June 11th - 21st: Scenes from a Small Island

June 11^th. BA286 San Francisco to London Heathrow.

On a jumbo jet bound for London. I love these monsters! So heavy and ponderous, thundering down the runway, taking off despite everything. We didn't get seats together, something about getting seat assignments at the gate (what is this, Ryanair?) but a nice guy agreed to move further back in the plane so we could all sit together. Only caveat: he said he'd come back for his seat if he ended up beside a really big person. Out the window, California already burned dry in mid June. Not enough rain, not enough rain. Snow still scant on the eastern slopes of the Rockies. We flew round the edge of night, skirting the rounded mountain of dark on the Journey Map on our TV screens. Grazed the southern tip of Greenland. Godthat the only city shown in the giant white waste. Does anyone ever go to Greenland? Does anyone even live there??

Middle brother and family flying in to Dublin tomorrow afternoon, youngest and eldest brothers already there. Dad's 80^th birthday lunch on Saturday with 25 family members, the four Berkeley kids and the four Berkeley cousins all together in one room for the first time in many many years, with many of the partners and kids. This is going to be a great trip.

June 12^th-14^th  Marine Hotel, Sutton, Dublin.

It's weird coming home to Dublin and staying in a hotel instead of my parents' house. They can't accommodate guests anymore, with my mom having her own room for all the equipment, and the night carer the third bedroom. Staying in a hotel is a still a big luxury for all of us. We were remembering Jessie's first stay in a hotel – a faceless motel on the way home from camping at the Eel river. She bounced on the beds, then checked out the bathroom and came runnng out crying "Mom! Dad! They gave us soap!" Our room in the Marine is bizarrely huge, with a sitting room down one end. By leaving our gluten free cereal box on the windowledge, we could see from outside that our room was four windows at one side of the hotel. Really brought some class to the place, the cereal. Turns out that everywhere you go in Ireland, you can get gluten free products. So that box of Annie's rice mac'n'cheese travelled to Europe and back in my suitcase. Best travelled mac'n'cheese in the northern hemisphere.

The Marine has a swimming pool. Indoor. Heated. Like all hotel swimming pools in Ireland, it turns out, you need to wear swim caps. This news was relayed to us by an apologetic hotel employee as about ten of my family members bobbed about hatless in the pool one afternoon. We all just looked up at him, said "okay" bemusedly, and kept on swimming. Outside, the weather suddenly turned to gale force winds, so when we came out of the swimming pool we had to battle the wind across the lawn back to the hotel. More on Irish weather later. As you will find if you ever visit, it is a constant topic of conversation on the tiny island.

June 15^th. Dublin, and dad's 80th.

Saturday morning we made a quick sortie into the city, after a few days doing family stuff, which involved numerous pints in the hotel bar of an evening. 

Long time since I sat down for a pint with my brothers in a Dublin pub. (Hotel bars are not, strictly speaking, pubs but they have the advantage that you can just roll upstairs to bed at 1am instead of having to hail a taxi.) First stop, the Stephen's Green Center and a stroll down Grafton Street, the pedestrian shopping street at the heart of the south (more fashionable) side of the city. Many street performers down Grafton Street, and coffee at the famous Bewley's Café a must. In my college days, Bewleys was a grand old café with waitresses who wore black with white lace-trimmed aprons. It's still very grand with lots of stained glass and velvet upholstery. I once did a poetry reading with Seamus Heaney in the James Joyce room on the 3^rd floor. There goes my 15 minutes of fame…

Of course I had to take Talc and Jessie into Trinity College where I was an undergrad. Lots of changes since my time, but the cobblestones are the same, and Front Arch, immortal meet-up spot before the days of cellphones ("mobiles" in Ireland). The rooms where I lived, House 13 on Botany Bay and House 37 on New Square, are all locked now. In my day, a more innocent one apparently, anyone could walk in and out of the houses. 

I'd forgotten how amazingly old the trees on New Square were. 

We thought of visiting the Book of Kells till we saw the line. Much more interested to poke around the Arts Block where I whiled away my undergrad days. Tried to poke our noses into the Lecky Library, scene of much study, but the rude security guard made it suddenly less appealing. We did wander into a lecture hall. They were named for famous Irish writers. I could see the ghost of myself, aged 20 in row 13 nodding out over my handwritten notes. In 1988, it was still okay to submit a handwritten essay for undergrad English. I used to type mine on an old electric typewriter. Tell that to the 10-year-olds of today for a laugh.

A quick tour of the Temple Bar, trendy section of  Dublin just south of the Liffey which was all old tumbledown warehouses when I was living in Trinity. Took off during the boom years, falling over itself being cool. A warren of tiny cobblestone streets with tattoo parlors, chic restaurants and snazzy new-old pubs like The Quays and of course the eponymous Temple Bar. 

