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Helen Chen Writer |
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Ireland - Part 1
Before our Trip W and I are wine drinkers. We drink beers occasionally, usually on hot summer days. However, one month before our trip to Ireland we felt the need of adjusting our tasting buds, so we started drinking beers with our dinners. May 3 and 4 At 3 pm, we took a taxi to Rochester airport. When we approached the terminal, the taxi driver asked, “Which airline?” “Which airline?” I repeated. “Does it make any difference?” I asked. I didn’t expect the question at all, and, to be honest, was a bit confused by it. I have been asked that question many times at airport in DC, Seattle…etc., but never at Rochester's. We only have two airlines: American and NW. And both are in this not-too-big building. Then I remembered that the building does have a side door, which is closer to the American airline ticket counter. Since it was an international flight, we arrived an hour earlier. To kill some time, we had mini-tacos and beers at the bar. After eating, W went to wash his hands and that’s when I heard an announcement saying, “last call for boarding flight…” I checked my watch; it was 25 minutes before our departing time, so I was very sure the call was for a different flight. When they announced it the third time, I decided to check my flight number to be sure. I couldn’t believe what I saw. I jumped out of my chair, grabbing my bag on one hand, W’s bag on the other and ran to the gate. We made it. At Minneapolis airport, our arriving gate was quite far away from our departing gate to London. Again, we got on the plane after the third "last-call". I began to wonder if our whole trip was going to be like this. Airbus 330 is quite nice. Everyone has his own little TV screen, which is mounted on the back of the seat in front. There are many movie selections. At first, I thought you had to pay to watch movies and I refused to pay. (This turned out wasn’t bad because I managed to write a couple of chapters of my novel.) When I finally realized it was free, I watched one before we arrive at Gatwick. (Believe it or not, I watched 3 on our way back. It helped killing time on a long flight like this.) We had two hours between flights at Gatwick and thought we had plenty of time. I dug out my credit card, hoping I had time to shop a little. When we walked out of the plane, there wasn’t a single airline person in sight. One sign said “flight connection”, the other said something about passport. We finally saw two guys who apparently worked at the airport. One guy told us we should wait for the bus to connect to our flight to Dublin. When I showed them the customs form we got on the plane, the other guy told us we have to go through the Customs Service. Of course, there was a long line waiting in the Customs Service queue. After waited for 10 minutes, (it’s unbelievably slow, let me tell you) I finally walked to the guy, who was directing people which booth to go, and asked him if we were waiting in the right line. He said yes and was kind enough to move us to the front and told us we had to get our luggage and check the luggage again. We followed his advice and went to pick up our luggage and our suitcases never showed up. The information he gave us was wrong - our luggage was shipped to Dublin directly. When we finally realized what was going on and rush to British Airways counter to get our boarding passes, we had only 20 minutes left before the flight departing. The lady told me we had missed the flight. “It still has 20 minutes! We can run to the gate, can’t we?” I asked. She wouldn’t even tell me which gate (NW couldn’t give us boarding passes for British Airways, so we had to get our boarding passed at this counter.) She said since our NW plane arrived on time, they couldn’t help us much. After talking to her seemingly forever, we were put on the standby list of the 5 pm flight (our original flight was around 11 am.) If the 5 pm plane was full, we were told, we had to fly on the next morning and it would cost us $200 each. She sent us to the standby counter and the guy at the counter said, “Come back at 3:45 pm to check if there are seats available.” W began upset. “If I could go home now, I would,” he said. Nothing I could do, so I ignored him. We spent some time eating at café, shopping and slept on the airport chair for the rest. Our daughter should arrive at Dublin around 2 pm and we had to call the hotel to leave a message for her. I asked the lady at British Airways counter if she could make a call for us. She said she could only sent an email to British Airways at Dublin and asked them to call. Later, we called the hotel with our cell phone and talked to our daughter. At 3:30 Pm, we went back to the standby counter - the guy said it was too early. At 3:45 pm, we went back again, the guy was no longer there. We went to the customer service and a lady told me we had to wait until 4:30. At, 4:30, we were told that we had to wait until 4:40. Finally, at 4:40, we got boarding passes. (We will avoid London Gatwick airport from now on!!!) There’s always a bright side ;-) If we didn’t miss our plane, I wouldn’t sit next to Stefan on our way to Dublin (I’m not sure I spell his name right.) I can always tell if a person is nice or not by watching how he smiles. Stefan definitely is nice. I had lost 5 or 6 hours of my