A Christmas Story

      What am I doing here?  At 8 a.m., I’ve been up since 5:30, the temperature outside is in the low teens, the west wind buffeting the Jeep.  In the seat next to me, the four-year-old grandson chatters.

      Ski lessons?  Really?  At my age?  But we were headed north.  A stop at a McDonald’s drive-through in Laramie got us hot coffee.  By the time we reached Snowy Range, I needed the boys’ room.  Nothing in the parking lot, we’re told.  Have to get to the main building.

     The original question sang out silent but clear again when we stepped out of the car onto the packed snow and the sharp wind attempted to knife through jacket, shirt, and t-shirt.  I don’t like snow and cold.

      I had refused the sticker the grandson wanted to paste onto my shirt the night before as we checked out of the ski-rental place with equipment in hand:  Boots, helmets, skis, poles.  “I Love Snow!” the stickers said.  “It would be a lie,” I told him.

      On went the vest.  Next came the Carhart insulated coveralls.  I don’t care what kind of fashion statement I make.  They are warm.  If I can just get them on without falling on the packed snow I’m standing on.

     I have a ski suit.  But the Goodwife couldn’t find her winter bibs she used to wear on winter playground duty many years ago, so she took my one-piece suit and I opted for the coveralls.  I did wash and dry them the night before.  When you are 71, the fashion police grant you a pass.

     My Carharts held the knifing wind at bay.  The wool socks were no match for the icy blast, however.  I slipped off my loafers and exposed my foot.  Getting the ski boots on last night in the sporting goods store, with the helpful clerk assisting, hadn’t been too bad.  My fingers were still nice and warm. 

     But now, my fingers numbed as I fumbled at the five latches and grabbed the tongue loop to try to pull the heavy boot onto my quickly cooling foot and shin. I succeeded in getting the boots on, but I had to have help getting the five latches in place.

     Now for the walk over the packed snow to headquarters.  Walking in ski boots is a challenge.  Walking in ski boots on a slippery surface is a fall waiting to happen.  But we made it safe and sound, with the younger folk carrying skis and poles.

      The first stop, the restroom.  A deceased friend once told me as we stood in line for the urinals at a state championship football game in Wichita, “Never get in the line with the bald guy, or the one with the white hair.”  He was, of course, referring to the amount of time an old man takes to void his bladder.  

      I didn’t put a stopwatch on it, but it might have been a Guinness World Record, by the time I fumbled with the coverall zippers somewhat bound up by last night’s laundering.  Then there were the jeans, the long underwear, and the briefs to navigate. I suffered a thoroughly modern problem, finding myself before it was too late.  The gloves and the sunglasses fell to the floor, but I didn’t care.  Priorities.

      The restroom experience behind me, I navigated the steady flow of skiers coming and going.  No turning back now.  Eventually, number two daughter found me amongst the crowd and wired a four-inch square tag to my Carhart zipper.  Number one daughter helped me latch my skis to the uncompromising boots.

      I only fell twice.  The first time was trying to make my way to the other side of the chair lift loading station on my skis where the lessons for beginners was already in session.  That was a mistake.  The very patient instructor had us start with one ski.   I should have carried my skis to that point.

      The instructor, who was himself in his sixties, had us do 360’s with both skis on as he demonstrated.  Then we walked sideways uphill.  A gentle slope.  My major concern was how to slow and stop without crashing.  Two hours later, I would still be trying to perfect that ability. 

     We graduated to a bigger bump.  At first, it wasn’t too slick, but as the temperature rose and as the snow got packed by many skiers gliding over it, it was slippery.  I only endangered others a couple of times.  One involved my second fall, where I took to the ditch to avoid crashing into a couple of girls conversing on the sidelines near the fence separating us from the chairlift mounting station.

     I could make left turns, but not right ones.  I could slow myself pretty well but not well enough to take on the “magic carpet”, the conveyor belt lift that creeps uphill slowly beside the gentle slope for tyros.   

     I abandoned the Goodwife.  She was on her own.  I could barely maintain myself on skis.  No way could I help anyone else.  She took one bad spill, backwards on her first attempt down the big bump.  The rented helmet proved its value.  It saved her from a cracked skull.  She was much better at “snowplowing” as she calls it, or the “pizza slice” as the instructor called the knock-kneed position used to put on the brakes.

     The lessons stopped at noon.  We attempted another run or two before we decided we had had enough.  We were tired.  I might have made a few more stabs at it.  Progress does encourage one to continue.  But the ski boots chafed the inside of my anklebones.  I knew I would regret it if I punished them anymore.

