Liverpool

public art

I'm not sure about Liverpool. After the vivid greens of the Irish countryside and the carpets of purple heather on the hills in Wales... I'm not sure about Liverpool. Liverpool these days is nothing like its gritty past self; the docks have been cleaned up and are no longer the center of smuggling, slavery, and warehouses filled with tobacco (granted, that was in the 19th century, but still...). Liverpool was actually quite wealthy in the 19th century (due to smuggling, slavery, and tobacco, among other things), and it wasn't until the beginning of the 20th century that things got dicey-- it was hit hard by the Great Depression of the 1930s, it was heavily bombed during WWII, and in the 1970s, the shipping and manufacturing industries went into a sharp decline. Things started picking up in the 1990s and now Liverpool is considered one of the cultural capitals of Europe. I had a nice time yesterday and today; yesterday walking around the docks and the central shopping area; today taking the ferry across the Mersey River and going for a walk on the riverside promenade on the other side... but I still don't know about Liverpool.

I love it when buildings like this:

 

are across the street from buildings like this:

Aber Falls

Yesterday, as I was walking down from the hills, trying to stay on the trail, which sometimes was a path barely the width of my body with nowhere to go on either side because to the left was a stone wall and to the right was a huge thicket of stickery bushes, I finally came to a clearing near a small sheep farm, which was surrounded by meadows with a few houses in sight. I had no idea in which direction I was supposed to go to get to the town, although it was clear that I was getting close, so I wandered around the meadow for a few minutes, and then noticed that there was a woman hanging her washing in the back yard of one of the houses. As happened at every point (4 times) yesterday when I was out on those hills and not sure which way to turn, there was someone I could ask. I saw literally fewer than a dozen people while hiking for five hours yesterday, but half of those times when someone did cross my path, it was just at the right moment. I walked over and asked directions into the town which she very nicely gave, and then, noticing my American accent, she asked where I was from, and when I said Seattle, she told me that one of her friends who is Irish, just moved to Seattle! We ended up chatting for about 15 minutes - the people I have met on this trip have been so nice! Of course there were the folks whose homes I stayed in - Julie and Matt in Doolin were fantastic as were Con and Angela in Dingle; Here in Wales I'm with Hilary and her daughter Zoe, who have been so nice to me -- all the BnB folks have been great, but there was also Susan whom I met because I was sitting next to her on the bus into Dublin, she made sure I knew how to get where I was going once I got off the bus; there was the guy who was working as a caretaker at the church with the stained glass windows in Dingle, we talked about the high cost of college in the U.S. (random...); there was the German lady and her son whom I met at breakfast in Waterford, they shared their peanut butter with me; and yesterday there was Julie on the outskirts of Llanfairfechan who pointed me into town, has a friend in Seattle, and who during the course of our conversation, suggested I got to Aber Falls today, which is in a nearby village west of Penmaenmawr, so I took the bus there today and had another great walk.

After the falls, I took the bus to Conwy, which is east of Penmaenmawr, and is a medieval walled village; I walked around there for a while, had a cappuccino and some carrot cake, and took the bus back to Penmaenmawr. I definitely feel like I did a good job of exploring this bit of Welsh coastline, a place I ended up in for no other reason that it was a spot on the train line with what looked like a nice place to stay, and which put me between Dublin and Liverpool, where I'm headed tomorrow.

Fields of Purple Heather

Penmaenmawr

Prince would have loved it here, at least during at this time of year when the mountains (such as they are in Wales, hills, really) are literally covered in purple heather.

This morning, Hilary and I drove back to the same spot we went to last night, but this time we walked all the way around the hill together before she headed back to town while I continued on to what became an epic walk down the paths, through the pastures, by the sheep, past the stone circles, past more sheep, over another hill, down the road, behind the quarry, past MORE sheep, along-side the wild horses, down a crazy-narrow path, and 5 miles later, I walked into the town of Llanfairfechan (people around here say the names of towns as though they are saying "cat" -- I have no idea how to pronounce the name of that town even though I made Hilary repeat it several times; in the Welsh language, certain letter combos translate to certain sounds; it's a code I have not cracked). From Llanfairfechan I caught the bus back to Penmaenmawr; tomorrow, I'm going to Abergwyngregn. Seriously.

