Ireland 2023

[Greg]

We are home.

The best way to end a trip is not to find maggots all over your dog's butt.

[Drunk Monk]

The best way to end a trip is not to find maggots all over your dog's butt.

I'm not sure that's the 'best way' but it certainly is a good way. Now I'm wondering if your trip ended in a bad way, or if you just said that totally gross thought in a random way. I'm guessing the former.

[Greg]

Let it begin.

May 1- Prologue and Departure.

Today is go day. In a little over three hours, The Queen and I will be getting in the car and driving to San Francisco to catch our flight to Dublin, via Heathrow on this leg. We did get upgraded to super deluxe premium. The only catch is we were no longer sitting together. We will have to do some wrangling with fellow passengers to see if they will switch with us.

Meanwhile there is Maeve. I admit to some guilt about leaving her. She is not in great shape. Her hearing is gone. She pants feverishly on the walks like there is something wrong with her lungs. Her interest in food is waning. This isn’t the best time to be leaving her because she could be leaving us. But we are going and we have a house sitter here to take care of Maeve.

The House sitter, the K-Man, arrived last night and his arrival was not greeted warmly by Maeve. This manifested itself last night by Maeve coming into our bedroom and barking first at me and then going to the other side of the bed and barking at the Queen. This used to be a nightly occurrence as Maeve would come in to discuss things with us as she came in to get water. But she has not done this in months. I blame the presence of a stranger in the house.

Another thing she hasn’t done in months, at least six, is try to get on the bed. Lately, she prefers to sleep in my office or in the mud room off the garage. Not last night. She laboriously propped her front feet on the bed and looked to the Queen to help her the rest of the way. On the one hand, it was great to have Maeve with us again. On the other hand, she leaks. For the last night, we could deal with the problem.

The problem never arose. Maeve, after a few minutes decided she wanted no part of being on the bed and started to leap off. Our bed is tall. Maeve’s joints can longer take the punishment of a leap down from that height. The Queen threw off her covers and moved quickly to help the baby. The Queen moved too quickly in the dark and smashed her knee into the bedpost, hard enough to fill the room with the noise of knee on wood. After helping Maeve, the Queen’s next stop was the kitchen for the icepack.

K-Man is settling in. We did the tour of the house and showed him the four pages of notes of his chores. He is taking it all in stride and the Queen and I can’t thank him enough for this duty. Hopefully, the Queen and he are still friends when we return. The worst note in the chores list is who to call if Maeve expires or has an emergency while we are gone.

The Queen and I spent most of yesterday packing. I know I have packed too much stuff, mostly camera gear. The Queen managed to get all of her belongings in one bag, one very heavy, heavy bag.

Wheels up at 7:50. We will be in Ireland at 6:15PM, Dublin time Tuesday.

The drive in to San Francisco went smoothly. My friend Google told us the quickest route was over the Pacheco Pass and then up the 101 all the way to SFO. The Queen got to hear my usual diatribe about the horrible 101 freeway. I come by my hate for the freeway naturally. Although, at 3pm on a Monday afternoon there was little to no traffic.

I did an internet search to find cheap parking near the airport. The cost to leave the car for our seventeen day trip at the airport would have been too expensive. When The Queen traveled all the time and used Park N Fly during her trips, we could get discounts at that facility. Sadly, those days have passed.

Searching the internet showed that Travelodge had a great deal on long term parking. Yes, that Travelodge. According to the Inter-webs it was cheap and had good reviews. My first misgiving came when I pulled into Travelodge just north of the airport and couldn’t find out where to check-in or where exactly to park. What exactly was the long term parking lot and what was the hotel parking. Signs kept directing me to drive forward. I did until I reached the end of the parking lot. Nothing was ever clearer. The Queen went to the front desk while I parked the car. As I dragged all the bags from the car to hotel reception over the rough tarmac, I at least spotted the airport shuttle driver. He told me to meet him here at the portico near reception to get driven to the airport. The word you are looking for is janky.

The Queen eventually made it through the crowd at reception, everyone in the world was checking in, and found out we were in the right place. She paid the money and I hiked back to the car to put the paid slip on the dashboard. Yes, I was worried this was the last time I would ever see my GMC Envoy.

After a long wait, the same driver appeared with the shuttle. My deduction was they had one van and one driver. We loaded up and headed to the airport. Since we were so early for our flight check-in, the trip through dropping off our bags and going through the TSA lines went very quickly. The airline also confirmed we had been upgraded to Premium Economy Plus, but we would not be sitting together on the plane. We would be flying on the Dreamliner 787 non-stop to Heathrow and then getting a connecting Aer Lingus flight to Dublin.

The Queen has been a United flyer for years. She’s been banking her miles in the hopes that she would get us first class tickets to Europe. According to the old rules, The Queen had met those qualifications handily. Naturally, the airline changed the rules. Now all her miles would get us was Economy Premium Plus. If we wanted to get into Polaris Business Class and those super cool pods, it would be thousands of dollars more.

They’ve done the same thing to their lounges. The Queen qualifies for the standard United Lounge which allows you to wait in semi-comfort next to a mini-buffet with USB charging ports at your comfy chairs. If the Queen spent more money, she could have gotten us into the super-special Polaris lounge. Nope. She had spent enough. I’m curious how the Polaris lounge compared to our lounge. Our lounge was pretty bleak, but still better than being out in general population.

Our seats on the plane were pretty nice compared to regular economy. And we did get someone to switch with us, so The Queen and I could sit together. On our seats when we arrived was a little goody bag filled with slippers, a toothbrush, eye-mask and earplugs. They also gave us over the ear head phones for entertainment usage. They served us dinner and it was bad but at least they gave us some food with our ticket.

The flight from SFO to Heathrow took about ten hours. I filled the time with watching The Fabelmans and Living. I also drifted off to sleep for a bit. All and all a pretty smooth journey to London.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

That 787 is a nice plane. The one I was on last Summer still had that “new plane” smell.

[Greg]

May 2 London-Heathrow and Dublin

When I made it into the International Terminal at LHR, I recognized the place. Usually it is so long between trips that doesn’t happen during international trips. I guess I’ve been to Heathrow often enough details are starting to sink in. When The Queen made the original reservations, we had an hour between flights but the computers at United cancelled that reservation and booked us on a later flight to Dublin. Probably wise, but this meant we had more time to kill. Fortunately, LHR has, you guessed it, a United Lounge. Unfortunately, the United Lounge was near the B Gates and Aer Lingus departures were through the A Gates. Two different terminals all together. Our connecting flight was Aer Lingus to Dublin. This necessitated a ten minute walk from one terminal to the other and during the walk there seemed no way to get back to the A gates from the B gates. I also feared we would have to go back through security upon our return from the United Lounge.

Fortunately, the man behind the welcome desk at the United Lounge assured us there was a way back to the A gates. Best of all, this lounge was much better than the one at SFO. It had a huge window wall that overlooked the runways. The buffet was really nice complete with weird chicken curry that was quite tasty. It had much less of the closet feel that I received from the SFO lounge. We hung out there for an hour before making the long trek back to the Aer Lingus gates.

One of the beauties at landing at Heathrow first and then taking basically what was a commuter shuttle over to Dublin was that we were the only people going through the non-EU passport control. When you land directly from the United States in Ireland with a bunch of your compatriots, which I have experienced, the lines can get very long, especially when all the red eye flights from the states land at the same time. Our entry into Dublin was a breeze. They should all be that easy.

We had rented a car for the trip around Ireland. Since automatic shift cars are scarce on the ground in Ireland and manual cars are quite cheaper than the automatics, for the last several trips we have gotten the manual transmission cars. I don’t really fear the manual but the first couple of times in the car does make me cranky.

The Queen rented us a Kia Sportage from her friends at Hertz where her traveling prowess still holds some sway. Our name was on the board when we showed up. Our car for the trip was a black Kia Sportage, big for an Irish car, small for an American car. This became readily apparent when The Queen’s monster of a bag was the only bag that would fit in the luggage area. Our lack of luggage space would become even more apparent with the arrival of the Queen Mum. But I shoved the bags in their, receiving notes of disappointment from the rear hatchback when I closed it hard on the luggage. The read window was almost completely blocked by my duffel. The Queen suggested I just put the extra bags in the back seat. I said I might as well get used to the blocked window because it was what was going to happen when everyone and their bags were in the car.

At this point, I figure, or hope really, that every car will now have Apple Play. I had spent time in the run up to the trip plotting our trips and destinations on Google Maps so once I got to Ireland I wouldn’t have the hassle of finding places. When I plugged in my phone however to the lightning cable, the Apple Play screen did not pop up. Cranky. The Sportage did have it’s own navigation system but I was unfamiliar with how it worked. I’m also a bit sleep deprived from the flight and my brain is switching over to driving on the other side of the road. I didn’t really want to be fighting with the car at this early stage. The Queen hit some buttons and an icon for Apple Play popped up on the dash. Pressing the button connected the car to my phone and we were in business. Now, I just had to drive us to Dublin.

My main mantra for driving on the left side is ‘Driver stays in the middle’. If I’m up against a curb, something is wrong. Driver stays in the middle. Car parks are the worst for me because I really have to think about where I should be in the lane. It helped a little to finally get out of the car park and onto the road. The first test immediately appeared in the form of the roundabout. As soon as I enter one, I can hear my father yelling about the best way to approach said roundabout and several other hints about proper roundabout navigation. At this point, I’m pretty good at the Irish roundabouts and get mad when I come to an intersection that doesn’t have one.

There were several ways into Dublin from the Airport: surface streets, the M1 or the M50. We had arrived during rush hour so the best bet would be to take the M1 through a tunnel into the city center. There was a weird situation with tolls on the M motorways. On the M1, I was supposed to pay at the toll booth. On the M50, there would be a reader of my license plate and the tolls would be billed to the rent. No tolls for driving on surface streets until Dublin figures how to make that feasible.

I was going to use the M1 tunnel route. I followed the signs. I used Google Maps. I missed the line to take me to the tunnel and ended up on the surface streets. The quick trip to our hotel was now the long trip to our hotel. Although it was kind of fun seeing the urban city streets rather than the motorway. I also got to learn about the dedicated Taxi/Bus lanes. In order for the people not to have to fight the congestion as much, people on buses get their own dedicated lanes to get around with. Taxis get to use them as well. Good for them, tricky for me, especially when coming to intersections. I didn’t quite know when it was legal for me to get into those lanes when making left turns. Still don’t know. I probably should have been given a couple of tickets.

The reason I missed the turn onto the right route, and will be an ongoing theme, is I have a hard time gauging where I am on Google Maps. Many times I have been unsure if this is the spot to turn or merge or is it the next spot. I hate Google Maps. I love Google maps. I did many discourses during the 2023 trip on how did I possibly get around Ireland 30 years ago with my father. I think we relied on paper maps, street signs and my dad’s infallible memory. The infallible memory worked as many times as it didn’t. My biggest regret from those times is not having a recording of our discussions about the best way to get from point A to point B. I should probably interview the Queen and my godson about their recollections to those times since they were first hand witnesses to the experience.

Eventually, we made it to our hotel, Hampton by Hilton on Chancery Street. kitty corner to the giant Four Courts building. The Four Courts building is where all the big trials in Dublin and Ireland are held. Since this is Dublin, our hotel had no parking. There were three spots on the street, but they were marked handicapped. I figured I would drop the Queen with our bags to check in while I drove several blocks away to the Smithfield Center Park Rite on Queen Street.

When I pulled into the spot outside the hotel, I saw a couple sitting on the sidewalk between us and the door into the hotel. Upon further examination, I realized they were busy sorting cigarette butts, I guess, for future usability. The man and woman also had a half full bottle of wine between. They caught me looking at them as I stepped onto the sidewalk on my way to the trunk so I naturally wished them good evening. I think they were surprised somebody actually spoke to them so they wished me a good evening. As I unloaded the bags, they voiced their concerns that I was in a handicapped spot. They warned me the police would be along any second to put a boot on my tire, clamping as it’s called in Ireland, if I wasn’t careful. They then showed us the proper entrance to the hotel. Ah, Dublin. You have to love it. Before I could be clamped, I got in the car and drove to the parking garage. The first thing I saw as I pulled onto what I thought was a one way street was a car coming directly towards me. I think (hope) locals just speed down the street to make a turn and ignore the one way markers.`

I wasn’t sure if The Queen wanted to leave the hotel after settling in so I decided to stop by a pub that had been on my radar: The Cobblestone. I don’t know when the Cobblestone first came to my attention but it is supposedly one of the best places to hear traditional music in Dublin. On Tuesday nights, the night we arrived, is when one of the finest Uilleann pipers in Ireland Néillidh Mulligan, brother to the owner of the Cobblestone plays his pipes. How do I know all this? Their website. Should I care? Maybe. Every time I plan a tour, I promise myself that this tour is the one where I’m going to sit in a pub and listen to a Trad session. It seemed foreordained. The Cobblestone was between the car park and the hotel.

In my rush to get back to the hotel, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to where I left the car park. My brain was spinning a bit trying to get my orientation of where things were and how to get from place to place. I think it was three minutes into the walk back to the hotel, that I realized that I wasn’t quite sure of where I had parked the car.

