ralphmelton

As we were coming to the end of the trip, we were getting second thoughts about eating the full Irish fry every morning, and we were staying in B&Bs that offered menus for breakfast. I ordered poached eggs on toast topped with cheddar cheese, because I hadn’t seen it on menus elsewhere. It was tasty, like a meatless eggs Benedict.


Lori chose porridge, eggs and bacon, and a scone.



Plan A had been to walk to the corner and take a bus into Galway. But we were a few minutes late and the bus did not run that often. And it was a beautiful day, and it didn’t look that far on the B&B’s hand-drawn map. So I talked Lori into walking along the Promenade into Galway. We might not have walked it if we had known how long it would be, but it was a very pleasant walk. (And every time we raised our map to check our course, somebody stopped to offer help.)


Had we not walked, we might not have spent any time in Claddagh, the tiny village famous for Claddagh rings (and now a suburb of Galway). And it’s very likely that we might not have stopped for a snack at the Gourmet Tart Shop.



Galway’s Latin Quarter was a very good place for us to finish our shopping in Ireland. Every tourist chain of stores we had seen anywhere was represented there, and the Quarter was so compact that it was easy to find everything.



The King’s Head pub was so named because of its role in the beheading of King Charles I.



Lori with Oscar Wilde. I’m not quite sure what the Galway-Wilde connection is.


We ate a wonderful lunch at Sheridan’s Cheesemongers. We invited the cheesemonger to recommend meat and cheese and wine for us, and he was very enthusiastic and did a terrific job. He served us a lovely Valpolicella wine and a great platter of Irish meats and cheeses. At my request, he wrote down a list of everything - unfortunately, I can’t quite remember which one was which.
St. Tola goat cheese
Kileen young goat cheese
Boyne Valley Blue
Gubeen smoked cheese (from the cheese maker in Eyeries that we had failed to find on our drive through the Beara peninsula Monday)
Durrus farmhouse cheese
Gubeen chorizo
Gubeen black pepper salami
Gubeen pepperoni
The Gubeen salami was so good that we bought some to bring home for ourselves and some as a gift for Lori’s father. Unfortunately, it was confiscated when we went through Customs.


For dessert, Lori had her last millionaire’s shortbread of the trip, a very good one.


We tried once more to find an Irish session. When we’d asked Mary, the innkeeper at our B&B, for recommendations for Irish music, she’d said “Irish people don’t listen to Irish music,” but despite that, she had suggested Taaffe’s as a place with a regular session. I think this was a reasonably authentic session - the folks playing were playing for each other, instead of for the audience, musicians joined the group from time to time, and no one offered CDs for sale.



Mary may have been exaggerating, but she was not wholly wrong; everyone in the audience appeared to be a tourist, including this particularly cute spectator.


Galway at dusk.


For dinner, we followed a Yelp tip to The Pie Maker, a little shop serving Australian pies. This was one of the finest Roadfood stops we’ve ever had, because we got into a great conversation with Stephanie, the woman making the pies.


It was a tiny shop, with just four booths and a counter.


We drank Australian beverages: Bundaberg ginger beer (very fiery) and Belvoir elderflower soda (somewhat bitter).


I had a chicken curry pie, Lori had a ham and cheese pie, and both were wonderful. After weeks of thick, heavy crust, it was a nice change to find that Australian pie crusts are light and flaky like pie crusts in the US. Its hard to tell from these pictures which pie is which. Stephanie can tell them apart by the garnishes on the pie crust, but I no longer remember which one was which.


For dessert, I had a splendid rhubarb tart and Lori had an outstanding banoffee pie. Stephanie was very firm on the claim that banoffee pie was an Irish creation, because so many bananas pass through Dublin on the way to other places. I didn’t argue too strongly with her, but there seems to be fairly clear evidence that banoffee pie was originated at the Hungry Monk pub in England. Stephanie very kindly gave us her recipe for banoffee pie, and we’ve made it ourselves with good results.



The food was all excellent, but the best thing about the meal was the conversation with Stephanie. For most of the evening, we were alone in the place with her, and we had a long, rambling, lovely conversation. (The conversation would have been long anyway, but it was made even longer because they only took cash and we were out. I left Lori there “as collateral” and went out walking to find an ATM, but the first ATM I found quit working at 6pm. I had to walk much further to find an ATM that would give us cash.)
She had grown up in the United States, and had been a social worker in New Mexico until she burned out. She had moved to Inishmor (one of the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland not far from Galway) because of a guy, and felt that she hadn’t been welcomed by the community there. But when that romance ended with a “psychotic” breakup, the whole community took care of her, and someone unexpected called the police.
She had moved to Kinsale for a while, and learned to cook through cultivating a recommendation for being available as a dishwasher, potato peeler, or whatever odd job was needed for a restaurant that might be short-handed for a day for a staff emergency until chefs started giving her tips and jobs.
Now she lives on Inishmor and goes to Galway for four days each week to work in the pie shop. She runs the Pie Maker herself most of the time she’s there, making all the pies, serving customers, and everything. The job makes her wonderfully happy.
She also told us about some of her romantic hopes, and invited our advice. I’m not going to write those details here, just in case the guy she was attracted to should happen to find this page in a Google search - but Stephanie, if you should ever read this, we have our fingers crossed for you, and we’d love to know how it works out. Best of luck!

We loved talking with Stephanie about life and pie, and we wish her and the shop the very best. This was one of our favorite stops in Ireland.

This was Rockcrest House, our B&B in Kenmare.


After leaving the B&B, we stopped in Kenmare for a bit of shopping and a visit to the KenmareLace and Design Centre, upstairs from the little town museum. Kenmare had been a great center for lacemaking, because in the 19th century Poor Clare nuns taught poor local girls to make lace as a way of making a little money. They had some fabulously intricate pieces on display, and a docent on hand who told us about the women who made them. We bought a marvelous delicate lace brooch for my mother, because she has tatted lace herself, and another for Lori just because it was beautiful. In a fit of optimism, Lori bought a kit that will enable her to make a small piece of the same lace. So far, she hasn’t started.

They didn’t allow pictures, but I recommend going to http://www.kenmarelace.ie and gawking at the pictures there.

I was finished before Lori was, so I took a few pictures of Kenmare.


This small round bridge is called Cromwell Bridge. The obvious conclusion is that it’s named for Oliver Cromwell, who brutally rampaged across Ireland during his time as Lord Protector of England. But the name was in used for a hundred years before he came along.


We drove off towards Killarney National Park, along the inland edge of the Ring of Kerry scenic route. Once again the roads were narrow and twisty, with steep drop-offs and no shoulders. Once or twice we went through a short tunnel that was barely wider than the car.




Another panorama from the Ring of Kerry:


One of the most famous sights in Killarney National Park is called Ladies’ View, so named because Queen Victoria’s handmaidens were delighted by the view on a visit here. Lori was pretty delighted with it too.



A panorama from Ladies’ View.




Just down the hill from Ladies’ View was this medieval ruin:







Our planned stop in Killarney National Park was Muckross House, for another tour of a fine estate. But first, we ate lunch at the Garden Restaurant at Muckross. This is not any sort of obscure local eatery; this is clearly impersonal food for tourists. But it was very tasty. Lori had the chicken and vegetables, I had the shepherd’s pie, and we shared a dessert of plum sponge.







