523 4th St. Ann Arbor, MI 48103 (734) 663-7269 ezekiel@aaps.k12.mi.us
Happy Holidays from the Ann Arbor Ezekiels 2010
Warm greetings to all our friends and family! We are all well and hope you are too. Our holiday will be a little different this year, as we will be spending Christmas in Costa Rica! Elaine has been agitating for us to go there ever since she lived there for half a year in 2008. We will see some of the sights and meet Elaine’s host family. It promises to be an interesting time, not least because Lainey is the only one of the four of us who speaks Spanish…
Elaine (21 on Dec. 3) is a sophomore at Kalamazoo College. She worked odd jobs in the summer before heading to South Texas for an “externship” with Migrant Health Promotion, where she had a chance to use her Spanish and journalistic skills. She is writing for the school newspaper, has a job writing for the alumni magazine and website, and is learning to make documentary films. She won a competitive New York Arts Internship and will be spending this winter in Manhattan, working at WBAI Pacifica Radio.
Lewis (24) is now attending the School of Life, living in a local apartment complex and working as a substitute teacher. It’s mighty hard to get a teaching job in Michigan these days; let us know if you hear of any openings for a great history teacher. Lew is playing lots of sports, including soccer, Ultimate Frisbee, and softball. He was a star for the Nematodes this year, dazzling one and all with his speed on the base paths.
Tina and Dan (almost middle aged) are teaching, coaching KMO, and taking mosaic classes, gardening and cooking (Tina) and biking, birding, and preserving farmland (Dan). They had a great trip to England, Scotland, and Ireland this summer. Highlights: people-watching on the thronged streets of London and Dublin, hiking and birding on the Norfolk coast, starring in a game of “Mr. and Mrs.” in an English bar, and a hair-raising mountain bike trip from Inverness to Loch Ness and back. Meanwhile, the Nematodes went 5-5, matching the Tigers, who went 81-81, but we probably had more fun.
We saw many out of town relatives and friends this year, from the wonderful Earthworks reunion on Memorial Day (thanks, Deb, Laura, and Karen!), to Josh and Lucero’s visit for the Art Fair, to the Quill Pig fall campout, featuring Mark from CA and Fred from OH, to Wendy Wilson’s visit for the 40th Anniversary of the Ecology Center. As always, we loved camping, softball, Top of the Park, biking, and the Old Town with our Ann Arbor friends. We loved seeing and hearing from all of you, and if we missed you this year, we hope to see you in 2011. We hope this will be a healthy, prosperous, growing year for you all.
Love, Dan, Tina, Lewis, and Elaine Ezekiel
Elaine planned and took a tour of the U.S., with her Austrian friend, Paul. They took the train and visited with the extended Ezekiel family in N. California, as well as buddy Phoebe's family in L.A.
Elaine and Dan visited Rafe and Kathy in Boston, and Tina and Dan had a ski vacation at Lake Tahoe in Feb. Tina and sister Sheila, along with daughters Elaine and Isabel, visited New Mexico in the summer.
Lewis and friends took a road trip to Albany, NY, to visit buddy Sam.
ike commuting in the winter:
Trip to the British Isles July-Aug., 2010 Dan and Tina Ezekiel
Wed., 7/28/2010 Detroit Metro Airport:
Trip begins with an early arrival at DTW, thanks to Lewis for the lift.
Then another summer storm hits and we are delayed 1.5 hours, so… we head to the Med. Grill for a snack and a drink. A NYT crossword and a 6x6 KenKen later, we…
We left our dining room living room, and kitchen devoid of furniture, as Alan Hennessy is going to sand our floors while we’re gone. Nimbus and Callie will be cooped up in the basement until Elaine gets back from CA on Aug. 8. Boy, will they be pissed!
Josh and Lucero just left, after a weeklong visit during the sweltering/uber-thunderstorm-ridden Art Fair. We threw an early 50th birthday party for Josh (hit by a thunderstorm, of course).
