Category: Traveling

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Cork City Durham Ireland Traveling

The long road home

If our time in Ireland taught me one thing, it is that after the rain comes the rainbow. It’s difficult to envision a rainbow right now, as the entire world shelters in place from this storm.

Friday morning was rainy, but we had a lot of packing and cleaning to do anyway. Once our packing was complete, the sun came out, and we went out for a last walk around Cork. We walked the length of Main Street and across the river to St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral, where we walked the labyrinth.

The labyrinth at St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral

We walked back east along the River Lee, then back west along Oliver Plunkett Street. Then just up and down the Grand Parade a couple of times. Being sure to keep appropriate distance from other people, of course.

We circled back towards the apartment but weren’t ready to go back yet. So we crossed the river to the north and walked out along the greenway, crossed back on the Mardyke Bridge and circled home.

The Mardyke Bridge over the River Lee. The building in the distance is the Music Department of University College Cork.

There were no direct flights from Cork to the U.S., and we didn’t think it was wise or desirable to spend hours in a UK or European airport on our way home. Our original flights were between Dublin and Philadelphia, so we changed our original, late April flight date to March 15. We rented a car and drove to Dublin and stayed at the Clayton Hotel near the airport. It appears to have several lovely restaurants, but we elected to eat peanut butter and marmite sandwiches in our room. They had hand sanitizer at the front desk, and allowed us to top off the rapidly diminishing pocket-size bottle I’d bought in January.

Soon after we booked our flight, Trump announced that anyone returning from the UK or Ireland would be subject to health screening and could only return through one of 11 airports — and Philadelphia was not one of them. The new restrictions would go into effect the day after our scheduled departure. We really needed to be on this flight.

On Sunday we got up before the crack of dawn and took the shuttle to the airport. We didn’t even stop for coffee, which turned out to be a good thing since I don’t think our bladders would have survived the wait. The airport was a madhouse. Thousands of Americans all trying to get the hell out of Dodge before the deadline. Most were young people — study abroad students ending their semester early, or returning from a limited study trip, or simply having headed to Ireland in the hopes of enjoying a festive Saint Patrick’s Day.

Besides the normal back-up of a crowded airport (the lines at San Diego airport after Comic-con were to date the longest I’d seen), Dublin Airport has U.S. pre-clearance, so you go through Customs there, not upon arrival. And you go through security twice, once for the airport, once for the U.S. area. In the confusion of arranging my toiletries for what I needed in Cork Saturday morning and in Dublin Saturday night and Sunday morning and what needed to be in checked luggage and what I needed to carry with me, I inadvertently left a small bag of liquids in my carry-on. So of course I got pulled over and had to empty the bag (once they saw what it was they wagged a finger but didn’t make me ditch any of it). I also discovered that my fitness tracker triggers the alarm, so I took that off for the second screening.

There were inexplicable delays. At one point, security screenings just stopped, for maybe 30 minutes. In Customs, they sorted us into two groups: people who had been in other European countries in the last 10 days and those who had not. Ours was the smaller group, I believe, so we moved a bit more quickly to the head of the queue to meet with a Customs officer. They have you stand on a numbered yellow square and await the officer at the desk with that number. We were on yellow square #12, next to be screened, when someone came through and said (loud enough for us to hear, but not the crowd behind us) “Stop processing people. Get representatives from the airlines out here.”

At that point Barry turned to me and said “We could be sleeping in this airport tonight.”

We were stuck on that square for about an hour. Most people behind us gave up and sat on the floor. They escorted small groups to the toilets (hooray, no coffee!). They passed out bottles of water.

I have no idea why they halted the Customs processing, or why it resumed, but what the airline representatives had to say was good news: they were delaying flights until everyone was on board. Since we’d had our boarding passes scanned at least twice already, they clearly knew who was at the airport but not yet at the gate.

Once Customs finally re-opened, we were of course next in line, and breezed through quickly. We even had time for Barry to buy a bottle of Teeling whiskey at the Duty Free shop!

