Travel – Page 43 – a sibilant intake of breath

Inis Mór

Those visiting Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands, take heed: with alacrity, you can improve your visit considerably. As soon as the ferry docks after the forty-five minute crossing, make a bit of a dash for the shop off to the right from the end of the pier, with ‘bicycle rentals’ written in huge letters on the side. For the reasonable price of ten Euros, you get a bike for the whole day (there is also a ten Euro deposit). If you go quickly, you will get one of the nice bikes I saw when I was returning mine in the evening. If you dawdle, you will get a bike several sizes too small and a bit creaky around the edges. I was reminded of the massive water-fights that used to take place in my neighbourhood when I was a kid. Borrowing a bike or a super-soaker of some variety was common, though a good fit in the latter case may not have been.

Over the course of today, I saw both ends of this 11km island (also called Inishmore), and much in between. The bus ride was spent aslumber, trying to make up for the stretched sleep schedule of the past few days. The ferry ride was scenic but unstable. I spent my first half-hour or so on the island profoundly seasick – a condition that is always much aggravated for me when I am tired.

Setting off in a random direction on my diminutive steed, I found myself winding up to the highest point on the island. At the top, there is a tower which you can pay to visit. For free, you can explore the circular fort Dun Eochla. Carrying on in the same direction, you will find a nice sandy beach, then another climb to the fort Dun Aonghasa, which is really quite amazing.

Located at the edge of a 90m cliff atop the crashing waves, this ancient fortress certainly seems as though it would have been easy to defend. I admire whoever has ensured that no fence or railing obscures the view off that great ledge. It is odd, I suppose, how cautiously people treated it. We walk along lethal edges all the time – 10m or so will do it – but when people are presented with something visually stunning, they become much more deferential. In several cases, I saw people lie on their stomachs with their heads about 3m back from the edge, then flop forward until they could see downwards to the rocks and breaking waves.

From Dun Aonghasa, I doubled back to the ferry terminal and then off to explore the other part of the island. Because the way the island consists of a series of hills, riding across it is an alternation between climbing gentle slopes and then coasting down the other side; it makes for a nice mixture of exertion and aesthetic appreciation. 99% of the tourist traffic of cycles and mini-buses goes in the other direction. As such, the northern part of the island is good for getting your fill of fields full of cows and sheep, horses and rabbits, and all other manner of grass-munching beast.

Before leaving, I picked up a very warm and sturdy pair of woolen hiking socks, made from the fibrous coats of the aforementioned sheep. I strongly considered buying one of the excellent looking sweaters, but decided that I wear insulating upper clothing so rarely that it would not be worth the (quite reasonable) price.

I am being hastened off the internet by six pairs of piercing eyes (those of fellow hostel members). Putting up the photos from today will be particularly gratifying, I think. Early tomorrow, I make my return to Dublin.

PS. If someone could find a few photos of those forts and link them as a comment, that would be wonderful. I would do it, but have not the time.

Cabin Fever 2 correction

Due to a scheduling error, it was previously announced that the retreat would be taking place from September 10th to 12th. In fact, it was meant to take place during the weekend before that: from Friday, September 8th to Sunday, September 10th. Please revise your schedules.

I really hope the change doesn’t cause problems for anyone. For those who are working, going on the weekend is clearly preferable. For those, like me, who are not, it doesn’t matter enormously much. That said, it is not quite ideal that I will be vanishing for three days within 48 hours of returning to Vancouver.

PS. Tristan has a post about this, also.

Galway

I must be brief in summarizing today, since this is a free hostel internet facility and many people are waiting. After an early start, I spent three and a half hours on the bus from Dublin to Galway. The woman beside me had two children on her lap (every seat in the bus was full). Actually, the smaller of the two children was predominantly on my lap for most of the journey.

The Galway Sleepzone is an unusually nice, if unfortunately named, hostel. The dorms have en-suite bathrooms, there seem to be decent kitchens, and there is both a good overall feel and the provision of free internet access.

