Coasterville Commentary

TR: Kings Island - 4/26/09

2009-06-16T22:41:00.002-04:00

Trip Report: Kings Island
Mason, OH
April 26, 2009

***********

This was the second weekend of the season at Kings Island, and Rideman and I were so thrilled about Diamondbackwe wanted to go ride it again. We got started a bit late which meant we arrived to the park around 12:30. This meant, unfortunately that we arrived right along with the after church crowd. We had to wait a while to get throug the toll plaza and we were searching for a parking space when Rideman commented that it seems like there is always a space that opens up in the center of the lot. No sooner had he finished saying it, then a car pulls out and we dart into a nice close up parking space

We enter the park and head directly to Diamondback. We first noticed that the temporary queue has already been pretty much remoed except for a couple section to make sure the line forms alongside Rivertown Junction. We had been in line about 20 minutes or so when the ride broke down. What made the breakdown interesting is we saw a crew member climb the steep lifthill to 'comfort' the riders. He was a ball of energy and was going to race up those stairs at record pace. Yeah, that worke formaybe the first half of the climb, then it was more like the snails pace the rest of the way up. We found it was interesting that this seems to be the only ride that requires the ride operator to wear fall protection to climb the lift, but its not the full OSHA gear, so we conjectured it must be a park rule and not an OSHA requirment. Anyway, we get on the ride after about a 15 minute shut down so all told it might have taken about an hour. We get sent to Row 10 where I note the queue gate is nowhere near lined up with the seating row due to a support column. We were about as middle train as you can get and it still gives a pretty good ride.

After Diamonback we take a walk around the park We skip Beast but we opt to ride Backlot Stunt Coaster. We get to skip a few people by answering when they call for two riders, but it got us in the back row instead of the dull middle car. A fairmly ordinary ride on Backlot Stunt Coaster followed by a fiarly ordinary ride on Vortex. We look at the lines in X-Base but as usual they are just too long.

We follow that up with uneventful rides on the Red Racer and Adventure Express. The big thing about Adventure Express is that all the special effects were shut off. We head into Action Zone where, just like X-Base the lines are pretty long, and we wind up only taking a quick ride on Flight Deck before returning to International Street. We realize the park is going to be fairly crowded today, and decide to go to Eiffel Tower to get some nice photos of Diamonback and the rest of the park.

After spending a bit of time on top of Tower, we head back to Diamondback and take another ride. We enjoy Fruit Chills (I had watermelon and Dave had Strawberry) while waiting in line through the almost full queue area. Rideman timed the time to eat the Chills as about 13 minutes, and thats with using the flimsiest spoons the park could find. This time we request and recieve the back seat. Wow, even better, I really think Diamonback is a back seat ride. We take another lap around the park where we score rides on Shake, Rattle and Roll and Zephyr.

We head into X-Base and I talk Rideman into a ride on Firehawk. Rideman had not ridden Firehawk since it left Geauga Lake a few seasons ago, mainly due to the fact the ride was usually a walk on at Geauga Lake and it usually 1-2 hours wait at Kings Island. We had waited about 40 minutes and were right up to the part of the line where the grouper directs you to go to either the left or right station when the ride breaks down. In fact, the ride is down for about 20 minutes and I am fearful that Rideman will want to bail out of line, and Firehawk is my second favorite coaster in the park. Not to mention, I wanted to ensure Rideman at least got a ride on Firehawk. So all in all about 75 minutes later we are taking a ride on Firehawk. I still really like it, but I don't think Rideman liked it as much as I do.

While waiting for Firehawk, Rideman ecieveda call from another coaster enthusiast who agreed to meet us at the Firehawk exit. He had not gotten to ride Diamonback yet, so thats where we headed. Ron was a bit concerned about his size though I didn't think he would have any issues. We show Ron to the super hi tech electric test seat that gives you a positive red light or green light after you pull the bar down. I notice a slight change in the programming of the test seat. The first week, the light was off untilthe lap bar has been pulled back far enough, now the light is red until the lap bar is pulled back far enough, then it changed to green. We started joking around calling the electric test seat an "Electric Chair"

All in all we take a ride on Diamondback and were able to get right back into line just before the park closed to bring my total count for the day to 4 and the season to 6 Diamondback rides. We stop by the blue ice cream stand to get some courtesy ice water. We figure this should hold us until we get some dinner. The three of us proceed to go to Bob Evans to have a suprigly good meal for an after park close meal.

Next up: Ride Warriors Weekend, and that TR is already posted!

I am now only three KI TR's in arrears - two from Fall of 2008, and Winter SOAR.

TR: Kings Island - Ride Warrors Weekend - May 9-10, 2009

2009-06-09T22:26:00.002-04:00

Trip Report: Ride Warriors Weekend at KI
Kings Island
May 9-10, 2009

*****************

On this weekend, the park decided to host a big park sponsored event. The park had been teasing the event since January, but real details were scarce until about two weeks before the event. I was happy to see that they were making use of their online ticket system for the event. For Gold/Plat pass, you merely had to fill out a registration form, no ticket purchase required unless you wanted to pay the extra money for the picnic lunch. So I registered as soon as I could and was set to attend the event.

I arrived at the park around 8am on the first day. I was surprised to see the parking toll collectors already at it, but thats what passes are for. I headed right up to the registration tables by the old season pass gate. Registration was simple, I gave them my name while showing my ACE card. They put a soft drink wristband on my wrist, hand me an event lanyard and a full color event program. I headed into the park using the specially marked metal detectors which allows me to dodge the general public who is also gathering at the gate.

I have no trouble clearing security and the admission gate using just my gold pass. I head up International Stret to the Gold Pass early entrance gate. It seems late arrivals are being held here, and then every 5-10 minutes a park representative is escorting groups back to the ERT area. All told I don't get to the ERT area until nearly 8:30. Morning ERT is scheduled to be Beast, Italian Job and Vortex, with Beast ERT ending at 9:00 so it can open to gold pass holders. Given that knowledge I head to Beast.

My first Beast ride, I just want a seat, so I take seat 5. I am about to board, when uh oh, we are not boarding this train. There goes another 10-15 minutes as they pull a train off and send it to storage. The ride itself was pretty good, love that new smoother helix. As I am walking down the exit ramp, I hear Diamondback will be added to ERT. Not wanting to venture too far, I take aother ride on Beast before heading to Diamondback.

I get to Diamonback just as ERT is being 'moved' there. I enter the queue and get to the station platform just in time to see the season pass running of the bulls end with quizzcal "How did they get here already?" looks. I beleive I scored 4 rides on Diamonback during the ERT period in various seats.

After the general public were admitted the line for Diamondback started snaking through Rivertown and got back as far as across from the train station. Time to ride something else.

I start touring the park and note Crypt is open. The line is just back into the ante chamber, so I have a 2 cycle wait to get on the ride. This time was worth it as this may have been one of the last day the gondola was flipping like a good Top Spin. Still not a great Top Spin, but passable. Upon exiting Crypt I instantly noted how the Crypt exit path makes the ideal Diamondback photo observation area and take several photos.

By the time I finished that, had a comfort stop, and got a free soft drink, it was time for the Beast walk back. Beast walkback was much the same as other Beast walkbacks, except Cedar Fair only takes you back as far as the turn after the first tunnel, whereas Paramount used to take you all the way to the backmost reaches of the Beast. Still, got lots more photos and then continued on my tour.

I proceeded to do the standard lap of the park, grabbing a ride on Italian Job (30-40 mins for a middle of the train seat), and about 10-20 minutes for Vortex. I have seen Vortex use its limited station queue area more this season than I have for years. I do the usual look at X-Base, decline the rides due to the long wait times, and go ahead and continue my tour with a ride on Racer. Racer line was out to the midway with none of the switchbacks open. I ride Blue Racer as I think to myself there is still a good coaster here begging to be let out.

After Racer I grab one of the French Bread Pizzas at Midway Eats and Treats along with a free drink. I must say the french bread pizza is actually rather decent for $5. After my snack, I took a ride on Adventure Express in the back car, it had almost a full queue but that doesn't take tooo long. Adventure Express is running its usual reliable self, except with all the special effects turned off. Still only 2 train operation as well.

From Adventure Express I start to realize the lines are getting longer. I decide to grab a quick ride on Viking Fury and thats when Rideman annopunces is arrival. Operations could be improved a bit at Viking Fury, but soon I join Rideman at the exit to the ride.

We cut through Festhaus and head to Action Zone. Bad call, Delirum line is too long, Son of Beast line is too long, Flight Deck line is too long, we look through the On Location shop. We stop ourselves short of walking to Invertigo, knowing it would just be another crowded spot.

We stat lapp 2 of the park, we decide Adventure Express is probably our best bet, sure the queue is full but its one of the shortest waits in the park, Much like our first ride except we find more enthusiasts to join our happy group. We stop in Festhaus for drinks and they comment how they have a scavenger hunt entry form that both Rideman and I ween't even offered. We head towards Nickleodeon to try to get some items for their hunt papers. We wind up taking a ride on Scooby Doo and the Haunted Castle. Its was a fairly ordinary ride, about the only oddity is my score ended up ended up being something goofy like 1769 with is odd since each target is supposed to score 30.

From there we stop at Greaters for ice cream and then Skyline for free drinks. Its time to head to the Kings Island theater for the presentations. We are treated to some old park photos on our way in, and a preview real for the memorial day weekend events. This is followed up by speeches and Q&A's by a park operations person, Don Helbig, and Jeff Gramke. We also had a video presentation by Tom Rebbie. If you were at the Beasts 25th birthday event, Tom told most of the same anecdotes as at that event. We did learn that the reason Beast has tunnels was out of necessity, and the idea of an underground tunnel was apparently unheard of at the time. They talked about the Beast rehab and how they widened the helix radius slightly. The operations person became the subject of a whine session about line jumping, smoking, the unfair treatment/confusion of platinum passholders, and that sort of thing. (Note, they were all very real concerns, just probably not how the speaker wanted to spend his time).

After the presentations in the theatre we had about an hour until the Beast's birthday party, which we spend partially riding Fairly Odd Coaster. We head back to the Beast Birthday party in the picnic grove. Imagine a wedding reception: You arrive, there are bowls of chips and pretzels, there is a DJ spinning records (in this case a lot of 1979 era music), there are people serving cake. On the way in we filled out a raffle ticket, and were given a free refillable souvenier cup which we can begin using at the picnic groves sfot drink stands, which were opened as a self service operation. They had Little Bill out first, and Scooby later. They did a Locomotion like dance "EVerybody get behind Little Bill and ride the Little Bill Coaster" to which some smart alecks chanted "We're to tall to ride the Little Bill Coaster" Every 15 minutes or so they gave away some door prizes, I didn't win but Rideman won one of the promotional displays, one that shows how Rivertown looked before the renovations. They cleverlyt had a table at one end showing Diamondback merchandise that you too can buy during ERT in the Diamonback gift shop. They also ordered way too much cake, "Everybody come back for as much cake as you want, go ahead get a sugar high!"

The party lasts about an hour and half then we go back into the park,. We decide to start our ERT eraly by taking 2 or 3 Diamondback rides with the public to close out the park day. Then instead of heading toward the front of the park, we headed to Beast. We didn't ride Beast but that was where they wanted us to all wait for the park to clear. Once the park cleared, ERT was on. At this point the single rider line was closed, and the seat assigner was sent away, now its go ahead cram the station, get in any seat queue you want. Rideman described it as a NAPHA like ERT, after the first hour, only about half the people were still riding, once midnight hit, it was only the die hards. By midnight, unless you wanted a front or back seat ride, it was a total walk on., So for the ERT time, the first couple laps we paused between rides to chat in the gift shop, besides on ride photos were FREE during the night ERT as long as you elected electronic delivery via email. After about 2 or 3 rides, Rideman and I got sperated, he is more social during ERT than I am, particularly with a new ride. I don't know ow his night ended, but by lap 4 I was perfecting the dash down the exit ramp, swerve around the displays in the gift shop, out the gift shop, door, down the midway, and back through the empty queue maze and riht back onto the next available train, and taking most of my rides in rows 2-4 or 12-15. All told at the end of Day 1 of the event, I had racked up something like 17 Diamondback rides.

We headed back to Cincinnati, and we added a Steak N Shake stop on the ride home, so after factoing in not getting out of the parking lot till 1:30 or so due to socialzing, we didn't get to Coasterville until like 2:30 or 3AM. We also wanted to do the morning ERT, thats starts out at 8AM, why do I think we aren't going to make it?

Morning ERT was especially appealing becuase it was shceduled for X-Base, where the lines are usually so long we can't get any riding done. Doesn't matter, we still didn't get to the park until 8:30, then we had to check in all over again, get new wristbands and everything. We entered the park and this time Don Helbig escorted us as far as Eiffel Tower, and asked if we knew our way, then we headed the rest of the way ourselves.

We bypassed Racer, why waste X-Base ERT on Racer? We headed to X-Base to learn Firehawk was down, as it would be all day. We rode Flight of Fear which was about a 15 minute wait owing to want to ride in te front seat. I get stapled into the ride to the point where I didn't really enjoy the ride, but it was worth riding becuase it wqas running with all the serivce lights on in the main ride buidling offering a rather unique ride experience for this. We exit and I announce I'd rather not ride it again, and I decide to take advantage of the fact they decided to open Vortex in replacemet of Firehawk. On a side note, Rideman tells me that on a later Flight of Fear ride during ERT he sat in the seat I had trouble with and reported back it has a shorter seatbelt than most other seats.

Meanwhile, I take back seat ride on Vortex, enjoy the floater air, and am dismayed they are making everybody walk around with an almot empty station. I get back in line and decide if its a one and done, I'm going to Row 1. I wait a train to get to ride in row 1, and another single rider joins me. I take a great front seat Vortex ride, we get back to the station and there is nobody waiting at the station gates. I ask about a reride, and the crew allows us to stay on for a second lap. At this time its about 9:25, and Don Helbig mentioned the rope by Juke Box Cafe would be temproarily dropped at 9:30 to allow people to leave the ERT area to ride Beast or Diamonback with the gold pass people. I head to DIamondback and this time the running of the bulls got to the ride faster, I might as well have ridden Beast. I think it took 20 minutes to get one ride, by which time Rideman joined me. He did ride Beast first, and so we take another DIamondback ride together. I am happy to report they had the soft drink stand in front of Diamondback open for the morning ERT. They weren't set up to sell food, but they were setup to pull free drinks, next year I hope they have that open for the night ERT.

Once the public enters the park, we let them have DIamondback, its time to actually ride the rides, since for the most part the park was too crowded yesterday.

We start with Reptar. We both had misgivings about riding Reptar due to our sizes, I evne joked "Double Rider Rejection" coming up. Remarkably we both fit into Reptar, it may have been a snug fit but we did fit. We nostalgically reembered when you used to have to walk the lift on the rides first weekend. All in all not a bad little ride. We next head to Avatar, where we manage to score an end seat ride. It had been so long since we had one of those it was refreshing. We continued with a ride on Fairly Odd Coaster before heading to Action Zone.

Once in Action Zone, we spotted a 15 minute wait for Invertigo. We took the rare opportunity and owing to a bottleneck in the station even got an end seat out of the deal. Invertigo is another neat ride that suffers from low capacity. We continue around to Flight Deck, which unlike yesterday is now a walk on.

We note its not even noon yet and we have alost hit all the E ticket rides. We skip Son of Beast for now, and even though Skycoasteris only $5 Rideman vividly remembers the hour+ wait we had two years ago "Don't even think about it".

We cut through Festhaus where we stop and talk to some fellow park nuts. People are starting to tire out, what with the late night and early morning. Our talk gets interrupted when they play a teaser song from the country music show at full volume, with the threat the show starts in 15 minutes. We were still around when the show started in 15 minutes, and it was too funny seeing people scrambling for the exits.

We then take time out fo our days to call our Mothers, I mean it is Mother's Day afterall. After that, we decide to grab lunch. Usually food means either a catered food event or leaving the park. The free drinks wristband makes the euqation more interesting. While food prices int he park are only slightly marked up, its the drinks that are usually the deal breaker. We go to International Street Skyline and figure out that even though the chili itself is marked up, since we aren't paying for drinks, it would wind up costing us the same as if we left the park to go to Skyline, and we don't have to tip here. So, yes you are reading this right, we ate lunch inside the park!

After having lunch, I bought some insurance in the form of a gift from the Glass Blower shop for my mom (she loves blown glass) . We decided to run our gift shop runs out to the car, and reentered the park.

We heade dback to Diamondback and took another spin. We met up with another enthusiast but our visit was short lived as he had to make use of his picnic grove ticket. Dave and I took another lap around the park, this time passing up more stuff than usual. I fact I think it was more a walk around the park, we take a lot of time analyzing the back half of Coney since we both think that area is currently underutilized. We get some free drinks at times, we note FIrehawk is still closed, we do take a ride on Vortex just for the sake of riding something. We also make stops at Racer (blue side), where Rideman gets his usual torque lock ride which means he has sowrn off both Racer and Beast for the remainder of the season.

We do take another ride on Adventure Express, and get into the Delirium queue. The queue is about half full but we decide to wait it out. Not even one full cycle later the ride goes down mechanical. We decide to wait it out. It takes about15-20 minutes by which time most of the queue has abandoned ship so we are in the second group when it reopens. As Rideman noted, all in all we probably spent the same amount of time as if the ride had operted normally. Delirium is a ride worth riding at all costs, anyway, as its one of the parks best rides. I also not that even thought Crypt and Delirum appear to use the same seats, these seats are more accomodating than Crypts.

We next head to Son of Beast to round out the e-ticket rides we can get, I think from here out we both neat Italian Job to finish the set of operating coasters, and I need a Beast ride. We ride Son of Beast in a "take a seat, any seat" mode as the line was close to 30 minutes long. We got rewarded with the usual horridly rough ride.

At this point we take a run through the Emporium shop (ever notice how many parks call their main shop the Emporium?), and head to Italian Job. The good news is the Italian Job line has shrunk since last we looked at it, and we got assigned to row 1. The only negative is they insisted on mega stapling me. I just don't get it.

After Italian Job, Dave heads right to Diamondback, and I score a walk on ride on Beast. At least I finished the set today. At this point I high tail it to Diamondback. I have a gamble to make here. One of the event perks is one ride on Diamondback after the park closes tonight, call it a mini ERT. I look at the line, it looks like they have enough riders to go to close, but the neet up point is again, way back at Beast. I figure I can take a ride here with the GP, or I can retrace my steps back to Beast and join that group. Either way I get 1 ride. But if I ride with the GP, maybe I can start heading back towards Beast afterwards and fall in with the group, and thus get two rides. I deicde to take the GP ride. I wait out the line and am dismayed becuase by the time I go down the stairs to go u nder the track, they have admitted the Ride Warriors group to the closed off queue. Looks like I lost the gamble, but I still get paid even money 1 wait: 1 ride. I'll take gambles like that all day. By the time I get to the top of the station stairs the end of the queue is startingto go dow under the track. I take a ride in my assigned seat. I exit the ride, the park is clearly already closed, the ERT line is laready completely inside the station. I remember, "It never hurts to ask, all they can say is no" and remember that parks often make excpetions or turn a kind eye during events. I fly through the gift shop and head to the closed ride entrance. There are some ride operators and some green shirted GR staff huddled around the ride entrance.

I pull the lanyard out from under my t-shirt and start to ask "Am I too late?" I don't need to, the entrance gate is opened for me and I fall in right behind somebody toting a tripod up to the station. I get up to the station, and note there are still sizeablelines for the front and back seats. Unlike standard practice they are letting people wait out for preferred seats. I head to Row 14, the backmost empty seat queue. My gamble then really pays off I wind up getting 4:1 odds, as I get three more rides as they allow me (and anybody else in non desired seats) to stay on until they clear out the front and back seat lines. Woo-Hoo!!!!

We deicde to forgo the usual after park meal tonight, but I do wind up getting the Kings Island under glass snowglobe from the DB Trading Post. And with that we leave the park after a mostly succesful event.

And with that, I am happy as I am now just 5 KI trips in arrears writing TR's.

TR: Kings Island - May 17, 2009

2009-06-09T21:26:00.003-04:00

Trip Report: Kings Island
May 17, 2009

Welcome to yet another trip I made to Kings Island, when I finish this report I will only be 6 more Kings Island TR's in arrears. Ohh Boy.

Today we welcome a special guest star to Coasterville's Coasting Adventures, JerryD. Jerry is a professed morning person (I still don't understand the whole morning person thing), and so we are at the park by 9:10, where we easily clear parking tolls with Jerry's parking pass, score a prime spot in Gold Pass parking (and witness the car ahead of us shamlessly barrel into Gold Pass parking without even slowing down, depsite the shouts of the parking attendant), easily clear security, Jerry clears Guest Relations with his Platinum Pass, and we are in the park by 9:15.