     So we rested in the lunchroom after our meager repast (I ate chicken strips rather than wait for hamburger or pizza) while the younger folk returned to the slopes.  After a catnap, we strolled (if trundling along in ski boots can be anything like a stroll) around the huge upstairs room (thank goodness for a sturdy handrail we used to negotiate going up and down the stair steps) where we could watch skiers and snowboarders coming down the slopes, or folks mounting the chairlift or riding uphill on the magic carpet.

      A couple of hours before sundown, number one daughter brought the Jeep up to the loading zone so we thankfully didn’t have to negotiate the hundred yards or so of packed snow across the parking lot.  Priority number one after seating myself in the Jeep:  get the snow boots off.  What a relief.

     I reflected as I slipped on my loafers to protect my feet from the still-blowing wind that I had not been cold at all during my two-plus hours amongst the winter elements.  Not even my feet or my fingers, the usual cold spots.

     Our adventure was done.  We headed home.  A brief stop at a gas station to put in a gallon or two to get jus back to Laramie ($4 per gallon at the one-pump convenience store), and we were on the road.

      The trip was our Christmas present from the girls.  It certainly was an adventure.  We both reserved judgment until tomorrow to see if skiing was something we might wish to take up.  Would we be stiff and sore?  (Answer:  not really)  Still, it’s cold and snowy.

       Additional Christmas tidbit:  The two-year-old granddaughter can’t pronounce words very well yet.  She says “yeah” and “no” very well and manages to get her wants known with signs, shakes and nods of her head.  She’s coming along on pronunciation.  But she understands nearly everything we say.

     “Your nose is runny.  Go get a tissue and blow your nose,” someone instructed her.  She pushed a stool over to the counter, a skill she has pretty well perfected.  She crawled up the stool, also a well-developed skill, grabbed a Kleenex and crawled back down.  She stood where we all could see her and blew her nose.

      We all congratulated her.  She looked at the tissue and its contents.  Then she licked it and discarded the tissue. (“Ughs” and “ishes” from the audience only brought a smile.)

     The Grandson got an “Elf on the Shelf”, a doll who sits on the shelf and helps Santa keep an eye on the recipient to see if he’s being naughty or nice.  The literature accompanying the elf instructs the recipient to name the elf.

         “What shall we name him?” asked his mom.

      The briefest of pauses followed the question.  “Walker Stapleton,” was his reply.

Wild Goose Chase

     Snipe hunting.  Cow-tipping.  Catching the Northern Lights.

     Clack, clack, clack went the tires on the street.  Starting October 1, Iceland drivers can equip their cars with studded tires.  Many had done so.  It was hard to be surprised by an approaching car.

      We made our way once again towards Bust Stop 1, where we were scheduled to catch a bus for a Northern Lights Tour.  It was nearing 8 p.m.  The girl at the tourist information desk assured us the bus would have printed across it something like “Sky Tours” or Tip-Top Tours” or something similar.

      A plane old bus, shaped like a high top shoe, pulled up.  A group of about a dozen stood there conversing.  It soon became apparent that we were all waiting to take the Northern Lights tour.  One of our number stepped out of the shelter of City Hall into the breeze to inquire of the driver.  He turned and motioned to us.  This was our bus.

      The driver made friendly conversation as he checked our paperwork in the dim light.  We all took our turn and we were soon aboard.  Checking his list, the driver said we needed to make just one stop at another hotel and pick up one more light-chaser.  Someone said we would just go along.

      All aboard, the driver, also the tour guide started his spiel.  He introduced himself, his name, his occupation (semi-retired teacher) and our goal for the night, finding a hole in the clouds where we had a chance of viewing the Northern Lights. 

      When you buy the tickets, they are careful to endorse a disclaimer that says there is no guarantee that you will actually see such a sight.  Also, you need to check the website displayed on the paperwork to see for sure that the tour is a go for that night.  If the weather is hopelessly cloudy, the tour will be rescheduled for the next night, or the next, depending on the weather.

      It had been cloudy and drizzly all day, but the sun had come out later in the afternoon, and the website said our tour was a go for this night.  So, having had our supper and a brief rest, we made our way to the bus stop.

      The driver consulted his cell phone for the weather and reported that we stood the best chance of finding a clear sky by going south.  All the while as he talked, he was hauling us out of town into the black night.

      He had us each tell our name, where we came from, what we did in life, following his example.  He said the trip would be a lot more fun if we were a group interacting together, rather than a bunch of silent individuals.

      He proceeded to sing an Icelandic folk song.  When he finished his song, he translated for us.  This was an English-speaking tour, even though two or three were from Germany.  An extended family from Alabama made up about half of our group. 

      He then asked us to sing him a song.  He said pick an American song since most of us were from America.  There were several suggestions, such as “Yellow Submarine” and a few other tunes.  I started singing “Dixie” thinking surely the Alabamians knew that song, but the song ended up being a duet.

