Blarney Castle was worth the hassle

9/14 Its all Blarney after Killarney!!

Blarney Castle was on the agenda today after one last Irish Breakfast in the morning(bangers and bacon again ohh boy!). The drive in our stick shift VW Polo(getting quite adroit at the old stick) took about 2 hours from Killarney. The castle has a checkered history with the first structure (made of wood) built around the beginning of the 13th century, which then was fortified with stone about 10 years later only to be destroyed in 1646 by the Parliamentarian forces(those loyal to Cromwell) . It was rebuilt again and changed hands on numerous occasions. We were able to walk thru was the ruins of a castle with a few rooms available for viewing. Did we kiss the Blarney Stone? Unfortunately, the Swine Flu paranoia prevented us from doing so. For those of you who are unfamiliar- kissing the Blarney stone will supposedly give you the gift of the gab or the ability to articulate rather cleverly. Since I know that I have that gift, I felt that it best be shared with others....

We walked around the beautiful gardens and enjoyed the Blarney experience overall.

We hopped in the car and headed to a stopover place that would allow us to leave Dublin in the early afternoon on a flight to Amsterdam. For those who read about my feelings regarding RyanAir, you would understand that it would be quite cunning to fly Air Lingus(national airline) instead of RyanAir, which we did and enjoyed immensely!

9/15 Drive to Dublin Airport

Despite having the car navigation unit, we had a miserable time trying to find the hotel at Dublin Airport to drop off our rental. Nobody had mentioned that the hotel had changed owners and names making it a massive pain to find even with the help of a few of our Irish Brethren.

Alas, we finally arrived into Amsterdam without much fuss and hopped on a bus that took us close enough to the hotel I had found on the internet located close to the heart of the tourist centre of the city. More on the double dutch days in Amsterdam in the next blog.

Kenmare and Killarney: Ring of Kerry Part 2

9/12

Arrived in Kenmare at about 6pm after traipsing thru a few towns on the way(none of which stood out in our recollection). Kenmare is jumping off point for people who plan to drive the Ring of Kerry...for those of you who don`t have the foggiest notion what the Ring of Kerry is...no its not the missing book from JRR Tolkien its a beautiful scenic route that many tourists take when they decide that they want to drive through the southern part of Ireland. Once again, we arrived in Kenmare without a place to stay and managed to find a great B&B after 3 tries...at a cheap rate of 70 Euros a nite. Our host recommended Darcy`s Seafood for dinner and wow were we blown away! The sole Marie ate had to be the best piece of fish she has eaten on this trip-in a sleepy podunk town in Ireland no less! Walked around the shops and heard some music from a UK band called Yea Sayer(spell?) that sounds like a cross between Enya and Fleetwood Mac( http://www.myspace.com/yeasayer).

9/13

Checked out at 11 am after having Irish breakfast for the umpteenth time.

Irish Breakfast consists of : eggs, back bacon, sausages and toast....I`m going have to double up on the lipitor if I keep eating like this and so will Zach!

Drove to Killarney National Park to see the sights and get a hike in. Proceeded to hike for 2 hrs and picnic somewhere along the way. You see the picture of the sheep up top? Well that wasn`t taken during the hike...you see our car navi was playing us for fools taking us on roads that weren`t meant to be traversed. We ran into cows and sheep crossing the road along with some huge tractors that almost ran us off the road- the road was one lane, but two way. There were some blind spots so you can imagine how nervewracking it got at times-20 km stretches at times...no joke.

Getting back to the hike-pretty scenery along with a few deer along the way. We have probably eaten 15 panini sandwiches by now and I must say - I am getting burnt out quickly on them. Ready for some sushi Tokyo style right about now...

We got back into the car and drove the ring for about 2 and 1/2 hours - weather was perfect and the roads weren`t too clogged with buses. The view was at times absolutely breathtaking and at other times just plain boring.

Arrived at Killarney with just enough time to find a quaint B&B relatively close to the city. It was situated right next to a river and was run by a young family-they were awesome taking care of Zach`s needs since they had a daughter only 1 yr younger than Zach. Found another seafood place in town and had another brilliant fish meal-this time I had the sole and Marie had a rocking monkfish...

