Wintery visitor :Fi

It was 3pm on a happy warm sunny day in Melbourne as Elena's sister Fi, shown at left, arrived at Tullamarine airport, for her flight to Dublin. About 10 hours later, at 1:30am, she finally flew out - argghhh. Oh well, c'est la vie... arriving in Dublin 1 whole day late, we made the most of it and had a great time relaxing and catching up.
We wandered through the city, and bought Elena the warmest fattest coat ever made. When the rain and cold turned from tolerable to ridiculous we ducked into O'Reilly's pub (opp. Trinity College) to warm up over a hot lunch and cider. As we thawed out we grew optimistic and planned a walk around Merrion gardens and Georgian Dublin, which we promptly dismissed after facing the rain and freezing temperatures oncemore.


A strange smell started to follow us around, 'eau de wet dog', and after looking around to locate the source we realised that the faux fur trim on Elena's coat was indeed not faux at all... but dog hair!......
Back at home we played scrabble, watched DVDs and drank hot chocolate, banishing the new coat to the hallway to block out the all consuming dog hair aroma.
On Saturday, leaving the coat at home, we set out for a little country drive through the Wicklow Gap.
L-R The only deer we saw, Pollaphuca Reservoir.
Through the Wicklow Gap: St Kevin's Way, Fi at freezing lookout, Us at freezing lookout, not so random rock.
Fi and Ivan at Glendalough.












We hid in the Roundwood Inn for hours, drinking cider and consuming irish-german fusion food by the log fire. Returning home, we watched the classic 'So I married an axe murderer', which amazingly Ivan had never ever seen....








In a few days we'll meet up with Fi in Madrid and we'll chat and eat again, only this time over a glass of sherry, some jamon, peppers, croquetas, calamari, tortilla, chorizo, patatas bravas, and... mmm







The infamous coat has successfully gone back home to (deleted- Eds), and all is well in the world again

.......

There’s nothing like a good… (slight anticipatory wincing may be detected) cloister. You can have your pipal tree for finding knowledge or an olive grove for Socratic paradox. However, if you live in a climate with, well, weather: (http://www.met.ie/climate/rainfall.asp), you need some sort of cover. So if you’re going to have cover, let us make it look good, have an aspect to some inside grassy stuff, or garth, around which one can contemplate one’s navel. This particular cloister is at the Jerpoint Abbey just down the N9 from Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny. If you decide that you rather like the odd cloister, have a gander at these http://www.hayquesufrir.com/products.php?cat=48.



NB: An additional attraction of the Abbey is its proximity to the Ethos Bistro in Thomastown. Excellent food!

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the changing seasons

The changing seasons... A homage to Autumn and to new beginnings....








A time of change and celebration, marked by the opening of the big cheese... Yum!

Megalitic Meath

Megalithic Co. Meath, of ancient passage tombs and celtic ruins...
Up we got bright and early one morning to set out and see Loughcrew Cairns, one of several ancient passage tombs in neighbouring Co. Meath...
Apparantly (according to guidebooks, official internet site a recent newspaper article) one could collect a key from the cafe in nearby gardens to open the tomb and take a look ... and as we thought that sounded like the neatest thing.... to arrange our own private viewing of one of these tombs, out of season.... off we went in seach of the gardens, the cafe, the key and the cairns. But, sadly, it was not to be.... the gardens and cafe were not open and we were failed yet again by a non functioning Irish system. oh well.... we still went up and had a look from the outside and it was still a very beautiful thing (~5000 years old) and a great place to wonder around and have our picnic.
However, the darkness, rain and clouds soon came, it was still beautiful......but now it was ab-so-lu-te-ly freezing. After rambling around and admiring the view, we abandoned the picnic idea and had a cosy and yummy warm lunch in a beautiful nearby town called OldCastle...

On the way home we thought we would check out famous Hill of Tara... (seen here from the sky) ...although the visitor centre was closed for the day (we arrived there quite late in the day), we wondered around there too... The Hill of Tara is thought to be the ancient seat of the High Kings of Ireland.. The area includes several sites/artefacts including the Stone of destiny (pictured) which (according to legend) when touched by the High King would let out a scream which could be heard throughout Ireland, and something called the Mound of the Hostages, (pictured) which was used as a burial chamber (from Neolithic times to ~1600 BCE) and is thought that up to 500 bodies are buried here. (cremated)..