Thankfully, we were not held too long on the ground once we boarded the plane. It was crowded but not completely full — we were the only people in a center row of five seats. The flight was uneventful, with little turbulence. We finally got a cup of coffee! We had lunch for breakfast, and I swear to you that airplane food never tasted so good. Even the salad was crisp and delicious. And when they served ice cream about six hours into the eight-hour flight I was as giddy as a 5-year-old.

We had another, even longer drive ahead of us, so we stayed the night at another airport hotel. The Microtel near the Philadelphia airport may well be the second saddest lodging I’ve ever seen (the first is a nightmare stay in a place in Las Vegas that I dubbed The Hotel That Time Forgot, but that’s a tale for a different blog). Whereas we were content to eat in our room at the Clayton, there was no way we wanted to spend any extra time awake in this depressing space. We decided to risk the outside world for dinner at Ruby Tuesday, the only restaurant within walking distance. It was fine, but believe it or not it was the most expensive meal of our trip! And that was with just entrees, one beer and two glasses of wine. No appetizers, desserts, or side dishes.

You would think that with all of this, we would have been in a hurry to get home the shortest way possible. But the shortest way possible is I-95 through Baltimore, DC, and Richmond. We took it to the outskirts of Baltimore, shot over to Frederick, MD, and headed south on U.S. 15. Significantly longer, but a must less stressful road. And central Virginia is almost as pretty as Ireland (but with dilapidated barns instead of crumbling castles).

We returned the rental car this morning, so our trip is now officially, completely over. Now starts the next adventure. A friend is doing a grocery run for us so that we can avoid bringing any airport germs to the Harris Teeter. The cherry trees are in bloom, and even some of the azaleas. It was warm enough to sit on the front porch yesterday evening. We’re home.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

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Traveling

Travels in the year of the plague

When we were in the intense planning phase of this journey — booking flights and hotels, deciding which credit cards had the best travel benefits, purchasing travel health insurance — the two events we reasonably thought might disrupt our trip were (1) one of us getting sick or injured, or (2) a loved one falling gravely ill and requiring a hasty return to the States.

Neither a pandemic or a global financial collapse were high on the list.

When we left the U.S. at the end of January, the epidemic in Wuhan was in the news, and enough of a concern that we purchased face masks and hand sanitizer, mostly because airplanes are essentially airborne petri dishes and we thought they might be prudent for all the flights we had planned. But the idea that the epidemic in China would, in 5-6 weeks, become a major source of concern to us in Ireland was remote.

Now, we wash our hands before we leave the apartment, more vigorously and attentively than usual. We take the stairs and don’t touch the banister, or if we take the elevator, use a key to press the button. But we still need to pull on a door handle to get out of the building. We arrive at our destination, and out comes the small and rapidly depleting bottle of hand sanitizer. But then, a bartender passes us a pint after having taken cash and an empty glass from another patron. We are mindful about not touching our faces until after we’ve washed our hands yet again.

I had a brief bout of exacerbated asthma during the windier days during storms Ciara and Dennis, so I purchased a peak flow meter (the thing on the left of the photo) so that I could determine if my discomfort was an annoyance or something I actually needed to worry about. I’ve encouraged Barry to use it (with cleaning before and after, of course) to determine his baseline levels. Today, we purchased a thermometer. Just in case. It could be useful to objectively measure what’s going on should we feel poorly.

We stopped in about a dozen drug stores today. No hand sanitizer to be found. I did not look to stock up for the DIY alcohol-and-aloe-vera-gel solution, but that may be next if Boots does not get a new order in this week, as they said they would. Lloyds said it could be 2-3 weeks.

We may end up sanitizing with vodka and marmalade.

Things are not actually too bad in Ireland, at least not yet. It is one of the less affected countries in Europe. To date there are 21 COVID-19 cases, almost all of them related to people traveling to Italy for ski vacations (including a couple of school groups). But the first community-acquired infection (i.e., not traced to China, Iran, Italy or other hotspots) was here in Cork. Oddly enough, the patient was already in the hospital for something unrelated, and when he did not improve, they ran a battery of tests, including for COVID-19, which came back positive.