Lori was keen on taking a jaunting car ride ever since we had read about it in tour books. (Tourist level: so very touristy.) Finding a jaunting car ride was easy; the process appears to be to stand near Muckross House and not aggressively reject the possibility of a ride. Using this process, we ended up on a ride to Torc Falls drawn by an old codger with a habit of repeating everything twice. “Three hundred sixty-five windows in the house,” he’d say. “Three hundred sixty-five windows.” But he carries some history of his own there - he’s been driving a jaunting car for decades, and his son is now driving a jaunting car of his own.








Muckross House was a grand house. Multiple gorgeous rooms were decorated in a variety of period styles. I think some furnishings we saw dated back to the 17th century, but I am not sure of this. The detail I remember most is that the family had hardly any social contact with the (non-noble) locals; their only social life came when they visited England or someone from England visited them. It seems a dismal lonely lifestyle - especially for the children. This was a theme we heard repeated in every grand house or castle we toured.

No pictures because they didn’t allow pictures, but we have some lovely pictures of the gardens.


On the other side of the parking lot from Muckross House is Muckross Traditional Farms, a collection of farms still being run as they were in 1930 or so, when horses provided most of the power and carrying water was a major part of daily life. I was particularly eager to tour these farms because I had read they are staffed by old farmers who can talk about the way things were back then. Unfortunately, we learned when we got there that during October, they are only open on weekends.

We stopped by Ross Castle on our way out of Killarney National Park, but the last tour was over.




We have a great many pictures of Ross Castle and Lough Leane under gloomy grey skies. These are some of our favorites:



Our destination that night was Ballyseede Castle. There’s a story in how we found Ballyseede. We were both eager to spend the night in a castle in our Ireland stay, and we mentioned that to a travel agent we were trying to work with. She immediately recommended Ballyseede, because it was so affordable. Now, I tend to be very thrifty or even stingy. But my castle stays are rare enough that I don’t want to choose a castle just because it’s cheap. But we could not persuade this travel agent that we had other priorities in our castle selection. That and chronic non-responsiveness led us to abandon that travel agent and arrange our trip entirely on our own. But we had her recommendation and other recommendations that Ballyseede was a good value in a castle stay, so we decided to spend one night there.


Our room was pretty, but bland compared the enthusiastic luxury of Lawcus Farm.


We ate in Ballyseede’s pub instead of the restaurant because I was having an attack of thrift. The woodwork in the pub was beautiful.


My steak and Guinness pie was excellent, with a very crisp puff pastry crust.


Lori had a nice but not particularly Irish pasta with tomato and spinach sauce and a very rich Bailey’s coffee.



One of the special features of the pub is the dog Einstein, who spends much of his time there. Einstein has a special trick: he has several stones that he considers his. He will carry them in his mouth, drop them at your feet, and implore you to toss them for him to fetch.


As we were finishing our meal, we overheard the manager offering a tour of the castle to another couple, and we inserted ourselves into the tour. He told some ghost stories, for which Lori will give a more sympathetic retelling than I. My clearest memory is that of Hilda, the last family resident of the Castle; as with the residents of Muckross House, she did not socialize with the locals, so the highlight of her day was when the postman arrived. The story is that she’s sometimes seen in her window, waiting for the postman to arrive.

Lori: The tour of Ballyseede gave information on the history of the castle, its present uses, and the ghost stories surrounding it. My memories have dimmed, but I’ll do my best.

The castle’s date of origin is uncertain. The history we heard dates back to 1584, when the land was granted to Robert Blennerhassett, after the defeat of the previous owners, the Fitzgeralds, the Earls of Desmond. The rent for the castle was to be a single red rose from the garden, to be presented on Midsummer’s Day each year. The descendants of Robert Blennerhassett occupied the castle until 1966. Hilda was the last of the family to live there, and it’s said her spirit makes itself known on March 24 each year, which was her birthday. It is also said, as Ralph commented above, that her spirit can be seen in the window of her bedroom, looking for the mailman or visitors who rarely came. There are some watermarks under said window that are said to spell out “R I P.” It may be a bit of wishful thinking to say that - we could see where they get the idea, but the letters (such as they are) are far from sharp and clear.

There is also a romantic tale that a woman in white roams the halls at night, carrying the single red rose used to pay rent. We didn’t see her, but she makes a great story.

The castle now does weddings in a banquet hall in the oldest part of the castle, and it is in this room the ghost stories were told. A woman on Trip Advisor claimed she could’t sleep because the stories were so scary. The stories were pretty tame…I’d hate to think of what happened to her after she saw “The Sixth Sense,” a ghost movie that had me looking over my shoulder for at least three weeks.

The guide did have some ghost photos. They aren’t available online, so you’ll have to take my word for it - they were creepy. One was a photo of several Irish ladies at a wedding a few years ago. They’d posed on the staircase with their arms around each other. What was creepy was that a skeletal hand showed up draped on one lady on the end’s shoulder…looks like the ghost wanted to join in the fun. The other was of the pet cemetery (yes, they have one for the castle dogs and horses). There was a ghostly image of a dog’s face in spectral blue that was certainly creepy. I have no idea how likely or unlikely it is that these were photoshopped.

I can say that I do believe in ghosts, I do think something’s probably there, and that we had no encounters of our own that night. We did enjoy Ballyseede, and would recommend it to anyone visiting Ireland who would like the castle experience for a modest price. The decor was lovely, and I enjoyed wandering around taking it all in.

For more information, here’s the castle website. http://ballyseedecastle.com/history.php

Our plan for Monday had been to drive the Ring of Kerry, whose scenic beauty makes it famous and very popular with tourists. But in two different events, our host at the B&B and another diner at the Lime Tree recommended we drive the Ring of Beara (around the Beara peninsula) instead; “It’s less touristy.” And my own superstitious quirks are such that I would not ignore such a double recommendation. So we drove the Ring of Beara.

It was a pretty drive under louring grey skies. But here’s the thing: “It’s less touristy” is apparently code for “the roads are so narrow and twisty that a tour bus would end up looking at its own license plate.” There were many beautiful scenes that we couldn’t photograph, because we’d have had had to park in the middle of the road and worry about blind curves.

I really regretted the theft of Lori’s phone this day. I use one of our phones as a GPS; I would have used another phone to take time-lapse videos, as I did in the Midwest in 2012.



This is not the best rainbow we saw in Ireland, but it was one of the few we were able to photograph.


We stopped at Derreen Gardens, an old estate planted into a luxurious subtropical rainforest garden with many exotic plants in the late 1800s. We paid our 7€ at the honor box, and ended up regretting it. The paths were wild and wandering, and there was no portable map and few signs. So we did not feel we could walk a loop and reliably get back to our car. We encountered no other people except the sounds of a flute from the manor house, so it was a strange lonely place.







The name “King’s Oozy” sounds like something the king should see a doctor about.


More pictures from our circuit of Beara.



We had plans to visit a cheesemaker in Eyeries. We found the tiny town of Eyeries, but didn’t find the cheesemaker. The brightly painted houses of Eyeries were very typical of Irish small towns.


This tree of roadsigns in Castletownbere was also very typical.


We ate a bland lunch at Murphy’s Restaurant: stuffed ham and turkey roast for Ralph and ham, cheese, and tomato toastie for Lori.