     The driver said he had found from his experience of guiding tours that Americans didn’t have any songs, that everyone knows.  He said that in Iceland, there are a few songs that everybody knows, such as the one he had sung.  That ended the song-singing.

      He enlisted our help in searching for clear sky.  Look for stars.  Seeing the Northern Lights requires a clear sky.  After an hour or so of riding, we saw a few stars.  We pulled into a grassy space by the side the highway and got out.  We looked up.  The stars disappeared and a few drops of moisture lit on our upturned faces.

       Back to the warm bus.  The driver consulted his cell phone for a few moments.  Further south, closer to the coast, he said, the weather folks were showing clear skies.  We hit the highway again.  We passed the airport.

      Around eleven o’clock, we found the combination of a clear sky and a place to pull off the highway without any interfering lights.  In Iceland, the Northern Lights may appear from any direction of the compass, not just the north.  Sure enough, some strange colorful “clouds” were churning around in the southern sky.  (I know it was south, because the North Star was behind us.)

      Folks oohed and awed as the display waxed and waned.  The Goodwife was a bit disappointed because the color was largely green, not pink as in all the pictures of the phenomenon.

      Several people took out cell phones and cameras to try to capture the event.  I gave it a shot, but I got nothing but black.  Earlier, the driver suggested camera settings, but all that was beyond my savvy.  Automatic exposure with automatic settings is the best mode I know. 

      After about twenty or thirty minutes of that, the promised treat of hot chocolate and cookies came out of the bus’s cargo hold.  I had long before that retreated to my comfortable seat in the bus.  My toes had curled, searching for a roost, two or three hours ago. 

      The Goodwife reported that the hot chocolate was really lukewarm chocolate.  The cookies weren’t too sweet.  A few more minutes viewing the strange clouds that mostly moved horizontally (sometimes they leap vertically, but not this night) and everyone joined the two or three of us who had spent much of the time dozing in the bus, and we headed back to Reykjavik.

      It was after one o’clock when I crawled into bed.  We had one more experience on our list of things to do in Iceland, take a plunge into the hot waters that arise from the bowels of the earth.  It didn’t happen.  We had tried to get tickets to the Blue Lagoon, but we were never able to. 

      The folks at the tourist office showed us some pools in the city that they said were superior to the Blue Lagoon and not nearly as expensive, but they were a bit out of walking distance, as the weather was still overcast, windy, and spitting rain.  The temperature ranged from six to ten degrees Celsius (40 to 50 F) the entire time we were there.  The wind and light precipitation made it feel a lot colder.

      Anyway, we spent our last day at two museums that were in walking distance from our digs.  The whale museum had huge models of whales.  I’m sure they were scaled down, but even so they were huge.  Once again, the Goodwife rented a recording to accompany the displays.  I was reminded of part of Moby Dick where Melville describes the different types of whales.  A blue light that illuminated the collection made for poor photography. 

       We also took in the Saga Museum, which was probably the best museum in a way.  It had lifelike figures in realistic settings.  One figure even breathed, his diaphragm moving in and out.  As the name suggests, each setting had a story featuring a heroic man or woman.  At the end of the tour, there was a room with costumes from the earliest days.  Visitors get to try on the costumes and handle the weaponry.

      On our first day in Iceland, I relied on a ship in dry dock (I think) to keep my bearings as we walked around unfamiliar territory.  We passed near it a few more times on our way to the museums and various eateries.  It was interesting to follow the progress the crews made.

      Our last day there ended at noon at, you guessed it, Bus Stop 1 where we boarded a small shuttle (packed to the gills with departing tourists) that took us just outside of town to the main bus depot where we boarded a big bus for the airport.

      We found Icelanders to be friendly folk.  But they have an international airport, like apparently all international airports.  We struggled through the bureaucracy.  It was the only place we had to carry on our luggage.  We were allowed to check our baggage at the other airports.  We were allowed to carry on without additional fee only after the ticket agent lady marched us over to the little cage that defined what was allowable in overhead bins.

      We were plenty early for our flight.  We took turns standing in line at the lunch counter to buy a drink and a snack.  When it was my turn to sit at a table guarding the luggage, I witnessed a strange event.

      We were seated at a small table for two next to a low wall.  A young man with backpack stood just on the other side of the wall.  He stood there a long time, observing, what?  It became obvious he wasn’t looking for another person.  I grew suspicious.  I kept an eye on him and our luggage.

      After about ten minutes, he came around the wall and asked if that sandwich, on a plate on a nearby table, was mine.  No.  Same question to people next to me.  No.  He grabbed the sandwich and walked off eating it.  A few minutes later, a waitress removed the dishes and wiped off the table.  Nobody ever came to complain they  had lost their sandwich.