Ireland time and desperately wanted to catch up. “So, I heard the Irish are great story tellers. Tell me a story,” I said. “Um… I’m not Irish.” I laughed. “When I told my friends that I was coming to Ireland, a lot of them said they had some kind of connection to Ireland. For example, one person’s great grandmother was from Ireland. Now I am here, I have a feeling that everyone is going to tell me he is not an Irish.” I asked Stefan about pubs. He said people used to go to pubs to social, but now a lot of people party at home instead. I asked him if the Irish were still hospitable like I had heard. He said Ireland and its people had changed. Maybe on the countryside I could still find those hospitable people who would invite me for a dinner ;-); he doubted if I could find any in the city. He told me many Irish would go to New York to do their Christmas shopping, which surprised me somewhat. “Things are cheaper there,” He said. He told me the places I should visit and answered my question about the cost for golfing. At one point, he smiled and said, “The weather was wonderful for the past 10 days, but it’s going to rain tomorrow night. I am sure everywhere you go, people will tell you that you should come a week ago.” (He was right - at least 4 people did so.) When the plane started descending, I looked out of the window and saw a city just like any other city. “What’s so special about Ireland?” I asked. “I think I want my money back!” I said. Our luggage didn’t arrive, of course. I didn’t really care – I was happy to see our daughter and nothing would bother me at that moment. The B&B we stayed, Clifden House at north side of Dublin, was an old three-story house, which reminded me the place I used to live when I was a graduate student. W and I probably wouldn’t pick the place, but I didn’t mind though. After all, our daughter was trying to save some money. I appreciated her effort. We walked to Liffey River trying to find a place to eat. The street by the river was dirty. One small section smelled like people had peed there day after day (no kidding!) Dublin certainly got off on the wrong foot with me. I had lost my appetite by then and was happy that we didn’t find a restaurant right away. We crossed the Liffey River and ate at a restaurant in Temper Bar area. The food was okay, not great. On our way back to B&B, we saw people singing in a narrow hallway. When we passed there, a young man grab my arm and started dancing with me. That was kind of fun! Luggage didn't come. We slept well anyway.
Ireland - Part 2 We had Irish breakfast this morning: bacon, egg, sausage and black pudding. We liked their bacon and egg (and coffee, and tea.) Their sausage had something added in it (flour?) And black pudding was just too different. Dining room was down in the basement. I was surprised to discover a tunnel in the basement. Apparently many old houses have a build-in tunnel.
Two blocks from where we stayed, there was a street full of Chinese stores. After breakfast, we walked to one Internet Café on that street, so our daughter could check her email and we could call the airline to find out what happened to our luggage. Our original plan was to go to airport in the morning to pick up a car and then drive to Limerick. We had a reservation for Saint Ritas B&B in Limerick for one night and Mulberry House B&B in Killarney the night after. It would be difficult for airline to deliver our luggage to us. Well, the airline put us on hold seemingly forever. We decided to go to the airport to see if our luggage would show up with the 11 o’clock flight. We called the car rental and told them we would be late to pick up our car and was told they had plenty of cars. “Nothing to worry,” the lady on the phone said. On our way back to B&B, I noticed that they had painted words “Look Right” on the street informing you that cars would come from the right.
The owner of the B&B was a businessperson. He didn’t have time to chat with his customers. He seemed cold. To my surprise, he offered to make a call to the airline for us. He was put on hold too. At the airport, there were a couple of phones on the wall for checking luggage. Again, we were put on hold. We checked the ticket counter and were told that there was nothing they could do – we had to use those phones. After waited for 7 or 8 minutes, someone finally answered the phone. The guy told us the 11 o’clock plane had just arrived and he would look for our luggage after all luggages were unloaded. “Call back in 5 minutes,” he said. Five minutes later, we called again. This time it was answered right away. Finally, we got our luggage. We rushed to the car rental counter and were told they didn’t have any automatic car left. “I called this morning to say we would be late and the lady who answered the phone said it was okay,” my daughter said. “Oh, she probably didn’t know you want an automatic car,” the man said. He then made several phone calls and found us a car from a different car rental company. So we were back to the end of the waiting line. Ten minutes later, we got a car. I had no idea how my daughter found her way to Saint Ritas B&B in Limerick. She had to drive on the left side instead of the right. And all those roundabouts didn’t help either. At one point, we thought we were lost, but on the next minute we were right in front of this beautiful house. An old lady opened the door. She looked nice. I instantly liked her.