The situation in Italy is the worst in Europe. The concern about a bunch of people flying into Ireland from Italy was enough that they cancelled the Ireland-Italy 6 Nations rugby match, which a European friend tells me is on par with cancelling the Super Bowl (today, France v. Ireland was also cancelled).

And today, the St. Patrick’s Day parades in Dublin and Cork — the two largest cities in Ireland — were cancelled. St. Patrick’s Day is not a big deal for either of us (even though I spent 8 years in a school named for the old snake killer) — but we were truly looking forward to being here for such an essentially Irish celebration.

And yet, I was a bit relieved when it was cancelled.

France is our biggest worry. After Italy, it is the hardest hit country in Europe, and Paris is one of the cities most affected. We have a package trip to Paris booked for the weekend of Barry’s birthday, the weekend after next. France is already encouraging people to take their temperature twice a day, and avoid restaurants. It’s pretty much assumed they will reach Stage 3 epidemic precautions this week, which would include cancelling most transit.

At this point, we are hoping that the trip is cancelled on us, so that we can actually get a refund. If not? We are two 60+ individuals, both with asthma, one with hypertension, the other with a lung scarred by radiation for cancer treatment. It would be ill-advised for us to risk going to a city where people like us who fall ill may not recover.

But it’s not only the concern for our health. What if we were to go, and other countries ban flights from France as they’ve banned flights from China? What if we could return here to Ireland, but would need to stay in isolation for 14 days after — and our AirBnB lease runs out before then? Our concerns are not just medical, and financial, but logistical.

After we check out of our apartment in Cork on the morning of April 1, we have a couple of days on the road in Ireland, then a trip (planned, at least) to Portugal and Spain. Portugal, like Ireland, is one of the least-affected countries in Europe. However, the cases that they have are all in places we’re going. And we have a few days in Seville, in the Andalusia province of Spain, which is also a hotspot for the virus. It’s easy enough to cancel the Seville part of the trip and stay in Portugal.

TAP, the Portugal airline, cancelled a number of flights, but not ours. The cancelled flights were to Italy, France, and Spain.

So, we could pull our punches and cancel Portugal…there’s time to cancel the hotels but we would likely eat the cost of the airfare, or a large portion of it. Then we would need to change our flights to the U.S., which would also cost us. It’s not that we are not willing to eat the cost if it saves our lives or prevents a logistical nightmare. It’s that we don’t want to eat that cost if waiting a week means it will be cancelled for us and we’ll get a full refund.

But, seeing what the official response has been by the U.S. government, it has also occurred to us that NOT returning to the U.S. may be a better plan! On the other hand, we could “self-isolate” in our North Carolina house with the gourmet kitchen, bar, pool table, two TVs with Criterion subscriptions, an art studio, science fiction library, and pile of games… damn, as long as someone will deliver food to us, we’d pretty much be sitting pretty.

But damn, I’ll miss Cork.

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Buses Ireland Kinsale Traveling

Kinsale

We took the bus down to Kinsale the other day. It’s a picturesque port town near the mouth of the River Bandon, accessible via a 45 minute bus ride from downtown Cork. It probably caters a little more to the tourist trade than either Cobh or Midleton, despite not having a major specific draw like the distillery or the Heritage Center. Even so, enough of the restaurants and coffee shops were open, to make a full day of it. And it turned out to be a pretty nice day for taking pictures, so I did a lot of that.

We started with coffee and pastries at The Poet’s Corner bookshop and cafe. And, seriously, their scones were the best I’ve had on this visit. And I’ve had more than my share the past 5 weeks.

I’m going to divide the pictures up into waterfront, and town, and mostly post them without comment.

Lobster boat
Kinsale harbor from The Ramparts

We had fantastic skies most of the day.

Like most Irish towns, Kinsale has old churches and castles, not to mention some old pubs. Not all of them were opened on our visit, though.

St. Multose, Church of Ireland
Some people think that’s the best kind
Your basic 330 year old pub, sadly, not open for business this early in the day

Houses and house names in Kinsale seemed to me to exhibit more of a sense of humor than some of the others I’ve seen.

