"E" is for Error

That letter cost me dearly!

I've been working on the "Oak Tree Sampler" by Darlene O'Steen. She is the only cross stitch designer I look for by name. Other designers use traditional sampler motifs as well as she does to create samplers than look old as soon as you're done, but she also incorporates lots and lots off different kinds of stitches. I adore this, because while I love cross stitching, I hate doing nothing but cross stitches. Many an otherwise wonderful sampler is ruined for me by being nothing but cross stitch. For me, that's up there with watching paint dry. Very big yawn! Different stitches are interesting to do, add depth and texture to the piece, and many have histories all their own.

I've had this pattern, well, the tag on it says I got it at a needlework shop in Jacksonville, and I left there in 1992. I promise the sampler hasn't been hanging around nearly that long! It's a great design, but I'm working it on unbleached linen, which means it is brown, and the dark fabric is hard on my eyes. The best time to work on it is late afternoon when the afternoon sun is streaming onto the back porch. Yes, I have an Ott Light and it is a wonderful thing, but you cannot beat real sunlight for certain applications.And I like sitting on my back porch. That's one of the great glories of living in the south, the whole back porch thing.

The alphabet is pretty straightforward, with the letters alternating with a dark blue and rust color. If the letter is Rust, it is supposed to be done in Rice stitch. This is Rice Stitch.

The numbers represent the order in which you make your stitches.

 If the letter is done in Dark Blue, it is supposed to be done is a Smyrna Cross. This is Smyrna Cross.

Each line represents one thread of linen fabric

 Things were clicking along; A, B, C, D. Then I hit "E". "E" is Rust, therefore it's supposed to be done in the Rice Stitch. All those R's should make it easy to remember; maybe Darlene even thought of that. Wouldn't put it past her, clever woman that she is.

First, I remembered to change to Rice Stitch, but when I looked it over before I moved to the next letter, I realized I'd forgotten to change the color. The "E" was Dark Blue. No way out of it, it would have to go. If you look at the diagram of Rice Stitch, you'll see why that was a challenge; all those tiny "leg" stitches (Stitches number 5-10) are golden opportunities to cut your linen. Please don't ask me how I managed not to. At least that was one area where the embroidery gods were on my side. They were probably having too much fun with the rest to be bothered. Or they know that there is a very definite point at which I will make a brief stop at the garbage can on my way to the wine and where's the fun in that?

I re-threaded my needle and went back to work. Stepped back - and realized I had the right color, but this time I had stitched the "E" in the Smyrna Cross. Now I enjoy doing the Smyrna Cross; there's a rhythm to it that's almost Zen. If there is a polar opposite to Zen, it is something very similar to taking out a Smyrna Cross. And there were 18 of the blasted things in that "E". That finally accomplished, I put everything that was not Rust thread out of sight, and chanting the steps to the Rice Stitch (mostly) under my breath - or as my buddy Jackie likes to say "consulting with the smartest person I know" though it sure didn't feel that way at the time - this time I managed to stitch a Rust-colored "E" in Rice NOT Smynra Stitch.

When you think about the mathematical possibilities, I made every mistake possible in this combination that didn't involved actually messing up the letter. The letter "E."

I wonder if Sue Grafton ever had this many stupid aggravations with one of her novels?

2013: The Year of Getting Things Done

Now that I've finished "My Big Fat Irish Vacation," I can finally Move on to what I've been working on since oh, about mid December. I've never been much for New Year's Resolutions - the whole New Year's thing has always struck me as rather contrived. But this year, I made myself a real live Resolution. Namely, Get Some Things Done.

By "Things," I mean finish the unfinished things that are lying around the house in one form or another and making me feel bad. The key to getting on the list of Some Things To Be Done is to be 1) an unfinished thing and 2) and unfinished that is annoying me. By "Done" I mean either completed, sent to Goodwill, trashed, or broken into component parts, unraveled, or whatever it takes to make it Over With. The blog account of my Irish vacation has been one of these Things To Be Done. And getting that done has been Step One. Well, sort of. The Public Step One. There are other things as well -

Some knitting

The red piece is the "Peddlar's Shawl" from Cheryl Oberle's book "Folk Shawls." I've been working on it since oh, about 2009 or 2010. Got into trouble about the time I was supposed to get off the garter stitch section and onto the lace border - though now I've a LYS (Local Yarn Shop) that should be able to help me out. The other two are much more recent - my first attempt at a pair of socks and a "Seriously Simple Shawl" that was suppose to teach me how to knit lace and read a chart. What they mostly taught me was that is is a Really Bad Idea to take two knitting classes at the came time. A Very, Very Bad Idea.

Some paintings, various mediums....

