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Thursday, October 01, 2009 Highlights from Ireland   Labels: Belfast, Dublin, Ireland, travel ^ Top | 12:56 AM | | | 
Thursday, September 10, 2009 Of Giants and Heroes I booked the tour through Northern Ireland for two reasons: Giant's Causeway and Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. One is a series of natural formations that almost look like they were built by man, and the other brought all my Indiana Jones fantasies to life. -779798.JPG) The story is that the Irish giant Finn McCool built a bridge so that he could reach his rival, the Scottish giant Benandonner, and challenge him to a battle. However, when Finn crossed the bridge and saw the other giant, he discovered that Benandonner was much larger than he'd thought and ran home, afraid, without giving the challenge. Benandonner saw the bridge and decided on his own to challenge his Irish rival, but Finn saw him coming and panicked. Finn's wife disguised him as a baby and told him to hide in a cradle and pretend to be their son. When Benandonner knocked on the door, Finn's wife told him that Finn was not home - the only other person in their house was their son. Benandonner took one look at Finn-as-son and said, "If this huge child is Finn's son, Finn must be huge!" He was afraid and ran home, destroying the bridge in the process. The reality is less exciting, involving lava and volcanic eruptions, but there is a similar rock formation in Scotland. The day we visited, it had rained for hours in the morning so that the rocks were slippery and the wind was so strong it was sometimes an effort to remain upright, but it made for an adventure. I would have loved to spend the entire afternoon there instead of the hour and a half we got on the tour. -780998.JPG) With the weather, we were lucky that Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge was open - the National Trust closes the bridge when the weather is uncooperative (it's generally a good policy to keep the tourists alive). The bridge was built by fishermen so that they could reach an area that would allow them to catch more salmon, but to see it from a distance you can picture Indiana Jones running across in order to escape Nazis or tribal natives who want to kill him. Up close, it's actually quite sturdy, even though it does sway and bounce with strong wind - given that thousands of visitors cross the bridge each year, the fact that you walk across on wide, wood planks (instead of whatever I was imagining) makes sense. That said, it's still narrow - you have to cross the bridge in single file - and only eight people are allowed on it at once.
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Wednesday, September 09, 2009 Monasterboice, Drogheda, and Derry "Do we have any Australians?" Cheers. "Do we have any Canadians?" Cheers. "New Zealand? Germany? Israel?" Cheers for each. And then: "Americans?" Muted acknowledgment. Apparently all of us have traveled enough to be a little afraid of Americans' reputation when traveling overseas. But on this tour, the Americans were quiet and it was a handful of Australian girls who won the prize for being loud and uninformed (and for giving too much detail about their backpacking exploits). -712187.JPG) Aussies and Kiwis dominated our bus of 55 as we left Dublin to explore Northern Ireland - and by the end of three days, we'd made lots of new friends. Our first stop was Drogheda and St. Peter's Church, which houses the head of St. Oliver Plunkett. I'm not kidding. Our tour guide thought we should see the 400-year-old mummified head-turned-relic and take photos. I passed on the photos and wondered if the parishioners, who were at the church for mass, were annoyed at the large group of tourists that had descended upon them. The church itself is beautiful - everywhere you look in Ireland, you stumble into gorgeous, centuries-old cathedrals - and when we weren't wandering around looking at heads in the middle of a service, the town was an interesting stop for an hour. We grabbed fresh scones and wandered over to St. Laurence Gate, which, according to the plaque nearby, is the oldest barbican still standing.Nearby Monasterboice is home to three high Celtic crosses, originally used by monks to tell Bible stories, a round tower, two churches, and a Celtic cemetery that's still being used - the newest grave I saw was placed in the last five years. -788551.JPG) From there we headed to Derry, our stop for the night. While our guide/bus driver was primarily useful for transportation and jokes, our guide for the walking tour of Derry was intense and clearly wanted to make the most of the opportunity to give his perspective on the Troubles. The name of the town itself is a statement of allegiance - those loyal to England, who controlled the town until the last 30 years or so, call the town Londonderry, while the majority Catholic population (and most of Ireland) call the town