The last post of 2012

Just one more day left in an eventful 2012.  It's been a great year for us and we hope for you as well.
Except for a disappointing stay at Lough Erne Resort over Christmas last week (which you will all likely read about in April when the G8 visits there) we have had a wonderful year.  So good, in fact, that we've decided to extend our stay in Ireland.  We will definitely be here until at least November 2013 and I'm lobbying hard for another year after that.  We will make our decision on that in April when our lease is up on the property we're renting now.  If we stay I'd like to move from the tony Sandymount to a place where actual Irish people live.  It's a little like living on Embassy Row here, not quite as snooty but close.

We just returned from our Christmas trip to Ulster, the northern province in Ireland that includes my mother's home county of Donegal and Northern Ireland.  Donegal is in the Republic of Ireland but the rest of the province is in Northern Ireland.  We spent Christmas Eve and day at Lough Erne in County Fermanagh, the county adjoining Donegal.  The only thing to be said for those two days is that it was expensive.  We had a pretty good time with one another, but could have done that just as easily in Dublin.  On the day following Christmas (Boxing Day here) we moved to Donegal and visited my mother's family.  That was great and really made up for the bad time in the hotel.  We should have angled for an invitation to Christmas Dinner with family instead!

We decided to fly into Donegal this time.  It's about the distance from DC to New York so it's not  a long drive but I don't like the car very much and it just seemed easier.  All went to schedule, except the 80 mile-an-hour winds when we returned made for a harrowing landing back in Dublin at the end.  I don't think I've ever been afraid on an airplane, but I was then.  Fortunately the (woman) pilot was experienced and she seemed to think this was all in a day's work.  I was happy to be on the ground.

I hope you are all looking forward to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2013.  

We made our reservation for your Christmas program with high expectations.  We have experienced Ulster 5-star hospitality at Solis Lough Eske in Donegal several times.  Soon after booking we learned that you would host the G8 in the spring.  We were sure a stay booked as a "program" in such a venue would be more memorable than a nice bed and some meals.

Before going into our list of disappointments let me say your staff is lovely.  To a person everyone was kind and interested in our comfort.  It could only have been better if they were more well-informed. 

Before we arrived, we read, with dismay, about the fire in the pool area and received a call about same in advance.  We were told that there would be an adjustment to the bill for the spa treatments we booked.  We were a little surprised that the rate wasn’t reduced because without a pool a 5-star becomes a 4-star in our opinion, but we were also told during that call that there would be entertainment nightly during our stay.  At this point, we would have cancelled except for the promise of ‘nightly entertainment’ and the strength of the G8 booking, which we considered a ringing endorsement.

When we arrived we were surprised at the architectural sameness of the campus but encouraged when we saw the warm appearance of the lobby.  After check-in we encountered our first major setback.  Our room was a long hike to a side hall that reeked of paint.  The odor didn't encroach on the room so we didn't complain but we found as our stay progressed that we became more sensitive to the unpleasant passage. 

Once we were settled we decided to explore our surroundings.  We took the first stairway we encountered and discovered that the only egress at the end of the stairway was to the outside.  Since we weren't dressed for it, we thought a sign alerting us to that on floor two would have been nice.  Later, after a real chill we started just trying doors because there was no indication of which of the many doors might lead us back to the lobby.  The dearth of signage in such a large establishment was a problem for us several times:  looking for the room for Christmas lunch and the massage location most notably.

The most memorable thing about the Christmas Eve dinner was the popper.  The wine stopper was a nice gift.  As far as the meal, except for my overlooked pork belly, my husband and I were hard pressed to remember it the next morning.  Meals in general were disappointing.  Overcooked fish and meat and undercooked morning eggs were the norm.

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Still, it was Christmas and we were determined to be of good cheer.  When we asked at Christmas lunch if there would be turkey on the evening buffet in advance of making or meal selection we were assured there was.  Imagine our surprise when we discovered it was turkey cold cuts and the hot meal was curry!  Surely the waiter didn't think we'd have passed up the hot turkey at lunch for a turkey sandwich in the evening.

When we’d received the telephone call after booking we were told that we couldn’t have our massages at the same time.  We didn’t question it because we assumed that they would be booked in tandem and there were limited facilities.  Again a disappointment to discover they were 3 hours apart and when I arrived for my 1 p.m. massage, I was sharing the facility with a mother and daughter who had just booked.  Both my husband and I were very much looking forward to the Thai massage because they are hard to find in Ireland but having one at 10 and another at 1 meant there wasn’t much we could plan for that day.   As it happened, we were so disappointed with Lough Erne that we’d already decided to cut our visit short and only stayed two rather than the three nights.  So, this timing was really inconvenient because we had to check out of the room at noon which meant a rushed shower for Alan at 11:30 when he returned.  At this point, I called the desk and was assured that there were shower facilities in the spa.  When I got to the spa, it was clear that a shower would have been a major inconvenience for the staff and so I just passed it up and I had no shower that day.  On top of this, when we paid, we had to ask for the adjustment that was promised.  If I hadn’t asked, it would not have been honored.