We dropped off our luggage. Without wasting a second, off we went to Cliffs of Moher. Although it rained on our way there, it stopped when we got off the car.
We had dinner at a pub – we called it Perkins-type-of-pub. Nothing special there. Soon after we got back to the B&B, my daughter decided to go out for a walk by herself. My husband headed out to buy a bottle of shampoo. The landlady and I started chatting. She didn’t think I should let my daughter out by herself at a foreign country. “Definitely not at night,” she said. “There is no bad guy here, isn’t it?” I asked. “I’m not going to promise anything,” she said. She told me she had this B&B for almost 30 years. She told me about her daughter. She showed me Irish dancing steps - she used to dance a lot. She was nice, but I didn’t have that “at home” feeling like I once did at a B&B in Connecticut. I shared a room with my daughter this night. It didn’t take me long to fall asleep. At midnight, a loud noise from the bathroom woke me up. “What’s that, Mom,” my daughter asked. “I don’t know,” I said. The noise sounded like someone was in the bathroom fussing around. I could hardly breathe. We got up and checked the bathroom. When we were in there, the noise stopped. We closed the bathroom door and went back to bed. The noise resumed. It took me a long time to go back to sleep. While I was still awake, I heard a man singing a folksong loud on the street. I found it quite charming.
Ireland - Part 3 We could see Bunratty Castle from the highway. It’s tall and huge. If anyone told me “you won’t miss it”, I would believe him. We saw the castle when we exited the highway. “Right there. It’s right there,” W pointed at it. One minute later, we, somehow, were back on the highway. We decided to turn around to give it another try. Again, one second we saw the castle and next second it disappeared. My daughter stopped the car. We looked and looked. Suddenly, I heard my daughter said, “Oh my gosh, it is right next to us. How can we not see it?” I looked. Sure enough we were parking right next to the castle. From our car window, we could only see a small part of the castle and failed to recognize it. We had a good laugh.
I think every girl has dreamed of living in a castle. I admit I do too. It’s secretive, and romantic. It provides great security. At least, that was what I thought before I visited Bunratty Castle. I didn’t know the stairs were narrow and the rooms were cold. I liked the murder hole though – the hole was designed for pouring boiling water or pitch on the heads of attacker. Ha. Whenever I visited a historical site, I often could feel some connection to the past. Not here. Maybe 1600 is just too far back. It’s unreachable. After visiting the Bunratty Castle and Folk Park, we picked up some sandwiches at a grocery store and then spent the whole afternoon touring the Dingle Peninsula area. The roads are narrow. Someone should invent a narrower car for Irish. Dingle Peninsula area is pretty. Not much for me to say other than showing you some pictures.
We stayed at Mulberry House in Killarney tonight. Killarney is a lovely town. We had dinner at Danny Mann Lounge –an Irish pub. Two people perform Irish songs there. They sang well. Sometime, the audience sang along, but no one was dancing. I love that loud noise there - a joyful noise from the heart. It was at that pub, I developed an appreciation to Irish people and wished I were one of them ;-) Mulberry House has cement walls. Looking out of the front window, I could see mountains. Looking out of the back window, I saw a huge pasture. The house is extremely quite. We told the lady that we would have breakfast at 8:30 next morning and when we opened our eyes, it was 8:35 already.
Ireland - Part 4 I have to tell you about those sheep. They are fluffy, cute and round… white dots decorate green pastures. Every time I saw them, I felt like to run to them and hug them. Later, whenever we passed some sheep, my daughter would tease me by shouting, “Sheep. Sheep.” Once we saw some sheep were eating grass by the road. My daughter stopped the car for me to take pictures. As soon as I got out of the car, a yellow dog ran to me, barking like crazy. I had to run back into the car quickly.
Surprisingly, not many people wore baseball caps. W and I were the only two most of the time. I had to wear it because it was very windy and I didn’t like to let my hair flying all over. Today we toured the Ring of Kerry. Some section of the road was very narrow. At one time, we had to back up 10 feet to reach to a wider section so the incoming car could drive pass us. In one small town, one guy stood on the road chatting to one driver in front of us. They chatted as if they were sitting in a café. At least 5 cars on each direction patiently waited for them to finish their conversation. No one honked the horn.