I spent the later part of today wandering in Galway a bit. The port was worth a glance, especially since it led me to the attractive and free city museum. There, you can find a collection of fairly good local art housed in a very modern structure: all glass, polished wood, matte white walls, and atrium lighting.

From there, I wandered up along the river that flows through the town towards where the museum is (I know not the name right now, and my guidebook doesn’t cover Galway). Beside a particularly nice stretch of bank, I finished the Booker Prize winning novel The Sea. I enjoyed it less than Sweetness in the Belly, as well as the last Booker Prize winner I read. I suppose it is always difficult to have a narrator who is fundamentally unsympathetic. I shall, in any case, write more about it upon my return to normality.

Tomorrow, I am going to the largest Aran Island by the earliest ferry, and returning by the latest one. My intention to visit one of the smaller islands was scuppered by the fact that the latest returning boat from them is at 4:00pm. As it happens, I will be spending more than eight hours on that much-praised bit of rock.

Even in the age of the CCD, there’s a tender place in my heart for film

From a nice hostel in Galway, let me write for a moment about film before I head off to find some dinner. People in Canadian cities that include a Lens & Shutter location (just Vancouver and Victoria, I think) should feel rather lucky, as they stock my two favourite films at excellent prices. While Kodak High Definition 400 is simply unavailable in the British Isles, their black and white T-Max 100 and 400 films are only available here for about ten Euros a roll, plus the unusually high cost of processing an ‘unusual’ emulsion.

If you’ve never given much thought to the kind of film you use or where you get it processed, you might find it worthwhile to spend less than $10 on a roll of one of the films mentioned above. For that price, at Lens & Shutter, you also get processing and either a CD of scanned images or a set of 4×6″ prints. All my photos from Europe in 2004 were shot on one or the other kind of film, and I am clearly fond enough of them that I have been hunting for somewhere that stocks them since I arrived here. I had my mother bring a batch of each for the Malta trip (though many of those photos were taken on my point and shoot digital camera).

Perhaps next year I should join some kind of photo club in Oxford and start doing my own developing and printing. The danger, of course, is darkroom hypnosis; once, when I was in tenth grade, I found myself leaving the Handsworth darkroom after 2:00am, not realizing at all how much time had passed since I wandered in after a quick dinner of Coke and Gobstoppers.

I suspect I will do better than that in Galway tonight.

Manuscripts, horses, and Evensong

Another great day has passed, in and around Dublin. After Brunch at Gruel (see the earlier entry where I describe it), I went to Dublin Castle and the Chester Beatty Library. You rarely see such an excellent free museum: packed with venerable and beautiful manuscripts, and boasting an attractive roof garden. It provided welcome solace from the driving rain.

The weather was so bad when I finally left that I decided to scrap my plan to go to Howth. Instead, I went into the nearby Christ Church Cathedral for an Evensong ceremony. This, I will admit, was quite uncharacteristic of me. Aside from one wedding and one first communion, this was the only time I ever attended a church during a religious function. Even though the hymns were entirely unfamiliar to me, it was a worthwhile and rather beautiful experience. Knowing how Claire is now part of an Oxford choir, I thought of her during much of it. Despite the size of the cathedral, the number of people in attendance was less than the number of people in the choir. Perhaps that related to how most of the church was closed for a television taping.

As I left the Cathedral, there were rays of sunshine hitting Dublin pavements. Despite it being after 6:00, I decided to take the half-hour train to Howth. It would prove a very wise move. The ride itself, in the evening light, offered an attractive transition from urban centre to countryside. Once I arrived, I walked a photogenic arc out one of the stone and concrete arms enclosing the harbour, pausing beside a small lighthouse to watch the birds floating like kites as they pushed against the incoming wind.

