complaints

Judging from the volume of the guests at this hostel, Galway must have the best - by which I mean most awful - bars in Europe.  I'm going to need another two weeks off to catch up on sleep after this trip because I haven't gotten more than five or six hours most nights.

Travel, particularly, solo travel, is so high-variance.  One minute you can be thrilled to be wherever you are and not wanting to go home ever, and just a few hours later - without anything in particular happening - you can be wondering why you decided to make the trip so damn long.

Weekends are particularly difficult times for travel.  It seems like the usual hostelling population - lone travelers and pairs who keep to themselves and have a tendency toward early hours - is eclipsed on weekends by a population I can only refer to as Drunken Idiots.  They arrive in the city for one night, primarily to drink, and they travel in huge packs, and they are loud.  Also, they tend to be already drunk when they arrive, and the men among them leer at any women they can lay their eyes on - even women as bedraggled as I am at the moment (aside from the missing half of my front tooth, my lip is still obviously beaten up, and I have several scratches still on my face, and of course every garment I own is dirty or damp or both, and I've spent the past ten days in a country without proper hot water).  I can't determine any reason for their existence except that possibly they have already been banned from every bar in their own city.

There's nothing wrong with Galway, really.  It's a small city with some medieval remains.  I'm going to try to take a walking tour tomorrow to learn more about them.  I had a pretty good afternoon today - after waiting for several dozen DIs (probably I'll have to talk about these Drunken Idiots again, so I might as well have a handy abbreviation) to vacate the lobby, which is located on what in the US would be called the fourth floor, I left my bag and took a walk around.  Most of what there is to do here (before 6 p.m. on non-Sundays, at least) is shop - there's one museum, but it's open about two days a week, and every other historical site is by appointment only, which is very popular here.  I went into a few places but was not feeling too excited about the same sweaters and jewelry as everywhere else; however, they do have some nice bookstores, and a nice river, and it seems like there are some recommended "long walks" if the weather is nice tomorrow.  I went into a coffee shop and had a nice "salad" (salads here consist mostly of cheese and bacon, which is not really the American definition of the term) and "cake" (British for dessert) and sat for a while, and then I walked around some more.  By seven, everything had been closed for ages and it was too cold outside to sit, so I came back to the hostel.

The hostel makes me homesick.  I think I'm much too old and antisocial for these places, although European hotels are really no better - more privacy, but fewer amenities and even more barren; often just as much noise.  I miss the cycling group and I miss home; I might wish I'd decided to go home earlier, but of course I probably wouldn't be able to get back because of the impending hurricane.

Another bus post

I have been, of course, exceptionally remiss.  I always am, around the middle of the trip.  But to a great extent, on this trip, the photos speak for themselves.  The second half of the bike trip was a lot of biking, rather a lot of rain, and small towns with one commercial street.  It was beautiful, of course, and I was with good company, but it was also a lot of riding and a lot of hills.

Tuesday – I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve blogged – was a day of riding around the Dingle peninsula.  I think I must have written about this.  There are some ruins on the peninsula, and some smaller towns than Dingle, and many shops and B&B’s and small restaurants or tearooms catering to tourists.  Wednesday was a rest day in Dingle, which I actually did spend resting – I think I must have blogged about this as well.

Thursday was a very long bike ride.  The first half was quite tough but also went quite well.  The lunch stop was not very nice – just a little store in a gas station with tables in it.  There was a tea stop in the afternoon and that was very nice – it was this small, local establishment that you might have seen in Western Massachusetts, organic and sort of hippy-ish.  But the ride still went on and on, and I was very tired, and there were still twelve miles to go.  There was traffic – by this time it was rush hour, and while drivers are quite polite on the back roads, in towns they are less forgiving of bicyclists – and the roads are narrow.  At some point the people I was biking with went up on the curb, to get out of the traffic, and I tried to go up on the curb as well, but I was tired and not thinking clearly and went at it from the wrong angle, and I wasn’t ready for the impact and the bike skittered out to the side.  It all happened very fast, too fast for me to react.  I got one hand down, sort of, but mostly I landed flat on my face on the sidewalk, which hurt so much it almost didn’t hurt at all.  There was blood all over the sidewalk and I couldn’t think for a few minutes and I was very scared.  But I came away lucky – a cut lip and a cut hand and some scratches on my nose, a few bruises and scrapes to add to the collection on my legs, but the only permanent damage I sustained was a badly-chipped tooth, which I’m told the dentist can patch up entirely.  With the chipped tooth and the still-swollen lip it doesn’t *look* all that minor, but it could have been a lot worse – I didn’t break my nose or even my glasses, my eyes are fine, I didn’t hit my head, and while I’ve lost rather a lot of tooth, the root is still intact and as long as I don’t try to bite directly into anything I’m not in any pain.  The others in the cycling trip have been very nice about it, and when I came back to the hotel all battered up they did everything they could to make me comfortable, making me tea and bringing me band-aids and assuring me that I don’t look completely ridiculous and that my teeth can be fixed and someday not too long I’ll laugh about my war wounds from the trip.