Today, Gold Pass ERT is set to start at 9:30, and I note instead of a mob waiting by the Gold Pass gate, they have one orderly single file line that by this time reached all the way from near the three flagpoles to the lobby of the International Restaurant. Various park management types were chatting it up with the guests while we waited for the gate to open. It was a quick flash your pass to the guard as you walked by and then we headed to International Street. Dutifully following the signs to Diamondback, we arrive at the ride just as it is opening.

We get expressed through an empty queue house and find ourselves assigned to an okay spot towards the middle of the train in the third train out for the day. We start the day with another airtime filled Diamondback ride. We get back to the brakes and we note the train ahead of us has not left the station yet, and is not being loaded, we note the train behind us come to a stop on the final brakes. Uh, oh this isn't good. Ride operators come out to our train to inform us of the situation, that's never good. A good 5-10 minutes later they are able to advance our train into the station where they let us exit, but again do not load the train. We exit the ride and since the ride is clearly down we take the time for a pitstop, and Jerry can find a way to store his rental car keys in such way that will not cause him discomfort on Diamondback. I mean really, they put both keys and both remotes, as well as a tag on one large keyring that can't be opened. What are the rental car companies thinking?

We rejoin the line for the closed Diamondback, after all its 9:50, the only other ride open at this time is the Beast. We figure there is nothing to be lost by waiting here, and although people are constantly streaming out of the entrance gate, they have not yet cleared the station. At about 10:05 we are practically at the ride entrance gate but seeing no dicernable progress we decide to try to find an open ride.

We head back Rivertown, and I point out the new Haystack Drier to Jerry, but we skip that, the train, the log flume, and the rapids ride and make our way to Crypt. I am half amazed to find Crypt open. The word on the forums is that Cryt has been changed again, and for the worse. Get ready for a train wreck. (Choo-Choo) We enter the Crypt building and are allowed to proceed directly to what was the preshow room, now Death Bat's room. I note a gate at the end of the ante chamber before the preshow room, and the operator is opening and closing the gate between groups instead of just keeping it open until preshow fills, or its time to ride. At least we get choice of rows, thats some small consolation. I look ahead and clearly notice the overhead door seperating the preshow room from the ride chamber no longer closes, replaced by safety gates between preshow and the ride chamber. At the appropriate time, the gates are opened and we board the gondola. People move pretty much, but not all the way to the right, and take seats. We hear the request to "Please move 3 seats to the right" Everybody shifts three seats right. There is another request "Please move 6 seats to the right", there are no more empty seats to move to. They ask again in a "Are you deaf or stupid?" tone. Finally after they decide verbal intructions aren't working, the operator comes to our row and says "Please move to the right", again there are no seats to move to. Then he finally says "Everybody move 6 seats towards me" He is standing to the LEFT of us. Therin lies the problem. His right is our left.

Anyway, the ride finally starts, and now you can forget the music, you can forget the fancy lights, you can forget any powerful flipping. The ride operates pretty much in large Ferris Wheel mode, you do go upside down twice per ride, and thats becuase the lock the gondola as it goes around. You know its a bad ride when the kids are complaining about it. As we exited the ride, the people on my cycle made it clear to the operators that they did not particularly enjoy their ride.

Okay, until we have some improvements, that is it for that ride. Sorry Don Helbig, but your tweet advertising a new soundtrack isn't going to cut it. We head next for Beast. Beast is a walkon and we walk right to the back car. Jerry scolds me for taking the back seat when I get to ride Beast a lot more than he does. Since both of us are of nice size, we decided to split up for both our comforts, I change seats with him and am glad to move to a non wheel seat. I really do like the retracking they did in the Helix, the ride has been running better than it has in years, but that doesn't stop it from being a pretty overrated ride.

We continue our tour of the park, this time stopping at Italian Job. They really should open the shortcut gate when the line is short, as this morning everybody was doing the Queue Rail Vault or Duck to avoid the long excessive trip down to, through, and back up from the disused queuehouse. We get our seat assignment, and we are lucky enough to draw row 1. Yeah, we get a little airtime, and they don't insist on stapling me like they did last week. The ride is a fun ride but not too thrilling. Jerry had not ridden since Italian Job media day, so he got to really notice how badly the special effects have broken down.

We continue the coaster tour with a near walk on Vortex ride in the front row of the back car. Nothing special here folks, move along. We start to head into X-Base and note a huge group all headed down the path to X-Base right before we arrived, so we passed this for now. We also passed Racer, and Adventure Express to head into Action Zone.

We do stop at Delirium, which has about a 1/3 full queue house. We wait a few cycles, we get loaded onto the ride, we get unloaded from the ride and sent back to the bull pen. Uh oh, its a problem that is best solved with a garden hose. "Clean up on Aisle Delirium!" "Another Satisifed Customer!" I expect them to run the ride empty to spin dry it, but no except for the people with seats near the affected area, the ride is immediately reloaded and we go for a ride. This is my favorite flat ride in the park, one of Paramount's better moves.

We exit Delirium, bypass the go-karts and head to Son of Beast. Uh Oh, Son of Beast is closed. What a shame! Neither of us look too sad at that revelation. We decide to pass up Flight Deck. (Jerry has been to the park multiple times, and has thus earned the right to skip rides) We note the Extreme Skyflyer is only $5 today. $5 each and about 20-30 minutes later and we are being harnessed. I note they have added a knotted rope loop to the footbar but I'm not sure what thats about. We have both flown this several times, which causes the ride operators to show concern if we enjoyed ourselves when we aren't screaming or freaking out during the ride. We follow the usual procedure, decide Jerry can pull this time. I note during the final checks before they lower the lift they call out what sounds like "Two Flags, Two Beaners, Two Flyers Ready to Go" I can't figure out what Flags reffers to in this context. We go up, we don't hesitate to pull when instructed, and Jerry leans way to one side which causes us to get the Spinning Skycoaster Experience. I am amazed how even the first drop just doen't do much for me anymore. I remember my first ride I thought the first drop was going in slow motion as my life was passing in front of my face. All in all a fun experience.

We exit Extreme Skyflyer and decide to bypass Drop Tower (I mean after we just did the brakeless freefall ride!), Congo Falls and decided the line for Invertigo looked a bit long. We headed back to X-Base. Flight of Fear and Firehawk were each posting about an hour wait. We decide to wait for Firehawk. One slow moving line later we are being shown to the other station where you have to go down stairs, cross under the track, then back up. Firehawk itself is the park's second best coaster behind Diamondback, shame the wait for it is alsways so long. Yes I ride in the arms extended Superman pose.

At this time we decide its already like 3pm, the park closes at 8pm. We head back to Diamonback and proceed to spend the next 5 hours gettng to know Diamondback. All in all we score like 17 more rides on Diamondback. We use the single ride line at times when it looks shorter, and we get awarded with some back of the train rides, some close to the front rides, a lot of mid train rides. We keep trying and keep gettng rejected trying to request the front seat. Finally about 11 rides into the session we finally get that coveted front seat, lean over the clamshell intense ride. That's a real neat ride, and I'm torn beteween that experience and the airtime filled back car, I think I have to give the edge to the back car.

Halfway through our ride session, Jerry mentions he has never ridden Avatar. We go to ride Avatar and get awarded with sucky middle of the bench middle of the car seats. Enough of that, its back to Diamondback.

Don Flint finally decided to show up around 6:30, and the lot of us manage to get 4 or 5 more Diamondback rides after he arrives. I know I love DIamondback, and considering its the conly coaster Jerry really seemed interested in, I take it he really liked it as well.

After the park closed down for the night, we all met up at Culvers (Jerry, Don, Don's mom, and myself) for a post park visit celebration.

Yeah, now only 6 more KI TRs to go!!!

TR: Holiwood Nights (5/29-31, 2009) - Holiday World + stops at SFKK and KI

2009-06-01T20:56:00.004-04:00

Trip Report: HoliWood Nights Weekend
Featuring stops at:
Holiday World (5/29-5/30)
Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom (5/31)
Kings Island (5/31)

********************************
"A coaster event so great it included divine intervention"
********************************

Okay, welcome to the official start of the 2009 Summer season, preview weekends are over and itstime to start the main season with the Coaster Enthusiasts Family Reunion aka HoliWood Nights at Holiday World.

I started my day May 29th with the pre-event ritual, a buffet luncheon at the local Indian restaurant. Trust me, there is nothing like Chicken Curry, rice, and Nan to coat the stomach and prepare it for the three days ahead I would advise, however, not waiting until the day of the event to start getting your system used to Indian cuisine, lest you suffer the consequences.

When Rideman picked me up, he noted my American flag was wrapped around its pole, despite the fact I have a special pole that is designed to prevent that from happening. He comment s "I thought that wasn't supposed to happen with that pole" In truth it doesn't very often, but o solution is perfect. I then left Coasterville around 4pm which meant we got to deal with downtown Cincinnati during rush hour, which wasn't bad this year, we even sailed through Louisville and were thankful we weren't heading east. We were all smiles and making time until we got mid way through Indiana when the highway was cut down to one lane each way moving 40mph instead of the usual 70mph. That was painfully slow. Eventually we made our way to Exit 63, and I am surprised there isn't a traffic light at the exit, what with the number of people heading to Holiday World from points east, and having tomake a left turn off the exit. We then start heading down the 7 mile drive from the exit to the park chucking that this is the point where first time park visitors are pulling out their maps scratchng their heads.

It used to be the first sighting of the park was when you drove around the back of HoliDogs FunTown, then the Voyage became the beacon indicating you were nearing the park, now its Pilgrims Plunge you see first. We had heard Santa Claus got its first ever trafic light this year (they ARE red and green afterall), we had conjectured it would be at the intersection where you make the turn to go to either the Raven or Legend lot, but instead it is located at the turn near Fun Town. I guess it does help at the end of the night since anybody exiting towards Exit 63 has to make that left. Interestingly, we note evidence of a new road going straight at what was formerly a three way intersection, the new road might only be 50 feet long at this point, but it has arrows on the right side pointing in. We combined that with the recent news the park was negotiating more real estate to expand the Legend lot, along with evidence the Legend lot is undergoing a lot of work, that we conjectured there may be a time when the Raven lot will cease to exist as we know it, which will allow the park to expand to fill in the Raven lot, and all parking will be at the Legend lot and you will enter the park via the tunnel under the road, Kennywood style.

We pull into the Raven lot and try to vulture (or is that Raven) a space as close to the front gate as possible, always a fun challenge due to the layout of the front of the parking lot consisting of dead head rows where you pull in, find out the space you were going to grab is filled with a compact car or light stanchion and then have to back out of the row. We score a parking space near the front of the lot and do our best salmon imitation as we are trying to get to the park gate as swarms of people are trying to get out to their cars. We make our way to the front gate plaza and we find a nice crowd waiting at the check in windows and another crowd gathered outside the gates. Yep the reunion has started, as soon as people got checked in they were joining the crowd of people milling around outside the park waiting for the first night ERT.

Check in was an efficient process with two lanes for pre-registered people and one lane for ticket sales. I got to the window, showed my ID and ACE card, the checked my name, then handed me a t-shirt and my FUNvelope containing the usual contents: nametag, ticket strip with admission and meal tickets, and a coupon sheet. The check in hostess was taking the time to explain the ticket sheet, then handed me an itinerary after pointing out the key important parts. They even took the time to circle in highlighter the fact I needed to be there by 8:15AM or no Morning ERT for me. I pretty much decided right then and there that I would be bagging on the morning ERT. I also recieved a flyer for the CoasterBuzz event in the fall, I will take that event under consideration.

We then followed more Holiday World event ritual by quickly returning to our car to drop off everything except the nametags and the Friday night tickets. It may seem silly but we saw a space in the first non handicap row of the parking lot and so we moved the car up to what is literally the nearest non-handicap space in the lot. We return to the front gate plaza to join the reunion. The big topic of conversation was the closed rides board which indicated both Legend and Pilgrim Plunge were down for the day. We didn't linger long so we could take care of some post multi hour travel needs. By this time it was 6:40 and we weren't sure if they would let us enter the park now or if we would have to wait outside until ERT begins. We entered the park and the reunion moved to by the Appluase fountain. We chatted there until we heard Will and Pat Koch on the PA system announcing the park had been closed for 30 minutes, telling us about return visit offers, its a very friendly touch on the usual "Park's closed, get out now" recording. We noticed there were a fair number of general pubic also lingering about the area, and figured we would help the park be able to give the all clear for ERT if we moved on to the picnic grove.

We were walking towards the Picnic Grove when we met up with Pat Koch near the Alamo, and proceeded to walk part of the way to the Pincic Grove with her. I think we got distracted when we noted what might be the only test seat for a rapids ride. We entered the picnic grove just in time to hear the stories about Legend blowing a gearbox and a dedicated Holiday World staffer making a mad drive from the park to Cincinnati, OH to have the gearbox serviced, then making te dad drive back to the park, then getting the gearbox installed, and tested. Yes, they had it running in time for the evening ERT!!! The second story was about Pilgrims Plunge was down since Wednesday, it blew a shaft encoder, a specialty part that needs to come from the Intamin factory in Germany. Its status at the time was somewhere between Philadelpiha and a town just north of the park They apologized that Plunge would not be available for Friday ERT, but Will is refreshing the UPS tracking page every 30 seconds, and has the UPS agent in the local depot instructe to page him as soon asthe package arrives. Word has it that Will got the call at 5:30AM, and went out picked it up, and the park had the ride operational for Saturday morning ERT! We then went through a detailed explanation of the event schedule, during whch Dave Althoff got a shout out, a dishonrable mention for having to pay the Procrastination Tax, actually.

There wasa moment of silence for some fellow enthusiasts who had recently passed away, then we started Friday ERT.

We decided to head up to dinner first, noting the Legend was open, but instead taking a spin on the Raven as our first ride, hey it beats walkinng up the hill. Our first ride was in the front row of the back car and it was already performing nicely. We headed to Kringles Kafe where we each polished off 4 slices of Sausage pizza with its famous thick soft doughy crust, a pile of potato chips and a block of fudge. We met up with more friends at dinner, and after dinner just outside Kringles. Man I'm gonna miss somebody if I try to remember them all, but hello again to Klockster, the Drabeks, David Cornell, the guys from Texas, Kory and Chad, the dude who likes old rides who is building an aircraft we met in the bumper cars line, the Nungesters, and much,much more.

After dinner, it was time to ride,we continued Coaster Foreplay with another quality ride on Raven, this time in that wonderful back seat before heading onto Legend. Legend was a near walk on, we rode towards the front, and sure Legend was squealing and was only running one train, but lets remember it was down all day so let's just be grateful it was open. One ride on Legend, and we can say that the Legend is back! Legend had a spell when it wasn't really running as good as it did when it first opened, but these last couple years they have done a lot to get it back to the way when it opened.

After Legend, we made a stop at Hollowswings which the park had graciously substituted for Pilgrims Plunge. When we arrived the ride was running empty to drum up business, when we boarded there were maybe half a dozen peope on the ride, when our ride ended at least one lane of the queue maze was full. The ride itself was fun with the spooky music and is a lot smoother ride than the Zierrer. Hallowsings is a custom themed Zamperla Flying Trapeeze.

After Hallowsings, it was time to stop stalling and get ourselved down to Voyage. Voyage was a walk on in anywhwere except the front and back seats. We started wonering where everybody was, as it seemed like all the rides were walk ons, yet we saw a good size group in the picni grove. Our first Voyage ride was a middle car ride just to get on the ride, and we were impressed with that. Then we took a front car ride in row 2, and that was even better, then another ridein maybe car 3. Around the time we had started hearing people saw the back seat is too intense. We took that as a challenge, and headed to the back seat. Wow! Extreme airtime on every drop, a devine triple down, and the ride seemed to be running all out in extreme mode. Little did we now what we would be thinking in 24 hours, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

We continued to ride Voyage until about 10:15 (for a 10:30 park close), then headed to Raven so we would not have to walk up the hill by Raven. Thats not to say we didn't avoid the hill between Thanksgiving and Haloween, and we realized once again that Holiday World is a very hilly park. We finished night one with 2 or 3 back to back rides on Raven until they shut the rides down for night one. We headed out of the park, thanking Pat, Will, and Paula on our way out

We headed to our car, and then headed to our hotel in Tell City. It seems just about every hotel near the park charges at least $100 a night, but we found a Days Inn in Tell City for only like $61 a night. Obviously a lot of other Holiwood Nights attendees also found the Days Inn as walking the hotel halls we didn't spot one otherguest that didn't have a coaster shirt of some type on. After dealing with the uneven parking lot, and finding our room despite the misleading directions we were given by the desk clerk we soon found our room and settled in After getting the air conditioner cranked up, and electronics chargers charging we went out to source a late night snack. We first stopped at the Super WalMart Tell City, clearly the city's big hang out spot. Snack supplies sourced, we next found the only open food in Tell City, a Taco Bell drive through. I can't say it better than Rideman did when he said "You know somethings wrong when late night Taco Bell helps cure the digestive issues casued by the pizza" Dave, I'm telling you, coating your stomach with chicken curry does wonders!

We had alread made the decision to skip the waterpark ERT, well we also decided to sleep in knowing we had a late night ahead of us. I think we fnally got to the park around 1pm after a wild goose chase to Dale, but we did learn the Denny's has been moved, as has the freeway exit. By this time the Raven lot was marked as full, so we headed to the Legend lot and found a space within a reasonable distance of the tunnel. Evidence of a lot of work going on in the Legend lot os obvious as much of the back half is coned off, and it looks like they are building a tram circle in the front of the lot. A disused parking trams sits in the Legend lot. We go through the tunne and we can see the front gate straight ahead of just accross the Raven parking lot, unfortunately the park has built a chain link fence to ensure you can't cut through the lot, you have to walk all the way to the front of the Raven lot and walk around the perimieter of the Raven lot to the park gates. I know the park caters to a lot of children, but this just seems to be overkill, like they don't trust you with the basic skill of safely walking through a parking lot. I notice the park is also building a new tram circle in front of the park gates, which I think will probably be used for the Legend lot tram, as they already have a Raven lot tram circle and tram path along one side of the Raven lot.

We noticed no rides marked as closed, so we entered the park just in time for an anoyance rain to start coming down. We were hungry not having had breakfast or lunch yet, so we headed directly to the Plymouth Rock Cafe. We walked right up to the serving line where I opted for roast turkey, dressing, corn on the cob, sweet potato casserole, dinner roll, butter, pumpkin pie and a sweet tea, all for just around $12. It would be hard to find that kind of meal at that price at a casual dining restaurant outside of the park. Plymouth Rock Cafe still serves up good food, at a great value, but it still suffers from a bad bottleneck at the check out stands that it has had ever since it opened. I make my way out to a table, and I was pleasantly surprised to see apple butter on the condiment bar. We proceeded to sit down to lunch with Kory and his family. It was a great relaxing meal.

After lunch Rideman wanted to fetch something from his car, so I took a back seat on Voyage while I was waiting for him. Voyage, while running above average was not quite up to last night. I do, however, appreciate the free lockers for cameras and the like. After my ride I met up with Rideman who surprised me as I was expecting him to come down the hill from Halloween, and he instead entered through Splashin Safari.

We next headed to Pilgrims Plunge, the queue house was maybe half full and sports the largest cieling fan known to man. At the end of the main queue house is an ride attendant who has the job of controlling access to the ride. You see the people entering the ride from the queue area, and the people exiting the ride from the ride both enter this area where there are loose article shelves and courtesy lockers for your use. You get time to stow your stuff, remembering you can take your shirts, shoes and socks off for this ride. After you access the lockers this host has the job of making sure those enterting the ride head to the stairs to cross over the trough, and those exiting the ride head to the exit door. Once across the bridge over the trough you enter a holding area, it loook like five seat lanes except there are no gates in front, instead there is only one gate and people flow through the gate from the seat lanes in order front to back. They use a "the boats never stop system" which is all well and good, but I freak out and my sense of self preservation refuses to let me make the jump into the boat. After two attempts and about to give up, I ask the ride host if the boat can stop, and find out that yes it can.

The ride itself, first yoou go along a long meandering trough with a rapids section or two. You might get a slash or two here in the front of the boat, like we were. Eventually you come around to the base of the elevators. Here the boat waits for an elevator to arrive, then the boat raises almost stright up except for the fact the two elevator tracks bow outward to allow to elevator platforms to pass in the center while only have one 'station' at the top and bottom. Going up the elevator is just a wierd feeling, maybe even a bit unsettling. At the top the elevator lines itself, and you sit there for a moment or two before the boat moves off the elevator and onto the boat chute. The boat chute itself isn't that bad, the water spray is such that its hard to look at whats going on. As has been reported the boats don't make quite the splash you would expect, and at first I was thinking "That wasn't bad at all" and then WHOOSH a wave comes crashing into the boat. Row A you get damp but nowhere near drenched, at least that was my experience. You then go through the run out and a U-turn back to the station. This area has been outfitted with coin operated water geysers. The boats themselves have 5 rows of two seats with high seat backs and lap bars that drop down from overhead like on Intamin's newest coasters, exept these do not have seat belts. I am a rider with a nice size gut, and although Intamin rides generally cause me issues with rider fit, I found this ride to be very accomodating, and I did not experiene the lap bar staple, or the sudden lurch into the lap bar at the bottom of the drop I had read about.