A Beara landscape from our stop at Molly Gaffigan’s gift shop:


Our last stop on our circuit was at Bonane Heritage Park. I was interested in stopping, because the park had a prehistoric stone circle and we had not managed to visit Stonehenge. Lori was not so interested, because the scowling clouds that had been with us all day had now gathered into a dripping rain. If we had had two cell phones (and effective cell service), she might have stayed in the car, but since we did not, she wanted to stay together. It’s good that we did stay together; we spent much longer at the park than I had predicted, and she would have been very nervous if she had been alone.
The honor box asked for 4€, but we had spent all of our small cash for the honor box at Derreen Gardens. I regret this, because we enjoyed Bonane much more - particularly because Bonane had good signs and clear routes.

Near the parking lot was a reconstructed crannog. I had never heard of a crannog before; a crannog is a dwelling on an artificial island in a lake, with a path of stepping stones under the water providing access for people who knew the secret.


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At the top of the hill was a ring fort. In the famine times, it had been used to try to grow potatoes, despite deep superstition prohibiting farming such sites. That gave me a new appreciation for the depths of the Famine, because this was such a high remote site that cultivating it would be a big challenge.


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A panorama from the center of the ring fort:


The Dromagorteen stone circle at Bonane is much less impressive than Stonehenge, but but it still requires a monumental amount of labor to lug dishwasher-sized rocks to the top of this hill. And the astronomical calculations and delicate adjustments must have required both labor and care.


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Near the stone circle was a fulachta fiadh, a pre-pottery cooking pit in which hot stones were dropped into a pool to heat water. My impression is that the actual cooking pit was much smaller, but the raised ring comes from the piles of used cooking stones.


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Lori suggested a selfie to confirm that we were viewing archaeological sights in the steady rain. Here we are, soggy and bedraggled but having a good time.


I quite enjoyed Bonane Heritage Park; I wish we had had more time to spend there.

That evening, we went to Foley’s, the other pub in Kenmare, to seek dinner and Irish music.

The brown bread was as good as ever.


We shared the crab and salmon cakes for an appetizer; they were tasty, but very homogenous; the opposite of the big lumps of crab found in some Baltimore crab cakes.


I had the stuffed pork chop, which was nicely prepared.


Lori’s steak and Guinness pie was quite tasty, but the presentation of serving it on top of the mound of colcannon was a little odd.


Our dessert was a sticky toffee pudding that was only okay.


The music in the back bar that night was Dan O’Sullivan playing rousing Irish-music-for-tourists. We had a great time listening to him. We bought one of his CDs, and we stayed listening until the bar closed. But all the listeners were tourists, and the songs were tourist songs; it was like a performance at an Irish bar in the US transplanted to Ireland.

This was the view from our bedroom window on Saturday morning. (I have commented that there is hardly any better symbol of indefatigable optimism than an Irish clothesline.)


The teapot at breakfast came swaddled in this cute tea sweater.


Lori had the scrambled eggs with salmon.


I had the Irish fry; this was one of the better fries of the trip.


And then down to Dingle for the Dingle Food Festival.


I don’t remember the explanation of why there was a gypsy parade at the food festival.


The festival was one of the best food festivals we’ve encountered, because it had the Taste Trail. Seventy-five restaurants, shops, and food stalls were all selling small tastes of their various specialties for 2€ apiece. This meant that we were able to try a whole lot of places without becoming too horribly gorged. Even so, we did not managed to sample everything; we managed fourteen places on Saturday and about the same on Sunday. (There were also cooking demonstrations, workshops, music, and more, but the Taste Trail was the main thing for us.) It was touristy, certainly, but it felt to us as if it was catering to Irish tourists instead of international tourists. (Someone told us that this festival was a chance for the locals to relax a bit after the tourist season abated for the year.)

Crab Roll from Dingle Bay Hotel.


Mini burger and whiskey custard from Murphy’s Pub.


I’ve lost track of who supplied this cupcake for Lori:


Liam O’Neill Gallery offered “Traditional Dingle Mutton Pies with Derry Clarke from L’ecrivian restaurant, Dublin”. This might have been my first chance to dine on food prepared by a Michelin-star chef, but I didn’t like the mutton pie much.


Biscuit Cake from the Strand House



Murphy’s Ice Cream offered a lot of specialty flavors. All of them were good, but I remember particularly liking the Oats and the Cheddar Cheese flavors. Murphy’s was one of our favorite stops on the Taste Trail.


I’ve lost track of which flavors these were. My guesses (clockwise from top): butterscotch, oats, and Irish marmalade.


Tempted Strawberry Cider served in a frame shop. This didn’t live up to my mental image of strawberry cider, unfortunately.


Pizza from The Diner reflected an imperfect understanding of 50s diner culture.


I had never had periwinkles before. (Periwinkles are edible sea snails; these pictured are from Hannie’s.) Eating periwinkles involves probing the snail with a toothpick like a game of Operation in order to retrieve a crumb of meat the size and texture of a small pencil eraser. They weren’t horrible, but I discarded them as not worth the effort after less than half the serving.


The bacon and cabbage from MacCarty’s was outstanding. Far better than I expected from a rather ordinary bar.



Dick Mack’s is a haberdashery and bar. This combination might improve the process of shopping for men’s clothing. (They weren’t actually on the Taste Trail, I think.)


We took a break from the Taste Trail to see the beautiful Harry Clarke stained glass center at the Diseart Centre, a former convent. They didn’t allow pictures, of the windows; some pictures are available online at http://www.diseart.ie/visitor/harry3.html.


Foxy John’s (a hardware store plus bar; this sort of conversion is apparently a thing in Dingle) had samples of Annascaul Black Pudding, an award-winning artisan black pudding (and other breakfast meats). This was definitely qualitatively better than many of the other black puddings I had in Ireland, but it didn’t make me a black pudding lover.



Pumpkin soup from An Gallerai Beag.


Cones of chocolates from It Must Be Food.


I think this cupcake came from Deirdre’s Delights.


We hit Kennedy’s Butchers just as they (and the other shops on the Taste trail) were closing up for the day. The three sausages were excellent.




This meringue tea cake might have come from the Tree House Cafe. I’m not quite certain, though. I took notes of our destinations in one of the guides to the festival, and I’ve mislaid that guide. The guide is available online, but without our notes. I’ve managed to reconstruct most of our travels from a vague memory of our route, and the guide’s list of the foods served at each stop. The Tree House Cafe is next to Kennedy’s Butchers, which matches my remembered route - but the guide said that Tree House Cafe was serving something else, and I don’t see this meringue listed anywhere on the list. (Note from Lori: I bought that from the counter. It wasn’t a food festival thing, it was just a tea cake…and a LOT bigger than I thought it would be!)



After such a day of the Taste Trail, it was a bit tricky to figure out supper. We wanted something a bit more substantial; Lori in particular hadn’t eaten nearly as many tastes as I had. But we didn’t want much, and we felt that that a nice restaurant would be wasted on us. So we ended up returning to the Diner for garlic bread and pizza. This pizza was adequate, but I don’t think it would measure up in New York or New Haven.


We attended evening Mass at St. Mary’s. The service used a mixture of English and Gaelic, which made it very hard for me to follow.

Lori: I am a card-carrying Catholic. One of the beautiful things about Catholicism is the universality of the Mass. However, the occasional Gaelic mixed in with the English, and the thick accents of the Priest and congregation meant that I was often lost too, despite the fact that the responses are the same no matter where you go. We think some of it was simply that the accent gave everything a slightly different cadence and/or rhythm than what I’m accustomed to. Still, it was a beautiful little church made of stone, warm-toned wood, and stained glass, I enjoyed hearing parts of the Mass spoken and sung in Gaelic, and I was happy we went there for Mass.