The dogs belong to some friends and were due last Christmas. The other two, well, let's not talk about how long they've been floating around. The crystal bowl of strawberries in the still life has been thwarting me, and the owl, well, that one may have to be completely re-designed. We shall see. It may wind up being sanded down and turned into a drawing before it's all over.

Weaving...

 This picture is just of one part of the tangle the warp got into; I didn't show the rest for fear of frightening the little children. I have been working on it, and it's actually all smoothed out and I am re-threading it - for the third time! This had better be the most beautiful Valley Forge Dogwood scarf of all time!!!

Some stitchery

I don't recall how long these have been floating around, but they deserve to be completed.

Even some home maintenance.

I started this stencil long ago, got about half way, and realized that I was going to have to stand in the kitchen sink to do the next part - which would be disastrous for me and the sink. I am determined that I am going to figure out how to either get that segment done so I can complete this thing, or paint it over and Forget About It! And get that roll of painter's tape off the cat shelf.

There are other things as well, some less photograph-able, some with a bit less priority. But while I am one of the most easily distractable people on the planet, my goal this year is No New Projects until I get some of these old ones out of the way. It's another form of de-cluttering really, finishing what I've started.

 The posts at first will come thick and fast because for a little while because while I've been working intermittently on the Ireland posts, I've also been working somewhat more steadily on some of these other projects. As the posting catches up with the work, it will slow down. But it should be an interesting ride, so see how much of this mental list I can get through - or will I make myself "mental" along the way?

My Big Fat Irish Vacation Day 10: Home Again

Wouldn't you know it? Departure Day dawned bright and clear. Which is undoubtedly a Very Good Thing when you're going to spend the day flying across a rather large chunk of the Atlantic Ocean, but all that was was on my mind was how I really wouldn't have minded taking off in the rain if we could have had those last few hours in Dublin. Because while we had seen a lot and done a lot, it was sinking in how much we hadn't done and hadn't seen. Ireland is a small island, but it isn't that small, and all the places missed were running through my mind. Donagal, Dungarvan, Wicklow, Waterford, Kerry - the place names run like a song.

Playing the bodhrain in Dublin

 Dublin Airport continued to amaze. Clean, fairly easy to find our way around in - and we were actually able to get a half way decent breakfast. And the customs agents were pleasant and managed to not make us feel like livestock. All of which was good because not only was I not thrilled about my vacation ending, I'm never happy to be in a airport. I don't enjoy being in a metal tube with several hundred other people and thrown through the air at a few hundred miles an hour.

Galway

 At least I knew what to expect now with Aer Lingus, and could look forward to another episode of Top Gear. It was the US end of things I was dreading, and rightfully so - for all the talk of international customs, the US security was much more unpleasant, and JFK was dirty, noisy, and we weren't on the ground 10 minutes before I saw a fist fight. Yep, welcome home, girl. The US flight that was miserable - nothing like being crammed in like an unwilling sardine with a bunch over-excited folk bound for Disney. Though in all fairness, the kids were fine. The parents, on the other hand....

Connemara Road

So where does that leave me? Wanting to go back. Often and badly. I literally dream about Ireland. And while much of it is beautiful and fascinating, what I really fell in love with were the people I met. I know full well that folk are pretty much the same everywhere you go, good uns and bad uns, fair and foul, but I was charmed by the people I met.

St Patrick's Cathedral at Rock of Cashel

So what now? Well, we're saving our pennies, planning for another trip, hopefully set up better now that we've gotten our feet wet. Tom sent off all the birth certificates, wedding certificates, and all the rest on Saint Patricks Day - it seemed appropriate - and is now officially an "Irish citizen of Foreign Birth By Right of Descent." So retiring to Ireland is still an option. And if I get my own mother's birth registered, I also have that prerogative - it doesn't do to forget I have my own ties in County Clare (t'is great Whalen country! as I was often told) and Dublin.

So with that, I'll end the Ireland saga with a favorite version of a favorite song. And while it was sung by Mary Black when they signed the Easter Accord in 1998, this is our favorite version.

My Big Fat Irish Vacation Day 9: Kilkenny to Dublin

The sun was shining the next morning, but I was not. Oversoft hotel bed? Aching bones from a new front coming through? Still being pissed off about leaving the music before I was ready? Or maybe the vacation was just reaching its natural end. I don't know. But I was not an especially happy camper.