We checked our watches and it was already 3pm, so its time to head to the Raven/Legend photo walk back. I like the way the park is doing it this year, instead of a sharp "You must be here at 3pm" rule, you could arrive anywhere between 3 and 3:15, which I'm sure in turn helped spread people out along the walkback trail so we weren't all bunched up together. The walkback started at the main gate to Splashin Safari so we decided to go through Thanksgiving as that seemed the shortest route. We were eager to take this walkback as it had not been offered in a few years.
We got to Splashin Safari and after a quick nametag check were admitted through the gate next to the Splashin Safari entrance, this admitted us to a path that goes between Frightful Falls and Splashin Safari. We paused to get a few photos of those two things, and then were guided to take the first path to the left instead of continuing back to go to part of Legend that goes alongside Slashin Safari. The first path to the left, takes you to see the frist drop, lift hill, and the part of Legend that crosses Frightful Falls. Once could also see the water treatment building for Frightful Falls. Some time was taken at each key point to snap action photos of the rides. After this we came to a part where one could take unadvertised backstage photos of the high dive show. You then continued along a path where you had the lower ravine section of Raven to your left, and the helix section of Legend to your right.

The tour itself, was pretty much a self guided tour, although the guys from Gravity Group and a Holiday World coaster mechanic were all there eager to talk about their favorite subject with coaster enthusiasts and answer questions. As you might expect give the chance some people would take all day taking photos and talking with the ride designers and mechanics, so there was a pace person who started the tour a few minutes after the entrance gate was closed whose job it was to keep the group on pace. As you might guess, this was where the pace person met up to us. We continued up a steed hill that wrapped around the Legend helix past the wood coaster maintenance shed where this year you can see wood, but in the past they had Banshee ride parts and the old Legend train. At this point you walk across the dam that blocks Lake Rudoplh from pouring into the park. The campground can be seen accross the lake, you can look down the hill on one side and see the ravine portion of Raven, or look on the other side and see the Lake Rudolph turn on Raven. We continues towards the LAke Rudolph turn, to finish up by walking alongside the first drop tunnel to return to the park via Rudoplhs Reindeer Ranch childrens ride area.

We looked at the new for last year Reindeer Games ride and then noted we didn't have much time before the Voyage photo walkback. We headed back down to Voayge, talk about back tracking today. We got to Voyage a bit early so we took the chance to get some Pilgrims Plunge photos. At this point we came across the major annoyance the park has just installed.

Let me put it to you like an old text adventure game:

"You have come to the end of the Thnksgiving Section, you look stragiht ahead and see a dead end where there is a Pilgrims Plunge observation area complete with coin operated water geysers, to your left you see a clossed gate clearly makred "Employees Only", upon further inspection you see another of the parks walkways on the other side of the gate, and you see said pathway being used by park guests much like yourselfs. These guests don't even have the coaster shirts or nametags on. To your right you see a walkway that leads to Pilgrims Plunge. Your destination is the Voyage service gate to your left, just past the closed gate that is currently being monitored by a park hostess. "

To solve this puzzle, you have to walk up the path to Pilgrims Plunge, following the signs to enter the ride, just before getting to the ride, you can walk through a gap in the fence to another Pilgrims Plunge observation area, with more coin op gesyers. There is a fence all along this path seperating you from the path you were just on. As you continue along, you go down a long windy ramp, so you can tunnel under Pilgrims Plunge, then up another ramp to come out just on the other side of the closed gate. Talk about irritating, and it is clearly irritating their normal park guests, I say this becuase when there isn't a park staff person present, folks were leaping over the closed gate. We're talking basic human behavior here, folks don't have much tolerance for long out of their way detours, and will, given the chance, try to circumvent them. I've seen it happen at several different parks. Classic example was when Kentucky Kingdom wanted to prevent people from taking a shortcut, they errected a series of obstcles - such as a park bench, then a fence, then a flower bed, then a hedge, then another fence, then a railing. That didn't stop folks from stepping up on the bench, leaping the fence, walking through the flower bed, trampling through the hedge, climbing the other fence, then ducking over the railing. Kentucky Kingdom, to their credit, finally decided to remove all that stuff and just create a path there rather than fight it. It just doesn't make sense to me, the park spent a LOT of money errecting that tunnel under the Plunge. I know they did it so they can have an attire checkpoint when leaving Splashin Safari, but if they have to put a monitor at the gate that person may as well be checking attire. They seemed to really overcomplicate this, when the easiest chepest answer would have been to have the attire check right after the Plymouth Rock Cafe, since Splashin Safari standards of dress are acceptable on Plunge. When Splashin Safari closes, then you close that gate.

Where was I, or yeah talking that long out of the way detour, the Voyage tour was much luch the onces in the past, except that now the service gate has been moved to almost the first drop. Its an out and back coaster, and this is an out and back tour along the same path. They did have the pathway on one side of the ride open all the way up to and just starting into the insane turnaround. Again more photos were taken, again the coaster mechanic and gravity group guys were on hand to answer questions or just talk coasters. After suitable time was allowed the group was paced back down the hill (Its a steep hillside Voyage is built on), and then back out the same service gate, where we took the same long detour back to Thanksgiving.

It was at this time that we decided we really should be riding some rides. We started with Gobbler Getaway where we met up with David Cornell. So in our car we had Dave Cornell, Dave Althoff, and Dave Bowers. Gee, I bet Dave is going to win! The queue maze was half full, I think the pumpkin pie spice smell is back, and with three in the car that really spreads the available points thin. Still, gotta love a classic style dark ride complete with crash doors and turkeys that taunt you at the end of the ride. Don't worry that our hapless farmer in the dark ride didn't have the heart to kill the turkey, ad they armed you with turkey callers instead of shotguns, becuase you can still have turkey at the Plymouth Rock Cafe just across the midway.

We skipped Turkey Twirl and Voyage for now (hey, we have massive coaster ERT tonight!) and headed u p into the main park. Since we were in a water ride mood, we decided to ride the Raging Rapids in Boulder Canyon which we usually skip. This ride was nearly a walk on and we got off mostly dry, and had more amusement watching our fellow riders avoid the water. I'm thankful the water curtain in the old town shut off just in time, and that the folks running the coin of geysers were also more interested in getting the other riders wet. This ride seems shorter than I remember it being in the past.

After the Rapids Ride, we stopped off at the Funnel Cake Factory for a snack of Fried Oreos, yumm yumm. From there we took a ride on Eagle's Flight. Eagles Flight recieved a new fully automated control sytem since my last ride on it, at least it retains its friendly operator. What's more, I actually had a good ride on it. No, I didn't get one snap out of it, but as is common for portable Flyers, although you may not get the satisfying KERCHUNK sound, you can at least get the feel of getting into a dive bombing, then quick pull out ride pattern. Its like its just a hair off from snapping then the tub pulls out of it without the payoff.

From there we walked right across the walkway and did a spin on Revolution. Not much to report here. We skipped Funtown as it was getting late, and besides neither of had much interest in trying to cram ourselves into Howler or the Freedom Train. Starting back towards the front of the park we noted we exceeded the weight limit on the Star Spangled Carousel, and I knew from past visits that Liberty Launch is a no go for me. We next took a spin on the Rough Riders, where wemet the guy who was talking old rides and aircraft. Friendly guy who stuck around for this ride and one on Paul Rever's Midnight Ride. Rough Riders, the cars re comfortable, the belts are comfortable, the cars look cool, the cars seem to have some power to them, its just that I think there are too many cars on the floor as it was just too congested at times.

Paul Revere's Midnight Ride continues to impress as being one of the nations best Spider rides. From here we decided the line for the car ride looked a bit long. We took a look in the Liberty Bell shop. Wait, the park that put Turkey Callers instead of GUNS on its shoot em up Dark Ride has a toy department in the gift shop with all kinds of toy weapons: swords, revolvers, all the way up to assault rifles, some of which shoot real "Safety" bullets.

We make ourway to the front of the park and start taking another lap, we talk to Will for a short bit on the way past Raven and then decide to skip the Scarecrow Scrambler and head for Frightfull Falls. FRightful Falls was a walk on and so we jump into the moving log. It should be noted that although Plunge caused me problems with jumping into a moving vehicle I had no trouble with the log flume or rapids ride.

When we finsihed up with the log flume, we took a look through the front gate shops and in a memonary lapse of judgement walk up Raven hill intead of riding up. AFter checking out the front gate shops, we run our cameras out to our car, and move it up to the front row of the Legend Lot, being nice not to park on the newly laid cement. We re-enter the park and make our way to the picnic grove dodging rain that got heavier and heavier as we go along.

We finally get to the picnic grove and first head to the shelter that had the auction. At first I thought we were too late but then realized the auction stuff was in the back half of the shelter. We grabbed some free drinks and perused the items.

The highlights of the auction were the perinally popular roller coaster lift hill flags, this time they came signed and bundled so you get the complete color selection for the coaster involved. They also had various advertising signs and banners, some signed Gravity Group t-shirts, and more. They also had a rummage sale with media CD's, stationary, old maps and brochures, old souvenir cups and more. They seemed to have a fair amount of bearings left, but the bin labeled Roller Coaster Wheels was already emptied. We didn't realize the food was setup until somebody mentioned they had finished eating.

We head up the stairs to the red shelterhouse to pick up dinner. Here I got my first clue that attendance was way down this year, as only 1 of the two big shelterhouses was open. We headed right for the buffet. We dropped our tickets off in the bin provided and proceeded down the line. Once again, we get to play "What toppings do we need?" befoe knowing wha is being served. I note buns, rolls, bread, relish trays, fruit salad, baked beans, mac and cheese, hamburgers, chicken and pull pork. We fix our plates and settle into dinner. Midway through dinner they make the announcements, sometimes interrupted by the pre-recorded "Will and Pat"closing announcements. Silent auction winners are announced and its time for the live auction. The big item up for bids was the original Legend drawings, that item sold for $500, which I think is a record for a Holiday World coaster event auction. They also sold a "Holiday World" logo flag that flew out in front of the park. I participated in that one up to $50,unfortunately for me it sold for $85. They commented they go through 3 such flags each season, which gives you an idea of the wear large flags take. Perhaps the most unique items sold were Kory and Chad from Gravity Group. Each sold one half hour of their time during the ERT. During that time you could ride rides with them, talk coasters with them, have them be your personal servant, etc. Kory mentioned he had brought his work laptop and that if you won he was willing to show you anything on the laptop that he was at liberty to disclose, including all about the new coaster in China. I think they also metioned they could design a coaster for you using their design software, just rmemeber you only have half an hour. I know Paula really made a big deal of this on Twitter, but I just don't think the fans were all that into it, leading to a "lets just get this over with".

Okay, the auction was over, but the rain is getting harder, then it gets much worse, the hail starts coming down, visibility is minimal, they asked people to huddle in away from the edges of the shelter, and they turned the lights on in the blue shelter house. We continue to talk coasters, and Paula provides regular status reports and sports scores. Perhaps showing off technology, Paula sent out a Tweet looking for the first person to come up to the microphone and say "They are testing the coasters" Such use of technology. Anyway about an hour late the coasters open and we make our way to Voyage. At this point we wait in the longest Voyage line of the weekend, it was down the stairs out the doors and into the outside queue area with the lower cargo hold being closed. We get up into the station, and we hold out for the back seat, this was actually easier than you might exepect as people were eagerly trying to get on a train, any train.

Remember everything I said about Voyage being in insane mode Friday, well forget all that. We have a new Insane Mode, perhaps we should call it InsaneX10! That train could not travel the course faster it it were jet propelled, It was literally flying over the hills, and taking the curves at breakneck speed. You know how when you see a working coaster model, it looks like the train is going rediculously fast beause gravity does not scale down? Well thats what this looked like. The airtime was launching you up into the lapbar, and the laterals were tossing you around like a ragdoll. As if it couldn't get better the lightning off in the distance lit up the sky adding a whole new dimension to the ride. Wow, I've said Voyage is the greatest coaster ever made, but there are few things likely to ever match the performance of the Voyage during the Saturday ERT in all of coasterdom.

After Voyage we head back to see whats going on with Pilgrims Plunge as I thought it would be a neat ride to try at night as it doesn't have that many lights on the drop. We enter the ride queue area and walk directly to the loose article shelves. Stowing loose articles we start to approach the ride as there was a boat stopped in the station and the exit gate was open. We were told we still need to cross the bridge over the load side, which we do. When we get to the load side, the load gate is closed. A few moments later, the boat waiting at the loading dock glides forward presumeably on its merry way out onto the ride course. The boat gets as far as the end of the station area and comes to a stop. The next boat comes up to the loading dock and stops. They do not load that boat, it then advances further and stops right behind the boat in front. They bring yet another boat up to the loading dock, but they don't load that one either. Something doesn't look right here. They then bring the fourth and final boat into the station, but there is no roomfor it so it stops on the top of the lift up into the station. That boat has one rider stranded in it. After doing all this we hear the crew talking to the people in the first boat, and it doesn't sound good. Some time later they come back to us, we are the only two in the queue and tell us it won't let them start the ride, but they are going to reboot the ride and try again. We wait a few minutes for the ride to reset, they push the dispatch button and the boat at the front of the platform still refuses to budge. They then bring out the infamous Intamin black box that releases the lap bars in the boats not located in the load/unload position. They unload the first boat, and the incoming boat then close the ride. At least they were nice enough to let us exit through the boat siting in the station. That was a waste of about 5-10 minutes.

We head back to Voyage and take many rides, each one more insane than the last, whats more incredible is even with it giving first rate rides the line was still completely within the station. We got a front car ride, another back car ride, and several middle train rides,doesn't matter when its giving out rides like it was tonight. You know you are in for a treat when jaded coaster enthusiasts who don't normally react after a ride coming back with looks of shock and awe on their faces and they are hollering and cheering.

When we had about 40 minutes left before park close we decided to check out the other rides, we walked up to the Legend with Kory and Chad who by that time had finsihed their auction obligations. Legend was running one train again tonight, and it was a total walk on, so we walked right on the back seat. Legend got the same insane transformation as the Voyage, and the Four Corners of Doom were living up to their reputation. I know some have written off the Legend as it had a few sluggish years but I urge you to give it another shot, it seems to be back to the way it was when it opened.

We finished the night with a half hour long, didn't even get out of the train power ride session on Raven. Not a bad way to finish off the event and yes Raven was also in insane mode. Tonight all three HoliWoodies were in top form giving rides us mere mortals usually only dream about getting .

We then headed up to the park exit, gave our thanks to Pat, Will and Paula, and then headed out to the Legend Lot. When we got to the Legend lot there were maybe 8 cars in the entire lot, so that made it quite easy to find our car. We returned to our hotel in Tell City, and yes Paul, I see what you mean by the rollercoaster like quality of that road. We no sooner got into our room until we crahsed for the night. Next thing I know, my iPhone is giving me the "You have one hour to vacate the room" alarm clock. We push check out to the limit and are then on the road. I noted the Indiana University logo statues in peoples yards remind me a lot of devil's pitchforks.

We decide sitting in single lane slow moving traffic on I-64 was not our idea of a fun time, and tried US 60. US 60 was moving about 60mph, and it runs pretty much directly to Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom (SFKK). Just after crossing the border into Kentucky, we found an IGA selling gas about 20 cents a gallon cheaper than the stations near Holiday World. Score!

We made our way to Kentucky Kingdom and make a stop on the way at Steak and Shake. Between the late check out, the time change, the drive to Kentucky Kingdom, and the lunch we didn't get to the park until almost 3pm. As we drove through Lousiville, we did not the firemen having one of their "Fill the Boot" fundraisers, which is not bad in and if itself, but when they park fire engines in the middle of the street with the lights flashing to draw attention to it, there should be a law. We were passing through right as some emergency vehicles with actual emergencies were having trouble getting through since people were ignoring the flashing lights after seeing the firetrucks being used as props.

Why do we do this to ourselves? It seems like our Kentucky Kingdom visits always come right after Holiday World visits, so maybe I'm not being all that fair to Holiday World. We pull into the parking lot and get hit with a $6 parking fee. One one hand its one of the lowest parking fees in the Six Flags organization, on the other its the first reminder we're not in Indiana anymore. So we give the state fair $6 to park on the fairgrounds then drive through the center of Kentucky Kingdom to the big lot in the middle of the fairgrounds. We drive up and down the aisles and my this lot looks busy, but who is to say what cars are there for the park, and what cars are there for other acttivities. We pull into the lot to the right of the main gate and find a parking space just a few feet from the entrance plaza.

We head to the ticket booths, and we see the employees in their new tennis ball green shirts. They do stand out, and they remind me of the shirts worn by employees at big sporting venues. We head to the one open ticket booth and look over our options. Rideman is set to buy the $55 season pass as he will be heading to SFMM in June, I have no such plans and note the one day ticket is $30. The park is also running a special, where you can get a 6 visit SFKK only pass for $30, and there is a chance I might get back here this season. I purchase the $30 Big Six pass, and the ticket seller hands me a voucher printed by the register and then proceeds to block out the section where you are supposed to fill in your information to register your pass. They direct Rideman to Guest Relations as he might get a lower pass price as he was renewing a 2008 pass. Unfortunately, when he got to Guest Relations he got the news that since his 2008 pass was isssud from Great Advenutre, he is not eligible for the renewal discount, but hey at least the ticket seller tried. We then quickly entered the park and passed though metal detection. I note that at peak times they have arrangements for "No Bags" lines and a seperate season pass gate.

We enter the park and head to the season pass processing center,yes I had to get a pass card for my Big Six pass. The line was just out the door and soon we were inside.You first head to a room where they have a bank of computers. You scan your voucher, then you do all your own data entry for the pass registration. I wonder why they don't just install a camera and printer at each terminal and completlely automate the process. After you enter your data the screen tells you to take your vocuher to the next room. In the next room they have the room devided into season pass processing and Big Six Processing, that way the workers don't have to worry about which passcard blank they are putting into the printer. We go to seperate halves of the room where agents take ou vouchers, scan them, they take our photos, and the same person hands us our passes. We pocket our passes and head into the park.

We walk past the games midway and I get my first dose of the "More Flags = More Fun"tagline. "Watching the Game = 3 flags on the fun meter, Playing the game - 6 flags" We head to the Himalayah, and after watching one cycle we board the ride. We procees to sit there as it takes about 10 minutes to get the Himalayah loaded and checked. We are rewarded for our patience with a slow moving ride. The operator though, seemed to be auditioning for the role of carney ride operator "Want to go faster, let me hear you scream!" "Want to go backwards?" It does neither of those things.

We exit the Himalayah and walk right onto the Enterprise just as it is being loaded, what timing. Its a fast spinning Enterprise which still goes completely vertical, which seems to be a rare thing for these rides anymore. I was a bit concerned with the amount of lateral shaking the ride was doing, but Rideman didn't seem all that concerend.

Next, we go to ride the Rainbow, or that was we were going to ride the Rainbow, but it seems it, like the Hellevator has been removed. The Rainbow does appear on the park map, but is not listed in the list of rides, last minute scratch, perhaps? Our next ride was Greezed Lightning, this coaster was a walk on as well, even for the back seat. Its a fast ride, you get launched forward, go through a loop, up the spike, back through the loop, through the station, up the back spike, and then down into the station. The good news is on the backwards trip through the station the were merely trimming the train rather than trying to stop it, so back seat riders get treated to that unqiue backwards airtime. We exit the ride and I start to notice something really annoying, the park has decided that any segment of fence that borders a ride must have a large "Danger" sign affixed to it. Yes, I have read about the incidents, and know exaclty why the park, or the parks lawyers, insisted on their presence, but after the first few its just overkill. I think some of my favorites were the "Danger: High Voltage Area" surrounding a gasoline powered Antique car ride, or Danger signs around the outside of the carousel railing, and one Danger sign placed right next to the entrance to the Rollerskater.

From there its to the Road Runner Express, which was using the short path to the station. The line was just to the bottom of the stairs, and we witnessed what might be the best ride crew in the park. The station can hold four cars, they had one car unloading (thanks to the lap bars releasing automatically), two cars loading, and then one car in the holding position waiting to be dispatched onto the chain as soon as the computer says it is okay. Unlike the rest of the park, this is the model of proper ride operation. This, of course, means this crew will be the crew that gets into trouble. We get sent to a car with just the two of us, so we eah take a bench and they allow us to sit in the middle straddling the T shaped lap bar. This pays off in spades ot on the course as it was a lot more comfortable in the hairpin turns. All in all, I had a much better experience on this ride than usual.

We next head down a long windy path past the Skycoaster (marked down to $15, sorry I don't fly for over $5), a Rio Grande mini train ride. The Rio Grande is a powered train ride, and was sporting the High Voltage signs, Rideman tells me the voltage involved to move that train is an alarmingly high 110 volts. We pass a disused games area that now sports a single vending machine inside a large empty area, and head back to Bluebeard's Bounty, the Pirat ride.