After another delay and realizing we weren’t going to make our connection in New York, we found a direct flight DTW à London Heathrow. We are underway at 7:15 p.m. We got to the airport at 3:15 p.m. Guess which one of us was responsible for our arrival time.
6 hr. and 30 min. to London. Good Night.
Thurs., 7/29/10, Heathrow Airport, London. 7:30 a.m.:
We arrived in London at 7:30 a.m.. We’ve had about 3 hours of sleep, but we are ready to see the sights.
Fri., 7/30/10, Brunel Hotel, London.:
We walked all around London yesterday, dazed by lack of sleep. Hyde Park, where we saw lots of birds, old and new, Buckingham Palace where we happened to come along for the Changing of the Guard, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the National Gallery, with Moneys and VanGoghs, the National Portrait Gallery, where we tried to learn a little British History, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Squre, and Picadilly Circus.
Back to our tiny room at the Brunel at 7, napped until 8:30. Fish and chips at a corner pub on the corner, sitting with two very young Swiss bankers, to bed at 10. Dan slept well, Tina poorly. Today we are off for more exploring…
Sun., 8/1/10, 1:30 p.m, on the train to Norwich.:
We just rushed on to the train from London to Norwich at the last second!
On our second day in London (7/30), we took our hop-on, hop-off bus tour. Some highlights were the Tower of London (outside only), St Paul’s Cathedral (again, outside only), the Wharf, Tower Bridge, and a boat trip down the Thames from Tower Bridge to the Houses of Parliament.
We had a Moroccan dinner after securing TKTS tickets to As You Like It at the Old Vic Theater. Then we went back to our hotel to change, our first trip in the Tube, which was easy, convenient, clean, and fast. Then back on the Tube to Waterloo Station and, after a pint (Tina beer and Dan cider), on to the play
It was wonderful. We sat front and center with our half-price tickets, next to a friendly family from Texas. The actress playing Rosalind reminded us of Ellen DeGeneres, and an Obama lookalike played Charles.
Yesterday (7/31) we eked out another ride on the tour bus, to the British Museum. We spent more than 3 hours immersed in ancient Greece, Egypt, Britain, with a quick stopover on Easter Island. The immensity of the museum, with over 7 milion items, is mind-boggling. We probably saw about 1/1000 of what was there. You also get an understanding of the way Britain plundered the art treasures of the rest of the world during its centuries of global dominance. This struck us especially when we viewed the Elgin Marbles, a whole room full of wall carvings that were taken from the Parthenon in Athens.
We also saw the statue of Rameses, which inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley to write the poem Ozymandias, which Dan’s beloved 7th grader teacher, Mrs. Owens, taught the class: “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and tremble, says the inscription on the ruined statue, set in a wasteland of sand.
We are now hoping to find a nice hoard of gold and silver in Norfolk, inspired by the many sch on display at the museum, along with stories about how they were found by farmers, holidayers, and schoolchildren.
After the museum, we hung out in Soho, people watching and drinking beer for several hours at the Seven Dials monument (which has seven sundials and stands at the intersection of seven streets).. An amazing mixture of tourists, high and low fashion, gays, street people. Cars, pedicabs, and bikes went by a meter away as we sat on the nonument.
There is a new “scheme” (Brit for program) in which thousands of sturdy bikes are parked at hundreds of points around downtown London, rentable at very low prices (free for half an hour). They are called “Boris bikes,” for Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, who is a big supporter of the plan. The scheme went into effect on 7/30 and we saw many people using the bikes. Unfortunately, ‘casual users’ can’t rent them until next month, so we couldn’t use them. Paris, Barcelona, and Dublin all have similar programs, so one could have an amazing European vacation, with quite a bit of urban biking, without having to bring a bike.
After fruitlessly searching for Raven’s (our haircutter) recommended ‘hole in the wall Thai restaurant’ in Soho, we ended up eating Indian food at the Goan Palms restaurant. We then walked home a couple of miles along Oxford/Bayswater Rd., where we saw many women in Muslim garb.