Waterford and Kinsale: RING OF KERRY Part 1

9/10 Around 6pm
We had to take the shortest ferry ride(car included) that we will ever take in our lives. I kid you not, it must have taken us 2 minutes to cross the river to get to Waterford Castle. We have been travelling by the "Flying by the seat of your pants"
strategy...literally making reservations for our hotels and B&Bs the nite before we arrive. In the case of Waterford Castle, the server recommended it to us, so we decided to go with it.
As we arrived onto the Island, we were amazed at the tree lined roads leading to the castle. The Castle was so beautiful with Ivy already showing the signs of fall colors(chlorophyll finally stopping...)with vibrant hues of red adorning the building. We played soccer with Zach out in the gardens area for about an hour since he hadn`t gotten much exercise during the day...followed by a quick dinner inside the castle.We get shown to our lodge and you would have dropped me with a feather-huge with 3 bedrooms and a gorgeous living room- wow what 239 dollars gets you in Ireland!!!I had to go out and get some food and a golf shirt(I bought it then was going to return it-god am I cheap!!)
When I got back, my poor wife was sitting on the bed shivering in terror as she saw the second largest spider crawling on the floor in her bedroom. I assuaged her as much as one could given the situation...we marched on down to the main lobby to see what could be done. I came back to hunt down the spider with one of the hotel employees alas to no avail. Finally we were given a tiny room inside the castle as they were no other lodges/rooms available. I felt that the manager on duty didn`t give a rats behind what had happened and didn`t even try to apologize to me or my wife. She just said that this area has alot of spiders!!!! Wow...thanks for the consoling message sweetheart!

9/11
Next morning I woke up to play 9 holes of golf next to the castle-nice course, weather was chilly, but sunny. I finished in 90 minutes(playing by yourself can be so incredibly peaceful) and headed back to the hotel for a chat with the general mgr.
Explained the situation and was comped for the nite and our meal(dont let me go there-the hamburger I had was smaller than a slider from Krystals for 10 times the price).
We wandered over to the Waterford Crystal exhibit. It used to be both an exhibit and the factory, but due to the downturn, the factory had closed in January of this year and all of the labor/workmanship was moved to Poland.
You can sense the despair and sadness in the voice of the lady who was kind enough to watch Zach while Marie and I walked around the exhibit.
It was getting a little late so we decided to head over to Kinsale, which is one of the requisite stops one makes when you are heading to the Ring of Kerry. Kinsale is a lovely harbour town with a checkered past, which I will discuss later.
First order of the day was finding a B&B to stay at...since we were essentially homeless. Came across a quaint B&B right outside of the city called Waterside and negotiated 85 Euros a nite for the 3 of us...the owners were in their 70`s and also very cordial hosts! Dropped our luggage and headed into town for some dinner- our host Phyllis recommended going to Jim Edwards for some fish and boy was that a good call-great clams casino(or was it mussels?), crab claws and Maries Sole was surprisingly good!
9/12
As luck would have it, this weekend was the first dry weekend since the end of June in Ireland. We were told that it rained 26 days during the month of August, which is all the more shocking since we have had nary a drop of rain during our time in both the UK and Ireland. The scenery in Kinsale was so beautiful with almost a fairytale type feel to it. I completely forgot that when we first arrived into Kinsale, it was the tail end of an Irish version of the Cannonball Run with a bunch of exotics (DB-9,Lambo,Rarri(Britspeak for Ferrari) and other beauts)...Zach was beside himself with all the cool cars driving by!!!
We were told that you have to visit Charles Fort while you are staying in Kinsale, so we did just that. Little did we know that this happened to be the weekend(happens only once a year- timing once again is impeccable) that they do reenactments of various battles that took place over the years in and around the city of Kinsale.
1601 was one of the more noteworthy events when the Irish looked to the Spanish Armada to join forces to defeat the British. Unfortunately, the Brits were able to pin down the Spaniards in Kinsale preventing a joint attack against them.
1915 was also noteworthy since the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat right of the coast of Kinsale(I think 1198 people perished out of 1900) this incident was instrumental in finally pushing America into participation in the Great War...

Alot of the people that participated in the different reenactments had been doing so for more than 30 years. It was quite fascinating to learn about different events that had taken place nearby...great little history lesson for yours truly!
We headed out to the next port of call namely Kenmare...which will follow in the next blog.

