(Originally posted in TC Daily Planet and archived here)
The Replacements at Midway Stadium – that’s a classic combination!
The band came on stage in matching suits; they look weathered but good. They sounded great. The audience was also a little weathered and the audience wasn’t quite in tune but that didn’t stop everyone from singing every song. And to be fair to the audience, Westerberg doesn’t sing ‘em the same way every time. He pulled at our heart strings when we said, “Sorry it took us so long,” and brought us back to reality when added, “that’s a bold-faced lie.”
The started with “You’re My Favorite Thing” and they didn’t pause much over the next two hours. Not a lot of chit chat just a lot of fast guitars! About halfway into the show I got a little nervous that we were seeing the grand finale when they played “Maybelline.” It was hard rocking, old school and timeless –like fireworks. Luckily for us, they were just getting started. They played a few covers – “I Want You Back” the Jackson Five and Sham 69’s Borstal Breakout.
Every Minnesotan of a certain age has their favorite ‘Mats’ songs and I suspect how you felt about the show really depends on your favorite songs. If you were there for “Here Comes a Regular” or “Answering Machine,” you were out of luck. But in those two hours they were able to play a lot of songs. During the encore, Westerberg sang “Skyway”; it was a change of tempo that folks seemed to like. A special request of “Merry Go Round” went out to Mary (I assume Mary Lucia–Westerberg’s sister). They ended with “Unsatisfied,” which won me a bet with my brother. A strange note for another other band to leave on – but it made sense for them.
The Hold Steady also looked at home in the Midway Stadium–except lead singer Craig Finn welcomed Minneapolis! I decide not to take that personally because I once heard Finn say that as a kid St Paul scared him a little. Mayor Chris Coleman corrected the error when we came on stage to welcome everyone to St Paul and officially proclaim September 13 to be The Replacements Day.
It’s fun to watch Finn on stage–he’s the rock star lead singer and over-enthusiastic guy in the corner rolled into one. But like The Replacements, he’s such a good storyteller. “You’re Little Hoodrat Friend” was a crowd pleaser. There were a few people who fought their way up in front to see The Hold Steady and happily stepped back when they finished. I’d move up for both bands!
Monday morning Michael took off for Australia. Then Patrick and Irish Grandma headed to Dublin. The girls and I went on a boondoggle walk. It took us to a part of Italy that really was all Italian. There was a food market where the girls got lollypops. Eventually we got tired and hot and headed up to the train station.
We had a nice lunch of parma ham and melon, pizza and carbonara. Tasty! After another, quicker boondoggle walk to hang out at the station for a long time. I have to say the kids were really good.
Eventually we got on the train and promptly sat in the wrong couchette, which meant as soon as the train started we had to walk through the train to the penultimate car to our couchette – so that seemed very exciting.
Our couchette is really two long seats facing each other with 2 bunks for sleeping above. There’s a big window on one side and a sliding door to the walkway on the other. In the couchette next to ours was an American family who apparently had something much posher in mind. But we liked it. Aine climbed up immediately; Kate soon followed. We all played on computers (or wrote blog posts) until we fell asleep and once we did fall asleep we each had our own bed.
We went right through the Swiss Alps, which was beautiful. I woke up the big girls to at least see it. I took some pictures – but know from experience that those sort of shots never do justice to the real thing.
Now we’re just sitting on the train – two asleep, two awake – waiting to get to Paris.
Thursday morning we headed down to the Coliseum. The Coliseum was on everyone’s must-see list so we were excited. I was even a little afraid that we had built it up so much that we might be disappointed – we weren’t. In fact at dinner everyone noted it as a favorite. It really is big and imposing and kind of majestic.
In its day is sat 50,000 people. It was built in 72 AD. Who even knew there were 50,000 back then? Most of the floor is missing so it’s easy to see what the basement/lower level looked like – and there’s a great (modern) mural that illustrates what happened back in the day. The lions were kept in cages in the lower floor. The cages moved along a sort of conveyor belt to “the place” where the cages were pulled to the surface like an elevator car or stage trap door. On the field waiting would have been the Christians. Our guidebook calls the Coliseum the NASCAR of antiquity. Funny to think of it that way – but I suppose it is.
So we were able to check out the stadium from two floors. The views out of the stadium were as amazing as the views inside. The columns and pedestals give you a perspective of how large the place is. I tried to get a couple of pictures to help – but even in person the size is so overwhelming you kind of dismiss it.