I understand you need a special invitation to spend the night here
Nobody knows what goes on behind this one

And just an amazing little street that we happened to turn up on our walk.

I’m hoping we’ll get another opportunity to go back and spend some more time in Kinsale before the month is out.

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Buses Ireland Ring of Kerry Traveling

Ring of Kerry

We’ve been busy again for the past week. Blarney, Crosshaven, the Ring of Kerry, and Kinsale on alternating days. Fewer than 4 weeks remain until we leave Cork, and make our way to Portugal and Spain. We’ll spend one of those weekends in Dublin, and another in Paris, external conditions allowing.

Although most of our time here is spent on quotidian affairs, we’re not averse to being tourists when the occasion warrants. Earlier this week we hopped a tour bus and went round the Ring of Kerry. The bus departs about 6 blocks from our apartment, and this guy saw us off.

Passed through a couple of small towns on the way from Cork to Killarney, where we picked up a couple of additional passengers. Of those, I thought Macroom might be worth a standalone visit in the next couple of weeks.

Killarney was picturesque in theme park kind of way. The scone i had there was disappointing, though. Bland and bready. (Don’t worry, the one I had later in the week at the Poet’s Corner in Kinsale made up for it.) But on the way, we passed the far-famed Cork and Kerry Mountains, where once upon a time a young highwayman robbed the English Captain Farrell, and all whack for the daddyo broke out.

I like the sight of snow, off in the distance.

The advantage of touring the Ring in early March is that we were virtually the only tour bus on the road. I hear that during the summer months it can be bumper to bumper with them. So not only are the roads more pleasant to be on, but the stops are empty as well, which means more time to enjoy them.

Irish coffee at the Red Fox.

Glenbeigh is the first, strictly photo opportunity stop of the tour. I took advantage.

We also stopped for lunch in Waterville, where Charlie Chaplin had a house for much of his life. It’s now owned by one of the local golf clubs, and for a super premium price, you and your group can stay there for a couple of nights while you play some of the local courses. They also honor Chaplin with a film festival and look-alike contest. Our bus driver told us that towards the end of his life, Chaplin entered the contest, and placed 12th. I have my doubts.

More art in Waterville

We also had a pretty nice lunch at The Lobster, which was one of the few restaurants open on a weekday this time of year. I’m finding the Irish know how to smoke a salmon.

After lunch, we had another photo opportunity in Castlecove. I took advantage again.

Our next stop was in the charmingly named village of Sneem, where I’m sure that J.R.R. Tolkien must have spent at least one night of his life. We bought some post cards, which gives me the chance to remind you that if you’d like a postcard from us on our travels, you can email me your postal address at corkspringblog at gmail dot com, and I’ll get one out to you.

We were detoured on our return to Killarney by a road closure, so we didn’t get an opportunity to pass through Killarney National Park, nor to see the Torc Waterfall. We did get to stop for a bit at the road closure, and chat with some of the locals, who were curious about us since they don’t seem to get many visitors.

The markings, according to our unreliable narrator of a driver, are to indicate which herd the sheep belong to. I believed him on this one.

And then we were home. Next post – Kinsale.

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Ireland Midleton Trains Traveling

Midleton: Town & Kindred Spirits

Yesterday we took the train into Midleton. It’s about a half hour ride, most of the way sharing the same track as the train to Cobh, splitting off for the final two stops.

Midleton is a bit smaller than Cobh, with much less waterfront and no harbor to speak of. There are two main points of interest, the distillery and the Kindred Spirits memorial. I’ll make a separate post about the distillery, but here’s some thoughts and images about the memorial and the town.

Directly adjacent to the train station is Midleton’s hurling pitch. Unfortunately for us, the next match is a few months down the road.

This sculpture, near where the railway road lets you off into town, is entitled Flock of Geese, or some such. Seems to me that “Halp!” would be more appropriate.

