Thursday October 10th: Get to Ireland at 9:30 am and grand reunion with Frank and Azu from my first WWOOF gig at 11:30 am. SO FABULOUS to see them again. After a leisurely lunch and catch up I helped a bit in the garden with harvesting some greens and packing veggies for the market. Food highlight of the day - picking kale from the garden to cook it for dinner that night. LOVE eating food I pick myself. Happiness.
Friday October 11th: a little more harvesting in the garden and helping Azu in the bakery. Love that also! Such good fun and so interesting to help make Japanese breads. Food highlight of the day - I got to try a bread that she makes with Japanese pumpkin. Slightly sweet and scrumptious!
Saturday October 12th: Errand and wandering day in Dublin. I tried my waterlogged camera after a week in rice and it actually turned on! Honestly, I was shocked, not expecting it to work again. Hoping (desperately) but not expecting. "Work" is unfortunately too generous of a term. There were some white bars across the screen, an error code flashing and it wouldn't shut off. :/ (I had to remove the battery speedily after pushing the "off" button that no longer carried out its command. :( So I bought a new camera in Dublin. And as painful as that was for my budget, I must say, I am INCREDIBLY excited about my new camera!! It's the same one, just the next in the series, and it has a 20X zoom (!!!! Instead of 10x) has wifi capabilities that sound really cool once I can sync it with a computer and phone ANNNNNNND it can take black and white pictures!!!! WOOOHOOOOOO!! I'm super excited about that last one and have gotten some great pics with that function. So my bank account is sad but my trigger happy finger is extra happy!! :)
Back to Dublin! I spent most of the day just walking around the city. Went to the Museum of Natural History but realized I wasn't in a museum mood so just walked to and around Phoenix Park (one of my favorite city parks, it has deer!) and to my favorite cafe restaurant there. Food highlight - Meet Frank and Azu at one of my all time favorite vegetarian restaurants (that they originally told me about) for a splendid dinner and lovely live music from a girl with a spectacular voice and acoustic guitar. Dessert was purchased to take home and enjoy with wine and tea. :) An excellent day and night! What was most interesting to me was that I didn't feel this crazy urge to go exploring in Dublin. After my 6 weeks in Dublin last year, I feel like I actually thoroughly got to see everything I wanted to. It was a nice but strange feeling to feel at home and familiar in an Irish city. Lovely!
Sunday October 13th: Get rental car from airport at 7 am. Drive to Cobh for 3 nights of couch surfing (CS) and exploring County Cork (one of the counties I didn't see at all last year). Stop in Waterford on the way down and do the guided visit of the Waterfor Crystal factory. Fascinating!!! Did you know that the millennium ball in Times Square is Waterford Crystal?? And that the crystal has to be at 1300 degrees celsius to be malleable so they keep their furnace at 1400 degrees ALL the time because they function 51 of the 52 weeks/year and it would take over 3 weeks to get it back to the right temp. CRAZY! And extravagant, seems like an extreme waste of energy, but maybe that's just because I'm not a Waterford Crystal consumer??
At the factory I got a great lunch recommendation for fresh seafood in a town called Dunmore East. Food highlight - fresh pollock fished day of. Yum! Conveniently, there was a cliff walk to a lovely bay that left right from town, so I had a splendid walk along the coast before continuing the drive to Cobh. Arrive at my CS host at 7:30 pm and spend a fantastic evening getting to know each other, swapping stories, drinking wine and eating a pizza of their creation with mackerel that they had fished! Excellent!!
Monday October 14th: Explore the coast on my way to Kinsale and make two PHENOMENAL random discoveries!! I decided to take a tiny tertiary road and ended up in this magically tranquil place called Robert's Cove. 3 cars drove through the whole time I was there. I also randomly found a little trail that brought me to the end of the cliff for some stunning coastal views. The kicker : it was SUNNYYYYYYYYY and warm! I was in a Tshirt! ! So lucky with weather. Next random discovery was Nohoval Cove. Totally remote! Had to drive 3 km down a single track (really really single track) road with grass growing up in the middle. I love those kinds of roads! It spit me out in one of the most beautiful, hidden coves I've ever seen!! End up having a picnic and journaling on some rocks by the water. Make it to Kinsale at 2 pm, have lunch in a fancy seafood restaurant and had an incredibly delicious salad with a decadent mix of fish and shellfish with a sweet chili sauce. YUM.Hands down the food highlight of the day! Make it as far as Clonakilty before I have to head back to make it for a reasoanble hour to cook dinner for my hosts. Run into waaaaay more traffic than expected and make it back an hour later than planned but still manage to make dinner and have a second lovely laid -back evening with my CS hosts. Discover a new whiskey I actually enjoy!! Hello Kilbeggan! !
