigwam, Liverpool" to see it, although all the pictures I've seen are taken in the best light, the 360 view we got on the tour bus is quite different. Anyway, Liverpool was a pleasant surprise all around.

That can't be said for the Ryanair flight we booked there and back.  Ryanair is Ireland's low-cost airline.  There's a joke here that they would charge to use the toilet on the plane if they could.  My 'really cheap flight' at 120 Euros for both of us quickly escalated to 320 (about $400) when you add the 100 Euro fee for forgetting to put the L. in Alan's name in the booking (name has to be exactly as on the passport), and the 100 fee for checking bags that are carry-on size with every other air carrier. In addition, the cattle call to get on the plane and get a seat is really stressful and tiring.  Never again.  It was horrible. 

Anyway, I am hoping for a quiet week upcoming.  We have scheduled dinner with my new friend, Mary, and her husband Tom on Thursday, and my first volunteer outing to a meeting on Friday, but otherwise, I'm planning to sleep in and putz around with nothing hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles.  We'll see, I usually manage to try to fit too much in a single day.

I missed a week!

Since my last post two weeks ago I've been busy and traveling.  Just after finishing my post June 29th, we left for a weekend trip to Donegal to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary, visit my mother's grave in Frosses there, and visit some friends and relatives.  We stayed at the beautiful Solis Lough (Lake) Eske Castle, a place that we'd visited several years ago.  It's on the grounds of a property established by the White family, sold several times over the last few centuries and was purchased by a Donegal developer from the Donegal forestry agency.  When the developer purchased it, the castle was in terrible shape, the forestry folks were interested in the land and trees and had allowed the castle to go to ruin.  After investing millions of Euro, the castle is now one of the best hotels and spas I've ever experienced.  If you are interested, here's a link http://www.solishotels.com/lougheskecastle/ . I'd recommend it to anyone visiting Ireland.

The one sour note to our visit was that I had to continue working on the compensation survey if there was any hope of finishing by today because one day after we returned from Donegal, I was headed to Provence in France for a four-day visit with a friend to "see the lavender," an adventure on my friend's bucket list.    I brought 107 tables with me to Donegal to proofread in the car on the round-trip journey.  Although it was boring work, most of the tables are exactly the same just containing different information for the various positions, it kept my mind off the road, a situation that Alan appreciated!  Except to say I met my deadline and will submit the report today, enough about this monumental task.

I left for Paris on Tuesday evening, July 3 met my friend in Paris for an overnight there and then we took the train together to Avignon.  My friend arranged everything and it all was just perfect.  We had a wonderful time.  The train ride was an express and the 2.5 hours quickly passed.  It was quite crowded because there was a theater festival about to start in Avignon that Friday.  At first we thought they'd all come for the lavender tours, ha.  The hotel my friend booked was right in the heart of Avignon's central square, just steps from the Pope's Palace.  Seven Popes between 1309 to 1376 spent their terms there when Clement V refused to move from his native France to Rome.  Some other problems ensued (which I don't know about because we were there for lavender, not the Papacy and didn't tour the palace). 

The following day we did a day-long tour touching on several really nice villages in the region and learning a lot about lavender growing and commerce.  One interesting fact is that what passes for 'lavender' in gardens outside this region is really 'lavendine' a less fine version of the original (at least this is what they preach in that part of the world).  We went to the lavender museum where they were at great pains to make this distinction.  It was all quite interesting, I had no idea that lavender was used in so many things, it's quite an economic benefit to the region. 

In addition to my friend and I, our tour included three young Japanese women and a couple from China.  The French guide conducted the tour in English, the only language we all had in common.  It seems there's a Japanese soap opera set in "Lavender, France" and the young women were quite engaged in photographing themselves sitting and otherwise posing in the bright purple blooming fields.  At one point the guide had to remind them that the fields were private property!  It was quite amusing.  We had a great, sunny day, although there was a nanosecond of rain which seemed to undo some of the shopkeepers in one of the villages we visited -- clearly they are not Irish. 

The following day we did a half-day tour of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine region.  We visited a winery where we learned quite a lot about how to taste and assess white and red wines.  We also visited a Roman amphitheater in Orange.  Quite a full half-day tour.

When we returned to Avignon, the theater festival was just getting started.  There was a parade and outdoor performances all over the place.  It was quite the spectacle.  It was all quite wonderful, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

We returned to Paris on Saturday and stayed the night in an apartment that my friend's brother rented for a week.  He and his family arrived late that evening.  I thought my flight was scheduled for Sunday evening so we spent the late afternoon and evening walking around the 7th Arrondissement (THE tourist Mecca of Paris).   A fun conclusion to the trip.


The only unfortunate event was discovering on Sunday morning that I was supposed to have left on Saturday evening, so I had to purchase a one-way ticket back to Dublin at a whopping 438 Euro! So all my efforts finding that 100 Euro round-trip to Paris were ultimately thwarted.  It dimmed an otherwise wonderful time.  


In the coming week, Alan and I are headed to Liverpool where I will be doing a presentation at the European & International Association Congress.  We return on Tuesday, when I'm looking forward to a few days of doing not much.  Till next week...