So, surprisingly, losing half a tooth didn’t ruin my vacation, or even my day.  That night I went to dinner with everyone else, and had some pasta and an Irish coffee and was perfectly cheerful even though my lip was still quite swollen and periodically would start bleeding.  Yesterday was another long bike, and I wanted to do some of it – there was supposed to be a great view at the beginning, and I also didn’t want to let the injury be the last thing that happened on the cycling trip (which yesterday was the last day of).  So I decided to go slowly – by that point I didn’t have much choice, as my muscles were quite fatigued.  I went with two others who I’d spent a lot of time with on the trip, and we took it very easy.  Before we even started up the big hill, we stopped for shopping and a cup o tea, which was lucky since it rained for quite a while, and instead of biking up a mountain in the rain, we were in the cottage, drinking coffee and Guinness and eating chocolates and warming our hands by the fire (yes, they have fires in Ireland in August, for very good reason – it’s chilly here, and nothing is heated adequately).  Then we set off up the hill, and to be honest we walked a good bit of it.  None of us had a lot of strength left, and I wasn’t using my clips anymore (which was a good thing, since it was so wet and of course I was leery of falling, but which did reduce my ability to power up hills) and I was less willing to push myself than previously.  But the whole area was gorgeous and we saw some spectacular views, both on the way up and on the way down.  However, by the time we got to the bottom it was getting onto the middle of the afternoon and we still had about ten miles to go before the lunch stop and then, in theory, another twenty after (I had not planned to do this last part).  I was hungry, especially since I hadn’t felt wonderfully that morning and had hardly eating anything at breakfast, and getting very tired, as was one of the people I was biking with, but the other was quite – almost annoyingly – chipper and getting impatient with us.  I’m not usually the person with less energy in a group, which made me feel even worse, but I told myself that she was probably tired as well and just trying to keep the group’s spirits up and make her last day as good as it could be.

The way it ended was that we got lost, and spent about an hour going the wrong way, figuring out that we’d gone the wrong way, and trying to figure out what the right way would be.  We saw some interesting country and a herd of sheep being herded, which I’d only ever seen in movies, and then we found the right way and continued on.  At that point our guide, who’d been looking for us because it was nearly four and we weren’t at the lunch stop, found us, and we all ended up deciding to end our ride there.  I was very happy to climb in the bus, be driven through thirty miles of scenic country, and then go to my hotel, have a long, hot shower, and lie on my bed reading before dinner.

For dinner I had bangers (sausage) and mash (ed potatoes), a nice change from the chowders and soups I’ve been eating.  It was quite good, actually (and, in keeping with all Irish food, quite substantial) and the dinner itself was a lot of fun, with everyone in good spirits and getting a bit nostalgic about the trip, talking about what their next cycling trip might be and insisting that we all keep in touch and call if we’re ever in each other’s cities.

This morning I awoke early, repacked my bag in an increasingly doomed effort to make everything fit, had a hearty breakfast in the B&B, and caught the 9:00 bus to Limerick.  We’re just about to arrive, and I’ll switch to the bus for Galway, which is where I’ll spend the next two days before returning to Dublin to head, a bit sadly, home.

rest day

Today was our rest day in Dingle.  We had lots of options for things to do - small bike trips or taxi trips to museums, and there was certainly plenty on the island that I would have liked to see if it hadn't been fifteen miles away or if it wasn't my rest day in the middle of a fairly demanding cycling trip - but I decided to take it very, very easy.  After a leisurely breakfast, I set out with another of the members of the tour group to visit a church and a convent we'd read about in one of the guidebooks in the B&B lobby.  These turned out to be actually quite interesting, and we also saw an art gallery that we both really liked.  Then we met up with another member of the trip and shopped for a bit, and then had lunch at a very nice seafood house - I had chowder that had at least an entire fish, and several mussels, in it, and then another appetizer called Crab Gratin which I could only eat about half of - and then continued shopping, and then had ice cream, and then continued shopping some more.  It was a lot of fun, and I got some good things - a travel wallet, which I needed since my existing one broke several days ago, and two pairs of running socks for much less than they would have cost at home (and they're not wool; wool is a big fad in running socks right now and I hate it), and a very nice green poncho sweater which was extremely expensive (at least, for a souvenir) but I really liked it.  All in all, a pleasant, companionable, unproductive, restful day.  My only concern is how I'm possibly going to bike forty-three miles tomorrow.

