First, there’s Iris, whom you and I have known for so many years as “Beta” on her father’s blog that I’d almost convinced myself that was her real name. (Which reminds me of the time Mig sent me to a cello-maker’s house to scout a carbon-fiber cello for him and I learned his real name from that guy’s wife…another story, but your secret is safe with me as long as you keep the payments regular, “Mig”) Annnnnnyway, Beta has been spending the last few weeks tramping around India with what seems to be a somewhat variable group of young people. The blog is called “meinasia”, which was supposed to be a sort of bilingual word-play being both “me in asia” for the English-speakers and “mein asia” for the German-speakers (The Family Von Mig lives in Austria, where they make dirndl skirts and sell watery beer to gullible American tourists). Apparently, though, the German part of it doesn’t really work. Whatev. The blog reads like a behind-the-scenes look at an episode of “The Amazing Race”, with train stations, airports, weird border crossings, and scary encounters with pushy souvenir peddlers. Because the trip is only six weeks long, the posting won’t last much longer, so be sure to have a look before it ends.

Meanwhile, my old friend Tony‘s oldest daughter, Lindsay (who, to the best of my knowledge has never had a cool Internet secret name) got on an airplane during the middle of Hurricane Irene and headed off for an entire semester in Uganda. Pretty ballsy, I think. She also fired up a blog as she was on her way. It’s called “Lindsay Leaves Home”, which doesn’t leave a lot of mystery, but at least there aren’t a bunch of people in Austria scratching their heads over some possible double entendre. When most of us think about a semester abroad, we tend to think about kicking around Paris or Rome, learning how to drink too much wine, smoke nasty cigarettes, and hookup with oversexed Eurotrash. There’s not a lot of glamour and romance in Uganda, I’m afraid, but not many Americans have even the slightest comprehension about life in a Third World nation, so the learning opportunity seems a bit more valuable than the typical 16-week European holiday semester. Lindsay is a pretty intense person anyway, so that’s fair. She’s only been in-country for a couple of days, so the stories haven’t had time to go too far yet. I hope she sticks with it for the whole time.

The thing that’s fascinating about blogs like these is that you get to learn about the authors as they are learning about themselves. Old geezers like me and Mig and Tony, we are fully-formed creatures for the most part, and if our blogs are revelatory, it’s usually because we carefully choose what we want people to see. Soon enough these young women will be vastly different people than they are right now, and the journeys they have set upon will be the agents of a great deal of that change.

I don’t know if anyone will be blogging at all another decade from now, when Charlotte is old enough to set out on such an adventure. And I genuinely despair that the world will not offer itself up so readily for her then. But even if she doesn’t get to see some exotic far-off place, I know she will find other agents of change that will shape her life, and I hope I get to see it through her eyes just like this.

Not too long ago, I started following Roger Ebert’s blog. Yes, *that* Roger Ebert. As newspapers are gasping their last labored breaths before rigor mortis sets in, they’ve compelled many of their regular columnists and reporters to keep blogs, even though they really should be out there, y’know, reporting. Surprisingly, a lot of professional journalists suck at blogging, but not Ebert. He’s a natural. He doesn’t feel compelled to post seventeen times a day, and his posts seem to come from within him rather than babbling about whatever his boss told him he needed to write about. His journey with cancer over the last few years has clearly been a powerful experience, and I find his posts (as well as his film reviews) much more engaging than his writing during his heyday with the late Gene Siskel. (indeed, read his recent post remembering Siskel, and you’ll see what I mean)

Over the weekend, he had this post encouraging people to take up travelling the world. He cites a statistic he came across which asserted that only about ten percent of Americans have ever traveled outside the United States. Not even the imploding economy is an excuse, he says, because everyone’s economy is imploding and if you do your homework travel can be affordable as well as exciting:

What do you mean, you can’t afford it? Right now, today, you can get on board a 14-day cruise in Miami and sail to Madeira, Portugal, Spain, Le Havre, Dover and Amsterdam, with shore leave at major ports of call. The lowest cost is $46 a night. That includes your bed, meals and entertainment. What’s your overhead at home? Tonight, you can find a single room in Amsterdam for $42.61 a night. Meals? For your dinner you want rijstafel, an Indonesian dish more popular in Amsterdam than anywhere else in the world. This is a mound of rice surrounded by small servings of various meats, veggies and sauces. You mix and match. You can find it under $10, or you can find it for a lot more. There are rijstafel buffets, but not for $10.