We head up the ramp and here is something that you don't see everyday, a push gate to get into the ride queue area. Guests have no gotten so accustomed to waiting behind any gate that the crowd seems to invariably stop at the top of the ramp until the ride operator indicates it is okay to push in on the gate an enter the queue area. The Pirat, while not the most cared for ride, still has its faux sails and rigging, which makes it better than the one at Kings Island in that regard. We were lucky enough to score an end row, and taking the advice to pick me feet up before we crested on our side, you do get some unique moments of something that might be liekend to airtime. The fully automatic, single position lapbars are a bonus for this park, helping this to be another ride that operates at a reasonable pace. At the end of the ride, you will notice the exit gates on the unload side have been chained shut, and you are instructed to exit back to the load side and they have further modified the confusing queue maze to allow for an exit path. You exit towards the now disued older picnic grove that is now reserved for use in the parks halloween event.

Finsihing that ride, we head back to the main circle loop path, we look at but do not ride the Breakdance. IT is evident the Breakdance, as well as several other things in the park got a nice coat of paint, however due to the modifications to the safety systems on the Breakdance that require every seat to be locked and unlocked by hand, we have ridden it and know the loading process is just entirely too long.

Okay, we have put it off as long as we could, its time to cross the darned bridge in the center of the park. The bridge that takes you from the front part of the park, over the fairgrounds entrance road and into the back part of the park. I swear this bridge gets higher and longer every season, even their own staff do not like it as the park staff can opt to use a ground level crosswalk. We get to the back side of the park, and we bypass several rides: The Giant Wheel, the rock wall, the go-karts, the entire waterpark. I note the waterpark has been renamed Splashwater Kingdom, rather than the former Hurricane Harbor name. I suppose given recent disasters, Six Flags thought it unwise to use the Hurricane name. I note the name is about the only thing that has changed as the theming looks to remain the same, right down to the use of what are commonly referred to as hurricane flags as theming. More Flags = More Fun, right?

We stop off at a wonderfully air conditioned comfort station, one of the things this park did do right, and I noted amogst the ammenities at the comfort stations in the park are cell phone recharging stations, for only $2 you too can have your cell phone battery rapid charged. No, I didn't try it out to see how well it works. I have to wonder how big of a market there really is for this. I also think this is a sign of the times, go to any decent size park anymore and look in the ride queues, you are likely to see people on their cell phones, not so much talking as texting, or playing games, or using the cellular internet connectivity. Those last two, particularly the internet functionality can really put a hurting to a phone battery. Every now and again I long for the days when going to a theme park meant the minute you left the house until the minute you got home, you were completely out of touch, and if you didn't have an answering machine, so much the better. Going on a two week vacation meant two weeks of being totally out of touch with the real world. I suppose you could still do that to yourself (I did in in Ireland last fall), but now we have been programmed to take our mobile devices wherever we go. Oh, where was I? Digressing, again. What a, uhm, surprise.

Anyway, Rideman reminded me of his distinct dislike for Chang, so I head to Chang alone. I breeze past the shaded but empty queue maze, note the fact the weeds and vegetation that had started to take over the ride entrance and exit have been trimmed back, and start to head up the stairs. The sign at the bottom of the stairs told me I was in for a 30 minute wait, and the line was just haflway down the stairs. I note the ride wait signs are "sponsored" by the parks pay-extra line jumping program. I think, this is a B&M and the wait is just down one flight of stairs from the station, no way its 15 minutes. I forgot three things: a) I'm not at a park that cares about ride throughput b) It's a B&M stand up, even Cedar Point decided to mothball a train because they couldn't get the trains out fast enough to run 3, c) this is Kentucky Kingdom where we only run one train, and take our own sweet time doing it. I mist have joined right after the line advnaced, because 1 circuit later I advance to the top of the stairs, two circuits later I am in the back seat queue, and three circuits later I am in the train. I take the back right 'seat' and struggle a fair bit to get the belt fastened, a feeling not unfamiliar to me on a B&M ride, but I do get the thing buckled all on my own. I head up the lift, around the turnaround and down into B&M stand up coaster goodness. I think there are 5 inversions on this one, all wonderfully intense, the mid course barely hits and all too soon its back to the station. Down the stairs and then a forced trip through the gift shop. At the exit of the gift shop, Rideman is pawin through a book, I ask what it is, and he indicated its a cheklist off all of Six Flags rides, in all of their parks - for $10. I don't buy one, but I think its a really neat idea to build chain wide synergy.

We then walk past the sites were a Chaos, a car ride, and several carnival style food trailers have been removed, to make way for waterpark expansion, namely the Mega-Wedgie (no, I am not kidding!), and Deluge waterslides. We also notice T^2 (Thats Terror to the Second Power, how's that for a geeky ride name) has a brand new entrance formed by cutting a new entrance way directly into the queue maze instead of routing people around to the old entrance at the backside of the ride. Signs laert us that a full queue house is a 2 hour wait, man what a depressing thought. Luckily the ride was only a station wait, but to say its only a station wait is both true and misleading as the seat queues can easily hold 6 trains worth of riders. We wait out the line for the back seat, dismayed by the one train operation on a weekend. After what seemed like almost a 20-30 minute wait we were on, and hey the wild hedge under the lift hill has been trimmed to the point where it doesn't brush your legs. That is an improvement. Using proper ride posture, we were able to escape the somewhat rough running ride mostly unscathed. We exit the ride, head down the exit ramp and look up at the transfer table. Uhm, I see a second set of bogies but no car bodies, and more importantly no seats on the other train. It's quite obious this ride has not yet been given its second train for this season, what are they waiting on?

We walk back and rejoin the main path, and all is not bad, I mean look they have Blizzard River open despite the ride clearly being marked as closed on the signs out front. We decline a ride on Blizzard River, I recall waiting almost 20-30 minutes in a line far shorter than the line it has today. We do take advantage of the misting fans on the main walkway. We get around to the former site of Top Eliminator Dragsters (man this park has ripped out a bunch of stuff since my last visit) you know its bad when a Six Flags park eliminated a pay extra attraction. The area around Top Eliminator has been converted to a live performace stage with a few benches. According to the park guide it hosts karaoke during the week, and live guest bandson the weekends. Today we had a band, that was alright, nothing that great. The band had an active audience of about 6 people, including 2 girls who were WAY to into it, as in I think they might have been family members of the band, or shills planted by the band to make it look better thn it really was.

I note the walkway back to where the actual Dragster ride, and Twisted Twins beyond has been sealed off with tall chain link fencing. We continue around the open path and walk under Thunder Run. Thunder Run has received a layer of tall privacy fence around its perimeter where it is near a walkway. Well, this will eliminate a popular line jumping spot/shortcut as the privacy fence seperated the queue area from the walkway. We enter the queue and its just to the bottom of the stairs, which is just past the 30 minute wait sign.

Thunder Run only has one train to start with, then they have taken lessons from Busch Gardens Tampa in that they check seatbelts first, then come back around to check lap bars. Add to this a crew that is in no hurrty to get things done, a safety spiel that they wait until after the train is loaded and checked to give, and we are talking a train heading out of the station every 6 minutes. Thats 10 dispatches per hour, and the train seats 24, no wait there is a seat roped off, 22 per ride. Thats 220 persons per hour on one of the parks major rides. That, my friends, is disgusting. After waiting entirely too long, the ride gets even more disgusting when I get into a seat, grab the seatbelt and find the two ends of the belt to have at least 2 inches between them. Did I not just spend two days riding wood coasters, in PTC trains no less, that are way more intense an airtime filled than this one? I take the walk of shame and console myself with a trip to the parks Ben And Jerry's where I order the biggest, most calorie laden sundae on the menu. Just kidding about the sundae, I do grab a lemonade to quench my thirst.

After that sad experience, we head to the Flying Dutchman. This is the wooden shoes ride sort of like a circle swing ride. It has a special spot for me as it is alledged to have come from Kings Island. In a brief moment of sanity, Six Flags actually removed the lapbars from the ride, going with just seatbelts. We take a nice relaxing wooden shoe ride, and I note the ride is mostly fully automatic, expect the turret stops lowering itself about 2' off the ground, and the ride operator lowers it the rest of the way manually. A neat fun ride.

We then notice a big privacy fence has been built behind the International Carousel flanking the restroom building blocking off the other entrance to the Northwest Territory. Add Twisted Twins, Mile High Falls, and Zeppelins to the list of rides that have gone out of service since my last visit. No wonder they sold me a six visit pass for only $30.

We finish up with a ride on Rollerskater, how come I can't ride Thunder Run, but I have loads of room in the cars of the kiddie coaster. We then make our way to the front of the park, again crossing that darned bridge. We take alook at Lonney Tunes Music Land (the parks kiddie rides area), surely putting the candy store in kiddie land is purely coincidence, right? We do a gift shop run through Exclusively Six Flags (shortened to just Flags on the park guide), and again I see nothing that even fits the description of a flag for sale. We also look in the Looney Tunes shop, where I am most confused when I come to an aisle stuffed with Mickey, Minnie, and their friends. Remind me again whose park I am visiting?

Even more confusing, Rideman asks me to look at a directional signpost located jut to the LEFT of the Himalayah, and asks me what is wrong with it. I look up and the sign clearly tells me to turn LEFT to go to the Himalayah, when clearly the ride is to the RIGHT. Rideman tried several times to get both the ride and the sign in the same frame, but just can't do it, so we look at another side of the signpost and it gets even worse. On the left hand side of the sigpost it indicates "<- Himalayah" , and the right hand side says "Himalayah ^", so this side is giving too conflicting directions to the ride, both of which are wrong as it should say "Himalayah ->" We spot an employee, not just any employee, but one wearing a suit and tie, we stop him, walk him over to the signpost and point the problem out to him. He could not have been less interested if he tried.

We then exit the park, and again I pass the "More Flags = More Fun" signs. Hmm, I still can't grasp the logic as to how the quanity of cloth decorations you have flying in the breeze correlates to the amount of fun the experience is. I mean I am a flag collector and have well over 200 flags (mostly desktop miniatures, but I do have full size versions of the flags for 8 different nations. If More Flags = More Fun, I should be enjoying a never ending fiesta. (Incidently, Spain or Mexico are not in those 8). Then again, its been pointed out to me that Voyage has 16 flags, and 16 > 6 so maybe Six Flags is right: More Flags DOES equal More Fun!.

But enough of that silliness, we head to the parking lot, and for grins and giggles plot Kings Island into our GPS. Hm, it tells us we could be in Kings Islands parking lot in 89 minutes, that 9:30, the park closes at 10. Do we try? We're coaster nuts, of COURSE we do!

We head up I-71 at legal speed and the GPS is actually a bit pessimistic as we pull into the lot at Kings Island at 9:26. The parking attendants have left, so FREE parking, not that we didn't have two valid parking passes with us. We go through that odd feeling of being salmon as we head to a park gate most people are heading out of. We througt perhaps the metal detectoon chechpoint was closed, but as we approached it a secruty guard walked up, scanned us, and we proceeded to the gate. At the turnstile, the ticket taker scans our passes and says "Last minute rides, Gentlemen?"

We head back to Rivertown and after a brief comfort stop get in line for Diamondback. The first queue house is totally shut off, and we head to the second queue area which is a little under half full. About 15 minutes later, we are being shown to a middle of the train ride in row 8. (No choice of seats). Somewhat bummed we still take our ride and get a decent amount of floater air, but its definetly no Voyage. We exit the ride and its 9:55, we race through the gift shop and zip back around and abck into line. This time the second queue area is maybe 1/4 full, so 7 minutes later we are at the top of the station stairs enjoying the fireworks. After fireworks we enter the station, and we hear the seat assignements of the groups ahead "14, 15, 16" Ugh, this doesn't sound good, we get to the front of the line "Go to row 1", are you kidding me, we practically do the 100 yard dash to row 1 before he changes his mind. So there it is, the last ride of an insane coaster weekend, on the front row of Diamondback, and I'm leaning over the clamshell which shifts your body position just enough to get a truly insane feeling ride on Diamondback, no wait, after Voyage on Saturday, I'm afraid I have to reserve insane for much more than this. Let's just say it was a great ride with strong airtime.

We exit the ride, and exit the park, and head to IHOP to end a great coaster weekend. I get home, and guess what the American flag is wrapped around the pole again, we chuckle as it looks just like when Dave arrived to pick me up, and I had fixed it then.

Next up: Who knows! I have an invite to a private party at Strickers Grove on June 21. I am also in arrears 7 trip reports, all to Kings Island, why I am I not looking forward to digging myself out of that hole?

My Flag Collection

2009-05-02T10:47:00.001-04:00

Besides riding rollercoasters and touring the world, I also collect flags. See some of my flag collection at http://www.coasterville.com/flags.html

TR: Kings Island - 4/18/09

2009-04-24T21:03:00.003-04:00

Trip Report: Kings Island
Mason, OH
April 18, 2009

"A 7:45 arrival ought to do it"

It's time to begin another coaster season, and this year my home park Kings Island, unveiled a brand new rollercoaster. It was with great excitement that I went to the park with Paul Miller. To give you an idea of how impressive the new coaster, Diamondback, is well Paul drove 14 hours each way from Minneapolis just to ride it.

The park was expecting a crowd for the new coaster's opening day, and they took the unprecedented step of starting opening procedures with the parking lot at 6am and the park gates at 8am. The rides were to still open at 10AM unless you had a gold or platinum pass, in which case Diamondback would open at 9AM. We planned on getting the park early, and wound up waking up ahead of schedule, getting to breakfast ahead of schedule, and arriving at the park at 7:45. We ought to be here early enough.

We pulled into the parking lot using my gold pass to dodge the $10 parking fee and filed into the rapidly filling gold pass lot. I was getting out of the car when April and Pete pulled up in the next parking space, we could not have timed that better had we tried. We all walked up to the entry plaza and we encountered lines for every security lane stretching all the way back to the main flagpole and growing fast.

As the park advertised at 8AM the security checkpoints opened and by 8:10 we were entering the park. We made the mistake of stopping off at the restrooms, but at least we got to see the really cool new hand dryers, a model where you stick your hands into the machine and it dries your hands with air coming from all over. It's fast and cool, but I doubt they have enough of them.

We continued our mission to ride Diamondback and found that only the Larosa's side of International Street was open, and the plan was if you had a gold pass you made the turn towards Scooby Doo, and if you didn't have a gold pass you waited up by Sttarbucks. By the time we joined the line, it was stretched back from the entrance of Scooby Doo back to the intersection on International Street. The park had some guys walking back the line trying to tell us something but their megaphones weren't nearly loud enough, particularly when they had to compete with the music over the house sound system. I also suspect the may have had the media taking pictures of the loud crowd assembled.

Shortly after 9AM, they opened the next checkpoint, we stayed towards the middle of the crowd which was a good idea. It seems that when you got near Scooby Doo they had portable fencing setup that gradually narrowed down to force a single file line, shortly before that they had security holding back the crowd letting about 50-100 people through every few minutes. With all this, it took us till about 9:15 to clear this checkpoint,

We followed the crowd between the cones and walked through Nick Universe. I was disheartened when the Diaomondback line was stretched across the blue ice cream stand and heading towards tower. I could not believe it when we proceeded to walk back along the line and by the time we got to the end of it we had walked past Chik-Fill-A, past the International Showplace, wrapped around to the back of tower and halfway down the hill towards the floral clock. Yet for all that the line from that point was about a 1 hour and 45 minute walk. I say walk as due to the high capacity of Diamondback you never seem to stop moving. You might pause every once in a while for about 20 seconds, but generally you keep moving the whole time. Some solace could be had when we made the turn by Starbucks and could see the looks on the non passholders faces when the line continued to grow and grow,

So we took out walk around International Showplace, past Chick-Fill-A, past the blue ice cream stand,past the Central Grill, and then made the turn to Rivertown. When we entered Rivertown I was impressed with the new brick walkways around Diamondback and at first though that perhaps they had taken out the Rivertown blacktop but it seems only the areas they had to redo got the bricks. Lookiing into Rivetown the store that was an abandoned gift shop the last 5 seasons has reopened as the DB Trading Post with Diamondback goodies and the photo booth. The little food stand is still there, renamed the Snake Pit. The Backporch Stage and the old mining company have been torn down and replaced by the queue maze for Diamondback. The entrance will eventually be where the Back Porch Stage used to be but for now additional temporary line has been setup so the entance is right next to Rivertown Junction (what used to be Wings Diner, sporting a new blah tan paint scheme)

We entered the temporary line area passing the first test seat, the temporary area is just one Z shaped waiting area that leads to the real entrance. At the real entranceyou have access to the main line or the single rider line. It was at this point I was encouraged to try the test seat. Diamondback has an electronic test seat with a real working lapbar. You pull the bar closed, it locks, but you still aren't good, you have to be able to pull the bar down until the green light mounted in front of you lights up. I passed this test so I was admitted to the main waiting area.

First you go where mining company used to be, in this space you have a shaded queue area with several switchbacks and mist fans. It was at this point that we noted Rideman had arrived and was overseeing the proceedings getting video footage of the grand opening rather than riding. When you get to the part of the queue that walks alongside the restaurant you pass the soft drink and candy vending machines, you then go alongside the queue maze almost passing right by the ride entrance then you go around the corner to a second queue area that runs behind the Rivertown Junction building, effectively removing the picnic area that used to be there. This area has two long switchbacks and is unshaded. It does have misting fans, and you get to watch the splashdown effect. We also noted the line was now firlmy wrapped around back past Rivertown Pizza. Later reports would tell me it stretched back to at least Beast and maybe even Crypt.

After the second queue maze you turn right, go down a few stairs, walk underneath the track, then turn left and up a long flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs a seat assigner will diret you to your seats. Now I see why the line is constant motion, as no sooner could the seat assigner fill all 16 rows, the next train has arrived, accepted the new riders, and then the seat assigner could admit the nxt 32 people.

Diamondback is a B&M Hypercoaster, a typs of coaster that is at least 200' tall and featured no inversion elements, instead they feature high speed, and tall hills. Diamondback has the newest train style which has the staggered seating. The way it works is the odd numbered rows have 2 seats mounted in the center of the car, the back row of each car, or the even numbered rows have 2 single seats, one on each far end of the train, so when all is said and done the train is 4 seats wide, but the staggered arangement is meant to improve the view for those in the middle, as well as promoting the wide open feeling. Another reallly nice touch is that the trains are mainly red and orange, but each train is trimmed out in a different color: green, red, or orange. The track is gold and maroon for the lift hill and first drop, but turns to red and cream for the rest of the ride.

For our first ride we were lucky enough to be sent to the back row of the train. We took our seats in our seperate single seats. There is a safety railing in the back of the car between the two seats and also in front of you to make sure you don't fall down between the cars. I hopped up into my seat, which is set high enough that my feet can't touch the floor of the car while seated, its not as extreme as say an Intamin inverted coaster where you practically need to pole vault into your seat.

Now the big test, I pull bck on the safety bar. On the test seat I noted it took three clicks to get the green light to come on, but here on the train I could only get one noticeable click but the bar rested about where the bar on the test seat did. Luckily for me, this was deemed acceptable and we were soon on our way.

The trip up the lift hill is quick and is steep enough that you won't be enjoying the view of Rivertown on the way up. At the top we take the steep 74 degree drop that zooms down and runs between Crypt and Potato Works. I note generous airtime on the first drop, which is a good sign. The ride continues and the things I noted the most were how quiet the ride is, how smooth the ride is, but most iportantly the strong airtime on every single drop, even the drops coming off the mid course brake run, and the drop that feels like it has trims on it. The turnaround back behind Crypt is interesting to say the least, but the signature moments are at the end of the ride, starting with a helix that spins you around right above the walkway back by Beast, when you come out of this helix, you head down into the much smaller swan lake for the big splashdown. Of course the splashdown is created by fins on the train which cause the splash, while the trains tays dry. IF you stick your hands out to the sides while in the back seat you may get a splash here. You then go up one more hill and into the final brakes a quick turnaround back into the station, Folks, we have a winner here, best ride the park has opened in years. We quickly exit the ride and head to the DB Trading Post where we collected our free Diamondback t-shirts for being amongst the first 10,000 riders. Wile we were in the DB Trading Post we also looked at and decided to buy the 2 photos and 2 keychains package of our on ride photo for $20. The line to pick up your photos was stretched outside the building and wrapped around the corner. We asked if we could bring out claim ticket back when the stand was less crowded and were told we could.

On our way back into the station, we noted April and Pete heading down the exit ramp, wait they were supposed to be BEHIND us. Something is wrong here, and when we got to the wlakway we learned that even though the test seat cleared them to ride, they were rejected by the ride itself. Bummer. They retried the test seats and of course the test seats said they were fine. They got a manager involved who wanted to see what the deal was, well its official the real train seats are less accomodating than the test seats. April could ride, but needs a friend to push down hard on the lapbar for her.

