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.

From London to Paris

Paris, France

We are in Paris. And we are currently spending our afternoon sitting in our little apartment watching Dr Who because right now Paris is feeling overwhelming and the Doctor seems familiar and safe, weeping angels and all. We arrived via the Eurostar yesterday afternoon and eventually managed to figure out how to get ourselves tickets and get on the underground and then off in the general vicinity of our apartment. Though getting out of the underground station proved to be a pretty big challenge when our tickets would not open the turnstiles. In the end some friendly Parisians essentially helped us all jump the turnstiles and shove our luggage through and then we walked the rest of the way to our apartment rather than try to work out how the bus system worked. And then we listened and nodded and murmured 'd'accord' a lot while a very talkative non-English speaking woman showed us all around our tiny apartment.

Our whirlwind London tour finished up Tuesday with a trip to the Churchill War Rooms, which then inspired us to watch Darkest Hour that night. The War Rooms was the first line of any size we had to stand in through our whole visit in London, mostly thanks to that movie, but it was very cool and now Fionn can recite the names of many of Churchill's pets. Really. We saw other things in our last few days too. We went to the British Museum, the Tate Modern museum, and the Victoria and Albert museum. The general opinion of the Tate modern was that most of it was weird, but we did see an actual Salvador Dali painting and a Degas sculpture, plus the view of London from the top floor is pretty great. The British museum is awesome but also just plain overwhelming, there is so much to see that after awhile I got a little numb to it and I would find myself walking into a new gallery, rolling my eyes, and thinking "Seriously? MORE ancient Greek pottery? Puhleeez." It also does make you wonder if possibly India and Turkey and Greece and Wakanda might just possibly want some of their own artifacts back. And the answer is yes, some of them would. Its also pretty cool to see the Rosetta Stone though (sorry, Egypt). Victoria and Albert was a similar experience of just so many things to see, but I am really partial to the sculpture there nonetheless (Rodin!), even if Liam did keep saying “More naked people?” We also covered many fandom bases when we toured the Globe theater, ate lunch on the steps of St Paul’s cathedral, walked all around St Bart’s Hospital till we found the spot that Sherlock jumped from and the plaque commemorating William Wallace, and of course walked across the Millenium bridge.

On Saturday though we took a break from sight seeing and instead took a train and visited cousins who live in a little town north of London. They fed us chili and let us play with their giant puppy, Bear. Ronan and Fionn learned to play netball and pie face. We walked around their little town and the neighboring St Albans and we just had fun not being tourists for a day.

And then we came to Paris and got a little bit lost and couldn’t find a decent grocery store that first night, were pretty disappointed in our first French bakery and are less than enamored of our funky little apartment. But we did find a good pizza place right away and a theater that is showing Ready Player One in English tomorrow and with some work got ourselves to and from a grocery store this morning so we have bread and chocolate and cheese and fruit. We will relax tonight, venture out again tomorrow, and will adjust.

London!!!!

London, England

We are in a tiny basement level flat under and behind a florist shop and hairdresser in London. Our flat is accessed through a series of gates and uneven stairs behind the street and no one would ever suspect that there are residences back here. Well, I wouldn't anyway, if I hadn't seen them. Our flat consists of a main room that is living room, dining room, kitchen and bedroom to Liam and Ronan and then a bathroom and bedroom opening off either side of it. Both bedrooms have limited walking space, and Fionnula's being deep into the flat, and thus under the sidewalk, is basically a dark cave in which she could sleep all day and never know the sun had risen. The bathrooms are too small for showers and are so each equipped with a shower unit right on the wall and a drain in the middle of the floor. The whole room is the shower, they call it a wet room and hang shower curtains across the doorway and add an extra lip to the doorstep to keep water from running out the door. Its quite clever really, though I do keep tripping as I go in and out and the bathroom does tend to be rather, well, wet after anyone has showered. The washing machine is in the kitchen and the drier is actually in a shed out in the tiny courtyard out front, though there is also a laundry line hanging across the kitchen. It is all very adorable.

