The beginning of the end...

These are all from Cloghane/Brandon area in Northern Dingle.
Who knew dingle could be so beautiful?

Get ready for some more eye candy. The Dingle Peninsula is stunningly gorgeous. Here’s a taster. When I first drove in, it was raining so hard, I couldn’t see anything, but later in the day I drove back out and caught myself taking my eyes off the rode staring at the mountains. Then it rained again and I once again was able to safely focus on the road ahead.


I brought with me a few blank CDs in case the disks I needed to burn to for work somehow failed me or got lost. Well, I didn’t need them so I chunked them in the back seat and let them get all scratched up. Later, I realized that I could make playlists on my own music for some good listening in the car—the meager radio offerings get a little old after a few weeks. Of course, I looked at the disk and assumed from the gouges all over them that I wouldn’t be able to play anything on them. I hung my head and resumed listening to newstalk radio. Then I decided I’d go ahead and give the CDs a try. They burned songs just fine, and only a couple tracks skip too much on playback to enjoy. So now I have a couple soundtracks of great driving music. One disc is high energy get pumped up music. The other is a little more emotional. I know smoran loves to play these games where you come up with top 10 or top 5 lists for just about anything. Well here are some of my personal tear-jerker songs on my playlist:

All I Want is You –U2
Ooh La La –The Faces
Pictures of You –The Cure
Maggie May –Rod Stewart

Of course there are others, but these made the cut for my daily listening.

Day: 29
Guinness: 40

It's not the size of your steeple...

Haven't had internet for a bit, so here are a couple from a few days ago...

First, I’m an idiot. It was going to happen eventually. I’m not a very forgetful person on a regular basis, but when I do forget things, they’re usually pretty bad. I just that realized after I’d moved on from my last hostel, I left a couple things behind. One was my towel that I’d left hanging to dry. I yelled at myself for a little bit then figured I’d be fine for a couple days until I get to Dingle where they’ll probably have a store to buy a new one. Then I decided to put on my nicer shirt that I’d brought to upgrade to something a little fresher than the same long-sleeved pullover I’ve been wearing the past several days. Well, guess what. I left that too. It was a new trendy t-shirt that my parents bought me. I’m a little pissed about leaving that.

Moving on from that stupidity…I decided to get some junk food for dinner and maybe save a little money in the process. I went to a “New York” style pizza place. It was funny. Painted on the walls were stars and stripes with posters of Derek Jeter and New York license plates hanging everywhere. I got the “Liberty Pizza.” Let’s see if I can remember; it had pepperoni, ham, cheese, green and red peppers, mushrooms, maybe some bacon, pineapple, and sweet corn. Sweet sweet liberty. Saving money on dinner means me spending under 10 euro (about 14 dollars). I didn’t realize until after I ate there that it’s the 4th of July and that I’d found my way to the only American-themed place in the city. I just wandered around for a while and found myself walking into this place. The subconscious at work…or play, however you like to see it.

Right now, I’m in a great hostel I found in the middle of town, listening to this kid’s birthday party at a youth center next door. They have this dreadful cover band screeching loudly and atonally into the mic. Right now he’s trying (I emphasize “trying”) to sing American Idiot by Green Day…also fitting for the 4th of July? There are some old, smelly German or Austrian men in my room tonight. And a smelly Canadian. I showered while they were in the room just to try to give them an idea of what they should be doing. Didn’t work. Now the guy is trying to sing Smells Like Teen Spirit.

