To make up for what was almost a sixteen-hour day yesterday, Mer had a mellow day planned for today. We got a later start, going out in the town to look for breakfast. I picked a restaurant based on the facts that it was serving breakfast and I knew it had internet access (our hostel’s internet connection is very poor, even when it is working). I needed to update my blog, and I’d promised a few folks that I would check my e-mail daily. Word to the the wise, though – when you order your very excellent three-egg omelets, check on the price when you enter the restaurant. Two omelets and two glasses of tap water came out to over thirty dollars. Ouch.

We finished up breakfast around 10:00, and after a brief stop in the room, we went to the town’s TI (Tourist Information center), which has a very small museum on the history of Kenmare. It was informative, telling about the town’s clan history and the founding of the town in the 1800s or so (it surprised me how late it was). The museum told about a few key figures, from hated town manager/agents to beloved priests and nuns, and it told of the rise and fall of the Kenmare lace trade. It had a panel or two on the Famine as well, and some of the measures taken to try to help local people. It only took about thirty minutes to see everything, but I enjoyed it.

We went back to the car and headed back toward the Killarney National Park, but before we got back to the Muckross House area, as I was expecting, we turned off at Kissane Sheep Farm. Mer wanted to see the demonstrations of sheep herding and sheep shearing. The farm was closed, but was going to have a demonstration at 1:00, which gave us a little over an hour to do something else.

Happily, that something else was to go see a waterfall, the Torc waterfall, near the Muckross House. I had seen signs to it when we were there on Tuesday, and I had dropped a subtle hint or two (or three). The waterfall was a short and very pretty walk from the parking lot, and we walked next to a stream the whole way, in the middle of a dense forest. The waterfall did not disappoint, and we spent about fifteen minutes just sitting next to the stream watching the water.

We headed back to the sheep farm, and this time they were open. We were the first people there, so we got to chat a little with the woman taking money, who is  the sheep dogs’ trainer, and she is from Germany. We also got to pet one of the farm cats. More people trickled in, and around 1:00 we were joined by a tour bus, and the demonstration was ready to go. We headed out to a platform that overlooked some astonishingly beautiful fields and grazing lands, and we were shown four different border collies doing their jobs.

It was amazing – the dogs responded to called-out commands, and they roamed all over the field and hills chasing and herding sheep. There were very fast, smart, and really effective at their jobs. They worked well as a team, and the handler never even had to move to get all the sheep gathered and in a pen.

We headed over to the barn, where we got to see a large, muscular man manhandle a sheep and shear its wool. He was able to shear the sheep in about three minutes, and the farmer said the shearer could do about three hundred sheep a day during busy season. The farm has about fifteen hundred adult sheep, and around a thousand lambs currently. Three of the lambs had been born within the last week, and they were awfully cute.

Having been impressed by one farm, we headed to several others in the form of the Muckross Traditional Farms, in the park near the Muckross House. This collection of three farmhouses and associated buildings preserves the look and traditional means of farming from about 1930, before electricity came to rural Ireland (the last parts of Ireland to get electricity got it in the 1970s).

The three farmhouses represented typical ones from a small farm (about twenty acres), a medium farm (about fifty acres), and a large farm (a hundred acres). Each farm had a woman in the house to explain how the farm ran, and they offered us bread that was made over the hearth in the house (it was quite good). The small farm was quite basic, with just two rooms, with the children sleeping in the main room and the parents sleeping in their own room. The medium farm added one room, a second bedroom for the children. The large farm was quite elaborate by comparison, with several rooms, including two dining rooms.

The farm had live animals, including two huge Clydesdale horses. There were a couple of kittens we saw (and we got to pet one), and we saw a four-day-old donkey who looked ready to be out in the pasture. There were puppies, and chickens, and turkeys, and even a peacock. All of this was surrounded by the mountains of the park, so it was a very pleasant walk as well as an education.

After we finished up the farm, around 4:30, Mer let me have my way. We headed back to the car, and started to head toward Kenmare, but I was distracted by a sign for “The Meeting of the Waters.” It was a fifteen-minute hike from the parking lot, and behind a tea room, but it was a beautiful and secluded spot where the three lakes all joined together in a narrow channel. We sat there for several minutes, and then wandered over to a small path that led to the double-arched bridge we had seen, called the Weir Bridge. The walk was a bit rough, but short, and the view from the bridge was looking over a lake at several mountains, so it was worthwhile.

We got back to the car and this time did head back to Kenmare. We parked the car and, after a brief stop in the room, went out to supper at a local bar and restaurant, Davitt’s. We got a table, and within a few minutes two musicians were setting up right in front of us. The man played the fiddle, and the woman played guitar and sang. We got to hear over thirty minutes of music while we ate, which, as they say here, was grand.

Finally, being somewhat addicted to dessert, we picked up some ice cream bars and candy bars from the grocery store, and we found a bench in a park on which to eat them. The evening was very fine, and it was a mellow way to end the first week of touring. I get to take over now, which should be interesting, since I have only some idea of what to do and where to go.

Life has many choices, and our hostel has helped out by removing one of them – the pesky shower controls. These have been replaced by a single “on” button that shoots out as-hot-as-you-can-stand-it water, for about forty-five seconds at a time, after which you can hit the button again. It certainly saves water, as my shower lasted all of about three minutes.

Mer had us up early and on the road by about 7:15 this morning. We headed west and north out onto the Ring of Kerry. It was early enough that we did not meet much traffic, and none of the later-in-the-day tour buses. We turned off the “main” road (if such a thing exists in Ireland), and we turned onto an often-one-lane road where the speed limit still fluctuated between 45 and 60 mph. Driving in Ireland often feels like a driving video game, but with sheep in the road sometimes.

We drove far out on to the Iveragh Peninsula (which is where people do the famous Ring of Kerry loop drive), on to the Ring of Skellig. This path is closed to tour buses, as the roads are far too narrow to accommodate them. If you meet an oncoming car, you have to pull over as far as you can into the bushes, and slow to a crawl or a stop until the other car gets past. It is interesting.

Mer directed us over an excitingly narrow pass that lacked drop-offs, but made up for it in blind, one-lane, hairpin turns. The views all along the drive were tremendous — fields, mountains, ocean, cute towns. After about two hours, we arrived at our destination, Portmagee, where we were supposed to catch a boat out to Skellig Michael, a jut of rock seven miles out in the ocean that housed a monastery from about 600 to about 1100. Sadly, one of the two boats going out was broken, so they asked us to come back at 2:00 (we were scheduled for 9:30). There was nothing we could do about it, so we agreed, but it meant back-tracking over the same road on which we had come in, to go back one hour to get to another sight Mer wanted to see.

But first, food. My breakfast of a granola bar and one roll had worn thin, so I insisted on getting some food. Mer knows that one of the best ways to keep me happy is to keep me fed, so she agreed. We overshot our destination by about a mile so I could go to a market and buy two chicken sandwiches and two candy bars for our very early lunch. We ate them on a covered patio overlooking the ocean.

After lunch, we headed down another horse-track-width road to Derrynane House, the home of Daniel O’Connell. Daniel O’Connell is known in Ireland as “The Liberator,” as he fought for the rights of Irish Catholics during the 1800s, using non-violence, through law and politics. His home is fairly simple, although a grateful Catholic community built him a chapel next to his house. The grounds are amazing and fairly wild, and are now a national park. To tour the house costs a little, but it was free on our Heritage Cards. The tour took about a half hour, which was followed by a twenty-minute film on the life of O’Connell. It was interesting. After the tour and film, we took a quick glance at the chapel (simple, but nice) and the fancy carriage O’Connell’s supporters gave him when he was released from a several-month prison term.

By then, we had to drive the hour back to the boat for the tour. Since Skellig Michael is seven miles out in the ocean, it took about an hour to get out there. The trip was lovely, with calm seas, lots of sun, and great views of all three peninsulas (Beara, Kerry, and Dingle).

Next to Skellig Michael is Little Skellig, a bird sanctuary. It roosts about sixty thousand gannets, which are large white sea birds. As you approach the island, it looks as if it is covered in snow.

Skellig Michael looms over the sea. It is about seven hundred feet high, with no vegetation other than grasses. The island seems to come straight out of the sea. We pulled in to a dock in a crack in the rock, and filed off the boat. We were there to hike up six hundred very steep steps that lacked any guard rails, and usually had a nasty fall off one side. Interesting. The prize was a collection of beehive huts and a few other primitive buildings at the very top.

I was worried my fear of heights would kick in, and Mer was worried she might trip. We made it about halfway up when Mer’s fear of tripping really began to worry her. A guide who lives on the island was coming down, and she told us the steps got steeper at the top, and there was a ledge that needed to be crossed. That worried me, so after talking things over with the guide, we all headed down, with the help of another guide. Mer was disappointed, but after fifteen or twenty minutes, we went back up the steps a little ways to a viewing point and sat there for ten minutes to enjoy the view (and the rather fun noise puffin birds make, which sounds like small chainsaws).

Back on the boat,  the captain took us halfway around the island to show us the lighthouses. Along the way, we saw two seals sunning themselves. We then were treated to a close-up view of Little Skellig and its sixty thousand inhabitants. We were not pooped on, but I got some secondary splatter on a near-miss.

The seas on the trip back were rougher, and we got wet from spray a few times. This reinforced to us that neither Mer nor I am fit to be a sailor. It was fun on one trip, but I think that would get old pretty quickly.

After the hour back on the boat, we still had the two-hour car drive, and it was already 6:30. So, we headed back over the same stretch of road for the fourth time. About seventy-five minutes into the drive, we did take a short detour to go see a well-preserved two-thousand-year-old ring fort that was made by piling stones on one another (no mortar). We ran into a charming older Irish couple in this remote fort, and chatted with them briefly. The fort was being besieged by a herd of cows and sheep, but they must have a treaty in place, because they let us pass.

We finally got back to Kenmare a little after 9:00, and we found a pub/restaurant still serving food around 9:30. That was happy, because shortly thereafter, the live music started. We tried a bunch of times to find live music in Kinsale, and only found it by accident at the Tap Tavern. In Kenmare, we have heard strains of music coming out of multiple places on both nights we have been here. Our musician played guitar and sang, and we got to hear him for over a half hour before we were done eating. It was very pleasant.

After supper, we found that the local ice cream shop was still open, so we tried it. My cookies and cream was only okay, but Mer got some unusual flavors that she liked (a banana-toffee mixture and a candy ice cream). Oh – if an Irish ice cream place puts fudge pieces on your ice cream, it means soft caramels. Just for your information.
We got back to the hostel at dark – the first time that has happened on this vacation, since evening comes so late here. Here is hoping things go a little more according to Mer’s plan tomorrow.

We bid our hostess Mary goodbye this morning. If anyone ever has reason to be in Kinsale, look up the Seagull – Mary was willing to do just about anything to make our stay nicer. As she would say – a grand woman.

We jumped in the car and headed northwest. The landscape change dramatically as soon as we left County Cork and entered Kerry – suddenly there were numerous mountains, and they were either covered in forest and heather or were rough stone and grasses. It was very beautiful. We headed on into Killarney National Park, to the Muckross House and gardens.

Oh, my, was that amazing. The house is very fine – a large mansion built in the 1860s, and donated to Ireland in the late 1920s. Much of the furniture is original, and the house is in excellent shape. What is most eye-catching is the setting – it overlooks Lake Muckross, which is surrounded by mountains covered in trees and purple heather. It was gorgeous.

We used our Heritage Cards we had bought back in Kinsale to book a tour of the house for free, but it was scheduled for about forty minutes later. So, we took the opportunity to roam the grounds and part of the gardens. I stumbled across a small, rough staircase made of rock, and we took it up into a rock garden, where the path was carved rock, and bedrock mixed in with the flowers and trees. It was very private-feeling, and there were numerous rock paths around. I loved it. After we explored the rock garden, we meandered down to Lake Muckross, where we took in the beauty as best we could. By then it was time for the tour.

The house tour lasted about an hour, and was well done. Our group was a bit large, consisting of about twenty-five people (including a family that had been with us on the Kinsale history walk yesterday). The main thing Mer and I took away was that we should never host a sovereign; it seems the owners of the house prepared for THREE years for a visit by Queen Victoria, a visit which lasted two nights. Sheesh. The house was elegant, and it was a good tour.

After the house tour, we had about twenty minutes before we had to head off to the hostel where we would be staying, so we explored more of the gardens, finding another small rock garden, a small stream garden, and a lower lawn garden, all of which were designed to make one feel solitude. The grounds are excellent (and free to the public).

We got back in the car and drove out to Kenmare, which is at the head of the Beara Peninsula. As we left the national park, we were treated to several dramatic views, which caused me to tell Mer that I thought I had just seen Michael with a flaming sword (i.e., guarding the entrance to the Garden of Eden). Amazing. The views from a pull-off named The Ladies View were breathtaking.

We checked in to our hostel (in a large double room with a private bath), and headed back out again after a short rest. We grabbed lunch from a market, and headed off. Mer told me we were doing a driving tour of the Beara Peninsula. I have to admit I was not thrilled; the roads were very narrow, and the drivers were driving very fast. Still, off we went. I’m very glad we did.

There were so many “Wow!” moments that the drive is a bit hard to describe. The drive went along a bay (oddly called the Kenmare River), then up and up and up over Healy Pass on a winding and almost one-lane road. Once over the pass, the road wound down to the sea again, to Bantry Bay, and then back up over another pass. The terrain changed over and over again, from small fields to ocean to almost alien-looking landscapes of rock and grass. It was the most spectacular drive I can ever remember making.

My favorite part was Healy Pass. We pulled off at one spot, and Mer commented on how quiet it was – there were no cars or even birdsongs (because there were no trees). We could hear the occasional bleat of a sheep (yes, there were free-roaming sheep in the road, just to make driving even more interesting). The pull-off looked out over several mountains and a lake far below. It was amazing.

We got a tad lost on the way back to Kenmare, which ended up being a fifteen-minute detour that was also pretty, as it took us down to the ocean. Once back in town, we parked the car and had supper at a local Italian restaurant (Bella Vita), followed by ice cream from the market, which was still open. We ate the ice cream back at the hostel, and then called it a night.

Mer had us up a bit earlier than we were the last few days, and after breakfast, I found out why. We headed down to the Tourist Information Center, where around 9:00 we met up with Barry, a local man who gives really entertaining and informative tours of Kinsale. We headed off with Barry and seven other Americans, which kept the narrative personal. Barry took us on a short walk to the harbor, and up the hill to where part of the old town wall is located, and then down to the main square where the harbor used to come up to, and finished off at the courthouse. Along the way, he told us about the Battle of Kinsale, and the British fortification of the town after they won that battle. He also said how the battle had ripple effects down to recent times – it seems that two of the main Irish leaders in the battle were from northern Ireland, and their land was confiscated and given over to Protestant Scottish settlers. This led more or less directly to Northern Ireland’s being separated from the Republic after the 1921 independence.

After the tour, we grabbed the bus back to Cork, to go pick up The Car. The car that gets driven on the wrong side of the road. By me. In a stick-shift. Yay. I did decide to pay the not-cheap option of getting full coverage on the car — I have seen too may Irish roads to be relaxed about insurance.

We drove out of Cork on the way east to Cobh (pronounced “cove”). A few thoughts about driving in Ireland – traffic laws are suggestions. Speed limits can be optional, no-passing zones can force you onto the shoulder to avoid oncoming passing traffic, parking in one lane of a two-lane road is common. Oh, yeah – and they drive on the wrong side of the road. Still, I managed, although the driving takes much of my attention, which makes me feel as if I’m nineteen again.

We parked in Cobh by Cobh’s huge and central cathedral. It seemed like a huge cathedral for a smaller town, but the town is one of the busiest ports in Ireland. I suspect there is some money in town. But we were there to see “The Titanic Experience” — an interactive museum about the Titanic.

The Titanic’s last port of call before it sailed across the Atlantic was Cobh (Queenstown at the time). The museum actually is situated in the old ticket office, and you can recognize the building in old pictures; 123 people boarded the Titanic at Cobh, and a handful got off there.

The museum was fairly small, but excellent. They had mockups of a third-class and a first-class room, and the third-class room was not too bad, actually. It had electric lights and running water, and food was included with the ticket (that was not common at the time). The first-class room (which cost $69,000 in today’s money) was not terribly big, but it did get the user access to the first-class amenities, like the dining and reading rooms.

The last room in the museum told all the things that went wrong on the trip, and it was amazing how they piled up — the ship was going near maximum speed at night through an area known to have icebergs. The radio operators did not work for the ship (they were private operators), and they did not pass on all the ice warnings they received. The binoculars were missing from the lookout tower, so the lookouts had to rely on their eyes only. A sudden ten-degree temperature drop (common around icebergs) was ignored. There were a few more things that I forget as well, but many things went wrong on the Titanic.

We grabbed a quick supermarket late lunch, and headed back to the car. Mer had me drive further east, to the small coastal town of Ardmore. Ardmore has an amazing beach (where I waded in the Atlantic), a path along a dramatic (but still safe) cliff area , a still-standing round tower, and a couple of holy wells. On top of that, the town was very well-kept and cute, and it had a tea room/coffee shop with excellent cupcakes.

We got to hear an older man playing guitar and singing, and he was very talented. I chatted with him for a few minutes, and he plays five instruments in all, and he leads tours of the cliff walk. Sadly, as it was after 5:00, he was done for the evening, but that was a fun encounter. Previously, on the beach, a nice man took our picture, and we chatted for a minute or two about how he was trying to train his puppy to like the ocean (the puppy was not so sure about it).

We did the cliff walk at a leisurely pace, and wandered around the church and round tower and cemetery when we got there. We still noticed the use of Scripture quotations on many of the headstones, although it was not quite so common on the headstones of the last thirty years (although it still happened on some of them). Sadly, the round tower is closed to the public, but it is in great shape. The church was in ruins with no roof, but the walls were still intact.

Our walk got us back to town and the car. The drive back to Kinsale was okay, although I stayed in the slow lane of any roads that had two lanes, just to be on the safe side. Back in Kinsale, we ate again at the Indian restaurant, Cobra Tandoori, as we had on Friday. It was still excellent. After supper, we checked e-mail and updated the blog by using the Tap Tavern’s internet access, chatted with a couple of Americans from the New York area, and then came home.

Mer seemed to glory in her returned luggage, with the enclosed makeup, going through her normal morning routine before we went down for breakfast a little after 8:30. We had another fine breakfast of (Irish) bacon and eggs and toast, and then we were on our touring way.

We started the day out by going to a Methodist church in town for Sunday services. As an aside, we were both amused when we told our Catholic hostess we were going to the Methodist church in town and she told us how to get to the Irish-Anglican church. I guess we Protestants are all the same.

We were welcomed warmly by a man named Billy and the pastor of the church, who comes down from Cork (eleven miles) every Sunday before going back to Cork for services there. We came to understand the congregation was small, but today it was tiny — there were Mer and I, another American, a woman from the Dublin area, the pastor, the organist (Valerie), and Billy. That was it. Still, it was a moving and meaningful service. The pastor spoke on the importance of thanksgiving and living a life of thanksgiving – of finding ways to thank God in all circumstances. After reading from Luke and Numbers (about the ten lepers whom Jesus healed, but only one of whom came back to thank Jesus, and about the Israelites complaining about the lack of meat when wandering in the wilderness), the pastor quoted libreally from a variety of texts from acorss the ages, and even from some of his original poetry. He never strayed far from the Biblical texts, though, and that helped keep the sermon focused.

The music of the church was interesting. We sang three hymns and one worpship song. We thought we knew all the songs, and we did, but two of the hymns (“For the Beauty of the Earth” and “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”) were both set to music we didn’t know.

We hung around after church chatting with Billy and Valerie, and they were kind enough to invite us out for coffee. We went to a nearby restaurant, and Bill bought us a scone and a hot chocolate, and we chatted for about forty-five minutes. Valerie is a cattle farmer with her husband, and Billy is a retired carpenter. They were lively and interesting people. When Billy found out Meredith was an English teacher, he quoted a Wordsworth poem from memory, a poem about a singing Scottish woman. It was lovely to start with, and was made even better by his accent.

Speaking of accents, we found out from Billy and Valerie that there is a variety of accents in Ireland. Billy commented he had to listen hard to the pastor because the pastor had a thick Dublin accent. When they found out we were going west later this week, Billy and Valerie both agreed that we would encounter stronger accents.

After coffee, we went back to the room to change clothes and head out. Mer wanted to go to the local castle, Desmond Castle, which is a small castle built in the 1500s. The castle has been a home, a jail, a workhouse, and a training building for troops. It is now restored, and the main floor is about the history of the castle. The second floor is dedicated to the prison area and to a wine museum, which also spreads to the third floor. Our guide in the main room explained that while Ireland makes almost no wine, after various defeats and after the famine, Irish who emigrated often went to France or Spain, where some of them became very successful vineyard owners. Later Irish did the same in America and Australia. The wine section was interesting to me when it was talking about history, but my mind glazed over when the information guides started to mention various types of wine.

After the castle, we went down the hill to Sundays, a local ice cream place with a fifties American Diner theme. The ice cream was a little small in portion compared to what we are used to, but it was good quality.

Since Kinsale is on an excellent harbor, it seemed good to tour it, so Mer got us on a one-hour boat tour of the harbor. We did not learn too much that was new (that we had not heard at Charles Fort or at the history museum), but it was a perfect day to be sitting on a boat. We were all the way in front, even in front of the helmsman. Our seat held four people, and we sat next to a charming couple on vacation from Dublin. They were kind enough to recommend several places to see in western Cork.

Back on land, Mer had us walk along the now very familiar low road, out toward Charles
Fort. We ended up in a pub called Bulman’s around 4:30, where Mer’s guidebook said there would be traditional Irish music. For once, the guidebook was wrong, and there was no traditional music today. We grabbed an order of fries (chips) and did take some time to sit across the street in the parking area, looking out over the bay and enjoying the early evening air.

We walked back to town, and after a brief stop in the room, we found a pizza place, where we got takeout (“take away”) pizza. We took it back to the B and B, where we ate it outside on a bench.

After supper, we popped down to the Tap Tavern, where our hostess said I could use the wifi internet to check on mail from home and to update the blog. That worked fine, and since it was early on a Sunday evening, the pub was quite quiet. We wrapped up our internet needs, made a trip to the bank to get some cash, and were back in our room before 9:00. The early evening and mellow pace of the day certainly qualifies as a day of rest on a Riordan tour of Europe.

Mer and I set an alarm for 8:00, which seemed to come pretty early. Our plan to counter jetlag works, but it does mean resisting sleep some, and I could have slept for a couple more hours this morning. We got up and got ready, and sat outside of our B and B while our hostess got our table ready. Breakfast was mercifully soft (scrambled eggs and bacon), so I did not have to worry too much about my broken tooth.