We arrived in London around 10 am after an overnight flight in an under booked plane where the kids each claimed their own row and felt so spoiled by the flight attendants that Fionn asked if we could just live on the plane and then made our way to our flat on the tube with all our luggage in tow, including Ronan's very damaged duffel. We realized pretty quickly that we were ill equipped to deal with this year's very cold spring in London but we found a few essentials at a thrift store and made do. Everyday we get on a bus or the tube and head out to explore. We have been to the Tower of London to see the crown jewels and walk where Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I once did.  We have been to the Natural History museum and the Science Museum. We have stood over  Geoffrey Chaucer's and Charles Dickens' and Isaac Newton's  graves at Westminster Abbey.  We have wandered Trafalgar Square and have taken a tour of Harry Potter sites and inspirations. We have gaped at Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Degas' ballerinas at the National gallery. Today we found platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross station and bought lunch in the market just outside. At the British Library we saw a Gutenberg bible, the Magna Carta, and scraps of paper on which the Beatles scribbled original song lyrics. We saw Peter Pan in Kensington gardens and Paddington bear at Paddington station. We are loving grocery stores that carry a variety of breads and jams, cheeses and curries but missing the fresh mangoes and pineapple of Costa Rica. The ease of communicating, and shopping, and getting around when we can actually read all the signs around us and understand what people are saying cannot be overstated. And we got to actually visit with cousins on Saturday and are doing so again this weekend. We haven't met up with people we already know for months and it was really very refreshing and comforting after so many weeks of  just us five and a lot of new faces.

We have six more days in London and then we are off to Paris. Six days to see everything we can, soak up all this luxurious English, find the boys a full English breakfast, and wait for the airline to finally deliver the replacement to that damaged bag.

San Jose

San Jose, Costa Rica

We are all packed up and ready to leave our San Jose home at 7 am tomorrow and head to London. We have been here for ten days and while we have mostly been relaxing, making use of the hot tub and grill that grace the roof top of our nearly empty condo building, we have also had some opportunities to see bits of the city.

Our first day here we got ourselves onto a city bus going exactly the opposite direction of the church we were trying to get to and when we couldn't make anyone understand that we wanted to get back on a bus going back the way we came, (or maybe they couldn't make us understand how to do that, it's hard to say for sure but definitely someone wasn't fully comprehending what the other was saying) we just did a new search on mormon.org and attended a different ward and decided to figure out the bus thing after church. And we did, figure out the bus route back that is, with a little bit of help from someone who decided to take pity on the lost white people who were way overdressed to be wandering downtown San Jose.

We braved the buses again to go see the National Theater and then again to go see the National Museum. By the following Sunday, we were practically pros at navigating the buses and managed to get to and from the correct ward without any incident whatsoever. Well, unless you count that the cord we needed to pull to announce we needed to get off didn't actually work, no matter how hard or how often we pulled it and so the driver blew right past our stop.

We also got a couple more chances to wander downtown San Jose where there are fancy shops and sketchy shops and people selling things right off blankets and tarps stretched out on the ground. These little blanket shops were particularly intriguing. There were people selling crafts, particularly jewelry, several were selling socks, and many were selling remotes. We saw one man selling Colgate toothpaste. It was all a little bizarre. We found John Lennon sitting on a park bench and bought a dinner of grilled chicken and vegetables right out of the front of a butcher shop and stood in the street eating. 

Kris and I walked daily though our neighborhood of walled up property. Most of Costa Rican homes seem to be behind walls and fences, La Fortuna was probably the biggest exception to that, but still many there too have all of their property behind a wall or fence. Here in San Jose, particularly this neighborhood, it is taken to extremes. Some of the walls here are 10 feet high. Many of them are solid and you can see nothing of the property or home. It is not uncommon for walls to be topped with spikes or razor wire or even electrical wire or any combination of the three. It doesn't seem like a particularly unsafe neighborhood, but maybe the walls and security guards at most corners help ensure that.