The point is: Get going. Spring is right around the corner. Dip your toe in the world. There’s more to see in Amsterdam than at Six Flags. We are lucky to speak English, so we can be understood most places. India has half as many English speakers as America. China is catching up. Mark Twain, who wrote The Innocents Abroad and Following the Equator,advises us: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

In the middle of our national obsession with being afraid of our own shadows 24/7/365, it is wonderful to read such unadulterated cheerleading for globetrotting. Sadly, I can even “improve” on his stat about people not traveling: Pew Research reports that 90% of Americans never leave their own home state for any extended period of time. Even though this nation was settled by people who were willing to walk across the entire continent, and even though we have a reputation as a nation “on the move”, in reality, most Americans stay put for their entire lives, never living in new places, never even visiting the rest of the world. And we’re supposed to be the “greatest country”?

I can’t brag about myself as a world traveler. I am lucky enough to be part of the 10% that have traveled abroad, as well as part of the 10% who have lived more than 100 miles from where I grew up, which puts me in unique company among my fellow citizens, but still leaves me with much of the world to explore. Before our own personal financial meltdown, we had hoped to make another trip abroad (though much less lavish than the first one), but still managed to visit Canada last year. Our summer vacation this year will take us to Washington DC, which I look forward to a lot, but, provided the world does not completely collapse in the next 12-18 months, I am more than ready to take Ebert’s suggestion and get out there.

Part of the fun of living online, thus, is getting to learn about other parts of the world from people who live there and getting to enjoy travel somewhat vicariously through the travels of others. Lately, it seems like a lot of people I know online have been gallavanting here and there. Blog-buddy John Tolva is just back from an extended trip to Ghana as part of a project he is doing through his employer (a well-known International Business Machines company) to assist local craftspeople in selling their goods internationally online. I’ve been following his blog posts about the trip, as well as his Twitter feed. He offered up some great posts about what he saw and did in Ghana, along with great photos:

The Twitter posts were, of necessity, more terse but in their own way much more telling. He came down with a malaria-like sickness that he’s still taking meds for, and I gather his trip home was…eventful. But he also DJ’d in a disco, met wonderful people, and obviously learned to love a place that most Westerners do not have the faintest idea about.

Maya Waldman is a mutual friend of Andre Torrez who has spent most of the last three or four years travelling around Asia, including a year-long stint in the Marshall Islands as a teacher. She’s presently making an extended return visit to India, and I would not be the least bit surprised if she stayed there for a long time. It’s easy to understand her fascination and feeling for the place. Check out this amazing photograph of spices at a local market:

On a slightly different note, Brittney Gilbert, another MFOT, relocated from her birthplace of Nashville, Tennessee last year to the San Francisco area to take a job with the CBS television station there, KPIX, as their resident blogger. Even though Nashville is urban, Brittney has been going through that fish-out-of-water experience one inevitably has when moving to a huge metropolis. Especially one as unique as San Francisco (and even moreso, since she lives in Berkeley). She seems mostly happy in the Bay Area, but in this recent post on her personal blog, she talks about the sometimes astonishing differences. I can relate to her experience much more than I can either of the other two, having moved betwee small-town Maine and Chicago a couple of times in the 1980s, and still sometimes shaking my head when I walk through places like Harvard Square.

I doubt I will ever see Ghana or India in person. I have spent a little time in San Francisco, but not nearly enough to feel like I know the least bit about it. It’s just great to be able to benefit from the sharing of these three individuals’ experiences and have a small taste of the rest of the world.

First off, let me recommend to you a new feature from the Boston Globe’s website, Boston.com: The Big Picture

It is the pet project of Alan Taylor, who is a web developer at the Globe and one of the best-known denizens of our particular web community. For a long time now, he has regaled us privately with photos snatched from the press agency wires — the photos that are sent to most every major news outlet in the U.S. every day. Most of the photos he’s shared are NOT the ones that photo editors pick for their publications, but are often times gripping pictures of crises, beautiful photos of exotic locations, or just interesting shots that weren’t quite newsworthy. After a lot of begging and pleading, he finally convinced the powers-that-be at Boston.com to let him post some of those pictures to a daily photo blog, which has now been up and running for a couple of weeks.