With that all sorted out, I emark on a mission to show Paul the park as this was his first trip to Kings Island. We started by running jackets and t-shirts out to the car. I see they got rid of the magic light handstamps again, and went to blue handstamps where they apply entirely too much ink, I saw more than a few guests with blue ink smeared on other parts of their body and on their white shirts. Beverage service wristbands were also purchased at this time ($10 for all the fountain soda you can drink, not bad when one drink is $3.59 now) the park advertises these wristbands as little as possible, and I note they don't seem to get that much utilization. I know they started as an extension of the free beverage service for group outings, but if they are going to be sold to season passholders, or even the public at large, they should do a better job promoting them.

We head to action Zone after scoring two rounds of drinks. We start to head to Invertigo but the line was just way too long for a mere boomerang even if it is an inverted boomerang. Owing to Paul's height (almost 7') we skipped Drop Tower and Delirium and headed to Son of Beast.

Son of Beast had abot a 45 minute wait and we decided to not wait through the extra front seat queue. Son of Beast starts off good, but I knew when the train started shuffling in the lift approach, that even though the first drop is incredible the Rose Bowl helix would be miserable, which it was, then the mid course brakes and the former loop drop were pleasant, then the second helix was rough and shaky again. In other words it hasn't gotten any better, Paul absolutely hated the ride. To be fair, it was one of those rides he went on to see if it really is as bad as its reputation suggests.

We next headed to Flight Deck and the line was back to where the giant billboard used to be, which is a sign that the park truly is busy. About 20 or so munutes later we climb into seat 2 of Flight Deck and instantly realize that was a big mistake for somebody of Paul's size. Paul did find Flight Deck to be a enjoyable, made even more enjoyable as the girl sitting in the first row was taking her first ever ride on it and wa sgenuinely scared. We do agree that the ride is so short they should send you around twice.

We next headed to Adventure Express, while noting Delirum had about an hour wait. We got to Adventure Express and the queue area maybe a quater full which means only about 10 minutes What was more disheartening was the family ahead of us. All five bought Dippin Dots, separate cups for each one of course, for $5 each at the stand across from the ride entrance, then walked slowly though the queue in front of us eating it, then when they realized the line was so short they pitched unfinished, as in at least half full cups of Dippin Dots. Yikes, but hey its not my money. Adventure Expresses theming is falling apart yet again, which means its good that the ride experience itself is pretty solid for a mine ride. While waiting to ride Cameron texted us to say its now 1:30 and hea had made it on all of two rides, we weren't doing much better, as we were just about to board our fourth. I noted Advneture Express was only running two of its three trains

We exited the ride and I note the Cyber Sez reality game is finally gone, but its replacement isn't much better - a portable Jacob's Ladder game setup right in front of a much bigger permanent Jacob's Ladder game. I also noted that depsite claims to the contrary at SOAR that Outer Hanks was reverting back to being Bubba Gumps, that it is still Outer Hanks.

We head into Coney Mall and we find Racer with a two train wait on each side. After waiting in lines, this is more like it. We took a ride on each side so Paul could get both experiences. The red side is significantly better running, bu the blue side seems to go faster. I also learned that the difference between snug fit and downright uncomfortable fit comes down to which pocket my wallet is in

After Racer we backtracked to Festhaus for lunch. When we entered the Festhaus we caught the tail end of the county and western music show. Paul thought it was awful but I didn't think it was that bad. We headed into the food lines, and I have a distinct distate for using video panels as menu boards. Makes it way to easy to change prices. I get to the service counter and my eyes light up and I think I hit the jackpot as they had bowls of watermelon available. I grabbed a bowl without even asking how much it would be. We stepped down to the hot food counter where we each got two gigantic slabs of peperoni pizza. The sign of quality is when the pizza goes from pizza oven to your lunch tray in under 45 seconds.

We grabbed drinks, and headed to a table. The first thing we noticed is the air conditioner didn't seem to be on today, the other thing is that if Paul thought the C&W show was bad, we soon were dismayed to learn that Mr. Cowpie took the stage to do some kid oriented show centered around really really awful jokes and humor. We grabbed another round of drinks and then headed out on the ride circuit.

We wanted to pick up right where we left off, so we headed right to X-Base. Both Firehawk and Flight of Fear had lines stretching out onto the midway with all visible switchbacks full Recent intellignece gained by cell phone told us Firehawk was running 2 hours. We deicded to try to get in as many other rides as possible then bite the bullet here.

We headed to Vortex, the line totally filled the permanemt queue area, but with three trains, it moves people really fast. A hint is if both rear switchbacks are full go towards the front as it only has one switchback due to the front seat line. Vortex recieved a new paint job and looks really nice, the ride runs about as it always does, another solid performer.

Our next stop was Backlot Stunt Coaster, formerly Italian Job, It half of one switchback full, an owing to having a grouper and three trains running the line moved pretty fast. We noted the splashdown pool was bone dry and wondered how long it would be until Diamondback's pool will also be dry. We got into the train and noted that the on board sound still doesn't work, nor does the stairway drop effect. But the trains are getting worse, the instrument panels and front license tags are gone, and of course the headlights are out. Luckily the ride itself is a solid performer, the police cars still work with lights and sirens, and the show scene mostly works except for the helicopter not rising and falling. I did not one incident in line where a family of five was clearly togehter as a group - 4 children of varying ages and one adult. Whent he grouper was trying to find a single rider, the adult of the group volunteered. The grouper tried to say "Are you sure?" "You won't be able to ride with your family?" etc. She insisted and was sent to the empty seat. She even acted like she was goin to take the seat but backed out at the last second. By this time not only were the other 4 members of her party seated but so were 8 other riders. In other words she managed to totally fill the ride crews gear box up with sand.

We had some inteligence that the Beast line was 1 hour, but since thats a park showpiece, we grab a round of drinks and head to Beast. The first thing that I noted was that the vacation timeshare scam booth is gone! Thanks goodness, I thought that was very tacky, it is much better served as a Diamondback gift stand. We rounded the corner to Beast, and besides Diamondbacks helix over the area, the whole Beast Plaza looks different It also got the brick paver walkways, but now all access is through what used to be the exit by the games area. Luckily the exeptionally steep hill has been replaced by a longer but much more gradual ramp that runs diagonally through the area The fence is also been moved in closer totally blocking off the former Beast concession stand. The rest of the Beast line remains the same excpet the line starts where the greeter station is.

The line was spilled out onto the midway by about a dozen people. We join the line and note the lower queue house was shut off, but the middle and upper queue houses were in full use. As advertised about an hour later we were riding Beast. Beast got a lot of new wood yet again, and the helix is a lot better than it has been in years. Paul indicated that if this is much improved he would hve hated to have seen it before, He isn't a fan of Beast either. To quote a college sports fan "Over-Rated!"

We get a text message that the Diamondback line is now under an hour. We dash through Rivertown. I could not tell if crypt was open or not, the Crypt equipment room was making noise, but I couldn't see much activity around the ride. The other big change is Wings (the old Columbia Palace) is now Rivertown Junction, with much the same buffet setup as Wings. And with it, another trace of Paramount theming is gone.

We get to Diamondback and now the line is back to Central Grill in Nick which meant it was just about an hour. We learn that April, Pete, and Dave are within 20 minutes of us in line. We all get our rides, with us being sent to row 12. (Back row of 6th car of 8) I wasn't too excited about this seat assignment, until I took the ride and learned that Row 12 also has nice airtime on very drop. That is the sign on a great ride.

After the ride we head to the photo booth, which now has no line. I present my claim check from earlier but alas they can't find the pictures. After stringing us for 15 minutes while the manager and 3 other associates are holed up in the office figuring ou what to do, they even do satisfy the situation in a very complimentary manner. I still don't understand how they were able to reprint the big photos but not the keychains. But then they gave me something with my pictures that will make me easily forgive them for not having keychains.

We then proceeded to engage in Strange Coasternut Behavior, in its classic form this involved a bunch of coaster crazies standing in the middle of the walkway, in the hotest park of the park, with no shade, within steps of operating roller coasters instead of riding the coasters. We at least found a nice table in a shaded area of the park, and within easy access to the Snake Pit which facilitates enjoying several free drinks.

Eventually we realize we have to finish Paul's tour of the park, so Rob and Dave join Paul and I for a walk through Nick where we find out Paul is too tall for Reptar so we head on to Avatar. he line for Avatar was just at the bottom of the ramp, and whats more they don't have enough seats for us when we get to the front of the line. We eagerly let two riders pass us so we can get seats in Row 1 instead of Row 4. Let me tell you the end rows make a HUGE difference on this ride. It's still not half the ride it was when they first installed it, but its not bad either.

We then go for a quick spin on Fairly Odd Coaster, the line being about halfway over the stile over the track. We take rides to verify this ride is still running well, and at the end of it we meet up with Don.

We note the line for Scooby Doo is posted as only 15 minutes, but by this time its 8:45 and we wanted to try to get Paul on both Firehawk and Flight of Fear. We race to Flight of Fear, enter the and find a full hangar, we quickly retreat. We head for Firehawk. The queue maze is just one half of switchback from being full, but its posted as only 45 minutes. It actually took about an hour, and Rideman and Rob decided to ride Diamondback instead. Don stayed with us and we soon had a back row ride on Firehawk. How nice it was that instead of the operator needing to shove further on my bar, they lowered it and then asked me if I wanted it tighter. Firehawk is now my second favorite coaster in the park behind Diamondback. Too bad the capacity on it is bad, and its making an awful squeal entering the station. Paul really loved this ride.

It was about 9:45 on a 10:00 close, so we dashed to Flight of Fear and found the line to be all the way within the UFO. It still took about 20 minutes which mean we heard the fireworks go off while standing in the station. Flight of Fear was a tight fit as always, but I was able to ride, man this ride always reminds me how I am losing my flexibility, The ride itself was great exept the brake is still hitting hard.

After Flight of Fear we headed to the front gate, but one last coment about Coney Mall. The panhanding in the park has got to stop, we were approached at least three times by panhandlers, and they each wanted at least a buck. We headed to the front gate, met up with the rest of the group, and then headd to IHOP for a group dinner.

What a fine way to start the season!

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 23

2009-04-12T21:18:00.002-04:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
9/2/08 - 9/11/08
Part 23

After John's briefing, we had some small talk with Jerry who mentioned that during the tourist season he might get a day off every now and then, but generally he only has hours between ending one tour and beginning the next. In fact, sometimes when the flight out is late, or the flight in is early he literally walks from the departures area to the arrivals area all ready to start again. In addition, we may think that John and Jerry are a team, but in fact they just met a couple hours before we met them. So we learned a little but about tours from the tour leaders perspective, and that he leads in order to meet people and show off his country.

We then arrived at the airport which is under a major expansion project. Unlike most airpots where tour busses can pull right up to the terminal, here we parked out on the other side of the parking garage. Luggage was unloaded, and claimed. Jerry then led us to the terminal, taking us through a walkway that goes through the center of the parking garage, sure we had to cross a lot of streets but traffic was very light. We did not take advantage of the conveyor belt ramp, instead we walked into the arrivals floor of the airport where we were offered the choice of escalators (called travelators in Ireland) or elevators up to the departures level. When the elevator reached the departures floor we got out of the elevator and pretty much fell right into the check in line located right next to the elevators.

We could see numerous check in desks open, but at the first bend in the queue area were two security people. Jerry stood alongside the line right before the security people in case anybody needed help, or so we could each thank him as we passed by. When we got to the security person, they scanned your passport and then started asking a bunch of questions, asking how long you were in Ireland, what your ending destination is, questions about who packed your bags, have they been in your control, and I was thinking "Didn't we get rid of those questions?" They then ask you about any electronics you have with you, if you own them, and if you had them repaired while you were in Ireland, they advise you about the liquids policy, and are you in compliance, and lastly if you have any weapons or anything that could be used as a weapon. If they like all your answers you they put a dated and initialed sticker on your passport and you can proceed to check in.

At the check in desk they scanned our passports again, and issued boarding passes, they did not need to see our e-tickets. She explained to us that we would need to claim our luggage in Newark and then recheck it, she then took our checked luggage for us. Before we could get our boarding passes we had to sign the front of them. Lastly we had to read a notice stating that our flight is participating in the United States Border pre clearance program, so we would need to report to the United States border checkpoint located in the Dublin airport no later than 7:30, failure to show up on time could cause us to not clear the checkpoint in time and cause us to miss our flight. So we have now checked in for the flight and checked our luggage, it is time to walk back through the main aisle of the airport actually having to cut through the line of people still waiting the check in,. We then headed to the security checkpoint,

In this case the queue area for the security checkpoint is located in the main check in area, and you don't go through the doorway into the next room until right before it is your turn. I read all the usual instructions and warnings. When we approached the metal detectors, I followed the lead of those in front of me, which included not removing your shoes. It would appear Ireland does not participate in that silliness but they make up for it by having you remove your belt. Other than that it pretty much the usual procedure: boarding pass and passport is checked, you put all your stuff on the belt as usual. In fact this was the easiest time I would have with airport security for quite awhile. One really neat thing they do is in regards to the gray tubs they give you for your loose articles. When you approach the security lane you take a gray tub off a rack located in front of the belt, and then when you are done, you sit the tub on its side in that same rack and give it a shove back, where the tubs recycle back to the people approaching the checkpoint.

When they say you will wind up in the duty free mall, it means you walk into an area that looks just like a big shopping mall, except all the stores don't charge the VAT. We looked on our boarding passes and learned we would be leaving out of pier B, and a check of the signage indicates the tax refund office was between B and C. We walked down the busy mal until we noticed signs directing people back the way we came for the tax refund office. The tax refund office is cleverly hidden in plain sight. There is in fact an overhead sign above the main walkway that clearly says "VAT REFUND" but it doesn't have an arrow pointing it out. Even if you did look towards the tax refund office you would not see it because you would see the foreign exchange desk instead. The tax refund offices, remember you could have up to four stops, one for each of the three tax refund agents, and one to stamp the forms you drop off for storeowners who are doing their own refunds, are located behind the foreign exchange office. Not only that, but it looks like on off limits service hallway, our own refunds were with an agency that had self service kiosks in the airport, which were lining the hallway back to the agents offices. You have to provide a lot of information like address, nationality, and passport number, travel dates, and credit card information so they can process the refund. We noted the kiosks also blend in well with the ATM's in the area. We left the are having filed our refunds and were happy we did not have to get in that long currency exchange line. We had both managed to spend enough money that we did not have enough left to bother with the exchange office.

We regrouped in the mall and checked our watches, 7:15 and we needed to be at US immigration by 7:30. We took off on a dash through the duty free mall, thinking that we had not really wasted any time. We took the clearly marked turn to Pier B, and noted that Ireland believes in exit through retail, as they have one duty free store you literally have to walk through to get to the gates. We followed the walkway to our gate and found out our gate was downstairs, but the stairs to the gate was blocked by a security checkpoint. The checkpoint was marked as being the United States Immigration office, but it was also marked as not opening until 8:00. Now wait, how can we report to the office by 7:30 if the stairs don't open until 8:00. We were able to spend some of the time in a room labeled as the "Form Filling Area". As US citizens we only had to fill out the blue and white customs declaration form Non citizens would have to complete either the white or green immigration form. The blue form asks a lot of the same questions as the Irish arrival card did: name, address, travel dates, what flight you are returning on, nationality, passport number etc. It then asks you a bunch of yes/no questions about what you are brining back to the country. At the bottom it asks you to estimate the value of items purchased abroad that you are importing. We completed our forms, and then got in line for the checkpoint at the top of the stairs. By the time the checkpoint opened some time later, the line was wrapped clear back to the duty free mall.

The checkpoint at the top of the stairs was pretty simple, they scan your passport and allow you to go down the stairs. Father mentioned he thinks this is the Irish passport control, we then go down the stairs to the just opened US Immigration office. Above the inspectors passport control desks they had both United States and Irish flags hanging, each sporting gold fringe. Since the office had just opened we walked through a large empty queue area right up to an inspector. Since we are US citizens, he merely had to scan and stamp our passports and then he stamped the blue/white customs card and told us to keep it with our passport.

We then entered a gate lounge area and were happy we had some time to make a rest stop before getting on the plane. We did stop at a snack bar, but their bottled drinks were warm, so we took our chance on the vending machines where we obtained cold drinks for €1.80 each, our last purchase in Euros. We returned to our gate area, at this time we discovered they forgot to secure the gate area before we arrived, so they secured the gate area with us in the gate area, then they came around and checked everybody's passport for a sticker, checked us in, and asked if we have anything with us we didn't have when we passed through security. We indicated our soft drinks, but there were not a problem.

At boarding time, our boarding passes were torn and we were admitted through the gate, where we went back up a flight of stairs, it seems that these gates share jet bridges with the gates on the floor above. We boarded the plane and took our seats. I was instantly delighted to find out this plane has the personal seat back entertainment system. We picked up packs with pillows, blankets and headsets. After our late departure from Newark, we were glad we left Dublin on schedule. Once up in the air I watched the new Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull on the personal entertainment system. After the movie it was about time for dinner, which wound up being a choice of a beef or chicken dish, we chose the chicken, which wound up being a ceasar salad, chicken parmesan, garlic roll, and a desert cookie. I purchased a Heineken to enjoy with dinner, and Bob had wine.

After dinner I looked around the music and games but didn't find much of interest, or the games were frustrating with the touch screen interface. I finally settled in watching Forrest Gump. Sure, it had Chinese subtitles which could be easily ignored, and since I had not seen the movie in about 15 years, I found it to be very entertaining, and it brought back some memories. During that movie the flight attendants were pushing the duty free cart, and after the movie they served box lunches with a turkey sandwich, chips, and a candy bar. After the second meal, I put the flight status updates on the in flight entertainment system. Before too long, we were landing in Newark, New Jersey, United States of America. The first step at getting home, is being back in your country.

We entered Newark airport in the very back of terminal C, and when we got off the plane we were directed to an escalator or elevator that took us up to a glass enclosed catwalk that allowed us to walk above the main concourse while ensuring the only place we could go was the US Customs office. They did, at least, provide a series of moving sidewalks for the very long walk. When we reached the end of the catwalk, we were directed to escalators that took us back down a floor to the Immigration office. You may recall we went through US passport control in Ireland, so when we entered the Customs area we were ushered down a bypass lane that allowed us to walk right past the inspectors booth without stopping. Once we got to the other side of the booths, we followed the hallway to another escalator down to the baggage claim area. I quickly glanced at the carousels and found the one we needed on one end of the room. We walked around the outside of the room and found a near deserted area on the carousel we needed. I was dismayed to learn my glasses somehow broke on the flight, but that's not a big concern as I can see well enough without them. I was delighted to learn that our bags came out towards the front of the group. We claimed our bags off the carousel and then got in the line to go through customs. The actual customs procedure was pretty simple, we stood in line, and at the head of the line an agent collected up our blue and white forms, glanced at them and waved us on. I was just as happy to be waved past the secondary inspection area, we rounded the next corner and two lanes formed, one for those whose destination was Newark, and then a lane for those changing planes like us. We followed the transfer line which went to another queue area. When we got to the front of this line we were directed to a baggage check person, who checked our baggage tags, the bags and our boarding passes. He took our bags and they disappeared into the baggage scanner.

The exit lane to the baggage recheck area directs you right to the escalator back up to the departures level. We went upstairs and noted we were in terminal C and our flight takes off out of terminal A. We were directed to the Sky Train, which provides transportation around the airport as well a connection to the mass transit system. We approached the Sky Train station, and the escalator up to the platform was broken and blocked off, and the stairs looked evil. So, we formed a line to be taken up one load at a time in the one elevator they had. Up on the platform I misread the sign and instead of getting on the train to the other terminals, we get on the train going towards the mass transit station. We probably should have taken the next stop and changed trains, but instead decided to just ride the circuit around. We did not realize the ride out to the mass transit station and back was about 10 minutes out of our way. Luckily it was only around 12:30 and our next flight was 3:30, and we were happy to be on the late flight, instead of the one leaving at 1:30 like the other half of the group.

We rode the Skytrain through all three terminals and a couple parking garages. Eventually we arrived at the concourse for Terminal A. We got off the train, and rode down the escalator to the concourse area, and were happy to find out we were right by the security checkpoint for our gate area. We entered the line for security, and you have got to be kidding me, only one lane open. We waited through a long line for security, and we had our passports and boarding passes checked, put our shoes, and coats and liquids, and umbrellas in plastic tubs, and set our carry on bags on the conveyor. We proceeded forward and they were putting everybody through the explosives "puffer" detector. We then passed through the metal detector and with no alarm, I though I was clear. The guard spotted a stray wire coming out of my pocket, the courtesy headset the airline had just given me for my last flight. I tell you that guard went ballistic over a cheap airline headset, as in almost brought the checkpoint to a stop. He had me totally empty out my pockets, go back and get rescreened which was fine as I had past all their machines anyway. It was more amusing to me seeing the guard go totally ballistic over a little headset.