But I have to give the Clubhouse Hotel credit. The breakfast was not the best I had in Ireland - that credit belongs to a couple of the B&Bs - but the dining room was amazing. I'd never really appreciated the term "Georgian" before. I felt like I had been dropped into an episode of "Upstairs Downstairs" and was terrified Hudson would find me not at all suitable. I found a picture on the web that kind of captures at least some of it, but still doesn't do justice to the experience of being surrounded by something so elegant. The dead animal parts were no longer on the walls, but the plaster work and sporting prints certainly were, a testimony to the history of the place, which started as a clue for the local Hunt back in the day and eventually became a hotel. Only recently has it stooped to having to cater to noisy American in blue jeans and trainers, poor thing.

Dining Room at Clubhouse Hotel

Tom and I put together a battle plan. Get up to Dublin, drop off the car, take a bus into Dublin for a last look around and be ready to catch the plane in the morning. One thing high on the agenda was a stop by Bray to see where his grandfather had been born and raised. Bray is just south of Dublin, so it all seemed quite do-able in the bright light of morning. So off we set.

We were hoping for another evening in Dublin, maybe a walk along the Liffey.

 We had kind of forgotten that Ireland we had been driving in the countryside and small towns. Driving the freeways of Dublin to get to the turnoff to Bray was a bit unnerving, especially as it put us in the thick of the heavy truck traffic heading for the port. Things didn't get better when we got to Bray. Not only were our maps outdated, but there was a lot of road work going on. The locals were only a little less frustrated and aggravated than we were. It was with great relief we found a place to ditch the car so we could get out and walk. That turned out not to be that great an improvement as we never did get a clear mental map of the place to help us keep our bearings. We kept getting tangled up. End-of-vacation fatigue was definitely setting in.

It says a lot that we were actually grateful to see a McDonald's. Partly to get a cup of coffee without having to worry about what to call the sort of coffee we wanted, partly because the Irish haven't seemed to have discovered the rest stop yet and we had been driving for quite a while. Tom had hoped to go by the school where his grandfather had taught. But the confusion with the maps, the construction and the realization that our instructions were really bad, made us decide that was not going to happen. The school is a private residence now, and all we could have done is drive by anyway. Still, it was a huge disappointment. We walked around Bray, and decided that Grandpa had the right idea when he left the place. Though in fairness to Bray, did it really have a fair chance, considering its streets were a torn up shambles, Tom was in a bad mood and the shifting weather fronts were making my bones ache so I was  feeling nasty? Let's give Bray a break and say there was some bias on the part of the judges.

Every man and his dog was complaining about the traffic in Bray

We headed back to Dublin with an eye towards returning the car, checking into the hotel, and taking a bus back to the city center for one last look around. Weren't we going to be the savvy travelers? But by the time we got done topping off the gas tank - the second time we'd put gas in the car, by the way, and the first time we'd done it mostly out of a sense of paranoia, not out of any need - and getting caught in the round-about and taking the wrong road not once not twice but three times before we finally took the right turn for the airport. And THEN going through all kinds of hell getting to the actual hotel - why is it always so hard to navigate around airports?!!! - the promised change in the weather had set in and the mild but blustery weather we'd had while filling up the car had turned into a cold driving rain that verged on sleet. Just getting off the bus and getting up to the hotel took my breath away. Taking a bus into Dublin for a final look-see was out of the question. So our final night in Ireland was going to be spent in the confines of a very American style hotel. Not exactly the plan, but a case of pneumonia is not exactly the sort of souvenir one wants to take home.

                                                          Mr. & Mrs. Eileen O'Duill, Speakers Bureau Photo                                                                    Eileen found all the Irish documents we're needing for Tom's Irish citizenship.

All was not lost, however. I had managed to get hold of the gal who'd been gathering up the Irish documents on Tom's paper chase. The originals she has sent us had been lost in the mail, and rather than risk that happening again, we'd agreed to meet while we were in Ireland so she could hand-deliver them. Our hotel wasn't too far from her home, so she drove over. I was impressed that she insisted on coming over right away because it was rush hour and the weather was foul even by Irish standards, which I think are rather high on that count. But Eileen was lovely and delivered the birth and marriage certificates into our hands so now all we had to do was pair them with the American documents and return them to Ireland for Tom to get his dual citizenship. And hope that bunch doesn't get lost as well! Still, I was very impressed with anybody who could come out in such miserable weather so late in the day and seem so happy about it.

So instead of taking a last look-see at Dublin, and seeing if we could find where my great-grandfather had been born on the Temple Bar, we wound up eating at the hotel restaurant, organizing our luggage, and watching television. Not the last night we had planned at all.

Being a capital city, Dublin has lots of statues. Most of them are on high pedestals, but some of much more accessible. The locals, true to form, have given them less than reverent nick names. I'll finish this entry with some of my favorites. Three statues that I really enjoyed, and two that just baffled me.

