Day two on the road to New Orleans. Not a ton to report. We had brunch at a place called Brother Juniper’s in Memphis. Monte Cristo with maple syrup – nonstandard, yet really good! Then we tried some car washes in Jackson. And we drove a lot. We saw snow until nearly Memphis – which was a little sad.
We arrived in New Orleans in time for dinner. We ate at a place called Mother’s. Apparently it was on Man v Food. Man tried to eat the giant Po’ Boy. We didn’t. The food was good. Poor Lily had nothing to eat with Mother’s does no specialize in vegetarian dishes.
OK I’ve been *terrible* about the blog and maybe I’ll go back and fill in the last few months – but today I’ll at least pick up to talk about our 2013 Spring Break. We drove down the New Orleans with Grandpa and back with Patrick.
The trip seemed a little ill fated at the onset. Poor Aine was sick – begging to stay home, which is very unlike Aine. I forgot my charger, so we had to go back. Grandpa forgot his sunglasses, so we had to go back. But after a series of false starts we were on the road. First stop – Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We had a fancy French lunch – well not really fancy, but pretty French.
Then we made a pit stop in Hannibal Missouri, boyhood home to Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens). We took some pictures at the commemorative lighthouse – which is kind of strange in that it way up on top of a hill. Kind of bad placing it seems for warding off ships on a stormy night. Seems like it might be more useful to low flying planes. It was fun to see the town. Most of us got an ice cream treat and Grandpa showed Aine how to play some brain teaser game at the ice cream parlor.
Three facts about Mark Twain:
- He was born in 1835 and the lighthouse was built 100 years later
- Twain was born and died during a visit from Halley’s comet.
- The name Mark Twain comes from his river boat days, it is the cry for a measured river depth of two fathoms
Next stop was St Louis. We had an old school Italian dinner on Italian Hill. We felt almost like interlopers when we were the only ones that the host didn’t know by name! Then we caught the big Arch as night was falling. It was cool – much more silvery than I expected.
Three facts about St Louis’ Gateway Arch:
- It is 630 feet tall
- It is 630 feet wide
- It was built from 1963-65
We spent the night in Cape Girardeau – a new town for us. Actually I think Missouri was a new state for the girls. So that’s always fun!
Filed under: St Paul
Every year the Treacy Clan head to the Minnesota State Fair – scavenger hunt in hand. It’s not a huge challenge scavenger hunt – but an attempt to reign in rampant and disorganized spending led by the whims of the 7 kids. At least this way we get a calendar and spend time outside the arcade and cookie booth. Others have asked me to share…
Minnesota State Fair Scavenger Hunt 2012!!!
- How big is the slab of butter used for the butter queens?
- 2. What is the strangest food at the Fair? Was it good?
- Get a calendar with a family picture.
- Ride the Giant Slide at the Fair. (Be sure to have someone take your picture.)
- Pick up as many school supplies as you can. (Each kid should have their own bag!)
- How many tickets can you win in the arcade? (Each kid gets $2; no spending your own money!)
- Get an autograph from a famous person. (Or get a picture of the team with a famous person.)
- Get a bird’s eye view on the Skyride!
- Where can you find a plastic bottle tunnel representing 5 minutes of use of plastics bottles in MN?
- Name three local breweries – ask a parent which beer is best.
- How big is the biggest pumpkin at the Fair? (Win a honey stick while you’re nearby!)
Filed under: Dublin
On Saturday Patrick went with his mom to London to visit his brother – so the girls and I hit the town. We went to the Science Gallery to the Mini Maker Faire. The focus is on learning how to make things – especially for kids. It sort of echoed a main theme from the TED conference – the whole idea of being able to make things, to invent, to innovate is very strong. It’s always fun to meet folks who do make things – because to me making something is so far out of my field of scope. I’m much better at writing about things getting made.
The coolest thing we learned about was a product called Sugru – it’s like play dough that hardens like plastic. So it’s amazing for fixing or improving thing. So for example you could easily attach a video camera to a helmet with Sugru.
We also saw tons of masks and crafts and musical inventions. And we learned about some of the sessions the Science Gallery has been having where interested residents can talk about, plan and implement ideas to make the city better. One idea I loved was the idea of co-cooking. Taking cooking stations to different communities to teach people how to cook healthy meals. How smart!
We also walked all over the city. Lily took loads of pictures. We ate at some fancy-ish place where Lily ordered a super foods salad. It had to be really good for you because it tasted disgusting. The truffle chips on the other hand were quite good.