After a few wrong turns and many glances at Google Maps on the phone to get me oriented, I found my way to the Cobblestone. From the outside, the pub didn’t look very promising. The giant mural on the building next door looked vaguely Mesoamerican. The sign for the Cobblestone looked like it had seen better days and could do with a paint touch up. But I overcame my fears and popped in.

I got one step over the Cobblestone threshold before I met a wall of bodies. I could go no further. I could hear the players playing but I had to stand on my tiptoes to actually see them playing in the corner. I had found the trad session but there was no room in the Cobblestone for me to actually hear them.

I left the Cobblestone and headed through Smithfield Square to find The Queen. Along the way, I popped through an alley that contained the Jameson Distillery. I also spotted St. Michan’s Church where later I hoped to see the mummies, another thing on my must see list. I also learned that Michan’s is pronounced like Mick not Mike.

At the Hampton by Hilton, I asked the Queen if she wanted to get some food. She agreed. I suggested we go to a traditional Irish place called My Meat Wagon. Okay, it wasn’t traditional but ever since I saw their name on the Cobblestone Website on the section of places near by serving food, I needed to go there. According to the maps, it was over in Smithfield probably right above where I parked the car. I tried to lead the Queen by the Jameson Distillery but the gates to that bow lane had been closed.

After some searching, we found My Meat Wagon and it was everything I wanted. The menu was basic. You could have Cow, Pig, or Chicken. Or a combination of those. You could also have it on bread if you desired. The menu remind me a lot of a great BBQ place in Los Angeles called Dr. Hogly Wogly’s Tyler, Texas Style BBQ. Our lovely Argentinian waitress took our order and in about two minutes was back with the food. I could swear all she did was walk back to the counter, order, and then instantly returned with the food. And the food was very good. The Queen and I should probably have just ordered the one tray of meat. The food also came with some really good chips and jalapeño infused mac and cheese. Carbohydrate coma here we come. I could tell I wasn’t in America when I asked our new Argentinian friend about My Meat Wagon merchandise. She looked confused. Why would I want a t-shirt with the restaurants name on it? I took plenty of pictures to solidify the memories.

After dinner, I took the Queen back to the Cobblestone just to show her. We were both able to stand just inside the door and listen to one really good tune. Seats would have made the whole experience better.

Because I’m me and the night was young, I made the Queen walk with me to the Liffey, the main river of Dublin. I didn’t realize it at the time but we took pictures of a bridge named Queen Maeve. We made it to two more bridges, the O’Donovan Rossa Bridge and the Grattan Bridge before the Queen decided she had enough and needed to sleep. Hampton by Hilton was right next to the O’Donovan Rossa. I should have walked with her back to the hotel but my need to see things burned hot. The Queen later stated she had no problem walking the few blocks back to the hotel.

I continued on down to the Ha’penny Bridge, another famous Dublin landmark. The Bridge is called the Ha’penny because that was the toll to use it when the bridge first opened in 1816. I had never photographed the bridge at night and this was probably my only chance to do that. Wednesday night we had plans in a different part of the city. I also took the opportunity to pop into the Merchant Arch Bar which is at the base of the Ha’penny Bridge on the south side of the river. I’d seen pictures of the interior of the Merchant Arch Bar and this beautiful circular staircase and I needed to see that for myself as well.

The Merchant Arch probably didn’t want gawkers in their establishment but I wandered in and took my pictures before I went to the bar and told the bartender of my admiration for his circular staircase. ‘Stupid tourists’, I’m sure flashed through the bartenders mind. I left the bar and made my way back to the hotel. I wanted to get to sleep so I could get back up and do more things.

I was excited to finally be on the ground in Ireland and ready to do all the things I’d be reading about for the last several months. My todo list was very long.

One of the themes of this essay is going to be lack of time. Despite the fact the group had booked 16 days of travel in Ireland, I always had the feeling I needed more time to do things. I wish I could have eaten in Merchant’s Arch but there was no time. The only time to see the bar was those few minutes I grabbed after dinner the first night we were there. I really should talk to the guy who planned this trip and register my complaints.

[The Queen]

Notes from tQ:
May 1: I watched “Women Talking.” Interesting, but it felt inconsistent. Some of the characters seemed to have moral flexibility and intellectual capability far beyond what seemed believable for a patriarchal Christian cult; and then seemed beyond ignorant about other things. Stretched the limits of credulity. But I was exhausted while watching so I could be wrong,

May 2: Cow at My Meat Wagon was very, very good cow. I wish My Meat Wagon had a branch in Raymond: I would be there at least three times a week.

[Drunk Monk]

I really should talk to the guy who planned this trip and register my complaints.

That did get a chuckle out of me.

[Greg]

May 3 Dublin - The Morning

May 3 was going to be The Queen and I’s first full day in Dublin. Part of that day would be devoted to heading back to Dublin Airport to pick up The Queen Mum but that wasn’t going to take too long. After that, I had full range of activities for all involved.

For whatever reason, Dublin is never one of my prime spots when I think about touring Ireland. The usual plan is spend a day there, see some plays, maybe catch some sights, and then move on. It could be holdover from when I lived in Ireland and the only thing I wanted in Dublin was to go to McDonald’s. Now when I don’t really like McDonald’s, I don’t see the point of being in Dublin too long.

That changed for this trip. Once again, I resolved to learn more about Irish history. I’ve tried this many times in the past but it has never really stuck. But this time I came across two podcasts that were a big help. One is The Revolutionary Ireland Podcast. I found this podcast because the podcast maker also does a walking tour of the all the key sights of the 1916 Easter rebellion. The podcaster is Lorcan Collins and I started listening to him on my daily dog walks. Lorcan doesn’t just cover the 1916 period, he covers lots of events from Irish history. I would listen to the podcast and then Google all the sights mentioned in the podcast in order to be able to find them when I arrived.

The problem is he’s not very prolific. Before too long, I was done with his series and I still didn’t feel I knew enough. But during Lorcan’s podcast, he kept mentioning another podcast called Three Castles Burning by Donal Fallon. If you have ever seen the seal of the city for Dublin, you can see the Three Castles burning on it. Lorcan’s podcast is the social history of Dublin covering everything from the Diving Bell used to build the walls along the River Liffey to the Clash playing in the examination hall in Trinity College. The amount of spots I needed to see rose exponentially after listening to his podcast. And Lorcan had made hundreds of podcast. I wasn’t going to finish them all before the trip took off. I made the Queen hear a few of them by the clever subterfuge of listening to them in the car on our way to Saturday shopping. She eventually started listening to them on her own.

I read a few books as well, but they didn’t help as much as I would have liked. I read a biography of Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, that taught me I don’t really like Jonathan Swift. But I started reading about him after one of the podcasts. The podcast showed him in a much better light. I also read Star of the Sea which was about the great Irish famine. It was also another failure. Finally there was the biography of Lord Edward who was one of the leaders of United Irishman uprising in 1798. The authorities decided it would be better if he died of his wounds rather than treat those wounds so he could stand trial.

I also used many websites for my research into how to enjoy myself. The two big ones were The Irish Road Trip and Things to Do in Ireland Before you Die. They had lots of top ten lists of restaurants and things to see that pointed me in the right direction on many occasions. For a concentrated look at Dublin, I used Lovin’ Dublin. The websites gave me plenty of great ideas.

From these books, podcasts, and websites, I did get a deeper understanding of Ireland in general and Dublin in particular. In regards to Dublin for instance, you have to look at Dublin as two distinct entities, the Northside and the Southside with the river Liffey dividing the two. From there, you can break down the city into different neighborhoods like the Liberties, Inchicore, Kimmage, Stoneybatter and Smithfield. where our hotel was located. My favorite new find was an area called the Monto.

The Monto was Dublin’s Red light district from the late 18th century into the early 19th century. It was called the Monto in reference to Montgomery Street, a name which no longer exists in the area. When the Legion of Mary went on their crusade to wipe out the Monto, one of the things they did was change the names of many of the offending streets. Montgomery Street is now Talbot Street. But who knew, besides everyone, that Dublin had a thriving Red Light District.

Yes, this amount of study to prepare to go on a trip is insane. No one does this. Well, one person. By adding up the time it takes to visit all the places on my list, I figured I would need about 36 hours in the day to accomplish my tasks. There it is again. Tasks. Who does tasks on vacation?

There were going to be three levels of touring pace on this trip. There was the slow paced sightseeing when we had The Queen, The Queen Mum, and myself. The Queen Mum is 84 after-all and has a bit of a breathing problem. It takes her some time to get from point A to point B with breaks along the way. The second level would be a bit faster with just The Queen and myself. Although, the Queen has cried Uncle on many occasions when she has had enough of my pace and needs a break. Yes, vacation timeouts have been planned into the itinerary. Finally, there would be just Greg unleashed racing around town with camera in hand, photographing like a mad man but probably getting no real appreciation of the sights he saw.

With a head full of places to see, I set my alarm for 5am. I’m sure every vacationeer sets their alarm to get up super early. But in my case, 5am is an hour later than I usually arise. In my defense, for the last several months I had been exercising more in effort to lose weight. I didn’t want that effort all to go to waste while on vacation. I figured there was an hour before everyone else was up to get in some exercise. I still feel you judging me.

I headed up to Mary’s Lane, passing by a car that had been clamped. Mary’s Lane becomes Mary’s street and gave me a straight shot across the North Side. I walked by the old Fruit Market which I had heard about on the podcasts. The Fruit market takes up a whole city block and used to be where wholesalers would sell and buy fruit. I dodged several forklifts still busily loading fruit from nearby much smaller facilities. The area I passed through was dodgy at best but as I neared O’Connell Street, one of the main thoroughfares of Dublin, Mary’s Lane became Mary’s Street, a pedestrian walkway with fancy shops on either side of the street.

Although why stay on these nice, well lit streets when I can dodge down a back alley to get a look at some 1916 Uprising history? When the General Post Office, or GPO, was about to fall during the Uprising, the defenders decided to make an escape through the side door down Henry St to Moore St. The charge out was led by a man called Michael O’Rahilly, known better as The O’Rahilly. He raced out sort of as a diversion so the wounded could be brought through behind him. The O’Rahilly was shot and managed to drag himself to an alley now named in his honor. When I found our that Mary’s Street had become Henry Street, I knew that I wasn’t far from Moore St. And Moore Street would lead me to the O’Rahilly Parade. Of course I had to go find it. Maybe there is no ‘of course’ about it.

O’Rahilly Parade turned out to be just a street. No plaques. This led me to Moore Lane which was pretty unsafe. The alley was lined with the back entrances to all the stores who had their front entrances on much more well lit streets. I wasn’t afeared at all.

I took pictures of the GPO because it is the GPO. Saw my old friend Jim Larkin up on his perch with his arms stretched to the heavens. The one book I didn’t read was Strumpett City which is about Jim Larkin and the 1913 Lockout. The statue of Larkin is in the approximate spot where the Royal Irish Constabulary waded into a crowd of people listening to a Larkin speech. The RIC injured between 400 and 600 people with their batons.

Behind Larkin, if you face him, is the Millennium Spire derided throughout Dublin as the Skewer in the Sewer and other colorful names. People thought it odd that during an epidemic of drug use in the city, Dublin Corporation would celebrate by putting a giant needle on their main thoroughfare. The Spire stands in the spot of another famous Dublin landmark that I had never heard of until this year: Nelson’s Pillar. Nelson’s Pillar was erected to celebrate Admiral Horatio Nelson’s victories and was built long before Nelson’s column in Trafalgar square. The pillar stood on O’Connell street from 1809 until 1966 when an enterprising IRA man blew the granite column up on the Fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 uprising. Songs laud the event as Ireland’s entry into the space program. Supposedly, when the army came in to take the rest of the column down, they hired the IRA man as a consultant for the job.

I ventured from the GPO up Earl St to Talbot Street, passed the statue of James Joyce, finally into the Monto proper. How could I tell? Well there is a giant mural there of the Monto complete with the lyrics of the song made famous by the Dubliners about the Monto. There isn’t much to say that this is the Monto besides the mural. It is just a warren of streets like any other in Dublin. I hoped to find the plaque commemorating Phil Shanahan’s pub, but failed to do so. Another coup missed. Phil Shanahan’s pub is where the British soldiers would drop off their guns in exchange for a fiver during the Irish War for Independence. Prostitutes would do the same with guns they had stolen from the military men. The spot where Phil Shanahan’s pub stood is now the Dublin City Arts Office.

All was not forsaken in my hunt for historic locations, I did make my way to one of Bram Stoker’s residences in Dublin. He lived on Buckingham Street Lower for several years. There is a plaque and a mural on the wall of his former residence.

After Stoker’s place, it was time to return to the hotel. I needed to back in order to have breakfast and then head to the airport to pick up the Queen Mum. My schedule was like a finely tuned watched, all the gears working in harmony to bring about a predictable outcome.

From Buckingham Street, I walked passed Connelly Train Station on my way to the Liffey. Fun Fact: The Fifteen Main train stations in Ireland are named after the sixteen men executed after the 1916 Uprising. The Pearse brothers, Willy and Patrick, only get the one station. Connolly Station is named for James Connolly. Connolly badly wounded during the uprising and given only days to live was still taken to Kilmainham Gaol and shot on May 12. He was too injured to stand for the firing squad, so they tied him to a chair.