After the Mass, we went seeking Irish music. Dingle is a famous town for Irish music, and we wanted to make the most of our opportunities while we were there. We never found Irish music that night, but we got one of the best stories of our trip. This photo may be as close to Irish music as we came that night - but the key to understanding this picture is to know that I do not play guitar.


What happened was this: as we were passing Bennett’s Hotel, Lori wanted to take a peek inside, because it was a venerable old establishment with a sumptuous entryway. When we poked our heads in, a guy at the bar enthusiastically beckoned us inside.
(I’ll call him Paddy, because he gave that as his name at least once.) It turned out that he and his (mostly silent) friend Jim had come from about thirty miles away looking for a session, and he had seen me and assumed from my appearance that I was a bluegrass player. Unfortunately, the closest I come to being a bluegrass musician is that my sister-in-law is an amateur fiddler. Paddy was not convinced despite our protestations, and it was at his insistence that we posed with his guitar.

We talked with Paddy and Jim briefly; I recall that Jim was a police officer, but I don’t recall any background about Paddy. They had no idea that the Dingle Food Festival was in town; they had just come to find a session the way they do once a month or so.

But Paddy’s attention soon drifted away from us to land upon Molly (definitely not her real name). Paddy started chatting with her with casual interest, but his conversation flourished wildly. Within ten minutes, he was introducing her to us as his girlfriend; within another ten minutes, he was asking to borrow Lori’s engagement ring so that he could propose to her. Molly did not seem to wholly reciprocate his infatuation; her responses were along the lines of “That’s not my real name; I’m not telling you my real name. I’m not going to marry you. I’m not even going to go to a different bar with you.” But Paddy was utterly undaunted and continued pouring out his adulations to his lady love. (This might have been creepy if she wasn’t enjoying it, but she was clearly having a fine time. After Paddy and Jim left, she told us her real name (which I’ve now forgotten) and told us that her cheeks were sore from laughing so hard.)
This is the picture Paddy insisted we take of the two lovebirds. It is one of our most memory-laden photos of the trip.


Paddy and Jim eventually unslung their guitars and started to start a session of their own, and were firmly told “no music here” by the bartender. They wandered off while we stayed to chat with Molly and her friend.

We walked a bit more looking for a pub with music, but the ones we found were full to bursting. We stood outside one pub listening to the music for a while, but it had been a day of a lot of standing and walking, and we went back to the B&B around ten.

Is this not the prettiest porridge breakfast one could wish for? This was actually a second attempt; Lori had ordered the porridge, but received a bagel with bacon and egg instead.


We took a walking tour of Kinsale in the morning, even though it was a wet, grey day. Barry the tour guide had large umbrellas available for the use of the tourists, which was a remarkable courtesy. Barry was a good tour guide and did a good job of explaining Kinsale’s history. Much of the wall that enclosed Kinsale in medieval times is still present, and the five historic gates still constrain traffic.



The medieval tax schedule is still posted in the old town hall (now a tiny but interesting museum).


We ate lunch at the Lemon Leaf Cafe, a bright little cafe tucked into the back of a gift shop. Lori got a lovely cup of tomato soup (just the thing for a rainy day) and a very nice ham and chesse sandwich with apple and raisin chutney. Again, in the US such a sandwich would probably be toasted in a way that melted the cheese, but here it was just served on toast.


I got my share of melted cheese, though, with a bacon and cheese rarebit that was simply fabulous. With great smoky bacon and sharp cheese, this was a meal worth a long journey for.


More harbor pictures:



We spent the afternoon with a bit more sightseeing and a bit of shopping. We bought cut crystal glassware at Kinsale Crystal. Cut crystal in Ireland has changed over the last few years. Waterford Crystal was the most famous Irish crystal company. But in 2009, Waterford went bankrupt and closed the factory in Waterford, and most of the production has since been moved to Eastern Europe. But a group of former employees now makes crystal under the name Sons of Waterford, and sends the blanks to small local shops like Kinsale Crystal to be cut and sold to tourists. (And these shops are very accommodating for tourists; they offered to ship our purchases directly to our home so that we didn’t have to worry about packing glass in our luggage.)

Lori spotted a beautiful rainbow shawl in Kilmaran Woolens, and I bought it for her as a Christmas present with the thinnest possible pretense that she did not know what I had purchased.

Because Kinsale is known as a town for gourmet dining, we looked for another gourmet restaurant for dinner, and ended up at Finn’s Table. This was an exceptional dinner, one of the best of our trip.

We ordered half a bottle of wine in the happy knowledge that we wouldn’t be driving anywhere. Julie Finn, one of the proprietors, cheerfully offered to decant it for us, even though it was only half a bottle.


I liked brown bread everywhere we went in Ireland, but I especially liked it here. The white herb roll was also excellent.


Lori began her meal with the tomato, ginger, and rosemary soup. Lori generally avoids spicy food, but the ginger and rosemary seasoned this very nicely.


Kinsale is a port town, so local fare means seafood. So for my appetizer, I ordered the grilled oysters with vodka, lime, cilantro sauce. These were really outstanding; the seawater taste of the oysters came through clearly, but the sauce transformed it and made it radiant. (When I praised the oysters to the proprietor, she tried to introduce me to the oysterman who had gathered them, but he had just left the restaurant.)


Lori had beautiful fragrant lamb chops.


My entree was the surf and turf with fondant potatoes. (The lobster came from local waters, and my beef and Lori’s lamb were raised by Julie’s husband’s parents.)


Lori’s dessert was a selection of caramel tart, house made ice cream, and chocolate mousse.


However, I won the better dessert with mine: lemon posset with blackberry sorbet and housemade shortbread. (A posset is a chilled milk dessert, similar to what I call “pudding” in my American dialect.) The flavors were radiant and sumptuous, and it was a splendid finale to the meal.


We had some chances to talk with Julie Finn at some length because we praised the food so highly. She said that she and her husband have only been in business in Kinsale for a year or two. We certainly think they’re off to a terrific start, and we wish them every success.

We wound up the night at Dalton’s Bar looking again for craic. The two women customers left shortly after we arrived, but we had some pleasant chitchat with the bartender.

Breakfast at Lawcus Farm was a three-course affair. We started out with fruit and juice (and optional granola, which we declined.)



Next was rich, tasty porridge. Instead of sweetening it with honey, Ann Marie suggested Orchard Syrup, an Irish syrup made from boiling down apples. It was tasty enough that we brought home a bottle as a souvenir.



As we were finishing our porridge, we noticed Robin the farmhand walk in with a bowl of eggs. These eggs were fried up and served to us only a few minutes after they were laid. At this point in the narration, I feel I’m supposed to rhapsodize about what a difference it makes to have such super-fresh eggs - but my palate is coarse enough that I did not notice a difference between this super-fresh egg and a nicely fried supermarket egg. Even so, it was well cooked and it tasted very nice.
We were told that the bacon might or might not have come from Lawcus Farm pigs; they serve more bacon than their own pigs provide, so they have to make up the difference with bacon from other farmers in the village. So there’s some question of whether the bacon is super-local or merely very local, but it was very tasty and savory. This was a great Irish fry.


Lori chose pancakes instead. As I look at this picture, I’m surprised to see sautéed mushrooms on the plate; I suspect Lori handed them to me.


