Wednesday, August 02, 2006

A Sh**ty Situation

After an, ah, interesting night in a charming yet "rustic" farmhouse hostel (read: add a gallon of water to the toilet tank by hand, flush toilet, repeat...) our second night in Ireland brought us to Dunmore East, an archetypical Irish beach village complete with thatched huts and fishing boats. Here's the tourism website for more great pics: http://www.waterford-dunmore.com/.

It goes without saying that travel from the Iberian peninsula to Ireland brings with it a bit of culture shock. While the sun stays up until all hours, the Irish do not, nor have they adopted the joys of the siesta lifestyle. Of course, the first order of business was to enjoy a pint of Real Irish Guinness at a Real Irish Pub. With the sun still above the horizon at 10:00 p.m., we set off on foot to find the local watering hole, hoping it would still be open.

The sidewalks and streets relatively empty in the evening glow, we walked through the town, window shopping along the way. During the journey, we noted another marked difference between the cultures: the pleasant lack of small dogs in Ireland. Both the Spanish and Portuguese seem endlessly enamored with yappy, pocket-sized dogs that are welcome seemingly everywhere humans are. These dogs are also welcome to do their "business" in the most inopportune locations, attached by bejeweled leashes to owners apparently unwilling to stoop to retrieve their pooches' presents. This societal oversight led us to develop the "dookie call," a system by which each travel partner is responsible for maintaining a constant, vigilant lookout for dog dookie. Upon spotting said dookie, the partner must then call out, "Dookie!" while gesturing toward the offending pile, thereby alerting everyone to the dookie's presence and averting a dookie disaster.

Here in Dunmore East we saw actual Irish setters, German shepherds, labs, etc., respectable manly dogs, all, with respectable, manly owners trailing behind them with plastic bags in hand for one last walk before bedtime. In the darkening village, amongst thatched huts and impeccable gardens, a small shop showed an impressive window display of jewelry and crystals. Not unlike a magpie, Megan is powerless against the draw of a shiny window display. Turning abruptly, she stopped to admire the various glistening wares. Suddenly aware he was talking to himself, Brandon turned to see his wife captivated by the display and walked to her side to wait for the spell to break. For a brief moment, the Dookie Call defense system was inoperative, and at that precise moment of weakness disaster struck.

Trying to put a positive spin on it, Megan observed it was good he had not worn flip flops to the pub, but this provided little solace for the affronted dookie victim. The Guinness was only briefly postponed until a patch of grass was located and the offending dookie removed. As it turns out, big dogs can make big messes.

Far and Away

Arriving in Ireland from Portugal, it's the simple pleasures that strike you, like being able to order lunch in your native language without much difficulty. And the Irish make it easy; everything you've ever heard about their hospitality, good humor and common decency is, amazingly, understated. After lunch, during which we recognized each item of food consumed, we headed south out of Dublin and through Counties Wickford, Wexford and Waterford. Each seemingly from a movie set, words cannot do these sights justice. Thanks to the miracle of modern communications, they don't have to:

Roadtrip Through the Old Country

After the manic festivities of Porto, we sought the quiet solace of Megan's ancestral home land, Ireland. Yet another in a long line of oneway plane trips brought us to Dublin, where we picked up a car, if you can call it that.

After numerous unsuccessful rebellions staged by its people over hundreds of years, Ireland finally won its independence from the Brits in 1921. Too busy fighting the ugly civil wars that followed, they never got around to learning to drive on the right, and correct, side of the road.

On most normal vacations, fighting your way on and off the plane, retrieving your luggage, locating the rental shuttle, standing in line, signing a rental contract and getting the keys to your rental car ends the most frustrating part of the journey. When you sit down in the car and the steering wheel is missing, this is not the case.
Armed with a road atlas that subsequently proved to be inadequate, we set off into the countryside, Brandon cursing madly and succeeding in not killing us, though barely. The sensation of everything you know about driving being not only wrong, but dangerous, is an unsettling one. The driver did the best he could, with the copilot occassionally chiming in with a well-timed, "Other side of the road, honey." Tempers were short, but no one threatened divorce, and after a few hairraising days, things improved dramatically.

Hammer Time Photos

We couldn't get these photos to upload when we did this entry, so here they are belatedly.