I wended my way along the brand new EPIC museum which is all about the Irish Diaspora to the famine memorial on the Liffey Bank. The memorial comprises seven starving peasants and a dog struggling to move forward. I had some filming ideas I wanted to try out among the statues so I stopped their for a few minutes. It’s a good place for the memorial because right next to it is also one of the coffin ships that brought people from Ireland to other countries.

Next stop was the Custom House, set on fire during the Irish War of Independence. I wanted to see a memorial they had on the grounds dedicated to the people that burned the building to the ground. The Dublin Fire Brigade were the prime instigators in making sure the fire in the building was not extinguished until everything had burned. Unfortunately, the gates to the grounds were locked and I settled for photographs through the fence.

Not all my quests were for historical places, most were, but as soon as I heard about the Father Pat Noise memorial on the O’Connell Bridge, I knew I had to see it if I saw nothing else in Dublin. The plaque is inset into the balustrade on the east edge of the bridge in a depression left behind by the installation of the Millenium Countdown Clock. The plaque reads “Advisor to Peadar Clancy. He died under suspicious circumstances when his carriage plunged into the Liffey on August 10th, 1919” The only problem, there was no Father Noise. There was no tragic accident. Two men decided to put it on the bridge as a joke. The plaque was there for years before a reporter pointed out the hoax to Dublin officials. The officials were about to remove it but the outcry was such that they had to leave it. And there it stays in all it’s glory.

This trip coincides with my father and I’s trip to Ireland. Thirty years to the day, my father and I returned to Ireland. 1993 was my first trip back to Ireland since I left school in 1981. In an other strange coincidence, during the 2023 trip, I’m the same age my father was during the 1993 trip, 59 years of age. To honor this time comparison, I went through my photos of that trip and I’m trying to take photos in the same or similar locations this trip. They aren’t all from 1993, but most are. I don’t know why it gives me such pleasure to compare the photos separated in time, but it does.

The first photo I shot as part of this expose was the Heineken Building located on the south side of the river at the O’Connell Bridge. According to my friends at Google Maps, the building houses the Residential Tenancies Board, but I’ve always known it as the Heineken Building due to the large Heineken advertisement running down the side of it. The advertisement is still on the building same as it was in 1993. I took a picture of the building because when my father first came to Ireland to start up Verbatim in 1977, he had his first office in that building.

I headed up Westmoreland St passed the National Wax Muxeum which amuses me with it’s life size figures of Batman, Superman and others on the first floor balcony. The figures seem completely out of place and, yet, there they are.

My destination was an old Bewley’s store in the middle of the block. Bewley’s is Ireland’s largest tea and coffee company and this used to be their flagship cafe, I thought. Bewley’s was my go to spot when I first stumbled on them on Cruise’s Street in Limerick in 1993. I could sit (if i ever actually sit on vacation) in a Bewley’s with a pot of tea and a couple of scones and consider it the highlight of the day. Turns out the most famous Bewley’s is further up the block on Grafton Street. This cafe was part of their expansion plans that failed. I knew this cafe from when The Queen and I stayed at the Bewley’s hotel around the corner on Fleet Street. The beauty of the Bewley’s hotel was the hotel opened up into this Bewley Cafe and Bakery for our breakfast. Sadly, this cafe has changed into a TGIFridays but you can still see the Bewley’s floor mosaic in the entrance to the restaurant.

Like I mentioned, the former Bewley’s hotel was just around the corner and I went there to snap a picture of the building. Most of my photos from the 2001 trip were ruined by a rogue x-ray machine that scanned our bags at the airport and all the film in those bags. As a completist, I wanted a picture of the now Fleet Street hotel to remind me of where The Queen and I stayed for our trip to Ireland.

The hotel also marked the starting point for the Icon Walk. The Icon factory, an artists collective, decided to revitalize the lanes around their building. They cleaned up the narrow streets and painted historical murals on the walls. Since I was rushing through, I took the detour down the lanes.

My mistake. The people who frequent these areas at night didn’t get the memo this was now a tourist thoroughfare. As I turned the corned onto Bedford Lane from Prince’s Lane, I immediately saw four people sitting crouched in the street, huddled around what looked like a crack pipe. There were others milling about, but that set piece of four people around the pipe caught my eye. I knew instantly I was in the wrong alley at the wrong time. They saw me as well. The one skinny girl on the end started to rise and implored me to give her some money for breakfast. I picked up the pace and moved further up the lane away from them.

At this point, I’m in Temple Bar proper. At night the streets are packed with tourist navigating the many pubs in the area. The whole area was supposed to be torn down in the 1970s and turned into a bus station but public outcry said no. My father and I stayed in this area in 1993 in the Bloom’s hotel. The Queen and I repeated the Bloom’s Hotel tradition on the 2001 trip as we were leaving Ireland. Both times, I had no idea what the Bloom name referenced.

I only had one more interaction as I moved through Temple Bar going up and down the streets, some man started yelling after me to stop. I did not. He yelled a lot. I took photographs of the Friends Meeting House on Eustace street which occupies the site where the Eagle Tavern used to stand. The Eagle Tavern is where the United Irishman of 1798 rebellion fame met for the first time. The Meeting house is also where Frederick Douglass spoke in 1845. He was on the run from the United States for being an escaped slave. He was only supposed to visit Ireland for a short time and ended up staying four months. I keep thinking someone needs to make the Frederick Douglas in Ireland movie.

I went back by the Ha’penny Bridge for some photographs in the daylight. I scooted by the Irish Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One street still had a Merry Christmas banner draped across the alley. My main destination was Fishambles Street where the first performance of Handel’s Messiah was performed. When I think Dublin, I don’t think Handel’s Messiah. But Handel’s Messiah was first performed here at The Great Music Hall on April 13, 1742. From reading Swift’s biography, I know Swift was initially against using the St. Patrick’s Cathedral’s choir for the performance but was eventually convinced to do so. Supposedly if you are in Dublin on April 13 and are on Fishamble Street, a group gathers to play the Messiah every year. There is nothing left of the original concert hall. All that is there now is a modern hotel, Handel’s Hotel, and a plaque on the front of the building with the information about the performance.

From there it was back to the Hampton by Hilton for my first Irish breakfast in their breakfast room. I could tell it was a Hampton because they had those stupid waffle making machines. I could tell I was in Ireland by the large tureen of pork sausages available for my consumption. It wasn’t the worst Irish breakfast I have ever had, but I’m hoping for better out of this trip.

My elapsed time for my Dublin walkabout was about ninety minutes. I could easily have doubled that and still not seen everything I wanted to see. But I was up against a deadline. The Queen Mum’s plane would land at 7:30. The Queen and I needed to be at Dublin Airport to pick her up.

[Drunk Monk]

"Greg unleashed"

[Greg]

Duh.

[Greg]

Side Note.

This Sunday Limerick will play Clare in the Munster Senior Hurling Final, pretty big deal in that neck of the woods. The match starts at 1:45. Pubs don't open until noon on Sunday. Pub owners felt that didn't give everyone enough time to have a few before the match. They sought relief from the courts to open early.

The courts in their wisdom granted that relief.

[Greg]

May 3 - continued.

First I needed to find out where I left the car in the Smithfield Park Rite. On the way to the car, I noticed two woman I had seen in the elevator now standing by the car with clamp on the tire. The sign on the car window said they owed a lot of money in order to free their car. I guess they didn’t know about the parking rules for Dublin. There is no free street parking. All of the parking needs to be paid for at a kiosk.

I found our car in the park rite by the expedience of walking down the entrance ramp and remembering where I drove the car. I’m sure The Queen just wondered why I didn’t remember where I parked the car. When I pulled in the evening before, I had just pulled straight into the slot. But I noticed the majority of people had backed their cars into their slots. It seems in the States most people don’t back in their cars. It’s kind of a showy move. But in Ireland, the land of tiny parking space, people back in as a defensive measure. My theory is parking garages were built at a time of much smaller cars. Your car tax for many years was based on the size of the car engine. Bigger engine. Bigger tax. I guess people have more money now and can afford the higher tax because cars in Ireland are noticeably bigger. But don’t get me wrong, they are still tiny compared to your average American car. As the cars got bigger, spaces in parking lots became tighter. And there always seems to be a concrete post right next to where you park. The final car thought, most cars have retractable mirrors that close against the car when you lock the car.

But we found the car pretty easily and headed off to the airport. It was early so we backtracked on surface streets that we took last night to get to the hotel. While I drove, I realized my Sportage had lane assist. Every time I would creep over the line, I would get a beep and the steering wheel would tighten up and turn me back into the lane. It wasn’t annoying at all. The other trick the car played was that it would disconnect from Apple Carplay. One second, I would be looking at Google Maps. The next I would be looking at all the icons native to the car. Carplay would usually cut out at the most inopportune time, like when I was about to make a turn. Occasionally, you could get Carplay to reset by unplugging and then plugging the cable back in. Nothing more challenging than trying to shift and replug in the phone. We tried using the The Queen’s phone for a while but her phone had the same challenges. It got to the point during some drives, the connection to Carplay would only last for a few seconds before switching off.

The Queen Mum had only been waiting a few moments by the time we showed up. I was able to park in another parking structure with all it’s hazards. The Queen Mum had a miserable time during her journey. The worst part being all the walking between gates at the airports. The walks are difficult enough for the healthy never mind the breathing challenged. The Queen Mum eventually contacted wheel chair services and had them wheel her from gate to gate.

The drive back to the hotel went much smoother than our initial drive into town. I was able to get into the proper lane and took the M1 tunnel into town. Now, I had thought I had heard the guy at the Hertz counter say tolls on the M1 would be charged to my account. I heard wrong. Toll takers on the M1 wanted their money now and it wasn’t cheap.

I did finally get my wish to drive along the Liffey as that is where the M1 drops you off. I thought the Queen and her mum would be more excited about my narrated tour of the drive through the heart of Dublin but they seemed to be more interested in catching up.

After all that travel, I thought it best if the Queen Mum took a nap. Fortunately, the Hampton had a room available and checked her in. While I went over to Park Rite to drop off the car, The Queen helped The Queen Mum to her room with her bags.

When I parked the car this time, I paid much closer attention to where I parked and what stairs I climbed to get out of the garage. I should have paid more attention on the first day because it would have solved the problem of finding My Meat Wagon as well. When I came out of the stairwell, I was opposite my new favorite Dublin restaurant. I hustled back to the hotel, snapping a photo of a dog behind the gate at St. Michin’s along the way. My plan was to go see some sights with the Queen while the Queen Mum rested.

I think this was the only time I actually looked at our hotel room. The room had a big window which looked out at the Four Courts Building. After awhile I noticed I could see the Gravity Bar at the Guinness Storehouse experience through the window. The Gravity Bar is the best thing about the tour. If I could I would just skip the tour and hang out at the bar. But you have to pay for the tour to gain access. What is nice about the bar is you get 360º views across the city through the floor to ceiling windows. I took the nephew on the tour back in 2009. We got to the top and wouldn’t go near the edges of the room because of his fear of heights. What I noticed from our hotel window was that there are actually two circular glass fronted rooms atop the Storehouse and if you squint they do look like the tops of pints of Guinness as the buildings below the white tops are a dark creamy brown.

The room was full of oddities and knickknacks. I’m looking at you giant SMEG brand teapot. There was a postcard in a frame on the wall and I didn’t know if I was supposed to take the card and send it off or if taking the card would ruin the art piece. The final item in the room that caught my attention was a vinyl LP by the band The Passengers. The Passengers was a side project of Bono and The Edge from U2 along with Brian Eno. The most famous song from that album was Miss Sarajevo recorded with opera star Luciano Pavarotti.

For the morning tour, we had three main stops: Archbishop Marsh’s Library, The Chester Beatty Museum and St. Michan’s Church. I figured to go to Marsh’s library first, since it was the furthest from our hotel and then make our way back to the other two stops along the way. Me being me, there would be various side quests along the way.

The first side quest was to the original walls of Dublin. When I learned that pieces of the original walls still stood, I knew I had to see them. I never picture Dublin as a walled city but that is how Dublin started. The walled section is next to St. Audeon’s Church and looks much like any giant stone wall. But it was interesting because this piece of medieval Dublin was still here for us to view. More important to the Queen than the brickwork, was the white dog that joined us, our first dog photo from the trip.

We walked around St. Audeon’s and over to Christ Church Cathedral so I could recreate another photo from 1993. I had stood at the intersection across from Christ Church 30 years ago and I did the same again today. I also found a really depressing wall plaque that I had first spotted in 2009 on tour with the nephew. Turns out there are a bunch more of them, all telling short stories of the people who lived in that area of Nicholas and Bride Streets.

Archbishop Marsh’s library stands in the shadow of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, just a short walk down Patrick Street from Christ Church Cathedral. Why two Protestant cathedrals within minutes of each other? Back in the day there were too many wealthy people for just one cathedral, so they built another. Both were within the city walls.

