Castles and Crumbling Abbeys and Beaches and Cliffs and Rain

Dublin and Tralee, Ireland

After two weeks in London and two weeks in Paris, Ireland has been a very welcome respite from crowded trains, tiny apartments and the endless concrete of urban living. Okay, Paris and London do both have lovely parks and gardens, but it isn't quite the same as the cliffs and oceans and fields of Ireland.

We left Paris on Wednesday morning, spent a night in a Bed and Breakfast near Heathrow, and then flew on to Dublin on Thursday. We had the weekend to see all we could of Dublin. We learned all about the 1916 rising at the Collins Barracks, visited many of the actual sites of the rebellion in the city, ate ridiculously huge and delicious doughnuts and took our first taxi rides of our trip so far finding Dublin cab drivers to be immensely entertaining people. But on Monday morning we caught a train to the southwest coast where we are currently lodged in a four bedroom house in Tralee that we have used as our base for exploring. We enjoyed seeing museums and cathedrals, historical sites and monuments, but when we park our car and let the kids loose on a hiking trail along an Irish cliff side, the joy the kids get being in nature or climbing over ruins is blatantly obvious. They are even happy looking at the flocks of sheep from the car windows as we drive by.

So stuff we did before we turned in our rental car:

We drove the Dingle Peninsula, where we got ourselves a little lost
in the narrow one-lane-but- still-two-way-roads that are pretty typical here looking for a lake that we couldn't really get out at, but then we did get out at a beach and played catch with a slightly pushy momma australian shepherd and her tag along puppies. We saw an impressive castle ruin, but only from behind a fence warning us to stay away. We paused briefly at a roadside waterfall and then drove up over a mountain pass in fog that rendered either side of the road virtually invisible.

Next was the Ring of Kerry where we first walked around the top of Geoghan mountain and cliffs and then the Kerry cliffs. The Kerry cliffs were particularly stunning.

Kerry Cliffs

Then we did the Cliffs of Moher too because we were on a roll with the cliffs. It was a fairly longish drive from Tralee, but totally worth it. First we walked all the way out to Hag's Head and back, stopping lots along the way to check out the view of course. It is deceptively far to get all the way out there, but Kris and I had done it before so *this* time we were prepared for the nearly 6 mile trek out and back (not so much last time). And then we went up the stairs towards the O'Brien tower and out the other way to get a good view of where we had just been. It was a great walk and it was an atypically sunny day too (thank you, Ireland!).

Cliffs of Moher

Ross Castle

Our short day was a trip to Killarney where we took a tour of Ross Castle. According to our guide it is the only fully restored tower house in Ireland, though tower houses themselves are everywhere, one of my favorite things about Ireland. After the castle we drove over to Muckross House in Killarney National park and just walked around the grounds some, no one was real interested in the tour inside the house (Kris and I have done it  before. Meh. The castle is way more cool) but they loved the parks and gardens.

Our last big road trip was almost to Blarney Castle, but it ended up being to the Rock of Cashel, because its just too cool. We stopped first at Lough Gur and saw an old tomb and then a Stone Circle. I love stone circles. This one was pretty huge. Ronan speculated that it was probably a sports field. Liam that it was to keep cattle in. And Kris said maybe it was just how they punished their kids, making them move really big rocks. They all were pretty entertained to imagine that these long ago people would be entertained to know that we are all speculating about the importance of this big circle if it really wasn't such a big deal but just something ordinary. Then we drove to Killmallock (and learned how to pronounce it) where we saw a couple abbey ruins and were asked "Are you tourists? Americans? Visiting our little town? How did you ever find it?" Ha! I can't believe the town isn't over run with tourists. But its not. And then we finished the day at Rock of Cashel and Hore Abbey in the wind and rain.

Rock of Cashel

And now we are without a car and planning to just enjoy our little Irish town. There is a great fish 'n chips place. The grocery store bakery makes amazing scones that I can't stop eating and their Cadbury hot chocolate was on sale last week so we are all stocked up. The park has nice walking trails, there is a movie theater and walking mall and I can hear the church bells from our house. It does rain basically every day, sometimes almost violently,  our tv is my laptop, our dining room chairs are all in various states of disrepair and the shower actually ceases to function after two showers and needs a good thirty minutes to recover. But we can work with all that, especially with an adequate supply of scones and hot chocolate.