Derry. Newscasters dubbed the town Slash City since they usually say "Derry/Londonderry" as to seem neutral. According to our guide, who was born and raised in Derry, the conflict was not about religion - it was about Irish civil rights and whether the town would be controlled by the Irish or the English. Derry is the site of Bloody Sunday, where 27 unarmed civilians were shot by British armed forces - the British are still investigating the incident, and the families of the 13 (or 14, if you count the man who died later from related injuries) are still seeking justice. There's a memorial to those who died on that day, and it lists their ages - many of those shot were only 17 years old. After that sobering look at history, we lightened things up with dinner at Ice Wharf, where a drunk Irishman approached our eight-person table asking, "Are any of you Americans?" Carolyn and I didn't say a word, but the Australians and New Zealanders who made up the rest of the table all pointed at us. Outed! It turned out that he had a pint of Guinness for "the Americans," which he ended up leaving with me. Apparently we're loved after all. After dinner, we made our way over to Peadar O'Donnells, which made the best night we've had in Ireland so far. A trio of musicians (bodhran/vocals, flutes, and acoustic guitar) played fantastic sets of traditional music, and the locals danced (and sometimes sang) with them. Pub musicians here tend to be fairly casual - instead of standing on a stage, they often sit down around a table with a pint of beer. I found out afterward at Derry is apparently known for music, and with good reason. Even though I was exhausted - every night I'd gotten less than six hours of sleep and I essentially pulled an all-nighter with the flight to Dublin because of the time change and staying awake through the day - I didn't leave until the musicians stopped playing and closed out the bar. Labels: Derry, Ireland, musicians, travel ^ Top | 7:22 AM | | |
Monday, September 07, 2009 A Primer in Luring Tourists Phase 1: Mention Vikings. Phase 3: Profit! But what's Phase 2? -731769.JPG) Dublinia would have been much better if we were in elementary school. But even then, some placards had grammatical errors, one needed updating (2007 was in the future), and enough paint had worn off others that letters from multiple words were missing. The verdict? Half interesting history lesson and half boring. However, the building itself is beautiful, and it's worth walking around the entire exterior.Speaking of Vikings, the oldest of Dublin's two medieval cathedrals was built by a Viking king. Most of Christ Church Cathedral was built and rebuilt centuries after the original, so it's not terribly different from other cathedrals, but the crypt is still medieval. We heard the choir rehearsing for evensong while we were there, and they sounded amazing. Interesting find: the crypt has a mummified cat and mouse on display - apparently they were running through the organ pipes and got stuck. They're famous: James Joyce references the cat and mouse in Finnegan's Wake. After much walking, we were hungry. Leo Burdock's Traditional Fish and Chips has nowhere to sit, so we ordered food and walked a few blocks down the road to St. Patrick's Cathedral, which has a large garden (with an homage to Ireland's writers). We sat down and noticed the people on the bench next to us were also carrying paper bags from the same chippie. And so were the people near the fountain. Great minds think alike. To finish the day, we decided to look for some music. Arlington Hotel Bar was recommended on Couchsurfing Zone Dublin (which is run by locals) as a good place for Irish music and dancing. Why it was recommended, I have no idea, because the bar was packed with tourists, the music consisted of boring covers backed up by synthesizer and guitar (to be fair, they did play two traditional Irish songs), and two of the four dancers looked like they hated their lives. The dancing was fine, but the men looked like they wanted to be anywhere but on stage for a crowd of tourists - who didn't notice, and cheered and hooted anyway. Labels: Dublin, Ireland, travel ^ Top | 1:56 PM | | |
Sunday, September 06, 2009 Greetings from Dublin I love wandering through cities on foot - it's the best way to get a sense of a new place, and it's always fun to discover interesting shops and architecture. On a map, Dublin's city center looks much larger than it is - everything is just a few minutes' walk, and it's much more tightly condensed than Chicago (even if you were to limit yourself to the Loop). All day, I stumbled across places that I'd read about in articles or seen photos of, completely unintentionally.  