IRELAND, DUBLIN: IRISH WRITERS WALKING TOUR, PART I (OSCAR WILDE SITES, ST. STEPHEN'S GREEN, GUINNESS, ST. PATRICK'S PARK LITERARY PARADE)

 July 13, 2024

On our last full day in Ireland including an Irish Writers Literary Walking Tour that Bob had booked in advance with Tours by Locals. We highly recommend our guide, Adam Ladd, who was fantastic.  

We started out by paying homage to the Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). We walked by the Giant's Garden Playground, named after a fairy tale written by Wilde called "The Selfish Giant." It tells of a giant who returns from a trip and finds children playing in his garden. Not wanting to share, he builds a very high wall to keep them out. His actions cause a continual winter to descend upon the garden, so not even the giant can enjoy it. When the children sneak back into the garden, the trees are so happy that they bloom and spring returns. The giant realizes the error of his ways and tears down the wall, making the garden forever available to all the children.

MEXICO CITY: PASEO DE LA REFORMA AND CHAPULTEPEC PARK

March 11, 2018

I had eaten a large plate of rich, spicy mole, and I had about the worst case of acid reflux I had ever had that night. I was up until 3:00 AM, at which point I finally took two Benadryl just to get some sleep. That totally knocked me out until after 9:00 AM, so we got a late start. We left the hotel around 10:00 and headed for Paseo de la Reforma. 

The Paseo de la Reforma, or the "Promenade of Reform" is a very wide divided street modeled after the great boulevards of Europe, such as the Champs-Élyseés in Paris or the Paseo del Prado in Madrid. It was designed and built in the 1860s to link Emperor Maximilian's castle to the city center. 

Today it is the hub of the downtown business area and home to most of the city's tallest skyscrapers.

Photo from here

Our goal was to walk along the Paseo de la Reforma to Chapultepec Park (where Maximilian had his castle), about 1.75 miles from our hotel, 

In the aerial photo at the top of this post, you can see that the Paseo splits around a monument. I remember this monument well from my first visit to Mexico City with my mom in 1978. We could see it from our hotel room window. It is known locally as El Angel, and more formally as The Angel of Independence. It was built in 1910 during the presidency of Porfirio Diaz to commemorate the centennial anniversary of Mexico's War of Independence. 

ASHGABAT, TURKMENISTAN: THE HALK HAKYDASY MEMORIAL COMPLEX

The grandiosity of the "tourist sites" in Ashgabat is hard to describe. Everything is SO over the top. 

Take, for example, the Halk Hakydasy ("People's Memory) Memorial Complex, a vast park that covers almost 7,000,000 square feet or 160 acres. It is 3,000 feet long and 2,000 feet wide. By comparison, the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is just 146 acres, and Tienanmen Square in Beijing is a puny 4,700,000 square feet. 

It took only two years to build this memorial park, which was opened in 2014. So far it features three monuments to the dead: one to honor the victims of the 1948 earthquake, one to honor soldiers killed in World War II, and one to honor those killed in a 19th century battle. There is also a museum, which we did not have time to visit.

The earthquake memorial is the most outlandish of the three monuments. A 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck 15 miles southwest of Ashgabat in October 1948 at 2:17 AM, causing extensive damage and many deaths in the city. As Turkmenistan was under strict Soviet control at the time, the actual death toll was never disclosed, but estimates are as high as 110,000, which would be over 20% of the population at the time. One website lists it as the 6th most deadly earthquake in the history of the world. Casualties included the mother and siblings of the future president of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, leaving him an orphan (his father had died in World War II). 

How did eight-year-old Saparmurat survive when the rest of his family did not? One source I looked at said he was out taking a walk. What an eight year old is doing taking a walk at 2:17 AM is a mystery to me. There is also a rumor that the earthquake was caused by the first testing of an atomic bomb by the Soviets. Who knows?

The 110-foot-tall earthquake memorial, a marble podium topped by a bronze and gold sculpture, was created in 1998 during Niyazov's presidency to be part of an earthquake memorial located elsewhere in the city. It was moved to its current spot in 2014. It shows a large bull shaking the world between its horns and a dying mother lifting her golden child above the rubble-covered globe. The child is said to be none other than (guess who!) the future president, Sapamurat Niyazov. Though unlikely, this divine rescue is more believable that the early morning walk theory.

