It’s come to my attention that the permalinks for posts (i.e. what you see if you click on “More” link) are displaying a strange overlay of text in Internet Explorer, making the page unreadable. I’m working on fixing it (if anyone would like to tell me how to do that, please comment). Meanwhile, both Firefox and Safari work properly.
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Ireland wants you to die. That’s one possible explanation for the roads here. I’d heard people talk about the infamous one-and-a-half lane roads, but those people were likely being paid by the tourist board to upsell it. One and a half lanes would be luxurious. I’d french Bertie Ahern for one and a half lanes. Hell, I’d French Bernie Ahern for a lane and a quarter. Because the roads are three quarters of a lane wide. Three quarters of a lane with traffic going in both directions. On serpentine switchback roads filled with blind curves with walls on either side and maniacal Irish people driving Audi A6′s at 120 kph straight toward you while weaving in and out of the sheep and elderly women that’ve wandered into the middle of the road. Oh, and the street signs are all Post-It notes stuck to the side of goats. Four days of driving here have tensed up my neck muscles so much that I look like a tortoise.
I think I’m finally recovered from jetlag/trip shock enough to spend my relax time on a blog entry instead of watching Irish television (congrats to Clodagh Roper on making the quarterfinals this week on “An Jig Gig,” btw).
In general, I have this to say about Ireland:
1. the people are friendly and witty;
2. the weather is plesantly dreary;
3. the paninis are dependable; and
4. sheep, cows, and horses cohabitate freely in its pastures.
Now, to catch up on our trip:
Seth has pretty well covered our flights over and our first day in Dublin. I will add that, continuing our track record of random celebrity sightings, we saw George Lopez at Heathrow!
I enjoyed the walking tour we took on Tuesday immensely, though it didn’t help orient me to the city as much as I would have hoped. Dublin city centre is a crazy maze of short winding streets – totally disorienting, but with lots of charm. I remember walking around at night in Temple Bar (the sort of “nightlife” district near Trinity College) when Seth and I came here for one night 12 years ago, and thinking it was just like NYC, but smaller. I definitely didn’t find it as intimidating as I remember then, but I’m also older. This was further made apparent on the “pub crawl,” where I spent probably too much time worrying about the tiny Spanish girls that immediately got drunk.
Day 2 in Dublin, we visited the Chester Beatty Library and the Guinness Storehouse.
More…
Thanks, but I couldn’t read it. If you’d like a reply, please resend it in English or using an English alphabet.
Oh and to everyone else: we’re celebrating our 10th anniversary at the five-star G Hotel in Galway with a night of local oysters and washing our underwear in the sink. More to come later.
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Your comments answered
So I thought if you are kind enough to leave us a comment engaging us by asking a question, you should get an answer, or at least know we’re reading them. Because we do read them and enjoy them, so keep them coming. And since checking back on your comments for a reply is a real drag, I’m going to periodically post answers en masse… I’m not going to promise to answer every single question, but I’ll try to keep up.
So…
A.:
The photo at the harley Museum was taken by one of my parents. But the art direction was all Seth. I just showed up.
We are hoping to do an overnight camel trek into the desert in Morocco. Depending on how that goes, I may seize the photo op at the Pyramids.
Not sure if we will get to Sardinia, but I’ll keep you posted.
Also, The Pixies were an AMAZING alternative pop band active in the 80′s-90′s who have sort of recently reunited for touring. We probably would have gone to the show, since we missed them in NYC, but all three nights were sold out!
SDWJ:
Ex Officio is the way to go!
Wash ‘em out in the sink and you’re good to go in a few hours!
P.:
I am going to go out on a limb and say that Quiddler is going to be more fun without a dictionary. I’m envisioning theme games like foreign language or slang… we’ll see.
B.: Perhaps we’ll try our luck at the roulette wheel….