We were also assured that there was “free internet.”  In most fine hotels “free” is truly free, you don’t have to provide your information to Bitbuzz in order to access it.  Contrary to what many people think, one’s private email address is valuable to services such as Bitbuzz or any other ISP so while there is no monetary charge, it is not free.  In addition, it didn’t work very well.   Because there were so many people staying there with electronic devices, any short hiatus in searching meant one had to sign in yet again through Bitbuzz.  The severe lack of internet bandwidth available there also affected the cable television reception.

Except for the terrible smell in the hallway and the not very well prepared food, we might have been able to overlook the other small annoyances if our biggest disappointment was absent.  We asked about entertainment and were assured it was planned for “every evening.”  But, 45 minutes of carols at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve and background music on piano for a few hours nightly is not what we expected at all.  There was no attempt in any way to engage us, no sing song, no guided walk, no singer or dancing, no talk or lecture and, above all, no attempt in any way to help the many couples, without large family in tow, to get to know one another.  Ireland is so noteworthy for friendliness, music, dance, beautiful environment, storytellers, and so much more, but there was nothing like that for us this Christmas.  We could have booked at the Shelburne Hotel in Dublin if all we wanted were meals and a nice bed.  We were very sad about that.

In short, all we can say for our Lough Erne experience was that it was very, very expensive. 

With best regards to your very nice staff, we are,

Monica Dignam and Alan Balkema

Today is the start of the equinox and we really know short days here now.  It's 9:41 a.m. and daybreak was just a half hour ago.  Tomorrow it will be at 9:30.  Sunset will be around 3:45 today and 3:30 tomorrow.  I'm hoping the days lengthening is as apparent. 

I wish Happy Holidays to everyone reading this and hope you are all planning for some good memories in the week to come.  We are headed to Donegal and will visit my mother's grave and some of her family.  We are spending Christmas Day in Fermanagh, which is in the adjoining county to Donegal but in Northern Ireland.  The place we're going is the place the G8 is going to meet this spring, so we're expecting a lot.

This is going to be a short post but I leave you with a link to the Ballyvourney Jig, the Irish set dance I learned this year.  Watching it, you will see how much fun I've had since I started last September, by the time I'm back in the states, I'm going to be ready to start a group!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Fa0h_ieKeU

With all my best wishes for a Happy Christmas and health and prosperity in 2013!

Although I don't usually do pictures in this blog, I'm going to post a really great picture of Dorothy and me at Glendalough during that grueling hike I posted about two times ago.  The picture is great and it gives a really good sense of the terrain.  That little boardwalk was quite wet and were it not for the many nails embedded, we would definitely have slipped off into the wet bog!  The up and down walking was a real challenge.  If you enlarge the picture you can see the path from about the halfway mark in the middle right.  From here, there was another quarter to go.  This picture is now my screen saver and I'm guessing I will start to have fonder memories of the walk as time goes by, but right now, I still remember it as very difficult. Yet, just this week we've booked a walking tour in Scotland for next September!  It will be between towns on the coast, so I'm hoping not this rough.  We're going with friends from Virginia.  They have done these walking tours before. I'm pretty sure they are both hale and hearty and just hope they are also not race walkers!  I have to say, the pictures of walking tours we've done are always great to see, I have to remember that while I'm doing it. 

 This week we have been doing things pretty close to home, although we have booked trips to Madrid for January and Paris for March, so we have stuff to look forward to after Christmas.  Last Saturday, we met one of the women we met in Majorca at a pub in Rathmines and had a great evening of Irish music in Grace's Pub.  She brought along her husband and a friend of his, so it was a nice group.  I really enjoyed the singing.  There were some familiar songs and some that I'd never heard before, including several that were identified as "Orange," Protestant songs from the north.  That was a real surprise and an indication of how the peace process has taken hold.  In the past, I think any Orange song sung in Dublin would be met with howls of protest.  It was good to hear.

On Friday this week we were included in the Hannigan's family Christmas dinner at a restaurant in Terenure, a nice little Dublin village.  We met the two siblings, Christine and Tom, that I haven't seen since they were toddlers.  Another very nice evening.