After my hill-walk, I dropped down into this village and caught a bus back to Pen. 

"The Sea Was Angry that Day, My Friends..."

George Costanza said that while describing how he came to pull a golf ball out of the blow-hole of a whale (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHF7EWCJqQI), and I thought it on the journey by ferry from Dublin to Wales. It was a little rough and I got a little queasy, but arrived in Holyhead, Wales not feeling too bad, but having missed my connecting train. I had to wait about half an hour for the next one, and then catch another one going back in the direction I had come, because the town I was going to is so small, you can't get there from here, if here is the train station at the ferry dock. So one train forward, another one (which was almost two hours late) back, and I finally arrived in Penmaenmawr (pron: "Pen-men-" then make a sound like an angry cat), on the Welsh coastline. It is a gorgeous little town, snug against a hillside and on the edge of the Atlantic. Hilary, whose house I'm staying in, met me at the train station and we walked up the hill less than ten minutes to her place. The entrance to the house is a little odd, it's nothing much to look at, but it's homey and comfy inside.

Hilary's house on the left

After I got settled, I went for a walk around the village - it's like something out of a fairy tale, or a romantic comedy, or a grisly British murder-mystery, if that's the way your mind works, with a few antique shops, a used bookstore, some restaurants, and a couple of boutiques. I walked through the town, all two blocks of it, along the main street and then saw a sign for a footpath that took me through a gate, through a pasture, past two ponies, and up behind some houses. After walking for a bit, I went back to the house and Hilary's daughter Zoe and her friend Emma who is visiting from England came in a couple hours later, and the four of us had dinner at the house and drove up to a path up on the hillside for a walk. It was stunning. It was just before twilight and the lights in the town below were twinkling, the coast was visible, and the purple heather which covered the hills looked like a carpet of amethysts. I'm here for three days and at first I wasn't sure what I was going to do with myself, but now I don't care. I could do that walk every day for three days and not get tired of it.

Penmaenmawr

Waterford to Clontarf (back to Dublin)

I really don't need one of these

I left Cobh yesterday afternoon and drove to Waterford, which is a medium-sized city about 100 miles southwest of Dublin; Waterford was my last stop before returning to Dublin today and ending my Irish adventure. Waterford seemed like a good place to break up the trip back to Dublin from Kenmare, and I also thought I'd like to take the tour of the Waterford Crystal factory. I got to Waterford around 4:30 in the afternoon, checked into my cute little room in a converted sack-dyeing factory, relaxed a bit, and then walked into the town center for some quite good Indian

Now I know where to get a giant crystal bear,
should the need arise.

food. This morning I got up and had a nice breakfast-chat with two other guests at the BnB, a mom and her university student son who were on holiday from Germany, and then walked to the House of Waterford Crystal; the next tour wasn't for another 50 minutes, so I walked around the showroom a bit which caused me to remember that I don't actually care for or about Waterford Crystal. The showroom is quite large and the things are pretty, they're just not my style, so I decided I didn't really need to know how they were made; I skipped the tour and made the two hour drive back to Dublin, which is where I am now, in a very nice, leafy neighborhood called Clontarf.

************

built in 1837, opened as a hotel in 1997

After I wrote all that, Clare, whose house I'm staying in, suggested I go to the Clontaft Castle Hotel for dinner, which is right in the neighborhood, and she offered to drive me there. Since I have been traveling all around southern Ireland for 10 days and not seen one castle (I could have, I just didn't see the point, although, no real point in a giant crystal bear either), that seemed like a good idea. I think a castle which has been turned into a luxury hotel makes a great point. So off we went; she dropped me at the entrance and I went into the Knights Bar for a steak sandwich and what I think was essentially a wine cooler. And just like with the Rolo-favored pudding, I don't care what you think, it was delicious. That's the second delicious fizzy pink drink I've had while traveling. Somehow drinking a local-brew pink wine cooler in Ireland (or the Bahamas) is less embarrassing than drinking a Seagrams at home.