The hills overlooking the town seemed a good place to visit, to I took to trekking up road by road as far as I could make it. A man who I asked for directions when I reached the top of one such proved much more helpful than could possibly have been expected. Named Jim Kilroy, he is a retired architect, and he owns some of the land in the area I was exploring. He told me a bit about the history of the place, showed me his three beautiful horses, and directed me to a cliffside trail that follows the circumference of Howth (which is a kind of bulb-shaped peninsula). Further evidence of how open and friendly the people of Ireland are.

By the time I reached the much larger lighthouse a few kilometres around winding cliffs, it had become full dark. Another stranger who I asked for directions proved exceptionally helpful. She said that she was heading in the direction of the train station that was eluding me and offered me a lift. I am glad I accepted, because it was a much longer and more complex journey than my crude understanding of the layout of the place suggested. She is a veterinarian, specializing in horses, and apparently knows Mr. Kilroy. I expect that’s normal, in such a small community.

Now back in Dublin, I am to meet Mark Cummins from the Walking Club at some later point. I should be mindful, of course, of the early morning bus ride tomorrow and the low probability of a good night’s sleep tonight. That said, three hours on the bus will offer a bit of time for recovery.

I think I can say with confidence that Ireland is the friendliest place I have ever been. While it isn’t fair to compare with places where I don’t speak the language, the sheer number of strangers who have engaged with me and treated me with kindness here is staggering. Nowhere in North American or English-speaking Europe has been comparable. I even got into a conversation with a young woman from Dublin who happened to sit beside me on the train back from Howth. This is a country that I need to visit again and, next time I meet an Irish person somewhere else in the world, I will do my best to help them however I can.

From Russia with love

Thanks to my newest set of dorm-mates, I am now wandering the foggy paths on the far side of exhaustion. I came home late last night to find the entry to the dorm physically barred with some massive object on the other side of the door. After pushing and knocking, I heard people shuffling around. I left for a few minutes and then opened the door to find my departed medley of backpackers replaced by seven huge tanned men, each wearing only a small slip of leather.

For the entire night, this cabal of Russians talked, and yelled, and laughed, and snored in anti-harmony: sounding like a collection of gas-fired saws all grinding around on rusty bearings. Thanks to their decision to wake up at six and spend the next four hours talking loudly in the room, I honestly got no sleep before having to vacate the hostel. And tonight is Saturday… The chances of my having enough presence of mind to manage the trek to the Aran Islands are not perfect.

PS. Unable to find a hostel in the Aran Islands that can take me for less than forty Euros a night, I’ve decided to book a place at the Sleepzone in Galway. I don’t particularly want to spend a lot of my time here calling and emailing various hostels, anyhow. From there, I will hopefully be able to do a daytrip to the Aran Islands on Monday. I will learn from the ticket office there how feasible that will prove.

Friday night Dublin

I set out tonight in search of social Dublin and – while I am drenched to the bone – there can be no denying that I found it. Through the drizzle, I made my way to Trinity College. There, I introduced myself to one person and began to spread virally as “Milan from Canada.” Every twenty minutes or so, it seemed that whoever I had been speaking to would introduce me to someone else. Between that and speaking with people beside me who were part of the same group as the person to whom I was introduced, I was very rapidly integrated.

Once the student bar at Trinity closed, I followed a group of Spanish drummers and pipers whose jaunty tune was quite at odds with the downpour. While doing so, I met a quartet of Dubliners who seem to overflow with goodwill towards Canada (actually, the sentiment was quite omnipresent among those with whom I spoke). After teaching one young woman the French version of the anthem, I ended up with them and still further friends at a place called Doyle’s. I wasn’t quite up to the 2:30am closing time there, so I tried to take advantage of a gap in the rain to get back to my hostel. Thirty metres away, a cab managed to hit a puddle in such a way that I got drenched from head to toe in pure Hollywood fashion.

Despite such minor foibles, it has been an excellent few hours. My ability to pick a person’s words from loud background noise has always been far below average, so chances are I didn’t hear anyone’s name properly. Even so, I direct my sincerest thanks outwards to all those anonymous Dubliners (and Spaniards) who made this rainy night so social and interesting.

