Day 1 of Getting Our Drink On!

Day 4: (April 19, 2013) - The Emerald Isle

We left Castlebar relatively early (10:00 ish) in order to get on down to Galway.  Ireland is a small country, so we were in Galway before noon.  Galway is a university town.  That means fun.  And here is downtown!

In general, college kids are poor and that means that if you can turn a euro or two, you do it.  In Galway's case, that means street music.  On the street pictured above, bunches of shaggy kids who look like they are still trying to sleep off last night's drunken revelry supply you with some of the most lovely Irish music you will hear.  Stand by, listen, give them one of those cool looking 2 euro coins and you are on your way a better man.  Here's what we saw:

One cool thing about traveling in Ireland is that if you are ever concerned about finding the city center, just look for the tallest church spire and drive toward it.  It's as simple as that.  We found the cathedral in Galway in this fashion.  My bride almost got run over by both car and pedestrian while trying to take a picture of the cathedral.  Here's the cathedral:

While we were inspecting the interior, I heard bells.  I look towards the altar and on come a priest, a couple of laypeople, altar servers etc.  I casually and smugly advised that they must be there to pray the Angelus.  That only takes about 15 minutes.  Wrong catholic smug dork!  My love and I are already getting a work out with all the catholic gymnastics of standing and kneeling by the time I realize that we just got caught up in mass.  Mass = 45 minutes to 1 hour.  A knowing look to Fighting Fitzgerald, a casual nod, and a quiet escape and we were out of there.  I'm praying, singing, standing, kneeling and then I guess I'm just too busy to stick around to the end.  I admit that I won the Catholic douchebag of the day award.  I couldn't exactly find out which pub in Galway bestowed this award, so I don't really have a picture of it to show you.  I'm sure its nice (but not as nice as Matt Molloy's Grammies).  It is probably on its way in the mail.

We left the cathedral and found ourselves in the St. Nicholas Collegiate Church.  Here's a picture.

The other thing you should know about my spider-sense is that it has another component to it which is not directly related to travel.  I walk into this church from a side-entrance and immediately my spidey-sense starts tingling.  This other component of spidey-sense tells me when things aren't exactly as they should be ... something is perhaps . ..amiss.

Here spidey-sense is telling me that maybe I'm not in a Catholic church after all.  It had a lot of the Catholic trappings which I expect.  It is named after some saint, there is an altar, a couple of statues, stained glass, and people buried here or there in the church (I know, weird huh!).  I did notice, however, that the word "collegiate" was a bit unusual.  I also noticed some battle flags and a monument to those killed in WWI.  Battle flags ... hmmm ...

What church might have such a close link between its government and its religion?  Of course, the Church of England!  Apparently, what we have here is an Anglican church.  Immediately I began to look for invading Englishmen who might want to separate my body from my head.  Oh yeah, spidey-sense was dead on. 

After nine months of being under a siege marked by death, famine and starvation, Galway surrendered to Cromwell's forces on April 12, 1652.  Despite the terms of the truce, many of the able-bodied were packaged off as slaves to Barbados.  Apparently, the English were equal opportunity slavers.  Cromwell's boys tore down six of the seven churches within the city and kept one for themselves.  They gave it a practical use by stabling horses there. 

What better way to say "f**k you" to the conquered than to have your war horses crap all over their sacred spaces.  And now let me tell you what I really think about your religion!  Oh well, the spoils of war and all that.  The English did a lovely job of returning it to its former dignity, however.

After a lovely little lunch at The Skeff (see picture below), we went to the Cliffs of Moher.

 
If you ever find yourself at the Cliffs of Moher, don't jump!  The Cliffs of Moher are 700 feet straight down to a lovely bed of jagged rocks.  Witness this lovely picture:

Apparently, cliff jumping for all the wrong reasons is rather popular at the Cliffs of Moher.  It is a bit of a bummer to read signs put up by the Samaritans that request that you kindly give a call and talk to someone before you do something stupid like jump off the Cliffs!

We caught the Cliffs of Moher on a lovely day.  Yes, we were surrounded by more Nico Bellic look alikes, but all very lovely.  Having experienced some of the most stunning views over the Dingle Bay, we loaded up and made it to Ennis.

