Monday

On Monday we visited regent Street, the "famous shopping street" in London. It had a lot of very expensive stores, most of which did not interest me. However, we spent a great deal of time in Harrods.

Harrods goes on forever and is lavishly decorated. I tried to find a picture that does the inside of Harrods justice. But there's no such thing. One of the more interesting items there, besides yet another tribute to Princess Di (this time with Dodi beside her), was a recreation of a sphinx with the face of Mohamed al Fayed on it. Why did we not get pictures of all this?

We did a lot of shopping around for gifts for the family in Harrod's and were taken aback when the prices were revealed. We saw a half million dollar watch. What more can I say about Harrods' inventory?

As an aside, I have noticed that no three people speak the same language in London.

To be continued

Sunday, London

We have visited London before. That was when Jared was about 16 and David was about 14--or maybe they were both older or younger. Anyway, Steven and I had both done London's tourist spots before and had a general idea of what we wanted to see, where we wanted to go, and how we should get there.

As before, we stayed in the Bayswater area. But this time we stayed in a reasonable hotel instead of the Julius Caesar. All of those who went on the first London trip can appreciate my last comment. Although a very small room, our current lodging was clean and modern. Equally important, it was just down the block from a Subway Sandwich Shop. This is good because we could get a filling and nutritious meal without having to hock the house.

Prices in London are absolutely astronomical. Steven, who loves to look at real estate prices on vacation, found a 466 sq. ft. apartment with an advertised price of 399,000 pounds sterling, or $800,000. Two Subway sandwiches cost 10-12 pounds or $20 to $25. Steven took one load of laundry to a do-it-yourself laundromat and it cost $12.

But again, I digress. We went to the British Museum. Here I apologize, but a story follows: The other time we went abroad, the boys and Steven and I went to the Louvre together. While purchasing tickets, I informed the attendant that we wished to see the Rosetta Stone, some Impressionistic Art, and the painting "the birth of Venus." The Frenchman did a half-hearted job of stifling his contempt as he informed me that "the Birth of Venus" may be seen in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, the Rosetta Stone is kept in the British Museum, and "We don't show Impressionistic Art here." (Try sneering while saying the last part out loud. I would think that it takes some practice to pull it off as smoothly as the man by whom I was being talked-down-to.)

This time, being better informed, we HAD to do the British Museum. And here is a picture of Steven in front of the Rosetta Stone just to show the world that Steve and Leslie Bauer did indeed see the thing.

We also walked through Hyde Park. While there, we identified two new innovations.

One is a children's play area dedicated to Princess Dianna.

The other is a fountain dedicated to her memory. As you can see, the fountain is circular and has some rapids in it. Put your own meaning into it. I found it intriguing.

To be continued.

Last Day in Ireland

We kind of wasted our last full day in Ireland. We took a circuitive route to Slane, via a national forest, which did not particularly impress me. After you've seen the red woods and Yellowstone, what's left to impress a person? There we found the most luxurious B&B of the trip.

This is a picture of the outside.

This was the view from our room.

Then we did a major brain-fade. Was it because we had spent too long in the car? Was it because we were depressed at having to leave the Emerald Isles the next day? Was it because we didn't get enough input from the B&B owner? No! It was because we screwed up.

We went into Navan for a couple of hours, but it wasn't worth the time. It is not a tourist kind of town. It is a no kidding, genuine town with real people and a bunch of shops to meet their needs. I am embarrassed to say that I prefer the tourist traps.

The next day, it hit us that NewGrange was just over the hill. Read for yourself what the tourist websites report about the attraction:

A 5000-year-old burial site in County Meath, Newgrange (Brú na Bóinne) amazes the select few every winter solstice when the dawn rays of a weak, wintry sun illuminate a secret, inner chamber. It is also open throughout the year to visitors, with a simulation of the special light effects of the winter solstice.

Set in a region scattered with Celtic monuments, in the mystical heartland of Ireland where the early kings were crowned, the enormous tomb is over 400 ft long and 40 ft high. By far the most impressive Neolithic burial site in Europe,

it is decorated with thousands of fist-sized pebbles and large blue-grey slabs of sandstone incised with Celtic spirals which symbolise the sun.

Oh well. All this means is that we will definitely be returning to Ireland someday.