This morning we got up, had the restaurant breakfast (as we did all three mornings in London), walked to a new part of Hyde Park, the gardens of Kensington Palace, where Princess Diana lived. The best thing about the Brunel Hotel was its proximity to Hyde Park, a great place to watch people, birds, trees, and dogs.
Isaac Newton famously said “If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants”. Dan teaches this quote every year, and one year, a student brought in a British 2-pound coin with “Standing on the shoulders of giants” stamped into the edge. It was a goal of Dan’s to find a coin like that to bring back home to show my students each year. Mission accomplished.
Wed., Aug. 4, 2010, Norwich Train Station, 11 a.m.:
We left Cromer this morning, after a nice 3-night, 2-day stay. Cromer is a small town with a tall church and a touristy wharf, right on the North Sea. Though we saw some people swim in the ocean, we weren’t tempted, as the temperatures were in the mid-60’s, with a stiff wind. They do give surfing lessons, however. There is a lot of truth in an old Richard Lewis comedy routine, in which he imitates Brits on vacation saying “I say, the grey is beginning to shine through the black, let’s go lie on the gravel!” The weather forecast often says something like “a bright day, with a few sunny spells and widespread showers”.
We usually get hungry about 3, which is right when the kitchens in English restaurants close for the afternoon. Famished, we finally found a Chinese restaurant, had a nice meal and a nice chat with out waitress, who has a Masters in chemistry and will soon go for her PhD.
Then a cab to the Cromer Country Club, a mile out of town, perched on a high cliff. After settling in to our comfortable apartment, we (separately) discovered the beautiful wild area on the headland behind the lighthouse, which is right behind the resort. We were treated to a magnificent sunset over the Cromer Cathedral and the sea, as the coast here faces north, with beach stretching off east and west.
The next day (8/2), we slept until 11, so we got a late start. We walked to Cromer on the trails along the bluff. We enjoyed the local architecture, which features walls made of potato-size beach cobbles
mortared together. We had coffee on the wharf and watched people catch small crabs in nets from the wharf. Cromer is famous for its “Cromer Crab”. The day turned sunny and we walked back to the resort. Dan found a copy of Pillars of the Earth in a bookshop. This is the book Tina had started when we left A2, but had to return to the library. It is very apropos here, being about the building of medieval cathedrals.
Back at the ranch, Tina chilled and read her book, while Dan walked the other way on the bluff trails, to the village of Overstrand, about a mile away. He made friends with a local man and saw some new birds, including linnet, “sand martin” (cliff swallow), kestrel, and “goldfinch” (a different species from our bird, with a red face and a beautiful lightning bolt of yellow on the wing).
The resort has a restaurant/bar that has entertainment in the evening. We were Couple #1 in a game of “Mr. and Mrs.”, which is modeled on a British TV show where married couples compete to predict how their partners will answer questions, some of which are ‘a bit saucy’. We gained points when Dan sang “My Girl” to Tina. We lost the match narrowly, when another couple was judged to dance the Twist better than us. Dan always seems to come in second on quiz shows….
The best part of “Mr. and Mrs.” was that the winning couple invited us and the other couple to share the bottle of wine they won. We had fun laughing and getting to know these two well-off retired British couples, who have both traveled extensively. The guys were quite macho alpha males; they taught us the origin of the V for victory sign, dating back to the bowmen of Agincourt. If the French took them prisoner, they would cut off their two bowstring-pulling fingers, so demonstrating that you still have these fingers is a victorious sign of defiance. If you display the backs of the fingers, this is an obscene insult.
Yesterday (8/3), we tried to rent bikes to ride to Cley Marshes, 12-15 miles west , to watch birds. Fortunately, the shop had stopped renting bikes, because the road we would have had to ride on was crowded and narrow. Instead, we took the Coasthopper bus and had a great time at Cley Marshes, which are fresh and salt wetlands on the coast, part a National Trust Wildlife Reserve. We saw dozens of familiar and new species from the trails and ‘hides’ (blinds) on the Reserve. The highlights were adult and young marsh harriers (different from our harrier, which Brits call ‘hen harrier’), spoonbills, and a single hooded crow. The birds in England are more skittish than those at home, and we were told to whisper, even when we were in the blinds.