The mound and passage are aligned so that during the Spring and Autumn equinoxes, the sun shines down the passage, illuminating the chamber -like something out of Indiana Jones. And..the similarities do not end there! This place is shrouded in mysticism and I have just learnt (from Wiki) that The Hill of Tara was at one stage thought by some to hold the Ark of the Covevant itself!! Very Indi indeed! There are countless of loopy people creating their own websites about the mystical significance of these sights, and I've just seen one that claims that new research suggests that the Hill of Tara could be the capital of the 'lost kingdom of Atlantis' no less.
More grounded but still fascinating info on the Hill of Tara here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_of_Tara.
Anyway, we will have to come back for a proper look at these things, but we have enjoyed our glimpses so far...
Other passage tombs around include the famous Newgrange which is aligned to light up during the winter soltice... Though this would be great to see, visits to Newgrange at this special time are usually organised as a 'lottery' or lucky dip. If your lucky enough to have your name pulled out of the hat, you can experience the real thing... However, if you're not so lucky, you can still experience the 'simulated' passage lighting that is organised each and every day at Newgrange.
Sadly and quite comically, even if you are lucky enough to be chosen to experience the real solstice at Newgrange, the Irish skies could let you down, it could easily be overcast, giving the sun no chance to shine through this great passageway... How infuriating for the poor neolithic people of Newgrange, to experience nothing after waiting for the longest night of the year to end and to experience this annual great moment! Poor things. Newgrange is still on our list to see....

random ramblings...and a touch of halloween

Hi out there...

Just a quick post to say we haven't fallen off the face off the earth or anything.... just that we haven't been quite bothered enough to make a proper blog post in recent weeks.

We have gone through Halloween- with shops filling up with scary and sweet halloween 'stuff' a whole month before Halloween itself, and some quite scary looking shop windows... every shop in Dublin, including op shops and butchers had skeletons, zombies, cobwebs and bloodied bandages as decorations.. I might have a few snaps of some shop windows.... These are not so good, but i don't always have the camera on me...The best one i saw was the op shop just around the corner...very spooky, but, sadly, I missed my chance at the photo...

We learnt something too - that Halloween is a Celtic tradition, a celebration of the 'end of summer', when the dead revisit the mortal world, walking free amongst the living. The Celts hung up skeletons to represent loved ones who had passed away. It was also believed neccessary to dress up as underworld creatures before stepping out for the night, so as to blend in with the real spooks..... and the bonfires were to either keep the returned spirits warm or ward off evil spirits... or both.... (Reference: wikipedia) More fascinating info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween#Ireland
It's always nice to learnt something new...

But.... Halloween night here with its random fireworks and bonfires does seem to get a little out of hand... The news report form the morning after gives some idea...
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1101/halloween.html

Despite all this, it does also seem like good fun, so next year we'll be more organised, get a costume and get to one of the pub parties.. This Halloween we had more mundane things to do like pick up Ivan from the airport after a short visit to London. But next year! oh next year!!

Now Halloween is over and Christmas is fast approaching......

Paris weekend: cest manifique!

Paris! How lovely, how grand, how majestic! How vast and how exhausting! So much to see, so much to eat and so little time! a mere 3 days..... We walked by the Seine, and around the city.. we hit the sites.. the Louvre (admired from outside), the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Monmatre and Sacre Coeur, the latin quarter... we walked and walked and metroed all day long. We ate crepes, brioche, croissants, salade nicoise, pomme frites, tarts and even french onion soup..
We saw many people walking around with baguettes, fresh from the bakery - albeit without the stripy top and beret.. The Parisians patiently listened to our horrendous french and smiled when Ivan greeted them with "Au Revoir"! (its funny cos its true) .. We wandered around in the evening, when Paris lit itself up and when the Eiffel Tower sparkled. (as above). We rode the metro confidently, tunnelled our way through the city as if we were locals.... except for the relentless map checking and popping up completely disoriented in random plazas and large roundabouts, no one would have known. We sat in cafes and rested our limbs, drank chocolat chaud (as it was very very cold), ate the tart of the day and watched the world go by. One of the best experiences would have to be the Artist's market we went to... with great art, jewellery and curious crafts. After 3 days, happy and exhausted, we carefully packed the few objects d'art we bought at the market into our small 10kg limit cabin luggage for the cheap Ryan Air flight back to Dublin, from some little known Airport 80 km away from Paris central.

L-R The Seine, at the Louvre, shadow puppets and big polar bear at Musee D'Orsay

...Paris Metro, Sacre Coeur, Eiffel Tower: Looking very tall!