While Lori got ready, I overheard Mark giving other guests a tour of Lawcus Farm, and I tagged along.




Mark said that everything in the place came from “picking” - pieces and scraps he’d picked up from other buildings. For example, the flagstones in the floor in the large dining room had come from another house, whose owner had had to take up the stones to bring the construction up to code. And the windows of our room (the upper floor on the left) had come from an old church that had been torn down.


A panorama of Lawcus Farm:


In the bar, Mark gave us each a shot of poitín, an Irish spirit (distilled from barley, potatoes, or whatnot) that occupies the same cultural niche and former historic illegal status as moonshine in the US.(For further reading: http://www.thejournal.ie/poitin-ireland-1175839-Nov2013/) Mark said that this was the good stuff; this is what the police would drink. I don’t remember much of the taste; it was potent and pretty smooth.

We set off to a Farm and Folk Museum that Mark had told us about in nearby Bennettsbridge. This museum is run by one man, Seamus Lawlor, in a barn or large shed behind his house.


This picture of monuments outside the museum is interesting to me for two reasons. The monuments for the evictions during the Great Famine and for the invasion by Oliver Cromwell suggest to me an anger about those cruelties that persists to the present day. And the monument in the middle begins “In proud and loving memory of James Lawlor who was founder, member, and chairman of the first Irish Transport and General Workers Union branch in Co Kilkenny in 1917”, and I suspect that James Lawlor was an ancestor of Seamus Lawlor who runs the museum.



In retrospect, I think we may have overestimated how strongly Mark was recommending the Farm and Folk Museum. Here’s the thing: there is a fine line between “museum” and “barn full of junk”, and this place only stayed on the “museum” side of that line because of a smattering of handwritten labels. (We have visited places that were on the wrong side of that line, particularly the Tower Museum in Colorado.)





But as we looked around, we saw a story of affection for the life of farmers of the 19th and 20th centuries. We read some nice tales and poems of threshing day, when a community’s threshing machine would visit one farmer’s fields and there would be a party of harvesting and gathering.


And there were clear signs that Seamus Lawlor still holds a grudge over the famine times. That was more interesting to me than the Famine itself; I know about the Famine, but I was not expecting it to be still aflame in the hearts of Irish.


We got a nice view of the bridge that gave Bennettsbridge its name:


From the museum, it was just around the corner to Nicholas Mosse pottery, a ceramic factory whose work has appeared in tourist stores. We watched people work, shopped for pottery, and got a little snack: local apple juice for me, Diet Coke with a local marketing campaign for Lori.


The drive back to Stoneyford gave us a moment when we weren’t using my phone as a GPS, so Lori had a chance to take a few pictures of the road. I may not have yet ranted about how narrow Ireland roads are. So many of the roads are about one and a half car widths… and the speed limits are high; the speed limit on a road like this might be 80 km/h (50 mph). Look for the car visible in one of the pictures to show just how narrow these roads are - and remember that these are two-way roads.




I’m particularly fond of this picture.


We ate lunch at Knockdrinna Farm Shop, an award-winning cheesemaker in Stoneyford


We had a couple of interesting juices:


We ordered a plate of their cheeses - but unfortunately, I don’t remember them. I know that there were two cow’s milk cheeses, two goat’s milk cheeses, and one sheep’s milk cheese.


For an entree, we shared a chicken and ham pie. It was tasty, but it had barely any ham.


From there we drove into Kilkenny to see the sights. We parked downtown and walked several blocks through soft rain to Kilkenny Castle.

Butter Slip is a narrow covered alley that got its name because that was where butter was sold in medieval times.


Kilkenny Castle was our first encounter with a Downton Abbey-like estate, with doughty walls and beautiful gardens. It was occupied until 1935, but then everything in the castle was auctioned off and it was left vacant. It was sold to the city in 1957 for 50 pounds.



There was work being done on the crest at the main entrance, which yielded an entertaining juxtaposition of old and new.


The east wall that would have been the original entrance when the castle was built in 1195 has been torn down centuries ago.


One little curiosity of the restored castle: they had a gizmo for enclosing your wet umbrella in a plastic bag for the protection of the antiquities.


Kilkenny Castle didn’t allow pictures of the interior. It was pretty (mostly in a turn-of-the-century style matching the last inhabitants) and fancy enough that we bought a book on the castle to get some pictures.

The River Nore as viewed from the castle.


A pub sign worth commemorating from our walk back into Kilkenny:


A few miscellaneous photos of Kilkenny city streets:


Lori’s aunt Helen had particularly recommended that we visit the Black Abbey in Kilkenny. We climbed up to the top of the hill, only to discover that the building we were heading to was not actually the Black Abbey - it was St. Canice Cathedral of the Church of Ireland. The round tower is one of the two round towers in Ireland that tourists are allowed to climb. I climbed up the stairs, but the door inside was closed.


We found the Black Abbey on our second try. I expected it to be more black. It turns out that it’s called the Black Abbey because it’s a Dominican abbey, and black is the traditional color of the Dominicans.


Another picture from our walk downhill. This was just a canal running through the town, but I think this is one of the prettiest pictures I got.



The Black Abbey was open to tourists, so were able to go in. The stained glass was particularly beautiful. As we were looking at the windows, a group of monks came in for evening vespers. We worried that we were intruding on their prayers and tried to leave quietly. As we left, one elderly monk caught our eye and gave us a blessing with a gesture and a smile. He did this with no break in the prayers he was singing. Lori said he just had this aura of kindness.


Another picture about the sometimes-difficult interactions between traditional medieval streets and modern cars. This particular street was one-way, at least - but cars of many different colors had left paint on the edges of this arch.


We ate dinner at a pub called Kyteler’s Inn, founded in 1324. Alice Kyteler, the mistress of the tavern, apparently outlived four husbands, but she was convicted for witchcraft (Kyteler’s material claims she was framed) and had to flee to England.


Dinner was pretty touristy and disappointing. I had a fairly sad ham toastie, Lori had some chewy Irish stew.


The reason that we came to Kyteler’s: Mark at Lawcus Farm had suggested it as a place for Irish music. It turned out that they did not actually have music on Tuesday nights; instead they had bodhran sessions. It was extremely touristy, but I gladly took the chance to try to learn a little bodhran. It may be fairly said that I was not any good at playing the bodhran; I was slower to pick up the techniques than most, and I felt I was continually trying to catch up. But I think that I was a very good sport about it, even when the leader was razzing me about my difficulties.

Lori very kindly wrote up this day. What follows is from her except for the occasional comment from me.


We woke to another beautiful day. We were spoiled by all the great weather we had on this trip. It was generally sunny and mild, and it didn’t rain nearly as much as we’d expected.

We got up and dressed pretty quickly, as the first stop of the day would be to attend Mass. We ended up ordering the same two-course breakfast: porridge with honey (and cinnamon) followed by smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. Kilronan House’s breakfast food was fine each morning, but it wasn’t especially memorable. I remember more that the dining area was always a bit crowded, and service wasn’t bad, but it was a bit indifferent.


We went to St. Andrew’s for Mass. I blush to admit we chose it mostly because it wasn’t far from us and had a convenient Mass time for us. We really were fortunate, though. St. Andrew’s was a beautiful church built in 1834. There were many gorgeous statues and the whole church was simply lovely.