Back to Cromer on the bus, a beer on the wharf (now under sunny skies), and a walk back to the resort through the pretty hardwood forest of ‘Happy Valley’.
When we got back, Dan, who has been trying to detox from the internet and email, went online to try to find out who won the primary election for mayor of A2, John Hieftje or Pat Lesko. Lol, it’s 5 hours earlier in A2, not 5 hours later, so the polls were still open. This morning, Lewis texted that Mayor Hieftje won (with a resounding 84% of the vote, as we later found out). Carsten Hohnke won our city council nomination by a landslide also. This is very vindicating for Dan, as the challengers’ campaigned basically called into question the whole Greenbelt program and single-stream recycling, both of which are issues he has given a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to….
We got up early today, cab to Cromer, train to Norwich. In Norwich, we toured the ancient cathedral, which gave Tina the chance to do some concrete, hands-on observation of the technical terms in ˆPillars of the the Earth’. That book is definitely enhancing our time here. Now, on to Peterborough, then Inverness. We are having a great trip!
Fri., Aug. 6, 2010, Ramada Jarvis Hotel, Inverness, Scotland, 10 a.m.:
One of the best things we did on this trip was to pack light. We only brought a carry-on suitcase each, plus a backpack. It has made all our maneuvering on and off of trains, etc., so much easier! We don’t have a lot of changes of clothes, but it is well worth it!
The train trip from Norfolk brought us into Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, at 4 p.m., then north for 4 more hours through amazing vistas—sheep, mountains, rocky streams, a rainbow. Then we pulled into Inverness at 8 p.m., to find our hotel was just a block away from the train station, right along the River Ness.
After sticking our bags in our hotel room (much nicer than the one in London, though with twin beds a la Rob and Laura Petry), we stepped out for a pint and dinner at a pub along the river. We watched the sun set quite late here at Latitude 58º (about even with the middle of Hudson Bay), not full dark until 10:30. We sat at an outdoor table part of the time, thoughtfully set with heat lamps to ward off the early August chill (really!) People are bundled up here in sweaters and jackets in the evening.
Inverness means “mouth of the Ness,” and the downtown is bisected by the Ness River, which drains Loch Ness into the firth or bay north of town. At low tide, he fresh water flows swiftly down to the sea, but at high tide, the river is sluggish and salty. You can watch men in chest waders fly fishing for trout and salmon in the tidal river, right under the bridges of downtown.
Yesterday (8/5) we rented bikes from “the man in the kilt on the tourist
steps,” 15 pounds apiece per day for beat up department-store mountain bikes, and proceeded on a wild bike adventure to Loch Ness and back.
Loch Ness, home of the famous mythological monster, is a long deep lake in
part of a narrow gash that runs all the way across
Scotland, called the Great Glen. The trip to the loch was on the Great Glen Way, which begins as a paved bike path through urban riverside parks, then turns to dirt single track and begins a relentless climb through increasingly wild country. A long level path through a forest full of ferns, mushrooms, and old stone walls, then another long, hard climb, mostly pushing our bikes, through a managed conifer forest. From time to time we had a view back over Inverness, the surrounding hills, and the sea. There are a number of wind farms visible on the hilltops.
The ride down the ridge was increasingly steep; in the open at first, but culminating in technical-steep switchbacks through a spruce forest to lake level. Again, we often had to walk the bikes. As we got down to the road along the lakeshore, it began to drizzle. We could see the ruins of Urquhart Castle in the distance, as we pedaled a mile up the road.
Tired and wet, we stopped at a roadhouse, where we recharged over some drinks, coffee, and (horrible) left-over food. We couldn’t face climbing back over the ridge to return the way we had come, so we decided to go back on the road, though a local had warned us it was very dangerous for bikes.
