Thursday, September 16, 1999

We had from 8:30 am until 1:40 to pack. We were careful. One suitcase each, one matching carryon, and two backpacks. The backpacks for what we’d need from home to Dublin. We worked from two lists – one from Savvy Traveler in Edmonds, one of my own making. I’ve learned not to direct Art – he works differently than I, and he does just fine. We ended up with backpacks holding a change of clothes, raingear, books and useful odds and ends. Just in case our luggage gets lost….

The C11 Brier bus picked us up and took us to the Lynnwood Park & Ride. Then to downtown Seattle, a short trek to the Metro tunnel and another short wait for the 194 to the airport. We got to Seatac at 3:45. Our plane was to leave at 6:30. We ate, we read, Art dozed. I have my fear of flying book with me. It helps on the 37-passenger plan ride to Vancouver. I am surprisingly calm these days in turbulence. No plane, I read, has ever fallen out of the sky from it.

The Vancouver Airport looks like a movie set for a Harrison Ford movie. It looks like a warehouse – but deliberately so. We make our cross-airport journey and arrive at the gate for the London flight an hour and 15 minutes before it’s due to leave. Now here we sit.

I have been doctoring my cold with zinc and echinaceia, my feet with ibuprofen, my middle-aged body with Centrum, beta carotene and herbal hormones. I told Art I felt like an old woman. He told me I was one.


Friday, September 17, 1999

The flight to London was long, long, long. Some fitful sleep during the few hours of darkness, more as I finally grew too tired to care about light and noise. Didn’t have a crammed-in feeling, though. We were fed well, dinner and a snack. Art asked for iced tea, and was met with a blank look from the flight attendant. “You want me to make tea and put ice in it?” They had never heard of it. Art ordered coffee and found it to be very good – throughout the rest of our stay in Ireland, very good coffee.

Passed over Ireland, then another unnamed island – at least, in my mind, before landing at Heathrow.

I was not impressed. People cool, direction signs lacking, no check-in people at the desk for an hour after we arrived. I asked, but got referred elsewhere, to another place of no help. Art was angry at the impracticality of it all, got profane and was upset for over an hour. Didn’t really come around until we were flying to Dublin, our final leg.

Taxi to Waterloo Lodge, friendly fellow who gave us a glimpse of the Northern Ireland issue. Not what the media portrays. I suspect his story is closer to the truth. He said of Dingle, “During good weather it’s beautiful there. It’s a different kind of place when the weather is rough.”

Waterloo: just right. Comfortable and clean. We’d been warned to bring our own washcloth and soap. After showers, we walked 2 km to a pretty good restaurant, Kitty’s Kaboodle. Much pub activity, primarily among the young, but we were too tired to go into a pub, even one advertising live Irish music. I noted the smoking in restaurants. To bed at 10:45 new time. Tired as I am, I expect that after a good night’s sleep we will be ready to go tomorrow.


Saturday, September 18, 1999

At 8:00 am we have no jet lag. I think the pills I bought at Savvy Traveler in Edmonds must have worked. We had a “full Irish breakfast” [one of many, as it turns out. Typical “full Irish breakfast” is a bowl of cereal or mueslix with orange juice, followed by a hard-fried egg on toast, sausage (entirely different from our type of pork sausage), a rasher of bacon (which is really thin sliced ham with no fat on it), sometimes liver sausage, sometimes pork and beans, toast and sometimes muffins and always some sort of brown bread)]. Full up, we’re off to a tour of Dublin. Apparently the remnants of Hurricane Floyd have hit; it is gusty and raining hard all day long. My cold is at the sneezing and nose blowing and snorting stage. At the suggestion of the front desk clerk, I stop at a chemist (pharmacy) and pick up some Benalyn – a three-times-a-day and once-at-night cold medication that actually works. Plus a man-sized box of Kleenex. I’m glad for my new waterproof jacket.

I stop at an ATM and discover to my horror that I’ve forgotten the new PIN on our joint checking account. I anticipate running out of money and having to scrimp for two weeks. Art isn’t nearly as concerned as I – he has $100 in his wallet. Still, I’m grappling with finding a solution to this problem, which I came up with all by myself. What a stupid omission.