quick post after breakfast

A great deal of time has passed (okay, two days) without blogging, and as so often happens, things have begun to recede into the mists.  I have, probably, only a few minutes, but I want to record as much as I can in that time before it all drifts away.

Monday:

• A rather hilly day of cycling.  I started out fairly fast, and alone; there were a lot of uphills and a long flat cycle through a valley and then an ascent to a gap.  I felt like a character in The Lord of the Rings, with the sun beating down on me in the broad green valley and cows and goats and sheep making noises at my bike. 
• At the top of the gap, I gathered with the other bikers in my group - it seems like we all tend to congregate at these sorts of locations, and like the biggest climb ends about a third of the way into the trip but takes the first half of the day.  There was then a descent, and then another long climb, and then the lunch location.  Everyone was feeling pretty draggy and defeated at that point, I think, and nobody stopped for lunch.
• The afternoon was a bit of a blur - I remember I spent most of the time biking with a couple who goes slower than I normally would, which encourages me to slow down and check out the scenery.  
• At the very end of the bike ride, there's the option to go past the town a couple miles and go to a beach.  That was really amazing - I have pictures of it but, as with all of my pictures, they totally fail to capture the awesomeness.  The beach was wide and cold, and people were walking along it in parkas.

Tuesday:

• A fairly flat cycle.  The views were amazing.  We kept stopping to look a the water, at ruins, at rocks, and to climb up things.  Unfortunately, between getting a fairly late start - we had to ride to Dingle first - and all this stopping, we didn't have time to do everything there was to do on the ride.  We saw views of the Blasket Islands, but didn't go to the Blasket Islands visitors center, which apparently has some very interesting exhibits.  There were also other museums and monuments and ruins that I would like to visit but that there just wasn't time for.  
• I've noticed that - for everyone, not just me - the primary impediment to enjoyment is an anxiety that sets in late in the afternoon, that there won't be time to get there, and that makes us hurry along, often needlessly, to get there.
• The day ended at a pub called Dingle Pub, with chowder and a sandwich and "Irish Country Western" music, which is a bit like Irish music and a bit like American country music.  They are big on the song Country Roads here, and when the musician played it, I had that feeling you can only have when you're very far from home, of being totally displaced from your own home, and totally at home in the broader world. 

Today is a rest day... I think I'm just going to take it easy and shop.

Cycling, Day One

               Today was the first day of my cycling tour.  It began with breakfast in the B&B, which began with the landlady saying “the buffet [of toast, cereal, yogurt, granola, fruit, etc.] is over there, and what would you like to eat?”  After breakfast (eggs, very good bacon, toast, and coffee) we got situated on our bikes, and then set out.  Much of the morning was spent near Killarney, seeing attractions in the Killarney National Park – Muckross Abbey (a ruin) and Muckross House (a Victorian house with a tour, complete with reenactments).  The group started out together but I ended up spending a lot of my time with two women on the trip, which was nice because it gave me some company (and gave one of the other girls some company later in the day, when her friend elected to ride in the van) and encouraged me to move at their pace, which was more laid-back and fun than mine might have been. The first half of the cycling today was actually fairly tough – there were some steep hills, and I fell over once when I was going slowly up a hill and being passed by a car and moved too far to the left and ended up in the ditch, with my bike on top of me, because I couldn’t get out of the clips fast enough.  After that I felt pretty shakey, and it rained for a while, and there were still some steep hills before the lunch break.  Fortunately, the girls I’d been with earlier had caught up to me, so I rode with them all the way to lunch.

               Lunch was at a café at Molls Gap.  The view was lovely, the soup was warm and filling, and the chocolate cake was excellent.  Afterwards, we had another fifteen miles to cycle, and I was a bit worried because the last twelve or so miles had taken us two hours (we hadn’t left the park until 1) and it was already 4:30.  But the long lunch break had been very refreshing, the weather had perked up, and the ride was easier, and we made it to our destination around six.  This left time for a short bath, a quick shower, and a walk around town before dinner; somehow through the excitement of travel I’ve bonded with one of my bikemates to the point of sharing entrees (neither of us could choose between the cod and the lamb; I’m very glad I got to try both).  Also, there was more chocolate for dessert. 