But before we left the area for Dublin, we drove over to NewGrange. We were too early to enter the visitors' center, but we had to see a little of what we were missing. We took a lovely stroll down a covered walk,

at the end of which was a beautiful and modern visitor's center. Then when we were thoroughly disgusted with our sin of omission, we returned to the car.

We drove to Dublin, a city that Steven refused to drive in (who can blame him?) and dropped off the car. Then we took a shuttle to the terminal, waited a bit, boarded a plane, and flew to London's Heathrow Airport.

To be continued.

Inisheer

The Aran Islands lie within the mouth of Galway Bay. The next day we took the ferry out to Inisheer, the smallest, closest, and most primitive of all the Aran Islands. (Need I mention that not once did I think about ferries in conjunction with our trip?) It was a grey day and the water was a bit choppy.

From our ferry (notice how casually I throw that word around now), Inisheer looked like this.

A little closer it looked like this.

A lot closer, it looked like this. As a matter of fact, this is where we spotted a nice, albeit rough looking man with a horse and cart, who offered to give interested people a tour of the island for a minimal price. Steven and I and a mother and daughter climbed into the cart.

The horse and he looked something like this. I say "something like" because we neglected to get a picture of him. What were we thinking?

We like to think that he had a good working knowledge of the island, but we'll never be sure. He had a thick accent--so thick that we all took turns asking the man questions along the way. Then the questioner had to attempt to decipher his answers for the rest of us. Since his eyes were on the road and not on us, after his explanations we usually just shrugged our incomprehension. At one point, he met another cart driver and spoke to him in Gaelic. He needn't have. We wouldn't have understood anyway.

He showed us the island's trophy shipwreck, the Plassy. In 1960 the Plassy was floundering in a terrible storm when someone on the island spotted it and called the Inisheers to help save those on board. Not one person was lost. A few years later another terrible tempest tossed the ship up onto the island and there it remained.

He showed us a lot of walls. As you can see, they are impressive. Inisheer is famous for its dry-stacked walls--walls that are assembled without mortar. The island is made up entirely of wind-swept rock, so rocky that the natives must make their own dirt. They do this by building walls, piling seaweed into the enclosures, letting it rot, and mixing it with sand.

After all their hard work, you've got to wonder why someone built a castle on the island. Castles are for protection against invaders. Who in the world would want to take over such an inhospitable place? But I digress.

He showed us the view from the top of the island and informed us that there were about 50 cars on the island. To get to...?

The unusual thing is that they had about 50 tractors there. Why? Certainly not for farming. We saw no crops and only a few head of cattle. And, for the rest of the day, Steven and I tried to figure out how the inhabitants support themselves. Nope. Not fishing. No, not from wool shorn from home-grown sheep. And certainly not from the tourist trade.

Although they had some absolutely fascinating ruins (about every 30 feet) none were marked, making it virtually impossible to discern their significance. The picture above is of the world's smallest chapel, Teampall Caomh, located on Inisheer. It was about 7 ft. by 10 ft. and made me claustrophobic even though it had no roof.

Here is another remarkable thing about the church--its ancient carvings are left to the elements. I guess this is because tourism is so terribly new to the island.

Returning to the subject of earning a living, is it possible to support a population of approximately 300 souls in a place with one school, a pub and maybe one hotel? We may never know the answer because, by the time the question formed in our minds, it was time to leave.

To be continued

Lisdoonvarna

Our erroneous assumptions were that cities on the map that were of similar size would have similar sized dots, cities of similar sizes would have similar items of interest, and the farther north we went, the more sheep we would encounter. Lisdoonvarna and Dingle had identically sized dots but they were light years away in interest. Don't get me wrong--Lisdoonvarna had its moments.



I assure you that Taft has nothing like these sculptures. Taft has sculptures, but they're all of oil derricks.



Moreover, Lisdoonvarna has some really great looking utility hole covers.



It also has a Jane Austin-esque hot springs resort with a lot of foliage worth photographing, which Steven did a great deal of. But the big attraction seemed to be:



You figure it out.



Steven and I, being married, automatically disqualified ourselves from the touted activities. So we went to Doolin to look around.

Doolin is a small tourist town, just about two kilometers from the coast. It took about 20 min. to see it all, so our attentions were then drawn to the nearby pier.