After Mass, there was some fellowship time over coffee, tea and scones. We enjoyed this, too and were glad to talk with the priest about some tourist details afterward.



He explained that the rings at the edge of each pew were for holding banners and pointed out the umbrella stands in each pew.



“Those were all hand-carved from Irish oak;” he said, “they’re 160 years old and don’t have a single creak among them.”



We also noticed a separate chapel to the right side of the church. This was a wedding chapel - there was a time when weddings were quiet affairs conducted in this lovely, small chapel. He also told us the last time they had such fine weather in Dublin in late September was in 1979 when Pope John Paul the 23rd visited! We really enjoyed our chat with him. I wish I could remember his name.



Next, we walked further toward Trinity College to see the College and most importantly the Long Room and the Book of Kells. We visited O’Brien’s, a chain deli/sub shop for lunch. Ralph had a chicken tikka sandwich that he found fairly bland. [Ralph: I think “Tikka” has more or less the same role in British and Irish cuisine that “Cajun” has in the US. Getting Cajun turkey breast in a sandwich shop does not imply any connection at all to the Louisiana bayou, and tikka chicken may have only the flimsiest connection to India.]


My club sandwich was pretty good, but not anything special.




[Ralph: we had no idea about the political situation in Ireland, but it was clear that there was vigorous political debate going on. We learned that there was an upcoming referendum on abolishing the Seanad, one of the two houses of the Irish parliament. This debate was particularly evident in the signs on light poles.




I have no informed opinion about whether the Seanad should have been abolished or not; all I really know is that there is no more effective way to get a Dublin cabbie to use the word “gobshites” than to mention the Seanad. But despite the anti-Seanad sentiment among the cabbies, the referendum did not actually pass.


Another sign of political passion: protest marches in the streets.

]



Our tour of Trinity was really entertaining. An engaging almost-graduated student began the tour with an impish grin. He told us his nametag said “Niall,” but his real name was Michael. In a shocking turn of events, Michael was out drinking the night before and had gotten up a bit late and forgot his academic robe and badge. He did say that if we didn’t enjoy ourselves, “Niall” was the name to be reported for being a bum guide. There was no need of this, though - Michael was funny and knowledgeable. [Ralph: it was interesting in itself that the tour guides wear academic gowns as part of their daily wear. (All students had to wear academic gowns until the 1970s or so.) I’ve only seen academic gowns worn for special occasions, so I had never seen an academic gown as worn and faded as Michael’s.]

He did a good job of giving the historical information, peppered with remarks on the various dorms. According to Michael, the Rubrics are disfavored residences; you have to go outside to get to the shower. He pointed out that from his own residence, he could enjoy a cup of tea in the morning while admiring the view of shivering underclassmen in line outside for the showers. We enjoyed his tour, and contributed to his next night of revelry as a thank you.



[Ralph: I forget the name of this building, but I remember Michael talking about the Italian architecture. He was quite apologetic about the fact that it was forbidden to visitors, and went into careful precise detail about which entrances it was forbidden to enter without probable detection.



Video of a fascinating “Sphere within Sphere” sculpture on the Trinity Campus: https://flic.kr/p/hWXwUg]

After the tour, we went on to the Book of Kells exhibit and the college’s original library, called the Long Room. The exhibit is wonderful, and includes many wall-sized pages from the book as it tells the story of the Book of Kells. You then go into a special viewing room and view two pages (in a glass case, of course) from the Book of Kells and two from another book of the same period. [Ralph: No pictures allowed, unfortunately.]

We then entered the breathtaking Long Room. It is simply one long, high-ceilinged room with balcony upon balcony of bookshelves and an amazing collection of books. Our guide for this room explained that the books are arranged by size, and a librarian finds and fetches any book you want to peruse.


In the center of the room, they have a great exhibit on the art and science of book preservation.



You also see the Harp of Brian Boru in a glass case in the middle of the library. Trinity College, The Book of Kells, and The Long Room really are worth seeing if you’re in Dublin.



We still had some time, so we made our way to National Museum of Ireland: Archaeology.


This museum has great exhibits of archeological finds in Ireland over the years. Two bog bodies are on display: Oldcroghan Man and Clonycavan Man. Both have well-detailed exhibits that help you to understand what you’re seeing and the time period the body was from. Fascinating, though the tiniest bit creepy. We also visited the stunning Hall of Treasures, where we saw famous pieces like the Tara Broach and the Chalice of Armagh, and many other dazzling examples of Celtic craftsmanship and art. [Ralph: I expected the Tara Broach to be beautiful, but I was surprised by how big and deadly it is. It would be totally reasonable to prohibit bringing this on a plane.]






The tiny, intricate panels of knotwork on the Chalice of Armagh really fascinated me. I just marveled imagining the work and art it took to create them.



We wished we had more time for this and other museums, but our time in Dublin was short (maybe too short), and we arrived about 45 minutes before their closing time.

We had some time on our hands between the museum’s closing and our evening event, so we went shopping in the Kilkenny shop. The Kilkenny shops pride themselves on offering high-end Irish crafts and artwork, along with some higher-end tourist merchandise. As we were looking around, we suddenly heard a woman screaming “you’re hurting me!” She was being subdued by security. She had been stealing things, and when confronted by security she pulled a pair of scissors out of her bag and got violent. Store security and the Garda (police) handled it, and no people were hurt, though she did smash some china and/or glassware. It was an unsettling experience for shoppers and staff alike. We did buy some crystal there, and enjoyed looking at the many beautiful things they sold.

For the evening’s entertainment, we went to Food, Folk, and Fairies at the Brazen Head, which is one of the oldest pubs in Ireland, dating back to the Middle Ages. We had high hopes for this event, which would feature a storyteller, live music, and dinner. [Ralph: I really wanted to experience some Irish storytelling on this trip, but the only storytelling we found was this very tourist-oriented one.]



Our storyteller was wonderful. In the “first act,” she talked about the food history of Ireland, mostly about the potato. [Ralph: I particularly remember the detail that farmers would leave one thumbnail very long for peeling potatoes.] The “second act” featured fairy lore and a few stories of the fair folk. She was engaging, warm and humorous, and she had a lovely soprano singing voice. All in all, she was excellent, and our only complaint about her is we wanted to hear more!


[Ralph: a snippet of video from her storytelling: https://flic.kr/p/hWXaW5]

Unfortunately, the food was not that great. It definitely had the feel of food prepared en masse for a banquet. Also, it is a large event (there were at least two tour busses helping to fill the sixty-some chairs in the room), and service was a bit quick and indifferent. I had fish cakes for an appetizer, bacon and cabbage for a main dish, and apple pie for dessert. Ralph had the same appetizer and dessert, but tried the beef and Guinness for his main dish. None of our food was bad, it just wasn’t very good, and it felt a little mass-produced.



There was a pair of musicians to play during our dinner. They did an assortment of pub standards that are Irish, but probably have more of a life with American tourists these days. They were fine, but we got the impression they were a bit bored with this gig (understandable) and not giving it their all. In fact, we were pretty sure one of them was singing “blah, blah, blah” instead of the lyrics on “I’ll Tell My Ma.” Honestly, since the storytelling is pretty authentic, I think they should have traditional Irish music instead of the ballads. But, that’s just my opinion. The ballads are probably what a lot of their audience wants to hear.