NEW YORK CITY: THE HIGH LINE

In the 1930s New York City city planners designed an innovative elevated railroad called the "High Line" for shipping freight throughout the city. It eliminated 105 street-level railroad crossings that had caused many accidents and deaths. Thirteen miles of track were laid  at about third-story level, allowing trains to connect with warehouses and factories and virtually eliminating the impact of industry on city traffic.

As interstate trucking grew in the 1950s, the use of the High Line began to decline, and over the next 30 years, use of the elevated trains gradually diminished before finally grinding to a halt in the 1980s. While still structurally sound, the tracks fell into disrepair and became an eyesore, and so they were slated for demolition. In the late 1990s, however, a nonprofit organization called for repurposing the tracks as an elevated park or greenway, following the model of the Promenade Plantée in Paris.

Construction began in 2006, and the first section opened in 2009. Two more sections have since been completed and opened, with a fourth section to open in 2018. Almost all of the High Line's substantial annual operating expenses come from private donations.

The southernmost entry to the High Line can be accessed from the Whitney Museum, which makes the pathway almost feel like an extension of the museum. Strolling along the 1.45 miles of redesigned railroad track seemed like the perfect way to cap off our visit to the Whitney.

We couldn't have made a better choice for our Thursday evening (in spite of the +90° temperatures). The High Line is one of my new favorite things in New York City. I think I could spend a whole day walking its planks, sitting on its benches to do some serious people watching, exploring its vegetation, checking out its plethora of unique art and architecture, and admiring its creative landscaping.

In order to best capture our experience in New York City's most unique park, the pictures in this post are presented in the exact order that I took them rather than grouped by topic.

The High Line is far from being a straight walking track lined with plants. It has some of the most interesting landscaping I've ever seen. For example, strips of greenery poking up between long slashes in the concrete give the feeling of grass growing between tracks:

NEW YORK CITY; CENTRAL PARK

"It is imperative that this population have open space and trees."

(William Cullen Bryant, editor of The Evening Post,
arguing for the creation of Central Park)

"On July 21, 1853, the New York State Legislature enacted into law the setting aside of more than 750 acres of land central to Manhattan Island to create America's first major landscaped public park; they would soon refer to it as 'the Central Park.' Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the winners of the 1858 design competition for Central Park, along with other socially conscious reformers understood that the creation of a great public park would improve public health and contribute greatly to the formation of a civil society. Immediately, the success of Central Park fostered the urban park movement, one of the great hallmarks of democracy of nineteenth century."

(From the website Central Park Conservancy)

Map from here

Some interesting facts about Central Park:

• Construction started in 1858 and continued through the Civil War.
• The original 778 acres were expanded to 843 acres in 1873.
• There are 36 bridges.
• It covers 1.317 square miles or 843 acres.
• The park is about 2.5 miles long and .5 miles wide.
• The perimeter is 6.1 miles. 
• With 40 million visitors annually, it is the most visited urban park in the United States.
• Many books have scenes set in Central Park, including Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence and J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.
• LOTS of movies have been shot in Central Park (one estimate is 140), including:
Mr. Popper's Penguins
Spiderman 3
Home Alone
Elf
Enchanted
Wall Street
August Rush
When Harry Met Sally
Kramer vs. Kramer
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Ghostbusters
The Avengers

One of the most interesting things about the park's history to me is that the landscape architect was Frederick Law Olmsted.

Frederick Law Olmsted (1895)
by my favorite portraitist, John Singer Sargent

NEW YORK CITY'S UPPER WEST SIDE: SAKURA PARK, GRANT'S TOMB, RIVERSIDE PARK, AND RIVERSIDE CHURCH

We had a spate of gloomy weather while in New York City, but that didn't stop us from doing a lot of walking. NYC is surprisingly walkable. There are many clusters of things to see and great public transportation between clusters.

On a walk around the upper West Side we started out at the northern edge of Columbia University where some of studios for art students are located in an old building that reminded me of a late-19th century department store:

Across the street, a new art building is going up which will provide much better natural lighting for studios:

It would be a shame to lose the old building with its Art Deco touches. I hope it gets remodeled and repurposed:

We made our way towards the Hudson River and the Manhattanville Viaduct via 125th Street:

 I love the landscaping that can be found in random spots throughout this massive, crowded city:

These little flower gardens are growing in some of the most expensive dirt in the world: