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.

So, the blog is not retired! Mer’s dad, Dale, went into the hospital in late March, and he was in the hospital for six weeks over two months. He is fine and back home and doing pretty well, but it did interrupt ye olde blogging for me. Here is a quick summary of what happened during the rest of March:

Friday, March 21 – dinner with colleague Matt and his wife Lizzie at Maggiano’s up near Legacy Village.

Sunday, March 23rd – former students and adopted “daughters” Katie and Sarah came over to learn how to make whoopie pies. We found out Dale had gone into the hospital.

The rest of the month was more or less about seeing Dale in the hospital and having Mer’s mom, Carlene, stay with us for spring break.

Last Saturday was “my” day, and it was quite mellow, with a long run in the morning and then my taking a nap while Mer got groceries. We puttered around home until evening, when we headed to Cleveland; I’m glad we left early, because Cleveland has the main highway we usually take closed for construction, and the detour signs were unhelpfully spaced far apart. We did eventually get to Playhouse Square, but it was about 25 minutes later than we normally would have gotten there.

Playhouse Square is a complex of theaters, and the place was packed. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was playing in another theater, and it must have been quite the draw. We were there to see C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce as a play, and our theater was about 90% sold out. The play was being done by The Fellowship for the Performing Arts, the same group who did a great job of staging The Screwtape Letters. The Great Divorce, which is a fictional account of a bus ride from Hell to the gates of Heaven, seemed to me like a difficult book to stage, so I was looking forward to it.

The production was fantastic. Three actors played nineteen different roles, including all three at various times playing the narrator , who was portrayed as C.S. Lewis himself. Each actor made each character different with different styles of speaking, body language, and such. It was very well done. Many of the most difficult transitions in the play (like the bus ride) were done abstractly with projections and lighting. It worked well and did not seem showy to me.

The play ran about ninety minutes with no intermission, and I never got restless. Mer and I lucked into front row seats through a quirk of Ticketmaster – the service would not let people break up a grouping of three seats in the front row for some reason, but a service representative at Playhouse Square was quite happy to do so when I called in my order. Hooray for older technology! Anyway, the play paced itself well, and we had great seats. We both came away form the play quite impressed.

There was a short talk-back after the show from Max Maclean, the producer of the play. I also had a very brief chat with the guy who ran lights and projections for the show, so we got to find out a little bit about the behind the scenes. Max’s talk conveyed how difficult the process of staging was, as it sounds as if it took about two years and several test productions to get the play cut down to where it played well to audiences. Good stuff.

Last Friday was an entertainment double-header at CVCA – I had a Royal Fools improv show at 6:30, which was followed by the CVCA Talent Show at 8:00. This is the second year in a row we have teamed up with the Talent Show, and while it forces our improv show to be shorter (about an hour instead of about an hour and twenty minutes), I think it is worth it in getting to perform for the bigger crowd that comes early for the talent show; we usually play for 100-150 people, and we played to well over 200 last Friday.

I never remember shows very well afterwards – I am thinking a lot during shows about what needs to happen. I do know we did not “tank” any games we did, and the audience reaction was excellent. Allie Kirk, a CVCA alum, came back from Chicago just for the show, and she added much fun in that she can play improvisational piano, which opened up several musical games for us.

The talent show is a fundraiser for the CVCA service club, Diakonos. Every year, Diakonos students stay at CVCA during spring break, and they go out into the local community to serve at several locations around NE Ohio. The spring break crew is usually 30 or more students, so it costs some money to feed the group and for gas for transportation, and the talent show tends to be an excellent way to raise funds.

The talent was quite good this year. I believe this is the first year that the group held auditions, and it showed. While there was some variation in the quality of acts, there were no bad acts, and the competition in the top half of the field was quite tight. There were singing acts and guitar players, a couple of dance numbers, some piano players, a “Who’s on First?” reenactment, a very talented beat-boxer, a jump rope dancer, and more. Meredith was one of three judges, and she said it was quite difficult to sort out the winners.

After the talent show, which was over a little after 10:00, we headed over to Friday’s with our friend Dubbs for a light supper and dessert. It was a pretty nice way to end an evening of entertainment.

Last Thursday, Mer and I had our friend and colleague Brandon over for supper, which was a quick bite of homemade pizza. We then jumped in the car and headed up to the Hanna Theater in the Cleveland Playhouse complex in Cleveland. We were there to see the comedy/thriller Deathtrap, but we had the added bonus of being there on an evening where there was a pre-show talk with one of the five actors. Brandon is heavily involved in the (CVCA) Royal Theater, so he was eager to hear from a cast member, and both Mer and I enjoy that sort of thing, so we made a point to get there as close to 6:30 as we could to hear the talk (the show itself was at 7:30).

The talk was excellent. The actress was open and friendly, and we got front-row seats (we have never quite figured out why people avoid front seats). Mostly, the questions were asked by a member of the Hanna Theater staff, but some audience questions were asked as well. I remember we found out the Hanna teams with theaters in a couple different states, so this woman’s home theater is in Idaho, and Deathtrap will be playing there this summer. She had to try to learn a Dutch accent for her role, and she said it was quite difficult. She also said the rehearsal time was relatively short, so she tried to have her lines memorized by the time rehearsals started.

After the talk, we found our seats, and the play started at 7:30. The set was extensive and detailed. The entire play takes place in one large lodge-style room, so the set did not have to be mobile at all. The set was one large room, but had a hallway at the back, a staircase, a sliding glass door, giant barn-style doors, and lots of old weapons mounted on the walls as decor. The room serves as the writing room of a murder-thriller playwright, and he has had a multi-year drought from being able to write anything. He married rich, but still they are almost out of money when he gets a manuscript from a young playwright, and the play is excellent. The older playwright invites the younger one to come up to his house for the evening so they can edit the script, and he contemplates murdering the young man and stealing the script. What unfolds after that is an amazing series of twists and turns, with some humor sprinkled in along the way. I won’t ruin the ending, or even the middle of the first act. As I said, there were a ton of twists.

The acting was excellent, as I have come to expect from Great Lakes Theater. Our seats were quite good, although there really are no bad seats in the Hanna theater. We did not get home and to bed until about 11:00, but it was a fun evening out with a good friend, and so was quite worth getting a tad short-changed on sleep.