County Wicklow

“We don’t have any automatics left today”.

“But I have a reservation.”

“I know, but we don’t have any remaining.”

At this point I can’t help but be reminded of the Seinfeld episode.

Actually, my truck back in Denver and my new Volvo in Brussels are both manuals. But I was trying to eliminate at least one of the following three problematic variables: lack of "Sat Nav" (aka GPS system), manual transmission, and driving on the “wrong side” of the road. I thought the combination of trying to figure out where I was going and shifting with my left hand while driving on the left could potentially be disastrous. Hence, my request for an automatic.

“Well, what else do you have?”

“A Land Rover Discovery Commercial, or a Mini, but both are manuals. Or I can search around and maybe get an automatic here in a couple of hours.”

That’s not much of a decision. Ripping around tiny Irish country lanes in a bright red Mini with its BMW engine sounded like a fine idea to me. Considering our original reservation was for a Nissan Micra, the non-reservation reservation turned out OK.

An Irish colleague had recommended we visit County Wicklow, known as The Garden of Ireland, located immediately south of Dublin. Our first stop on the drive down was Powerscourt Estate. Sweet digs, nice plot of ground, and a "mountain" view -- that's the Great Sugar Loaf in the background of the second picture below. What you can't see is that the interior of the "house" was completely destroyed after a devastating fire in 1974, right after the completion of a major renovation. Instead of rebuilding it as before, they converted it to a public building and took a more austere approach with the restoration, cleaning and repairing everything, but leaving bricks exposed, not rebuilding certain floors, and keeping furnishings to a minimum.

As luck would have it, the Powerscourt Picnic Run and Rally just happened to be there on the same day. Rows and rows of antique cars, trophies, and champagne for everyone! That's Simone and a vintage Rolls in the picture below - check out the serpent horn above the wheel.

After Powerscourt, it was on to our residence for our short stay in County Wicklow: Kilpatrick House. Kilpatrick House is a 300 year-old home that has been in the current family for the last hundred years. Our young and funny host, Howard, ensured our time at the B&B was perfect by greeting us with tea and scones, and including Bailey's Irish Cream in our porridge. The estate is a working dairy farm, and the family home became a guesthouse in 1941. Amazingly, our host's grandmother cooked and served three meals each day for the three families who stayed there. And, this all without the benefit of electricity, which didn’t arrive until 1955.

A bit of history. St. Patrick initially came to Ireland as a slave. At some point he left the island, and when he returned to spread Christianity he landed somewhere on the coast southeast of the Kilpatrick House. One of his earliest churches (perhaps the first) is about 500 meters from the Kilpatrick House, and a well said to have been blessed by The Saint Himself is on the Kilpatrick House grounds. Kil is “church” in Gaelic, hence the name Kilpatrick House.

Simone at Kilpatrick House.

The next morning we embarked on a tour of County Wicklow. First, we visited the Avoca Handweavers' mill. It claims to be the oldest traditional mill still operating in Ireland, and, sure enough, there is still handweaving going on.

Rain thwarted our attempt to see the historic monastical ruins of Glendalough, so we decided to take a scenic driving tour instead. The scenery, what little we were able to see through the driving rain, was beautiful in a haunting way. Lush green valleys, jutted with slate gray rocks, barren of trees, and covered in heather. It's easy to see why movie execs chose this area to film "Braveheart," though interesting in that it's Ireland not Scotland.

Here’s Simone enjoying the Irish weather. This is August.

Despite the weather, it was a great drive through Wicklow and we ended the day back in the tiny village of Redcross at the Snug Restaurant. It seems reasonable to assume that, being in Ireland, we might take in some traditional Irish song and dance so we inquired with our waiter. He replied in a thick brogue, "Well, if it's dance, then it'll have to be in a hall because Irish dance, ya know, legs everywhere." But alas, we were unable to find a hall with "legs everywhere".

On our final day in Ireland the rain let up just long enough for us to see Glendalough. St. Kevin founded the monastery in the 6th century and it was active for over 600 years. All that remains today are its ruins. Check out the roofs...they are made of stone!

We packed a lot into our visit to the Emerald Isle, and will post a photo album as soon as the talented customer service folks at Picasa deign us worthy of a reply. But until then...sláinte.

Irish Rain

Have you missed me?  Yes, I'm back after a three month hiatus.  What should I blog about after these long months? How about something that happened three months ago...Ireland! First - Dublin.

