the first step....

begins a journey of....many miles. 

Some will say that the journey, not the destination is the story,  (or something like that).. well, (IMHO) that doesn’t quite apply to international travel.  It is the bridge you must cross to enjoy the destination. So we started to cross that span (and Atlantic) last Thursday.  A fellow traveler on our recent Scotland journey gave us the name of somebody who will drive you in your own car, drop you off, and than pick you up at the airport upon return.  We availed ourselves of that and will probably be the norm now for any extended travel.

Anyway, we got to Dulles without traffic or undue delays, and found British Airways to be fairly easy to deal with, got our bags checked to Shannon, and rode the little train to the correct terminal and got to the gate without hassle.  The other times we’ve traveled from Dulles we kind of marveled at how empty it was in general.  Same here..

 

While we were passing time we saw a traveler using something you never see anymore

 

Although intially deserted, the lounge began filling up with what we speculated was a tour or athletic team composed mostly of young women (teens we guessed) who didn’t speak our language.  They did speak Texting however, since most of them buried their noses in hand held devices.  We finally boarded, and this time the plane was a 747-400 and it was MUCH better than our Scotland bound USAirway’s 757.  We paid extra (go figure) to lock in aisle seats across from each other, and that was also helpful.  Each seat had it’s own little programmable video screen in front of you where you could pick what source you wanted to use to pass the seven hour flight time.  Fortunately they had a classical music channel and I was able to listen to Beethoven.

 

A friend who travels long distances frequently loaned me his Bose noise canceling earphones.   What a difference!  Audio quality was excellent, and the jet noise was considerably reduced.  If you travel a lot, I would recommend an investment.  Another good thing was that British Airways offers complimentary beverages of any sort even if served in plastic.

 

Maybe buoyed by the music, I thought the food also exceeded USAirways.  Lots of plastic and foil, of course

 

Which when uncovered revealed the pasta and green salad (with bottle of wine in background)

 

The ensuing hours passed fairly easily (thank you Mr. Bose), doing that dozing half zombie like sleep and eventually we approached and landed at Heathrow.  When telling friends of our trip and passing through that airport, we got a lot of “oh dear”, and rolling of eyes in response.  And you know what?  They’re right.  We first had a devil of a time figuring out what gate our Aer Lingus flight was, and finally with help from a nice BA lady we were directed to a long hike involving several ascents and descents on escalators, eventually arriving at a street level tram which would take us from Terminal Five to Terminal One, from which our plane to Shannon would depart.  It seemed that the bus ride was enough to drive us to Shannon as it weaved in and out, up and down around massive construction projects.  Finally dumped us at the door of Terminal Five, and then we repeated another marathon hike and escalator journey that took almost a half hour.  That was interspersed with seemingly random checkpoints requiring partial disrobing, contents into trays on and on, and even places where you had your photo taken, producing a little yellow sticky on your passport for the next sullen security agent to see.  You might guess that a seven hour plane ride didn’t put us in a good mood for that.  Eventually we got closer to our destination and saw this sign.

 

At first I thought, how cute!  Very funny!  Well, not really. Once past this sign there were no kiosks, vendors or anything.  You were sunk, and by the time you figured that out, it was just too far to go back.  Eventually we loaded on an Airbus of some variety and flew above the clouds landing at Shannon.  Not to denigrate the English, but the whole scene changed when we got to Ireland.  Smiles all around, how are you? Custom agents, yeah, whatever, have a great holiday.  Gotta love it.

Then, and then, I was faced with my greatest fear of the whole trip.  We approached the Avis desk, and indentified ourselves.  We were at the end of the line of customers, and so the wonderful lady spent a long time making sure everything was okay, we had directions, gave us a little damage report on our vehicle (a Renault of some variety) saying they knew the fairing around the passenger mirror was busted out (but worked), and pointed out it was a diesel making sure we knew it was the black hose at the gas station.  I was a little discomforted when she said, there’s a quarter of a tank of gas, but that should be “plenty” to get you to Galway.