Sad to say, the Bad Ass café had completely lost the funkiness of my college years and is now a fancy restaurant retaining only the name and the big red-paned windows. Crossed the Liffey on the Ha'penny Bridge (you used to have to pay a half-penny to cross, that coin became defunct during my childhood) to the less fashionable North side. 

The Winding Stair book café is still there, though not under the ownership of Kevin, who founded and ran it when I was a teenager. Scene of the first poetry reading I ever did, aged 16. 

On to The Church, a real church cunningly remodeled as a restaurant complete with impressive bar right down the center, pipe organ still in place, fabulous stained glass and wood everywhere, and weird catacomb-like bathrooms (no skeletons though). Great place to eat if you ever find yourself at the top of Henry Street.

Dashed back to hotel just in time for 80^th birthday lunch/family reunion. All four of us Berkeley kids, plus all four Berkeley cousins in one room with numerous partners and kids, and my aunt Joy, and of course the guests of honor. Since mum turned 78 on June 9^th, we celebrated her too. Great to catch up with everyone but distressingly little time to do so. Four hours passed in a flash. Dad made a brief and very dad-like speech, I read out a poem I wrote for him, some silly bits, some sensible tearjerky bits, and it was all wrapped up with cake and copious bottles of wine. The festivities carried over to mum and dad's house and later a nearby hostelry. Turning 80 is not for sissies, but my dad carried it off in style. "No big deal" was the presiding sentiment. "Anyone could do it." That's my dad. Bit of a cool customer.

June 16^th: Onward south and west!

Sunday afternoon we left Dublin for Kilkenny, a beautiful medieval town two hours southwest. Brief stop on the Dublin ring road at Dundrum to drop in on my friend Niamh, miraculously over from Sydney so our paths could cross in Dublin for the first time in living memory. We were roomies at Trinity, after which we headed off for opposite points on the planet. Met Niamh's 4-year-old Caoimhe (wonder what the Aussies make of that spelling) and had a couple of hours to cram the past ten years into. It's a theme of my trips back to Ireland. So many people to see, so little time…Still it was great to have the reconnection.

Checked into the Newpark in Kilkenny and when I said my name the concierge said brightly "Ah Tolchin, yes, we have your passports." Momentary utter confusion. You have our passports? Is this some kind of alternate universe? Turns out I very uncharacteristically stashed our passports in a drawer in the Marine hotel room, then left them there. Housekeeping found them, the staff figured out from my handwritten notations where we were staying that night, and some random staff member happened to be driving to Kilkenny so no bother, he delivered them to our hotel.  Welcome to Ireland! This was just one of many such small miraculous moments on our trip.

The Newpark was a fabulous place, run just like a hotel should be run. Everyone kind, friendly, helpful beyond the call of duty. They had a mini zoo in a big enclosure out back: miniature horses, donkeys, lamas, ostrich, goats, sheep, plus a room with rabbits, chincillas and other critters all available for petting and feeding if you caught the feeding guy at the right time. 

 Rashers and Sausages, as we called them: extremely friendly.

The animals were really well cared for and had plenty of space. Just for the pleasure of the guests. They also had an indoor pool and gym, plus a "Tranquillity Pool" – warm outdoor pool with the perfect view of a 400-year-old copper beech tree. Even in the economically slammed climate of Ireland today, the Newpark had a feeling of ease and good humor. The manager chatted with us as we admired the zoo. Obviously loved his job and thrived on providing the best service to his guests. We loved the Newpark! Yet there are signs everywhere of the economic pain: the fella feeding the bunnies told us that most of his friends have emigrated to New Zealand now. You never know how good the local hurling team is going to be season to season, he said, because the best players may have emigrated since last year.

June 18^th: Bantry Bay, West Cork

West Cork deservedly has a reputation for lush beauty, rivalled only by its immediate neighbor Kerry. Ireland was so green and wet as we drove down through it. Great signposting – big change from my childhood – easy to find everything. Fun driving the tiny beetly car, gobbling up the kilometers southwest. Of course, once you get off the major routes (the motorway system remains half-hearted since the bust put an end to it) you have the challenge of sharing seriously narrow roads with seriously large silver double-decker tourist busses. These come lumbering towards you without even the pretence of moving over, as if there was anywhere to move. You squeeze into the hedgerow, hoping there's no ditch to get stuck in, and the giant glides by. There's usually at least a hair's breadth between the two vehicles, sometimes even two.