Filed under: Dun Laoghaire
Just to make sure that everyone is appropriately impressed, here’s a little background on the Forty Foot from Wikipedia…
The Forty Foot is a promontory on the southern tip of Dublin Bay at Sandycove, County Dublin, Ireland, from which people have been swimming in the Irish Sea all year round for some 250 years. … The opening section of Joyce’s Ulysses is set here, with the characters Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan being partly based on Joyce himself and Gogarty, respectively. [
So today the girls and I set out with our friend (from my MA program years ago) Taura to swim at 40 Foot. It used to be that 40 Foot was a place for naked men – only. Now swim suits are required and women are allowed. It’s cold – really cold – both the water and the air outside the water. And for a special treat there are jelly fish in the water. The bluish purple ones are OK. The brown ones are dangerous. Going in I saw a blue jelly fish. On the way out I saw a big brown jelly fish. We heard a story of someone getting stung last week – and we saw several apparently seasoned swimmers turn back due to jelly fish scare.
Taura, Aine and I made it into the water. To be fair, Taura was the only one who really swam. And I don’t know how as I lost feeling in my arms after about 2 minutes. I will say that I went completely into the water, which is something I rarely do in Dublin.
We capped off the expedition with a fun dinner in Glasthule. We went to a pub with Indian food. Yum!
Filed under: Dublin
We did the free walking tour of The Liberties. Pat Liddy gave the tour – his a tour guide of some note. There were more than 100 people on the tour – all Irish and all with blue hair. It was an interesting route. Well Patrick and I found it interesting. The girls not so much. And I think it was made less interesting with bad weather about every 15 minutes it would absolutely pour. One really nice thing was that the Viking Splash tour people saw us in the rain and gave out free rain ponchos for free. So that was really nice.
So here are snippets from the tour –
The Liberties are a series of areas in Dublin that in the 12 century were made regulation-free area. Or at least there were left to create their own regulation and structure and were absolved from regular Dublin regulation and taxes. Subsequently the areas and people from the areas are generally considered to be pretty independent, take care of it ourselves kind of people. The liberty we walked was West of St Patrick’s Cathedral – near Kevin St, Thomas St and Newmarket. It was an area of weavers. And has always had an industry focus.
We also stopped by The Coombe – former location of a big hospital. There is a memorial of sorts from the hospital – the old front stairs I think. The stairs now contain etched names of the characters from the day – such as Stab the Rasher, Bang Bang and others. Many people on the tour remembered the characters named.
Famous people from the area: Brenda Flicker and Imelda May. I think Patrick was very sad that we didn’t run into Imelda May on the tour.
We lived sort of near this area near Christchurch 20 years ago and have a couple of friends in the area. It is a very Dublin area.
Filed under: Dublin
Maybe I’ve mentioned – but the weather has been terrible this summer. But Lily and I finally decided that we’d had enough. We took a monster walk to Dalkey. Dalkey is a high end, seaside community. It’s a couple miles away – I suspect we probably had a good 6-mile or so walk. The views as you can see from the pictures below are beautiful. And we had a fun lunch. Sadly the restaurant that Lily really wanted to visit had closed. But we found a vegetarian-friendly place for her. (Which meant it wasn’t really the best for me.)
Filed under: Dublin
So what would make going to see the Stone Roses outside even better? Going with the same person you would have gone with 20 years ago! So I was thrilled to learn that my old friend Janet was going to the show too. She reminded me that we had seen Happy Mondays together back in the day. And amazingly enough the good weather held out for the show. So we went with 45,000 of our best friends to see the show in Phoenix Park.
It was lucky that the weather was good –because no matter how you slice it – it was 2-3 miles to walk to the part of the park with the show, which is a fun walk if the weather is good but could have been miserable it if had been raining. The show was good – it could have been louder – but everyone was singing along and they played all of the top hits from back in the day!
Filed under: Dublin
The weather has been dicey at best this summer. So we hoped that we’d get some good luck for Aine’s birthday because I knew she’s want to go for a picnic at Sea Point, which has become a tradition. And luckily we did get a decent day for her birthday. We had a nice picnic with the whole family and then the girls and I went for a walk down the West Pier in Dun Laoghaire. We didn’t see any seals, which was too bad – but we had a really nice day. Celebrating your birthday in Ireland isn’t always the best – so I was glad that it worked out for Aine. And really we chose to celebrate over 3 days to make sure that we’d be able to get to the beach.
Filed under: Edinburgh
So the best thing about TED, was TED – but only because TED is so good, because Edinburgh is still one of my favorite cities – and I did get to see some bits and pieces between sessions. Well really most of what I saw I saw on the first and last days – but I still saw some.
I met someone on the bus from the airport on the Edinburgh and we hung out until we could actually check into the hotel. We went to enjoy a drink at the café where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter. Luckily I happened to remember where it was from our last (aka only other) trip to Edinburgh. Also on one of my morning walks I actually saw a fox behind the Edinburgh Castle.
The rest of just sort of nice pictures of great parts of Edinburgh – no real accompanying stories.
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