Carolyn, a fellow swing dancer and friend from my Michigan days, and I arrived in the center around 8:00am, and much to our surprise, the streets were empty and most of the cafes were closed. Apparently Dublin wakes up late on the weekend. For breakfast, we wandered over to the Temple Bar Food Market, where everything looked amazing - it's actually not a very large outdoor market, but I could have eaten there all week. Unfortunately they're only open on Saturdays. After much deliberation, we both decided on Guinness steak pies, which we ate while listening to the musician in the photo on the left play flamenco guitar. The pies were crisp, with a fluffy crust, and full of flavor. Grafton Street felt familiar, even though this was my first trip to Dublin. After watching a marionette dancing to Macy Gray, a giant leprechaun, a "coin-operated" man, living statues, and scores of musicians, I realized that Once must have been filmed on Grafton. (When I returned later to my computer, I discovered that Glen Hansard, the actor/musician from the film, and Damien Rice both used to busk there - which makes some sense, since the quality of the performers today was surprisingly high). -720603.JPG) The River Liffey is Dublin's equivalent of the Seine - it's similar to Paris in that the river divides portions of the city and its banks are walled in by stone. A few artists have booths along the north side, and I bought a black and white print there for my brother, an amateur photographer. With our accents, Dubliners can immediately tell that Carolyn and I are from the States, and they all ask where we're from. When I mentioned Chicago, the photographer exclaimed, "Obama's from Chicago!" He was relieved that Bush is no longer in office. Almost everyone we talk to mentions Obama, and a man selling scarves from a small storefront even knew our mayor: "You know the Irish, your mayor's name is Daley." Dinner was at the restaurant of the first chef in Ireland to earn two Michelin stars, Kevin Thornton. They're running a special pre-theatre menu that effectively is a way to eat three courses (plus a chef's choice starter) at Thornton's for the price of an entree from their a la carte menu. While our meal was good, I have to say that I wasn't blown away. Across the board, the presentation was beautiful - I've never seen anyone else serve tea the way that they do - but the dishes themselves did not amaze me. In spite of this, it was fun to meet Thornton himself, who popped out of the kitchen for a few minutes to greet all of the guests who were seated before the main dinner rush. All in all, it was an excellent first day. Labels: Dublin, food, Ireland, travel ^ Top | 2:10 AM | | |
Saturday, September 05, 2009 Flying to Dublin I can't remember the last time I used the in-flight entertainment system on an American carrier - on a recent (long) flight, the TV screen in the aisle was flickering and the larger one for our entire section wasn't working. Flying to Dublin yesterday on Aer Lingus, which is considered a discount carrier, I got a large, personal touchscreen that allowed me to choose from video games, TV shows, movies, and music. And they gave us headphones (which most US airlines charge for these days). To add to all of that, we made excellent time and arrived in Dublin early. An hour early. If this is "behaving like a discount carrier," the US airlines need to take note. Labels: Dublin, flights, Ireland, travel ^ Top | 2:32 PM | | |
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 Ronda, or Middle Earth  People tell me skydiving is scary. I've gone skydiving, and it didn't produce nearly as much fear in me as staring straight down the gorge in Ronda, Spain. Ronda is an old town built on a plateau--two, actually--separated by a sharp, 330-foot drop. The fear reaction that looking down from Puente Nuevo (the "new bridge" that took 40 years and 50 lives to build) produces is a visceral one--people do sometimes fall to their deaths, but much of the space any normal person would wander through is walled off or enclosed with iron grates. We weren't normal. Lauren, Jason, and I climbed down the slippery stairs that went down to the bottom of the gorge and wandered away from the more standard path to one winding directly underneath and through the bottom section of the bridge. (I don't think most tourist sites in the US would ever leave the path we took open for fear of lawsuits.) The path offered amazing views (the photo on the right was taken from it), but at any moment it would have been a little too easy to trip and fall--most of it was only two feet wide, with a long, sheer drop on one side and perhaps a shorter drop on the other. There were some railings, but they were flimsy (a single line of wire, rather than actual rail, just thick enough to grab, but of dubious help if you actually did fall, and a couple of sections had chain-link fencing), but many of the fence posts and attachments were loose or had fallen off.  There were a good number of beer and pop bottles even further down than we went (read: where there was no path at all), so I suspect that the town's teenagers (who all apparently frequent one otherwise intriguing Arabic-styled cafe) must run up and down the rocks. Ronda's beautiful, but there wouldn't be a lot for a teenager to do there after a couple of weeks.The town itself is amazing--it was Roman, Moorish, and Catholic all in turn, and pieces of each conqueror reflect themselves in its architecture. From one point, you can see the old Arabic bridge (which is still used), the Roman bridge (also still used), Arabic baths and mines, a castle, and a palace. Walking through it, especially near Puente Nuevo, feels like walking into Middle Earth. ^ Top | 11:25 AM | | |