This led to seven miles of extreme, scary, road riding. The road is narrow, probably built before there were cars. There is no paved shoulder, lots of winding blind curves, and rock cliffs 2 feet from the pavement edge. Between the pavement and cliffs are very sharp stones, as big as eggs or potatoes, totally unrideable and littered with car sideview mirrors, taillight covers, and hubcaps. We frequently had to jump off our bikes and cower against the cliff beside the road, as trucks and buses sped by a foot away.
At last, after an hour and a half, we got to the end of the loch, where a canal begins, with a blessedly car-free, level, tow path to travel the remaining seven miles back to Inverness. Having survived, we were in high spirits, and we got back to town in a jubilant mood, after 31 scenic, hard, and unforgettable miles.
After a bath and a bottle of wine back at the hotel, we decided to celebrate our anniversary early, with dinner at the Mustard Seed restaurant, which we had noticed earlier. Our real anniversary tomorrow will be part of a long day of travel. Dinner was fancy and delicious (and expensive, as all our restaurant meals have been), Tina had salmon, Dan had scallops, and we shared another bottle of wine. Then to bed, to rest our aching bones.
Sunday, Aug. 8, 2010, Scariff, County Clare, Ireland, 9:30 a.m.:
On Friday (8/6), we got up, had breakfast at the hotel, went shopping around downtown Inverness (without buying anything), ate lunch at Subway. Then we signed up for a dolphin-watching van tour of the Black Isle (not really an island, but a peninsula north of Inverness). Our fellow passengers were Pat (an Englishwoman) and Alan, an Englishman from Cambridge. They didn’t know one another. Our guide was John, a Scottish dolphin expert, yeah? (He finished almost every sentence with “yeah?”)
We encountered a pair of bottlenose dolphins almost immediately, while still on the outskirts of Inverness, and got a distant glimpse of another from the tip of the peninsula, but were disappointed not to find any at their usual main stomping grounds. We had fun on the tour, seeing a buzzard (not a vulture here, but a type of hawk, looking sort of like our redtail), hooded crows, highland cows and sheep, razor clam shells, a thatched roofed house, a pheasant, and lots of nice scenery.
We had a picnic lunch on the beach, including a “Scotch egg,” a hard-boiled egg fried into a crust of crumbled bacon. Our companions encouraged us to eat haggis while in Scotland, but we left without having done so. Something about organ meat boiled in a sheep stomach just didn’t excite the old appetites!
We packed our bags back at the hotel, and at 8:45 p.m. we boarded our sleeper train for Wales. A train hostess showed us into a tiny dorm-room-like berth, complete with tiny sink and tiny bunk beds. As Scotland sped by outside, we fell asleep about 10:00, but slept wretchedly, woken hourly or more often by sudden lurches of the train. It was also very hot in our car.
Our hostess woke us at 5 a.m., by sliding us two paper cups of coffee, then we had half an hour to sidle past one another and pack up. Then we were dumped onto the platform at Crewe, England, at 5:30 a.m., to wait an hour until a train came to take us to Holyhead (pronounced Holly Head), Wales. It was our 28th anniversary.
In Holyhead, we spent the last of our British money on a simple breakfast of coffee and bacon rolls. Then we got on a huge ferry boat with hundreds of people (including lots of noisy kids) for the 2-hour crossing to Ireland. We docked at Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun Leary), Ireland, at noon.
Sunday, Aug. 8, 2010, Scariff, County Clare, Ireland, 9:30 a.m.:
At Dun Laoghaire, we showed our passports, then were picked up by Magnus, the man from CountyCars car rental. Tina says she always wanted to be met at the airport by someone holding a sign, and we finally were, though the sign said CountyCars and not our name. Magnus asked Tina about her Irish background, and when she said her mom’s maiden name was Lannen, Magnus said he was from County Mayo and there are lots of Lannens there.
Magnus then told us about a miraculous appearance of the Holy Mother, St. Joseph, and St. John the Baptist, which occurred in County Mayo in 1879. They floated in the rain, viewed by over 20 people, for three hours, to comfort the people in the countryside, which had been depopulated by the Potato Famine and emigration. The grass remained dry beneath them. The Pope came to the spot and said Mass 100 years later.
Magnus took us to the car rental place, gave Dan a little hands-on lesson about driving on the left, and off we went, driving across Ireland. Tina marveled at all the new construction and the fine freeways, total changes since she was here in 1970’s, when few people had their own cars. We stopped for lunch in the town of Port Laois.
A few hours later, we arrived here in Scarriff, on the shores of Lough Derg. Our condo is next to a dock in a reedbed, with a view of Shire-like hills of farms and woods, many swans, coots, great-crested grebes, black terns, and a friendly tortoiseshell cat named Bo (but no boat or fishing gear).
We went back into town to shop for groceries and eat dinner; it was our 28th anniversary. Another change that has occurred in the British Isles since Tina was last here is the proliferation of good Asian restaurants. It’s remarkable that the small village of Scariff has several excellent restaurants. We ended up in a new Thai restaurant, where we ate a fabulous green beef curry and chicken Pad Thai, followed up with cheesecake (on the house for our anniversary), then homeward in a stupor, to early bed after a long day, which began in England, then took us across Wales and Ireland!
This morning, the foggy scenery was beautiful, there were 40 swans on the lake, Bo the cat took us on as long-lost friends, and we are going to drive to the Cliffs of Moher.
Aug. 9, 2010, Fisherman’s Lodge, County Clare, Ireland:
Today has a cool date: 8/9/10. Although here they call it 9/8/10.
Well (as our students would begin), we have had a busy few days here. Yesterday we got up and were soon on our way to the amazing Cliffs of Moher. They tower 800 feet over the Atlantic, and as we were told, “the next parish is Boston”.
We walked around for four hours or so, enjoying many spectacular vantages, and at one of them we encountered two of Tina’s former students and Old West Side neighbors of ours, Jenny Herzog and Abby Huth. A funny thing about that is we had bumped into Jenny and her family years ago, in the tiny village of Paia, Maui, the first time we went to Hawaii.
There are many cool seabirds nesting and roosting on the cliffs. We looked for puffins but didn’t see any, but we did see several gannets. We got home to the condo in time for Tina to cook a ‘brilliant’ meal of steakburgers and fried potatoes. Dan was not able to get to bed very early, as he started a load of laundry in the communal washer here, and the wash cycle was still going after 2 hours and 20 minutes.
Today after breakfast we headed southwest to the Ring of Kerry. Dan finds it hard to drive on the left on these varied Irish roads, which range from superhighways to tiny lanes with scary stone walls a foot from the edge. Dan has remembered to stay on the left about 98% of the time (which, as Elaine points out, is an A+!), but the other 2% have been a little stressful for Tina.
We drove through Limerick to Killarney, and the incredible scenery started. These are world class views, comparable to Big Sur. It got better and better until, as the Lonely Planet guidebook says, between Waterville and Caherdaniel, the beauty dial reached eleven. Spectacular sheep fields, in many shades of green, at various angles from horizontal, hemmed by ancient grey stone walls, tumble down from mountainsides for miles to the blue sea.
At Caherdaniel, we walked on the killer tide-pool strewn beach, skipping stones in the little fingers of water that extend between fins of rock, then visited the seaside home of Daniel O’Connell, ‘the Liberator’, saw his chapel and the triumphal carriage the citizens built for him to travel the streets of Dublin after he was released from jail. O’Connell was the first Catholic member of England’s Parliament; the law had to be changed to allow him to serve.
In the gardens of his home, we saw some sort of perennial plant that has leaves like a rhubarb plant, but 6 or 8 feet across, easily the largest leaves we’ve ever seen on any plant. A person could shelter under one leaf.
We drove back in one piece, filled up on some Emo gas (the name cracks Dan up). They were selling hurling bats from a rack at the gas station, so we got to see what they feel like in your hand (like a big field hockey stick). Ireland is sports crazy, and hurling is one of the biggest sports. There was a national semifinal game while we were here, and it was the main story on all radio channels, along with a scandal about a senator from the ruling party who submitted receipts from an out-of-business phone company for reimbursement.
Gas costs about $1.30 per liter, which is $5 or so per gallon. That doesn’t seem to keep people off the roads here, though large cars and SUV’s are mostly absent, and there is excellent public transport, which is well used.
We got home at 9:30 p.m. (still pretty light) and treated ourselves to a phone call to Elaine, who just got home to Ann Arbor after her California adventures with Paul. Tina made another smashing dinner, we watched a funny TV show called ‘All The Single Ladies’, and now it’s time for bed. On to Dublin tomorrow, for the last leg of our trip.
Aug. 12, 2010, 8:45 a.m., Bloom’s Hotel, Baila Atha Cliath (Dublin), Ireland:
Happy 50th birthday, Josh!
We’ve had breakfast and are back in our (nice) hotel room, watching Tina’s new favorite show, “Everwood,” a soap from the States. Just kidding, nothing will ever replace Law & Order as Tina’s favorite TV show. We are waiting for it to be time for us to catch the bus to the airport for our trip home.
We’ve had a great time here in Dublin. Tina drove here from Clare (don’t tell the car rental company!) in record time and handled the left-hand driving with ease. Then Dan had to take over in Dun Laoghaire, to satisfy the terms of the rental, and it was back to cursing and lurching. Dan hit a curb and lost a hubcap, but Tina retrieved it and we got it back on.
After returning the car, we got on the bus to downtown Dublin, without enough exact change to pay our fares. The nice driver let us on anyway. The whole trip, buses and other transport have appeared on cue, the moment we needed them.
Going up a hill in the bus, Dan saw his favorite traffic sign ever:
MAKE WAY FOR WEAVING CYCLISTS
!!
We got off the bus and walked through Grafton St., a pedestrian mall full of street performers, sand carvers, chalk drawers, stores, restaurants, bars, and throngs of tourists. We got to our hotel in the heart of the Temple Bar neighborhood and, surprisingly, we were allowed to check in at 12:30. This is by far the nicest room we’ve stayed in, with a double and single bed, nice shower, and enough room for us and our stuff.
We walked back through Grafton St. and Trinity College, then boarded a tour bus and rode around the city on the top of the double-decker, learning about Irish history and Dublin architectural styles. Then back to the hotel for a nap, then we walked around the Temple Bar (the party heart of Dublin), visited pubs, had dinner, and listened to Irish music at several locales. Dan bought a CD from one of the artists. This was our biggest rally of the trip, didn’t get home to the hotel until 11:45 p.m.
By the way, this is the trip of tall women (TG’s). We have encountered 6 foot-plus women everywhere. We are playing a game to see who spots them first, similar to Slug Bug.
Yesterday morning we went to the Post Office, to visit the site of the 1916 Easter Rising and to mail the phone charger Dan accidentally absconded with back to Fisherman’s Lodge. In Europe, all cell phones are required to be able to use the same charger, so all phone chargers look alike. Oops.
The Easter rising was the work of radical young Irishmen, who took over the Post Office and read a proclamation of Irish freedom. They were greeted with little enthusiasm by the population, partly because 250,000 Irishmen were in France taking part in WWI. The English put a gunboat in the River Liffey in downtown Dublin, shelled the post office to smithereens and quickly forced the radicals to surrender after a bloody fight, which left over 100 dead on each side. The English then tried and executed 16 leaders of the uprising, one so badly wounded he had to be tied to a chair to be shot. This overreaction finally aroused the Irish people, setting off a period of rebellion which culminated in the independence of almost all of Ireland a few years later.
There is a statue of Cuchulainn, (pronounced Coo Cullen), the mythical hero of ancient Ireland, at the Post Office. In legend, he was mortally wounded in battle and asked to be tied to a post to continue fighting. Even in death, his enemies feared him so much they wouldn’t approach him until a raven perched on his shoulder. This legend seems to exemplify the sometimes grim quirky Irish psyche in some way. Tina did a project about Cuchulainn in high school. Tina substituted an Irish myth for the retired Greek myth. There is a story that involves a six-pack of Guinness and a C+ grade, with the grade being the gift…
We took a tour of Trinity College, where we got to view the ancient Book of Kells, an illuminated Bible from the 800’s A. D., and the educational material about it. It was fascinating to learn about how the book was made. Some of the illuminations contain such tiny and intricate details that historians speculate the scribe monks might have used magnification, though it supposedly hadn’t been discovered yet. Some think they looked through crystals. The tourists viewing the books were quiet and reverent in the hushed dark chamber where they are displayed to avoid decay caused by too much light.
On the way out, we saw other parts of the ancient library, which has 15 shelves stacked vertically, to a height of about 20 feet, each shelf chock full of centuries-old leather-bound books.
Next we walked to the ancient walled city and looked at cool life-sized sand sculptures of Vikings and their mythological creatures in the courtyard of Dublin Castle. Then we walked through St. Audoen’s (Protestant) Church. Before we left the church, we rubbed the “Lucky Stone”. We ended up at the Guinness Storehouse, the center of which is a 7-story beer pint. We had already learned, on the tour bus, two rules for drinking Guinness:
1. Don’t sip, seven gulps per pint.
2. Three pints per hour.
At the storehouse, we saw a 40-ft. square of barley, tasted roasted malted barley, stood under a waterfall of “pure Wicklow Mountain water,” saw dozens of funny ads, and gulped a pint in the Gravity Bar, seven stories above Dublin, with views of all the landmarks, the soccer stadium, the ferris wheel, the mountains, and the sea.
We walked home down the Liffey, then dinner at an Italian restaurant, chitchat with new friends from Hong Kong, to whom we gave our still-valid tour-bus tickets. Then Tina bummed a corkscrew from the restaurant downstairs from the hotel, so we could enjoy a bottle of wine back in the hotel room.
This morning at the hotel breakfast, we saw a young guy in the restaurant with his wife. He was using a Mac Mini between bites, sing his keyboard while still holding his knife and fork. Smooth.
Here are some of our favorite English, Scottish, and Irish quotes:
•”Mind the gap!” (for subway platforms, but works for twin beds too).
•”That’s turdy-tree Euro turdy-tree.”
•Emo brand petrol.
•”Have at it!” (with the corkscrew).
•”No worries,” “No problems”
•”Brilliant”
“Cheers!” (not Cheerio) and “Cheers, mate”.
•”You OK?” “You alright?” (one meaning is “May I help you?”)
•”The weather will be bright, with some sunny spells, and scattered rain”.
A little panic-button action, just before we left, as Tina thought her purse, with our passports, was stolen. But it turned out she had left it in the restaurant. I guess we were just too awed by the computer guy eating breakfast. Good thing we rubbed the lucky stone!
Signs at the Dublin Airport:
• Departures
• Terminal
• Way Out
• Mortuary
Hope everything goes OK with our flight!
PS: Everything did go OK, we got home without incident about 7 the next evening, and Elaine picked us up and drove us home. Our new floors are beautiful, the kitties were glad to see us, Elaine was glad to see us. The next night, the Nematodes played a season-ending doubleheader, and in the memorable nightcap, we beat the first-place team to finish the season 5-5. Not bad for a bunch of oldsters (though the younger set did most of the work).
It’s fun to travel and see new things, and it’s fun to be back home. A week or so later, we spent 5 days camping at Sleeping Bear with Alice It reminded us what world-class scenery we have right here in Michigan, not to mention cherry pie, Petoskey stone hunting, and wave riding. Now summer is waning and the school year looms. But there will be another summer. So ‘Cheers, Mates’ until it’s here….