Wandering through Paris

Paris, France

Paris has grown on me. Our apartment is less than charming, particularly the fact that it was advertised as having two full bathrooms when what it really has are two rooms with showers and sinks and then one small closet with a dirty toilet in it. But when you venture out of the apartment, there is a lovely park less than a block away, at least two fabulous boulangeries where we buy the baguettes that, along with a big wheel of brie, have become the mainstay of our diet, and public transportation that can take us to any number of amazing places in about thirty minutes.

Our best days have been those we spent wandering a bit through the neighborhoods of Paris, especially when our walks corresponded with the two sunny days in what has been a mostly damp and cloudy visit. Today was so wet we abandoned our walk through several gardens a little earlier than planned and came home by way of the bakery so we could buy a few treats and, of course, fresh baguettes. Our first real day exploring Paris was last Saturday, even though we had been here for a few days already, that was the day we finally were feeling comfortable and capable of getting around. It was not a warm day, but it wasn't bad and we got ourselves most of the way to Les Invalides by metro and then walked from there to the Eiffel tower, on to the Arc de Triomphe and the down the Champs Elysees before descending again to the depths of the metro and home. By Friday we were pros at Paris and we spent a beautiful sunny day walking around Montmartre, starting with the Sacre Coeur at the top of the hill and then wound our way around and up and down the hill. We found the house where Van Gogh lived in Paris and the Moulin de la Galette that he featured in several paintings. At least that is what my limited research claims. There is a second windmill just down the street from it that looks basically the same, so maybe it was that one Van Gogh was painting? And of course the Moulin Rouge which I assume was never actually a functioning mill. Saturday we walked up and then down the Seine checking out the bridges and listening to the accordion players and dodging aggressive pickpockets. Then we crossed back to the Ile de Cite and saw the beautiful Sainte Chapelle as well as the very tip of the Island before heading back to the Eiffel tower to witness it light up at sundown and then put on a brief but awesome light show before we headed home late, via bus, to bed.

In between walks we have been mostly visiting art museums and the occasional cathedral. We spent one very long day at the Louvre, which I didn't exactly love overall but did love in parts. As far as an art museum goes, it is overwhelmingly huge and badly lit, but it is also sort of THE art museum. The Mona Lisa is predictably underwhelming, since you stand in a crowd of pushing, shoving tourists until you get to stand behind a barricade about 20 feet from the painting which resides in a protective case on the wall. Meh. But there are other paintings to see and plenty of sculptures and, if you are into that sort of thing, there are Egyptian and Greek and Aztec artifacts here too. London didn't get them all! A better museum, we thought, was the D'Orsay, beautifully housed in an old train station. The artwork sort of picks up where the Louvre basically left off, with lots of impressionists and post impressionists. So we saw lots of Renoir and Monet and Van Gogh and Degas and the whole museum took us only a few hours. Today we saw our last art museum, the l'Orangerie, though we had hoped for one more, the Marmottan, which is almost all Monet I believe but we weren't paying close enough attention and it was closed on our last day to visit it. But L'Orangerie has two huge, oval galleries that each feature four  panels of Monet's Waterlilies paintings and I love them. I could sit there all day. Especially if the other people would go away. The basement also has a collection of normal sized paintings in frames by a variety of artists: Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Matisse. But the real attraction here is the Waterlilies.

     We did not go up the Eiffel tower, I like seeing it from the ground. Same with the Arc de Triomphe. We did, though, pay to go up the bell towers at Notre Dame. The gargoyles were what swayed me. It seems like every place here boasts of the 'best' overhead view of the city, but I wasn't really excited by most of them, least of all the Eiffel Tower view as it would, of course, exclude a view of the tower itself. Besides, there is a decent view over the city just standing in front of the Sacre Coeur. But, no one but Notre Dame had gargoyles, and the view of Paris is only enhanced when viewed behind a horned and bearded monster depicted in stone. For stained glass though, Sainte Chappelle beats out the iconic rose windows of Notre Dame.
     I will never quite get over the trash and graffiti, the general state of disrepair and neglect, the families weaving their way through stopped traffic at intersections begging at car windows or the packs of pick pockets that actually stepped out and blocked our way as we walked along the sidewalk, waving 'petitions' in our faces. Most especially, though, the sight of the homeless sleeping in the metro stations, the metro trains, huddled under window awnings, or just stretched out on the sidewalk across from the Louvre will probably haunt us all for some time. But Paris can be charming too, if you look up from the garbage at your feet, though be careful because if you aren't paying attention you will probably step in dog poop.