Sunday, December 28, 2008 Madrid and Winnie the Pooh  Winnie the Pooh is stalking me. One of my first sights in Madrid after getting out of the Metro at Sol was Winnie the Pooh handing balloon animals to small children. Cute, right? Well, a little later, I walked into Plaza Mayor and there he was again. However, this time he was joined by two of his friends: Chewbecca and Yoda!* I was much more excited to see them--Spain immediately won points for satisfying my geek tendencies. Chewie and I did a little dance, but I think he was actually trying to get me to hug him (believe me, it wasn't obvious--I only figured this out when a little boy ran up to Chewie and hugged him. He must be used to kids just running into his arms). Hours after leaving Plaza Mayor, after I'd explored a cathedral, peeked into Museo del Jamon ("Ham Museum"--hilarious name, but really a small restaurant chain with a ridiculous number of dried Spanish hams hanging from the ceiling), and wandered through parks, Winnie the Pooh appeared again at a street market in a totally different section of town, still handing out his balloons. Three times was getting a little scary, but none of the other tourists found this disturbing at all. Then again, many of them were wearing neon wigs with foot-tall hair and deconstructed Santa hats that turned into spirals at the top, so I'm not sure they could really be trusted to notice anything strange.Random fact: The EU ban on smoking is totally ignored in Spain. I'm not convinced that it's possible to find even a cafe that doesn't get smoky. * Lucasfilm is rather overprotective of its copyrights. I wonder if the street performers paid licensing fees for their costumes? ^ Top | 10:03 PM | | |
Monday, December 03, 2007 London Highlights ^ Top | 3:54 AM | | |
Tuesday, November 27, 2007 Mummies My keyboard appears to be British, but as I type it's conforming to an American layout. (Strange--though appreciated--since I haven't changed any settings on the software.) I'm in the basement of an internet cafe right next to the Young Vic, waiting to see their production of Brothers Size, which has garnered rave reviews. I spent most of today exploring the British Museum's extensive Egyptian collection, with minor detours into Assyria and Greece/Rome. Their placards are actually quite informative; I hadn't known that hieroglyphics were a formal form of writing reserved for monuments and art whereas Hieratic script was standard for everyday use (account keeping, letters, records). Eventually Hieratic became a formal script for religious texts, replaced by Demotic script in daily use. Looking at the mummies, while fascinating, feels a little odd--these were people, and they've been removed from their carefully prepared tombs. It's a different feeling than just walking through a cemetery or looking at tombs, in which you're a step removed from bodies, different even than wandering through Parisian catacombs. According to Ancient Egyptian beliefs about death, they needed to remain intact in order to be reborn into the afterlife. (Somewhat problematic from the standpoint of bodies moving hundreds and even thousands of years later--when would one enter the afterlife? Wouldn't they have already been reborn? Would one die again in the afterlife if the body here decomposed? Would servants be lost there, assuming they appeared in the afterlife to begin with, if their corresponding statues were destroyed in this life, though so much time has elapsed?) Moving the mummies seems problematic from that point, even though comptemorary people do not share those beliefs. Labels: Ancient Egypt, London, travel ^ Top | 12:36 PM | | |
Saturday, November 24, 2007 Welcome to London Stepping out of the Tube station near my home for the next four days, my first sight of London from street level consisted of Starbucks, KFC, and Burger King. It’s always amazing to me how large cities are so similar even in the midst of their differences: the area near the Knightsbridge stop is home to the iconic Harrods department store—and a host of stores that I can find on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Staples like the Gap hang out next to H&M, and I expect the clothes are primarily the same, with the exception that here they cost twice as much. I earned a laugh from the man working the Gatwick Express ticket counter at the airport when he told us that we were getting a great deal—two train tickets for free since there was a 