I highly recommend adding The Big Picture to your daily blogcrawl.

Also of major prominence, you might remember the sudden popularity of a website called “Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle”. A genuine Internet meme if there was one, it shot to the height of popularity just as Obama’s campaign started to take off in the polls this winter. Matt Honan is responsible for that website and also the paperback book version of it, which goes on sale nationally in August, just days before the Democratic National Convention. The Internet has, of course, moved on to other memes since then, but you can buy the book and remember those glory days forever.

Somewhat less importantly, but worth looking at anyway: Jason Rhode wrote a well-timed post about the 1935 Sinclair Lewis novel “It Can’t Happen Here”. The book tells the story of the rise to power of a homespun demagogue who becomes president and ushers in a wave of fascism that overwhelms America. Written in the 1930s, as Hitler and Mussolini were consolidating their power in Germany and Italy, the book is clearly aimed at the widespread popularity of fascism in the United States and at populist politicians like Huey Long, but, as Jason writes, the scenario envisioned by Lewis has many parallels to the rise of George W. Bush and the current political scene in the U.S. that it could have been written last week.

Last, but not least, Derek Taylor, who usually writes about the goings-on in my old stomping grounds of Portland, ME, recently went to Italy for an extended vacation and offers some potentially useful tips for anyone else who might follow in his footsteps. Included in that post is a link to the photos he shot there, which you’ll want to look at even if you’re not planning a trip to Italy.

Next year my wife and I will both turn 45. We’re already thinking about taking another trip somewhere overseas to celebrate, just as we did in 2003 when we went to Paris and London for our 40th birthdays.

One destination we’re thinking about is Barcelona, Spain. In fact, Bridget has already gone ahead and e-mailed the famous El Bulli restaurant for a reservation for their 2008 season — they only accept reservations for a brief period each year in advance of the season but accept requests in advance.

Since our chances of getting in at El Bulli probably aren’t very good, it’s worth looking around for other possible destinations as well. I’d really like to go to Iceland; “The Amazing Race” has sent its contestants to Iceland a couple of times, and it looks like a gorgeous place. It’s not a long flight from Boston, and they always have package deals.

But yesterday I stumbled across this website for a guest house in Morocco. It’s in the city of Fez, which was the traditional capital of Morocco for centuries. The photos make the hotel look simply beautiful, but in addition to the exotic locale and luxurious setting, the guest house is owned and operated by a Moroccan chef and you can do a day-long cooking program with him as part of the stay. He takes you shopping in the souk for fresh ingredients, and then you go back to the kitchen for a hands-on lesson in Moroccan cuisine.

Of course, if you go to Iceland you can eat some fermented shark, but I gotta think it would be enormous fun to have an authentic Moroccan cooking experience. If I can’t get to try some molecular cuisine in Spain, that is.

Comments:
Barcelona is high on my list of places to visit…particularly because of the very outstanding buildings by Antoni Gaudi…and Morroco is only a ferry ride away…well after a long train ride and followed by a long bus ride. But still, it’s closer than walking from Boston.
Posted by Karan [URL] on 05/31/07

Cooking in Fes _is_ great fun!
Posted by Liosliath [URL] on 05/31/07

Oooooo I’d be really, really torn! Basque food is my FAVOURITE Spanish cuisine bar none and even without El Buli the culinary experience would be fabulous. In fact I have been contacted several times by some ladies who own a sort of cooking school/resort type place in Spain.

Then again, Morocco is pretty damn cool as well, but I don’t think you would be eating the street food or dining in the open food markets. I think culinarily and artistically Spain has a lot more to offer.

JEALOUS.
Posted by jo [URL] on 06/01/07

Our day in Ennis was very enjoyable. Ennis is about half an hour from Liscannor and is a rapidly growing large town — everywhere we drove we saw new construction of roads, condos, offices, retail, and so on. In fact, our little GPS got terribly confused because it didn’t know about the new spur of the N18 that goes all the way to Ennis. Twice we found ourselves on the highway unintentionally because the GPS thought there should be a local road there instead.