Well, guess what, about half way (by our estimation) the little gas pump icon on the dash started blinking and dinging.  Great.  Stuck on a road where we don’t exactly know where we are, out of gas.  Wrong.  The next turn revealed a “Topaz” sort of a local chain (it turns out) and we gratefully wheeled in.  Across the pump from us was a beat up pickup with two Jack Russell Terriers in the front seat of vastly different ages.  The gentleman got out about the same time I did, and it was obvious he was an Irishman, ruddy of color and white of hair.  I looked at the (diesel) pump and seeing no slot for a card, I sucked my courage and said “excuse me sir, how do you pay for this?”.    (without trying to phonetically mimic his accent which was broad) he said “Ah, you just pump the gas and then go inside and pay”.  That started a conversation that lasted a good five minutes about how you pay in the States, how much it is over there, what we were doing here, where we come from, etc.  What a great thing.  So with half a tank of diesel, and 40 Euros lighter we again took to the “other side” of the road as I have learned the Irish graciously refer to our habits.  MFO had a handful of maps, and off we went, headed toward Galway.  We only had a couple of mis-adventures on the traffic circles, making a couple of revolutions, and only a few “Watch OUTs” as I tended to overcompensate on the drivers side, placing the passenger in mortal fear of clipping mirrors or cars.  I kind of thing the "other side" deal is harder on passengers than customers.

We finally fought our way downtown (City Centre), and then got hopelessly confused trying to navigate to the hotel.  It should be right HERE!  Nope, a warehouse.  Round and round, no joy.  Finally a call resulted in friendly helpful directions which got us there.  We found we had turned one little street short the first attempt.. 

So we arrived, pooped and somewhat pleased that we didn’t have an accident, and buoyed by that, after a little rest, we enjoyed the first of several great meals…  but that’s for next time.  Pretty quick we’re out the door for another and we will be appropriately

 

DFD

At Last!

Hello from Ireland at last.  We have switched hotels for the remainder of our stay, and this one (Meyrick, Galway) is more reasonable and provides free internet in the rooms.  It is one of the grand old hotels in the city, and they know how to do it right.  Lovely accomodations.  we couldn't book for the duration as the Oyster folk pretty well tied up the place.  As I may have mentioned in FaceBook, our initial hotel, while comfortable and close to everything felt compelled to charge five Euros for one hour of access.  And that one hour was just that, one hour.  Connect, click, and you got 60 minutes, start NOW.  For ten Euros, you get twenty four hours.   Usually a spendthrift this kind of galled me and i didn't do it, hence the switch to short sporadic facebook posts..

Anyway, as you know the Festival is complete, Michael Moran won his second world championship, and our contestant Mike Martin (not Miller as erroneously hastily posted by a Guinness sated poster) came in 11th, which is not bad in our recent history.

The festival pretty much took up Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday (including the All Ireland Hurling Championship match between Galway and the victorious Kilkenny), so we've only branched out starting yesterday.  Despite our rocky beginning (the first real post that will hit later today (?)) the trip has proved just great.  Galway and it's people and even the other attendees at the Festival make you feel right at home.  We were concerned we would be sitting in a corner alone, watching the goings on.  Not SO!  Hi, where' ya from?  How do you like it here?  Easy to talk to, so we didn't feel isolated at all.  As North American Representative, I was able to be with the judges

"We" have much to catch up on, both in food (which has been very good) and travel (Aran Islands) and general walking around (pubs).  Not sure how to condense all that into a few posts but we will try... today to Clonmacnoise which we visited last time but would like to experience again..  and yes, we do maintain standards by being sure to

DFD (which in this case means consistent with venue)

 

 

 

 

(Almost) Ready to go...

With just a few LMI's to pack in, then will close up suitcase, and our journey to Ireland will begin.  The past few days following the "market" Saturday were filled with hosting some friends from our Michigan past, errands, talking to the "concrete guy" about the new pool deck for the gray lagoon, and generally stifling panic about being ready.  Hence the lack of making you read stuff until now.

So ready or not, we'll go up to Dulles, see how British Airways treats us, visit Heathrow, and then on to Shannon.  At which point my other major fear will materialize when we are given an auto that has a steering wheel where the passenger should be.  "Good luck sir!"  Then navigate up to Galway and hopefully not injure anybody getting to our hotel.

When that chapter closes, the fun will begin.  Revolving around the Oyster Festival and World Championship Oyster Opening Contest, all oiled with plenty of Guiness.  Since the winning shucker from our St. Mary's Oyster Festival represents North America, and I am his, um, chaperone, I have been invited to be the official "North American Observer", which means I get to be back stage to make sure no funny business goes on with the trays and judging.   Bad news is that I don't get to see the actual shucking, er, I mean opening, but I did see that two years ago so seeing the judging and so forth will be interesting.  There are galas associated with the festival with a Mardi Gras theme (go figure) so MFO found us some festive masks to wear (which are now carefully packed by the master - her).  Will try to capture some images to put here.