Here are pictures we took at the Ring of Kerry... We saw an Irish rainbow ;-)
We ate at another Pub at Killarney. I ordered mussels. They were excellent. Four men sat at the counter discussing golf games. W asked them if Tiger had won the tournament. They started chatting to us. They asked me if I like Ireland. I said I liked it a lot. They said if my daughter married to an Irish, then I could stay forever. Right away, two out of four claimed that they were single. They seemed nice, but they drank too much and golfed too often… (Just kidding…)
Ireland - Part 5 I wanted to tell you about “Irish” food. I meant what we ate in Ireland. We ordered Irish stew a couple of times. One tasted good - it was like a good homemade stew. The other tasted like canned beef stew. I had a good chicken sandwich, which seasoned with curry, at Blue Door restaurant in a town called Adare. We had a great Italian dinner one day and one decent Chinese dinner one day. My favorite meal was at Queen of Tart, near Trinity College. The taxi driver who took us to the airport asked if we had tried their cabbage dish. I didn’t think I had seen it on the menu, but it could be I just missed it. I would categorize Irish food as comfort food (not sure this was right, but that’s how I felt.) Maybe that’s why they have great beer ;-) It’s hard to tell who is Irish. The ones that I could tell, I like them a lot. There were many tourists everywhere we went. Among all the towns we visited, Killarney was my favorite. It is a lovely town. And we met some wonderful people there. Have you heard of the Blarney stone? Whoever kisses the stone at Blarney Castle is magically endowed with the gift of the eloquence. The stone is set into the outer face of the battlements. One has to lie on his back in an odd position to kiss the stone. After kissing the stone, the guy in front of us said to his wife, “I am sure my blood pressure is doubled.” Among three of us, our daughter was the only brave soul who kissed the stone. “I can’t believe you guys don’t want to do this,” she said to W and me. We told her we were too old to benefit from it. Rock of Cashel was a symbol of royal and priestly power for more than a millennium. More pictures…
Ireland - Part 6 May 9 In many ways, we are spoiled in U.S. One thing that made us happy when we came back was to watch water come out of the faucet. A couple of B&B we stayed seemed to have water pressure problem. The amount of the water that was coming out of the showerhead was probably ¼ of what we got at home. One bathroom, the one had strange noise at the night, had a round mirror with a circular Florissant light on the outer edge. When you turned the light on, looking into the mirror, you saw two bright circles in the middle of your eyes. It was weird but cool. This was the last day our daughter would be with us in Ireland. She was going to fly to Rome on the next day. We decided to visit Guinness factory first thing in the morning. I wasn't too fond of Guinness at this point, so I wasn't crazy about the idea, but I agreed we should go. According to the map, it would be a 15 minutes walk from our B&B and it took us at least 45 minutes. At one point, we asked a Taxi driver for direction and he told us it wasn’t far from where we stood. Fifteen minutes later, we finally got there. We learned how Guinness was made and saw how the plant harp looked like. At the end of the tour, visitors could go up to the top floor to get a complimentary glass of Guinness. Since we arrived in Ireland, we had been drinking Guinness almost everyday. I wasn’t crazy about the taste. But I really liked the one we had at the factory. It was 5 times better than any Guinness we had at any pub.
I should tell you a little more about Guinness. I think Guinness is the kind of beer that once you get used to the taste, you would like it a lot. I was introduced North Star Guinness at one pub. North Star Guinness is a little spicier. I like North Star a lot more. I also like Harp (another Irish beer, Karin. ;-) From Guinness Factory, we walked to Christ Church Cathedral. The building was begun about 1030. I am interested in these old buildings because they are gates to history. I touched the walls, imaging through the wall I had touched someone who was in the church long time ago. On the wall, there displayed the mummified remains of Cat and the Rat, which were trapped in an organ pipe in the mid-nineteenth century. (Where are their souls now?)
Christ Church Cathedral From Christ Church Cathedral, we walked to St Patrick’s Cathedral.
Have you heard of the Book of Kells? It’s the most decorated of Ireland’s medieval illuminated manuscripts. It was moved to Trinity College in the 17th century, contains the four gospels in Latin. “Wow” and “amazing” were the only two words my daughter and I managed to utter. The old library reminded me of the dining hall in Harry Potter movie.