Ennis is a nice little town that once was a bit of an island made by rivers.  The name means island.  Apparently, that helped to hold off the English (for a while).  We rolled in to Ennis in the late afternoon.  I had no idea where to go to find our hotel, but I used the aforementioned "drive towards the tall church" method, and it worked out fine.  Here's a perfect example of how we worked this at Ennis.

Drive to the pointy place at the end.  Where you find the Church, you find downtown.  Our hotel is off an alley halfway down this street.  Pretty easy, right? 

I titled this post as "Day 1 of Getting Our Drink On".  Yes, of course, there has been Guinness drinking prior to this time.  But because our hotel was right in the middle of this mess shown in the picture, I was able to consume beverages without fear of having a "hit and run" on a leprechaun after a pub visit. So, my love and I engaged in a bit of a pub crawl.  The first place we hit was Knox's.  It seemed o.k. at first.  Then I noticed that my pretty wife was one of two girls in this pub full of guys watching soccer (and I know its "football" everywhere but in the U.S.). That other girl was not a looker - black stocking with a run dragging its way up her ample thigh.  That kind of thing. In any event, we had found the Irish version of "Charlie's Lounge".  An Irish meat market if you will.  Well after my wife jiggled every male eyeball in that pub when she squeezed her way through all these guys to find the restroom, we got out of there.

Inner Dialogue In My Head At the Irish Meat Market:

1.  Hmmm.  Lot's of guys here.  If one of these guys hits on my wife, how far is too far?  Small talk is ok (I'm reasonable after all).   

What next?

2.  When I show up to rescue her, if the offending meat head treats me like I'm getting in on his action, I'm probably going to get upset. 

And now a consideration of consequences ...

3.  And how long do they keep Americans in jail in this country?  Would I have to come back for trial months down the road (too expensive) or can I just pay a fine and go?  Maybe they allow you to pay a small fine for a couple of punches thrown and a choke or two?  That must be it.

In perfect peace because I've drawn boundaries ...

4.  OK, I'm feeling better, so keep an eye out for the wife as she comes back from the restroom.

Needless to say, I couldn't relax at Knox's.  Watching sports with dudes is typically my thing, but I needed a safer haven. 

Off to "Brogans".  And we ended our evening there listening to music played by some people who filter in with their instruments over the course of an hour or so.  Eventually, we had the best seat in the music room.  I start with Irish whiskey and then "glub, glub" (sound of me drinking Guinness).  Wait for it ... there's that warm glow of the Irish pub experience.  And this isn't a concert experience.  It's much more casual.  The players play, relax, chat, drink, then the person with the violin will just start playing a couple of bars of music.  The other players set their drinks down, and off they go for 15 minutes or so.  After they've worn out, its back to repeat the process until they've had enough. 

They outlasted us, and that ended a really wonderful day!

And Now We're Frickin Shopping!

Day 3: (April 18, 2013) - The Emerald Isle

We woke up in Castlebar and wondered what the heck we were supposed to do.  A guy we met before we got turf fired and boozed at Matt Malloy's pub told us to go to the Museum of Country Life and also the Foxford Woolen Mills.

Let's get started with the Museum of Country Life.  That place was interesting, but I'm pretty sure I need to be treated for depression now.  The potato famine killed about one million people in Ireland and another seven million emigrated to the U.S.  The current population is only about five million, so this gives you an idea of the magnitude of the problem when the potato crops gave out.  It also explains why we have so many darned people of Irish descent in this country.  The police department of every sizeable town in this country thanks you, Ireland. 

In any event, here you have people with hardly any clothes, straw made furniture (not kidding), and straw made boats (not kidding), straw made belts (not kidding) etc.  Basically, the Irish cut down all their trees (burning wood = warmth) and so these poor folks lived in stone built houses with dirt floors and made as much stuff out of straw as possible.  The only thing of true value to the Irish was their Catholic faith.  Add poverty, starvation and persecution, and the Christian faith blossoms.  Add wealth and acceptance and it withers.  Ponder that for a while.  Have you mulled it over?  Accept it, and thank me later.

I suppose if Karl Marx showed up in an Irish village and starting hectoring some poor, straw shoe wearing Irish farmer about religion being the "opiate of the masses" Karl's day would have ended up badly by being strung him up with a noose made of (oh, let's see...) STRAW.

The Museum of Country Life is located at Turlough Park.  This happens to be the ancestral home of the Fitzgeralds.  I'm told that my wife is some gazillion times removed from the Fitzgeralds, so we might have been stalking the home of one of her forefathers.  Here's the Fitzgerald family by the way.