      Our flight departed about 3:30 p.m. Iceland time.  After eight hours of flying, we caught sight of the Rockies.  We approached from the northeast, coming over Nebraska.  We landed just after 6 p.m. at DIA.  One of the longest 2½ hours of my life.  Once more we waded through the Disneyland back and forth cattle fences.  The agent checked our passports, asked where we were going, handed back our passports, and we stepped out of the secure zone.  Our trip was over.    

Iceland 2

     Sunday morning.  11 a.m. appointment.  Breakfast.

     When I booked Alfholl, our bed and breakfast, breakfast came with an extra fee, how much I don’t remember.  But we decided as long as we were having to pay for it, we might as well seek our morning meal elsewhere.

      It was our first morning, also the day we were scheduled to take the “Golden Tour”, and it was Sunday.  Reykjavik honors the Christian custom of taking Sunday off, at least the part of Reykjavik where we stayed, and during the off-season.  All the little shops that usually served food were closed as we walked around at 9 a.m.

      We found a hotel with a breakfast bar open.  It was a lot like the breakfast served at bed and breakfasts in the olden days, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, various types of bread, fruit, juices, coffee, tea, etc.  Having dined, we walked the three or four blocks to bus stop 1 where we would join the Golden Circle tour.

     Like all things, the decision to take our breakfast elsewhere had advantages and disadvantages:  we had a variety of breakfasts, but we did not get to know anyone, seeing only the tourist servers.  We saw our host when we checked in.  He helped us make bus reservations to return to the airport on the appointed day, tried (and failed) to get coveted reservations to the fabled Blue Lagoon, helped haul our luggage upstairs to our room.  But then, we never saw him again.

      Our bus was on time and we were early.  We watched the birds in the pools that surround City Hall.

      A shuttle bus took us to the main bus depot, the same one we went to on arrival from the airport.  The attendants helped us board, and after most of us were on, then they came to take our tickets, vouchers, or smart phone pictures.  Thoughtful, really, rather than having everybody standing outside the bus door in the wind and drizzle. 

      The first stop was Þingvellir National Park (don’t ask me what that first letter is—English translations usually substitute “th”, thingvellir).  The park centers around some ancient ruins from a thousand years ago where the Icelandic parliament met.  We only saw that site in passing.  The real attraction was a huge rift in the lava where two tectonic plates separate.

      The fault line runs for many of miles with various degrees of separation.  Where the bus stops, the fault is yards (woops—meters) wide and deep.

      A walkway allows tourists to walk down between the canyon walls to a flatter plane below.  All three stops we made on the tour included similar tourist centers with restrooms, some form of eatery, gift shop, and convenience store.

      On the bus trip, we went through miles of open space with an occasional settlement or farm type dwelling.  But when we reached the designated site, things changed.  While we experienced some traffic enroute, at each site, a parking lot was crowded with cars and a bunch of busses, enough that we had to take a close look at our bus before departing to take in the scene so that we could get on the right bus at our assigned departure time.  Don’t be late!  It’s an expensive taxi ride back to Reykjavik.  Needless to say, the centers were crawling with people, many natives taking advantage of a Sunday afternoon to see some of the sights.

      Our second stop was Geysir.  Apparently, it’s where we get the word “geyser”, Geysir being the first named hot water eruption from Mother Earth.  Geysir is not as predictable as Old Faithful, and perhaps not as spectacular, but it erupts much more frequently. 

     From the parking lot and tourist center, we walked the hundred meters or so to the site.  Several pools of hot water and other steam spouts line the pathway.  We were probably 15 minutes making our way around the spout, and we saw two pretty sizable eruptions. 

      Our final stop was Gullfoss, a huge waterfall.  It sits in an exposed area, pretty rugged, obviously, to have the waterfall.  The sharp wind and occasional spit of rain made for a pretty quick visit. 

      From Gullfoss, we took about a two-hour bus trip back to Reykjavik.  Coming and going, we saw a lot of scenery, including mountaintops, glaciers, a snowstorm progressing down a mountain pass, an industrial site or two, and some sheep and horse ranches.  Not much in the way of grain fields.  Iceland imports nearly all of its grain needs.

       For the rest of our Iceland stay, we would visit museums in Reykjavik and take a wild midnight ride.    

Iceland

      The sun was not cooperating.  It was early afternoon.  We were heading north. 

      The sun should have been shining through the left windows of the bus.  It was coming through the right rear window.

      We are heading south, I concluded.  I had looked at the map enough to know that Reykjavik was about 45 minutes north of Keflavik, the major airport.  Why were we going south?  Was the map wrong?   