Costa Rica has been an adventure. We have loved their beaches and trees and flowers and birds (the birds!), but most of all, the people we have met here have, without exception, been super nice and have tried so hard to help us even when it meant pantomiming that we needed to get off the bus now because the bus was going to turn away from our destination. But we are ready to begin a new adventure tomorrow.

Bridges,Butterflies, and Volcanoes

La Fortuna, Costa Rica

Tuesday morning, we left Tamarindo and embarked on a beautiful drive inland to La Fortuna. La Fortuna is a little town at the foot of the Arenal Volcano, a volcano that was considered dormant until, in 1968, it suddenly erupted and wiped out three other nearby villages. Apparently there is a popular myth that La Fortuna was named for having the good fortune to be situated to the east of the volcano when all those neighboring villages on Arenal's  west side were, well, less furtunate. It isn't true, as the town was already named before the eruption occurred, but it is still a good story. The volcano is still active and until 2010 would regularly glow at night, but all we witnessed while we were there was a bit of steam rising from the top.

Our home in La Fortuna was tucked away behind a restaurant and the parking space was adjacent to the house manager's outdoor kitchen, where we frequently encountered her family as we came and went. Inside, the house was beautiful with the best equipped kitchen we have seen yet, but the only two bathrooms were attached to the two bedrooms and instead of doors they featured only sheer curtains, probably why Ronan opted to be on the living room couch again and let Fionn and Liam have the two beds in the extra room.

Our first adventure was Hanging Bridges Park, which was basically a hiking trail through the rain forest that involved a lot of bridges, many of them being suspension bridges. I am simultaneously fascinated by and scared out of my wits by bridges, particularly ones that swing in the wind, so of course I thought this would be a great place to go. It was a beautiful hike and the bridges really are pretty cool, even if some of them did seem to sway violently even when Ronan wasn't intentionally rocking them. Thanks to some hikers ahead of us who were all standing and staring up, we spotted a sloth way up in the tops of a tree.  Other wildlife sightings were pretty limited: lizards, small birds, a butterfly and leaf cutter ants. The ants were actually very cool and we watched them for a long time. A long line of ants coming and going up a huge tree, along the edge of the trail, and into and out of tunnels of leaves on the ground. They were very intent, when Kris tried to pick up a leaf piece that one was dutifully toting along, the ant refused to let go. The park was a tad expensive for what it was really, but still a nice way to spend an afternoon.

The next day we went to the Butterfly Conservatory. I loved this place. The owner bought a ranch, reforested it, and now raises butterflies there. They have four butterfly enclosures each representing a different biome of Costa Rica and each swarming with butterflies. Most impressive was probably the one full of the blue morpho butterflies because there were just so many of them and they were in constant flight, but I loved them all and the varieties of butterflies were amazing. In addition to the butterflies they also had a lizard and frog habitat, the care keeper there was very anxious to show us all his pets. He would explain that the frogs were very poisonous and then open the enclosures so we could get a better look! After we had our fill of butterflies, lizards, frogs, turtles, and the gorgeous botanical gardens, the way out was a hiking trail through the reforested land. It was beautiful, though I wish I had noticed when we left the house that Fionn had chosen flip flops for the day, not ideal hiking shoes. Now I can stop feeling badly that I never took my younger kids to the Butterfly Pavilion in Denver. Whew.

For our last day we went to the Arenal 1968 Trails, we chose it over the actual national park that is right next door mostly based on online reviews of the trails. Since we didn't do the national park also I can't really say if we made the right choice, only that we did really enjoy the trails here and not only because they provided hiking sticks at the beginning of the trail, though that was a perk. Our trail started out through a sort of demonstration area where they grew sugarcane and pineapples, its the first place the kids have actually got to see pineapples growing, so that was cool. Then we headed through a lot of rain forest and around the edge of a lake. All along there was plenty of large, boulder sized lava rocks and the further we got, the more they took over. Unlike the lava fields we were at in southern Utah this summer though, these lava fields have trees and grasses and all sorts of things growing through and over them. At one point the trail was steep enough and sandy enough that we used the guide rope installed along it to pull ourselves up the incline. We ate our lunch at the far end of the trail while staring at the volcano in the distance and eavesdropping on another group's paid tour guide.  While there, we met a charming little girl from England who is traveling the world for a year with her parents. Freya chatted with us a good part of our hike back, all about her favorite authors, the highs and lows of visiting India and what she likes best about traveling ("the beachy parts").

