10 Questions About…

Last Sunday we had lunch in a fancy restaurant in a mall. It was nice – then we had a fun side trip to Tully Church. Tully Church is near to the house. I had been there before. Patrick and I walked there last the time we were here – but we had to get past a horrible, mean barking dog to get there. But on Sunday we had a car.

Cross at Tully Church is from the 12th or 13th century. Then there’s a church that’s probably older; I think they say 9th century. They’re kind of fun to see and climb on. It’s fun to see the landscape in the area too. As Lily said it would be fun to see a picture taken every year from the location – you could have seen a lot of building over the last few decades.

For extra credit Patrick and I took a walk Monday morning in the opposite direction to a dolmen in Ballybrack. Dolmens are rock formations that are burial portals. It’s kind of amazing to see all of the ancient religious building in the area. There’s a web site called Megalithic Ireland that I sometimes visit when I feel like taking the girls on a boondoggle walk.

It’s kind of a funny mix – but yesterday we wet to the Rose Festival and the Viking Festival in St Anne’s Park, which is on the other side of the harbor from us. I know this will be meaningless to most readers – but for my friend in the know…We made a tactical error on the journey and got off the DART at Contarf – then we walked down the coast road to the park. So that added about 3 miles to the beginning of our day. (You can take ‘em out of the South Side – but not help them read a map.)

Anyways we were very lucky with the weather on the walk to the park. And fortunately I really like to walk and the rest of the posse will sort of follow without much complaint – but we were happy when we finally got there. The Rose Festival was really a series of booths – inclduing some very delicious food. We walked around. We watched a band for a while. Aine did a craft project. We saw some very pretty roses. Patrick bought books.

The just a few yards away really – was the Viking Festival. The big deal was reenactment of the Clontarf Battle. For those who didn’t attend (or pay that much attention in history class) …

The Battle of Clontarf (Irish: Cath Chluain Tarbh) took place on 23 April 1014 between the forces of Brian Boru and the forces led by the King of Leinster, Máel Mórda mac Murchada: composed mainly of his own men, Viking mercenaries from Dublin and the Orkney Islands led by his cousin Sigtrygg, as well as the one rebellious king from the province of Ulster. It ended in a rout of the Máel Mórda’s forces, along with the death of Brian, who was killed by a few Norsemen who were fleeing the battle and stumbled upon his tent. After the battle, Ireland returned to a fractious status quo between the many small, separate kingdoms that had existed for some time.

We saw the reenactment, which was kind of fun. It was also kind of fun to hear the cheers and jeers from the audience. It was all good natured – but funny. They recreated the battle three times – demonstrating three battle approaches. The funny thing was that once the actors were dead – the emcee would “call to Valhalla” to revive them for next variation on battle

On the way home we got caught in a serious downpour. It’s been raining ever since.

See our other videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S78K4dSoH58

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wka2xIeCOCA

This week is the Made in Temple Bar Festival. Temple Bar is an area in Dublin. It’s kind of arty by day – kind of rowdy and a favorite haunt of bachelor and bachelorette by night. The arts line up for the festival is great – sadly we weren’t able to get tickets for most of the events – but we were able to see the tightrope walker. You’ll see the from video it was kind of cool. Went with the kids and our longtime friend John. A good end to a good day. (Forgot to add that before the tightrope walker – we heard Aidan Walsh sing a few songs. He’s sort of a character around the Dublin music scene.)

See the other very quick video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJhr9li_ktk

The Science Gallery, one of my favorite places in the world, had been closed since we’ve been here – preparing for the latest exhibit: Elements. It opened on Friday. It was great as we knew it would be.

The Science Gallery does take a few minutes to warm up to. The exhibits are done primarily by students at Trinity and the students are the docents. Some are better with kids than others. (While the summer show is usually very kid-friendly, not all of the shows target or are remotely interesting to kids.) Here are some of the things we got to do:

• Find out what elements we contain. You step on a scale sort of thing and they’ll tell you how much of your body is oxygen or tin. You walk away with a big sales receipt sort of list.
• Aine got to make a rock garden. We didn’t keep it but it was cool and very fast growing.
• I separated copper from iron
• Lily & Aine got electricity from lemons

Last Thursday Patrick’s advisor Tony Roche had a book launch for his latest work – Brian Friel: Theatre and Politics. Tony has always been supportive and Patrick and very kind to us. SO we were invited to the launch. Lots of the Irish Literatti were there. The big highlight was that Brian Friel himself was there. Patrick got to meet him – and we have the picture to prove it.

Patrick grew up in Cabinteely. We have had many arguments over the years over whether it’s a suburb or urban village. But I can tell you it’s a suburb. His mother lives in the house where he grew up and we stay here when we’re in Dublin. We know it pretty well. But last week we got to see something new – the inside of the big Cabinteely House. The Cabinteely House would have been one of the big estates back in the day – and by back in the day I mean mid 1700’s. The house was built for Robert Nugent. He is known for marrying rich windows and his name gives us the terms nugentize – which means to marry rich widows.