After we got off the highway and got pointed back toward Bunratty, we got off track again thanks to Tim’s faulty memory and had to beat back, but we did finally get to Bunratty Castle. The present castle dates from the 1500s, but earlier castles stood on the same site all the way back to the 1200s. Along with the castle there’s a “theme park” — a re-creation of a 19th century Irish village complete with a church, a manor house, and false storefronts with assorted gift shops inside. The warm and sunny day was perfect for walking around the grounds. Farm animals were in abundance as well; there was a competition for who could make the most noise, the roosters or the dozens of crows who nest around the castle. Like every other place we’ve been in Ireland so far, Bunratty had its own unique stink, too. Every building seemed to have a peat fire in the hearth. The Irish think of the peat as a charming, homey smell from their rural past, but in reality it’s feckin’ nasty.

The castle itself is about par for the course with historical buildings. Some rooms are open to the public, some are not, with assorted period bits of furniture and other objects. Interesting enough but not compelling. The climb up the winding stone stairway to the top of one of the towers did a job on my knees, but the view was definitely worth it.

With time to kill before the medieval banquet, we drove down the road to the Bunratty Winery for some mead. They also make poitin, the traditional Irish moonshine, which can now be sold legally. We got a sample of the poitin and then a chaser of mead. The mead is wonderfully sweet and the poitin is fiery and harsh. I actually really liked the poitin and bought a bottle to bring home.

Our GPS sent us off on a wild goose chase looking for another nearby castle, which we never did find. It sent us down a side road that got narrower and narrower (which is saying quite a lot in a country where all the roads are very narrow to begin with) until it was barely wide enough for one car. We dubbed it the “Leprechaun Highway” because only the Little People could have made a road that tiny.

Eventually we found our way back to the castle just in time for the banquet. As cheesy as any ren-faire you’ve ever seen, but the wenches were all very pretty and they gave us more mead to drink. Tim says that the shtick they did during the meal was identical to last year’s banquet but with different performers. The food was nothing special — some very salty spareribs and a chicken breast with mead sauce. We agreed that it was fine given that we didn’t have to pay for it, but it was definitely not worth the 65 euro/person cost.

The GPS got quite frustrated trying to get us home because of the new N18, but we just followed the road signs. As we drove back into Liscannor and turned up the road to the cottage, the GPS gave an annoyed sigh and told us “take a U-turn now”. It was just like having the wives with us.

Comments:

Hi,

Glad to hear that the weather is good and that you are not getting too lost.Itis so easy to do in Ireland.

Anxious to hear if you made it to Galway and what it is like.

So glad you are putting these updates on your site-I check it every day.

I agree with you about the smell of peat fires,it takes some getting used to.

Hope you enjoy your trip to Dingle.Be safe and have fun.

LOVE,MOM
Posted by marilyn kane [URL] on 03/29/07

Greetings from the heart of County Clare!

We had a remarkably uneventful flight on Sunday and arrived at Shannon Airport at dawn on Monday morning. The morning fog made the countryside both charming and inscrutable as we drove the hour or so to the coast, but the sky was clear and by mid-morning the fog had lifted and we were treated to a very pleasant first day for our adventure.

We were supposed to meet the woman who manages the rental cottages at 9:00 a.m., but she didn’t show until about 10:00, and only after Tim beat the village payphone into submission to call her. Her excuse: “Oi toght you mint noine in t’evenin’.” (yes, they really do talk like that, particularly the older folks)

The lady was a bit on the crazy side (or, this being Ireland, perhaps a bit on the tipply side). We had our pick of cottages, since it’s the off-season here and most places are either still closed or totally devoid of tourists. We changed our minds once or twice, and each time she assured us “Dis one is the noicest one of them all.” So we assuredly have the nicest cottage in all of Liscannor, if not the entire island of Eire.

It is adequate. Nothing fancy, but also fairly well-kept and comfortable. Tim says the place where he and my mother stayed last year in Ballyvaughan was nicer, but not according to the rental lady. I might not stay there again if I were choosing for myself, but it suits our purposes just fine.

Once we squared away our luggage, bought a few provisions at the town grocery, and sat around a bit in the cottage, trying to recoup from the jet lag, we set out to see what we could see.

Liscannor is pretty much a one-street village with two pubs, a restaurant, a grocery, and a gas station/convenience store. Like much of the west of Ireland, though, there is development everywhere you turn, predominantly in the form of holiday homes, vacation hotels, and other tourist amenities. Five years from now Liscannor, Doolin, and the other coastal villages will be just like Cape Cod, but with different accents. For now, there is still some charm in the traditional Irish buildings, farms, the narrow and winding roads lined with stone walls, and the occasional ruin.