The three I liked:

 

On Earl Street, James Joyce, aka "The Prick With The Stick"

On Grafton Street, Molly Malone, the "Broad with the Cod" or the "Trollop with the Scallops"

                  At Dublin Park, Oscar Wilde, "The Fag on the Crag." The different colors of his clothes were obtained by used stones of different colors.

The Two That Baffled Me take some explaining. First off, they actually shared the same sight, on what is now O'Connell Street by the main Post Office in Dublin. First off, the English erected a monument to Admiral Nelson here in 1808, putting one up in Dublin even before they got around to putting one up in London. Put that under the heading of "Things That Make You Go Hmmmmm."
.

Apparently the locals were not charmed by the presence of Admiral Lord Nelson, or impressed with his statue being atop the "tallest Doric column in the world," because the IRA blew it up in 1966. That might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but they were probably having doubts when the Irish government began replacing Pillar.

First was this sculpture of "Anna Livea," which is supposed to be a personification of the River Liffey as per James Joyce. I've included two shots so you can truly appreciate this thing's awfulness.
 

Side view

No, this is not elongated or distorted.

The river is supposed to be "represented by a young woman sitting on a slope with water flowing past her." The locals didn't buy it for a minute. She was quickly dubbed "The Floozie in the Jacuzzi" and the "Whore in the Sewer" (give it the local pronunciation of "hoo-er" and you'll get it). I doubt there were many tears shed when this thing was moved off O'Connell Street to a small park in 2001. Little did they know what was about to be visited upon them. Namely....

The Dublin Spire ---

The official name of this thing is The Millennium Spire. The locals prefer such names as "The Stiletto in the Ghetto" and "The Nail in the Pale;" "The Pale" being the area of Ireland under direct English control in the late Middle Ages. (hence the term "beyond The Pale.") Nobody seems quite certain what this thing represents. I found some literature that rattled on about "Ireland's promise in the new century while harkening back to her storied past," but that sounds like International ArtSpeak to me. The shape is supposed to recall ancient standing stones, and there are some sort of kind of rune-like things on it, but it's being out of polished steel messes up that image. At least it is a convenient meeting place. You can't confuse it with anything else, and since at 400 feet high it's the tallest thing in Dublin, you can't miss it.

But seeing as what came after, you have to believe if the boys in the IRA had known what was going to come next, if they might have thought twice about toppling the old Admiral and just wondered off to a nearby pub for a refreshing pint.

Huh?

My Big Fat Irish Vacation Day 8: Cashel to Kilkenny

Tom and I headed out of Cashel with an idea of  spending the day in Kilkenny - I wanted to see the Design Center and National Craft Center there. But under as clear and blue an autumn sky as you could wish, we were in no hurry to get anywhere in particular. We were enjoying the ride and the sheer pleasure of being in Ireland on a fine fall day. Here, in this valley between two mountain ranges, we really felt like we had come home. It reminded me of where I grew up in Tennessee; it reminded Tom of southwest Wisconsin. Even when we got a bit tangled up and had to backtrack, we didn't care. We were just happy to be there.

Kilkenny Side Street

 When I think about our time in Ireland, our day in Kilkenny was far and away my favorite. We ambled in around lunch-time, located the local shopping center, and prowled a bookstore for a bit, had a bite to eat, then strolled around the city streets. We watched the street musicians, and got thoroughly turned around looking for the Tourist Information office. When we asked a young lady where it might be, she didn't know, but instead of suggesting we ask somebody else, she ran across the street, asked the lady running the shop there, then came back across the street to tell us. It made me sad she was selling ice cream and it was really too cold and windy to buy her wares. She was charming.

Kilkenny Castle

 We walked up to Kilkenny Castle. Once the home base of the Butlers, an Anglo-Irish family, the grounds stretching down to the River Nore are now a public park, and the side Cromwell did not blow up is the backdrop to a lovely rose garden that seems as popular with the locals as with the tourists. With our usual aversion to the the lifestyles of the rich and famous, Tom and I watched a video about the history of the place, then crossed the street to the Kilkenny Design Center, and through it, the National Craft Gallery.

Butler House and Gardens behind Craft Gallery

  The Gallery  was closed for lunch, but some of the workshops beyond were open, so we did get to see some silver and goldsmiths at work, and I could at least fantasize about what it would be like to be able to take some classes in the workshops in the renovated stable area. When they did open, the Galleries proved to be well worth the wait. The Modified Expressions Show was amazing. It featured artists from Europe and America working in paper - books, maps, calligraphy, even cardboard, if you can imagine such a thing. Amazing stuff. I'm going to try to put a link to their web site so you can look at a slide show of some of the work. You've got to see some of this stuff to believe it.

  http://www.nationalcraftgallery.ie/exhibitions/modified-expression

 The Design Center was a mixed bag. What as good was very, very good, (and unfortunately but understandably way beyond my budget) but there was also a goodly part devoted to factory-made goods. Now I know that things like Waterford Crystal and the china with the shamrocks on it are part of Ireland's tradition - and I am good with the crystal, I really am - but I have a problem with them being in a "craft" gallery. That may be snobbish on my part, but then I come from the craft tradition and definition of the Southern Highlands Crafts Guild, and when you about literally cut your teeth watching people like Virginia Dare Strother and Going Back Chiltosky, you do tend to cop a bit of attitude.