Having finally cleared the checkpoint so we found some seats, took a rest break, and then sourced some food. We decided on some Uno's deep dish pizza, and if the security checkpoint wasn't enough of a harsh reminder that we were back in the non customer friendly USA, the fast food booth confirmed it. They didn't offer us any napkins or plastic forks for the pizza, and acted like we were a bother. Not to worry, we finished our pizza and then sat back waiting for our flight. We got lucky with this departure from Newark as we were loaded and left Newark right on time. It was an uneventful flight back and I had another Heineken on the flight from Newark to Cincinnati, and we already had our money out before the flight attendant came to us so he said "What can I get you gentlemen from the bar?" I did like his unique ring that has a can opener right on it.

We soon landed in Cincinnati, and after a quick rest stop we made our way back through Concourse A to the center of the airport with the help of the moving sidewalks then down the escalator to the train. This time I made sure we got on the correct train. It was a short ride to Concourse 3, then through the exit from the secure area and up the escalator to the arrivals area. By the time we got to the baggage carousel our bags were there ready for us. We then met up with y mom and uncle. After all the welcome homes, we headed to the parking garage, loaded up the car, and then headed home. We first dropped Bob off at his house, then we went for dinner at Gold Star Chili in accordance with the Cincinnati by laws that state you must have chili upon your return to the city from any extended length trip.

While sitting in Gold Star, my sleepiness caught up to me, we had a nice conversation with dinner, then headed home where I showed off the souvenirs. I then headed to bed to get rested up. And so ends my trip to the Emerald Isle, thanks for reading.

Bonus photos: The Irsh flag I bought proudly flying in front of my house on St. Patricks Day

The Connemara marble and Waterford crystal crosses:

Now an all American St. Patricks Day tradition: The drinking of the green beer:

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the series

Check out my photo album at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/coasterville/sets/72157607738201293/

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 22

2009-04-10T21:48:00.001-04:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
9/2/08-9/11/08
Part 22

We then boarded the bus and resumed our trip to Dublin. It was still raining pretty hard so there wasn't much to see. During the drive Jerry told us the story of another important person in Irish history, Charles Parnell. As Jerry put it, Parnell was very active in politics, even though at the time Ireland's role in parliament was ceremonial at best. It was in that political atmosphere that the popular school of thought was why bother attending the parliament meetings if you don't really have any impact. Parnell thought otherwise, he convinced his fellow Irish members in parliament to actively attend every meeting, not only that, but to become very active in the debates. It almost sounds like our filibuster, as they would target topics that in reality had little to no impact on Ireland, but were very important to England. They eventually got England to allow Ireland to have its own parliament, in order to get rid of them. Parnell's victory was short lived with him on a personal level as he was soon exposed in the midst of a scandal. We chatted briefly about elections and Jerry reiterated that they are pretty amused watching our election. Jerry also tried to take credit for "Vote Early, Vote Often!" as an Irish custom. It seems they sent out election tickets some two months before the election, and go the roles are often out of date so people have been known to use tickets for people who had died or had moved away.

As we approached Dublin, Jerry had an interesting proposal. You see, his instructions were merely to take us from Glendalogh to our hotel, which was in Dublin. Jerry and John were talking, and they said they felt kind of bad about sending us away without at least a cursory driving tour of Dublin. So they offered to give us a short driving tour of Dublin, indicating we would still arrive at our hotel in time for dinner. We, of course, accepted the extra touring opportunity.

As we approached Dublin, we began to see the transportation method of choice in Dublin, the doubledecker bus. There seemed to be an endless fleet of these busses taking people in, out and around Dublin. Jerry also pointed out the yellow zones around major intersections, the rule being you aren't supposed to drive into the yellow zone unless you have enough room to drive out of the yellow zone. I think I have seen similar tactics used back home as well, not that I have seen any of them work well.

As we entered Dublin we passed a lot of houses that had two flagpoles out front, and Jerry explained we were going through an area that houses a lot of the embassies in Dublin. You won't confuse the United States embassy, however, in its round and modern looking building. We drove past the United States embassy making it our first embassy that I have seen. We then drove through the town and saw the iconic long rows of townhouses. As has been pictured, often times the only thing that differentiates one townhouse from another in a long row is the color of the front door. It is believed that this is a visual aid to help people locate their house after a long night at the pubs. We then winded through Dublin seeing a complex known simply as the "Government Buildings" along with the Leinster House, which combines houses the Irish Parliament and other key government functions. The main government building having a façade very similar to our main congressional building. We also passed by the Mercy International Centre where the Sisters of Mercy were founded. We then passed by one of the big city parks in Dublin, St. Stephen's Green. From there we passed by the Mansion house, the home of the Lord Mayor of Dublin. If I get some of these buildings out of order, that comes from taking a fast pace city tour. Continuing our Irish government tour, we went past Marrion Square and could see the City Council building at a distance. We then passed by the Shelbourne Hotel, which is a fairly famous hotel in Dublin, and then Grafton Street which is a trendy night spot that is pedestrian only at night, which runs from St. Stephen's Green down to Holy Trinity college where one could see the Book of Kells.

After passing Holy Trinity College we passed the Olympia Theatre, which is a Victorian era music hall before heading to Christ Church. The unique thing about Christ Church is that the church is on both sides of a major road connected by a bridge. We also passed through the financial heart of the country seeing the Bank of Ireland as well as another major Irish bank. We then headed to another hot nightspot in Dublin, the Temple Bar area which is also where the River Liffee passes through the city. Amongst the sights to be seen in the river area is a famous pedestrian bridge known as the Ha'Penny bridge, a Victorian style bridge that originally cost a half penny. We then turned down O'Connell street to see the famous statue of O'Connell as well as the new Spire of Dublin. Another key monument to Irish history can also be seen here in the form of the General Post Office often believed to be the starting point of their revolution, At this point we turned onto Parnell Street and headed to our hotel for the night, another Jury's Inn. I must say I was most impressed with this unexpected extra city tour of Dublin.

It was time for our final schedule briefing, and it started as it did normally with dinner scheduled for 7pm, but then the bad news came. It's not anything we didn't already figure out, because our flight back home leaves at 9AM tomorrow morning. Jerry informed us that regulations state we report to the airport by 6AM, and so he wants to have us on the road by 5:30AM. In order to accommodate us, he has arranged for the hotel to serve us a special express breakfast at 5AM. I leaned over and joked that it would be a bagel and coffee, and then realizing we hadn't seen a bagel all week, the person responded "That would be great". Next topic of discussion involves our luggage, the hotel will take our bags to our room for us, and if you don't mind having your luggage out by 4:45, the will take them back down for us as well. However, John will be arriving at 4:55 and wants to start loading the bus at 5:00, so it would greatly help if as many people as possible volunteer to take their own luggage down to the hotel lobby by 5:00. Jerry also cautioned us that since we have been spending the week in rural Ireland, that we are in Ireland's biggest city with over 40% of the population, and we should be mindful of all the things that come with big city life. Due to that the hotel has a security system, and the elevators will not operate until we insert our room keys, and the porters will not take our bags out to the street, we will have to claim them in the lobby, so either way you are taking your bags to the bus yourself. Then, one last time we headed into the lobby and picked up our keys.

We headed to the elevators and I notice d they have the card readers mounted by the outside call buttons, whereas I am used to seeing the card reader inside the elevator. We wait out turn for an elevator and then ride up to the fourth floor. When we get out of the elevator we note not only vending machines but an ice machine as well. Looking at the room locator sign, we get the dreaded news that our room is as far from the elevator as possible. We walk halfway around the fourth floor to an interior room that has a wonderful view of an uninteresting hotel courtyard. The room, no surprise, looks just like the rooms at the other Jerry's Inn's we have stayed in So after getting settled in and freshened up I started looking towards getting ready to leave. It's not mean but when the end of a trip is near, no matter how nice the trip, you start getting a little homesick. I also knew that dinner was likely to run long being the last night and all, and I knew we would be getting up at 4AM, so the more I can do now before dinner the better.

When you order a United States passport they send you a very scary brochure titled "Know Before You Go" that attempts to put the fear of Customs into you. In particular they talk about keeping all you receipts for souvenirs and having the items and an itemized list of the items ready to present to customs. So, I sat at the desk in our room in Dublin and took the back of piece of notepaper and itemized out all of my souvenirs. As I was doing this I also had all my souvenirs out on the desk so I could look at them all in terms of figuring out how to pack everything the best way. By the time I finished this chore, our big luggage came. I started to move my liquids into a clear airport security bag, and then packed away everything except for the clothes I would need the next day, the camera charger and my overnight kit. As it happened by the time I had everything packed up, it was about time for dinner. We left our room, and walking around the other way verified we are about halfway around.

We rode the elevator down to the restaurant level and headed to our tables in the middle of the dining room. I could tell this would be better than the last Jury's Inn when a barman came over and took drink orders right away. You can be assured I did order my last Guinness of the trip. It was then time to look at the menu. When the waiter came around I ordered a field green salad, Beef and Guinness stew (so yes, I had my Guinness and ate it too), and finished up by ordering Bailey's Cheesecake. The appetizer came, and from what I heard from those that ordered the soup, it was Jury's Inn soup. Lifeless soup that tastes the same no matter what the flavor it is advertised as. Tonight's soup was billed as broccoli and cauliflower, and those who had it noted they could taste neither broccoli or cauliflower. I'm happy I went with the traditional salad option. I also enjoyed my beef stew with a Guinness based gravy, served with plenty of potatoes and vegetables of course. We had a laugh when we had run out of dinner rolls, and somebody at our table asked for more by saying "Could we have some more bread?", well they brought out a loaf of sliced bread. You have to be careful what you ask for. Speaking of things you ask for, another person asked for some coffee and was informed it was not time for coffee yet. I don't think she took to kindly to that. But with the coffee comes that wonderful treat known as Bailey's Irish Cream Cheese Cake. Wonderful, they could have served us that more often.

The desert course started with the announcement of a birthday in the group, and the customary singing of happy birthday. There were then a few brief goodbye speeches, and some singing and general partying. After dinner, we made the walk back to our room, and upon returning to our room looked around for the ice bucket. No ice bucket to be found, but the plastic carafe from the coffee maker will work just fine. One last Jury's Inn shower, and the camera was charged, so I packed everything away except tomorrow's clothes and my travel wallet. All I need to do tomorrow morning is toss my night robe into the suitcase and my overnight kit. I tired to use the automatic system to set our 4AM wake up time, but Jerry had already had the desk set it for 4:15, so the automatic system would not let me override it, but a quick call to the front desk and it was changed. We then tried to get to bed but between the coffee and the music from dinner rolling around in our heads it was about another hour before we got a quick four hour nap before starting the final day of the trip.

Day 10 - Thursday, September 11, 2008

So we woke up at what my friends would call an uncivilized time in the morning, got ready, and then checked and double checked that everything was packed, and we had everything we would need on the way home in easy reach. We knew the morning would be rushed so we took all of our luggage and coats out of our room, and headed down to the lobby. When we got to the lobby shortly before 5, the bus had arrived and there was already a nice size pile of bags waiting. We added our luggage to the pile and headed to breakfast. The express breakfast was a continental breakfast with breads, toast, fruit and cereal, along with juices and coffee. They had the same fancy coffee maker as the Jury's Inn in Cork, so had some cereal and café mocha, which I followed up with a nice plate of melon with some toast. At around 5:20 we headed back down to the lobby. At this point we were asked to claim our bags and take them out to the bus. John was busy loading bags and we waited outside the bus until we saw our bags get loaded as we were told they would not have time to double check the load.

We boarded the bus and it was another "Sit wherever you like day" on the bus, so we all quickly grabbed seats and headed out. On the way to the airport, Jerry asked our opinions about the hotels and the various attractions so he could file his report back to the tour agency with our opinions. There were some more thank you speeches on the way to the airport and Jerry mentioned again how lucky we were with the weather, and then noted that you can have perfect weather, a punctual group, and have everything work out exactly to plan, but if you have a cold tour group, it can still be a bad trip, but he mentioned that we were definitely not a bad tour group and that we were a wonderful tour to end his season with. The prime touring season is over, sure Jerry will do weekend or day tours, but for the most part he is off for the winter to be with his family.

As we approached the airport, Jerry let John lead us through the procedure. We were told that when we arrived at the airport we would have to first check in for our flight, and that we would be interviewed before being allowed to check in. At this point Father interjected that this is not the time to display your Midwestern friendliness. No, this is time to use as few words as possible, preferably yes or no. Anything else you share can only be used to further question you, making the process longer for everybody. After getting checked in, we should then clear security. At this point we will be in the duty free mall, our third stop should be the tax refund office, which is in the duty free mall, then the currency exchange office. John reminded us that currency exchange offices generally don't like dealing with pocket change, so if you have coins left over, they are pretty much only souvenirs at this point, also the tax refund people may pay you in Euros so be sure to hit the tax refund office first. After that the fifth stop is the US Immigration office for preclearance, then finally the gate area, where we would need to check in again. He also stressed not to dawdle as the process could take every bit of the three hours.

Stay tuned for the exicting conclusion - only one more segment to go!

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 21

2009-04-09T23:16:00.001-04:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
9/2/08-9/11/08
Part 21

We headed into the town of Avoca, well known as the area where Ballykissangel was filmed. We passed Fitzgerald's pub which is a pub used in that British television series. Just on the other side of town we reached Avoca Handweavers. We crossed a stream and turned into Avoca at first driving past the visitor's center to park in the coach parking in the rear. A representative of Avoca boarded our bus and gave us the orientation speech. It seems Avoca is Ireland's oldest surviving business, let alone oldest mill. It started as a co-op for the isolated community, turning sheep's wool into yarn and textiles and corn into bread. For a long time the clothes and blankets only came in natural white. Later on in history the fashion community took over Avoca and introduced colored dyes and their cloths became famous. After that the mill was about to close down when it was bought by a sole family again who have since turned it into a successful clothing, food and cookware store.

She explained that they are proud to still operate two old fashioned looms that are each over100 years old. These were, in fact, controversial when they were first installed. Before then weaving, even though assisted with a loom, was an all manual process, having to thread the shuttle through each row individually. The new looms, which still qualified as hand weaving, introduced the fly shuttle. This greatly sped up the process as the weaver could hit one control and hold open the threads to prepare for the shuttle to zip across the entire row at one time when activated by the weaver. Now instead of being a tedious all manual process, an entire row of weaving can be accomplished in a matter of seconds. The weavers of the day had a great fear that these fly shuttle looms would put them out of work, after all one of these fly shuttles could way out produce a manual loom. This led to the early vandalism and destruction of the new looms to stave off this new threat.

In modern times, of course, most of their work is performed by completely automatic power looms that are merely supervised by the weaver. The move to a power loom was necessitated by the sharp rise in demand for their product. Our host confided that she was glad the weavers have seemed to welcome the new power looms without the destruction caused by the predecessors a hundred years ago. She used the phrase "I'm not trying to pressure you" which usually sets off all kinds of alarm bells in my head. But she did advertise the specials available in the discount loft. We were then given about 2 hours or so to explore, and it was decided that would include our lunch stop for the day. John, our driver, mentioned that even if we weren't ready for a big lunch, that we would be remiss not to at least try a pastry or desert, as in addition to clothing, they are well known for their bakery and other food items. We got out of the bus and before taking the tour, we went into the visitor center to use the rest facilities then regrouped outside to tour the weaving shed.

We walked across a bridge over a rapidly moving stream as we headed to a rustic looking building titled the "Weaving Shed" The signs invited us to come on in. Our host did not come with us, instead this is a self guided tour, with the first room set up to show you the entire process. In one corner of the room the wool from the sheep is spun into yarn, any color dying is done out of sight. Along the front half of the room you see a big metal frame holding numerous rolls of thread. You then come to a big drum looking machine that is spinning fast, and you see the machine is being fed by its workers from the rolls of yarn on the big metal frame. According to the sign here, the goal is to prepare a drum with the yarn all in the right color sequence to be fed to the looms. We walked the tourist trail around that machine and came to the two original fly shuttle looms they have on public display. Here we took quite a bit of time admiring the process, I didn't quite get the idea of the fly shuttle until Father pointed out to me where to look to watch the shuttle zip back and forth. You are pretty much free in this area to walk all the way around the looms and get a real good view of the action. You then go through a doorway into the next room, here you are restricted to a small walkway along the side and you can observe a room full of power looms humming away. This isn't nearly as interesting at the older looms. You then exit out another door and walk back along the stream to the bridge back to the visitor's center.

We next headed to their restaurant, again a cafeteria style operation, but upon getting to the front of the line none of the entrees really appealed to me. Father was in front of me in line, and he ordered a real nice looking slice of rhubarb pie. I am one of the few people that are fans of rhubarb pie, and its so rarely seen back in the States, that I saw the temptation and I went running for it. My lunch time meal was a large slice of their homemade rhubarb pie, served with a big scoop of cream, and a cup of coffee. Note that by cream, I mean whipped cream, not ice cream. When I got to the cash register I looked in my wallet and realized I had a €50 note and nothing else, but I did have a pocketful of change, even if I had been working at trying to get rid of that to. My tray totaled to just over €6, and $9 is admittedly high for a slice of pie and coffee. The cashier was not eager to break a €50 for me and asked me if I had anything smaller. I got my pile of change out of my pocket, and after we counted that up, I found out I had just enough with maybe about 25 cents or so to spare. At least that took care of the pocket change.

We claimed a table and I looked and there for my coffee was a small pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar cubes. I didn't see any tongs or anything for the sugar cubes, so I admit I just plucked a couple out with my fingers and dropped them into the coffee. I then headed for the rhubarb pie and it was a huge slice with lots of filling. The filling was very tasty and the crust wasn't just a flat curst, it had crumbles on top. As I was enjoying my pie, it became the subject of curiosity of many of those waiting in line for food. Bob bought a pastry or two, but also went with a bowl of mushroom soup, and he reported he was so glad, after a week of Jury's Inn Soup, that their mushroom soup had actual mushrooms in it.

After eating, we headed into the gift shop, including the bargain loft. Bargain being a relative term, and neither of us bought any of the woven goods. I hit the general Irish souvenir section and bought a wall calendar for my office. In the various stores there were series of posters like "Castles of Ireland", or "Doors of Ireland", or "Pub signs of Ireland" , well the calendar has a miniature version of one of these posters for each month. I also bought some music CD's of traditional Irish music. Bob bought some stuff from the cookware and general souvenir sections as well. I noted they did have their pies for sale as well as cookbooks and stuff. I was sure to also grab a brochure before we headed out to the bus. We had some time before we were to start loading, so we were able to get John to pose in front of his 59 seat super coach for some photos. As we were loading outr bus another of those bright green tour busses arrived, yes, the Paddywagon, just like we saw at Cliffs of Moher. Some more chuckling ensued as we were leaving Avoca. The turn out of Avoca onto the small thin roadway took great skill on John's part to not run off the edge of the road on the turn. We shoed him great applause as we headed back through Avoca, the town.

On our way out of Avoca, Jerry announced that the limerick contest is now closed, and he read each of the three submissions. There was one submission about John the bus driver, another about a man from Cincinnati who went to visit Bunratty, and the third was about Fathey Barry, making fun of he fact he slept most of the tour. We voted, the winner was announced and the prize was a toy Irish tour bus that Jerry had picked up at one of the souvenir stores we stopped in.

We next started our drive through the Wicklow mountains but not before passing through a village where I think I see my family has a bookmaking parlor, "Terry Rogers Bookmakers", it's even spelled right. After that we went through a nicely forested area with thin tall trees. Our next destination is the day's Mass stop at St. Kevin's Church. It's true that St. Kevin is credited as being the abbot of a monastery at Glendalough, but on our way there we are stopping at the still operational St. Kevin's church located a few miles from the famous site. Jerry told us that St. Kevin was a very patient man, which is why his statue shows him with a bird resting in his hands.

We didn't drive all the way to the church, acting on the advice of the church we parked at a community center down the road from the church. Jerry reminded us that the local custom is to walk in a single file line on the side of the road facing traffic, in other words the same thing we do, but having to remember traffic is reversed from what we are used to. We walk up the first stretch of road, which is uphill and then the road split between the school and the church. When we first entered the church gates I was a bit unsure of what looked like a series of rollers in the ground, but in reality they don't spin. Bob informed me that these do help to keep livestock from continuing up the hill.

At the top of the hill we come to a mid-sized stonework church in a classic design. Going inside the church is a very simple design with white walls and modern looking altar pieces. We took our seats and I noted they have the pew dedication plaques like some churches back home, except they mount there's on the top center of the pews instead of the ends. Jerry is able to find the light switch but the sacristy is locked. While Jerry goes to find the sacristan, Father finds a volunteer to lead us in a saying of the rosary while we wait. In one of those moments of great timing the sacristan arrives and gets the church and Father ready to say Mass just as the saying of the rosary ended. We proceeded to share what would wind up being our last Mass of the trip. After Mass we had some time to look around the church before heading back to the community center. On the way back downhill we noticed a strange sculpture in the church yard that we couldn't describe and there was no marker explaining it. What we did note is a marker indicating that this was a site of the 2000 Jubilee year retreat. We then walked back down a very busy street lined with cars. It appears that school has just let out so we are sharing the narrow road down to the community center with cars coming to pick up their students. We carefully made our way to the community center, and took advantage of the fact it was open and had restrooms. Not an authorized rest stop, but a rest stop none the less. The community center had the features you might expect, a gym, multi purpose room, a computer room with internet access amongst other things. Notices indicated tonights line dancing was cancelled. We next headed from the community center to the historical site of Glendalough.