On the way back we walked by Circus Maximus and the Palatine. The Circus Maximus was actually a larger stadium/sports area. It was built to seat 250,00 for chariots races and public games. Now it’s more like a giant field. The Palatine dates back to 753 BC. It’s where Romulus killed Remus and founded Rome. TO honor the spot later emperors built their palaces here. By walking around the area, we got an idea of how large the footprint of the area is – but it wasn’t until we took the double-decker bus tour in the afternoon that we got an idea of its size. (I’m going to add those pictures here in case that helps. Also – we saw several lizards in the Palatine. Lizards are always a highlight.)
Aine and the rest of her Daisy crew crossed the bridge to become Brownies. I have to give Aine credit. Not only had we now sewn on her petals, we couldn’t even find her Daisy bib. She didn’t mind she went anyways – and it turns out they hand you the new Brownie vest before you cross the bridge so most folks didn’t even notice. (Now I would feel better if I could remember where we put the Brownie vest.)
The girls and Patrick are off this week for Spring Break so we’re taking a mini-vacation in Wabasha, Minnesota. There are two big draws in Wabasha. First Grumpy Old Men was supposedly filmed here. Turned out that not a lot was filmed here, but that was OK. (Part of Grumpy Old Men was filmed at the Half Tim Rec in St Paul, where I worked for years so I felt like I had that covered anyways.) The second and more important draw is the National Eagle Center.
Wabasha is less than two hours away from St Paul. On the way here, we drove through Wisconsin – and Pepin, the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder. We had a nice lunch in Wabasha, we wanted to be quick because we knew the eagle feeding was happening in about 40 minutes.
The National Eagle Center was great! We met one of the founders through a connection Patrick had. She told us that. Wabasha has always been a place to see eagles – especially in March. The eagles hang out here because there’s a lot of open water because of nearby Lake Pepin – the lake pours into the Mississippi, the river gets wider – but it quickly narrows so the water trying to get into the narrowed river keeps open water on the wider part of the river. About 10 years ago they decided to build the center.
Five eagles reside at the center. Each has been injured in some way. Most were nurtured back to health by the Raptor Center but were not well enough to be released to the wild. Lily and Aine got pictures taken with Angela the Eagle. Then (because we knew the founder) we got a great picture with the whole family and the eagle with wings spread. So that was cool.
We got to watch them feed an eagle. That was gross but cool. The eagle got to choose between rabbit meat and rat. She went for rabbit meet. I think the rat would have been grosser to see. The rabbit looked like raw meat; the rat was recognizable as a rat. Lily and Patrick got to hold a falcon, wearing the falconer’s glove.
Last, but not least, there are telescopes and binoculars all around the place so that you can look up and down the river for the eagles. They said there were about 30 eagles around. Of course with my untrained eyes I saw more like a dozen, but it was still fun. What’s kind of amazing is that with the binoculars, you really could scan through the trees and see a lot.
I heard that Read’s Landing is another great place to see eagles. The plan is to stop there tomorrow on the way home.
I think the favorite vacation activity for the kids was kayaking. We were able to kayak right in back of the house. In a lot of ways the house where we stayed was like a high end cabin in Northern Minnesota. The backyard led into the Bay. The Bay was calm the whole time we were there. What was not like Minnesota was the tide and the seals. So we learned to sort of time our kayak trips because nothing is worse than dragging the kayak through a ton of beach and nothing is better than the seals coming at high tide.
Grandma kayaked one day and Aine went out a few times. So it really was a good activity for most of us.
The view from the kayak was amazing. We could see Glengarrif Harbor, we could see the mountains and we could see Garinish and other islands. In fact it felt like we should be able to kayak out to Garinish – but that seemed a little overly ambitious. When we were going fast at all it was fun to look up at the mountains because it felt as if the mountains were moving much faster than we were.
On Monday we went to Garinish Island – it’s a small island that we can just about see from the house; you have to take a ferry to get there – but it’s only about a 10-15 minute trip. On the way to the island we went by Seal Island, which really just seems to be a big rock where a few seals can hang out. But it was fun to see. When we boated by there were about 6 seals on the rock/island.
But back to Garinish, it is beautiful. There are gardens all over the island – in fact there’s a self-guided tour of them. We started off with lunch and then Lily navigated us very quickly through the gardens to any point where we might see seals.