In between adventures, we explored La Fortuna's stores and bakeries and restaurants and park, did some school, killed more cockroaches, and enjoyed the considerably cooler weather in comparison to the coast. Then Saturday morning we packed up our car and headed to San Jose where we are now living on the fourth floor of a very modern condominium building, Liam and Fionn get the couch this time and Ronan is luxuriating in the second bedroom, pleased that his bathroom actually has a door!

Kayaking!!!

Tamarindo, Costa Rica

Yesterday we rented sea kayaks and had ourselves an adventure. We had scheduled the day before with Kenner and Reinaldo, two brothers who run a surf school and rent boards and kayaks right on the beach. At approximately the appointed time (we had to wait a bit for the winds to die down somewhat, except they didn't really), we were outfitted with life jackets, a large water proof bag for us to stuff with all our belongings, paddles and three kayaks which Reinaldo dragged out into the water for us, held steady while we climbed in and then shoved us off with instructions to paddle "left, right, left, right" while he definitely was demonstrating right, left, right, left. Liam and I shared one kayak, Kris and Fionn another and Ronan got a single. Fionnula was attempting this with some pretty serious reservations. We were to head out beyond where a dozen or so boats sat floating and then turn left towards a small offshore island where we could land, explore briefly and then return the same way we had gone. Liam and I were definitely a little rough on the way out and once had to use our paddles to shove off from a moored fishing boat so we wouldn't collide, but I thought we were getting the hang of it as we approached the island. Then we realized that what we thought was a pretty smooth shore was quite rocky and we would be better to try a landing closer to where Fionn and Kris were heading. This realization was too late though, and we decided that rather than fight the waves we would be better to just let them bring us in on the rocks and make it work. We basically achieved a soft crash landing.The island was amazing. One side all black volcanic rock and tide pools, the other piled high with over sized shells of mysterious, and long dead, sea creatures. Fionn stuffed her bag with shells. As it approached time to leave I wondered how we would pull this off without the help we had had leaving the mainland. Especially given the rocky shoreline, the wind, and persistent waves. I thought of how Reinaldo had told us that on the way back we would have to "paddle really, really fast," and thought that didn't seem so funny now.

Liam and I, turning around together, just after our successful, if not graceful, launch, to see if Kris and Fionn had got off the island,  capsized our own boat. We were not far off shore and could both still stand in the water so we got ourselves righted, climbed back in and started over. Ronan, who managed his kayak extremely capably from the beginning, threw himself into the water next to us in solidarity I guess. Then we followed instructions and paddled really, really fast to get away from the island's drag on us. We were making good progress when we realized that Fionn and Kris were both floating in the water beside an upside down kayak and Ronan was racing towards them. Liam's immediate response was "we have to go to them,"  but it turned out that we lost control of our own boat long enough that all we could do was keep an eye on their drama as we spun back and forth ourselves and headed most of the way back to the island we had just escaped. Liam and I got our boat under control in time to see Ronan lift Fionn back into her seat and then hold everything steady while Kris climbed on board too. We were amazed to see that Kris still wore his baseball cap and sunglasses. Even Fionn's flip flops had remained on her feet and the bag that held all our water bottles, Fionn's shells, and Kris's phone had floated on the water at least long enough to be thrown back on the kayak. Kris discovered later that it had also filled with water, but his phone stored inside layers of ziploc bags had survived the dunking just fine. We made the rest of our way back through the moored boats with no excitement other than a large flock of birds perched on an empty fishing boat that took flight over our heads. Ronan stayed behind us the rest of the way keeping watch on us all, I am sure, and tacking back and forth to get some extra mileage in for himself.

Back safely on shore, we sat and watched the sunset, and then some fire jugglers and then walked home to our beds.