I had a fantastic pub experience last night. Remember that Aussie guy who was walking to all these pubs? Well, he recommended this one to me, so I figured I’d try it out. It was a really cute, well-decorated pub that didn’t quite have the sloppy traditional Irish style of random things everywhere. I hate to be sexist, but I think it’s because the owners of the pub are two sisters. The female touch is rare in Irish pubs. When I walked in, I got a few odd looks, but I sat down at the bar and ordered a Guinness. I started chatting a little to the two ladies behind the bar and realized quickly that every one of the ten or so people in the place knew each other well. 100% regulars. The two ladies turned out to be the sisters who own the pub. It’s been in their family for 110 years. So we had a good chat—they remembered the Aussie guy and his stuffed donkey he was carrying. I ordered another Guinness and hung around. They keep the young riffraff out of the place, so it’s good I look like an old man otherwise I may have never made it this far. Then this 60-year-old man who is friends with the sisters sits down next to me and joins the conversation. He’s a nice guy and recommends some places to me in the Dingle area where I’m going. He buys me two more Guinness while we’re talking. I tell him about my job and what I’m doing, etc. Then he gives me his cell phone number because he’s a fisherman and said he’d take me out for free around the coast where I’m ending my route. We’ll see if I get around to that. This other man comes up and shows us a picture he’s printed off the Internet. A few days ago, Irish police recovered the largest cocaine shipment in the country’s history. They found it off the shore when rescuing the couriers, whose boat has tipped over in the middle of the night, putting two in the hospital for hypothermia and one missing at sea. Anyway, the picture is of this young guy at a beach with a really long rolled up piece of paper—one end at his nose, the other near the ground. There’s a long line of white foamy surf down the stretch of the beach.

The Shining

First order of business. Happy 4th of July. No fireworks here. Be patriotic for me.

Yesterday, I had a weird day. I’ll tell you why. I got to the biggest city I’ll be working in, Tralee. It’s not big at all by American standards, but it’s busy and confusing and disorganized. Map in hand, I still kept taking the wrong turns. This is walking, mind you, where making wrong turns is quite correctable unlike screwing up in a car. I managed to do laps around the city for a few hours. I walked a lot. Luckily, it only rained a little bit on and off. Earlier that morning in a tiny town, I was walking through a nature trail that clearly nobody ever walks and it started raining hard. There was enough canopy cover to keep me from shaking my fists at the heavens. Anyway, Tralee is confusing. Oh, and like I said before, I stick out like a sore thumb as definitely not Irish—more so every day as my beard and hair grow. You’ll see how this fits in, don’t worry. As I walked down one of the main streets for the 500th time, a car pulls over next to me with the window rolled down and an elderly lady pokes her head out the window and asked how to get on the road to Listowel. Now, I’d driven through it on the way there, so I vaguely knew the direction, so I gave her decent enough directions but qualified it by saying that I wasn’t the best person to ask. The best part is that I did all this in an Irish accent. She bought it. Not that any Irish person would believe me for a second, but the old Americans haven’t a clue about the intricacies of accent and dialect in Ireland so I got away with it.

I will say that it’s a little harder to pick out who is a resident of a city now that Ireland has become a haven for immigrants. In fact, in the past 4 years or so, 300,000 immigrants have come to Ireland for the incredible number of jobs available in this booming economy. In a nation of only about 4.5 million people, that’s a huge difference. This also makes Ireland the most expensive country in Europe. Let’s Go hasn’t factored that in yet and pays me as if Ireland is still in the dark ages.

I’m in this hostel/B&B that is absolutely dismal. It’s actually quite frightening. The room is nice, but the place is this neglected building behind a bar. It used to be quite bright and perky, but now no one really runs it other than the bar manager, who doesn’t give a shit. I think I’m one of maybe three people staying here. I ate a crappy breakfast in this large cafeteria-esque dining room with tons on tables and chairs. I was alone. Only one little light was shining on me in the quiet rainy morning. As I walked down the long empty corridors to my room, I couldn’t help but think about The Shining. I don’t think I need to explain any further.

Not the place, but an equally creepy abandoned boarding school for girls.


“Come play with us.”

Day: 26
Guinness: 35

Keep on keepin on.

It’s been a couple days since I got on the Internet. Even in the most rural parts of Ireland, it’s a commodity that we take for granted. I remember a couple weeks ago sitting in the most remote place in Ireland cruising on high-speed Internet. Finally, I came across an area of Ireland in which broadband or wireless Internet access is not abundant. It’s definitely here—we’re not talking about the Stone Age here—but there aren’t Internet cafes and it’s not in every home. They’re bringing it here soon. Although it seems like cheating to consistently use the Internet when I’m traveling alone trying to be a little rustic, I will shamelessly admit that it has been important for my well being thus far. I’ve still got a couple weeks to have a nervous breakdown, but I’m holding up fairly well from what I gather…though we all know that what someone infers about himself is not always the most accurate representation of his condition.