Took a morning in Cork City, enjoying the shopping and the oddly-named English Market, a good old-fashioned meat and produce market complete with wrought-iron and wood-beams like an old train station, plus upstairs café serving fantastic soups and the best gluten-free bread Jessie had ever had. West Cork has some of the most classic Irish town names I know: Clonakilty, Skibbereen, Ballydehob. Bantry, where we stayed the night, was an odd sort of seaside town with a huge concrete central parkade where the town fair has always taken place. 

 Bantry Bay

The town didn't feel quite woken up, and we were excited to head out onto the Beara Peninsula, probably the least travelled of Kerry's three (Dingle, The Ring, and Beara). 

 Irish architecture tends to be very unadorned, but they love their bright colors.

June 19^th: Allihies, Beara Peninsula

We'd booked a couple of nights in a B&B in Allihies, a tiny village at the tip. Looked like about two hours from Kenmare, the peninsula's gateway town (deserved winner of the national Tidy Towns competition 12 years in a row). Actually, it took about four hours. We didn't realize that the Rural Route round the peninsula, which was narrow and windy enough, divided at one point and we took the even narrower windier coastal road that seemed to follow every fjordal inch of the coastline. But the views! Every corner we came around was better than the last. Some places the road just looked like a tiny ribbon across this wild lush coastal landscape. Very few cars, very few houses.

Finally made it to Allihies, a one-street village with just a single pub (highly unusual in Ireland where there's usually a pub for about every twenty inhabitants) 

 and asked a local where the Beach View B&B was. She directed us out of town and said to say hi to Irene. Everyone knew Irene and she knew everyone. She told us some guests the previous week had wanted to hike the peninsula but didn't know what to do about getting back. She told them to hike as long as they wanted, then call into the nearest house, tell them to call Irene and she'd come and pick them up. When I asked if she'd lived there her whole life, she said yes, but then qualified that she'd been born in Eyeries but moved to Allihies. Eyeries was the tiny one-pub village about six kilometers away. People survive there with "the bit of farming." Up the mountain, small rocky farms separated with rock walls. A few sheep, a few beef cattle. Everyone shares the hay cutting machine, taking turns. She has three kids, two have left. Gregory, a guy I met on the beach, had another story. People largely survive in this officially 'disadvantaged' area on EU subsidies.

Irene was so warm and friendly, she made the stay wonderful. Fabulous buffet breakfast plus of course the "full Irish" (rashers, sausages, grilled tomato, eggs, toast, black and white pudding…you don't want to know what's in it) and when we were leaving and weren't sure we had enough cash she told us to take an envelope with her name on it, go to the ATM in Castletownbere (nearest town about 20km away), put the money in the envelope, leave it in "the shop next door to the bank," and she'd pick it up in the next few days. Welcome to rural Ireland!

June 20^th: Kenmare

Allihies was a little too far from the madding crowd for 2 days out of our 10, so we headed back into Kenmare and booked into a guest house on the main street over Foley's pub.

Hard for me to believe it was 35 years since I was in Kenmare. The six of us in our green 1971 Volkswagon Variant. Now it's 2013, a boom and a bust later. That night, I drove Jessie out the Ring of Kerry road to Sneem where we holidayed as kids. Still a sweet little village with two greens joined in a figure-of-eight by a bridge over the river. We bought a packet of Milky Moos, my favorite sweets from childhood and a taste that brings me back there.
Along the roadsides in the West, you often see the bog cut with the stooks (piles) of turf stacked to dry. People own small plots of bog that they cut by hand. The turf takes a few weeks to dry enough for fuel, but it gives off that great peaty smell that you can smell all over the West of Ireland.

June 21^st, Midsummer's Day

Being so far north of the Equator, and so far West in Ireland, the longest day of the year was even longer, light till 11pm. And since we're doing so much, and it's light from 4:30am., every day feels like about five days. Stopped on a whim at Muckross House, which had the most spectacular gardens and grounds we'd ever seen. We got chatting to one of the gardeners as we wandered. He happily stopped what he was doing and launched into a history of the house, sending Jessie into fits of suppressed laughter as he talked in his strong Kerry accent about how it was built in "the eighteen-farties"  for the Herbert family. Herbert, a British member of parliament, was originally "given" 10,000 acres of the land by Queen Elizabeth I, as though it was hers to give. The Herberts and friends used the house only sporadically as a hunting lodge. Gorgeous place, sitting empty most of the time. They sold it to a guy for his daughter as a wedding present, but she died on the boat to America to visit her parents in 1932. Her husband couldn't bear to keep it, so he gave it to the State, who couldn't afford to do anything with it until they renovated it in the 1960s. Giant wing-nut trees. A sunken dahlia garden. A stream garden. 

Jessie temporarily shrank into a tiny person, meditating among the giant leaves.

View from Muckross House down to their private lake. Not bad, for a second home!