Archbishop Narcissus Marsh, great name Narcissus, opened the library in 1707 and was the first public library in all of Ireland. It is also the only building from that time still being used for it’s original purpose. I didn’t get a chance to see the check out register but Bram Stoker came in to do research for Dracula and signed the register. They recently moved a book case and found a fireplace behind it. Supposedly, Dean Swift would come and sit beside this fireplace. One bookcase has books which still have bullets in them from the 1916 Rebellion. The bookcase is opposite a window and the bullets came through the window and into the books despite the fact the library was far away from the serious military engagements.

I had heard about the Lego figurines scattered around the shelves and I finally spotted one on one of the cases. I guess they put them there for the kids to see. I went and asked who that figurine was supposed to represent. I was told. I found another and asked about that one. Eventually the people at the front desk just gave me the kids map that listed all the figurines and who they represented. Should have kept that map then I could tell who I saw but there were figures of Joyce and Stoker and Dracula.

The most interesting features of the library had to be the reading cages. Patrons who came into the library were put in small seating areas that had a wire screen to block off the seats. People who checked out books were locked in with their books to read on the premises to keep them from stealing the books. The library has about 25000 books in all and I assumed no one had read them in forever so I asked when someone had last read one of the books. They said books were checked out yesterday. There are separate rooms in the library were researchers do their work with the books.

The Queen and I had been through St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 2016 so we skipped that visit this time although we did walk through St. Patrick’s Park in front of the Cathedral. Kitty Corner to the Cathedral on Golden Lane are a row of corporation houses with giant ceramic plaques depicting Gulliver’s adventures in Lilliput. The round plaques were put in place in 1996 as part of the refurbishment of the area.

Our library journey continued with a stop at the Chester Beatty Library right behind Dublin Castle. The museum has two main permanent collections, Sacred Traditions and Arts of the Book. Both were fabulous and overwhelming. They have a copy of the Book of the Dead written on Papyrus. My favorite piece was probably a 30’ long by 2’ tall painting of London. The idea was you can unroll the scroll and look at different sections of London as if you were standing on the bank of the Thames looking at St. Pauls Cathedral. My brain rapidly filled with all the different art. Fortunately there was also a nice cafe on the first floor where we could get water and Diet Coke. But my ulterior motive to visit the library was to visit the roof top garden and take pictures out across Dublin. Sadly, there is a large wall surrounding said rooftop garden making it difficult to take pictures.

After the Chester Beatty Library, we had to make a quick pit-stop in Dublin Castle for two reasons. First, I needed to take a 30 year compare picture and second, we needed to purchase our Heritage passes. Heritage Passes get you in free to many historic sites around Ireland. The first thing we were going to need the passes for was our tour of Kilmainham Gaol which we would do tomorrow on May 4. I had about half a dozen other spots lined out on the itinerary where I could use the card and make the card worthwhile. And by going in to Dublin Castle to purchase the pass, this would mark the first time I have actually stepped inside one of Dublin Castle’s various buildings. This should trip would also be my only trip inside Dublin Castle. Once again it has failed to make the list of places I want to visit. I do want to visit inside, there wasn’t enough time on this trip. Next trip, maybe.

From Dublin Castle, I did a mini, self guided walking tour through the narrow streets of the original medieval City. Specifically, I wanted to walk down Crane Street and more specifically stand in front of 3 Crane Street, the former building where Michael Collins ran his spy campaign against the nearby Dublin Castle. 3 Crane Street was also where the Shields brothers lived. Arthur Shields the younger of the two brothers actually met up with Michael Collins when they were both interred in Frongoch Prison in Wales after the 1916 uprising. But the Shields are probably better known for being actors. William Shields changed his name to Barry Fitzgerald so he wouldn’t get in trouble at work. Both brothers appeared in The Quiet Man. Barry was Micheleen O’Flynn and Arthur played the Reverend Playfair. Everything is tied together.

But nothing on Crane Street looked like it should. Plus, there weren’t any street numbers on the buildings, making it even more difficult to find number 3. We moved on, heading to Eustace Street so the Queen could look at United Irishman Plaque and the Frederick Douglass Plaque on the Quaker Meeting House.

For lunch we stopped at Darkey Kelley’s pub, named in honor of a woman burned at the stake for practicing witchcraft. The burning could aslo have taken place because she was a brothel owner. Her brothel was not far from where the current Darkey Kelley’s pub stands. The food was good. The waiters all seemed like they hated life and we were part of the cause of that hate. They finally did send in a waiter with a better disposition. This pub was always where I came up with the new travel rule: Always bring your phone to the loo to take pictures. They had a great map on the wall listing all the pubs in Dublin. The title on the map was “Dublin’s Greatest Evils”

After a quick stop on Fishamble Street so The Queen could see where Handel’s Messiah was first performed, we headed across the Liffey to St. Michan’s Church where I would finally get to see the mummies. I had been thinking about seeing these since I had first heard about them. I even told DM about them so he could see them which he did which made me jealous. Now, the time was at hand for me to see them.

The Queen and I pulled through the gate on Church Street to St. Michan’s at 1pm and headed for the entrance. There was a giant blue door but nothing that screamed out enter here. There were confusing signs that were confusing. We walked around the building looking for a way to get in. Nothing. At this point, The Queen noticed the sign with church hours printed on it. According to the sign, St. Michan’s was closed from 12:30 to 2pm. Failure writ large right in front of me. In all my research, I had never seen a time for when they were closed for lunch. I had only seen they were open from 10 - 4. We couldn’t hang around until they were open. There was a tour waiting for us over at Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. We couldn’t come tomorrow because we were leaving for Galway in the morning after a stop at Kilmainham. The Sadness was palpable as we left the grounds. No mummies for me.

As I moped back to the hotel along Church, The Queen decided to test out Dublin’s gravity to see if the earth’s pull was just as strong as it was back in California. She misjudged the edge of the curb, placing her foot half on and half of the lip and fell into the bike path. Hard. I turned and waited to see how badly she was hurt before helping her up. A nice young Dublin man rushed up to see if she was okay. He offered her a caramel for her pain stating they were okay, they were from his office. He then realized and stated that is what someone trying poison you would say. The Queen declined his caramels while she struggled to her feet. Her hand was pretty bruised up. The fall also did no favors to her bruise from walking into bed two nights ago.

At the Hampton, we rested for a bit. I had called for a cab to take us over to Trinity College at 2:45. Because of the bruise to her hand the Queen needed help with her shoes. We met the Queen Mum down in the lobby. Our cab waited for us out the side door.

The cab driver dropped us off in the area known as College Green which is opposite the main gates to Trinity. To our right was the former house of Parliament, currently an Allied Irish Bank. They stopped using the parliament building back in 1805 when the Irish Parliament was dissolved and everyone had to report to Westminster.

We had some time before the tour started so I had The Queen take a shot of me standing in the main quad, known as Parliament Square, of Trinity to recreate the photo I took of my father in that spot in 1993. It took a bit of doing to get the right spot and angle. One of my side quests for this tour was to get into the Museum Building. I had been seeing pictures of the interior for quite some time. The whole foyer seemed like something you would find in an Islamic temple and not something you would find on Trinity campus. I left the ladies and ventured off. I had some trepidation about going into the building because I’m sure the campus didn’t want unsupervised visitors just wandering into their buildings. They needn’t have worried. When I got to the main door and pulled on the handle, I found the door was locked. Stupid locks. I wandered around the entire building to see if there was another entrance that might be open, but that giant wooden door was the only door. I only felt a little thwarted.

The tour guide met us at the Campanile next to Parliament Square. A good spot since our first stop would be about twenty feet to the left of the Campanile, that statue of the man on the toilet. Once you see the statue that way, you can’t unsee it. In actuality, the statue is of George Salmon, provost of Trinity College from 1888 to 1904. The great story about Salmon, although not true overall was the he stated women would be admitted to Trinity over his dead body. The first woman student at Trinity arrived on the day Salmon passed away.

Our guide was equal parts funny and knowledgeable. You could tell he cared about the school when he would remark disdainfully about the new additions to the school. The biggest one being the new exhibition space for the Book of Kells exhibit in The Printing House Building. If you want to see the Book of Kells in the Long Room of the Trinity Library, you have to do it this year as the Long Room is closing for the next three years as they fire proof the building. In the center of the New Square is where they are building part of the new housing for the Kells exhibit. Our guide was not happy about it, either.

We passed by my friend the Museum Building so the guide could talk about the different stone work on the building. It was amazing. All the panels were different flora and fauna from Ireland. Small animals were carved into the tops of column capitals. As an aside, he mentioned similar sculptures had been carved on the outside of the National Library where they had sculpted a group of monkeys playing pool. As we left the Museum Building, he said we could go into the building but he couldn’t take in such a big group. We could enter the building by ourselves after the tour.

Our final stop on the tour was the Long Room and the Book of Kells exhibit. Finally, after many visits I would finally have my own pictures of the Long Room. I was very jealous when a friend showed me her pictures of her trip through the Long Room. I accused her of sneaking the shots because every time I had been, there were plenty of signs saying no photographs in the Long Room. Nope. The rules had changed and you could snap away as long as you didn’t use a flash. I guess Trinity got tired of policing the photographers.

Of course there had to be a twist for my visit. There was. Sure I could take pictures of the long room but half the room was devoid of books. The process of moving the library’s collection had started in preparation for the remodel and a lot of the shelves were empty. The iconic busts that line the room had been swaddled in bubble rap. But the first four busts of woman were still available to be seen. One other reason to be in the Long Room was to see an original copy of the 1916 Uprising proclamation. Only about 50 copies remain and the Long Room has a copy.

The YouTube video which angered me the most covered the Book of Kells exhibit. The influencer doing the video advised people to skip the Book of Kells because he didn’t really see the point of spending all that money to look at a page of a book for a few seconds. I would punch him if I could. Our tour guide stressed the fact of taking your time going through the exhibits that explained the book to gain some understanding of what you were seeing. If you just race up to the page that is open for the day, you will probably have a bad experience. I think that’s what happened with the YouTube Boob. On the flip side, how can you not be excited by seeing a hand drawn page of a 1200 year old book?

After the tour I was going to take one more crack at the Museum Building. I would not fail. The Queen and Queen Mum opted to go with me after the build up by the guide. Here is where you get to find out why I am genius. The door to the Museum Building opens a lot easier if you push on the door rather than pull on the door. In my defense there was a pull handle on the door leading me to believe you had to pull on the door to open it. In the door’s defense there are several centuries of wear marks and discoloration where a million people have pushed on the door. Our group was the only one in the ornate lobby, pretty as the pictures I had seen. But I couldn’t quite get as good a picture as the ones I had seen.

Before I went to Dublin, I contacted one of our neighbor’s from when the Queen and I lived in Los Angeles. He was born and grew up in Dublin before emigrating to the United States. If anyone knew a cool place for dinner in the Hibernian Metropolis, it would be Seamus. He responded to my query about cool places to eat in Dublin with a question of his own: when were we going to be in Dublin? I told him and he told me he was going to be in Dublin at the same time. Ah, coincidence. Seamus suggested we eat dinner together. I told him we had a short window to eat as we had a Literary Pub Crawl to do after our dinner. Seamus opted to join us on the pub crawl as well.

We all met at Lennan’s Yard at the top of Dawson Street near Stephen’s Green. The Queen mum was feeling a bit tired after the tour and fortunately we found an exit from the Trinity grounds that put us on Dawson St. Heading up Dawson, we passed a still running Tower Records and St. Ann’s Church which I wanted to explore but didn’t have time at this point. St. Anne’s is where Bram Stoker married Florence Balcombe. Balcombe was at one time the fiancee of Oscar Wilde until Bram Stoker came along. The other fun fact about St. Anne’s is St. Anne’s had a policy of having bread by the altar and anyone that was hungry could come and take some. I needed to verify that story.

Lennan’s Yard was very nice and we had a great meal. The only problem was they sat us up stairs. Stairs are the Queen Mum’s kryptonite. She hates them every time she sees them. During our meal, I got a visit from my friend the Chairman that is loaning us his house in Lahinch for a night. I’ve known the Chairman since my days at the Crescent. His father worked for my father at Verbatim in Limerick. The Chairman has done very well for himself running two High Tech companies in Dublin. Currently, he is the Chairman of the Board of several undisclosed companies. And yet here he was schlepping some keys to me in Dublin. He was a bit cross at the hostess because he asked for me and they said I wasn’t here. The table was under Seamus’s name. I went down the stairs and got him and convinced him to come up stairs for a glass of wine. The Chairman is a great man for the wine. What a lovely time sitting around the table with friends chatting. At one point, I snapped a picture and the Chairman told me I was not to put it online. He’s spent fifteen years of his life being online and in the press daily and he was done with that nonsense.

A big thanks to Seamus for grabbing the check. He informed us before dinner that he would be paying and that would be that. When we would meet on dogwalks in Montecito Heights he would tell us tales of his time in Dublin. He visited Newgrange before it was rebuilt and used to go inside the main chamber all the time. He also shook hands with the crusader mummy in the tomb of St. Michan’s.

The Literary Pub Crawl started at the The Duke Pub on Duke Lane which was only a short walk from Lennan’s. Unfortunately, our first stop where we were to meet the guides was up more stairs. The Queen Mum was going to kill me.