The day after seeing the Cliffs of Moher, I took a drive south to another spot, Loop Head, on the coast that also has some beautiful cliffs. The weather was absolutely nasty. The wind was blowing harder than it has the entire trip. Luckily, it didn’t rain too hard. Anyway, nobody pays attention to Loop Head because of the Cliffs of Moher. However, relative comparison aside, this little spot was pretty awesome. Plus, nobody was there. I was the only person and that was good enough to make me not really care about the shitty weather. In fact, the strong winds made some impressive waves that crashed against the cliffs. It’s hard to get tired of watching that…unless you’re in danger of being blown off the edge. Because no one goes to this place, there are no guard rails or paths to say, “Hey! You might die if you go over there.” And if I did survive the fall, there would be nobody around to save me. Well I didn’t die in case you were holding your breath in anticipation of the outcome of this adventure. I kept my distance from the edge because the gusts of wind were rather powerful. Long story short, that was a good dose of one-on-one time with nature to make me happy for another few days. Good thing, too, because I’m gonna be in a not-so-pretty city for a couple days.

Smaller, but still sweet.

It's a long way down to some rocks and crashing waves.


This Aussie guy plopped down in the hostel. He's walking from south to north and stopping at every pub he walks by for a glass of Guinness. That's the purpose of his trip. A pub walk. And he smelled cause he'd been walking a lot. That was fine until we went to sleep. Think of the loudest snorer you've ever heard then add a couple decibels to that. Then there was a psycho drunk guy on the street screaming and trying to fight people. And a house alwarm went off. And a dog decided to bark like crazy. I didn't sleep very well. I'm not enjoying my trip any less, but the work is getting very tedious.

Day: 25
Guinness: 33

Cliffs of Moher

From a couple days ago...
I finally made it to the Cliffs of Moher. It’s so famous that people appear from all over the world just to see them and then leave the rest of Ireland unvisited. Despite all the people swarming the place, it’s worth it to go see them. They’re incredible. However, things are very different from when I saw them the first time 3 years ago.

Just a few years ago, it was wide open with very little human intrusion upon the area. Unfortunately, a couple things happened to change that: 1) the Irish tourism industry realized they could make bank if they had a few ways to charge people to see the cliffs, so now there are parking fees and a visitors center and more shops, etc; 2) because stupid people get too close to the edge and fall off, they’ve built large paved walkways with stone walls to keep people from straying toward the edge. People just can’t get to the places they used to. So a lot of people just break the rules and risk incurring the wrath of the Garda or losing their lives.


Lastly, the first time I went to see the cliffs the weather was surprisingly beautiful. When I went this time, it was surprisingly beautiful…until I got to the cliffs. As I made the drive up, I saw these dark clouds roll in on top of me. It didn’t rain; the clouds just sat there on top of the cliffs. The fog was so dense at points that you wouldn’t even know the cliffs were there. It was kind of cool, because you could actually see the heavy winds blowing the clouds around right in front of you. It lifted every now and then, but there was no more sun. Eh, people saw the Cliffs of Moher and got a taste of Irish weather all at once.

You wouldn't know it, but these are the Cliffs.


It got better.

In twenty day, I’ll be on the plane back to Boston. In about 14 days I’ll be done with all my work. That means I get some playtime with no restrictions. Booyeah.

As I was walking through a little town, I saw this middle-aged guy with two kids wearing a shirt that said “2007 Beer Pong Champion.” Still livin’ the dream.

A Lighter, Brighter JP

The Burren: Land of Stone


I like leaving my car with a view.