Lubbin` Dublin

9/8 5pm Arrival in Dublin
We arrived in Dublin and headed to our hotel by bus since we decided to cut back on expenses. The hotel we stayed at I managed to find on Expedia...so I didn`t expect much. Well...for 140 bucks a nite we managed to stay at a 5 star hotel in a beautiful suite with all the trimmings including breakfast. Radisson Blu St. Helens was a lodge that was refurbished into a hotel(around 150 yrs old.) We were very happy with the service, room and all the trimmings which helped to make up for the nightmare flight from hell...
9/9 Sightseeing in Dublin
Started out the day with some exercise at a beautiful park(Stephens Park) in the city for Zach. You can see in the pics that Zach got a little close for comfort to one of the swans at the park(see above pics). Afterwards, we walked along the beautiful shopping streets and then headed over to Trinity College. For those who don`t know, Trinity college was founded in 1592 and is the oldest university in Ireland. It also houses the Book of Kells, an important manuscript for Catholics and Christians alike - it contains the four gospels of the New Testament and dates back to the year 800...
We made an executive decision to walk to the Guinness Beer Storehouse and exhibit...45 minutes later we finally arrived. The timing was good, they were celebrating their 250th anniversary...wish I could say that I love a good pint `o Guinness, but I don`t so it wasn`t all that impressive for us. The way that beer is made is fascinating and the fact that kept insisting throughout that the beer`s water came from clean mountain streams did raise some suspicions...
Hung out in the downtown area waiting for an 8pm reservation at Chapter One, a restaurant I found out about thru a magazine we read in Atlanta...
The food was good and the service was iffy-still it was nice to know that decent fine dining was to be had in Dublin....
9/10
Happy Birthday Mom and Kenchan
Chilled at the lovely gardens at our hotel until our rental car(Volkswagen Polo) arrived.
After dealing with all the rigmarole with getting the paperwork together, we were on our way to Waterford(home of the eponymous crystal). Why Waterford? Well the genesis of this idea came from a conversation with our server the nite before at the Chapter One restaurant. Just so happens that she was from Waterford and recommended that we stay at the Waterford Castle...so we said sure....why not!

LegoLondonLand/Ire before Ireland Arrival

9/7
Legoland day finally arrived(we had been promising Zach that we would take him to Legoland from the beginning of this journey)!
The actual trek from London to Legoland was relatively painless even though you had to take 2 trains and one bus to get to Windsor. When we finally entered the place our first impression was that this was Wallyworld with a capital CHEESE! As we headed further into the park, it did get better with a very realistic 1/10 scale versions of all the major European capitals made with Legos. Zach was mesmerized by all the trains,planes and autos that were moving throughout the exhibit-so much so that he almost climbed in to fix a train that had de-railed.
We then came to one of the rides that looked like a lot of fun-it was a made for kids racetrack with miniature racecars... Unfortunately, you had to be 6 to ride on said racecars. Of course, me being the father of the year, I decided that I wanted my son to race one of the cars. The only way we were going to do this was for my son to sound convincing to the people when asked how old he was. He must have snowed them because he was hopping into a racecar 5 minutes later- you could have lit up the town of London with all the electricity emanating from our son. We had a blast and managed to get back to London by about 8pm that nite.
We had to move out of our hotel since the Hilton was full....I managed to find a great deal at the Hotel Intercontinental(via Hotwire.com) and was all agog when we arrived at this beautiful hotel. At the check in counter, I had a chat with the guy and found out that he was from our favorite place in the world (Taormina in Sicily). Needless to say, he was impressed with how much we knew about Sicily that he upgraded us to a suite that was something out of lifestyles of the rich and famous....
9/8 Off to Dublin
Had a great meal at a Turkish place in London called Sofra. I had arranged our flight with Ryanair and felt like everything was all set...I was rudely mistaken.
After taking a train to Gatwick airport, we were all set to check in when we were told that you had to have printouts of your boarding passes(never required in the time that I have been flying). Since we didnt have it, they charged us 40 pounds apiece for the check in with out the printouts. To add insult to injury, we were then told (along with every other person on our flight) that we were only allowed
15 kg of luggage per person. Of course, we were over the limit so I had to rush and buy a bag to stuff excess into and carry on to the flight. It was such a hassle and engendered a great deal of stress for yours truly-I found out later that the Irish call the airline SCUM AIR, which is being too nice. It was more like Lyin` and Cryin` Air....

London...what Recession?

9/3
We arrived at the Hilton Metropole a bit exhausted. Ate a little room service and decided that we all needed a 4 hr power nap. Awoke a tad groggy, but raring to get out to see a bit of the city. What better spot than Picadilly Circus to get a good taste of London life (ok its Time Square Brit Style).　　Ended up in a decent Italian joint recommended by the hotel called Senior Sassi-decent pasta, Marie`s fishy was too fishy(Branzino is sea bass in Italiano)...
9/4
Woke up late after catching up on sleep, we headed over to awesome dim sum place (Royal China Club)recommended by Marie`s friends living in London. Regents Park was a gorgeous park not too far from the hotel that we had to take Zach to for some needed exercise and fun. Italian again that was nothing to write home about.
9/5
Met up with Yoshi/Matsumi/Maho (Marie`s JCool friends) for Japanese that was very good. Afterwards, we all strolled over to a huge playground for 2 hrs then one more park for another 3 hrs(notice any trend here?). We are keen to get Zach as much as exercise as possible. After a quick change at home, went to Bombay Palace for some of the best Indian food we have had in quite some time. One thing we keep noticing is how crowded most of the restaurants are and how the city is bustling with activity. The hotel was packed and the lobby was teeming with people going to and fro. If there was a recession going on in London, we sure as heck couldn`t feel it.
9/6
Today was a day to do some touristy things. For some of you, you maybe thinking where is the Tate? Where is London Bridge? Where is Covent Gardens? Well, Marie and I have both travelled thru London in the past so it wasn`t as important this time around to do so much touristy stuff. That being said, we felt it was good to give Zach some exposure, so we got on one of those hop on/hop off buses to see places like Buckingham Palace(which happened to be open to the public for only 2 months each year while Queen Elizabeth vacations in Balmoral). The Palace is not so grand from the outside, but once inside, it was resplendent with beautiful paintings/ornately designed rooms/flowing tapestries etc.
Buckingham Palace was only designated the palace for the monarchy in 1837- it had been called Buckingham House before that.
We got back on the bus and stopped off at Westminster Abbey/Big Ben/Houses of Parliament(picture above-somehow caught it with some eerie sun in the background).
Jumped on the bus again and got off at Trafalgar Square to check out the National Gallery. The Gallery was awesome and what tickled us so much was watching our son stand in front of a painting for a few minutes at a time-we didn`t know he was such an art afficionado!!!! I was able to see one of my all time favorite paintings live for the first time-The Umbrellas by Pierre Auguste Renoir that was fascinating in that the painting was started in 1881 and finished in 1886. The gap of five years was enough to show how his painting style had evolved on that one painting....
We jumped to get on the bus not knowing that we got on the wrong one...oh well. We ended up getting off near St. James Park, which happened to be one of Marie`s favorite parks due to how beautifully the trees were inside the park. Ate at Fiamma inside the hotel, which was probably the worst meal of the trip so far...

New York State of Mind

8/30
Managed to get out of Atlanta in one piece - we arrived in NYC at 8pm. Headed over to the 1 bedroom apartment we found on hotels.com for $132 a nite. Normally, I would never divulge that information, but in this case, its pertinent to what will follow.
You know the old saying: " If its sounds its too good to be true...then it probably isn`t!"? Well...its very apropos for the place we arrived at. Why? a) The TV didn`t work( unless you think Spanish Public Access channel is quality viewing. b)
the dvd player was broken. c) The shower door fell on top of Marie( thankfully, she was startled more than anything else and finally d) shower was flowing with lukewarm water. All in all, Murphy`s law was in full force while we were in that shabby apartment. In the end, we got upgraded for the final day of our stay...wooo wooo!
Will not use Woogo Apartments for future travel plans in the Big Apple...
8/31
Woke up late again and headed down to the village to meet up with friends from Tokyo who moved to NYC about 18 mths ago. They live in a sizeable (1800 sq ft) refurbished walk-up and shuck out 6000 dineros plus a month...ouch. The Allens were nice enough to treat us to some make-your-own sandwiches and salads at their place.
We then jumped over to a local park in Battery Park City...while we were there former
first lady Laura Bush happen to wander nearby checking out the beautiful park. She had a ton of secret service people following her(tax dollars hard at work).
After that celebrity spotting(also passed by Puff Diddy or P Daddy?) we decided to go to their fave local Japanese place(decent).
I finally made my pilgrimage to my Mecca on 2nd Ave between 77th and 78th, Sables to get my requisite whitefish, sable and bialy. Nirvana wasn`t very far away as I knoshed on this when we finally got home at 8:30pm
9/1
Today has to be one of the most hectic days of our trip so far. We raced to New Jersey to meet up with Mrs. Barker(Marie`s English Tutor from high school) in Fairlawn-no easy feat transferring at Penn Station to get on NJ transit. We had a nice little lunch reunion and Zach was on his best behaviour for the first 5 minute of the lunch. After lunch, we zoomed out to meet up with Michelle(Marie`s BF from college) at Central Park. It was the first time for us to meet Alexander and Tyler
aged 5 and 3 respectively - Zach had a blast bonding with kids his own age.
Afterwards, we met up with David(Shelly`s hubby) at a local Italian joint in Grand Central.
You would think that we be enough to call it a day, but you would be mistaken! We then literally jogged over to Millenium Hotel next to the UN to meet up with Dana and her new hubby Chris for some late nite chat and drinks.
We finally zonked out at 10pm
9/2
Headed out to Sara Beths for some breakfast grub and then I had to run some errands while Marie took Zach over to a great playground inside Central Park.
We finally flew out to London around 8pm on Virgin Atlantic, which was breath of fresh air in this climate of crappy airlines/service/overall lame experiences.
We upgraded to premium economy(sounds like an oxymoron...don`t it?) and managed to have a relatively relaxing and uneventful flight. More on London in my next blog.....

8/30

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