We are staying at the Westport Inn Hotel, in the little town of Westport, in the Republic of Ireland, and the hotel is really impressive. I have a room with two beds (one double and one single) and the bathroom has a big tub—I took a hot bath last night. At 6:30 pm we went to a party in Dave’s room—Irish crackers and four types of Irish cheese and alcoholic beverages such as the Bailey’s Irish Cream that I sipped—and he actually has a four-poster bed that’s elaborately carved. Even the head of my beds have elaborate carving, and everything done in natural wood. Breakfast starts at 8, so I’ll be going down in les than ½ hour.
Last night, we went down to Matt Malloy’s—the red-painted pub (well, the front façade is red)—the bar owned by one of the Chieftain’s and we went to a back room where there was an empty stage but a bunch of our group gathered around a table in a corner. When the music finally did come, around 10 pm, it was in the tiny room before this one, so we couldn’t really hear it, but we sat around drinking and talking for a while anyway. When Dave and I turned to leave, the tiny room was blocked off with people and we finally got a glimpse of the musicians, all seated at a booth. We turned around and found another exit, escaping out into an alley with trash receptacles.
Oh, yes, before that, I did some shopping around town with Linda and bought a souvenir for my mom and a Tara brooch for myself, although it was a great deal smaller and simpler than the real one that we saw at the museum in Ireland. And we went to a bookstore and I bought four books—all centered around Ireland, at least. We took our books to the hotel, and after putting mine into my luggage, I went up to the party in Dave’s room. Bailey's really warms you up. It's no wonder it's popular in Ireland, but this is summertime and I was getting hot drinking that stuff. It was quite yummy, though.
After the party, I went with Liz and Phil to a little Indian restaurant in the basement of a building—and it was really great food. Also great conversation. Phil and Liz are extremely liberal, and Liz like me isn’t a christian (I do remember earlier on the trip she said she has lots of books on Newgrange, so maybe she’s Pagan). We had a wonderful conversation about our dysfunctional families and about the dysfunctional families of people we know. I talked about my aunts, not to mention my brother and x-sister-in-law and her crazy parents.
Types of Irish tunes/dances:
Reel: 4-4 time
Hornpipe: 4-4 time plus a couple notes tacked at end (more swinging)
Jig: 6-6 time
Slip jig: more stuff thrown in
Oscar's—name of the hotel bar, and the ad copy includes a little portrait of Oscar Wilde in an oval. We had to walk through the bar to get to the restaurant for breakfast.
I unfortunately didn’t get to meditating this morning—all the more reason to be sure to do it tonight, no matter how late I’m out.
Limericks
While driving around and looking at breathtaking scenery—mountains and lakes-a couple people on the bus, namely Esther and Matt (the judge, not the bus driver) came up with limericks on the spot and spoke them into the microphone at the front of the bus.
The sheep in Ireland are lively
They like to stand in the driveway.
When the tour bus comes ‘round the corner,
They make a mad dash and flounder
And move aside without having a mourner.
That totally sucks. Someone asked me to do a limerick, and I said, “I write free verse.” The limerick I did write isn’t fit to share, although that certainly doesn’t stop Matt.
I just saw a spotted grey and white donkey in the same field as a brown horse and a brown baby horse.
“It’s not like they go to Bombs are Us,” Phil just said, in response to something about terrorists. (Someone’s reading a newspaper.)
Today we’ve passed several ruined churches (probably thanks to Cromwell) and a couple of castle ruins (also probably thanks to Cromwell). One of them was close to the road, and it was the simple kind that’s just a square tower. It’s overgrown with ivy and only has, at most, two storeys left. The other one, which we just passed, was only one wall covered with ivy, and it might have been another church, really, since there wasn’t much left and it was further from the road, it was hard to tell.
It’s a grey and rainy morning, although yesterday in Westport it was clear out, with a bright blue sky and fluffy white clouds. Really cute town with lots of storefronts painted in bright colors. Before we left this morning, I took a picture of the town centre with the clock tower.
Galway City
Trolley bay—the framework for parking grocery carts in the parking lot
Modern shopping centers--this town looks too American.
Salt Hill, holiday resort area, hotels double as student housing in winter.
Cladaugh ring, associated with this area--facing away from you=looking for companionship. Toward you=not interested or already have husband/boy friend
Heart of the city: much more quaint-looking architecture, reminiscent of Westport.
After Galway
We came to some more farmland and later stopped for a potty break at a cafeteria-style restaurant. After the restrooms some of us (including me) got drinks and snacks, and I was at the register behind the funny Dave. He jokingly asked the cashier if he could see her supervisor, because of something a server said. He had said, “Don’t confuse me, I’m groggy.” And she had replied, “What’s wrong? Too much sex and beer last night?”
Ennis
We stopped in Ennis for lunch.
Matthew told us about a strange group of gypsy-like people who travel in expensive modern trailers that include satellite discs and flush toilets and four-wheel drive. Travelers—that’s what they’re called, or tinkers. These people are extremely Catholic, but they overlook “thou shall not steal.” These travelers are legally allowed to drive onto people’s property if the gate is open (that is, in Ireland every house is surrounded by a stone or brick or otherwise fence with a gate). The girls marry when they’re fourteen, fifteen, sixteen (legal age is 16, and driving age is 17). They get their own trailer-caravan when they marry. They also tend to marry second cousins. Weddings can be quite violent—if there’s an argument, they’ll grab sticks and beat each other. It sounds to me like they need to attend Marshall Rosenberg’s nonviolent communication seminars. Some of their kids go to school, but not all, for instead they’re taught how to steal. If someone lets them stay in a house for the winter, they’ll stay for a week or 10 days and sell everything, and they go off to another county. The laws protect them, even though they’re thieves.
Ennis—Lynn just said that she and Dave just ate at a restaurant where the couple beside them was from Emporia, Kansas. Small world!
Cliffs of Moher
On the way to Moher, we just passed a faerie bush. It was tallish and slender and leaned dramatically from the center and had a couple red flowers. (I drew lines indicating the slant—an idea for a sculpture would be to make a faerie that’s pretending to be a faerie bush, based on that one.)We just passed another castle that was less than a whole wall. It had an arrow slit, which is more than I can say for the one we saw a few minutes ago. Lots of castle ruins and cathedral ruins.
Aran Islands (known for Aran sweaters)—three islands, small, medium, large
We had a limited amount of time to look at the Cliffs of Moher, but I absorbed a lot of scenery during that short time. We climbed a steep path, climbing and climbing, and came to an eighteenth-century gothic folly that was being used as a tourist shop on the first floor; you could also pay a small fee to climb up the winding staircase and view the cliffs from above in the tower, but I didn't feel like paying the fee for that, though I would have if we had had a couple hours rather than only forty-five minutes to spend there.
The Cliffs of Moher are probably about the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen. I mention this even though I've been to Colorado a few times, and I've been to continental Europe, to four German-speaking countries. The cliffs are very tall and steep, and you can look down close to the edge and see some big rocks surrounded by splashing waves.
The Burren
The perp Sean at the Burren had Noel taste a berry with a bizarre bitter taste that she said was the weirdest thing she’d ever tasted and made her tongue numb, and the perp said, “It makes girls stop talking.” I said somewhat quietly, “It should make boys stop talking.” Goddess knows, misogynist pricks like him are the ones who need to shut the fuck up, I thought, whereas women need to speak up.
As if that weren’t enough, he made many misogynistic comments throughout our tour, including a snide-ass remark that Irish “girls” will club their husbands with a stick. (If anyone made the mistake of marrying him, she’d have plenty of reason to do so.) Liz asked if people use the berries (or something) to make jelly, and he said no, “Irish girls don’t make jelly anymore,” and they’d beat a man over the had for suggesting it, and they have other things on their minds, and they wouldn’t want to break their nails.
We had walking sticks, since we were walking around on slick limestone with lots of holes and dips of earth between the sheets of limestone, and I kept looking at my walking stick and feeling really tempted to use it as a weapon. I rather think that Caroline at least would have joined in, since she was the one who said, “Do you get the feeling he doesn’t like women?” and I replied something like, “Oh, yeah, big time.” I was in a fuming rage most by that point. Dave the tour guide explained that he’s a bachelor farmer, as if that were an excuse—as if there were any such thing as an excuse. No wonder he’s single—not even the most clueless woman would marry such a pile of stinking excrement. Here's an ironic thing about misogyny: if a woman hadn’t given birth to the misogynist asshole, his worthless ass wouldn’t exist.
The stupid prick kept making these ignorant misogynist comments, and it really pissed me off, even though I had suspected I’d encounter a lot of misogynistic bullshit in Ireland. Lovely scenery, but get rid of the men. Either evolve or become extinct. (Of course, that’s my opinion of 80% of the male population in general, not just in Ireland.) Last night, when I went to bed, I tucked Yeats away in my purse and got back to reading some of the book that I brought with me to Ireland, The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland, to cleanse myself. Just gotta do it, probably tonight also.
Kinvara is the name of the town that has the hotel with thatched roof, Merriman Hotel. It's the largest thatched roof in Europe.
Dunhaugh Castle
The medieval banquet at Dunhaugh Castle last night was a delight. We first drank mead while listening to a harpist, and the actors (two woman and one man—and also the female harpist) introduced themselves as their characters and gave some historic background about the castle. A king Goya lived there in the 7th century. As everyone was filing toward the staircase, after having finished a cup of 15 proof mead, Minnie was pouring mead out of the pitcher and offering some, so I giggled and held out my cup, and she filled it. We went up a narrow spiral staircase—it may have been two floors, and I said, “It’s the Tower of London all over again.” We got to the Grand Hall, where there was a pavilion-like stage on one end for the actors, and the rest of the room was full of the long tables and benches. Dave and Lynn sat in the far center seats under a window and facing the stage so they were crowned king and queen. This resulted in Dave making some ornery proclamations and such, being the outgoing ham that he is. The food was good, and it took me a long time to finish the mead and switch to white wine, which I don’t think I ever finished, and I had to drink some water. Some of us didn’t want to start with salmon and had melon instead, and they made stir-fry for me and I think a few others—there are about three other people who don’t eat meat, though two make the exception for fish. Afterwards, we had apple tart with crème. There was acting and singing between the serving of courses and after the dinner. Basically, it was a dinner theater in a very old castle. I would have liked a tour, but they only do that in daytime. There’s a crafts workshop up above, closed in the evening.
In the gift shop, I bought a little tiny bottle of mead. Someone else bought six little tiny bottles of mead, even though full size bottles were available. Of course, the small ones are easier to pack.