Club House Hotel: Your back is to the Check In Desk, now you get to find your room.

The Tourist Information Office had no B&B for us, but instead sent us to the Clubhouse Hotel. That was quite an experience. First we had to find it. While walking Kilkenny was no problem, finding where to leave the car in the lot behind the hotel was an adventure. Directions included going down an alley; we went down the wrong one to find ourselves in a situation where I thought we were going to mess up yet another rental car. Luckily the Golf had a very tight turning radius and we managed to get out without messing up ours or anybody else's vehicle, though some of the shrubbery suffered. We finally found the right very narrow alley, though we had doubts even as we saw signs saying it did belong to hotel. The hotel itself was, well, different. It started life as a Hunt Club back in the 1700s, then morphed into a hotel. It's like of like Topsy, it "jest growed," and if I thought the hotel in Dublin was a bit confusing with all the doors that looked like fire doors but weren't really, that was nothing compared to the Clubhouse. What with all the different levels and hallways going off at odd angles, I considered putting down a trail of breadcrumbs but was pretty sure they'd have been swept up. The room was on the order of an American hotel room, except colder water and one of those irritating shower heads that just didn't go far enough from the wall to be much good that the Irish hotels have but the B&Bs do not. Oh well, I wasn't there for the ablutions.

Street Musician

 The fine folk at the check-in desk had assured us both of good food and good music were easy to find in Kilkenny, so we set out. It was a bit of a walk, but like Galway, Kilkenny is an excellent place just to walk around in. We crossed the river and set out for Langtons, recommended to us by both the folks at the hotel and Rick Steves' book. I had doubts going in, simply because it was so lovely and elegant. They didn't seem the least but put off by as scruffy a pair as we, so we settled in. We'd had lunch and tea and were going to be drinking Guinness when the band played, so we decided we'd better get appetizers. When Tom's arrived, it wasn't what he expected, but it was tasty, so he dug in. He was almost done when the waitress arrived in great distress and explained that they'd brought him the wrong dish. Tom tried to explain that was alright, he was very happy with what he had gotten, but nothing would do but that they bring him what he had ordered - at no charge of course. The problem was that I was quite full with what I had eaten, which had been delicious, Tom had had quite enough with what he had eaten - and now we had what really was another meal on our hands and the waitress and manager standing at the table so apologetic, waiting for us to tuck in. In the meantime, there was no sign of any musicians - and we found out that the band had had to cancel. Yet another reason for the staff to get itself into a swivet of apologies. And we are sitting there not really wanting to eat another bite but feeling terribly obliged...  We managed to mess up the third appetizer enough to calm the staff down before we made our escape.

Matt the Miller's Pub on the River Nore

There was a small group at another table who had also been waiting for the No-Show Band. Turned out it was being lead by a professional tour guide. He had talked to the staff and found out that another pub a few blocks away was sure to have a very good local band. So we pried the perpetually apologizing staff off our arms and set off to find Matt the Millers. The walk was long enough for the extra food to settle down and make some room for the Guinness we knew we be having. The band was just finishing setting up - and I have go give the Irish pub bands credit. Mountain bands can drive you crazy with their constant tuning. They are obsessed with tuning; they'll dang nigh stop in the middle of a song to re-tune. Irish bands get in and get to work. This bunch got right down to it, and it was a hit parade right off my play list - they opened with "Mary Ellen Carter," and two tunes later it was "Ballad of Saint Anne's Reel." (Yes, I know I mis-spelled it on this blog title, but I can't figure out how to correct it without the computer deciding I'm starting a whole new blog, which is way too much work for 1 letter.) No Johnny Cash, but lots of Stan Rogers and Liam Clancy and I was one happy Yank.