Tuesday October 15th : Start the day with a wonderful run around Cobh, including hill repeats up West End along the "Deck of Cards" Victorian houses, then explore "The Great Island" with one of my fabulous CS hosts. Explore a lovely forest, taking a stroll down to the waterfront, then head to Cork City for a 1 pm arrival. She has to work from 1:30 to 5:30 so I explore the city at my own pace. This includes a strolling picnic from the English Market with semi-sundried tomatoes (AMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZING!!!! I'd never experienced them before, but they are one of the best things I've ever tasted. They by far trump ordinary or fully sun-dried tomatoes), with basil and fresh local mozarella cheese, olives with garlic and thyme and fresh bread full of seeds. I was a very happy girl.
I was not so happy when a little girl kicked me in the shin. =/ Seriously. I spent most of the day walking around the city, (St Finn Barr's Cathedral was my favorite!) and as I approached "The four-faced liar" (a four sided clock tower with a clock reporting a different time on each face), I had two little girls, around 7 or 8 approach me. "Excuse me" they begin. Very polite, very correct. Then one says "We want to kick you." I didn't fully understand, and as I'm asking her to repeat, she comes up and kicks me in the shin. Niiiiiiiiice. Way to go, absent mother who wouldn't even take responsibility for her own kid when I confronted her later. Very nice. Moments like me make feel a desperate sense of despair for the human race. But luckily there are still bountiful beautifully fabulous people who still inspire hope and happiness. My CS hosts are absolutely in the latter category. We met up around 7 pm for this incredible vegetarian feast that my CS host had originally started. Conceived as a fundraiser for Climate Camp, they offer an absolutely scrumptious vegetarian meal for a suggested donation of 5 euros. It's such a fantastic idea and meal! Would never have known about it if I hadn't done CS. One of the dozens of reasons I love CS so much!
Wednesday, October 16th : Last full day in Ireland. So sad. There are so many places left to explore. I must come back. I have this oddly strong confidence that I will be back. This can't be my last trip in Ireland, nor Scotland! =) Despite feeling oddly confident that I will be back, I still had an overpowering sense of urgency to see as much as possible on my last day. Sharp deadline for the day, however : I have to be back in Dublin around 7 pm as I've made plans to go to the Gravedigger's Pub with Frank and Azu. Very excited for my pub date, but also very rushed to accomplish everything before my 5 hour return drive. So I take off around 7 am, to a dark sky and heavy rain. Bummer. Seriously reconsider my plan to head to the coast. I have no planB Indoor Day. Everything I want to do is outside. Since killing my camera in the October 3rd Scottish deluge, I am more hesitant now, to go exploring in the rain, and absolutely WILL NOT bring my camera. No no no. I've learned. =) We had checked the weather the night before and although I have no faith in meteorologists for any prediction greater than 24 hours, I feel like they should have a pretty darn good idea of what's going to happen the next day and they'd predicted decent weather in Southwest Cork. So I decided to chance it. And am I EVER EVER so happy I did!!
My first stop was, again, a random and spontaneous decision and I was so utterly thrilled with my decision! I can't remember the name =/ but I found a sign for "cliff walk" and followed it to another fantastic cove. This one with a white sand beach. And NOBODY! ANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNND GLORIOUS SUNSHINE!! So I had a picnic on the beach. It was absolutely extraordinary. A picnic on the beach in Ireland in October. And THEN I walked barefoot on the beach!! Incredible!! I took a little walk along the cliffs, but the path sort of vanished in the undergrowth, so I decided to head back to the car when the gorse bushes started tearing at my ankles, and continue south, towards Baltimore (yes, there is a Baltimore, Ireland) =). After having a friend recommend Sherkin Island last year, it was already on my radar, but I felt like it would be too rushed that day. However, I end up talking to this very friendly man on the beach, and he as well, raves about Sherkin Island. So I decide to try for it! 11:30 am when I head off, and in my little head (that desperately likes to underestimate how long something will realistically take) I thought it might be doable. But alas, it was not. I missed the last reasonable ferry by 20 minutes, and although I was at first disappointed, it turned out to be juuuuuuuuuust right, because it allowed me to discover.....
LAKE HYNE!!!!!! This absolutely tremendous sea loch that is filled by the rising tide and can even have seals. Sooooooooo cool!! I asked just the right person and she gave me the much-needed and appreciated information that there are walking trails at the lake and even a lovely viewpoint. Off I went! First, picnic by the lake, then hike to the viewpoint, admire and REJOICE in the utter beauty I'm surrounded by, then return quickly to the car for an estimated on-time departure. When I put in my end-point, my GPS estimates it at 7:01 pm - PERFECT!! Athough I ended up in some horrific Dublin rush hour, so I was 30 minutes late, but we still had time for tapas and a Guinness at the Gravedigger's Pub. Excellent!! An absolutely smashing week in Ireland! I couldn't have asked for better!!
Hooray!!! Except for the getting kicked in the shin (WTF was up with that?). I'm so excited that you keep having such amazing adventures!!
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