While she might have not appreciated them – I actually took loads of pictures of the flowers and assuming I can get my real computer to work again (very sad story) I just might frame some of the pictures for my house. I won’t post them here though – since pictures without people tend to be a little boring. Bantry Bay is very shielded. Apparently the average annual temperature is 67 degrees. So the flowers are very different from what you might see in other parts of Ireland.
We did also get to a rougher part of the island where we could see seals. One was pretty close – the others were pretty fair away – but there were a lot of them.
The island also has some beautiful structures, which I will post online if I get my pictures off my real computer. It was a very cool place.
I have friends from Cork so I feel a little bad about saying this, but if you an opportunity to go to Cork City, think about it before you say yes too quickly. I remember the last time I was there (with Anita & Darla) that we had a terrible time finding our hotel in Cork and that once we were there we didn’t see that much.
This time we stopped for brunch. We got a great parking place under a sign that said parking and went to find a place to eat. I needed a camera and went into 4 places where folks were kind of helpful. (Naturally I left an essential cord to my camera at home.) The last place he said he had a camera for €99 and proceeded to show me one for €129. I hate that sort of thing. (I ended up buying the €99 for €90.)
Then we had breakfast at some place where they could not have been nicer. They just kept bringing out the toast.
Then we went to the car to see that we had been clamped! (That means they lock your back wheel.) Apparently you can’t park under the big sign that says parking unless you “have a disk”, which I think means they do it to get income from visitors because having disk doesn’t mean that much to me and of course only the locals would have one. We weren’t the only clamped car we saw on the street and we weren’t there much more than an hour – if even that long.
Luckily we had a phone so we were able to contact the “vehicle immobilization” people quickly and within 30 minutes we were €80 lighter and on the road.
Next time, I’ll just be avoiding Cork city.
Last weekend was Dublin Puppet Weekend. We kind of thought that the kids might be too young for it – but we sort of ran into some of the activities. Aine is the only one who enjoys Punch and Judy type shows. Maybe you have to grow up with Bosco (one of the characters) to like that sort of thing. But we did see a guy who did a very small puppet show. He started with a mermaid. I think I got a video, which I’ll try to add later. His work was really exquisite – almost like a dance. I’ve added a picture of Wanderly’s Wagon for my friend Sheila. It meant nothing to us – but I thought you might like it.
Then we lined up to see the mechanical puppet show. But they only choose 10 people from the crowd to actually go into the show. Lily was the first person selected. She said it was cool. It better have been since we had to wait 20 minutes for her. (Not that we were jealous or anything!)
On Sunday we went to the Dublin Flea Market kind of near St Patrick’s. It’s an area that we don’t’ know well at all. It can be a slightly rougher area – but the market was very cool and we met up with our friend John. So that was fun.
The girls and I spent a marathon day in Howth. Patrick didn’t come because apparently being a full time student relieves you from any family obligations. It was a day of highs and lows – literally.
For folks who don’t know Dublin – Howth is the other side of Dublin Bay from us. So it’s what we look at any time we visit Dun Laoghaire or Bray. The nice thing is that we could take the DART (train there). Unfortunately we have to take a bus to the train but we’re pretty used to that.
The first thing we did when we got there was take a boat to Ireland’s Eye. It’s an island just a short hop away from Howth. I think it took all of 20 minutes to take the bus there. It was fun! We had packed a picnic; so we had our lunch on the Island. NO one lives on the island. It’s very small. We hiked around the part of the island/mountain that looks easiest but turned out to be full of nettles and kind of boggy. So you live and you learn.
After the island we hiked around the coast of Howth. It get super steep so we didn’t go too far. I can only handle taking Aine so far up places like that. Although we saw a kid about four years old who was dangling his feet off the cliff. Even Aine noted that it looked pretty stupid and that his parents were negligent to not have an iron grasp on him. Really I was so Afraid for the kid I could have been sick.
In the way up we saw a place where WB Yeats had lived. That was a thrill. It was a beautiful day so we saw a ton of people too. We ate a Deep, which seems to be a favorite with Lily. The waitress actually remembered us, which is either nice or a very bad sign. After lunch/dinner we went to see Howth Castle. There is a cooking school in it now. We also saw the Rhododendrons, which are mentioned in Ulysses.
After that very full day, we took the train home – got on a bus but had to get off about a mile from our stop because old girl (I won’t use names to protect the innocent) was sick. Actually her timing was good. Any longer on the bus and they would have been handing us a bucket.
So as I said, a day of ups and downs – but overall a great time. Going to Ireland’s Eye was a big highlight.
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