Since we were in a pub of all places, drinking was involved. Seamus was kind enough to keep buying rounds. Our hosts for the evening would be Frank and Finbar. Our entire gathering was about 20 people. I was amused the entire night but I can’t for the life of me think of any of the pieces they performed with the exception of 15 minutes of Waiting for Godot by Samuell Beckett. According to Dean of English Seamus, that was about all I needed to hear.

From the Duke, the group headed back to Trinity College. As we started to cross Nassua Street from Dawson Street, the Queen Mum decided to do a gravity test of her own. We stood in one of the ramps in the sidewalk that allow wheel chairs to cross street and the Queen Mum didn’t quite notice the difference in height between curb and street. Down she went. Fortunately, Seamus mostly caught her and she was back up in a jiffy. I think one of the most treacherous parts of the Dublin sidewalk are this channels place in the sidewalk to gather rain water. The channels are about an inch deep and six inches wide and are everywhere. I can’t count the number of times I put my foot wrong in one of those channels.

One of the special parts of the tour was we were allowed to be on the campus of Trinity after hours when the college was closed to visitors. Frank and Finbarr performed on the steps of the Examination Hall. The Examination Hall was where The Clash performed back in 1977. Frank and Finbarr were a little more sedate. I had a fine time showing Finbarr pictures of my father standing in Parliament Square from 30 years ago. Along with every bit of performance, the lads also give a bit of history, which was again well received. At the end of the history section, they always tell us there were clues in the speeches for a the trivia quiz at the end of the night.

The group made it to O’Neills pub without any further mishaps from our quarter. O’Neills was a warren of different areas to drink. Seamus wanted to know what I wanted to drink and I asked for water. He said there was no way he was asking the bartender for water. He might get kicked out. Our job from our guides was to find the picture in the portrait room in the pub of a man with a white beard and find out who that man was. The portrait of the white bearded man was easy to find because Finbar and Frank were sitting right in front of it.

The lads didn’t perform in O’Neills. Instead we walked across the street to the Molly Malone statue. Her statue stands in front of the former St. Andrew’s church. Molly used to be out on Grafton Street opposite Trinity College. She was installed in the Grafton street location in 1988 as part of the millennium celebration for Dublin. Dublin locals promptly christened her ‘The Tart with The Cart’. I encountered her in Dublin in 2009. I was quite surprised when I came back in 2014 and found a bunch of construction work going on at her spot and no sign of Molly. They were building the Light Rail Luas line and Molly had to go. She didn’t go far, just around the corner to Suffolk Street where tourists still take pictures of themselves rubbing her breasts for luck. That is the reason her endowments are so shiny.

One of the powers Molly posses is that when you stand near her statue, you break into the Molly Malone song. Seconds after the tour arrived, we all started singing about cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o. Finbarr and Frank set up in an archway of the church to do their segment. There was a giant mural of Noseferatu. After St. Andrews church stopped being a church it became a Dublin Tourist Office. That didn’t work out. The church has had different uses including I guess a haunted house, hence our friend Nosferatu.

We did take a bunch of pictures in front of Molly because that is required by Dublin law. But I knew I had to come back because the pictures I had taken in the before times were in the sunlight and I wanted to my photos to match.

Stop three for the evening landed at the The Old Stand Pub, just around the corner from Molly. Our trivia hunt for The Old Stand was find the picture which included the original name of the Pub. The other fun fact about the pub came in the form of plaque stating this was a pub where Michael Collins would hang out. I’m sure there were plenty of pubs where Mr. Collins imbibed, he was on the move constantly to keep away from the British, but The Old Stand had the plaque and a picture of the Big Fella. For a time while in the pub, I thought the Queen Mum might be making a love connection. A nice man by the name of Neal, who sat next to us, leaned in and started quizzing the Queen Mum about who she was and where she was from. Naturally, I took a picture of the happy couple before I rescued The Queen Mum by saying it was time to meet up with the tour.

Our final stop for the night was next to Davy Byrne’s pub where the trivia questions were unveiled. I was able to gain one point by knowing the original name of The Old Stand pub which I don’t remember now. The woman who won the contest was a full on cheater. She had been on the tour before and remembered the answers to most of the questions. Davy Byrne’s was important to Seamus as well. As we listened to Finbarr and Frank, Seamus casually mentioned that Davey Byrne’s was where he first came out as a gay man.

The tour ended there. We thanked Frank and Finbar with money, because that is what you do. We went down the lane to end of Duke Street and caught a Taxi back to the hotel. That seemed to be enough for our first day in Ireland.

[Greg]

May 4- Dublin to Galway

You know, Greg, you could have just stayed in Dublin and seen all the things you wanted to see. First we were coming back to Dublin by the end of the trip. Second, I had a date to meet an acquaintance in Galway who tells Irish Folktales and he only tells them on Thursday nights. May 4 was the Thursday, we could see his show. Except for one slight hiccup.

I first met Rab Fulton back in 2009 on the trip with my father and my nephew. We were staying in Galway and one of the things I read to do was find a Seanchaí or Irish storyteller. As luck would have it, I found a flyer for just such a storyteller appearing that night at the Cottage Bar not far from where we were staying in SaltHill. The room were Rab performed was quite tiny. The room didn’t have to be big because there were only about six of us in the room with Rab. But he left an impression and when The Queen and I were in town in 2011, I took her to the Cottage Inn for another show. The Queen liked him as well and Rab was delighted I had come back for another show. We saw him next on our 2019 trip to Ireland. There was a great coincidence we would be passing through Galway on a Thursday which also happened to be Halloween. Perfect. By 2019, Rab had graduated to a much bigger space at the Crane Bar. Rab was kind enough to comp us tickets and let us in before the crowds and there were crowds. The place was packed with about 100 people. Rab did a great job with his show. In the early shows when we first saw he was fine and the stories he told were quite interesting. Now, he had learned his craft and put on a great show as well.

When I planned this trip, I knew one of the things I wanted to do was be in Galway on a Thursday to see the show and introduce him to The Queen Mum. The trip would cover two Thursdays. I chose the first one because it was good starting out point on our loop through Ireland. I made our hotel reservations accordingly.

Here was the hiccup. In the week before the trip, Rab told me he wouldn’t be performing that Thursday in the Crane Bar. His father was flying in on May 4th. In order to be with his father, he decided he would perform on May 3. Every other week, he would on stage on the Thursday. Just not this week. Rab did ask if we could come out on Wednesday, but I had, as you have seen, already booked tickets for Wednesday. Plus, traveling to Galway on the day the Queen Mum arrived would be a bit hard on the Queen Mum.

So, I was racing out of Dublin to Galway for a show that wasn’t going to happen. My plans are like tissue in the face of reality.

Originally, I was going to race out of Dublin to get to Galway. But then I realized there was no rush so I decided we might as well tour Kilmainham Gaol before headed. But Kilmainham doesn’t open until 9am. Plenty of time for another huge walk through the city.

Once again I headed east to the docklands but I stayed to south side of the Liffey. I took pictures along the way but my first stop was Bindon Blood Stoney’s Diving Bell. The Diving Bell allowed workers to work under the Liffey to build the Quay walls. The bell went into operation in 1871 and was used up until 1958. The only real reason to tell this story is to name check Bindon Blood Stoney. Once I got to the Diving Bell, I was less than impressed. It’s just a big metal rectangular box you could pump air into.

From their I went to Windmill Lane studios to see where U2 recorded some of their albums. I stopped at the actual Windmill Lane street as well but the studios moved further down the docks and I went there. I was hoping the advertisements on the building from U2’s latest album would still be on the building but they were not. From the outside, it is just another sort of nondescript building. Still took the picture, though, to say I was there.

That was as far as I was going into the docklands. I turned and headed back in the direction of the hotel with a long list of places I wanted to see before I arrived back at the Hampton by Hilton. I went over to the McMahon Bridge which crosses the Alexandra Basin so I could see the Boland Mills and the Chairman’s former building. When I visited the Chairman for the first time, the building was pointed out to me as the Hershey Building because it was a dark brown color. “Couldn’t miss it”. Missed it plenty. It used to stand by itself down in the docklands but the Hershey building sits among a big crowd of taller buildings now. What a difference ten years makes.

The next stop was Merrion Square and the former home of Oscar Wilde. I was hoping I would pass by the former home of Patrick Pearse but I had to turn towards Merrion Square before I ever saw it. Since I was in kind of a hurry, I missed several things in Merrion Square Park but I did get to see the statue of Oscar Wilde sitting on the rock. Opposite the rock and Oscar Wilde are two more sculptures. On the bases of the sculptures can write messages.

Through the fence, I could see Oscar Wilde’s house. There is a plaque for Oscar on the side of the building as well as plaques for his mother and his father. His father, William Wilde, list about twenty of his occupations on the plaque. The one for Oscar’s mother, Lady Jane, gives her nom de plume ‘Speranza’ which she used when she wrote poetry and articles for the Young Ireland movement and were published in The Nation.

Oddly, several blocks away on Harcourt St lies the home of Lord Edward Carson, the man who defended the Marquess of Queensbury against Oscar Wilde’s criminal libel charge. Carson and Wilde knew each other at Trinity. The trial and Carson’s defense led to Wilde be charged and convicted of Gross Indecency for the crime of Homosexuality. Carson would later go on to be a staunch unionist and helped with the formation of Northern Ireland.

From Merrion Square I made my way to College Green with a quick trip down Dublin’s best known shopping area, Grafton Street. Supposedly Grafton Street is one of the top three most expensive shopping thoroughfares in Europe. My destination for this segment of the trip was Bloom’s Hotel. Once again I needed some before and after pictures. My father and I stayed here in 1993 and the Queen and I also stayed here in 2001 at the tail end of our trip. Since I was here last they have spruced up the place with murals celebrating Ulysses. Just so you know, when I booked the hotel for those two trips I vaguely knew about James Joyce and I certainly didn’t know who Leopold Bloom was. I booked the hotel because of the hotel’s location in the middle of Temple Bar.

The previous day I searched up and down Crane Street for signs of Micheal Collins and the Shields. Last night I checked the inter-webs and found out I really should have been looking for Crow Street. The big give away should have been the fact that there wasn’t a giant Urban Outfitters at the end of Crane Street. The Urban Outfitters used to be The Medical School of the Catholic University of Ireland. I did find the fabled 3 Crow Street but there was still no indication of the buildings hidden fame. And from now on, I will remember that Crane Street was the Street that still had a Merry Christmas banner hanging across the street in the middle of May.

I should have headed back to the Hampton from there before we set out on the rest of the day’s adventures but why would I want to do anything sensible? Instead, I crossed back over the Liffey, taking pictures of the Sea Horse Street Lights on the Grattan Street bridge before heading over to the Fruit Markets on St. Michan’s Street. I needed a few shots of the building in the daylight. And since I was right there, I might as well take a peak at St. Michan’s Park.

Why a children’s playground? This children’s playground sits on the site of where Newgate Prison used to stand. The walls surrounding the park are the old walls around the park are the walls from Newgate Prison. Newgate prison was where the prisoners from the 1798 United Irishmen Uprising were held. Too far into the weeds? Probably. But there is more. Before Newgate prison was here on the north side of the Liffey, Newgate was one of the gates in the old Dublin City walls on the south side of the Liffey. When they were pulling the walls down this gate was moved here and turned into a prison.

I took cobblestone covered Cuckoo Lane back towards Mary Street and then to the Hampton by Hilton where I had breakfast number two of the trip.

The first stop on the day’s itinerary was Kilmainham Gaol just a mere fifteen minutes from the hotel. I toured the Gaol back in 2014 but I had to leave the tour halfway through because parents. We had something scheduled and I needed to get back to our hotel which didn’t leave me time to finish. This trip would make up for that failure. Ha!

Our tour started at 9:45. If we left at 8:45, I could drop Queen Mum and Queen at the Gaol by 9. Parking was down the road so I would have a ten minute walk to get to the museum. Plenty of time. God laughed.

I left the Hampton and walked the five minutes over to the Smithfield ParkRite at 8:30, so much time to get back to the hotel in order to leave by 8:45. So much time. I was halfway down Queen Street when I sensed there would be a problem. Google Maps kept altering my arrival upwards. There were two lights to navigate before I could make a left turn on to Arran Quay. One was at the Luas Line and the second was Arran Quay itself. I spent an interminable time at the light at the Luas line watching one car at a time make the left at Arran before the light would go red. All the traffic on Arran was so packed there was no room once that traffic went through to allow us on Queen to make the turn. Yes, Greg, traffic is at 9 O’Clock worldwide. Google Maps kept changing my arrival time. Red letters were bad and they were always red. I eventually forced my onto Arran after hitting the curb.

There were only two lanes on Arran and one of those was the dedicated bus lane. No cars in the bus lane. But I made it. I crawled along Arran for most of my adult life until Arran Quay turned into Inns Quay in front of the Four Courts Building. I think it was after 9 when I found the problem. There was an accident in front of the Four Courts blocking the car lane. Everyone had to merge into the dedicated bus lane to get by. I just stayed in that lane until I made my turn on Chancery Lane and straight to the hotel.

We have too many bags for the capacity of the car. I fit them in anyway. One bag ends up in the back seat strapped in by the seat belt, sitting up right like a real boy. Only a lot of swearing was involved.