And that's the end of the Ireland trip for me, I get on a ferry to Wales tomorrow morning. Here are some things I have learned in Ireland:

1. Most Irish people (there were a some exceptions, but very few) are extremely nice, friendly, and hospitable.

2. Driving on the left side of the road from the right side of the car, while unnatural and not the way God intended humans to drive, is do-able.
2a. Round-abouts are no big deal.
2b. Sometimes the GPS lady is just screwing with you.
2c. Keep left, keep left, keep left. 

3. The Irish countryside is spectacular; the cities... meh.
4. It's pretty easy to get just about anywhere if you're not in a hurry.

"Near, Far, Whereeeever You Are..."

The only problem with visiting the Titanic Experience in Cobh (pron: "Cove") yesterday, was that Celine Dion's song was in my head for most of the day, other than that, it was pretty cool. The Titanic was built in Belfast but Cobh (which was called Queenstown at the time), located between Kenmare and Waterford, was its last port of call before heading for the open Atlantic in 1912. One-hundred and twenty-three passengers boarded in Cobh, 44 survived. The Titanic Experience is a museum of sorts, each visitor joins a tour with a guide who tells the story of the ship, its passengers, and its sinking; there are video reenactments, replicas of rooms, and  photographs, timelines, and artifacts, and it's built on the site of the former ticketing office for the White Star Shipping Line. The passengers embarking on the Titanic in Cobh would have purchased their tickets at this site and then rode the tenders 30 minutes into the harbor and boarded the ship; the original pier for the tenders is still standing outside the building. Each ticket for the Experience is printed with the name of an actual passenger who boarded in Cobh, mine was Mary Mangan, she was 32 and traveling alone. At the end of the tour, you can look up 'your' passengers name to see if they survived... my Mary did not. Eight people got off the ship in Cobh, one of them was Father Frank Browne who had a camera on board, hence the fantastic photos of life on board before the disaster.

replica of a third class ("steerage") cabin - this was actually
considered super-fancy because it had running water and electricity,
which most of the third class passengers wouldn't have had in their homes.

replica of a 1st class cabin

Cobh

Kenmare

along the road between Dingle and Kenmare

I'm getting used to the driving, I think. This morning I left Dingle and drove to Kenmare. Con helped me map out the best way - again, I was going to take the main roads but he suggested the secondary roads, two actual lanes, twisty/windy, but he said I could do it, and he was right. The scenery was spectacular, and it wasn't even a big problem that it rained quite a bit of the way. The fact is that much of the time, I am the only car on these back roads. Sure, there is the occasional bus (which I've learned not to look at as they approach - keep eyes on the road in front, not on the bus to the side); sometimes there are a few cars behind me, and when that happens, I pull over at the first available spot and let them pass since I am going slower than most, and then I'm on my own again and it's just fine.

would have missed this on the main road

and this

I arrived at Pat and Eilish's place around 1:30, left the car, and walked into town. All these cute Irish towns are starting to look alike. There isn't much to do in Kenmare which is fine with me. I checked out a tiny lace-making center (apparently this town was known for needlepoint lace-making... something something nuns... something something Queen Victoria...), and then I walked to an ancient stone circle which is in a clearing a short walk from the town center. There were a bunch of stones. In a circle. It was a pleasant enough day, raining off and on, currently on, and I'm happy as a clam to be back at the bnb with no plans but to relax and read.

Pat and Elish's BnB

needlepoint lace

3,000 years old... ritual site? clock? calendar? anyone? 

Kenmare