While there, we were especially interested in the mud flats. Above and beyond that, we found that there was a ferry to the nearby Aran Islands. We chose the smallest and closest to visit.

To Be Continued

Pushing Northward

From Killarney we pushed north in hopes of seeing Ireland in the raw (getting stuck in a sheep jam). We crossed the Shannon River from Tarbert to Killimer via the ferry.

As a little girl I pictured my first ride on a ferry boat to be something more like this...

than this... Imagine my disappointment. Eventually I got over it.

Outside of Killimer we stopped at a shop that had a few small things. There I found a green and purple wool scarf for myself and, of all things,

genuine Dutch caramel cookie waffles. These are an especially romantic cookie because Steven drove up to Billings in a snow storm to buy some and mail them to me in time for Valentines Day. A week ago we discovered that we can get them in Cody too.

We took a detour to see what was advertised as a pony tour of the area. Up and down the hills, through thickets, past very colorful houses we drove on the narrow, winding road. Alas and alack, when we arrived, no one was home--not the stable owner, not a stable boy, not a wife or children, (even though we saw a swing set out front), not even a pony. But the stable had a slate roof and the yard had some brightly colored flowers to see so not all was lost.

I guess it was a good thing everyone was gone. Steven feared that I would ask to take a pony tour. He was right as usual. But we had discussed the possibility on the way to the deserted stable and he was insistent that we NOT ride any horses without Blaine Dahlstrom to supervise. He's probably right about that one too.

We passed the Cliffs of Mohr which featured...cliffs. There were several reasons why we did not stop: 1) the parking lot was user-hostile, 2) it was getting late and the park would be closing soon, 3) the cliffs were kind of ...? ... brief? dinky? not up to the California Coast cliffs' stature in comparison and Californians don't charge tourists to look at rocks and the ocean (My what an ugly American I am becoming!) 3) the only new thing we might see is a glimpse of a puffin ($30 to see a puffin? I think not).

We decided to spend the night in Lisdoonvarna, a name I have yet to master. This is multi causal: not only is Irish spelling, and thus pronunciation, challenging, but the European Union is insisting that Ireland use the original Gaelic names for its towns, and Gaelic spelling and pronunciation are even more remarkable than the Irish stuff. This results in very confusing road maps, where the town's folk are trying to attract tourists to their city and the maps and road signs don't mention the name you are looking for.

To be continued.

Killarney

We made two important discoveries on the way to Killarney. The first was made in Tralee as we filled the gas tank for the first time; small cars have better gas mileage than big ones. The second learning came to me at a McDonald's, as Steve and I sipped milkshakes and pondered the wonders of the first; every fourth person here looks like me. An explanation follows:

The black Irish are those with white skin, black hair, and green eyes. They are the descendants of the shipwrecked sailors from the Spanish Armada. (Let's face it. The Irish are very friendly people.) I have the same coloring and have always felt somewhat like a freak, even in my own family. People with black or brown hair have brown eyes, or at best, hazel eyes, and often, dark skin, especially in California's Central Valley. I cannot tell you how wonderful it was to fit in for a change.

I consider Pierce Brosnan to be the prototypical specimen.

Notice the similarities.

In Killarney we made another discovery: the old adage, "Sometimes less is more," is true. We couldn't wait to check in to the B&B and then hit the shops. But no sooner had we parked downtown and started looking around, than we found that all the shops looked the same and "crafts" means souvenirs in Irish. And the variety did not even come close to that found in Dingle.

After a couple hours of earnestly searching, we had all but given up on Killarney. But then we decided to visit St. Mary's Cathedral in Killarney. It was beautiful and quiet and a good place for us to regroup. We then ventured a walk in

Killarney National Park. It is enormous, as may be expected of a national park, and reminded me of Sherwood Forrest. Also as expected, we saw herds of cattle and deer but no Robin Hood.

We also came across Knockreer House, a charming cottage and a show piece of the park.

Not yet savvy as to how long seven kilometers are, we decided to walk to Ross Castle.

During our perambulation, we noticed some workers feverishly trying destroy a cluster of gigantic rhododendrons. We had to ask why the slaughter. "Because they are not native to Ireland and they will eventually take over," they said. A little further on we noticed a stand of bamboo. We decided that warning them about the invasive nature of bamboo would not be appreciated, so we let it drop.

To Be Continued