We pulled up at the visitor's center, and after some time for the real rest break we headed inside. Glendalough uses the tactic of having each visitor wear a sticker as visible proof of payment of the entry fee. In this case the sticker was a plain green circle sticker, nothing remarkable but as we entered Jerry placed one on each of us.

We were then ushered into an auditorium where we were shown an orientation video about celtic crosses, dolemans and monastic historic sites, the video was just generic enough where the Office of Public Works could use the same video at several sites. After the show in the auditorium we went through a museum. The highlights of the museum were a scale model miniature of what the monastery looked like in its day, several gravemarkers, a celtic cross and other artifacts.

After touring the museum we waited in the visitors center for a local guide, and were then led outside to a trail to the historic site. Now it had been clear while we were at the church, and while we were experiencing the visitor center attractions, so of course that means as soon as we started up the trail to the site, the skies opened up and a strong rain came down. We made provisions for those who wanted to stay indoors to go to the pub at the local hotel, and then the rest of us continued on the tour.

We started in the gatehouse, where we noted the ground was very uneven, and remnants of the gate structure could still be seen, but the giant arches over the walkway remain. We were told that civil law didn't apply in a monastery, if you made it inside the gates you could hide from the law, which is what happened sometimes. We next walked towards but didn't spend to much time looking at the round tower. We were told it was use as a lookout tower but due to the weather Jerry requested our local guide make it a highlight tour. We then went into the ruins of the main church building. This church ruin is in much worse shape than the cathedral at Cashel. In this case we see the supports for arches that end at the top of the wall, the big window frames are no longer there, and the tops of the walls have started to disappear, whereas Cashel looks like somebody just ripped the roof off and took the windows out, this building is much more deteriorated. Our guide did point out the alcove where the tabernacle is believed to have been in, and the doorway which now leads to nowhere but is believed to have gone to the sacristy.

We then continued through the park and came to a part where one had to decide if it were better to walk through the muddy grass or through a deep puddle on a washed out path. All around the site is a graveyard, which provided our next stop, a high celtic cross. Our guide explained how usually they had detailed carvings on them, but of course we noted this one was very plain. Our guide said, they believe this one was once very intricately painted instead of caved, which reminds me of how a Vatican museum guide told us that the snow white statues we are used to seeing were once believed to be painted in full color.

Also on the site we saw the original St. Kevin's church which had a fireplace under the steeple like chimney, which gave it it's nickname of St. Kevin's Kitchen. Lastly we looked far in the distance to where the priest's house was. After allowing us some time to walk around the park taking pictures, we headed back to the visitors center. Right outside the monastery gate I now understood the name of the carnival style food trailer, which was "St. Kevin's Kitchen" of course. Across the street was an equally temporary looking gift shop. We were able to get Jerry to pause for a few photos for the record. We then headed back to the visitor center, and collected those who waited in the pub, took another rest stop, and I ran back into the visitors center and bought a park guide.

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 20

2009-04-08T23:21:00.001-04:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland

A trip journal by David Bowers

9/2/08 - 9/11/08

Page 20

The cathedral is very similar to the site at Muckross in that the roof and windows were missing but the basic building has survived. This cathedral building has been through a lot, with it being destroyed three times and all in its history. On one end of the cathedral is a castle like building where the cathedral caretakers lived. I didn't pick up much on the history of the cathedral except that it was destroyed three times, and in the ends its final demise was when another cathedral was built closer to the center of town, making this location on top of the rock obsolete and harder to get to. The bishop ordered the roof removed for tax purposes, letting the building to its own fate and the weather. Speaking of the weather, the wind has really picked up, and inside the ruins of the cathedral it is really howling like a wind tunnel. Before we continued Jerry suggested we look inside a wooden structure we saw in one arm of the transcept where we could see some of the original wall finish, We walked over to the enclosure and peered inside to see total darkness. Apparently, the lights weren't on inside this display. We were about to leave the cathedral when Father reminded Jerry of the time.

Our next stop is to be Holy Cross Abbey, and we needed to be there by a certain time, and we must have gotten behind schedule. We exited the Cathedral and found out we had pretty much seen all of the Rock of Cashel other than the museum. We quickly hurried out through reception, down the driveway to the waiting bus. When we left Cashel, Jerry explained that Holy Cross Abbey is also to be the day's Mass stop, and due to a special event going on at Holy Cross Abbey we needed to be there by a certain time.

We soon pulled across a bridge over a river and first we passed a pub, and then we came to the gate into the courtyard for Holy Cross. We were still in a rush, so we rushed through the courtyard and into the main church and took places for Mass. Jerry came over to us and explained that we had time now to look around the church and we would have mass in a few minutes. We walked around and took a brief tour, starting at the namesake relic. We got to see a relic of the true cross on one side of the altar, and the tabernacle chapel on the other side. After touring the church we headed back outside. I thought that maybe they would take us to a side chapel or a smaller room in the abbey for us to hold our private mass, and in reality quite the opposite was true.

We were led out of the courtyard into a service area. Sitting out in the service area was a gigantic yellow and white big top tent, complete with wooden doors at the tent openings. We entered the tent and it was full of metal benches facing the front of the room where a complete altar was set up. Once we were assembled here, Father explained that Holy Cross was conducting their novena this week, and that in less than an hour they would be having Mass in the main church. He said that with his fast style we most likely could have finished in time, but as we know people like to come early for some quiet time, and we didn't want to deprive them of that, especially during their novena. When we had arrived a bit later than expected, Father spoke with the pastor at the Abbey who recommended we use the overflow tent, which would not be needed till the evening novena service. Father inspected the altar to make sure everything he needed was there, and in the process rang the bell, at which point everybody stood up. He motioned for us to sit back down and noted the Pavlovian response. So we had Mass and remember that wind that was building up at the Rock of Cashel, well it continued to grow, recall also that we are in a big tent. The canvas of the tent was billowing, the masts were shaking, the doors were flapping open and shut. This made it to be a very noteworthy experience, and maybe a bit unnerving to be under a tent that is straining to survive the furious wind. During the homily, Father said that of all the Masses we have shared together this week, this will probably be the one your remember most. By communion time, we noticed others had joined us, and we welcome them in as always, and we also took advantage of the fact the benches had hymnals in them. After our "tent revival" as Father later jokingly called it, we had time for a rest stop and to look in the religious goods store located right off the main courtyard. When we left the Garda or police were directing traffic, and the lot was getting full. We had to walk out to the parking lot to our bus. We left the Abbey and Father mentioned that he was told they had 4,000 there for the morning novena, and will have much more than that tonight. Then it started raining again.

We made our way back to Kilkenny where we would be staying the night. Along the way we passed a military facility and Jerry jokingly downplayed the size of their forces. "We have the only navy where everybody goes home every night", as he noted even though they have had a history of fighting amongst themselves, that for the most part they have stayed out of the major world conflicts, being able to just watch from the safety of their island. You know sort of like the way we felt until 9/11 when we thought our mainland was safe and everything happened "Over there". Someone who wasn't thinking asked if he United Kingdom assists them if they should need help, and Jerry without missing a beat "Does England assist us, well they are the ones we need help against". We then pulled up to our hotel, the Hotel Newpark. Before people got ideas of seeing the town, Jerry broke the news to us that we are not near the city center and that calling a taxi would be needed. We pulled into the hotel driveway and I like how they welcomed us by having the US flag on display outside. We got our time schedule and were informed the dinner would be in one of the banquet rooms instead of the restaurant.

We went inside and collected up our keys. The first stairway and elevator were labeled as being for the meeting rooms only, we proceeded back following the signs to "Bedrooms", instead of using the term Guest Rooms. Up a shot ramp, then down one long hallway of rooms, then we came to the elevators, but found out our room was on the ground floor, what we didn't realize is just how extensive the ground floor was as we continued to walk around and around, eventually into an annex that had a different architectural style. We were almost to the very end of the hall when we found our room. We entered the room and Bob was impressed. One of our two beds was a full king bed, and the floor to ceiling windows offered a great view into a forested area that gave the hotel a lodge feel. Bob came out of the bathroom and asked me to please try to contain my excitement, then I went into the bathroom and yes it looked really nice with green and white marble like tiles, and a heated bath towel rack. What Bob was referring to, though, was the full toiletry kit like we are used to seeing in hotels back in the United States. It took a while for the bags to get all the way back to our room, but we looked around, repacked our carry on bags for today's gift shop additions. I noted an Ireland travel guide placed under the wall mounted flat panel TV. I took a look through it and it looked interesting and I noted it was marked as complimentary, so I added it to my souvenirs. I then glanced at the newspaper I had picked up in the morning while waiting for dinner.

We left for dinner somewhat early given the long walk to the restaurant. The restaurant was all the way by the front doors, so there were some jokes made about leaving a trail of bread crumbs to find our rooms again. When we got to the reception area, we then had to walk through the restaurant to the banquet rooms all the way at the end. The banquet room we were assigned was more of a ballroom as it had a bar area that wasn't open and its own restrooms. We found out we would be dining with other tour groups as we made our way to our designated tables. We took our seats and started to review tonight's menu. This was made somewhat harder as they had only left 2 or 3 menus per table. We waited for them to come around and take drink orders, and we even saw a person look like they were going to open the bar. That would have worked for us, as we were seated right by the bar. Eventually a bar server did come and take drink orders, I was lucky because I ordered a Guinness, and it arrived ready to drink. I think we had a waiter taking bar orders as he first brought wine bottles but no glasses. He wound up serving everybody in the dining rooms wine before going to get the wine glasses. Even then he made no motion to help open the wine bottles until he was asked. More about him later.

When it came time to order I went with the field green salad, the ham and turkey with dressing, and everybody got the same desert. There wasn't anything special about the salad, but when the main course came, I know they don't have Thanksgiving over in Ireland, but they have copied Thanksgiving dinner pretty well. I received a generous pile of meat with ham and turkey surrounding a mound of dressing. Also on the plate was one fried potato and some carrot. A little later the side dishes arrived, in literally a semicircular side dish that fit right alongside the plate. The side dishes were, what else, mixed vegetables and boiled potatoes. The desert was like a cream puff with some raspberry filling.

After dinner, we made our way back to our room pausing at the hotel's business center. I spotted an available internet access point, but when I got closer to the computer I noted it was a coin operated computer, and with only two more days until I was home, I decided to go without the internet. We then headed back the long winding hallway to our room. As I alluded to earlier, I had the best shower of the trip that night. I started with a bathroom equipped with a full basket of toiletries and when I was done showering, I grabbed a wonderful toasty warm bath towel. I said it in my Italy trip report, and I'll say it here, let's hear it for heated bath towel racks. What is interesting is the packages for the toiletries had the Best Western hotel logo. Best Western in the United States can be just about anything but this would be the nicest Best Western I have ever been in.

We decided to start repacking our large luggage, and moving stuff from the carry on bags to the checked luggage, all in an effort to start the process to get ready for the trip home. After that we had a pleasant night's sleep.

Day 9 - Wednesday, September 10, 2008

We awoke ready to begin out final full day in Ireland. We put the bags out in the hall and made the long hike to the front lobby. During the week, hotels had started serving breakfast before the time Jerry had given us, but not here. Right at 7:30 they opened the restaurant so we could have access to the ballroom. We returned to the same table we ate at last night, then went through the buffet line. The buffet line only had the cold food like fruit, bread, and cereal. At this point there was some confusion as some thought there was no hot food. For those of us that sat down the servers eventually came around the dining room taking orders for hot breakfast. I ordered a sausage and eggs plate to go with my breakfast. We enjoyed our breakfast and then headed back to the room to collect the rest of our things. While we were checking the drawers for any forgotten items, we found the in room coffee service and coffee maker hidden inside one of the drawers. The moral of this story is to be sure to check all the drawers in an Irish hotel, you may find things like hair dryers and the like contained in them.

We made our way back to reception, checked out, and then boarded the bus. Following the seat rotation program we headed to almost the back of the bus in seat 9. When about half the people were on the bus, Father Barry announced the seat rotation program had been discontinued. "It's general seating day on the bus! Sit wherever you like!" As we were leaving Kilkenny, we passed an Eddie Rockets, Jerry mentioned that Eddie Rockets is the same thing as our Johnny Rockets, and there are other cases of similar names shops, like they have T. K. Maxx instead of T. J. Maxx.

We started another day of driving the Irish countryside, and today we are supposed to travel through the Wicklow mountains. One of the first things Jerry pointed out to us is a dolman, which is a burial marker made up of 3 or more large stones with a flat stone on top forming a table like structure over the tomb. From there it was another day of bright green farms and fields, with several forest like areas in the mountains. Speaking of the farms, Jerry mentioned that we were getting near some stud farms. It seems that there is a lot of money to be made from racehorses, and the owners of a top quality stub can earn quite a bit of money by allowing people to bring their female horse in an attempt to get them to breed. One of the interesting things about horse racing is that all horses age 1 year on January 1st, regardless of what their real birth date is. Obviously this is good if your horse is born on January 2nd, but pretty bad if your horse was born on December 31st, and then a couple hours later is suddenly 1 year old, and thus doomed to race horses with one more year of development. It's an academic matter which months would be good months , and you would think they would be happy with a 6 month break. However, the owners of the studs aren't happy with this, and have discovered that in the southern hemisphere, all horses age on July 1st. In order to get year round production out of their studs, they have commissioned specially designed aircraft to move the horses between Ireland and Australia.

We then drove through a small town with signs advertising they had pride in their town, which is a nice but common sentiment. It was explained in this case, that Ireland runs a Tidy Towns competition where towns actually compete with each other on appearance. I suppose that's as good of a reason to celebrate local pride as any. As we were driving through another town, we saw a tight turnoff to the left that led to a sharp downward curving road. Thanks to John's great driving skills we were able to make it through that series of curves.

We then went through some more countryside then we passed a house whose owner is skilled in topiary, or the art of creating carefully shaped bushes and trees, often with artistic shapes or designs like arches, or flat topped or cubed bushes, etc. To our right, a river had turned to rapids, adding to the natural beauty of the area. We also passed what I am guessing is a fish farm of some sort. Here the grass is cut up with several long thin rectangular pools of water. For those that would rather be golfing, we drove past the Woodenbridge Golf Club. The golfers on our bus were getting excited just being that close to an open golf course.

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 19

2009-04-03T23:30:00.002-04:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
9/2/08-9/11/08
Part 19

The first stop in the factory itself was the mould making workshop. This is where crafters make the moulds that dictate how the basic shape of an item is going to look without decoration. Adjacent to the workshop are rows of shelves holding the moulds they have produced but aren't being used. The next stop is the first crafter demonstration. In this one, one crafter walks over to a big oven, where a metal door opens up and the body of a pitcher is taken out, then the metal door closes again. The crafter takes a long metal pole and the pole just seems to magically attach itself to the pitcher, and can carry the pitcher about the room, over to his workbench, even hold it out to show people. Meanwhile, another crafter is taking another glob of molten glass out of another oven using another metal pole, and takes it over to a small metal table to roll it out. After the first crafter is happy with the basic shape of the pitcher, the other comes over and slowly lets the second glob of glass, now shaped slowly flow down, still glowing orange, onto the pitcher. After this is done, the first crafter works this new glob of glass into the form of a handle, makes both attachments to the face of the pitcher, and then puts it back into the oven to slowly cool down, lest it would shatter Not before showing the pitcher with handle off to the room of course to applause.

We then go and see this type of work being performed in the factory environment by going up a flight of stairs to oversee this part of the factory floor from a catwalk. Up here we can see several stations setup where people are doing the same type work. I spot warnings to not sit or stand on the metal handrails, and I think I am back at an amusement park. I note that even along the tourist trail, the workers are allowed to show their hurling team spirit as theyre were several flags and posters visible. Some time is given to observe, then we head back downstairs, and continue on the tourist trail.

We go into another galley like area where we see some more of their famous sports trophies. It seems that whenever they are commissioned to make a piece, such as a trophy, they always make at least three: one for the customer, one for the factory archive, and one as a backup in case something should happen to the customer's original. In the case of a trophy where the winner may not be known until moments before the presentation, they may send a Waterford artisan with the trophy who is tasked with carving the winners details into it mere seconds after the results are final. They also explain about how their logo is the seahorse, and since you can't really trademark a drawing of a seahorse, they have modified the tail of the seahorse to be shaped live a clover, that is the unique touch they need to make it a private logo.

Leaving that gallery we come to a display about "Blank preparation and quality control". Here each piece is checked and here is the kicker, the workers are paid piece mail and if a piece fails its next quality check, the workers don't get paid for that piece. Also some of the moulds may leave a bowl with a lid on it that is great for strength in moulding and shaping, not so good for using it as a bowl. Before the piece can go onto cutting the excess glass has to be removed.

Next is the "Marking and Cutting" area. At this point the blank piece is prepared for the intricate decoration that Waterford is known for. They didn't show us the device, just a picture depicting the device that they use to carefully draw a grid of guidelines on the bank piece, wich will help the next group add the decorative work to the piece. On a shelf in this area are examples of our pitcher, remember the pitcher we saw the crafter making back in the glassblowing demonstration? Well here are examples of it with its 'lid', then one with the 'lid' cutoff, and then a pitcher with its gridlines marked on it.

Before heading into the cutting room, we see an old Waterford Glass Limited sign, and then a real nifty display. You may be aware that the Times Square crystal ball that is lowered on New Year's Eve is made by Waterford Crystal, and our host told us that they are constantly rehabbing the ball with new glass panels being replaced on parts of it every year. On the factory tour they have the factory replica of the new years eve ball, with a black background with stylized New York City skyscrapers. Our host says "Here is a piece that I'm sure I don't need to introduce to you" We are gazing at the new years eve ball, mere feet from it, or at least its replica, closer than even TV can get us, able to eye all the detail work. As we are intently starting at the ball, our host reaches over and presses a button, and then the replica starts to perform the same color changing light show as the one in Times Square. Impressive.

We next head into the cutting room where rows upon rows of workers are standing in front of workstations carefully cutting or etching in all the decorative work. This is really where the magic happens. It may not be much to look at while they are doing it, but when you see the finished product, it sure is impressive. Along the walls of the cutting rooms are shelves where examples of each piece they produce can be borrowed by the workers to compare with the piece they are making. Along the walls there are posters outlining how to make some of their cuts, that upon reading the posters in my photos are clearly aimed at the tourist, not the workers. In the same area other posters are hung with some of their advertisements, and even a poster detailing that Waterford city sponsored the Jamaica team in the 2003 Special Olympics.

Next we stop at another gallery like area, where they show off their Lismore line with a chandelier and complete table service in crystal. Its not quite a sales pitch, and the interesting thing about it was our host took a couple wine glasses off the display table and passed them around the group so we could get a much closer look at a piece of Waterford crystal, and get a feel for the weight and thickness of it. Our host showed us some more pieces, and in a case we could see a horse and carriage made out of crystal.

We next headed into the engraving area, here is where the real fine details are added. It was noted that due to the precision nature of the work, while it is okay to take pictures, in this area, please don't use a flash. Around this room they had some examples to look at, including some mostly round pieces of glass that appear ot have a picture etched into them. They had on display some large vases with the golden gate bridge, liberty bell, and the US flag etched into them. It was clear that while we weren't seeing much engraving getting done, we were entering another gallery area where we could gaze at the artistic side of their work. One case held glasses made of colored glass, another with St. Patrick etched into it. We turned one corner and the group stopped. Here on display was a replica depicting the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy, in this case showing the firefighters carrying out Mychal Judge. On display alongside it are the various photos the artist used for inspiration. Our host upon seeing we were taking great interest in it mentioned that this is a replica of the original which was sent to the New York city Fire department, in tribute to all those that lost their lives saving others. Most of us didn't even know this tribute even existed. The display is tastefully done in its own gallery, and an US flag mounted above. In the foreground of the crystal, it looks like church windows in crystal with angels etched on them.. Again, a very pretty piece.

From here we went to the last room of the factory tour, which is where we get small group Q&A with a master crafter. In our case the crafter demonstrated the art of cutting a pattern into a bowl, and he also mentioned about how the artisans get paid piece mail and about quality controls. He said they realize that some pieces and some tasks are harder than others, so each part of making each piece has been evaluated and a pay rate assigned to each one. I'm still trying to imagine trying to administer that. Since today he is doing the demonstrations for the tours, he will get an hourly rate. But back to the patterns he pointed out many complex cuts are actually repetition on simpler cuts, and he proceeded to make a few so we could see the progression. I noticed his bench also had the finished product for that pitcher we had been following through the tour. It was asked what happens to reject pieces, and he responded the great thing about glass is its renewable, so you mess up, you just melt it back down and start over again. The only thing lost is the time spent on it. He went on to describe apprenticeship and all that. Then our host collected us up and escorted us back to the visitor's center.