Unfortunately, I am a night owl - my mother has long sworn I was born to be a night watchman - married to a lark of the most extreme sort. Tom was pumpkinizing in the worst way. I gave serious thought to letting him go his way. I had every confidence I could find my way back to the hotel just fine. It was finding my way back to the room once I got to the hotel that gave me pause and made me leave long before I wanted to. If I'd had my way, I'd have probably been there till the sun came up. It so would have not be a problem for me. We passed several other pubs oh the way back to the hotel with music, though none as appealing to me was what I'd been listening to. But the hotel room wasn't as appealing as any of them, even the pub with the weird off-key guy with the badly tuned guitar and no sense of rhythmn. I sat on the bed in a fine snit and contemplated bread crumb trail substitutes while Tom went to sleep.

My Big Fat Irish Vacation Day 7: Galway To Cashel

It was back into the rental - a diesel VW Golf, BTW, please don't tell "the lads" at Top Gear. The couple of days off really helped Tom with the driving. Getting through the roundabouts was still a team effort - Tom concentrated on keeping us out of everybody's way and I figured out which exit we wanted - but he was handling the whole left side of the road thing like he'd been doing it for years. We headed south on the N18, a limited access highway.  I occupied myself by delving into the now familiar Collins Comprehensive Road Atlas. I was getting a feel for the general lay-out of the place, but could not figure out where "Amach" was. I was seeing it on sign after sign, but could not find it on any map. Then it dawned on me. The way Irish road signs are worded. Irish first, then English. There was a reason I couldn't find "Amach" on the map. Who in their sane mind would name their town "Exit"?

We had a vague idea of heading down towards Limerick and maybe on towards Tipperary. The weather was blustery but fine, and we were feeling very foot-loose and fancy-free. We stopped off in Gort for a quick break. I saw the words "Tim Horton" on the hot drink machine in the gas station and though "Aha, American (or at least Canadian) style coffee!" I had high hopes as I poured myself a cup of the stuff - and was teleported to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as soon as I took as sip. Just as poor Arthur Dent did when he tried to get a cup of hot tea on the spaceship Heart of Gold, I found myself confronted with "a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike" well, coffee in this case. I like good coffee, but I am not all that fussy, and I simply could no handle this stuff. Luckily it seemed content to ride quietly in the cup holder, so I left it to its devices. We both seemed happier that way.

Things got much better when we reached Tipperary. At this point both of our guide books abandoned us, and I don't know why. I was quite pleased with Tipperary. We walked around the town a little bit, and my only real regret is that I forgot to write down the name of the pub where we had an excellent lunch. Of course all the pictures of race horses on the walls gave it some extra points as well.

Nice street scene of a nice town.

 Once done with lunch, we headed for the one place in the MidLands that Rick Steves admits exists - Cashel. The Rock of Cashel, which is a set of Cathedral ruins atop a high tor over the town, was on my list of Places I Really Want To See.  Unfortunately, The Rock soon began to remind me of a certain very annoying hotel in Atlanta. I could see the place, and circled around it for what seemed an interminable time, but like to never actually got there. Tom and I were doing that with The Rock. Though at one point I was surprised and happy to see a field of corn. Not European corn, which refers to about any grain, but real American corn, or maize. I've no idea what it was doing there, but it was like seeing an old friend there for a moment. And we needed all the friendly reassurance we could get, frustrated as we were getting at being able to see where we wanted to go so plainly and not being able to get there. Round and round we went, until we saw a very small sign, bolted up the hill, and found ourselves (at last!) where we had been trying to go for the last half hour.

The Rock of Cashel, County Tipperary

 A visit to the Rock of Cashel is a quick overview of more than 1000 years of Irish history. From about 300 AD, it was the seat of the High Kings of Munster. This was where Saint Patrick decided he'd make his biggest splash by converting the High King, Aengus, to Christianity around 450 AD. The high ground of The Rock became a center for Irish Catholicism. Around 1000, the Round Tower was the first stone structure built there; it served as a lookout for the Vikings who were beginning to raid the territory. Cormack's Chapel, Ireland's first Romanesque church, was built about 100 years later, when things calmed down a bit. The Roman Catholic Church may have gotten the upper hand of the more free-wheeling Irish Church by then, but the carvings and engravings on the Chapel's walls and arches harken strongly back to the motifs we saw at New Grange. Even that far back, the Irish were mastering the fine art of following the letter of the law - but with their own particular spirit. The Hall of the Vicar's Choir where we started the tour is actually the youngest building, dates to the 1400s, so you have quite a spread of years to deal with. One of the hardest
things for an American to get used to when dealing with Irish history is that there is just so darned much of it! 

The Nave of the Cathedral, showing the secret passage. The Round Tower is to the right.

 What I enjoyed the most was studying the carvings on the stone sarcophagi in the niches, and the secret passageways behind the walls, now exposed, where the Bishop could have escaped from his quarters to the Round Tower if need be - or peered through screens to do a head count during Mass and to make sure that everything was up to snuff.