After the event was done, we were wiped out. We hailed a cab and went back to our hotel. Another couple was chatting with the concierge and he was about to make them some Irish coffee, so he offered us some too. This probably killed two birds with one stone for him - he suggested we go into the sitting room, appeared shortly after with a tray of drinks for us, and then went back to his post at the desk. So, he made us happy with boozy coffees, and he handed the chatty couple off to us. We enjoyed talking with them while we sipped our coffees, then went up to bed.

Our morning was spent in traveling to the airport and flying to Ireland. It was all uneventful, but we had to walk on and on through Heathrow.

The driver of our cab ride into Dublin was a white-haired man who was wonderfully chatty. He told us a lot about Dublin. He mentioned that we would see lots of Eastern European women holding babies and begging for money, and told us that was a scam.
He also told us about the hurling finals happening this weekend. Our plans for Dublin had not included hurling, because the finals had been scheduled for the previous weekend. But that match had ended in a tie, so they were playing it again our weekend. We resolved to try to watch the game from a pub.

We checked into our B&B in the early afternoon, and then walked towards downtown to find food and tourism.

We walked through St. Stephen’s Green, a lovely park.



We ate lunch at the Bewley’s on Grafton Street. Bewley’s is a large coffee company, but the Grafton Street location has been a renowned Dublin cafe since 1927. It’s a very pretty place, with beautiful stained glass windows.


I had a roast beef sandwich, and Lori had a ham and cheese toastie. (A toastie is a sandwich served on toast - but not heated in a way that would melt the cheese within.) The sandwiches were good, but the housemade crisps were really excellent.


Dessert was a beautiful tasty sticky toffee pudding. It was a tough choice, though, because there were lots of pretty desserts available.


We wandered around the Grafton Street area looking at the fancy shops (and buying a short-term SIM for my phone).

The buskers were worth watching. These sand sculptures were amazing.

We also saw a curious group of living sculptures. Unfortunately, Flickr is no longer letting me embed our video of what happened when I put a Euro in their cup: https://flic.kr/p/hWWyvf

The tourist information centre was in a historic former church, so it was a very impressive tourist information centre:


An entertaining but misleading sign:


I was interested in finding some sort of Irish dance event while we were in Ireland, and I thought that Dublin would have better chances for it than smaller towns. We found the Museum of Irish Dance, which was advertising a show called Jig the Story of Irish Dance - but the museum was closed by the time we found it, and there was no show that night. I regret missing it - it sounds like an interesting show.

But we had a flyer for a dance show at the Arlington Hotel, so we ambled over there.


The room was clearly set up as a dance-audience space, with tables raised so that every seat had a view of the stage. The decor was fairly minimal, with Celtic designs painted in fluorescent paint; we feared that it might be really cheesy tourist junk.


It was certainly very tourist-focused, but the food and the entertainment was really excellent. This exemplifies the good side of being touristy; tourist-oriented can mean a curated experience showcasing the best of a place.

My appetizer included fresh salmon mousse rolled in smoked salmon.


Lori’s potato-leek soup was very good.


My entree was Irish stew, and it was really splendid. I have not generally cared for lamb, but the lamb in this stew had a gentle, sumptuous lamb flavor that was much better than any lamb I’ve had before.


Lori ordered the beef and Guinness casserole. When we ordered, the waitress took care to explain that ‘casserole’ meant something different in Ireland than in the USA; in Ireland, a casserole was a piece of meat braised and then finished on the grill. So this was more similar to a pot roast than a hot dish - but it too was very tasty with deep mellow flavors.


I made sure to have a Guinness, of course. I would like to say that I noticed the difference in taste between Guinness in Dublin and Guinness in the USA, but my palate is coarse and I did not identify a difference.


The desserts were tasty but not the best part of the meal.


The meal was followed by the music and dancing. The music came from a band called Púca. Lori says “they played everything that I would hope to hear at Mullaney’s [an Irish bar in Pittsburgh] on a good night. It was clearly Irish music for Americans, but they played very well and very energetically.” And the dancers were super skilled and super energetic.
I recorded snippets of video to try to capture the spirit of the music and dance, but Flickr is not cooperating with my embedding.
https://flic.kr/p/hWWjv2
https://flic.kr/p/hWWmbM
One of the last dances was a broom dance, which I had never heard of: https://flic.kr/p/hWXhxk

On our last full day in England, we decided to take the hop-on-hop-off bus tour that we had meant to take on the day we arrived. Perhaps we hadn’t planned well enough, but things just didn’t gel that well this day; it took us longer than we expected to get to the tour, longer than expected for the tour to begin, and longer than expected to get from place to place on the bus.

We did get off at Buckingham Palace, but there was a long line and we were running late. We did not tour the palace, but only visited the gift shop.


After that, we decided to try another attempt to find a lovely tea. Since Fortnum & Mason had been such a disappointment, for this try we went to Harrod’s.

Harrod’s actually looked really nifty inside - I wish we had had more time to spend there.


A Harrod’s staff member recommended Ladurée, a French tearoom in a back corner of Harrod’s. (I do not know what the difference is between an English tearoom and a French tearoom.) It was an outstanding experience, and everything we had hoped a luxurious English tea would be.

Ladurée offered a selection of 17 different teas, which is much more variety than I am really qualified to handle. So we went with my usual fallback, which is to choose the specialty of the house: Thé Mélange Spécial Ladurée, "Delicate composition of black teas from China and Sri Lanka and rose petals, with aromas of orange, bergamot, blackcurrant, vanilla, cinnamon and caramel”.
Most of those subtleties were lost on me, but the tea was really excellent.
(We were asked not to take pictures in Ladurée, and I almost complied. But I did take surreptitious pictures of the things at our table.)


I didn’t take notes on what we chose for food with our tea, but I’m able to reconstruct our selection: the menu is online, and because the menu involved a choice of two items out of four in each of three categories, we ordered two teas with one of everything. From top to bottom, we had these:
Finger sandwiches: smoked salmon; ham; cheese; and vegetables. I dimly remember that one of these was especially good, but I can’t recall which.
Viennoiseries: plain croissant; chocolate pistachio croissant; chocolate croissant; and sugar brioche. These were all really light and delicate and so good.
Pastries: the pastries were so special that they deserve to be broken out into a special list:
Ispahan: I had never heard of ispahan before. The menu description is “Smooth rose flavoured macaron biscuit, rose petal cream, fresh raspberries and lychees”. It was very intensely rose flavored, and simply exquisite.
Tarte passion framboises: I don’t know French, but I could figure out what this one was. This was probably my personal favorite: the flavors were incredibly intense.
Elysées: "Success cocoa biscuit, crispy praline, thin crispy chocolate from Madagascar leaves, smooth chocolate cream, zabaglione chocolate mousse, chocolate and cocoa biscuit moistened cocoa syrup"
Plaisir sucré: "Hazelnut meringue sandwich cake with crushed Piedmont hazelnuts, crusty praline, thin milk chocolate leaves, Chantilly cream and milk chocolate filling”
There were too many flavors of macarons for us to sample them all, but they were so so good.


Tea at Ladurée was so wonderful that we couldn’t help but linger to enjoy everything. We then planned to take the tour bus over to Shakespeare’s Globe, but the tour bus was slow and it didn’t come very close to the Globe; we had to get out at St. Paul’s Cathedral and walk across the Thames. We ended up being too late to see the exhibition at the Globe that we had prepaid to see. (The exhibition tickets were good for a month; we gave them to the proprietor of our inn with the hope that he could find someone else who would use them.)