     Except we weren’t.  Headed south.  Hmmmm.  It was a problem I wouldn’t have to work on much, because it was practically the only sunny day we had while we were in Iceland.

     We had landed, cleared the passport office, and headed to bus kiosks.  I had again relied on Trip Advisor, which sent us to Fly-Bus.  They had service from airport to your doorstep.  Not quite, but okay.  Reykjavik ordinances limited busses to certain streets in the city.

      The big bus we took from the airport stopped at a depot just outside the city, where the passengers dispersed to smaller busses that took us into the city.  We were given a bus stop number where we were to disembark. 

      The driver of the small bus asked each of us which hotel or lodging we were staying at as he helped us unload our luggage.  He wasn’t familiar with our place, Alfholl Guest House.  He recognized the street, Ranargata.   Two blocks up, two, or maybe three blocks right, you’ll come to it.  Except we didn’t.

      I accosted two young ladies and asked them for help.  Out came the cell phones.  In a minute or two, they produced a map.  We had gone up one block too far.  Go down one block, turn left and go two blocks, then left again on Ranargata.  We were home.  Fairly simple, especially compared to finding our way in Dublin.

      Our first view of Iceland came from the airplane.  It was a clear day, apparently a rarity as winter approaches.  The land looked like rough rocks, lava, covered with the skin of a kiwi, soft green fuzz. 

      There is a small community around the airport, but the ride to the city reminds me of Eastern Colorado in one way:  there are few buildings, farms, or small towns.  The vista includes distant mountains and an occasional glimpse of the sea, but very little in the way of agriculture, fields or animals grazing.

  

     Iceland has a lot in common with Hawaii, volcanic islands with lava mountains punctuating the flats that have eroded, providing soil for plant life.  Iceland has only one native tree and limited agriculture due to the short growing season of the northern clime.  Still, it is green with the moss, or whatever it is, that covers much of the landscape.

      Having arrived, met our host, and stowed our luggage, we set out for the tourist office which was conveniently located in the city hall beside bus stop 1 where we got off the bus and started our pedestrian journey.  We made arrangements for a couple of trips, both by bus.  The lady who sold us the tickets directed us north to the old harbor where we would find abundant seafood places.  Which street should we take?  Oh, any of them.

     The street we chose took a left turn and so did we.  We walked a mile and never came to the harbor, which later we would learn was only three blocks from our lodging, if you took the right street. 

      A couple of young ladies tried to give us directions to a great seafood place not far from  where we stood.  We went to the supermarket and turned right, walked another three blocks where we could see the harbor, but no restaurant. 

     An older lady caning her way along the street sent us back the other way to a local establishment.  The place the younger ladies directed us to, was indeed another few blocks down the way we were going, but it was a chain restaurant like Red Lobster or something.  Go back to the supermarket, cross the street and go right for two blocks and we would come to a local place that served great food, she said.

     So we did.  The store was a bakery that specialized in pastries of various kinds.  In the evening they served a limited menu of seafood.  The problem was, only one girl at the counter spoke English.

      We asked for a menu.  They had none.  The waitpersons almost ignored us.  We teetered on the brink of walking out.  The girl came to our table and informed us that she was about to post the menu—which was chalked on a blackboard right above our table.

      We stepped aside to allow her room to get to the blackboard.  As she wrote, she informed us what she was posting, as she wrote in Icelandic.  We must place our order at the counter.  We made our choice and I went to the counter.

      I stood in line beside a local who ordered a bottle of beer.  I asked about the beer.  Fortunately, he spoke English.  The beer was from a local brewery, he said.  Things were certainly taking a turn for the better. 

      He said the beer was good and there was a large selection.  He pointed to a row of bottles on a shelf behind the counter.  The bottles wore the same label, except for a big number in the middle of it.  I saw that the number 15 was a porter, so I ordered it.  It was good.

     We sat in our own private little island of English while those all around us spoke Icelandic.  We indeed had strayed off the tourist pathway.  With a belly full of good food (it was some kind of flat fish) and good beer, life was good.

      The sun had set as we began our journey home.  Finding our way wasn’t much of a problem, since we had mainly taken one street all the way.  With the sun gone, the temperature dropped some and the humidity increased.  Still, it was quite pleasant as we walked home on a Saturday night.

     Reaching home, we took our turn at the shower.  We shared the bathroom with three other rooms on our floor.  We didn’t see anybody else, so sharing wasn’t much of a problem.  It reminded me that when I was booking the place in September, I was urged to hurry to close the deal, as there was only one room left!  Liars.

     Sunday morning, we needed to be at Bus Stop 1 before 11 a.m. to catch our bus to make the Golden Circle trip.  We congratulated ourselves on a successful day one in Iceland and hit the hay. 