The graveyard on the Rock of Cashel with Hore Abbey below.

 Outside the Cathedral is what the guides assured us was a graveyard with the finest collection of Celtic crosses in Ireland. The view was certainly one of the finest. Even with the weather closing in, the view of Hore Abbey and the Plain of Tipperary were breathtaking for reasons that had nothing to do with the dropping temperatures and rising wind. We wanted to linger, but closing time was getting near, and we had not dealt with the issue of finding a place for the night, so we set out, though not without a lot of backward glances.

The "Golden Vale of Tipperary" with Hore Abbey

The Tourist Information Office set us onto a B&B called Sister Fidelma's. Tom went to get the car; I walked it because I had a couple of errands to run, wonder why the name sounded so familiar. We found the place with little trouble; as usual, the folks at the TI Office gave very clear instructions. We found it on a side street, and all was soon revealed. The name came from a mystery series by Peter Tremayne, which I had read years ago. It was like meeting an old friend. They had the complete series in several languages in the lobby; I helped myself to a collection of short stories. I'd bought Tom a book about the geology of Ireland at the Tourist Information Office, so we were both happy.

Sister Fidelma's B&B, Cashel

We weren't so happy when we set out to get a bite to eat. It had gotten very overcast, and the wind was strong and biting. We went down the main street until we finally found a place to eat, and had what was probably the worst meal we had outside of an American airport for our entire trip. Very insipid sort of Italian. I got fettuccine Alfredo on the premise it's hard to mess that up, but they succeeded. There was hardly anybody else in the place, and it was easy to understand why. We made our way back to Sister Fidelma's and curled up until we got some warmth back into our bones.

I was very irritated when I went back to the lobby to return my books the next morning to find a bunch of local maps and see that if we had gone up the street instead of down, we would have found quite a few restaurants, and probably have done a lot better. That's what we get for not looking around thoroughly! But during the night bad weather had blown away and while a cold wind was still blowing, the sun was shining, the folks at Sister Fidelma's had made us a fine breakfast, and things were looking bright again.

Not only can doors in Ireland be alarms, apparently they can be rude!

My Big Fat Irish Vacation: Day 6: Connemara

 A bit of geography here. Galway and its bay are on the west coast of Ireland. The the south is County Claire with The Burren and the Cliffs of Mohr. To its north is Connemara. We wanted to see both, so Galway made a great base to work from. The Tourist Information Office found us a B&B in the same general area DunRovin was in, Salt Hill. Ross House was actually larger, with a bigger bedroom, and a very nice living room that was the perfect place to curl up with a glass of wine and catch up on my journal. All B&Bs like to say they are "homey," but Ross House actually fit the bill.

Having discovered the joys of letting somebody else do all the driving and navigating, we were thinking about taking a bus tour of Connemara, one of Ireland's great beauty spots. Our landlord, Sharon, piped up and told us that one of the bus companies could pick us up at the house - no figuring out what to do with the car! One bus ticket cost about a Euro more than it cost us to park the car all day in Galway, so that was a no-brainer. So we joined another pair of Americans who were staying at Ross House and caught the bus at the head of the street - I, at least, feeling like an overage school child while we waited in the early morning damp.

Our first stop was our first Irish ruin, Ross Errily Friary. It was founded in the mid-1400's by the Franciscans. The community thrived until the English Reformation. The friars came and went depending on the political winds of the times, but finally left for good around 1740. I soon discovered one of the Big Drawbacks to bus tours – you can't poke around as long (or as briefly) as you like. We only had 15 minutes here. I could have spent hours!

Loch Nafooey, County Galway

Connemara is noted for it wild beauty. Even on such a gloomy day as this one was, it is a striking place. It is also known for the Connemara pony and the tough sheep that graze its hills. The sheep have a habit of getting onto the roads, and it is up the drivers to avoid them, not the other way around! At one point we had four trotting down the road headed right for the bus.

Connemara Sheep, who have complete confidence in the power of the disc brake.

 Tony the Connemara pony has a sweet gig. He galloped alongside the bus until we stopped. I wondered what the excitement was about until the bus driver got out with a bag full of apple slices. Small wonder he was so happy to see us!

Tony the Pony's place.

A bit of an essay here about Ireland in general, and Connemara in particular. For somebody like me from a country with barely 200 years under its belt, the sense of history here is amazing. The Tombs at Bru Na Boinne predate the pyramids; hills all over Ireland were capped with circular "ring forts" put up by the people who preceded the tomb builders. Round towers built during the Viking invasions 1000 years ago dot the countryside, as do the ruins of castles whose origins may go back farther than that. It's humbling to be in a place where so many have gone before.