Art, beer, and street crime

Today was wide-ranging and circuitous. It began with a walk along the Liffey before crossing south and heading up to Dame Street. There, I had a marvellous early lunch at an oddly-named cafe called ‘Gruel.’ Their sandwiches are good, and their salads are of such a variety as to make vegetarians simper with pleasure. After a couple of days of dodgy eating, the vegetable infusion was thoroughly appreciated. I may well drop by there for another lunch or dinner before I return to Oxford next Wednesday.

From there, I headed westwards to the Guinness Storehouse. Rather than shell out ten Euros for the tour, I just took the elevator in the lobby to the top level: the much-hyped gravity bar. Nearly packed wall to wall with digicam-wielding tourists, it was not the ideal spot for a Guinness. Indeed, the much calmer spot two floors down offered a comparable view and enough space in which to read and think for a while. On your way down and out, you will inevitably get a bit of a peek at the exhibits that most other people have paid to see, as well as the infinite masses of Guinness merchandise for sale. One of the more interesting things about the storehouse is the collection of high-walled brick streets that surround it, conjuring images of Dickensian industrial revolution era factories.

From the Guinness Storehouse, I headed yet farther west to what would be the oddest place of the day. I must have hit the Irish Museum of Modern Art at an unusual time, because the place seemed practically deserted. It’s an unusual art museum that you can wander directly into the central courtyard of without seeing another person, a queue, or a ticket booth. Odder still when you can go straight from there into galleries where you are the only visitor, and bored staff members sit around chatting with one another.

In fairness, things did pick up a bit after I was the only person to take the 3:00pm guided tour. Much of the art on display was of the shockingly self-indulgent variety that modern art galleries are rightly derided for catering to in such sycophantic fashion. Just doing something big and weird doesn’t really entitle you to gallery space and public grants. Even so, there was some decidedly good material on display, especially in the upper west gallery.

Immediately to the north of the art gallery, which is inside a former retirement home and hospital for soldiers, are some intricate formal gardens: all hedges and marble statues. I don’t think the way I got out was conventional (climbing over the ten foot stone wall onto the adjoining street), but there seemed to be no other way by which to exit northward.

From there, I walked north to Phoenix Park: the only part of Dublin that is actually much larger than you expect it to be. In the middle, past a zoo that I didn’t enter, you can find the official residence of the Irish head of state, the Áras an Uachtaráin, sitting kiddie-corner from the American ambassador’s house, both decked out with razor wire and motion tracking systems.

The walk from Phoenix Park back to the centre of town is fairly tedious and unattractive, at least when done as I did it, by cutting east across north Dublin, then straight down into the area near O’Connell Street. From there, I crossed the Millennium Bridge and experienced my most dramatic few minutes here so far. A distressed looking red-haired woman was shouting and pointing at a man running westward while clutching a brown leather purse. Two much larger men, prompted by the woman’s plaintive demands that someone stop the man, pinned him to a brick wall beside the canal, stripped him of his ill-gotten handbag, and held him there until the Garda Síochána (national police) arrived. It’s not the kind of display of civic solidarity you expect to see in a big city.

Anyhow, I headed from there for a pass through the crowded and touristy Temple Bar, just to see the district, before trying a pint of the much recommended Plain Porter at the Porterhouse Brewing Company, to the west of there.

Tomorrow, I am thinking of taking the DART out to Howth, after visiting the Chester Beatty Library. As for the rest of tonight, I am hoping to track down somewhere with a bit of good live music, before turning in fairly early. One serious recommendation to anyone planning on staying at Isaac’s Hostel: even with good earplugs, expect to be woken up several dozen times a night by people making an ungodly racket all around you and trains rumbling by next door.

Dynamic first day in Dublin

Today was superb; I’ve found my bearings in Dublin as quickly as I have come to realize what a great place it is. Despite the sheer length of the period of time I shall denote ‘yesterday,’ I got up in timely fashion this morning. Within an hour of doing so, I had acquired some needed provisions and set off for the day’s explorations. They would prove both extensive and diverse.