The B&B I stayed at last night had a scale in the bathroom. I was very curious to see what I've done to myself in the past couple months between Commencement activities and this whole Ireland thing. I got on. Then got off and spent the next minute doing the difficult mental math required to convery kilos to pounds. Listen, multiplying something by 2.2 is hard if you haven't done much math without a calculator in the past 4 years. Turns out, I've lost a good bit of weight. That doesn't mean I'm wasting away. I'm pretty sure it can be attributed to muscle atrophy. While my buns might be as tight as ever from the hiking I've been doing, the rest has start to get a little soft. And let's say I wanted to gain weight. I flat out don't make enough money to cover a diet like that. Looking on the bright side...I've got nothing. I'm gonna go eat fried food and have a Guinness.

Today, I went to some caves. It was a tourist trap. Another stone thing made by aliens was over-touristed. I kind of laughed when I saw tons of tourists from all over Europe converging on this tiny stone structure in the middle of nowhere to then later disperse and reconvene at the next famous stone that leans a certain way and looks a little like Queen Elizabeth if you squint.


Tonight is a championship hurling match for a tournament that's been going on. If you're not keen on what hurling is...do some research. The primary sports of Ireland are: hurling, Gaelic football, soccer, rugby, golf. I think all of these sports are far older than baseball, basketball, or American football. 3 of the 5 are also rougher than the popular American sports. Excellent. I think I'd like to try my hand at hurling some time.

I don't have too much to say here, but I did want to point out something about the food. I feel like I'm repeating myself, but whatever. You can stop reading any time you want. I can't stop writing. It's like a cancer (the most overused inappropriate analogy these days--which makes it less biting and thus more appropriate?). Anyway, Irish cuisine cannot even attempt to match anything coming from the States or France or Italy. However, it bests British food. That's not a big feat. The problem is that the standard fare is bland here. They don't use any spices. That can be a good thing, though. The ingredients are all very fresh and always 100% Irish. Good fresh fish and meat and veggies and bread.

I need to do work. I'm sitting in Lisdoonvarna, which is famous for its annual matchmaking fair. Too bad it's not going on right now. I could use me a big 40 year-old Irish lady.

The beard gives me a few years, no?


Day: 22
Guinness: 31

The Evil Irish Weather...and Luxury

I jinxed myself when I rejoiced at the sunny skies and warmer weather. Today I got drenched, soaked to the bone. Cold, hard rain all day exposed the fact that I have clothes prepared only for mild or brief rainy periods. As I shivered in my wet clothing with no shelter I stared desirously at the sailors with their suits of warm, waterproof apparel and the tourists with cars picking them up to go to their hotel rooms. Actually, just as dangerous as the cold rain was the ferry ride in stormy weather. As I waited to board my ferry, others disembarked looking a little uneasy. One girl was crying and holding a bag of vomit. This did not bode well. I’d rather be cold and wet than nauseated. I survived, looking death by hypothermia and severe sea-sickness in the eye and saying, at first timidly then more confidently, “NO! I will not go quietly into that cold night.”

Right now I am doing a little more than merely surviving. Agreeing with myself that dire conditions called for extreme reward, I now find myself luxuriating in the most exquisite B&B I’ve ever graced with my presence. You will laugh at these pictures. I’m staying in this massive room that appears to be for a honeymooning couple. I don’t care; it is awesome no matter how frilly it may be. It’s called the Green Room. It has a green theme. I sipped tea while watching a TV documentary on the Caribbean ecosystem. Never mind that it cost me an entire day’s salary—today, it’s worth it. I just need to do laundry tomorrow. Desperately.


While I was still on the Aran Islands, I took a few photos, as you know I am wont to do. I added the appropriate ones to the last blog, but I am especially fond of this one:


Roosters! I could have waited around and taken a million shots to get the perfect postcard-quality image, but I’m rather pleased with the memory of a bunch of roosters running around cock-a-doodle-dooing in front of a vacant pub.

For those with a childish sense of humor—as I was stuck in Galway traffic today, I saw a sign that had been doctored. It originally said “End of Hard Shoulder.” Shoulder had been crossed out and replaced with “Dick.” Yes, traffic jams have been known to sap the mojo right out of you.

Day:21
Guinness: 29