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Wednesday, August 28, 2024

IRELAND, DAY 2: CORK

 July 5, 2024

Our next destination was Cork, located in (what else) County Cork, the largest and southernmost county of Ireland.

With a population of about 225,000, Cork is the second largest city in Ireland. That's a small population for the second largest city of a country! But then, the largest, Dublin, has fewer than 550,000 people.

My first impression of the city came from this fantastic mural, which I have since learned is entitled What Is Home? The artist, a guy named Asbestos, explains, "I painted this figure wearing a cardboard box on its head to start a conversation with the public about what home means to them. As a country we are currently in an existential crisis over housing and our need to put a roof over our heads. There's a fear and uncertainty about finding a safe space, and the system seems to be stacked in favour of the landlords." The mural, painted in 2021, is part of a street art project started during the 2020 lockdown.

It was mid-afternoon and we were hungry. We hadn't eaten much since breakfast. Bob had scoped out a restaurant weeks before the trip located in Cork's English Market--Farm Gate CafĂ©. 

We both ordered lamb stew and were a little disappointed. It was only average.

Saturday, August 24, 2024

IRELAND, DAY 2: ROCK OF CASHEL AND HORE ABBEY

 July 5, 2024

We were hitting jet lag on the afternoon of our first full day in Ireland, so I picked up a Coke Zero at the gas station. I was intrigued by the ingenuity of the attached cap. That's a great way to keep the cap with the bottle for recycling.


Not long after entering County Tipperary, we came across a blocked off right-of-way for a herd of milk cows. Now that's something you don't see everyday (or any day) in California.

Eventually we made it to Cashel, a little town of about 4,400 people with a BIG tourist draw, St. Patrick's Rock, more commonly known as the Rock of Cashel. The word "cashel" means "fort" or "castle" in Irish.

We had to park at the base of the rock and trudge up the hill, but the view looking up was quite impressive.

Sunday, August 18, 2024

IRELAND, DAYS 1-2: TRAVEL, ARRIVAL, AND EXPLORING KILKENNY

 July 3-4, 2024

We left home at about 3:00 PM and made it through downtown LA and to our parking garage in about two hours.  Not bad.


We had an uneventful check-in for a non-stop flight to Dublin on Aer Lingus, a new airline for us. We were seated on the 3rd or 4th to the last row in the center section of a 2-4-2 configuration, but the last five rows or so only had three middle seats, making the aisles wider in the back near the bathrooms. Genius. Anyway, we both had aisle seats with an empty seat between us. Miraculous! And another miracle--I slept for a good part of the 9 1/2 hour flight, a rarity for me. We did have two meals. Dinner was tortellini with tomato sauce, salad, a roll, and chocolate mousse that was pretty good. Breakfast was a hot bagel with melted cheese and a sausage patty--not so good.  I watched one movie, Disenchanted with Amy Adams, sequel to Enchanted. Worst move I've seen in a long time. You can't win them all.

For a relatively small airport, we had a long walk between getting off the plane and passport control, but by then our suitcases were waiting for us. We walked to the car rental area to get our car from Budget and discovered why our rental (and every other rental we looked at) had been so cheap. They REQUIRE customers to buy insurance, which added $400, plus we had to put down a $2,000 security deposit. They must have lots of problems with people who can't drive on the left side of the road and with a steering wheel on the right. We had a very small Renault Clio with a manual transmission, but Bob, fortunately, is an absolute pro at shifting with his left hand and driving on the left side of the road.  
Our plan was to immediately leave Dublin and drive to Kilkenny, a distance of about 80 miles, which we thought might take an hour and a half. However, traffic was very heavy leaving Dublin, and not long after leaving the car rental place, the car began beeping at irregular intervals. Then the tire light came on, so we figured the low tire pressure caused the beeping. We got off the freeway, found a gas station, filled the tires, then figured out how to turn off the tire warning light. Sixty seconds into our drive, the beeping came back. Ultimately, I figured out that it was a sensor for lane control. Every time Bob began to drift towards a line in the road without signally, it beeped--and that was often. I found the instructions for how to disable that feature, and we continued our drive in peace.