               What else to say about the bike ride?  I saw beautiful scenery, to which I cannot do justice with either words or photographs, and adorable towns and houses, and sheep.  I got sweaty and dirty, and at some point I cut my thumb.  I felt exhausted at the end, and it was awesome.  I am a very simple person, I suppose; give me pretty scenery and an opportunity to sweat in it, and something good to eat afterwards, and I consider it an excellent vacation.

               

Saturday's Post

I’m writing this Saturday evening at the B&B in Killarney, although I won’t be able to post it until… Wednesday?  Next Saturday?  Internet does not seem to be, you know, a thing in Ireland.

This morning I slept surprisingly late – at least, *I* was surprised when I checked my watch upon waking and found it was 8:49 a.m.  But I guess I shouldn’t been; I haven’t been sleeping all that much or all that well, so I was due for it.  I made tracks out of the hostel and caught the 9:30 bus to Killarney; after about 90 minutes of scenic riding I arrived.  It was a bit disorienting because my guidebook doesn’t have much in the way of coverage here and the bus station is not in an obviously central location, but I found the center of town quickly enough.  After dropping off my bag at the bike tour’s meeting point, I ducked into the coffee shop around the corner.  I briefly considered not doing so, since it didn’t seem like the most super-optimal coffee shop, but decided that, since I hadn’t eaten or had any coffee yet, I should go for the easy option over the perfect one.  This turned out to be a very good idea.

After having a scone (good, but not as transcendent as yesterday’s) and a cup of coffee, I set off to explore the town.  The first thing I saw was a bookstore, and – convinced that possibly Southwestern Ireland might be the Land of No Books, I went inside and bought a book.  (I also bought a book in Cork, so I now have three books in my possession, the first of which I am halfway through, and have finished and discarded three magazines and any number of local papers).  Of course, Southwestern Ireland is actually lousy with books, and there were (at least) three other bookstores in Killarney, but this was the best one so if I was going to buy a book it was good that I bought it there.  It is, however, the Land of No Cash Machines; there were three total cash machines in town, I think, and all the tourists were being directed to the same one.

After walking the length of the town, going into a few other stores, and seeing a couple of the historic government and religious buildings, I set out for Ross Castle.  It was a nice walk through the outskirts of Killarney and a wooded area, and the castle is on a beautiful lake.  I just walked around the castle – there was a tour to go inside, but my book called it tedious (some other girls on the tour did go inside, and they said it was interesting enough).  There were also boat trips to go to an island in the middle of the river, but they seemed rather disorganized and understated, so instead I sat by the lake and read for a bit.

By the time I got back to town, I was quite hungry.  There were a lot of pubs in Killarney, and proper restaurants, but not really a lot of coffee shops or places to get a snack.  Eventually I stumbled on Murphy’s, an ice cream shop from Dingle that my guidebook mentioned.  I tried the sea salt ice cream (weird but not good) and settled on the chocolate and caramel.  It was good, inferior to most of the ice cream I had in France but still far superior to most American ice cream.  Then I walked around a bit more, shopping (not with any intent to buy) and looking for provisions to stock up on, and then sat in a courtyard by a playground and read for a while before it was time for the tour group to meet up.

The tour group met in a hotel, where we had an introduction to the trip before a somewhat fancy and not very good dinner.  (I’m terrible at ordering, of course; too often, I get what I think I should get rather than what I actually want.  This time I had what was basically a fancy version of fish and chips.  Since I’m not very fond of either fish or chips, it’s not surprising that I wasn’t thrilled with this meal.  However, it wasn’t bad, and now I can say I had it once in Ireland and I do not need to have it again.  Also, really, nothing on the menu was very interesting and much of it was a lot more expensive, so there were not really any great choices.  During the meal, I met the other people on the trip – there are twelve of us, which is a nice number, enough that you’re not forced to be with the same couple people all the time, but not an unwieldy amount – including the woman who will be my roommate for the next several nights.  Finally, we departed for our guesthouses; we’re split up, and my half the group is at a guesthouse run by an exceptionally friendly middle-aged woman.  The guesthouse does not have internet, so hopefully nobody is expecting to hear from me anytime soon.