The road from Liscannor to Doolin takes you directly up the hills that form the Cliffs of Moher and then back down very steeply to the shore. New Englanders will probably know what I mean when I say the ride is much like driving the Kancamagus Highway in New Hampshire. It is only a couple of miles, so it wasn’t a huge jaunt, just a little hairy in some spots.

Doolin has a few more shops than Liscannor, but is otherwise no more than a couple of roads and a handful of shops. There was a septic truck in the road, pumping out a couple of overfilled septic tanks next to the stream in the photo above, which made the whole village stink of rotten sewage…just the appealing aroma we were looking for at lunchtime.

We ate lunch at Gus O’Connor’s, a pub well-known for its live music performances in the evenings. We got in just ahead of a crowd of bus-tourists, who filled the joint. Beef stew for me and beef-and-Guinness with mash for the boys.

We did a little gift shopping and proceeded down to the shore. The rocks have a weird cratered surface to them, and the surf pounds madly, with huge waves. The cliffs are visible from there, as well as the smallest of the Aran Islands, which is only about 10km offshore. Once I saw the shacks offering ferry rides, I suddenly understood why Tim was doubtful about taking one. They didn’t instill a lot of confidence in me, either.

From Doolin, we backtracked to the Cliffs of Moher. They’re building a visitor’s center, and it’s about 90% done, so it’s open to the public now, but not completely ready for loads of tourists.

The climb up the hill is long and steep, but wide steps have been installed, with strategic camera lookouts marked with signs, so we stopped evert couple of levels and took pictures. The view is remarkable. It’s a hike up the hill, and we were already jet-lagged, so by the time we got to the top to see the tower (the first picture in this post), we were beat. We schlumped back down the hill, rode back to the cottage, and had a nap until dinner.

Right now we’re in Ennis, but I’ll save tales of today’s adventure for the next visit to an Internet cafe.

Cheers!

Comments:

Hi boys, I’M SO GLAD TO HEAR THAT YOU MADE IT OK.Tim was so worried about the cottage.I told him about Irish time and it is true.They will get to it in their own time ,just be patient. Glad the weather is good,the coast is so beautiful. I know you will enjoy it. Be safe and have a good time. Stay in touch. Love,MOM
Posted by marilyn kane [URL] on 03/27/07

Stunning! And it looks just like the Ireland from the tourism sites. Thanks for sharing some of the experience. Have a great time!
Posted by Tony [URL] on 03/27/07

Glad you are having fun. The picture of the cliffs is definitely getting framed and hung. Is the cottage non-smoking?

Please call home – the kid is nearly frantic.

The wife.
Posted by Bridget [URL] on 03/27/07

Travel day is here. Tim and Dan will be on their way down shortly, and our flight leaves at 7:15 this evening.

This week I’ve tried to make sure I had a solid prep list and I tried to do as many little tasks as possible throughout the week so that I would not be slammed with a lot of last-minute details. Nevertheless, we ended up spending most of yesterday morning wrapping it all up.

I had decided to get a pre-loaded ATM/debit card so as not to risk losing my regular card or having the card be compromised during the trip. Visa and American Express both sell them. It’s sort of an intermediate step between a regular ATM/debit card and traveler’s checks, which have gotten to be rather obsolete. Some travel sites suggest that they’re not a good deal because of the assorted fees you get dinged with. Since I plan to visit places like cybercafes, which are notorious for credit card phishing, I thought it would be wiser to eat the fees and use a card that’s not tied to my bank account.

So we toddled over to our nearby AAA office to buy one, and while we were there they told us that I would need an international driver’s permit to rent and operate a car. It’s not strictly required, apparently, but the State Department recommends it. On our Paris-London trip in 2003, we didn’t do any driving ourselves, so it wasn’t an issue. The permit only costs $15 (plus $8 for the required photos), and the AAA people were able to do it on the spot.

I also wanted to have a small amount of cash in Euros to bring with me just to have some ready cash. It’s not too hard to find banks with foreign currency on hand in the Greater Boston area, but the further away you get from the city, the less likely it is that small bank offices will have them if you just drop in. AAA also sells them in small quantites. They were honest enough to tell us that we would probably get a better exchange rate elsewhere, but our bank branch doesn’t have them, and the closest bank where we could get them was a Citizen’s Bank in Lexington. They also charge a fee for non-customers. The current official exchange rate is $1.32 to €1.00, which translates to $100 buying about €75. AAA sold me €65 for $100, and the bank would have sold me €75 for $100, plus a $5 fee. Even though AAA is charging almost double what the bank charges, the bank’s fee levels that out a bit, and the convenience factor in this situation was also an issue.

So, on one hand, it was extremely useful to go to the AAA office, but one does pay a price for the last-minute convenience of doing so. Travel is another one of those lifestyle industries (like the wedding industry and the baby crap industry) which regards its customers as a trapped audience and has no compunction about exacting premium prices for services that can be had for less money in ordinary circumstances. I’m not the least bit annoyed in this case because I have to be honest and blame my own laziness for not doing the legwork any time in the last three months, but it’s worth noting for those of you reading along.

At this point, I’m just about finished packing. I’m spending time right now making sure all my electronics are good to go — I loaded a ton of new music and some podcasts on my iPod, burned some DVDs to watch on the laptop, and so on. My carry-on bag weighs a ton because I’m carrying all the electronics with me: camera, iPod, laptop, GPS, cellphone, and all the assorted cables and power supplies required. I just know the Gestapo’s going to want to cavity-check me when they see all that.

I hope to post again sometime on Tuesday, so check back with me then. Slan go foill!

My trip to Ireland with my brothers, Tim and Dan, is now only a month away. Over the weekend, Charlotte and I drove up to Maine to visit my mother and to reconnoiter with my brothers about our basic plans for the trip.

We didn’t commit ourselves to a hard-and-fast itinerary; I mostly wanted to make sure that each of us got to have some input as to the places we wanted to see. Dan and I both want to spend a day in Galway; Tim hasn’t been, either, so it won’t be duplicative for him. Last year he had trouble navigating into the city, but I think with my handy-dandy GPS gizmo we won’t have any problem.

Ennis is another destination we’re looking forward to. The highway from Shannon Airport to the little village where we’re staying takes us right through, so we’ll have a couple of opportunities to stop and see the town. We’ll just miss the big musical festival they have every year, which is too bad.

Our cottage will only be a couple of miles from the Cliffs of Moher, so there’s no doubt we’ll get to have a look. We’ll also spend a day driving around the Burren. Tim and my mother were both quite taken with the stark landscapes of the Burren, so I’m looking forward to seeing it for myself.

In contrast to the rocky plains of the Burren, Tim wants to drive southward into County Kerry, take a car ferry across the mouth of the Shannon River, and go to Tralee. We might stay overnight there given the slower travel times on the Irish roads. If we do, I’d want to drive back on an inland route for a change of scenery, but we’ll skip Killarney, which all of the guide books write off as a total tourist trap.

The only question mark is whether or not to go out to see the Aran Islands. We’ll be a quick drive from Doolin, which is one of the originating points of the ferries to the islands. Tim sounds less than enthused about the prospect, but I think it would be worth half a day.

With those plans in mind, we should have a day open to juggle things around or go back to see things we didn’t catch. I am not one for the “Bataan Death March” school of seeing every single possible attraction for exactly 3.5 minutes before moving along to the next one. I would rather take the time to spend as much time as I like at some place or something of interest and feel like that experience was worthwhile, even if I have to miss something else in the process.

For example, I have reconciled myself with not going to Dublin on this trip. There will be plenty to see and enjoy. Not that I plan to become as regular a visitor to Ireland as Tim, but if I were ever to travel to Ireland again, I would plan to make the next trip focus on Dublin. I imagine that Bridget and I would have a good time there by ourselves, so if I enjoy this trip, we can think about a Dublin trip for just the two of us another time.

Based on what I’ve found online and some e-mail I’ve exchanged with someone who travels the western coast of Ireland extensively, I should have no trouble finding Internet cafes even in smaller towns. I briefly considered renting a cellular WiFi card, but the cost was a bit more than I wanted to pay. I probably won’t get to post here every day, but I will make every effort to post at least a couple of times.

And I’ve already solved one potential problem. The cottage where we’ll be staying does not have a coffee pot. Tim doesn’t drink coffee, but Dan and I both NEED the coffee to start the day. When we went to London a couple of years ago, I ran into the same situation and marched right over to the nearest Dixon’s and bought a coffee maker. But we were in the middle of a vast metropolis on that trip, so I can’t be sure we’ll easily find a place that sells small appliances. So this morning, I ordered a pair of Bodum travel coffee press mugs — one for me, one for Dan — and I’ll bring a pound of press-grind coffee along as well. The Gestapo better not mess with me and my coffee, or I’ll sic my little brother on them. He knows karate.

Comments:
Sure if TSA thinks we won’t be bringin’ our coffee I’ve got a sharp finger nail to do me negotiating.
Posted by Dan [URL] on 02/26/07

If you ever go across the sea to Ireland
Then maybe at the closing of your day
You will sit and watch the moon rise over Claddagh
And see the sun go down on Galway Bay

I’ve mentioned a copule of times in passing that my brothers and I are going to Ireland for a week-long trip at the end of March. That’s barely ten weeks away, so I need to start thinking about the trip a little bit. My brother Tim has already taken care of the flight and accommodations involved, but we need to work out a rough itinerary and a few other minor details.

This is Tim’s third trip to Ireland in three years, and it’s safe to say that he’s a bit obsessed about Ireland and all things Irish. My mother went with him on the first two trips, but this year he decided he’d like my youngest brother Dan and me to go with him. We don’t do many things together as a trio. I’ve lived most of my adult life away from my hometown and only see them occasionally when we go to visit my mother. But we get along reasonably well and we all make each other laugh a lot, so it seemed to me that we could have a pretty good time together for a week.

When he first suggested the idea, I could only agree tentatively due to the cost. It’s not expensive as foreign travel goes, but things have been very tight at The (Real) Big Red House. For Christmas, though, he and my mother went in together and paid for the airfare and cottage rental for all three of us. An exceedingly generous gift, any way you look at it.

For Tim this trip is a bit of a rehash of last year’s trip. We’ll be staying in a rental cottage just south of Galway Bay along the western coastal region known as The Burren. The basic plan is to rent a car and tour the countryside. Quite honestly, I’m not really sure what there is to see, so I need to read through a few guide books to get a sense of it. Dublin, the capital, is on the other side of the island, and Tim has said that he does not want to go to Dublin on this trip. I don’t know if we can convince him otherwise or not; I’m not expecting to make Ireland a regular vacation destination, so it would be a shame to miss the country’s premiere city, but he paid for it, so it’s his call.

My father’s family is Irish, and his grandmother’s side of the family (Hynes) came from County Clare. The Kane side of the family came from County Cork. My great-grandparents actually met on the boat coming to America in the late 1800s. Apparently, years ago one of my father’s uncles went to Ireland and tracked his way to find where the families came from, but I doubt that will be much on our agenda. We might possibly drive south to the Cork area, but just for sightseeing, not any sort of fantasy family reunion.

As I get a better grip on what sort of things there are to see, and which ones hold particular interest for me, I’ll share that with you here. I don’t know what manner of Internet access I might have, since we’ll be away from any urban centers with Internet cafes and the like, but I’ll probably drag along a laptop just in case I can post while I’m on the trip. Stay tuned.

Comments:
My understanding that in bigger villages like Galway, you will have reliable internet access at internet cafes and pubs…smaller villages, not so much. My family is from County Clare as well. Take a look for a castle in wee village called Ennis (not Enniskillen) and you’ll see our old stomping grounds. Apparently we’re direct descendents of a King Ennis, known as the Beer King and if you ask me, that’s an ancestor to claim.
Posted by Karan [URL] on 01/08/07

We will be staying in Liscannor. If you look at the map I posted, you’ll see Liscannor Bay in the lower left corner. You can also see Ennis at the bottom right. Absolutely nowhere near Galway itself, and the cottage we’ll be in does not apparently include Internet access.

If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to persuade Tim to let me sneak into an Internet cafe in Galway long enough to post once.
Posted by Brian [URL] on 01/09/07

It’s a small island, if you’ve got a pony cart available, you should be able to get to Galway from Liscannor in half a day…be sure to whistle “The Rakes of Mallow”. Ten points to you if you can name the 1952 movie that featured it.
Posted by Karan [URL] on 01/09/07

Brian, can’t wait to hear about your trip. I have been trying to get John to go back to Ireland this year, but we’ll see what happens. I would be interested in family tree info if you have it. I have some info on the Kanes, but I didn’t know the story about the great-grandparents, and I thought that was neat.
Posted by Katie [URL] on 01/14/07