Notice that little squint playfully flying the kite?  Well, this little sh*t grew up to be "Fighting Fitzgerald".  George was his real name, and George is what the Irish call a "fire eater".  What is a fire eater?  It means he was a duelist.  Grown up Georgie must have taken offense quite easily because he killed a whole bunch of people until his days of easy offense and pistol shooting were stopped by a noose in Castlebar.  The peaceful little guy leaning up against dad inherited the estate, and the Fitzgeralds purportedly kept breeding until my wife appears somewhere down the line.  I thank you Fitzgeralds!  Sometimes the ghost of "Fighting Fitzgerald" arises in my home, and I now understand.

From the front lawn of the Fitzgerald ancestral home, we noticed this:

This kind of thing happens all over Ireland.  You are driving about and to your left and right are ruins of old churches, castles, abbeys etc.  This is the Round Tower at Turlough Park.  It was built in the 900's.  Keep in mind that this was the time when the Vikings were raiding Ireland.  Here it is perfectly intact.  The structure next to it is a church that was built in 1625.  Of course, an ancient graveyard surrounds the whole place, so you can't walk up to it or around it without stomping on all sorts of Murphy's, Murrays, O'(add any name here - the Irish have you covered) and Mc (same deal as with "O").  How does McDeWalt sound?  O'Barry maybe?  No?  O'Shutup?  I like that one.

The dead and the living have to get along somehow, and its done by playing a game resembling both hop scotch and twister.  You do this by estimating from the headstone where the body may be and you JUMP! ~ By this means you may avoid any kind of unintended desecration. It rained on us while we were inspecting this marvel of human engineering, and I didn't find any leprechauns or vikings (other than my wife), so it was off to the Foxford Woolen Mills.

Here's a picture of its dramatic entrance (sarcasm intended) of the Foxford Woolen Mills:

Right now some of the ladies are starting to get that itching feeling that a male rant about shopping is about to occur.  You're right.  Don't get me wrong, this is a nice place.  I'm genuinely happy that my bride got her shopping buzz on (sarcasm not intended).  When I conjured up my mental image of these woollen works, I had thoughts of a huge stone building filled with orphaned girls who were learning a trade from the nuns so they wouldn't starve etc.  Well, it very well may have been that way in the 19th century, but now it kind of had the feel of an Irish Ikea.

For those of you who don't know, I had a huge meltdown at Ikea in Sacramento once.  I'll admit that it came very nearly close to what you might see out of a three year old in need of a nap.  I believe Fighting Fitzgerald was there as well, and the net result was a whole push cart of stuff being abandoned right there in the aisle right next to where they sell those meatballs.  There is just something about that angular, austere Swedish furnishing and its ever-present threat of hours of cluelessness and near tool-throwing that will occur after I've bought Sweden in a box that just gets me going.  More to the point - their furniture sucks. Can't we all just agree that it is ugly?

In any event, I was starting to feel an Ikea rant coming on, but I mellowed because I was on vacation, and my wife was really happy.  So, I sat my butt down on some chair I'm not sure I was supposed to sit on and put on that bored look on my face that we husbands get when these things happen.  I did see some yarn being made into a blanket through a glass window in a door.  That was the only "milling" I saw. That's close to my mental image, right?

Travel Shopping Rule #1 - If it isn't made in the place where you are, it doesn't count!!!  My love found some ceramic owls which she thought she might buy for the girls.  When I inquired as to whether she was safely within the parameters of Travel Shopping Rule #1, she turned them over and you can guess what we saw ...  come on ... play along ... it was ... it was ... "Republic of China"!  A clear violation.  Chinese ceramic owls do not count as an Irish gift, and China is not a republic!  I insisted on their disqualification on both grounds, and my bride ultimately found something much more Irishy.  You are welcome, love.