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

IRELAND: HISTORY, MOVIES, BOOKS

I have long wanted to travel to Ireland, but it never rose to the top of my husband's list. This year we had trips scheduled in March and December, with nothing planned for the summer. Bob just couldn't imagine a summer without travel, so Ireland rose to the top as a carrot to convince me to add one more big trip to the year. It worked.

In preparation for the trip, we started watching every movie set in or about Ireland that we could find, and we read a few books as well. Very quickly we discovered that we knew embarrassingly little about Irish history. Here are just a few key things we learned.


• The island of Ireland has two parts. 
    - Five-sixths of it is the Republic of Ireland (all the colorful sections in the map above), also officially known as Ireland. It is an independent country with 5.1 million people. When we Americans say "Ireland," this is what we mean.
    - The remaining one-sixth is Northern Ireland (the gray section in the map), which is part of Great Britain and has a population of 1.9 million.

• Between 1916 and 1921, Irish republicans (or the Irish Republican Army - IRA) fought for independence from Great Britain, but Irish Ulster loyalists and British forces fought to keep Ireland as part of Great Britain. The first main revolt was the Easter Rising of 1916, but it was put down in a week. Ireland's breakaway government declared Irish independence in January 1919. Tensions escalated over the next few years, with  much of the conflict occurring in County Cork, Dublin, and Belfast. A treaty signed in December 1921 ended British rule of most of Ireland, but Northern Ireland remained within the United Kingdom and under British control. In spite of the treaty, fighting continued through 1922.

• "The Troubles" is a euphemistic term for the period of conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s to 1998. When I think of conflict in Ireland, this is what I think of. I always thought it was a war between the Catholics and Protestants, but that's not entirely true. It really was about whether Northern Ireland should be British or Irish. It so happened that the Unionists, or those who favored remaining with Great Britain, were mostly Protestants (as is true of most British subjects), and the Irish nationalists or republicans were mostly Catholics. The conflict began as a campaign to end discrimination against the Catholic-nationalist minority in Northern Ireland, and it spiraled out of control from there. The IRA that had been active in the Irish fight for independence 50+ years earlier was also active in this conflict, and that's where I became familiar with it.

Once we arrived in Ireland, we learned a few more things.

• We never saw corned beef and cabbage on any menu in Ireland. Apparently, that's an Irish-American thing. Their main ethnic food seems to be beef stew. There is a lot of meat in their diet--sausage, bacon, and some lamb and chicken. They eat a lot of potatoes--no surprise there.

• We saw references to leprechauns only in tourists shops. Shocking. One Irish guide blamed the movie Darby O'Gill and the Little People for the popularity of leprechauns among tourists. I would add that Lucky Charms has also done its part.

• Northern Ireland has its very own Protestant church, the Church of Ireland. 

• The Irish had their own language, Irish Gaelic, that was Ireland's primary language until the 19th century, when English gradually took over. However, all the signage on the island is in both English and Irish, and Irish is still taught in the schools.

• Guinness dominates the drink market. Everything seems somehow to be related to the brewery. It was impossible to walk down a shopping street or go into a restaurant without seeing the Guinness trademark. Guinness stout must be served in Guinness pint glasses, and there is a specific temperature and pouring method that is strongly recommended. There is even a Guinness Zero, the "zero" referring to the amount of alcohol. We tried it and found it awful.

We learned a lot more as we traveled, but I'll get into that in future posts. For now, if you want to have some fun preparing for a trip to Ireland, here is a list of movies that we watched either on Netflix or Amazon Prime,

These four historical dramas were fantastic. I heartily recommend them all for anyone traveling to Ireland.


There are many well-done movies that draw on the culture of Ireland:




Of course, we watched several cheesy romances:


I'm not sure what to say about this one, other than that I liked it when I was about nine years old and Sean Connery is the leading man. Other than that, there isn't much to recommend it. I think Bob made it about a third of the way through.

This 1952 movie was a little better, and seeing John Wayne in something other than a Western was kind of fun.

And finally, we tried and failed to get into this Netflix series. We watched one or two episodes and decided to skip the rest.

Armed with our vast knowledge gained mostly from movies (how American of us), we were ready to head to Ireland!