Shakespeare’s Globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre that William Shakespeare performed in for much of his career. (With accommodations: electric lights, flush toilets, modern fire safety codes. But it has the only thatched roof built in London since the Great Fire of 1666.)


We chose to watch our play in the manner of Elizabethan gentry: we paid for seats instead of standing in the center with the groundlings. I even splurged to rent cushions for the benches, and I rented a blanket after realizing it was a chill evening.



We saw Macbeth. (Lori’s dream had been to attend a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because she had played Titania in college, but the performance schedule dictated Macbeth.) It was a really excellent performance, both as a historical recreation and as a modern staging. I’ve sometimes had trouble following all the action of Macbeth as it flips from scene to scene, but this production made things very clear to me.
Historicities I did not know about: It began with the whole cast drumming together, and it ended with the whole cast joining in a final dance.

Lori says:
The three witches were especially noteworthy: they started dressed as apparent villagers, but stripped down to undergarments in their first scene, and then progressed to seem even more wild and otherworldly later in the play. I think they might have been dancers as well as actresses - they used a lot of weird postures and movements. The only “witch makeup” they used was a powdery white makeup that was applied onstage at one point.

Billy Boyd (who was in the “Lord of the Rings” movies) played Banquo, and he was excellent. It made us smile that they worked in a chance for him to sing, and he really was scary as his own ghost. Another interesting note: the only “ghost” additions to his appearance were stage blood, and maybe a paler base makeup. He provided the scary vibe with his facial expressions and movements. All of the actors and actresses were excellent, Boyd stood out to us because, well, we did recognize his name.

The stagecraft was notable in its simplicity. The stage was lit with standard electric lighting, but there were no special lighting effects. They didn’t go out between scenes, and all this helped preserve the historical feel of the play. There were some striking effects, my favorite was at the end of Act I, when Macbeth becomes king. Unseen to most of the audience, the three witches climbed posts in the theater and scattered red rose petals on the stage. They managed to be both celebratory petals for the king, but against the simple, stark white walls of the set, they also resembled drops of blood. Well played, Globe Theater, well played.

I have to say, I expected the play at the Globe to be good, but it really was a notch above most theater I’ve seen in several ways, while keeping to a simplistic aesthetic. It was everything I’d hoped it would be and more…and it is the first time I’ve truly enjoyed “Macbeth.”

We were very hungry after the show, because our tea had been our only food since breakfast. Proximity led us to eat at the Swan at the Globe. My roast pork and Lori’s roast chicken were both delicious.

Tuesday in London began with a trip to the Tower of London. One of my misconceptions was already dispelled by seeing it on Sunday: I had thought that the Tower of London would be much taller in proportion to its width.



One of the particularly fascinating bits of the Tower of London was the Beefeaters themselves. They are members of the armed forces, only eligible to become Beefeaters after twenty-two years of distinguished service. (There’s a lot of competition for the positions, also - our guide mentioned that there were 80 candidates applying for the most recent position.) So this guy who gave us our tour probably served in Afghanistan or Iraq in Bosnia (presumably in a different uniform). And if his service was more than usually distinguished, there’s a good chance that he saw combat then. It must be quite a transition to go from a life of combat-readiness to a life of guiding tours.


We took the extra tour to see the Crown Jewels, and it was well worth it. The United States really has nothing like them (which might be a virtue). They are well-presented, with a lot of historical context - and a moving walkway to keep people from gawking too long. Since they didn’t allow pictures, we ended up buying a book about the Crown Jewels.


As we were preparing to leave, we happened across an interactive drama happening in one corner of the Tower Grounds. A counterfeiter was being investigated, and eventually convicted and hanged. I’ve forgotten the name of the counterfeiter, but the Warden of the Mint who was investigating the crime was someone I’d heard of: Isaac Newton. Apparently he was given the job as a sinecure after his advances in physics - but he took the job very seriously and did an excellent job, including the Great Recoinage of 1696.


In retrospect, it should have been obvious: the Tower Bridge is so named because it’s close to the Tower of London.


Our other goal for the day was to get a nice English tea. I had formed a notion that the place to go for an excellent English tea was Fortnum & Mason. We got there and asked about tea - and we got horribly snubbed. The hostess at Fortnum & Mason made it very clear that we were not smartly dressed enough to be allowed into any but the least fancy of Fortnum & Mason’s tearooms, named the Parlour. (I looked for a t-shirt that said, “I got snubbed at Fortnum & Mason”, but did not find one.)

Tea at the Parlour was fairly nice, but the circumstances made it very easy to find fault. Service was really extremely slow and indifferent. And the only option for an afternoon tea came with mini ice cream cakes - which meant that you couldn’t linger without the ice cream cakes getting melty. The whole experience made us extremely cranky.


When we made it back to the inn, we were tired and grumpy - and, we realized, hungry, because scones and ice cream cake was all we’d had between breakfast and dinner. Julian the innkeeper recommended his favorite Indian restaurant, The Empress. (Although we thought that “just a few blocks” meant two or three, and our feet were hurting after six or seven.)

The Empress was a lovely dining experience. Our first sign that this was something special came when we were ordering. Lori ordered a korma (because she is very spice-averse) and the waiter murmured “that’s not very authentic”. Some diners might find this annoying. I can well believe that I would find it annoying sometimes. But for us then, it was a lovely thing to have a waiter who would make strong recommendations about the food. We got into a lengthy conversation with the waiter, and we followed his recommendations, and we had a great time.

After some discussion about whether the “exotic spices” mentioned in the description would be too fierce for Lori, she settled on the Murgh Banarashi, a dish that I’ve never heard of in the USA. The most recognizable taste was pineapple, but there were a bunch of spices that I couldn’t identify. It was really tasty, though, with clear bright flavors - one of Lori’s favorite Indian restaurant experiences.


I ordered the Indian Shepherd’s Pie. The waiter didn’t say anything about it being inauthentic. I hope that he didn’t think I was too irredeemable to discuss authenticity with. But what I was really looking for was authenticity of a different sort: I wanted food from a British-Indian tradition. I’ve read British authors talk about Indian food as a normal part of their life (for example, Terry Pratchett’s Death says “I could murder a curry” in one of his first appearances, and Lister in Red Dwarf is a fan of vindaloo), and I wanted to taste Indian food that would be familiar to a Briton
I haven’t read a reference to an Indian shepherd’s pie, but I think I achieved my goal. It was a shepherd’s pie, with sauced ground lamb and peas topped with mashed potatoes and cheese, but it was all seasoned with Indian flavors and it was really tasty.


Between dinner and dessert, they brought us plastic tubes that were warm to the touch. We asked what they were: they contained heated moist towels for our hands. How refreshing!

We had a good conversation with the waiter about where he was from and what foods he missed from home. Sadly, although I remember that he was from Bangladesh, I don’t remember what foods he missed. I do remember that we chose our dessert because he said that it was a particular favorite of his. The dessert was shemai, another dish I’ve never encountered in the USA; the description said “Traditional Bengali dessert made with vermicelli, ghee, raisins, milk, sugar, and nuts”. My best analogy is that it was like a rice pudding thinned with milk and cream - it was very tasty.


The menu of after-dinner drinks includes Chili Naga Vodka. “Drink at your own risk; very very hot.” I didn’t try it.


We had a splendid time at The Empress. It was one of the best meals we had in London, and one of the best Indian meals we’ve had.