Now for the part of the day where we drive for three hours, right?  You've been waiting for that I know.  We got in the car for some more left-hand side of the road torture and drove up to Ballina, over to Bangor and then South to Ballycroy National Park.  A strange thing happened on the way ... I saw trees.  It was explained to me at the Park that some genius in the government got the notion that Ireland should be returned to its natural, forested state.  Sounds good except it kills off the bogs.  Here's what the bogs look like:

At Ballycroy, you have the strange situation where the bogs (which flourished because all the trees were cut) are protected against the government's own efforts to reforest Ireland.  I guess you just have to choose one form of "natural" over another.  In any event, you could tramp right out in the patch of brown just ahead in the picture, dig up some turf, and burn it in your fireplace once it has dried out.  It will take over a thousand years to regenerate, but you could do it.  However, I don't recommend this as a suitable home heating fuel.  If you want the inside of your house to smell like you just lit up some coals in a hibachi on your living room floor, burn turf.  See ... I've learned from my Irish correction suffered earlier in my trip ... I did not refer to the turf as "peat".

While walking on this path in the drizzle, I had a Heathcliff moment.  For those of you who remember high school English class, you may have had to read about that brooding hunk "Heathcliff".  This guy was dreamed up by one of those Bronte sisters in her novel "Wuthering Heights".  So, here I am in the exact same environment as "Wuthering Heights", my wife is next to me, she's pretty, I'm a jerk like Heathcliff and all that is left for me to do is take off my shirt embrace my wife and let the rain wash us clean.  Very romantic!  Well, it didn't go down like that because I was cold and wet.  I did take my first opportunity to go all red neck and pee on the bog.  On behalf of the people of America, I apologize to you Ireland for peeing on your bogs - not only my own but the pee of any other American as well.  But Ireland, you must know that I have the bladder of a squirrel, and it just seemed like the right thing to do at the moment.  But yeah, I'm sorry.

We left Ballycroy and made our way to a cool pub called Grainne Uaile in Newport.  Here it is:

We were very happy to get to Newport, and this pub was nice.  Here's my problem, and you knew there was going to be a problem, right?  The atmosphere inside looked Irish, but I was besieged by the french language.  The family next to us was French, so I spent most of my time picking at my food and wondering, "What the f**ck are those people saying?"  None of my business, of course.  Not their fault either.  I imagine if I was French I'd probably speak french as well.  I guess I would have to.  More disturbing than the french, however, was the Spanish language music I heard.  Damn right!!  Frickin Spanish music in an Irish pub.  That sh*t ain't right!  Do we really have to bring Mexico to Ireland!  I left very confused.

Oh well, we dried out, paid for our food and left what was otherwise a very cool pub.  It was County Mayo's pub of the year in 2006.  Just look at the picture!  We closed out our trip by returning to Breaffy House in Castlebar.  All in all, this was our best day so far.  I'm writing this weeks after we've returned, but the memories make me happy.  That is how I know that we had fun, and that is how you judge a vacation.

World, You Are Welcome!

Day 2: (April 17, 2013) - The Emerald Isle

You know, its kind of nice to sleep in a bit after a stressful day of travel.  Might as well, turn on the t.v. and watch that for a while in bed.  It was drizzling outside, so why not?  Besides, when you travel taking in a bit of t.v. is also part of understanding the culture.  Have you ever watched the Simpsons in french?  I have, and it was enlightening.  While channel surfing I discovered that we Americans owe the world an apology.  We have exported Jerry Springer.  Except, in the U.K./Ireland, Jerry Springer is named Jeremy Kyle.  Here he is:

Jerry Springer kind of comes off as a gentle soul who is empathetically trying to help people sort through their issues.  That is why after 40 minutes of cussing, throwing chairs and tossing about 1,000 pounds of red neck flesh on his stage, Jerry really grounds us (sarcasm intended) with some softly spoken moral advice.  Jeremy Kyle has all the same zoo animals present on his show, but he makes no pretense at providing direction.  Apparently, the British way is to tell your guest exactly what a total, worthless piece of sh*t he/she is.  So, as I lay in bed, Mr. Kyle is found following his guests about (they can't escape him) while berating them and waiving a slip of paper above his head which purports to contain either DNA or lie detector results.  Just look at his picture!  Don't you just want to smack that smug look right off of his face?  He is soooooo intense!

The good news is that the U.K.'s white trash look pretty much like our own, except (of course) the British have awful teeth, they aren't as fat and they dress slightly better.  Witness:

Thanks to Mr. Kyle's British guests and my own observation of the Irish, I've developed a radical new theory as to why the British have treated the Irish like a red-headed step child throughout history.  Was it racial prejudice, greed or religion?  No.  The British are simply envious of Irish teeth.  If you can't fix your own teeth, it wouldn't quite be fair to let those other chaps on the next island over keep their perfect teeth would it.  So, my theory is both orthodontic and democratic because everyone loses.