More recently the house was owned by the McGraths who ran the Irish Sweepstakes. Apparently his family lived in the house until the mid-1970’s, which is kind of amazing considering that it’s huge and not at all modern. Eventually the house went to the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Council. They maintain it. I think it’s mostly sustained by being used in various movies. The perk of being a movie location is that the curtains and other props made for the filming in the house stay with the house. So it appears to be very well maintained although a good share of the furniture and decorations are replicas.

The tour of the house included very fun actors, which helps me actually remember some of the details. The tour doesn’t include the surrounding park – but our pictures do. As you can see there are some fun sculptures.

It’s 60 degrees here today and very windy – but it’s not raining. So I know folks at home (where it’s 90+) will be a little jealous – while I’m jealous of the heat. The nice thing about a yucky day is that I’m catching up with work and the blog!

Last week when it was sunny, the girls and I walked to, up and back from Killiney Hill. Here are some quick facts on Killiney for folks (taken from Wikipedia, which never lies!):

• The coastal areas of Killiney are often favorably compared to the Bay of Naples in Italy.
• North-eastern Killiney is one of Dublin’s most exclusive residential areas. Famous residents include U2 members Bono and The Edge, Enya and occasionally former racing driver Eddie Jordan. Killiney is also home to a number of foreign ambassadors to Ireland.
• The Park’s topography is quite dramatic and its highest point, at the obelisk, is 170 metres above sea level.

My good guess is that the hill is about 3 miles away from the house – if you’re walking. It’s a lot closer if you could fly over the hills and houses. So I have to give the girls props, they were great walkers. Our walk included a walk down part of the Vico Road, which is gorgeous! The fun part of course is trying to guess which house in Bono’s. There are a couple of serious contenders and I’m sure at least one house we passed was the nicest and most expensive house I have ever seen. (I think I got a picture of their lower gardens which stretch out to the sea.)

We’ve walked up the Hill many times before but this was our first time walking to the Hill. I hope the pictures do the walk justice. The walk did seem worth it when we came down the hill and got treats at the coffee shop in the park. We may try to visit again – maybe make a stop off at the beach on another day. If the rain ever stops. (It wasn’t raining when I started this – it’s pouring now!)

Last weekend we had a regular downtown Dublin day. We didn’t have any big plans – mostly the girls wanted to do the things they miss when we are home. By that I mean they wanted to eat chocolate crepes at the Farmer’s Market in Meeting House Square. Sadly they are working on the Square! Its’ going to be cool when it’s done; they are building umbrellas to make the Square better in all sorts of weather. But for now it’s just under construction. The girls were heartbroken – until we started walking around and we learned that the usual market booths were just dispersed around the area.

Eventually we found the crepes and all was well with the world. In fact we tried lots of different food while we were there. Then we went to George’s Market, which is a more permanent market – part flea market, part super organic type stuff.
Lily had specifically requested this stop. When we were there we saw that they had fish pedicures.

I had heard about these fish before – essentially you stick your feet into fish tanks and the fish nibble at your feet. The fish are Garra Rufa. Here’s the description from their web site:

The treatment itself even has a name – “ichthyotherapy” – which is defined as “ the use of fish to treat illness, e.g. certain members of the family Cyprinidae such as Garra rufa and Cyprinion macrostomum living in hot springs near Sivas, Turkey nibble at skin lesions and are said to cure psoriasis. Probably exposure to UV light and to selenium in the water is aided by removal of dead skin”.

So we decided to go for it – the girls and I had the treatment for about 15 minutes. It’s very ewkie. It doesn’t hurt. It kind of tickles. I could just about take it for a few minutes and then I’d be overwhelmed by the creepiness of paying to have fish bite your toes.

Bog bodies are always one of my favorite creepy but cool activities. We’ve seen them before – but they never get old. (That’s kind of a pun since one of the things about the bodies is that they are perfectly preserved in the bogs.) We got a great tour of the bog bodies, which was new to us. The tour starts with a glimpse at random things they have found in the bogs – like clothing and butter. We learned that a lot of the bog bodies are almost 2000 years old.

My favorite story – and I’m clearly paraphrasing although will directly quote one line – – is of the bog body that was probably a kingly sacrifice. The idea was that the bog man would have been dressed up and married to a horse – “though it was a symbolic marriage only” and after the wedding the horse would have been eaten and the king killed and chucked into the bog. It’s kind of amazing that they can do so much research on the bodies. It’s kind of amazing to think of the clues that would have left them with that story. And most of all amazing that the guide felt she had to say that the marriage was symbolic only – and that I was the only one who seemed to think that was really funny.

Anyways – no flash allowed in the museum. So I took the pictures I could but they’re not great – although the bog body hand was pretty good. For comparison I had Aine pose her hand with the bog hand.