After breakfast, it was time to take care of that tooth. Mer and I got to the dentist’s office about 9:30, and we were seen before 10:00, which is pretty good for a drop-in appointment. The dentist was very nice, and he was able to put a temporary patch on my tooth. I am very grateful to modern medicine, and it never ceases to amaze me. I thought they might have to yank the tooth, but he put a putty in my mouth, molded it to shape, and then shone an ultraviolet light on the putty to make it harden. Magic. My tooth should be fine for vacation and until I can see my regular dentist.

After our exciting tour of the dentist’s office and a brief stop at our room in the B and B, we walked downtown to the local history museum. We had to wait a few minutes for it to open, but we spent them happily sitting on separate benches in a small square — Mer’s bench was in the sun, and mine was in the shade.

Once the local museum opened up, we were able to go in. We met a very kind and informative woman volunteer who specialized in Celtic history. She told us about the historical importance of Kinsale’s harbor (Ireland’s closest large harbor to mainland Europe), about a couple of battles fought in Kinsale, about the Lusitania being sunk off the coast, about the underground Catholic Irish culture when it was banned by England, and more. She was delightful. The museum is very eclectic, with everything from ice saws to pictures of famous Irish explorers to a “giant’s” boot (the man was 8′ 2″ tall) to artifacts from the Lusitania to pieces of the old town wall. It was fun in itself, but the guide to whom we talked several times really made the place for us.

Since it was about 12:00, we went to a local store to buy chicken wraps for lunch. Europe is expensive, especially food, so we skipped eating at a restaurant. Even so, lunch was eight euros (about eleven dollars). Happily, the food was very good.

After lunch, we took the low road path back out to Charles Fort, where we had been the night before, when it had been closed. Now, we wanted to tour the inside. I’m glad we did — while the buildings have no roofs or interior structures anymore because of a fire set in 1923 during the Irish Civil War, the stone exteriors all stand, so it is easy to see how the fort was laid out. It is huge — twelve acres are covered inside the fort, and the views of the bay are amazing. We caught a live guided tour at 2:00, and then we wandered the fort freely. I think we spent about three hours total in the fort, and learned about fort construction in the age of cannons, about how the enlisted men lived (not very well, with low pay and twelve men to a room), and about the weakness of Charles Fort (it commanded the sea in front of it, but there was ground higher than it behind it, so it was vulnerable to a land assault, which happened in the one battle the fort experienced).

Just outside the fort is a foot path that follows the coast for several miles. Mer did not feel we had time for that, but we did wander about a half mile down the path to admire the bay and Charles Fort. After a brief rest on a bench, we headed back toward town, but made a detour to go see a small church and its cemetery. We love to visit cemeteries when we travel, because they usually have great views. The views in this cemetery were blocked by trees, but the cemetery itself was interesting, with many worn gravestones, a nice gravel path, and its own kind of beauty. As this was the second cemetery to which we had been in Kinsale, we started to draw the conclusion that many headstones quote Scripture on the stone, and it’s touching to see what verse the family picked.

We then headed back into town, where we were delighted to discover that Mer’s missing bag was waiting for us at the B and B. She freshened up a bit, and then we went to Jim Edward’s pub for supper, where we had an excellent meal (great bread, and lasagna for me and soup for Mer).

Then, just to make sure we would sleep really really well, we took the two-mile walk out of town and around the bay to get to the older James Fort. The walk was very pretty, especially on the great weather day we had, which was good, as the actual fort was underwhelming when compared to Charles Fort. While James Fort is free, the stronghold of the fort was locked up, and the outer walls were earthen embankments. They gave great views, but were less intimidating than stone walls. We wandered down to the seaside tower that used to pull up a heavy chain to block ships when needed, and then we wandered the two miles back to town.

We were not quite done with the evening – after a short stop at the room, we went down to the pub owned by our hostess, which is called The Tap Tavern. They had live music, and we listened for about forty-five minutes, and we even danced twice, on very tired legs. That wrapped up our second day in Kinsale.

We headed off on our Ireland vacation on Thursday, but first I had an errand (or ear-rand) to do. Over the last few weeks, my left ear had blocked up so that I could not hear out of it. I tried to treat it myself, but that did not work. Then, I went to an urgent-care place, and they could not get the wax out, so they referred me to an ear specialist near our house. Happily, they could squeeze me in on Thursday, but not until 10:00. Since our flight left from Toronto at 7:20, I figured we had to leave no later than 11:00 to make the flight, and that was with only an extra hour or so built in for delays.

The nurse was very nice (was actually a 2003 CVCA graduate), and she used a micro-vacuum to suck the wax out of both ears. I could hear again, and got home at 10:45. Mer arrived immediately afterward from going to the bank to get some euros, and so we were off on our five-hour drive at 11:00, as planned.