I'll end with a little update on my set dancing.  I'm actually getting better at it.  If you are interested, here's a youtube link to see one that we do at the end of each night:  It's called the balleyvorney:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh6Qz6C5j14 .  This is a pretty long and vigorous dance, but it's as fun as it looks.  I'm really happy with this class.  We're about to break for Christmas and it will not resume until January.  I'll miss it for the month, that's for sure. 

I'm not as disciplined on this blog as I was at the beginning.  It's now almost two weeks since my last post.  But, I'm determined to keep it up.  My last post ended with preparations for Thanksgiving dinner so I'll recap that day. 

In addition to our friend Dorothy, who was visiting from Atlanta, we invited four new friends we have made here in Ireland.  None of them had experienced an American Thanksgiving in the past so it was a treat to shepherd them through the best of all American holidays.  I tried a few new things, most notably stuffed walnuts and dried fruit and nut stuffing, but for the most part it was as traditional as I could get. The stuffed walnuts came about because we couldn't find the traditional Diamond Nut collection in the shell and I knew that I had to stuff myself with walnuts in advance of the meal if it was going to be my idea of Thanksgiving.  The stuffing happened because I learned that Alan thinks my mother's traditional beef and pork recipe is heavy (who knew). 

There were several firsts, the pumpkin pie (described in my last post) was made from scratch and a fresh turkey.  The pie was a little more fibrous than that which is made from canned pumpkin but good nonetheless.  The turkey was a little disconcerting at first, I'm used to slow thawing a rock-frozen bird with all the feathers off and the skin kinda whitish and smooth.  The fresh version, as least what's on offer here, still had a few feathers sticking to the kinda purple skin, broken in several places.  I was very concerned with keeping it cool during the overnight it was in our teeny refrigerator.  I have to say, though, the turkey was a triumph! We are still eating leftovers. 

The meal was just great.  We started with each person's thankful list and that segued into some great conversation.  All of the participants complemented one another very well.  It was a completely pleasant meal and evening.  One of our guests brought us a bottle of Midleton Irish Whiskey, a limited edition libation in the price range of the finest single malt Scotch (but better since it's Irish).  At the conclusion of our meal, we each had a little taste of that neat (except, Mary, the driver) and after several bottles of the Majorca wine we saved for the occasion from our trip there we were all pretty mellow.  It was a really fun day.

The following day, Dorothy and I took an overnight trip to Belfast.  We went to the Titanic Museum, newly opened this year, 100 years after the sinking. It was a really good museum, particularly the way they did the film of the launch of the ship.  The historic film was somehow superimposed on a window at the spot where the ship went in the water when it was launched in 1911.  You could still see some of the features of the port and the mountains behind in both the film and reality.  It was quite spectacular.  I'd wanted to take Dorothy to Cork, the ship's last call in Ireland before sinking, but there just wasn't time in her visit to do all we wanted.  That evening we went to a pub for traditional Irish music.  As I'd experienced in the past, and prepared her for, the musicians play for themselves, not an audience.  Unlike our early experience in Dublin where the pub was so crowded and loud we couldn't hear a thing, this one was pretty empty and quiet.  The musicians were really great and there was also a singer with a beautiful voice.  It was perfect.  

We had a quiet weekend after returning to Dublin on Saturday evening but on Monday she and I took a day tour to the Hill of Tara, the inauguration site of 140 Irish kings during the millennium before the English took over; and Newgrange, a megalithic passage tomb that has been preserved.  I'd been to Newgrange several times but this was my first trip to the Hill of Tara and it was well worth it.  They say you can see 22 of the 26 counties in the Republic from there.  We were fortunate to visit on a sunny and bright day and the view was spectacular. 

To our great sadness, Dorothy left on Tuesday morning.  Her visit was too short, we've prevailed on her to plan another visit and stay a month! Dorothy's was the last scheduled visitor for us and I expect we won't see any American friends again until the spring, at least.  We will have to content ourselves with travel in Europe till then.  Our next adventure will be the Christmas program at a resort in Northern Ireland.  We will fly into Donegal, visit my mother's grave and some of her family and then drive North to Fermanagh.  Since booking we have learned that the G8 will meet at that resort in the spring, so that's made me think the place is going to be pretty nice. 

Next week we have been invited to the family get together of the Hannigans', the family that the Dignam family has known for over 100 years.  The great grandchildren of the family my Aunt Lilly worked for as a nanny/barmaid are our (younger but still boomer) contemporaries and, although I've known the first son, John and his family for many years, and have gotten to know the eldest sister Frances since coming here last spring, I haven't seen the other siblings since I was 19 and there were little kids scrabbling around the table during my several visits to Ireland in 1968 and the early 70's.  We are looking forward to it.

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.