To get to Kilmainham, you guessed it, I have to go back down Queen Street. One way streets make this the only way. I don’t have to get into the left turn lane, thankfully, because that lane still moves slow. I dropped off The Queen Mum and the Queen at what I thought was the front entrance because it was the front entrance last time I visited and headed for the Park Rite at the Museum of Modern Art. Google wanted me to take this torturous walking route back to the Gaol, but I spotted a path that went right there that Google Maps did not acknowledge.

By the time I made it to the Gaol, it was 10 and my tour was long gone. Hoards of secondary students were waiting in line to do their tour. I went to where I dropped off the other two and found out they had changed the entrance. The entrance was now in the building next to the Gaol. I explained to the Gaol Docents who I was and about the tour and my compatriots. I explained I didn’t need the first half of the tour because I had done it previously. They said they would take me to my party, although they wondered how I only did half the tour the last time. A guide led me to the group who were in the iconic staircase section of the main prison.
I kind of wished I had seen the section where they held the uprising prisoners as I am much more familiar with that cast of characters than I was in 2014. But I did get to see Robert Emmet’s cell. Chances are good you might have seen Kilmainham Gaol in a film. The two that come right to mind are Sins of the Father and The Italian Job. I was surprised when I saw the Italian Job recently and immediately recognized the prison that was standing in for the British Prison. To be clear this is the 1960s Italian Job, not the remake.

I did however finally get to the Stonebreaker yard were the Sixteen leaders of the uprising were executed. Fifteen on one side of the yard and James Connolly on the other side. Connolly was so badly wounded in the Uprising, he couldn’t stand. Doctors only gave him a day or two. Still the British brought him in, tied him to a chair, and shot him. It’s hard to believe the time between the end of the Uprising and the executions was only about two weeks.

My big question for the guide was what about other bodies from executions buried in the yard. I had recently heard about some flagstones being moved and the curators finding remains underneath. The guide told me the Gaol has been around since 1798. Bodies were buried everywhere on the grounds.

Clocmacnoise could be The Queen and I’s favorite spot for photographs. The site holds nine ruined churches, two round towers and many High Crosses. Clonmacnois sits almost in the center of Ireland athwart two different passageways through Ireland. The first is the Shannon River. The second is the east west land route known as the Eskar Riada. Plenty of picture potential.

I was thinking we would stop in Athlone either before or after Clonmacnoise but I couldn’t really come up with any reason to go there again. It would have been nice to have lunch at Sean’s Bar, the oldest pub in Ireland dating from the 900s, only they don’t serve food and I don’t need any more photos of the exterior. Athlone was off the itinerary.

It’s about a ninety minute drive from Kilmainham along the M4. The most exciting thing along the way was the signpost for a town called Kilcock. Yes, I’m still twelve years old in my head. As Google Maps did in 2016, we were directed away from the main entrance of Clonmacnois and to this strange entrance. In 2016, it was disconcerting to arrive in this cul de sac, staring at a six foot tall stone wall with Google Maps telling us we had arrived at our destination. We finally noticed the steps to one side climbing up the wall to a small gate. Arriving at the back entrance the last time didn’t matter. We didn’t want to go to the visitor center. So, we popped over the back wall. I was kind of glad Google Maps took us here again so we could show the Queen Mum the secret entrance, but there was no way I was going to make the Queen Mum go up those uneven stone stairs. Plus, the High Crosses were in the visitor center. So, I backed out and headed to the regular entrance.

In the visitor center, they showed us a quick movie about the history of Clonmacnois and then we were free to inspect the two and a half High Crosses. They also have reproductions, right down to the weathering of the High Crosses out amongst the churches exactly where the High Crosses originally stood. The last two times The Queen and I visited, we pretty much had the place to ourselves. This time plenty of people walked the grounds with us. The Queen Mum had her fill of walking after the Kilmainham Gaol tour. She opted to find a bench. With the sun shining upon us, we probably could have spent hours walking the grounds but we didn’t want the Queen Mum to be bored out of her mind.

After a quick foray to Clonmacnoise Castle which is adjacent to the grounds, we headed off to find lunch and the next visitor center, the Battle of Aughrim. We never did find lunch but we found what would have been a great place to have lunch, Luker’s in Shannonbridge. The restaurant had a great view of the Shannonbridge and the Shannon. The place was closed for maintenance. As I dredge my mind, I don’t think we ever did stop for lunch. We did stop at the Aughrim Visitor Center. Just like the website advertised, they were closed. I wanted to visit the Aughrim Center because this area was where one of the three big battles of the Irish end of the Jacobites wars were held. The first one was the Battle of the Boyne, which William of Orange won. The second was the Battle of Aughrim which the Jacobite forces were winning until General Chalmont de Saint-Ruhe, who was leading what he thought would be a victory charge, took a cannonball to the head. Things fell apart for the Jacobite forces after that. Despite the Visitor Center being closed, there was a giant park that had been turned into a reproduction of the surrounding land to show how the battle was fought.

Next stop Galway and our Eyre Square Townhouse. My goal is always to get as close to the city as possible. I’ve erred in the past by taking hotels further from the city center and you spend too much time getting to the city rather than being in the city. Eyre Square Townhouse was a stone’s throw from the actual Eyre Square, which is the heart of Galway.

Eyre Square Townhouse was a pain to get to. Galway near the center is comprised of tiny streets based loosely on the medieval street pattern. There was no parking at the Townhouse either. Street parking was full. I did an emergency parking in a handicap spot to unload the bags. I dumped all the bags in front of the building marked Eyre Square Townhouse only to find out as we checked in that our actual building was across the street. And just to make the Queen Mum cry, there was a long flight of stairs to get to our room.

This wasn’t a traditional B&B, it was more like a rental apartment where we had two bedrooms and a large kitchen dining area. But we were right above, according to the guides, one of the best places to have breakfast in Galway, the Revive Cafe. As we checked in with our lovely hostess who was on her second day on the job, she informed us the Revive Cafe was closed for repairs. I am batting a million.

I parked the car at the Dyke Road Car park which was about an eight minute walk from the Townhouse. The car park was part of a shopping mall. I had the feeling upon leaving the car for the walk back to the Townhouse, I would never see the car again. Or if I did see the car again, it would not be in the shape I left it.

For dinner, I wanted to go to a pizza joint that had been voted Best Pizza in Ireland, Dough Bros. This rise in pizza places in Ireland makes me mad every time I think about it. The only place to get pizza in Limerick was from a chain of just horrible pizza purveyors called Pizza Land. I ate there once and never again. Towards the end of my stay in Limerick in 1981, a restaurant called Islands opened behind where I worked at Burgerland. They had sort of a pizza but still not quite pizza. I was disappointed. Flash forward to 2014, they served pizza at the Strand hotel in Limerick and it was pretty good. It was very close to pizza. Naturally, the next time I’m in the Strand, they had stopped carrying. But on the 2019 trip, plenty of good pizzas. For 2023, pizza joints are everywhere. It seems like the entire country went to Naples to learn how to make Italian style pizza. One of my many missions was to check out these ‘Best in Ireland’ pizza places.

Upon leaving the Eyre Square Townhouse with The Queen, rain started falling. Rain had finally found us. It was fun walking through town and actually recognizing places from previous visits. For instances, walking by the flags of the fourteen main merchant families displayed on the side of Eyre Square is where all the executions used to be held outside the Galway city walls. Galway translates into city of the foreigners or strangers. Currently, one of the best places to see the old city walls is in the Corbertt Court Shopping center next to the Dunnes Store. We didn’t stop in there tonight.

Because everything is about me, I chose the path to The Dough Bros to lead us by Lynch’s Castle. The Dough Bros lies on the opposite side of the block from Lynch’s Castle. After ordering our pizza in the packed place, we had time to kill. Might as well hit all the Lynch spots while we were out. We headed to St. Nicholas’ Church to see the historic Lynch window where the notion that Lynching meant hanging came to be. The Lynch Window makes up part of the wall surrounding St. Nicholas’ Church. Walking inside the wall on previous visit, I saw just how fake that wall is because on the inside it’s just smooth concrete. On the street side, the wall looks to be made of brooks. Since we circled the block, we came by Lynch’s castle one more time. I did another recreation photo of one I took of my father standing in front of the castle in 1981. At that time, cars could still drive in front of the building. Now, the medieval quarter of Galway where Lynch Castle and The Dough Bros sits has been pedestrianized and cars are banned.

We took the pizzas back to the Townhouse and had a lovely dinner in the dining area. The garlic knots were very tasty and the pizza tasted like pizza. The meats are bit different from what you find in the USA, but they were edible.

The bedrooms were not en-suite and we shared a bathroom across the kitchen from the bedrooms. There was a built in nightlight in the overhead lamp that cast a wierd glow across the kitchen. I saw that light many times.

[Greg]

May 5 Galway

What better way to wake up and get started on your Galway adventures than to find out that at some time during the night my iPhone 14 Pro had decided to become an inert piece of aluminum and glass. Good times. I immediately tried a hard reboot to no effect. My phone was still a brick. It’s not like the phone was important or anything. It’s not like all our travel arrangements were locked in the phone included hotel reservations and maps to our destinations. No problemh.

The Queen found a place in the mall that did iPhone repairs called zRepair in the Corbett Court Shopping Center. They didn’t open until Nine and I was up at Five, so I did the only logical thing. I headed out for a walk. Since my iPhone camera was now gone and, heaven forbid, I should head out on a walk without taking photos, I brought along my GoPro in case there were any photo opportunities.

The Blackrock Diving Board was my destination of choice, about a forty-five minute walk from the Townhouse in a south easterly direction. I was able to walk through the medieval quarter again and then over the Corrib River via the Wolfe Tone Bridge. Wolfe Tone namesakes are everywhere. After I crossed the bridge, I made my through a residential section of town. There weren’t many folks out at this hour except for a few joggers. Always confuses me to see joggers in Ireland.

One of the things I should also have brought with me was a raincoat. What was a little sprinkle when I left the Townhouse was now a good steady rain as I walked along the Strand through Salthill with the Atlantic Ocean on my left. On a sunny day, this would probably be an amazing walk. Not so much on a Friday under cold leaden skies. I don’t know how many times I thought I should turn and go home. My hoody was soaked through. But I could finally see my destination and maybe the rain would let up.

It’s miserable and yet I see a guy out there swimming in the waves. If this had been California in this kind of weather the beaches would be empty. But in Ireland if you wait for good weather to go to the beach, you’ll never go.

At Blackrock diving Platform, more people were in the water. They all looked really happy to be out there. As you make your way to the platform, you pass by a nice building with facilities for the swimmers. There were a lot of swimmers. They didn’t stay in the water long but in they went. It made me quite euphoric to see the Irish insanity on full display. Of course, the insanity was only from my vantage. The swimmers were all quite happy. One of the swimmers spotted the strange Yank in their midst and asked me if I was going to go in. I said the water looked like it was freezing. The Questioner just shrugged and said it was much colder at Christmas.

Because my luck is my luck, the entry to the diving platform had been closed the day before for maintenance. I had to be satisfied with taking photos from behind the railing with my little GoPro.

While at Blackrock, the rain had let up so the walk back to Galway wasn’t quite as miserable. I marveled that on the sidewalk there were still markings telling people to keep their distance because of Covid. I also found a different path to go home rather than through the houses there was a path that followed along the ocean and put me along the Claddagh Quay. The Claddagh area used to be an area of thatched cottages and gave it’s name to the famous ring just across the Wolf Tone Bridge.

Because I’m me, I did a hyperlapse through the Medieval Quarter of town. A hyperlapse is a timelapse where the person moves. In this case, I set my Gopro to take a photo every second as I walked through town.

Since we weren’t staying in a B&B, we had to go find breakfast. The place that was open earliest was at The Hyde Hotel just off Eyre Square on Forster Street. We walked down from the Townhouse since it was a short walk on the opposite side of Eyre Square. It was a short walk for some. Breakfast was really good and the restaurant had really beautiful decor. Our little room had tons of flowers attached to the roof. I would have taken more pictures but dead phone.

Since it wasn’t that far from Hyde to zRepair in the Corbert Court, just on the opposite side of Eyre Square. I have to stop saying it wasn’t that far. By the time we arrived, The Queen Mum was desperate for a place to sit down. She ended up on a coin operated kid’s ride. She rested there for a few minutes to get her wind back before we walked over to the Dunnes store where we could see the original Galway City walls.

The Queen mum has an medical inhaler that she takes to help with her breathing. She is supposed to only use it five times a day to help her. The Queen Mum had already used it four times at this stage. That can’t be good. The Queen Mum rested while I went into zRepair.

I explained to the nice man behind the counter the problem with the phone and what I had done to repair the phone. My repair consisted of the hard reboot. The nice man walked back to his repair station at the rear of the store. He fiddled for a second and then he came back to me. The nice man handed me the phone and said all better. The phone now worked. I asked him what arcane magic he worked to get the phone started. Hard Reboot. I did the Hard Reboot. Yeah, but obviously I didn’t do the hard reboot properly. The Hard Reboot takes a skilled technicians hands. I thanked him and then thanked him again when he said there was no charge for him pressing three buttons on my phone.

The first thing I noticed on the phone were five missed calls from Brian Nolan Galway Tour guide. I had called him the previous night about taking a tour. He called back this morning when the phone was not operational. I called him and told him the situation with my phone. He told me that was a likely story. But he did say he could do a tour that morning. We would meet him in Eyre Square near the Galway Hooker sculpture.

First we escorted the Queen Mum back to Eyre Square Townhouse. After the three walks ending with the climb up the stairs to our rooms, the Queen Mum was done. She would not be joining us for the tour.

The Queen and I met Brian at the Quincentennial fountain. According to Mr. Nolan, the fountain hasn’t worked for years. We were joined by only one other couple. I’m all for small tours. After awhile, I did feel bad for them because I might have monopolized Brian’s time during the tour. Our first stop on the tour was the Kennedy Memorial. JFK stopped in Ireland for four days on the way back from his trip to Germany where he made his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in Berlin. Brian also gave us a small aside about the Browne Doorway that stands at the edge of the square. The Browne doorway came from a manor house on Abbeygate street that was being torn down. Brian felt that something should be done about the doorway besides rotting away here in the square.

Our next stop was our already visited Corbett Shopping Center. I think I short circuited Brian’s speech by saying we had already been in there this morning. But I can never get too much of looking at the oddity of those stone walls in the shopping mall.

On the way out of the mall we stopped at Lynch’s castle where I learned more about the infamous hanging. To recap, Mayor hangs son after son commits murder. One of the notes I had never heard about the story, was the murdered man was actually a spaniard who’s life was kept in surety for the good actions of the Spanish traders. He was the son of a rich Spanish merchant living with the Lynch family and was making a move on the Lynch son’s girlfriend. If the Mayor were to let his son go unpunished, many Irish sons who were in Spain under the same conditions as hostages could forfeit their lives. The son had to go.

It’s very nice having a castle with your name on it, even if the castle looks more like a manor house. But I did learn that the Lynch family, like many of rich Galway merchant houses, owned the entire block and the Lynch castle was the key building in defense of the block. All the other building on the block all centered on a courtyard and the buildings acted as defense to that courtyard. I think this is the first time I actually went into Lynch Castle. The bank, which currently owns the building, left one room in the old style of floor to ceiling panelling with plenty of wainscot and wood trim. Need to go back and spend more time in there.

On of the unique to Galway features are marriage crests. When two people wed, they would combine the two individual family crests into one double crest and mount it to the Newlweds house. The double crest is only found in Galway. More importantly, Brian showed us one for the Lynch family and Blake Family marriage. The crest is kind of hidden down an alley on the way to parole services. When the plaque was originally found while doing remodel work, one of the workers was just ready to mix the crest in with a pile of debris for the foundation. Cooler heads prevailed and they remounted the plaque to the wall. We got to see the plaque because the usually locked door was open. Tourist Immunity!

From there it was off to Kirwan’s Lane. Up until a few years ago, Kirwan’s Lane was a mess. But one of the local artisans, Judy Greene, a potter, decided to do something about it. The whole lane has been refurbished to look like the streets used to look in Galway. More importantly, they built one of the buildings to house the Browne Doorway from Eyre Square. Since the Browne Doorway is still in Eyre Square somebody had to have said no. But you can see the build out on the building where the doorway was to reside.

At the end of Kirwan’s Lane, we turned on to Quay Street where we saw the Blake Merchant House. The Blake’s were the family that married with the Lynch Family back on that marriage plaque near Lynch castle. There were only the Fourteen Tribes. They all had to be married to each other. The Fourteen Tribes lost their power after the Cromwell Invasion and the rules were changed to favor protestants. The Fourteen Tribes were Catholic.

Brian Nolan gave us a massive tip at the end of the tour. He said there was an informal Traditional Music (Trad) session held that day at Monroes Pub at 4:30 that afternoon. The answer to my prayers. I want to go to Trad sessions. I fall asleep before they usually start. Brian even told us the best place to sit to hear the session. It was like a Christmas miracle in May.

The rain finally let up when we departed the tour. Not that it had been raining hard, just enough to tell you you were in Ireland. We stopped in St. Nicholas’ Collegiate Church for a quick tour and more pictures at the Lynch window. I really need to get a guide book from the Church because there are a million weird things in the church most importantly of all is the Lynch Transept where there are at least three Lynch tombs including the one for Mayor James Lynch who hung his son. One area has trader marks carved into the floor from different professions. There is a crusader buried in there. There is plaque to Jane Eyre but a different Jane Eyre. Ms. Eyre left money to give bread to the poor. Christopher Columbus (That Christopher Columbus) may have prayer in this Church before setting off on his voyages. St. Nicholas of Myra was the patron saint of sailors. Most of the early memorials have been defaced by Cromwells soldiers who took Galway in 1652. Soldiers supposedly used the Church as a stable for their horses. We did just a quick visit thinking to come back later with the Queen Mum.

I decided to track down some of my teachers from the Crescent College Comprehensive, the school I attended in Limerick, while on the trip. One of whom, Father Liam O’Connell, now lived in Galway. Best of all, he was on Facebook. I messaged him I was going to be in town and asked if he would like to get together. He said yes. Father O’Connell coached my Rugby team as the Crescent. Most of the students referred to him as Father Moses because of his almost biblical beard. I can’t remember if we ever said it to his face.

Moses invited us to lunch at Hooked on Henry Street over on the other side of the Corrib River. Hooked opened at 1 but we should make plans to be there before then. They were very popular and did not take reservations. Since it was a bit of a hike, we opted to take a cab to the restaurant. The first thing the driver said to us when we got in was the restaurant was within walking distance. Not for all of us.

Hooked was popular but not as popular as advertised. There were four other groups waiting by the time we were let in the front door. But as we dined the place did fill up. Hooked serves seafood and only seafood. The Queen and The Queen Mum were in heaven. Me, not so much. Usually there are one or two items that aren’t seafood in a seafood restaurant. Hooked did not give in. Nothing but Seafood. I ended up with Fish and Chips. Boy, those chips went a long way. The fish wasn’t too bad for me. Raves from the other three diners.

Since the Queen Mum had yet to see anything of Galway and we had about an hour before the Trad session started at Monroe’s, I suggested we walk over to the Medieval Quarter and see some stuff. I particularly wanted to get her to see St. Nicholas Church. The Queen Mum felt good about the journey. Moses led us on a lovely walk besides one of the canals that used to drive the mills along the Corrib River. We made several stops along the way including on my friend The Wolfe Tone Bridge. One of the other key destinations was Thomas Dillon’s Claddagh Ring shop. Thomas Dillon’s on Quay Street is where the Claddagh Ring was invented. The Queen has bought two rings from the shop and had them resize one of them.

From there, we walked to the next block and St. Nicholas’s Church. Because of the hour, St. Nicholas’s Church was closed. Which worked on sort of. The Queen Mum was exhausted, desperate for a spot to sit down. I went off to find a taxi to get us back to Monroe’s. I watched for about ten minutes as Taxi after Taxi would come up bridge street to the roundabout and then go back down bridge street. I opted to call for a cab to come find us. The dispatcher told me the cab would be there in fifteen minutes.

By this time the skies had cleared and was fully of puffy white clouds. The day had turned gorgeous. The Streets were packed. I photographed a wedding procession coming up Quay street. A great day to be in town.

While I waited for the cab, I walked down to Bridge Street to find out what was going on with all these cabs not coming up towards us. The reason was simple as I soon spotted it. There was a taxi rank there with a line of Taxis waiting for fares. I went and told the Queen and the Queen Mum that were just going to get one of those cabs rather than waiting. When we got in the Taxi and I told the driver our destination, the first thing he said was “It’s within walking distance”. I said not for everyone. The driver, who seemed to be from the Caribbean from his accent said they have to tell fares how close things are otherwise they get angry when they realize how close the destinations are. I received several messages from the Taxi I called wondering where I was.

We got Monroe’s on Upper Fairhill Road nice and early. Using another tip from Brian Nolan, we sat at a raised table right next to where the band was going to play. Okay. We got there too early and the sun was shining so I told my two companions I was going for a little stroll to do some picture taking. The best picture I took was in the bathroom for an upcoming performance by a band called Craic Sabbath.

Ten musicians took over the booth in the corner of the bar. A window next to the booth opened on to the street so pedestrians on the sidewalk could hear the players. The only disconcerting note was above the musicians booth was the large screen TV tuned to some golf match. In the group where pipers, drummers, fiddle players, a squeeze box and a banjo. I’ll be honest. A little bit of Trad session goes a long way for me. The tunes starts to sound the same to me. Heresy! I really wish I was the kind of person who could sit in a pub all night listening to the music, but that’s not going to happen. I don’t drink and I’d already polished off my order of chips. We left after a half hour. The ladies took a taxi back to the Eyre Square Townhouse while I walked back. I needed to take a picture of Sally Long’s Pub. The pub has murals of rock stars on the outside wall.

I had to do a quick walk to the car park to buy another parking pass for the Sportage. I was pleasantly surprised to find the car was still there. I did move the car to be closer to other cars as well. My only concern when buying the ticket was the ticket showed the expiration time as the current time rather than the next day. I figured it would all work out.

For dinner, I walked down to the Pizza Factory Restaurant. The menu was pretty simple. You pick a type of sauce. You pick a type of pasta. They make it. You take it home. And yet the woman in front of me in line at the restaurant couldn’t quite grasp the concept despite the fact there was a giant chalk board next to the register that listed all the sauces and all the pastas. It took this poor woman about ten minutes to come up with her order which I think turned out to be two things. I tried to be clear and concise when I had my turn to order. The food was really good, but as usual there was way too much. The Queen Mum continues to eat like a bird. I could have ordered one portion of pasta for the Queen Mum and her daughter and there probably still would have been pasta left over. The garlic bread was probably too much.

After dinner it was off to bed. We packed up a little since we were off to Cong and Clifden in the morning.

[Greg]

May 6 Cong - Clifden

I was happy to find my car still unscathed after another over night in the Dyke Road Parking Lot. I was even happier to find a parking spot in front of the townhouse. There was a loading zone right there, but a truck had decided the night before that was going to be his spot. We started early because there were a lot of pit stops on our itinerary. I decided we might as well have breakfast on the road since there weren’t any breakfast places open this early in the morning. By early, I mean before 8. A lifetime of getting up at 4 am has skewed my sense of what early means.

Today would be The Quiet Man tour, hitting stops important to the making of the film The Quiet Man. Well, doing The Quiet Man stops and seeing the Connemara country side of County Galway.

Our first stop was Ballyglunin, home of the Castletown Train Station. There is no such place as Castletown except in the world of The Quiet Man. Actual rail service closed at the station in 1976. In the 2000s, locals from Ballyglunin decided to refurbish the station to make it look like it did in 1951 when filming took place here. They did a good job. The station does look like it did in the movie. They major exception being the bridge which crossed over the train and the tracks. We took pictures. We walked around. The Queen Mum opted to stay in the car.

For breakfast, I drove us to Tuam to dine at the luxurious The West Wing restaurant. I guess they decided to go with West Wing because the building is white and there is a huge semi-circular room on the front of the building. There are even some presidential themed rooms in the restaurant. But once we got past the name, it was just a restaurant that served a good full Irish. Fun fact that I was embarassed to learn later was the name of the town, Tuam, isn’t pronounced Twam, like I thought, but rather Tomb. A friend asked me what I was doing in Tuam and I had no idea what town he referenced. Tuam. Pronounced like Tomb.

As usual, I planned too many stops in a short span of time. This knowledge did not lead me to skip going to see Ross Errily Friary. Ross Errily is probably my favorite ruin after Quin in Clare. Most people don’t know about it and there is nothing around it to spoil the views. That being said, when we showed up, there was a giant tour bus with a group of French tourists running about the place. Fortunately, they must have been on a tight schedule as they quickly departed. I’m just glad I didn’t meet the bus on the single lane, grass center line road that leads to Ross Errilly.

The other fun thing for me and my narcissism is that there are a ton of Lynch tombs in plaques all over Ross Errily, including those double family crests. At one point I thought I spotted the funereal plaque that matched the Lynch-Baker wedding plaque from Galway. But I had the names wrong. There were still two Lynch double plaques that I spotted. Outside the walls, stands a giant Lynch mausoleum which is always worth a picture. The Queen and I agreed we could have spent a lot longer prowling the grounds. There is always something new to find, like a dog with a noose around it’s neck on one of the memorials.

Cong is where the film crew showed up in June of 1951 to film The Quiet Man with Cong playing the role of the town of Innisfree. This would be my third time on the tour. I first went with the nephew and my father in 2009. I took The Queen on the tour in 2016. Now it was The Queen Mum’s turn. Remarkably little in the town has changed since 1951. All of the key buildings are still there from Cohan’s Pub to Reverend Playfair’s House. The big difference would be the paving on all the streets and the fact that the sheep fields have become the Ashford Castle Golf Course.

We had some time before the tour started so I went off exploring. I noticed the town was also packed with locals, not just filthy tourists. Today was the day for a lot of first communions. I was hoping to get into the catholic church to see the font from the patty fingers scene but there were a few too many people in the church so I departed. I wanted to walk along the river and take some photos of places I had first seen back in 1980 when I stayed at Ashford Castle. When I came back in 2009 with the nephew and my father to do the Cong tour, I was surprised to see how close the town was to the Castle and that if I had just gone a few short steps beyond the Monk’s Fishing House in 1980, I would have been in Cong. Now, I know the way so I made my way through Cong Abbey and over the bridge next to the Monk’s Fishing Hut. The hut sits in the river with a hole in the floor through which the monks could fish. Or maybe just hide from the Abbey. The whole time I walked along the river, I could hear gunshots from what I guess was Ashford Castle. I think they were doing Skeet shooting. Or maybe hunting peasants in the woods. I’d love to stay in the Castle again, because I remember it as being beautiful but I would have to mortgage the house or sell a kidney to afford it.

Further along the river path, I spotted the foundations for the fishing bridge across the river. When I first came here, I photographed a man fishing from the bridge. The next time I saw the bridge in 2009 all the planking from the bridge was gone. All you could see were the metal struts. This time there was nothing.

I figured I had enough time to go see the Ashford Castle grounds so I continued up the path. There was one new structure there. A small guard shack a little bigger than a old London phone booth now stood next to the path. As I approached, a young man in his Ashford castle vest stepped out and asked if I was a guest of the hotel. I said no. He said he couldn’t let me on the grounds then. How very sad. You used to be able to walk all over the grounds which are beautiful. Not any more.

Once back at the bridge and The Monk’s Fishing House, I found the Queen and The Queen Mum watching a man play fetch with his Irish Terrier. The man would throw the stick into the river. The dog would race across the bridge to the opposite bank and then dive into the river to retrieve the stick. The dog had a spot where he could climb up the bank, which he did, and then drop the stick near his Man. And repeat. The dog look exhausted. The man throwing the stick look exhausted. The man mentioned his dog would do this 30 or 40 times before quitting.

Barry was to be our tour guide for the Quiet Man tour. I’m pretty sure he started the tour but the Queen and I had somebody different for the tour when we did it in 2016 and it wasn’t quite as good. Granted, as we embarked on my third Quiet Man tour, I felt I could almost give the tour myself. What I couldn’t do was be Barry. Barry made the tour feel fresh, almost as if this was the first time he gave the tour. He would also tell stories about the town that were funny. He would give stories about the locals. Many of the stories he would preface with, “You don’t mind if I swear do you?” A tour full of charm.

Our first stop was the dying man’s house which is just around the corner from the Quiet Man Museum. I had promised the Queen Mum Cong was flat. Naturally the road up the from the dying man’s house was uphill. It seemed to me that the stop at the dying man’s house used to be a bit longer but Barry had a couple of stories to tell and dying man house information fell by the way side. No great loss. Fun fact: the dying man, Dan Tobin was played by director John Ford’s older brother, Tobin At the intersection of Riverview St and Main street, we stopped for some quick stories about the local butcher before heading down Main Street to Pat Cohan’s Pub.

The Queen Mum got a chance to sit in front of Pat Cohan’s because during the years they have picnic tables in front of Cohan’s now. The picnic tables weren’t there when I did the tour in 2009 because at that time Cohan’s wasn’t a pub. It had never been a pub, even when they did the filming. Only recently had someone decided people might want to visit the pub and drink there. Although it is more gastropub than traditional Irish pub. Barry got to tell us how the interior of the pub was on a soundstage in Los Angeles and the punch was the longest punch in history since it started in Los Angeles and ended on the streets of Cong.

The next stop was another recent addition, the John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara statue. We had been there for a few minutes with Barry telling a tale seemed to indicate that O’Hara and Wayne spent their time together cohabitating in one of the suites in Ashford Castle. O’Hara, in her autobiography, stated she knew about the story and thought the story reprehensible. Both the O’Hara and Wayne were there with her family. O’Hara figure the rumor was spread by John Ford because that’s the kind of trouble he liked to cause. While Barry gave his spiel with the tour group in a semi-circle around the statue, at one point urging the Queen Mum to grab the bronze Wayne’s buttock, another tour group pulled up. There was some joking/not-joking ribaldry between the two guides. But then the other guide started to do his spiel right behind us. Members of that group wanted me to move so they could take a picture. I was having none of if. I remained stock still and ignored the several pushes on my arm to get my attention. Eventually, they thanked me sarcastically for moving and went on their way. I thought the polite thing for them to do would be to wait the minute until we were done and they could do their bit. But, no.

A few minutes walk down Cong Street took us St. Mary’s Church where the patty fingers in the holy water scene takes place, The font they used came from the Catholic church that we passed on the way to St. Mary’s. But St. Mary’s is a much prettier church. Barry got special permission for his daughter, a catholic, to wed in the protestant mini-cathedral. I took pictures of The Queen and The Queen Mum peeking around the gate as if they were Mary-Kate looking back at Sean Thornton.

On the way back to the Quiet Man Museum, we passed the house that belonged in the movie to the Reverend Playfair. Much of the ivy had been removed from the cottage and more was being removed as we walked by a the owner of the house. He was the grandson of the owner and they had been there since long before the filming. I talked to him for a few minutes about the house.

Back at the museum, we got to play dress up and reenact some of the scenes from the movie. The interior of the museum had been sent up to look like the White O’ Morn cottage where Sean Thornton lives. All the tour members pulled up chairs in front of the fireplace. I’d been down this road before so I knew what was coming. When we did this the last time, Barry choses about ten people to recreate the final scene of the movie. My nephew got to be Father Flanagan as played by Ward Bond. Then Barry pointed at me. Dammit. I try to avoid these things. I also decided to be a good sport because it must be a pain in the ass to get people to volunteer. Although being picked out of the crowd really isn’t volunteering. Barry asked if I had a wife and I pointed to the Queen sitting in front of me. I thought he would pick more people this time, but no, just The Queen and I. I got to put on some of Sean Thornton’s clothes. The Queen got to put on some of Mary-Kate Danagher’s clothes. I was instructed to get down on one knee and propose in front of the whole group. My knee protested mightily but I did. And I proposed using my best John Wayne accent, which drew loud laughs from the group. Were we done? No.

Our next stop on the humiliation tour was the bedroom. I was to pick up the Queen and toss her on the bed recreating that famous scene. My protesting knee gave way for a shoulder that can’t pick things up anymore. I had to do an awkward grab that wasn’t the best way to do that but I succeeded. Barry said a recent person chosen for the throwing task almost knocked out his bride because he threw her so hard she slammed into the stone wall next to the bed. Then I had to lie with The Queen in the bed while the rest of the tour group took pictures. I hope I will not be called on again to serve.

Because of our deep tourist credentials, we decided to dine at Pat Cohan’s gastro pub. One look at the menu told us to find other places to dine. It was all just too Chi-Chi. This didn’t stop us from buying Pat Cohan t-shirts, though. Got to have the t-shirt. We ended up at Ryan’s Hotel up the street. The food was much more in line with typical pub fare. And they had the best signs on the toilets. Always bring your phone to the loo.

My original plan was to spend the night in Cong to see the town when it was tourist free but I also wanted to see a place called Kylemore Abbey. There were places closer to Kylemore Abbey to stay than Cong so I made arrangements accordingly.

Perfect weather surrounded us we drove through the wilds of Connemara. I enjoyed the puffy white clubs while the Queen Mum and the Queen enjoyed the comfort of the inside of their eyelids. I stopped once for some pictures in a steep walled valley that didn’t disturb the sleeping beauties at all. The stop at the Killary Fjord did get the Queen out of the car. After that I practiced my passing skills as I had to maneuver around bicycle peloton that shared the road with us.

My first introduction to Kylemore Abbey was a quick stop for a picture from the road back in 1980. The Abbey sits next to a lake and always looks like it is poised for a postcard shot. On the second visit in 2009, the nephew and I actually toured the grounds but didn’t make it into the abbey itself. I probably should tour these big mansion houses but the tours always strike me as dull. On Kylemore 2023, the plan was to finally see the Victorian Walled garden.

Kylemore Abbey started life as Kylemore Castle built for Mitchell Henry, a wealthy London Doctor. Four years after the completion of 40,000 square foot country house, Mitchell Henry’s wife passed away and he spent less time there. The next tenant lost the house to pay off gambling debts. The Benedictine nuns took over in 1920, forced to flee from their chapter house in Ypres because of World War I.

The Queen Mum would not be joining us on this tour, her strength only allowed her to get to the edge of the parking lot. The Queen and I would be making a quick trip around the grounds, once again eschewing going into the Abbey in favor of touring the formal gardens. Since the Queen Mum was car bound in what was turning into a warmer day, our trip would be a quick. Naturally, we had to take selfies with the lake and the abbey as our backdrop. The clouds toyed with us by letting sunlight shine on the abbey and then blocking the sunlight before we could take the picture. After buying our tickets, we caught the bus for the mile journey to the Victorian walled garden. Any other day when we weren’t pressed for time, I would have walked.

After the bus dropped us off, of course we headed over to take pictures of the white horses. The horses did not know they were in the presence of the carrot lady, so they ignored us and wouldn’t pose for pictures especially when they rubbed their rears on the trees.

As far as gardens go, this was one of them. There used to be a far more extensive system of greenhouses where all sorts of exotic plants were grown but all that is left at this point are the foundations. One of the perks of being the head gardener for the gardens is you get to live in a beautiful cottage inside the walls of the walled garden. The Queen spent a lot of time identifying plants with her iNature app.

The bus only takes you to the garden, the tiny church is in the other side of the Abbey and was worth the visit. The tiny church is like a regular Irish protestant church, only about a quarter of the size. Mitchell Henry built it for his wife and the built the Mausoleum for this early departed wife nearby. The walk along the lake shore is lovely. It was late in the day so most of the people headed back to the parking lot. By the time we got to the tiny church only man dawdled outside the main entrance. We waited patiently for the man to move before my rude American kicked in and I asked him if he would get out of the way. After viewing the interior, only eight seats wide, we headed back to the carpark resisting the lure of a million photo taking opportunities. Once at the car, I drove us back the way we came to try for one more photo across the lake of the abbey. I had to do some screwy u-turn maneuvers to get into the spot but I did it. I could always claim photographic immunity. I think I was in this same spot back in 1980 when there was more parking and probably less traffic. Hard to say if going to the spot was worth it.

The traveling circus spent the night at Ben’s View guest house in Clifden about an hour away from the abbey. We had to suffer through more driving along beautiful country roads. I put on my guide hat, which is never far away, and pointed out the Ross League Manor hotel where I stayed on the 2009 trip and is one of my father’s favorite places to stay. I had never heard him mention it until he requested we stay there on the 2009 trip.

I had only been to Clifden once before and that was only to have lunch on our way to the Ross League Manor. I might have been here in 1980 as well but I have no memory of it. Clifden is a young town, only started in 1812 by John D’Arcy who owned about 17000 acres in the area. D’Arcy pretty bankrupted himself building Clifden. In 1907 Marconi built his wireless station just outside of Clifden in order to be able to broadcast to North America.

There is only one main street in Clifden and I still got lost trying to find Ben View Guesthouse. There is no Ben. Bens refers to the twelve mountain peaks that dot the landscape of Connemara, probably the most famous of which is Ben Bulbin, The Ben View is probably one of the oldest buildings in Clifden dating from the 19th Century. I was able to get a parking space just around the corner. After paying the parking fee, we went to check in. I asked how much the parking would be for the night at the machine to our host and he said there was no charge to park in Clifden on the weekend. The only weakness to our accommodations were the steep narrow stairs up to our room. The Queen Mum got the room right at the top of the stairs while I dragged our bags to the nice big room at the opposite end of the hall.

I asked our host for a nice place for dinner within walking distance. He suggested we dine at Off the Square, probably one of the best seafood restaurants in Clifden. If that didn’t work there were a bunch of other restaurants nearby including another one he recommended called the Marconi. Off the Square used to be On the Square but they changed their name when they moved premises away from the actual square. Sure enough, the restaurant was about a hundred feet from Ben View. The place appeared empty when we arrived. When I said I would like a table for three, the Maitre’d asked for my reservation. When I said I didn’t have one, she said they didn’t have any room for us. So many empty tables.

More walking. Upon leaving Off the Square, I noticed the Marconi was another hundred feet down the block. I hoped we didn’t spend the night running into reservation issues. The Marconi interior looked nicer than Off the Square with graphics on the walls above wood paneling and white linen table clothes. When I told this maitre’d we didn’t have a reservation, she said she would see what she could do. She came back and said they had a table for us but we only would have two and a half hours to eat before they kicked us out. I’m pretty sure we could fit a two and half hour dinner into our schedule.

Dinner at Marconi was the best meal we had on the trip. The service was great. The food was excellent and best of all, they gave us bonus food. The Queen Mum and I ordered the lamb shank which I would eat every night for the rest of life. And that was fine, but after the food was on the table, they brought out three more vegetable dishes including potatoes au gratin which I would I would eat for the rest of my life. Yes, we already had potatoes with our meals but obviously Marconi didn’t think we had enough potatoes. I stand with them in this assertion. It was such a great night. I’m so happy Off the Square kicked us to the curb.

After too much food, we hobbled back to the hotel. One more ugly climb up the stairs for the Queen Mum and we were in for the night.