The festival will conclude Sunday morning with a brunch.  We're staying until the next Thursday with some touring planned (as well as unplanned) to see the Aran Islands, and the country north of Galway.  We're doing day tripping so won't get too far afield.  Have picked out some restaurants so foodies will be served.  None of which is the famous McDonagh's which is highly over rated food wise (tested on the 2010 trip).

As usual, blogging will be governed by time (are you on that damn computer again??!!), and internet access and the normal vagaries of technology..  For those of you social media wizards, I might give FaceBook a shot here and there...

Somewhere in Galway, a pub or bar is loading a keg of Guinness, that contains my first sip...so, until next time..

DFD

Buying Local..

Just a quick note from a little shopping trip this morning.  We’re expecting some house guests this weekend, and they are “healthy” eaters..  So we thought we would go over to the farmer’s market in the BAE parking lot near us and pick up some fresh stuff.  We haven’t been there in a while and we re-learned how nice it can be.  As it’s getting toward the end (?) of the growing season there weren’t as many farmers there as we've seen there during the summer.

I didn’t think to grab my camera, but now wish I would have.  There were lots of shiny yellow and green peppers, red tomatoes, purple eggplants, salad greens of various hues, and snow white onions, all glowing in the morning sun.  Nature’s bounty to be sure.  And then there’s the people.  We met some friends and chatted, talked with a couple of the farmers and it kind of develops a little sense of community.  Small town in a big town.

One of the stalls had a “buy local, buy fresh” banner so we stopped and talked to them.  They were from the Sassafras Creek Farm located near Park Hall (and expanding to Leonardtown), owned by a very nice energetic young couple.  He told us what he had to go through to become “certified organic”.  It’s not something where you just hang your shingle out.  You have to go through quite a process that involves many inspections, inventory restrictions, asking “mother may I?” for almost anything you put in the ground or on the food, and so forth.  They felt it was worth it because they believe very strongly in doing the right thing with their food.  We even got a nice solid head of garlic from them, not the dried out crap you see in the markets.  They also had fresh ginger which I haven’t seen before.  They supply produce to the Good Earth Natural Food Store in Leonardtown. We did note that we didn’t see ANY sweet corn however, thank you Mr. Drought.  Other stalls had breads, baked goods, scones, and stuff like that.

We were pleased to help support them and the other farmers that were there.  All were friendly and loved to talk about what they do.  There are people like that, thank goodness.  The market will be open through the end of October.  Don’t forget there is also one at the corner of 235 and Hermanville road.  Makes me want to re-visit them.  Go out and help keep our green spaces from becoming houses!  Buy Local!

and....

 

DFD

Small victories and memories

Today I stole an hour from the travel demons and mounting angst over our upcoming trip.  I said what the “heck”, and went down to St. Mary’s College for the first of this year’s series of Piano Talks by Brian Ganz.  Me and about 19 other lucky folks were treated to a rewarding hour of beautiful music by Chopin, along with Brian’s instructive comments and illustrations.  Today’s selections were “The Mazurka’s Humor, and The Nocturns’s Heartbrake.  Brian talked about what makes “humor” in music, non sequiturs, unexpected resolutions, and so forth.  Of course he lost me rather quickly, but he used passages from the five mazurka’s he played to demonstrate.  He does have the habit of trying to involve the audience by asking questions..”which of the two pieces I just played illustrates humor by changing modality?”.  Some of the students hazarded a guess, but I kept quiet and tried to learn.  Oh, at one point he asked if anybody was familiar with the works of Leonard Cohen.   Given the age of most of the audience, I was not surprised that not many hands went up..  He said that Cohen used some of the same techniques as Chopin.  He gets around!

After the “humor” he played two nocturnes, (B major; Op 62, No. 1, and Lento con gran espressione).  Both were just beautiful.  There was just something nice about a few folks in a mostly empty auditorium with Brian filling the room with music.  One begins to see what real talent is, a question I have asked in the past.  These things are worth the trip, the next of which is October 4^th (at noon).  Brian can sell out Strathmore in an hour, we are so lucky to have him for free and share his expertise.

What made this concert special and melancholy for me was that the seat next to me was empty.  I had a good friend that I attended most of these talks with, and he always sat in the last row, aisle seat on the right side facing the stage with me beside him.  I came to find out he knew a lot about the music, although he never spoke much about it.  He was also the same person I shared many a long lunch with at Courtney’s.  A really unique person, I felt lucky to know and share time with him.  At the end of any performance he would always shout “Bravo!” in a lusty voice.  At the end of today’s session there was no Bravo.  He passed unexpectedly last month.   I did sit in the seat next to his as I always did, and I’m sure although it was not verbalized so we could hear, it was there.  Rest easy, my friend.