Mer mentioned the car radio was acting weird – it was not keeping time and was resetting to the first track whenever the car was turned off. That reminded me that at the last oil change, the mechanic told me the battery was weak. That brought a little edge to the trip, to the point where I decided not to turn the car off at the first rest stop, and we went to the bathroom in shifts. While Mer was in the restroom, I ate some granola, as I was very hungry, having only eaten a bowl of cereal that day. After Mer got back in the car, I noticed I had some granola stuck in my teeth, but thought little of it. How wrong that was!

The rest of the drive went smoothly, with the exception of hitting construction-related traffic in the last five miles to get to the airport. It was a little tense taking twenty minutes to go a mile, but then we cleared the construction and got to the airport, where we once again had a bit of a hard time tracking down the remote economy lot. We found it on the second attempt, and got on the train to the airport itself, arriving around 4:45.

We breezed through getting our tickets, although Mer was a little nervous that her checked luggage got separated from mine, but decided not to say anything to the ticket agent. How wrong that was! Security was a bit more of a headache – about forty-five minutes to get through it and then get to the gate. That left us with about thirty minutes to grab something to eat, since we had not eaten any real food in about ten hours. I grabbed us a couple of sandwiches on hard hoagie rolls, and we ate them. I then went to the bathroom, and was trying to figure out what was stuck in my teeth. When I looked in the mirror, it turns out I did not have anything stuck in my teeth – I was missing a quarter of a tooth in a back molar. By what I can only ascribe to mercy from God, I was in no pain, but I was worried the tooth could shatter more or the filling in the tooth could let go, exposing a nerve and causing me intense pain. As such, I decided to talk little and eat nothing on the flight itself.

The flight went well, if a bit dully. I was too tired to read, although Mer plowed though two hundred pages of Oliver Twist, and my heart was not much into playing any computer games. I think I managed to get about thirty minutes of sleep. The flight arrived on time in Dublin around 7:00 am, and we were quite slow getting through customs; we did not arrive at the baggage carousel until almost 8:00. The baggage area was fairly barren, but we were among the last to get through customs, so I did not think too much on that. After a minute or so, my bag came out, so we grabbed that. We waited a couple more minutes for Mer’s bag, when the carousel stopped. The attendant said there were no more bags. Somehow, my bag made it, but Mer’s did not, on a direct flight. Sigh. The attendant was very nice, and took Mer’s information and gave her an overnight bag with some basic supplies in it. Something must have gone haywire in Toronto, because there were five people missing luggage off of our flight.

Once we took care of that, we took the bus from the airport to the train station in downtown Dublin. We sat on the upper part of a two-story bus, so we had good views of the city. I honestly did not recognize any of it – it has changed a bunch in the fourteen years since we were last there, and my memory has gotten foggier as well. We did strike up a fun conversation with a British man who was on a weekend jaunt for the “stag party” for his future son-in-law. The man had married an American woman he had met while they were in their respective navies, and we had a pleasant time learning about his family.

Once in the train station, we were fairly surprised at the cost of the tickets to Cork – over $75 each for a three-hour train ride. What is more, our credit cards did not work in the machine for some reason, so we had to find an ATM to get enough cash to pay for the tickets. The train ride was pretty and easy, and we were both glad we had done the train instead of getting a car, as we both briefly fell asleep at various points.

In Cork, we walked to a dentist office to see if they could look at my tooth, but they were closed (at 1:00 on a Friday, which was odd to me). So, we walked to the bus station for the last leg of our twenty-plus-hour journey, the bus to Kinsale, a very cute seaside town in the south of Ireland.

In Kinsale, we located two dentist offices. One told me they were done for the day (2:00 on Friday), but to come back at 9:30 Saturday morning. The other office was closed. So, here is hoping they can get something done for the tooth, even if it is pulling it.

Kinsale is a very pretty town. The layout is confusing, as it follows no grid pattern, but the town is very inviting to walk in. We checked in to our B and B, and then followed our usual jetlag-busting technique – sleep for two hours, then force ourselves to get up and get on the local schedule by eating supper and touring. I took a shower after our nap, and we went to an excellent Indian restaurant, Cobra Tandoori. That is probably the best Indian food I have ever had, helped out by my not having eaten anything in fourteen hours. I ordered soft food and chewed very carefully.

Mer and I then wandered the town a bit, checking out the waterfront, and then an Anglican church (the church predates the Anglican church, with some church on the site for fourteen hundred years). The cemetery in the church yard was picturesque and interesting.

After the church, Mer checked to see if a certain pub was having live music that night. They were not, so she turned the evening over to me. I had seen a town map with a walk out to a “ruined fort,” so that was the obvious thing to walk to. It looked to be just out of town, and the signs said 2 km (1.2 miles).