Our next stop was Writers’ Museum. With an earphone, you would hear an introduction to Irish writers and some of their works. We had fish and chips tonight for dinner. At first W thought they had mixed up with the orders. It took us a while to realize their “chips” were our “French Fries.” The last thing we did today was to attend Dublin Literary Pub Crawl. The two and a half hour tour, which was led by actors, gave us a feel for the city’s booze-fuelled literary heritages. This definitely was one of the highlights in our trip.
Ireland - Part 7 May 10 My friend M commented that I wrote a lot about people in my travel log but not about the place I visited. Well, I want to mention that showing you pictures of places instead of writing about them is what I have intended, because “one picture is worth ten thousand words.” For example, I liked to write about the beautiful floor I saw at Christ Church Cathedral, but no matter how I described it, you probably wouldn’t get the picture unless you saw the picture yourself. If I show you the picture, there is no need for me to describe it to you, is it? This morning, we took our daughter to the bus stop – she was leaving for Rome. As soon as her bus left, I experienced a complete shutdown of my brain. I didn’t feel like to see anything anymore; I didn’t want to try any new food. W suggested we took a half-day bus tour. “We can go south today and north tomorrow,” he said. I didn’t care, so we got on the bus (not cheap, by the way.) We thought the bus would stop several times to let us see the scenery. Although the bus driver did mention several interesting spots, the bus didn’t stop until we reached Powerscourt Garden. We were given one and a half hour to visit the garden and eat lunch. “The gardens at Powerscourt are probably the finest in Ireland, both for their design and their setting at the foot of Great Sugar Loaf Mountain.” (From DK Eyewitness travel book) The line in the cafeteria was long. By the time we finished our sandwiches, we had only 45 minutes left. The garden is huge and beautiful (see picture, M!!!) One particular tree in their Japanese Garden got my attention. It was like Maple tree but not exactly. I would love to have one in my yard.
We were disappointed that we didn’t stop at more places, but the bus driver sang many songs and he sang beautifully. I guessed that made it up somewhat. After the garden tour, we went shopping. Window-shopping, that is. My window-shopping lasted only for 10 minutes. After I saw a nice blouse for $250, I went outside watching street performers sing.
I missed my daughter.
Ireland - Part 8 May 11 This is our last full day in Ireland. Since we weren’t impressed with yesterday’s trip (the cost vs. the gain), we refused to take another similar trip. I wanted to have an easy day today, since we had to catch our flight early tomorrow morning. We decided to explore Dublin by bus – “hop on – hop off.” This turned out to be a great decision. There was two bus tours: red bus and yellow bus. They both would go through the same route except the red bus would take you to the Phoenix Park and the yellow one would take you to the Kilmainham Goal. The yellow one was a little more expensive, but it had a tour guide on the bus. On the red bus, either the bus driver would be the tour guide or you had to listen to the tape. I was a raining day! We rode the red bus to the Old Jameson’s Distillery. Do you know that Jameson is obtained after three separate distillations whilst in America, bourbon is only distilled only once, and most Scotch whisky is distilled twice? At the end of the tour, I received a certification for being a qualified Irish whiskey taster. Only 4 out of 50 got the certification. You had to raise your hand high and push a lot of people away to get it!
The Old Jameson’s Distillery After we circle the city once, we hopped on the yellow bus. Angela was our tour guide. She was the BEST! I enjoyed every second of it, but we had to get off the bus to Kilmainham Goal – the Irish most famous jail. At there, we had another wonderful tour guide and heard stories about several prisoners. Remember I have mentioned that I didn’t “connect” to anyone when I visited the castle? Well, I definitely felt the connection when I was at Kilmainham Goal. I knew someone else was there. Not just one person. Many people. I couldn’t see them, but I felt their existence.
The Jail Had I taken this bus tour earlier, I would fell in love with Dublin sooner. I’m going to end this trip report here (I will take a guinness break tomorrow, and maybe have a summary of the trip on Thursday.) But I do want to mention that the Irish man who took us to airport was fun to talk to and the Irish woman who sat next to me when we flew to London was very nice. After the trip, I have a deep appreciation for Irish people. Cheers - from your qualified Irish whiskey taster!
Ireland - Summary Here is the summary of our Ireland trip.
What I like: (not in any particular order) |
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