The remnants of history that touched me the most were those connected to the potato famine. The potato blight was actually the second blow to the Irish in the mid 1800's. In 1839, a huge storm nearly destroyed the fishing fleet - a serious blow to a people hugely dependent on fish for their food. They were still struggling to put those pieces back together when the potato blight hit - and hit again. And again. The famine lasted from 1845-1851. Countries all over Europe suffered from the potato blight, but Ireland was far and away the worst, in large part because of the political situation of the day. The English landlords owned the land; the native Irish had to rent their cottages and farms from them. What was described to me sounds a lot like the American sharecropper system, and just as hopeless a hole for the people who actually worked the land. Even as the Irish starved, the English landlords were exporting other crops by the ton from Ireland for sale in overseas markets. Some landlords had decided there was more profit in sheep than in farming, and were putting the people off the land at the same time. To make sure they wouldn't come back, they would pull the roofs off the cottages. You see these roofless stone cottages all over the place; the locals call them "famine cottages." Ireland had 8 million people in the 1841 census; today the population is finally up to half that number.

Connemara was particularly hard hit. The locals had built up beds on the hillsides, using seaweed and sand to create friable soil - you can still see the lines of these "lazy beds" up and down the mountains. When the potato crop failed, they had little else to turn to. It was here I saw my first "famine walls." 

Two and three years into the famine, it was becoming plain to all of Europe that Ireland was in serious trouble. The English landlords began looking for some way to help.They were afraid that just giving the Irish food would make them lazy, but that having them break rock and build pointless walls and roads would teach them the value of working for their bread. It seemed to have escaped the Landlords' notice that many of the people were in such bad shape that said work was killing them. You still see these around the landscape, always, it seems to me, in the middle of nowhere. When I did the math, I realized that my great-grandparents would have been growing up right in the middle of all this. Small wonder their children left for America at the first opportunity.

History lecture/consciousness raising over. On to brighter, happier things...

We stopped for lunch at the little town of Cong, a town dedicated to the proposition that just because it's been more than 60 years since John Wayne shot a movie there, there is no reason you can't still make some money off of it. It really is a pretty little town.

One of the rivers that flank the town of Cong

We studiously avoided all things "The Quiet Man" related, though in fairness to Cong, it wasn't that hard. But once again, the curse of the time schedule hit. I'd have loved to have had more time to explore Cong Abbey in the center of town. It dates back to the 1100's. We found out later there are also some very nice walks along the rivers on either side of the town. That would have been nice.

Cong Abbey

We got our chance to take our longed-for walk when we finally reached Kylemore Abbey. It had started out as a great house, built by a wealthy English businessman in the 1860's. Things went well for a while, until first his wife, then one of his children, died. He left the place. It went through several owners until World War I when Benedictine nuns from Belgium took it over and moved the girls' boarding school they'd been running from war-torn Belgium to Ireland. A combination of lack of nuns and lack of rich people interested in housing their daughters in the middle of nowhere -  if your daughter was one to get into trouble, she'd have had her work cut out for her trying to find any out here! - caused the school to close in 2010, though some of the nuns still live on the property.

Tom and I were not interested in seeing how either rich Englishmen or Benedictine nuns lived. Instead we headed for the woods - a proper walk at last!

The trees looked like something out of Tolkien's  Middle Earth - wrapped in layers of moss and ferns, huge and very wise-looking. The ponds and lakes were as still as any we saw that day, perfectly reflecting the surrounding hills. 

Tree framing one of the Twelve Bens

And I got to see my first European Robin! Turns out it is one of those gorgeous little birds the pictures just don't do justice to. The breast is not orange or yellow, it looks more like there is a living ember flitting around in the trees overhead. They are just little guys, but they pack a big punch.

We could have taken the bus all the way back to Ross House, but got off in Galway instead - we wanted to stop by an internet cafe so Tom could see how the Brewers were doing in the playoffs. That done, we just roved the town, looking for a place to eat but in a very desultory way. We poked our heads into a pub and there it was - American NFL on a big-screen television. Tom was at the bar before I really registered what was going on. I think it was the Lions playing somebody - what I mostly remember was a young man nearby who had apparently spent time in America and come to love NFL football. He was trying to turn his pals on to it, but they were not buying. I noshed some fabulous fish and chips and enjoyed his futile efforts. My appetite for dinner and Tom's for some American sports taken care of, we made our way across the Wolfe Tone Bridge and back to Ross House. Long as the walk was, I decided I could get used to this long stroll after dinner routine, at least when it was as through as interesting a place as Galway is.

We weren't really in a good signage area, so I had to settle for this rather unique county line sign in Cong--

I suppose they just want you to be sure where you stand.

Even if it is over water.