That was quite a 1.2-mile hike. The views of the town and harbor were amazing, but the hills were long and steep. As an added bonus, when we got to the fort, the interior of the fort was closed. I had assumed it would be open to the public at all times since I thought it was in ruins. It is not, and it is not. The still-intact fort was shut up, so we wandered the grounds and watched the sun starting to set (it does not set until well after 10:00, and we left the fort around 9:30).

Happily, we saw a map of the walk near the fort, and decided to try the walking path along the promisingly named Low Road. It turned out to be so. There was still one rough hill at the start, but once on the Low Road, we had an easy and very fast time of it, cutting the walking time by half and the effort by more than that. Mer, being a good sport, managed to laugh that off, especially since we’d now found an easier way to get to the fort if we want to go back during the open hours.

So, we wrapped up our first really long day. We are hoping that Mer’s luggage will find us tomorrow (Saturday) so that she does not have to go clothes shopping, and I am hoping my tooth can be dealt with so I do not have to worry about it during the vacation. That is a pretty full and eventful first day!

Here is the last of the summary version of our doings over the last ten weeks or so:

Sunday, June 1st – student grad party, then CVCA graduation at The Chapel in Green.

Monday, June 2nd – Dan and Gen (former Midd friend) and their two girls over – dinner at Aladdin’s in Hudson, then Silver Springs playground, then ice cream at Handel’s.

Tuesday, June 3rd – lunch with Mer, Dubbs, Eric, and Regina (colleagues) at Friday’s.

Wednesday, June 4th – Heather Dale house concert.

June 6th-8th – Junior High Academic Challenge Nationals in Chicago – dessert with Shannon, watched The Three Doctors, then supper with Shannon and Jo at the Red Lion. Saturday, we had two matches, then toured Millennium Park and the Mag Mile. Sunday, we had four matches (A team went 2-4 and B team went 1-5 in some close matches), then we drove to Mom and Marc’s in Michigan (arriving late, around 9:00).

Monday, June 9th – student grad party.

Tuesday, June 10th – supper with Aunt Mary at Taggart’s in Canton.

Happily, Dale got out of the hospital in early May, but then much of Mer’s free time was spent grading since the end of the school year was approaching, which left me trying to keep the house going (and not blogging). Here are the May doings:

Friday, May 2nd – Tarzan at CVCA with Mer.

Saturday, May 3rd – One Act Festival at Grove City College in Pennsylvania (saw two former students acting in the plays).

Friday, May 9th – CVCA Junior/Senior Banquet (“prom”) – prom was at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Cuyahoga Falls, and the After Party (informal fun and food) was at the Tallmadge Rec Center.

Saturday, May 10th – kite flying and food at church, then watched Her Majesty Mrs. Brown.

Monday, May 12th – Handel’s with Zach and Londa.

Friday, May 16th – Royal Fools improv show at CVCA – great crowd and funny show.

Saturday, May 17th – lunch at Quaker Steak and Lube with Steve and Jordan (and Mer), then packet pick-up for the Cleveland Marathon. Back at home, Mer and I watched Tom and Viv.

Sunday, May 18th – Cleveland Marathon with Jordan and LT (and saw other colleagues). We finished in 4:13:11 (9:39/mile).

Wednesday, May 21st – The art and portfolio show for graphic arts at CVCA, then pizza at Cici’s with some of the guys from my Connections group.

Friday, May 23rd – Dubbs over for supper after we bumped into her at Subway, watched Sense and Sensibility.

Saturday, May 24th – hiked Chagrin River Park, and then went to a graduation party for a student.

May 28th-30th – Senior Trip at Maumee Bay State Park – go-karting, Toledo Zoo, “senior share nigh,t” Cedar Point (which included lunch with the other chaperons at Famous Dave’s).

Saturday, May 31st – hiked Dix Park, then two graduation parties, then watched Ghostbusters with Mer.

April saw Dale go home from the hospital, but then return again at the end of the month with pneumonia. Here are the social outings we participated in during April:

Saturday, April 12th – went to a play version of Charlotte’s Web at the Players Guild in Canton.

Wednesday, April 16th – “Teachers’ Night Out” at Great Lakes Theater – a lecture, food and Shakespeare’s As You Like It for one very low price (I think it was $25).

Friday, April 18th – Easter Egg hunt in the dark at former students’ house (the Niehauses) with Dubbs and also some other former students and their parents.

Saturday, April 19th – two hikes – at Spencer Lake and Indian Hollow, then dessert in Oberlin. Watched cartoon Iron Giant and then ice cream at Handel’s.

Tuesday, April 22nd – colleague LT Newland over for dinner, then ice cream at Handel’s.

Wednesday, April 23rd – play version of Pride and Prejudice at Kent State, then cookies at Insomnia Cookies.

Weekend of the 26th – Mer went to a church women’s retreat, while I had Ken (our pastor) and Janet over to go to a Chinese buffet.