   

 

           

Dublin the Last

      The Book of Kells—Trinity college

      Never heard of it before?  Me either.  The Book of Kells, not Trinity College.  I ran across Trinity College in James Joyce and other such esoteric places.

      According to the official blurb, “The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript written in Latin, and containing the four  gospels. . . . It was created around 800AD by early Christian monks.  . . . It is widely regarded as Ireland’s finest national treasure.”

      “Illuminated” in this case means decorated with bright colors rather than doused in light, since it was done on calfskins, 150 of them.  Between the fancy calligraphy and the Latin, reading the larger-than-life displays was a task.  The Goodwife rented the audio and wandered around trying to coordinate what she saw with what was going into her ears.

      I didn’t think it was worth the trouble to get the audio, especially since my hearing was still compromised.  (Did I mention that I had a bad cold about ten days before we left on our trip that filled my ears with liquid?  Six weeks later, I have periods of normal hearing, which I am informed isn’t too good anyway.)

      I wandered around and read the information accompanying the displays.  As with any work of visual art, things made a lot more sense after someone explained the symbolism and all such things that I never notice just looking at it.

      Above stairs, there was something I did understand without elucidation.  It is called the “Long Room”, and it runs the full length of the big building.  The common folk are allowed to wander up and down the center of the long room.  On either side are huge, like 12 or 15 feet high, shelves full of books, many of them ancient.       

      Students and trained volunteers work at maintaining and preserving the old volumes.  In a room at one end of the hall, you can see them working, wearing white gloves and masks.  The busts are of famous people like Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope from the literary world and many scientists like Newton and Einstein. 

      Having drunk our fill at a fount of learning, it was time for a little soup to ward off the drizzly grey day.  Somewhere along in there, the Goodwife got the idea that she should visit a quilt shop.  The waitress spent about ten minutes on her cell phone trying to find the closest one.  There wasn’t one very close.

     I asked her where the tourist information place was.  That was much simpler, just down the street in the next block.  We found it no problem.  We needed to buy new LEAP cards so we could ride the train.

      Supposedly, there were over 600 places to buy or add time to our LEAP cards.  Except, not if you have a tourist LEAP card.  The tourist LEAP card, apparently, has a better rate than a regular one.  If you go to add time to the card, you pay at the regular rate.  Plus, you have to have some idea how much you are going to use it.  You pay by Euros, but you get charged by how much you use the card.

       On the train, you use your card to pass through the turn style when entering a station, and sometimes again when you leave, so they have an idea how much you used your card.  We tried two or three stations where there were live persons manning the ticket window.  They all advised us to find the tourist information office.  So we did.

     The two ladies that waited on us at the office not only sold us a card.  They had a surefire quilt shop we could find.  It was a ways off, but easy to find.  Just follow this street up a hill, past a construction site, turn left when we found something, I don’t remember what.

      As we stood pondering just what street we should be going up, another lady stopped to help us.  She sent us up the correct street, but at the top of the hill, we came to one of those pesky forks in the road that never get mentioned in the instructions.  A friendly policeman had never heard of the quilt shop.  He pulled his cell phone out of his hip pocket and soon had the address.

       It wasn’t as easy as the tourist ladies suggested.  It was on a side street somewhere.  We never found it.  We got sidetracked.  Trying to follow the policeman’s instructions, we passed two old churches standing side by side.  One church claimed to go back to Viking times.  Plus, it said free guided tours.

      We were the only ones in there, so we got our own personal tour guide, a walking history book, he was.  He told us all about the Vikings, coming and taking over Ireland.  Everywhere we went, including Denmark and Iceland, we ran into those rascally Vikings.  They came to Ireland to get women.  They decided to stay because the winters were a lot milder than where they came from. 

       When they converted to Christianity, they built churches.  This particular church had been built, destroyed, and built again about three times.  There is a modern addition, too.  When they were excavating to remodel, they stumbled across some signs of former buildings.  Some of those dig sites are preserved, a rectangular hole in the floor, fenced off so you can peer down and see what the excavators found.

      In other places there are stones etc. from former buildings, tying the current structure to past ones.  The church next door is a Catholic one.  During the English religious wars, Dublin converted to the Anglican Church. This was one of the few Catholic churches that were allowed to exist.
     That ended our quilt shop quest.  We were worn out and ready to find an eatery and head for home.  We tried to find an Irish meal, like corned beef and cabbage, but the waitress told us we would not have much luck finding that dish anytime except lunchtime. 