Our first flight ever on Ryanair was uneventful, but I must say the cattle call is quite disconcerting.  The way people queue up you’d think they were handing out free turkeys at King Soopers the day before Thanksgiving.  Come on people, we’re talking about plastic seats, boarding music that makes you feel like you are in video game, and customer service that screams, "I'd love my job, if these stupid customers would just go away!".  Basically, it's an hour long ride on an inner-city bus, so where’s the need to get onboard in a hurry?

I don’t know why, but we weren't blown away by Dublin on our first day, despite all the great things we'd heard. Regardless, Stephen the student gave us a great tour of Trinity College Dublin, where we saw the 1200 year-old illuminated manuscript, The Book of Kells.  We strolled through Temple Bar, saw Joyce’s “cat and the rat” at Christ Church Cathedral, learned the history of my beloved Minnesota Vikings at the otherwise very lame Dublinia, and cruised by St. Patrick’s Cathedral . . . which provided my only blog-worthy pic of the afternoon.

After days of begging, pleading, imploring, and beseeching, Simone indulged me by actually attending a Riverdance show (or as our friend refers to it, DanceDance).  OK, it was Simone’s idea (dare I say, passion), but I went along with it, which is pretty big of me considering it was two straight hours of dancing (so the link is actually monkeys doing riverdance, but you get the idea).     

Time for full disclosure.  I secretly enjoyed the show, even enough to keep me from dreaming about the pints of Guinness I could be drinking in any number of classic Dublin pubs.

We ended the day with me a pint o' Guinness, and Simone a pint o' Bulmers in O’Neills pub, which also happened to be our B&B.  

Day two in the city was all about Guinness, Irish pubs, and Jameson.  And rain.  Lots of rain.  Here’s a pic of our view from the top of the Guinness Storehouse to give you an idea of the type of day it was in Dublin.  A Perfect Irish Day.  

The Guinness Storehouse, the brewery's original storehouse located at St. James Gate, has been restored and serves as a great example of adaptive reuse (can you tell my wife is a historic preservationist?).  It is really cool . . . seven stories of beer bliss followed by a “free” pint of the dark stuff at the top of the building in a 360-degree glass-enclosed floating pub.

Before we did our next tour we decided to grab some lunch.  Hmm, how about fish n’ chips at the oldest pub in Ireland?  Don’t know what I’m actually doing in this picture, perhaps welcoming you to the Brazen Head, est. 1198. 

We had a great couple of hours in the Brazen Head, conversing with the bar staff and our fellow patrons, and watching Usain Bolt’s amazing 100-meter Beijing run. 

  

Not certain about this next picture though.

On to the Jameson Irish Whiskey tour!  A local gentlemen at the Brazen Head told us to volunteer when they asked for volunteers at the end of the tour, so we took his good advice.  We did a tasting of Scotch, Bourbon, and Irish Whiskey.  I’m not a big fan of gasoline (aka Scotch). I've always been a Bourbon guy, but have never really given Irish Whiskey a chance.  The triple distillation process really produces a very smooth beverage.  I’m a convert.  I still love my Evan Williams Single Barrel, but Jameson may have taken its place as my favorite whiskey.

Guinness, the Brazen Head, and Jameson.  Mmmmm . . . Dublin restored on Day Two.  

Next up, County Wicklow.

Remembrances

We are back in the blogosphere! As you may have noticed, we have been off the grid for a month. Two weeks of that was due to a trip to Hong Kong, and then another two weeks passed owing to post-trip-down-with-a-cold-madness. I am still figuring out how to tackle writing about Hong Kong, and Troy is working on a long overdue post on our trip to Ireland (we went back in August), so in the meantime I wanted to take just a second to talk about life and, specifically, its fragility.

On November 11th, Belgium commemorated the 90th Anniversary of the end of World War I, known as Armistice Day here, called Veterans Day and Remembrance Day elsewhere. Troy and I went to the memorial service held at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and though we understood practically nothing that was said, the ceremony was still moving. It served as a somber reminder of man's inhumanity to man and the horrors of war. It was also a poignant tribute to the courage and sacrifice of those who serve in uniform. The service was held to commemorate the past, but I used the time to pray for peace and reconciliation in our modern world.



The man in the center/back with the purple sash is Albert II, King of Belgium






The day before, I learned that a dear colleague of mine from my LoDo days had passed away. He was a wonderful mentor to me, both professionally and personally, and seemed more like a dear uncle than a work acquaintance. He was a truly good man, and his days on earth were far too short. Even though there are probably few if any among you who knew him, I still wanted to publicly honor the life of Dave Moore (1945-2008), may he rest in peace.

Admittedly, heavy topics for a blog such as this, but sometimes it is good to take a moment simply to reflect.