Saturday, August 10, 2024

ROME: THE ROME TEMPLE,

 March 23-24, 2024      

Our return flights to the US went through Rome, where the shortest layover was something like ten hours, so we decided just to take a full day and enjoy some of the Eternal City.

Feker picked us up at our hotel and dropped us off at the front entrance to the airport, then parked the car and joined us. 

We had an interesting experience at the Tunisia International Airport. Bob checked a bag because he had liquids he had purchased in Sicily that he didn't want to forfeit, but checking the back was almost (or over) $100 USD. Stan's bag was too heavy and they were going to make him check it as well, but Feker opened Stan's suitcase and started taking things out to go into his backpack and Chris's suitcase, which had already been weighed and tagged and so weight wasn't an issue. Feker got Stan's suitcase down to the given maximum, or close enough. It's a dumb system and easy to get around.

We finally got through, boarded, and had a flight to Rome that lasted an hour and about 20 minutes. 


Bob collected his checked bag and we went outside to grab a taxi. Because we were going to our hotel, which was not in the city center of Rome (which has a standard €50 taxi fee, we had to find another taxi. One driver was watching for those like us who were going to the airport area, which was obviously much closer than the downtown area. We ended up paying €50, the same amount as a ride four times as long to the city center. It was such a rip off.

We dropped our bags in our room and went outside to call a ride to take us to the Rome LDS Temple Visitor Center. We waited and waited, and it appeared the taxi may have gone to the temple rather than to where we were. I tried calling but got a lengthy voice message in Italian. We finally cancelled for a €3 charge and tried again. This one took longer than expected but did actually show up. Our ride to the temple, which is pretty far away from the tourist part of Rome, took about 45 minutes and cost over $100 US. 

This 41,010-square-foot temple was announced in 2008 and dedicated in 2019 by LDS Church President Russell Nelson. The dedication event was the first time ever that the entire First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gathered in one location outside the United States, so it was a big deal.

The temple was closed for two weeks for cleaning when we were there, When it is open, only members of the LDS Church who hold a temple recommend are allowed to enter.

Monday, August 5, 2024

TUNISIA, DAY 3, CONT.: NORTH AFRICA AMERICAN CEMETERY, CARTHAGE, THE ANTONIN BATHS, AND OUR FINAL IFTAR DINNER

 March 22, 2024

We had two more destinations on our last day in Tunisia, three if you count dinner. The first was the North Africa American Cemetery, 27 acres dedicated in 1960 to hold 2,841 of our troops killed in the North Africa campaigns of World War II. 

There are 26 American military cemeteries outside of the US, and this is the only one on the African continent.

I was intrigued by the trimming of these trees, and that's a lot of manicured green lawn, don't you think?


We started in an office where I think we signed in. We caught our first glimpse of the cemetery through the windows.

They had a Purple Heart on display and a document signed by Lyndon Johnson. On the page on the right, a passage reads: "The Purple Heart has been conferred individually upon those buried or commemorated here who gave their lives in action."

It was nice to see the American and Tunisian flags standing together. The plaque over the fireplace is one from the American Battle Monuments Commission, who administers this cemetery.

Thursday, August 1, 2024

TUNISIA, DAY 3, CONT.: TUNIS - ST. VINCENT DE PAUL CATHEDRAL, FOOD MARKET, AND MEDINA

 March 22, 2024

After breakfast, we took another walk down the Avenue Habib Bourguiba, the street with the promenade in the center that we had walked on the previous night on our way back to our hotel. This time we walked on one of the sidewalks next to the buildings. 

We stopped at a little mosque nestled between other buildings and known for its ceramic tile exterior.  I think it is called Kallal-el-Kedime Mosque, but I can't find any information on it.


Then our guide Feker took us into the courtyard of what looked like an apartment building. In the middle of the courtyard is a shallow pond, and in the pond are over a dozen turtles.


Our next stop was the Cathedral of St. Vincent de Paul, a church built in the Moorish revival, Gothic revival, and Neo-Byzantine styles. Construction was completed in 1897, albeit without its belltowers due to lack of funds. They were completed in 1910.