      We visited two or three castles during our stay.  The most interesting one was Dalkey.  Not that it was too much different from any other castle.  But our tour was conducted by three or four different people.  The first guy had us sit down and watch a short film.  Then he turned us over to an archer, dressed in costume and carrying a real live bow and a quiver of arrows.  He acted the part of the bowman/soldier and explained the ins and outs of conducting a war with bows and arrows.

      He handed us off to a maid, also in costume, who explained some of the domestic details of castle life, sleeping arrangements, cooking, bathing (once a year, maybe, usually in the Spring, right before a wedding).  She led us to the top of the castle walls where we could look at the village and see how the castle could protect the area.

     The maid handed us off to the physician, in this case also a female.  She was impersonating an actual woman who acted as the barber, dentist, and physician for the castle centuries ago.  She explained the tools of the trade, hair cutters, tooth pullers, bleeders, and the processes involved.  That included urinalysis.  She had a jar of urine (supposedly) which she held up to the light, analyzed the color, the smell, AND the taste.  Gross!  I know, it was fake, but still.

      They had to be tough to exist in those olden times.  No wonder the life expectancy was about 40 years.

      When we first got to Dalkey castle, it was nearing noon.  They wouldn’t be open for tours until 2 p.m.  We took a walk up the coast.  It was sunny but chilly.  It would be the nicest day we were there.

      

     The other castle was one that had been modernized and lived in.  The man who lived there died without heirs, so somebody took the castle over and turned it into a museum to try to preserve it.

      In downtown Dublin, we saw huge grain elevators, tall white cement tubes just like in our neck of the woods.  They were standing on the grounds of the Guinness Brewery.  Sure enough, they hold the barley used for brewing.

     We didn’t make the brewery tour.  We bought tickets for the “Hop on, Hop off” bus tour, which takes you all around downtown Dublin.  The double decker bus travels down the narrow streets.  At corners, you could stick your hand out of the window and grab a lamppost. One of the drivers referred to the bicyclists darting in front of him and crossing the streets against the stoplight as “coffin-chasers.”  No kidding.

    To make the most of the bus tour, you need to get an early start, which seemed beyond us.  After tourist season, the busses don’t run past five or six o’clock.  That doesn’t leave much time to get off and look at something.  It does give you a good look at the city and gives you some idea of what you would like to see.                

     Speaking of Guinness, one of my goals was to drink a Guinness in Ireland.  I have drunk a Guinness in England and in America.  I always suspicioned that the Irish don’t send their best product abroad, especially to England.  I shared that thought with a bartender who sniggered without assenting or denying.

      After a few sips of the brew, I confided quietly to the Goodwife that there were better brews in Colorado.  Of course, I have been spoiled by the explosion of microbreweries  we have here.

     We finished off our Ireland stay on a cold rainy day.  We rode the train along the coast line past Dalkey again and on farther.  We turned around in a small village where we ducked into an antique store and fell into a conversation with the proprietress who was having a slow day due to the weather.  She was lamenting the modernization of her small community with the ticky-tacky apartments they are erecting.  The modern harbor was forced on the community against the majority will.  It attracted tourists, though, so she was reluctantly admitting it had been a good deal.  Like nearly everyone we talked to, she wanted to talk politics, American politics as well as Ireland politics.

      We did have a good time in Dublin.  I think we would have liked Ireland better had we left Dublin and got out into the country.  Can’t blame anybody for that except the tour arranger, me.

       Saturday morning found us standing at the bus stop at 7 a.m. waiting for good old 720 or 721 to take us to the airport.  The ladies at the tourist center showed us the way to take the city bus to the airport, but it involved riding to the center of town again and changing busses.  I decided it was better to pay the blue buggers and not have to change busses.

     We reached the airport and searched for WOW Airlines.  Iceland here we come.

Irish Washer Woman

    Laundry list.  It was on our agenda to wash clothes the last couple of days in Copenhagen.  It didn’t happen.

     We entered Ireland with the clothes on our back and suitcases full of dirty laundry.  Breakfast came with our bed-and-breakfast.  Sort of.  Thirty years ago when we visited the United Kingdom, breakfast was the real thing, eggs boiled scrambled fried or poached; beans; various kinds of toast; stewed tomatoes.

     Not anymore apparently.  Breakfast now means continental breakfast, pastries, bagels, cream cheese, that sort of stuff.  Or something like you will find in many motels in the USA, a toaster, assortment of jellies and jams, some fruit, cereals with milk, coffee and tea.  No waffle maker in this B & B. 

      Fortunately, for me, we had found a small jar of peanut butter in the grocery in Copenhagen.  Wrapped in a plastic bag, it made the trip to Dublin intact.  If we had had to carry our luggage on to the plane, it probably would have been trashed when we went through security.   