On the double-decker bus we do the complete tour, then visit St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Though Ireland is mostly Catholic, the two cathedrals in Dublin are both Protestant. St. Patrick’s was build around 1272. When they were doing later excavation they found a well stone that was supposed to have been where St. Patrick baptized people. The stone was displayed inside the cathedral. Johnathan Swift served as dean of St. Patrick’s and is buried there under the floor inside the cathedral, along with his long-time friend Stella. Swift had such strong political opinions that he never advanced much in the church hierarchy.

Still in the pouring rain and wind, we went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, which is a hand-painted mass missal from about the ninth century. In a gallery there’s a great exhibit with enlargements of the pages, explanations of the history of the time, how the painting was done, etc., so by the time we got to the actual exhibit of the Book of Kells we felt like we have a pretty good understanding of it. At the exhibit I hear three people scolding the tourists for not moving along quickly enough and for talking in the room where the actual books were displayed. Grouchy! I went through the exhibit about twice as fast as Art. I read faster than he does, plus I don’t read as many of the details. I’ll bet that a month from now Art will remember way more than me about the exhibit. He’ll converse knowledgeably with friends about things I don’t even remember hearing.

On the tour we pass by the Guinness brewery. The brewery makes 4 million pints of Guinness a day, and sells three million of them in Ireland. The country only has three and a half million people. Everywhere we went on our trip Guinness was on tap – a very dark beer with a nearly-white head. We were told it doesn’t travel well, so in other countries it doesn’t taste the same as it does in Ireland. Guinness seems to be pretty much a national Irish phenomenon.

We did have coffee with Brendan O’Farrell, a fellow that introduced Art’s sister Kathy to her husband Mike. Brendan talks like a wheeler dealer and kept glancing at his watch as we talked. He even brought a work colleague along. We met him at 4pm and he excused himself at precisely 5. Reminded me of my old friend Fred Thompson. He says if we aren’t able to resolve the cash issue, I should call his secretary and she’ll talk to someone at the bank. I may well take him up on it.

On the way back to the lodge we looked for a restaurant that wasn’t fully booked for the evening. We ducked into an Indian restaurant at about 7:00, where they said they’d seat us if we’d be gone by 8:00, as they had the table booked from then on. So we had Indian food for dinner – new experience for both of us, and pretty good, though it was a little spicy for me.


Sunday, September 19, 1999

We took an early-morning cab ride to Heuston Station. Used to be called Kingsgate, but was renamed for Sean Heuston, one of the leaders of the Easter Rebellion of 1916, martyred by the British. The train ride through Irish countryside took four hours, but seemed shorter as we watched the green fields roll by, separated by rock walls – just like the pictures in the books! It was fun listening to the conductor call out the station names and to note how often they didn’t sound at all like they were spelled on the map. We didn’t have camera at the ready when the opportunity arose for the picture of the decade – a golfer, on the green, along with 30 or so sheep. A new meaning for hazard on the fairway!

When we arrived in Tralee, a taxi driver named Pat gave us a ride to a nearby pub for no charge so that we could find something to eat. We bumbled around with our luggage in the pub, feeling very much like strangers in a strange land, then had a good meal there – Art turkey and me lamb. Struggling with the strange coins in a stranger Irish pay phone, we called Pat back when we were ready to go, and got a ride to our first B&B, The Haven, owned by the Costello family.

Anne Costello was very warm, talkative and welcoming. I was surprised at how small the rooms were – two single beds and a tiny added bathroom “en suite” – a toilet, sink and shower barely large enough to move around in, but preferable to the larger bathroom down the hall. Early on we asked about an AA meeting in town and found out that her husband Jim had been in AA for years, and she’d been in Alanon. I told Anne about my consternation about the cash situation, and she said she’d take us to the bank on Monday morning. On her recommendation, we took a three-mile walk, a “warm up” up the hill above Blennerville. We noticed where the trail started that we’d be taking the next day. At 7 we were served a simple meal in the sitting room, and then a taxi was called to take us to an AA meeting in town. Another smoky room. Afterwards we walked around Tralee a while, then found another taxi to take us back to the B&B.