I realize I haven't gotten to the travel portion of today's blog, but this is important.  I do try to educate.  I want to recommend you catch Monday and Wednesday's episodes of The Jeremy Kyle Show on the internet as follows:

Monday: Which one of my children stole my bingo winnings?  (plug in that lie detector)

Wednesday: I only started sleeping with your sister when we broke up! (so we're cool then?)

You are probably wondering why I haven't described any travel yet.  Here's the answer:  What comes next has absolutely no interest to any of you.  We went to Knock.  What happened at Knock, you say?  Well, gather up your rosaries, sit down by the fire, and I'll tell ya.  In 1879, the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist and a sacrificial lamb (this represents Jesus for all you non-Christians reading) appeared all glowing white against the back wall of the church in the middle of the night.  The first person saw it and ran to get most everyone else in the town out there to see it, and they all stood there dumbfounded for about two hours as the image glowed.  I like to think of it as kind of like a really holy drive-in movie but without audio.  Here is a picture of the shrine located on the exact spot this occurred:

Now, I know what you non-Catholics are thinking.  You think we Catholics are always in an uproar about these things and hurry about worshipping images of Jesus or Mary which appear in cornflake shape or perhaps on a piece of toast.  Yet, it will please you to know that you aren't supposed to worship an image, even if were to appear on something you really want to eat.  Also, the Church has only approved a handful of such Marian Apparitions as genuine.  Knock is one of them.  And so we went to the site.  They had a pretty cool museum with stuff from the visits made by John Paul II and Mother Theresa.  Strangely enough, they don't let you handle these things.

After getting drizzled on a bit at Knock, we got in our super-cool rental Renault and headed to Castlebar to check into the Breaffy House.  Lovely place, but also somewhat "hamster-home like" (see Day 1 blog).  Here it is:

We didn't stay long because I really needed to swill more Guinness.  That means we had to take the 20 minute drive into Westport.  Why?  Because my second pilgrimage of the day had to occur at this specific location:



This little pub is owned by a fella named Matt Molloy.  Mr. Molloy is the flautist (relax, that means flute player even if it sounds naughty when you say it out loud) for the Irish music mainstay "The Chieftains".  Ah, the Chieftains have provided me hours of musical joy (especially at Christmas), and so I felt it only necessary to spend some money at Mr. Molloy's pub.  He wasn't there but his two Grammy's were just sitting there behind the bar.

Anyway, Stacy discovered that she doesn't like Guinness very much after years of telling me and lots of other people that she does.  I drank most of hers (I'm helpful) while we sat by a turf fire in the back.  Yep, they burn peat here.  Peat is just decayed organic matter and it looks like clay when you dig up.  Some chap back in the prehistoric times figured you could burn this stuff if you just dug it up and dried it out. I'm not sure how you dry anything out in Ireland, but they did it!  It basically smells like burning charcoal.  By the way, you don't call it a peat fire. It's a turf fire.  The Irish are very quick to sort you out on these things immediately after they come out of your mouth.

One delusion that I carried with me to Ireland is that everyone would think I was interesting.  After all, here's a chap with an American accent dragging his pretty wife into our tiny obscure pub in our rural village.  Shouldn't we get up and go talk to him, make inquiries, even buy him a drink?  No.  They pretty much just leave you alone.  Everyone over there has American relatives.  At least during spring and summer, Ireland is lousy with Americans even though we only saw a handful in our travels.  My only means of standing out was the terrible sunburn I acquired at my kid's baseball game just before we left.  The Irish have probably never even seen a sunburn, but I didn't get any attention for that either.  And that's probably a good thing.

So, no, I didn't get treated to free Guinness because I come from America.  That was a disappointment.  Don't get me wrong.  The Irish like Americans and they are mildly curious about you, but not in the order of magnitude I expected.  To illustrate, my only exposure to foreigners growing up were the Swedish foreign exchange students at our high school.  And I gave them as much attention as possible, but only because they were Swedish, pretty and female.  That kind of expectation just doesn't fly in Ireland.  Also, I'm not pretty or female.  Stacy is, but they didn't even bother her.  In this regard, those people are seriously messed up.

Anyway, Stacy and I vacated Matt Molloy's and returned to the Breaffy House.  We did drink a bit more at the hotel pub while watching soccer (excuse me, football).  Thus ends Day 2.