2-for-1 deal on our party of four—and I chuckled and said that was good, since “My money’s worth nothing here!” Before leaving Bryan warned me that prices in London look normal. Until you remember that one pound is worth two US dollars. (It’s pathetic when even Canadian money is worth more than ours.) I wonder if Britons traveling to the US experience a similar feeling in reverse (“Wow, everything’s so cheap here!”). It’s interesting walking around Central London after recently reading Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere--when I first heard the recorded voice on the Underground say “Mind the Gap!” I nearly burst out laughing. (This would have probably caused my family to wonder if I was insane. Oh wait.) I browsed through Harrod’s imagining an underworld’s market materializing in the middle of the night and disappearing by morning, leaving no trace of sellers who would trade food for ballpoint pens and girls auditioning bodyguards. I know, I’m a geek. ^ Top | 2:11 PM | | |
Thursday, August 30, 2007 Recipe for a Birthday Trip to New York 1 Missed flight due to Bryan's last-minute caulking-the-tub project 2 Bumps from overbooked flights 1 Lost boarding pass 1 Additional night in Chicago 3 Total visits to O'Hare 3 1/2 Days in New York City 1 Cute pet rabbit that doesn't utilize his litter box as much as he should 1 Off-Broadway theatre production (the excellent Eurydice) 1 Free Lincoln Center performance (Kristjan Järvi’s Absolute Ensemble--it was forgettable) 1 Breakdancing performance in the subway near Times Square 2 Visits to Chinatown 3 Trips in search of quality chocolate and/or ice cream 1 Viewing of performance art that was less interesting than the view from a skyscraper (Dean Moss and Ryutaro Mishima) 1 Street performance by Chinese musicians (they were terrible) 38 Photos (the camera battery died) 1 Helping of Birthday Night Birthday Night: 1 Concert in a tiny jazz club/restaurant (Moto) 2 Borrowed birthday candles from the neighboring table 1 Dedication of "Happy Birthday" by paid-off jazz duo 3 Birthdays (at two tables!) in the same night at a jazz club that holds less than 25 people Throw all ingredients except Birthday Night into a weekend and mix until just blended. Frost with Birthday Night. Serve warm. Sure to please singer-songwriters! ^ Top | 6:29 AM | | |
Monday, March 26, 2007 Michigan Travels I find pieces of my parents' house in my brother's. The ceramic dishes, the wok hiding under the stove, the pots on the burners. It's the first time I've been to his place since he moved in, and it feels both immediately familiar and unfamiliar. Familiar because I feel comfortable--it's the bachelor pad of my kid brother, after all, and I don't feel the otherness of a guest even though his friendly roommates refer to me as one--unfamiliar because this is the first house he's lived in without our parents, and though it's been months since he moved to Lansing I hadn't been able to visit until this weekend. I played a show at the cafe down the street. The walls are decorated with brush paintings from a trip to China two years ago, chopsticks from his fellow InterVarsity staff roommate, a jazz poster from his musician roommate, and wallpaper that was fashionable decades ago. The fridge is a relic from the 70s (much like my microwave), but with the retro feel of the house there is a footed tub in the upstairs bathroom that's begging to be photographed or painted. In Ann Arbor I slept in the TV lounge of an all-women's co-op owned by the University of Michigan and remembered what it was like to live in the dorms while walking down the hall to use a communal bathroom with four sinks, three toilets, two showers, and a tub. I walked around my old city with friends I've known for years, surprised to see that the theatre building has been mostly torn down--only a third of it still stands. Its replacement is on North Campus, home of the engineers. I wandered through the Arb and tried to avoid patches of mud on the newly-thawed ground--spring has finally arrived, and just being in the sun, strolling without a jacket, conversing on life plans and theology while surrounded by a carefully sculpted wild landscape, was satisfying. And I played Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution for the first time--an apartment's worth of guys (and me) laughed so hard when Alex belted out tenor notes in a range almost too high for him that he wasn't able to sing from laughing himself. Here I've gotten a snapshot of my brother's life, playing Settlers of Catan with the other IVCF interns, hanging out with his students from Chinese Christian Fellowship, meeting the family that's essentially adopted him as their own (recently the two-year-old daughter spontaneously started calling him "Uncle Ben"). Three concerts, two cities, one brother, and lots of friends. It's been a good trip. Labels: concerts, touring, travel ^ Top | 1:07 AM | | |
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