To start, I crossed the O’Connell Street Bridge into what is now central Dublin. Close by is Trinity College, where I had a look at the general grounds and the Douglas Hyde Gallery before going to see the famous Book of Kells. Despite grave warnings about Vatican Museum-class lines, I waited no more than three minutes to get into the gallery. The exhibits that precede the book demonstrate beyond dispute what an enormous amount of effort must have gone into the tome, though it’s really hard to comprehend in a post-Gutenberg era.

Above the Book of Kells is the spectacular Long Room: a barrel-roofed library made of dark wood. While other people milled about looking at the busts of great thinkers and a few volumes on display, I read Sweetness in the Belly. Between there and The Pavilian – an on campus pub beside the cricket pitch where I wandered for a bite to eat afterwards – I finished Camilla Gibb’s very engaging book. I will write a more comprehensive review once I return to Oxford.

At ‘The Pav,’ as the students apparently call the place, I met a group of physicists working on applied nanotechnology and the development of magnetically based random access memory for computers (the big upside of which is that it maintains the information in it without a current being applied). One of the nicest things about Dublin is how easily you can insert yourself into the conversations of strangers in pubs, or be drawn in, as I would later learn.

Other excellent things about Dublin include the size – no more than a fifteen minute walk from the farthest point I reached today (St. Patrick’s Cathedral) to the internet cafe near my hostel. Complimenting that are the pedestrian-only streets: a truly excellent element of urban planning anywhere. I haven’t used Dublin’s public transit, though trams and buses seem to be frequent and popular. After only a day here, I am willing to speculate that I could live here happily for some time.

After leaving Trinity, I went for a bit of a wander. I saw both cathedrals (Christ Church and Saint Patrick’s, both smaller than expected for such a traditionally religious place) before crossing over eastwards past Saint Stephen’s Green. At the suggestions of people I consulted before leaving, I then dropped in for a while at a pub called Kehoe’s. Over the span of a couple of hours, I had conversations with Americans about Arabica coffee beans, a fellow Canadian about Irish history, and a pair of native Dubliners about our respective countries. That pair very heartily endorsed the plan to visit the Aran Islands and Galway, suggesting that the smallest of the three islands is definitely the one to visit. One of the men also showed me a pub, about thirty metres away, where the protagonist of Ulysses famously had a gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of burgundy for lunch.

As the night is still fairly young, I may have a wander past the hostel to see if I can find anyone who is interested in a bit of additional exploration. I have the sense that most of those with whom I spoke last night – including an aggressive ‘Young Republican’ American woman, intent on proving the virtues of gun ownership and and sheer villainy of the Democratic Party – have already departed. That said, the place is positively crawling with curious travellers.

PS. After finishing Sweetness in the Belly, I picked up a hardback copy of John Banville’s The Sea for half the normal price of a paperback copy, at a discount book store near Trinity. After I finish that, I will take another stab at finding a used copy of Dubliners, or possibly fork out the Euros for a crisp new edition.

Imperfectly packed

Happy Birthday Sasha Ilnyckyj

If further evidence that I need to pack very carefully when departing at 3:00am were needed, it has been provided. Even though everything I was meant to bring was in a line leading to my door, it seems I left one small bag of rather essential items behind. As such, my first order of business in daytime Dublin is to replace them before my teeth rot and my hair begins to frighten passers-by. Likewise, an entire class of clothing items need to be replaced, in some fashion or another, if I am not to wear the same pair for the next seven days.

The away-trip plan for the moment is to take a bus to Galway on Sunday morning, then catch a ferry to one of the Aran Islands. Including the coach from Galway to Rossaveal, the Aran Islands leg of the trip should only be about 25 Euros, round trip. Has anyone been to the Aran Islands? If so, which of the three do you recommend: Inis Mor, Inis Meain, or Inis Oirr?