Midleton is, essentially, a single main street kind of town. It’s about 7 or 8 blocks long, with enough restaurants, bars, bake shops, etc., for a town thrice its size, and a decent number of shoe stores, clothing stores, & real estate offices as well. The alleys and side lanes hold a few surprises, too.

Adjacent to the distillery is a pollinator garden. It’s still winter (even if the pagan calendar says it’s early spring), so not much is blooming. Roughly double the normal amount of rain has fallen across the country this February, so every small creek is racing.

The Kindred Spirits memorial is in a small park, roughly a kilometer south of the town center. Enough has been said about the memorial elsewhere that i don’t need to add anything. It was a truly humbling experience. I hope some of my photos can convey that feeling.

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Ireland Traveling

On being a tourist

We visited Ireland for the first time almost 3 years ago. Dublin, Dundalk, Bray, Waterford, Youghal, Cork, Cliffs of Moher, Lisdoonvarna, Galway, and Athlone, packed into 11 days. We were, in a word, tourists.

It’s not an inherently bad thing to be. First time in a different country, you naturally want to take in as much of the surroundings as possible. Every stream, every cobblestone, every pint is a new experience.

But there’s also a discomfort in being a tourist. You’re in other people’s homes, gawking at their alien ways. I’m much more relaxed trying to fit into my surroundings. Much of that first visit felt comfortable. While the Cliffs of Moher, say, are indisputably a tourist venue, in Yeoghal we parked the car, had lunch, hung out with some toddlers on the 30 square meter pebbly beach, and felt at home. Of our time here, only Galway felt like a city geared towards tourism. The joke I made for a while was that it was the only place we saw people juggling firesticks.

Cork City was our favorite stop, precisely because it had almost nothing in the way of tourist attractions. Our biggest draw was the Butter Museum, which turned out exactly as we imagined. Sin É is a cramped bar in the Victorian Quarter, with traditional music nightly, that may or may not appear in lists of things to do in Cork. But we felt very much at home over our 2 1/2 days here. Enough so that it was our first choice of a city to stay in for a couple of months. We checked in to our apartment Saturday afternoon, returned the rental car Sunday morning, and have spent the past couple of days figuring out where to buy things like bread, coffee beans, post cards, and books.

Our neighborhood has 3 supermarkets, a dozen or so small grocers, more secondhand shops than I can count, twice as many bars as secondhand shops, and street food from a dozen different cultures. I’ve heard at least that many languages spoken as we learn to navigate the city.

We’ve also met a couple of the immediate neighbors, younger than us for sure. A man from India working in tech, who we met in the elevator. A couple, he from Croatia, she from Portugal via France. She was chock full of suggestions on where to eat and drink when we get to Coimbra and Porto later this spring.

The latter we met outside our apartment on the common patio area last night when we returned from our walk. They had set up to practice their firestick juggling routine.

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Cork City Ireland Traveling

We made it.

Wow, is it Monday already? We left early Wednesday for a grueling day and night of travel. The low point of which was my breaking down sobbing in the PHL airport as we shlepped across four terminals with 2 suitcases and 5 carry-ons, the high point of which was chatting with John Prine while waiting to board. Make me an angel that flies from Philadelphia!

I watched an episode of The Good Place last night which had a line to the effect of “Humans live around 80 years and they spend most of that time waiting for things to be over.” Which pretty much describes the flights, baggage, customs, car rental, and driving in Dublin.

We had one lively and idyllic stop on the way from Dublin to Athlone, at Saint Brigid’s Well. Barry took pictures, I did not, so I will defer to his posts for photographic documentation. He has about 900 pounds of camera equipment; I have my phone.

Driving here is stressful, but not because of the other-side-of-the-road stuff so much as unfamiliar signage, very narrow roads and lanes in some places, only having phone service while on Wi-Fi and therefore not being able to set or modify routes on the fly, and a navigator who hates being a passenger in a car almost as much as she hates driving. But it’s a Catholic country so I figure they accept silent Hail Mary’s even from atheists.

More soon on Athlone and Cashel, but now going to watch the light fade over the skyline and enjoy our first home-cooked meal here in Cork.

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