      One of the advantages of staying at a B & B is getting to meet the homeowner.  Robin came around as we were eating breakfast.  He knew of only one self-serve laundry in the area.  It was outside at a convenience store-gas station.  He discouraged us from going there.  It was outside.  There was really no place to sit.  We would have to stand outside while our clothes washed and dried.

      Robin said he could show us some laundry services that would do the washing and drying for us.  I had found one on the internet via my tablet.  Robin said he knew right where it was, not too far.  He even offered to drive us there in his car, but we would have to find our way back on the train. 

      I said it would be best for us to go on the train so we would have some idea how to get back on the train.  If he took us right to the place in his car, we would be lost souls when it came to finding our way home, no dropped breadcrumbs to guide us.

      We knew where the closest train station was because we walked past it while searching out our supper the previous evening.  It was five or six blocks away.  The laundry was pretty heavy, so we emptied my wheeled bag and stuffed it in there.  Clicking and clacking down the sidewalk, we went to the train station.

     Riding the train is, to me, preferable to taking a bus.  The train is roomier, nicer, especially if you are carrying a bag.   Train stations don’t move around, are easier to find.  You have to use your boarding card to get into the station, rather than showing a conductor or driver before you get on the bus when your hands are full of stuff.

      Robin confirmed what Google maps told me about the correct station to dismount.  It was only two stops from the station where we boarded.  The laundry was two or three blocks from the train station.  We found it with no problems.

      The lady weighed our dirty clothes.  She took our bag, said we could leave it and not have to lug it around while we waited.  She would put our clean, folded clothes in the bag, which would be ready for us when we returned.  It would be about two hours.

      What was there to do for two hours, we asked.  She pointed across the street intersection, saying there was a print museum just down the block.  We could while our time away there.

      As she spoke, she was making change for the bills I had given her for payment (Ireland uses Euros).  She handed the change in coins to the Goodwife.  “Hey,” I said, “Don’t give it to her!”

      “Oh, just habit,” she returned, laughing.

     “Your poor husband.  Does he even get an allowance?”

      “He gets what he deserves,” she said with a meaningful glance.

      “I think Ireland must be filled with female chauvinists,” I ventured.  There ensued a wide-ranging discussion of politics, Irish, American, world, to the effect that women could probably do better than the men had.

       We departed for the print museum, which was one of the most interesting places we went.  It had old machinery, printing presses going way back.  There were woodcut letters and blocks, inkpads used in the old days, line-o-type machines, all the way up to a rather complex press that was used up into the 1980’s when computers and laser printers put the old mechanical inventions out of business.

      The museum was free.  I’m not sure what supported it, but a group of old guys keep the machines in running shape.  They meet on occasion, maybe weekly or monthly, when they get together and work on the old stuff, sometimes actually printing with some of them.

      The day we visited, there were three or four retired printers on the premises.  One guy was a mechanic who was tapping a new screw hole in the metal of one of the printers.  All of them had made their living in some aspect of the print business.  They were willing to discuss anything with us, not just the printing business. 

      A worry is what will happen to the machines and the history when the old retired guys are no longer around.  Will there be a younger crew willing to come in and learn from the older fellows?  Nobody is showing up, yet.

      Other topics included organic farming (the Goodwife mentioned that I raised organic grain), and of course, politics.  We took our leave of the printers and mounted the stairs.  I thought there would be more printing stuff, but no.  It was a women suffrage collection, highlighting the heroines of the Irish suffrage movement.  It included many editorial-type cartoons.

      Attached to the print museum was coffee shop that seemed to be a gathering place for the locals, including the retired printers.  We partook of a pot of tea and a roll, and our two hours were up plus some.  Time to return to the laundry.

      Our lady brought out my suitcase full of clean folded clothes.  I thanked her.  “I know why you sent us to that museum.  You wanted me to see that suffrage stuff,” I told her.  She apparently didn’t know the suffrage collection sat atop of the print museum.  But she wasn’t taken aback.

    She heartily agreed that I, and every other man, needed to see it.  She then confided us in a bit, saying she was 51 years old and didn’t have much prospect of getting a better job than the one she had.  She was tired, but too young and too poor to retire.

      She didn’t stay down for long.  She asked where we were staying and how we found the laundry.  She said we could walk to our B & B.  “Just go straight down this street and you will come right to the street where your house is.”

      “Straight down the street” means something different in Ireland.  Not very many streets go straight.  You will hit a fork in the road, and you are left with Yogi Berra’s advice, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

     I was fairly certain we could find our way, but I was towing the bag full of clean clothes, so we opted for the train station and the six or seven blocks we knew over clickety-clacking a mile or more.  We had clean clothes and had experienced quite a bit of local color.  We were ready to see something else in Dublin.