On the way back to the visitors center, I noted they had even attached a Waterford flag to the top of the gate arm at the security checkpoint. From here we walked along a path that ensures we enter the factory store from the back. Here ends the tour, and shopping and window shopping can begin. Immediately inside the doors is a display of their full table service in red, blue or green, mixed with clear, so its only portions of the glass that are colored. They have the boxed sets sitting there with gift bows on them suggesting a great gift idea. Well, I think one of my cousins has a set, and as far as I know it merely sits in a display cabinet there as well.

A bit further in the store, the Waterford Crystal seahorse is available in crystal, but what really caught my eye was a complete chess set and board. I don't want to even imagine how much that runs. Oh wait, the tag I can see in my photo says "Not for Sale", so maybe some of the items in the cases in the shop are more gallery pieces. The store seems to be organized into sections by use or occasion to make it easier to find a specific piece. I don't think we did find the exact pieces we had bought, but we found items that were close and the prices comparable to what we paid. In one corner surrounded by windows was a Christmas tree with all Waterford ornaments, and then a whole section of sculptures, even a globe. We continue along the main path which lead us down stairs to the lower level of the store. What was not immediately clear is the lower level is affiliated merchants, general Irish souvenirs and the like. It seems they don't want Blarney Woolen Mills to have all the fun. I say this wasn't clear as we entered a department that had crystal, and since we were on the grounds of Waterford Crystal, we thought it was safe to assume we were looking at locally produced pieces. Well in this area we found that nativity set that Bob had spotted for about €30, so thought, at that price why not add one. We took the box over to the cashier who very openly warned us "You do realize that this was not made here at Waterford, right?" Well, no we didn't, and if that is the case, we have lost interest in it. I must give them credit for being very open in letting us know. We wound up having to walk back upstairs to get out of the shop and then down a few stairs to return to the visitors center. Passing by the information desk, I grabbed a brochure and noticed they had a set of 6 souvenir postcards in an envelope for only €1. Both of us bought a set.

We headed across the hall from the information desk to the cafeteria. Its getting old hat now, another bottle of that sparking Fanta lemonade, some salmon served with mixed vegetables and both boiled and mashed potato. I couldn't resist the raspberry coffee cake on display by the cashier's station so I added desert. We soon headed to a table, and I wonder if it was a conscious decision to not use Waterford serving pieces at the Waterford factory, but I looked in the sugar bowl and saw something I don't think I have ever seen in real life, sugar cubes. Little cubes of either white or brown sugar. We had our lunch, and truth told that was the worst piece of salmon I had on the trip, but this is a case of their worst is better than some other peoples best. After lunch we made another rest stop, then boarded the bus. As we were leaving Waterford a message came up the aisle and then I saw the problem, one of the overhead bins was open, with a Waterford Crystal bag sticking out. No one wanted to see that go wrong. The bin was closed and we started heading towards the Rock of Cahsel.

As we headed out of Waterford, there were some signs that read "Up Waterford", and Jerry explained they were not rude in any way, its just the Gaelic cheer translates to "Up" in English. As we were driving through town, we saw a house that was decorated in both the Waterford blue and white, and the Kilkenny colors of yellow and black, a house divided. A bit further in front of one business were no less than six flagpoles flying their Waterford flags at half staff, mourning their loss I suppose. We crossed a bridge and it was pointed out that it was a moving bridge, like a drawbridge, we passed by its control booth, and then we could see down to the harbor below. We then passed by what looked like a cornfield before passing through a major highway construction project. Soon the decorations changed from blue and white to yellow and black, so we must have entered Kilkenny, but we would only be passing through on our way to County Tipperary.

Jerry talked a little bit about the train service in Ireland, how the country thought it was a good idea to build the rail lines, but it was up to each area to furnish their own trains, which led to some unique cases like one area using horse drawn train cars. We were heading, as I said, to the Rock of Cashel. The Rock of Cashel started out as a castle for the King of Munster but almost nothing remains of that era, it was next turned into a religious site and the remains on the site these days are from that era. We started going up the hills to the Rock but the bus stopped about a block from the actual site. If I weren't cynical I'd think it had something to do with the Rock of Cashel shop located right across from where we parked. We unloaded, and then walked up the hillside quite a ways until we reached the entrance to reception. We still had to walk up a flight of stairs outside, then go in the door, then up another flight of stairs to the reception area. One wing of the reception area contains a museum like area and the other the ticket sales area with some guide books for sale. Jerry introduced our group and indicated he would be our guide. He then proceeded to hand over a large check, and here I thought these kinds of arrangements were always made in advance. After arrangements were made, we climbed up another fligt of stairs and out another door onto the grounds. Instead of heading directly to the cathedral which was straight ahead we made a right and headed to Cormacs Chapel. We entered the building though a modern door that has been retrofitted into the original doorway.

Cormac's Chapel dates back to the 1100's and some of the unique features are a barrel roof on the inside, that is a regular pointed roof on the outside. Also on the inside a lot of the arches and intricate stonework is still present. Jerry mentioned that a lot of the windows have since been bricked in when the building was converted into a house at some time. We left Cormacs Chapel and walked around the outside around to the round tower, which is the oldest surviving building on the rock. It was noted the entrance is some 12 feet above the ground. This was a practical need due to the shallow foundation, but it was also good for defense as the people inside could just pull up the ladder. After seeing the round tower, we headed around and walked through the graveyard where some examples of Celtic crosses could be seen. While walking around the exterior of the cathedral we could see scaffolds and workers busy on the restoration. After walking through the graveyard we entered the cathedral proper.

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 18

2009-04-02T23:02:00.001-04:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journalby David Bowers
9/2/08-9/11/08
Part 18

After a nice relaxing lunch, we went to find the gift shop, we headed outside where a slight rain was starting. At first, we headed the wrong way and into the hotel, before they directed us to go the other way, and the gift shop is next door to the pub. We noted the bus was open, meaning we were in the final 90 minutes, but that meant we could drop off our Blarney Castle photos before heading in to shop. The shop contained three floors of shopping, first we wanted to stop at the foreign exchange window for Bob, but that person was out for a bit, so we looked around the shop. It was much the same as the one in Bunratty, except with a bit more of everything. We headed to the Waterford Crystal department, we both wanted to bring a piece of Waterford home with us, but also didn't want to spend a lot of money on it. I know, inexpensive Waterford is an oxymoron, but we decided to have a look.

Before we left home, Bob had looked through their catalog and thought that he would get a nice nativity set he saw for about $65, but when we looked in the store the nativiy set they had on display was larger and went for €160, which is $240, more than either of us wanted to spend. We took a look around and while everything was very pretty, it was also mostly out of our range, except for some maybe a single glass or serving piece from some of their less expensive lines. We were still looking around, when I spotted the bargain table, with some very generous savings. We looked around the bargain table, and Bob spotted a Madonna sculpture for around €50 and I spotted a standing Kells Cross for about €80. These were prices we could live with, and for pieces that we thought were very pretty. We found a salesclerk and the deal was about to get even better. She asked where we were from, and we indicated the United States, and then she said that if we have it shipped, we don't have to deal with the tax rebate process, as the shipping order would be sufficient evidence. Once she took the VAT off of my cross, the new price was €60, which is $90, which is half off its catalog list price. Of course, I lost most of the cost savings back to the shipping and insurance charges but I'd much rather not have to deal with toting it around the rest of the trip. Bob also had his purchase shipped home, so we were soon walking out of the Waterford Crystal department with our very expensive pink pieces of paper.

We went back to the foreign exchange window and Bob was able to get a $100 bill changed into Euro, At first he was only going to change like $60 but the cashier said there is no change in dollars, if we give her a $100 bill, we get the entire bill changed to Euros. We continued shopping, Bob wanted to get a new hat in the traditional Irish style, so we consulted the store directory and headed up one floor to the men's department. We looked through several hat racks before we found the style he wanted, and then once we determined his head size and found a pattern he liked. About €22 later, Bob had a new hat.

We were heading out of the store when I took a look in the Guinness department, I originally wanted some Guinness bar glasses, but I didn't see those, I did pick up a Guinness bar towel and coaster set for about €5. We then left the store, confident in the thought that unless we see something really special, our shopping for the trip is done. We noted we still had about 30 minutes left until departure, so we stopped off in Christy's Pub for a pint of Guinness. Refreshing and it took just enough time for us to head out and join the others boarding the bus.

We next departed Blarney and headed to Cork, where we would be staying the night, it's not a long drive at all, according to the guide the tour company sent it was just about 6 miles. Cork is an important port town, and Jerry mentioned the names of some big multinational businesses that are located in or around Cork. We approached Cork in an area that is mixed with industrial looking buildings as well as some church steeples visible above them. Oddly enough, one of the buildings we would pass is a Heinken brewery, I thought that belonged in Holland, but outside it was proudly flying both its Irish and corporate flags. We took a short city tour passing by the famed Metropole hotel, a barber shop, labeled a grooming parlor. The still functioning barber pole and the descriptions of services on the window gives it away. I noted they still advertise "Hot Towel Shaves" We passed through a bigger than average city, for Ireland, said to be its second largest city. Amongst the buildings I noted one building that looked to be a Casino, (complete with artwork on the outside depicting casino games, and another was a combination diner and tenpin bowling alley. We crossed over the Lee River that runs right through the middle of town, which makes for a really neat setting. Right about where we crossed is the Cork bus station, and we wound up having to drive around the block three times upon arrival at our hotel, getting a good look at the customs house in Cork each time, as well as the offices of the Irish Examiner, and a billboard depicting hurlers. On that nore, Jerry mentioned to us that as expected, Kilkenny did defeat Waterford in the All Ireland final they day before. One one lap around the block we saw a Coor's Light truck and thought that looked out of place.

We finally stopped when they arranged to have us park blocking an alley adjacent to Jury's Inn, part of the same chain we stayed at in Galway. We were happy the rain held off long enough for us to get inside and collect our keys off the reception counter as has become the custom. We took the elevator up to the third floor, opened up our room, and found out we had a spectacular view of the Lee River and the shops and the like on the other side. Not much to say about the room itself, except it was based on the same floor plan as the other Jury's Inn, right down to the same bathroom furnishings. It's back to the body wash for us, it would appear. I noted we would not have to worry about people getting in through the adjoining room, because not only was the adjoining room door locked, but it was blocked by the bench which was now holding my suitcase. We got our carry on bags repacked with the days purchases, and awaited the arrival of our luggage. We had just gotten freshened up, and just when you think it would be a nice time to take a walk, the rain starts pouring down, hard.

We go down to the hotel restaurant for dinner, and in truth I'm not feeling all that hungry. I noted that unless they had a hidden dining room somewhere else, I think we took up the entire restaurant. The places were set with heavy placemats at each seat, about the size of a mouse pad. We waited, and waited for the bartender to come around taking drink orders, but they never did make it to our table, I solved that problem as the bar was just on the other side of the restaurant. I walked over and fetched our drinks, following the lead of some others in our group. For my dinner I selected the melon salad, and for the main course I decided to go with the vegetarian option, which was angel hair pasta in a marinara sauce with grated cheese. When it arrived I noted that they follow the Italian method of applying just enough sauce to turn the pasta orange and have the tomato flavor, but not enough where there are pools of sauce. It was a very generous bowl of pasta, but I was a bit dismayed that we did not get the mixed vegetables or potatoes with it. I had a bowl of ice cream for desert which was much like our Neapolitan in that it includes strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate, except that instead of being mixed together they were three separate dips in own bowl.

After dinner, we asked at the bar about getting some ice for our room, and the barman first gets out an ice bucket which would be too much just for us, so we ask him about something smaller, so he takes a pint beer glass and fills that for us. Perfect. size for us to split, only problem is he used a Carlsberg beer glass, had he used a Guinness glass, it may have gotten lost. We returned the room, and I did the evening chores of putting the camera on its charger, checking the weather, yep still pouring down. Some news and baths and all that good stuff, and it was time for bed.

Day 8 - Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Today, we had to get up, put bags out in hall and all that before heading back to the restaurant for breakfast. I did remember to return the beer glass to the pub before falling into line for the buffet. While waiting for the buffet to open I snagged a paper from the stack waiting at the head of the line, the Irish Independent. I like how they have both the traditional style paper with different sections, or a magazine like version, where its all in one big book. I grabbed the magazine like version for ease of handling. We headed down the buffet line and picked up the traditional Irish breakfast, with the food options being pretty similar to the Galway Jury's Inn. What was particularly interesting was the coffee machine. It was one of these brew a cup at a time machines where you press the button for what you want, all the way from hot water, to coffee, hot chocolate, cappachino, latte, etc. I went with the Café Mocha button, and soon the machine prepared and dispensed a cup of Mocha into my waiting coffee cup. We finished breakfast, headed back upstairs to get our things, then back to the lobby to check out and wait. It was still raining so we weren't eager to walk outside. The bus pulled up on the river side of the street, so we had to cross the street, and that was when I noticed the sides of the hotel looked ivy covered, nice touch I also liked how they do have water rescue equipment alongside the Lee river, just in case something were to go wrong. Today, the seat rotation program put us in seat 7, which is right in back of the rear stairwell and exit. As I noted before, these are still on right hand side of the bus, or on the opposite side of the bus than the front door, and I also noted the restroom is at the bottom of the rear stairs right next to the back door. That must be awful cramped, and the sink for it is at the top of the stairs. We headed out and with the rain streaming on the windows, I realized this would not be a good morning for photos, but then the rain stoped, and the sun dried the water off the windows.

On our way to Waterford, we passed by a Renault dealer, and here I thought they were long out of business. Jerry noted we were heading into County Wateford, who had just lost the All Ireland final. This quickly became apparent by the number of white and blue flags posted nearly everywhere in the county, alongside streets, on houses and businesses, with big signs wishing the team support at the major intersections and roundabouts. One house even had their front lawn decorated up as a hurling pitch, and here I thought we went crazy for sports. It was a bit of a drive to Waterford but it was also a good drive to rest through. About an hour or so later, we arrived at the Waterford Crystal factory. Jerry explained we would have a fully guided fatory tour here, some time to shop the factory store, and that by the time all that is done, we may as well have lunch here as well. Before the tour, though he allowed us to go into the visitors center for a rest stop, and we could look around before being back on the bus in about 15 minutes to begin the tour. The visitors center has, as you might expect, a gallery of their finest work including some of the trophies they have made for major sporting events, a grandfather clock made out of crystal, and a big harp, the symbol of Ireland made out of crystal. Another display in the visitors center is a bronze statue of a glass blower, under which are vials of the sand and other raw materials they use, a miniature wood mold and even a miniature oven. Nearing our tour time, we exited the visitors center to wait out on the porch. I note they were proudly displaying the US Flag in their flag display.

Typically one would board a bus at the visitor's center and be bussed back to the factory, but since we are a coach tour, and have our own bus, our assigned guides board our bus and we use that to get back to the factory tour. On the way to the tour they give us the big welcome, and let us know that camera usage is okay for about 95% of the tour, and they encourage us to take as many photos and video as we'd like, all photo restrictions would be made clear as we went along. Some safety notices about how we are going to be walking through a live factory environment, so be sure to stay with the group, stay on the designated tourist trail, and don't touch anything. Any pieces you see lying about may not be properly finished and may still have some sharp edges. It was explained that we would be split into two groups for a better tour, and that the split would occur after the orientation video in the auditorium. On the drive back our guide tells us about how they make glass from sand right here in the factory, and along the driveway back to the factory they have pictures of various flags, with a welcome message next to each one in the appropriate language. It should be noted that several coaches and tour groups were lining up to go back to the factory. It's a very practical approach, they bus you to the far back of the factory, and during the tour you work your way back towards the front. They advised you might want to take an umbrella as we would have to walk outside between the factory and the visitors center.

We enter the factory through a set of automatic doors and into a fancy hallway with more crystal on display. This hallway serves as a waiting area until you are admitted to the auditorium. This part is like an amusement park experience where automatic doors open to admit you into the room. It was noted the screen was located above the doors we are entering, so we should walk to the back of the room, turn around and face the screen. There were some seats in the far back provided, then the doors closed, the lights went out, and the movie started. The movie was essentially a PR video that did more to inspire us to live a finer life with Waterford Crystal than it was about showing how the product is made. It did win a few points for being a special format movie shown on three screens with the two side screens being set at an angle to the main screen. The octagonal shape of the room was employed to help with this. After the video a different set of doors open and we were led into the factory, in the first section there were two wooden walls so we could not see into this area, and it directed us to where they wanted us. In this area they split us into two groups, assigned group leaders, and then the first group took off for the tour while we waited a few moments in the hall.

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 17

2009-04-01T22:43:00.001-04:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
9/2/08-9/11/08
Part 17

By this time we had met up with the sacristan and one of the gates was opened. The gate has a park welcome sign, park map, a notice that this is a holy place, so no picnics or camping on the island itself, and a sign describing the site. We entered and crossed the bridge and found not a holy water font, but an entire holy water well. We continued along the pathway and I noted old stairs going up to something up in the hillside, but no time for that now as the sacristan is leading us to the end of the pathway to the little chapel. When I say little, I mean we had a tour group of 56, and we were a tight fit. There is room for maybe 48-50 seated, more in folding chairs or standing in the back. After we entered the lights were turned on, and the sacristan set up microphones for a sound system. We got a laugh out of that, as it seemed totally unneeded. There is only one aisle, down the center, with the pews going all the way to the side walls. I look down and I can tell I am not looking forward to the bare wood unpadded kneelers.

It's a pretty church on the inside as well with rose and pink colored walls, an impressive altar in the front, and a sanctuary candle right over the center aisle that dominates the front half of the room. I noted for fire safety, they went with the push button electric votive candles, and the walls were adorned with paintings depicting the stations as well as the usual statues. The sacristan mentioned this building is only about 100 years old, and is not a regular parish and has no scheduled Masses, but is extremely popular for weddings, retreats and tour groups. We proceeded to have Mass, and things were going fine until communion time, when Father admitted "I have no idea how we are going to do this". There are no side aisles, and the main aisle is only about 1 person wide. I was seated in the front, and for us Father just walked along the front pew distributing communion the old fashioned way, just like he had a communion rail. For the other rows things were a bit more interesting, what we finally did was one pew at a time people went into the main aisle and got in line, then received as they headed back into the pew. It took some time, but it was well organized. Father said "It's the German coming out in me"

When Mass was ended we had some time to admire the church, and then I went outside and up the uneven stone steps, two flights up to an outdoor stations of the cross. There is a large cross in the center and it is said that these are actually the ruins of St. Finbar's hermitage. I took some photos and went back down the two flights of stairs and rejoined the group as we headed back across the bridge and up the trail to the bus. We headed out and got a good taste for just how far out of the way Gougan Barra is as we backtracked quite a ways to the sounds of the High Kings on the bus sound system.

We headed to Blarney, a stop[ I was most interested in. But first, we passed a Top gas station, with "Proud to be Irish" proudly displayed on its sign, not in changeable letters, but a permanent feature of the sign. I suspect this may be in reaction to the number of Texaco stations I saw. On the way to Blarney Castle, Jerry gave us the background about how it's a castle ruin, albeit a castle ruin that has become very famous for its Blarney Stone. Blarney, which is either seen as the gift of gab or the gift of eloquence, depending on your point of view, is said to be instilled in whomever kisses the stone. The story goes that Queen Elizabeth I decided it would be a good idea that the Irish Earls who owned the castles should just give them over to the crown. The Earl at Blarney castle sounded agreeable but whenever the day to hand over the castle came, he always had some reason why the transfer could not go on, causing the queen to say that he was full of blarney. Jerry noted that wouldn't it be great if you could just walk into the front hall of the castle , and pucker up to some stone at head level mounted on a wall? Well, its not that easy, first you have to climb all the way to the top of the castle, yes using those same dubious spiral stairs we saw in Bunratty just not as well lit or maintained over the years. Once we get to the roof of the castle, we have to walk around to a certain point, then you have to lie down on your back on the railing, crane you head backwards so that you are almost upside down in order to kiss the stone. That might scare some people off, but I think its good to let people know what sort of adventure they are in for up front. In addition to the castle, we would also have the main location of Blarney Woolen Mills, which is a big Irish souvenir superstore, and Jerry proposed we take our lunch stop here as well. So, let's see 1 hour to tour the castle, 1 hour to shop, 1 hour to eat, so I'll give you 3 hours of free time to divide up as you see fit. He pointed out the locations of the store, the restaurant, and the pathway leading to the castle. The castle is a paid attraction, but he has called in advance and we are to just show our tour name badges to the tcket seller. This will also be a break for John, but in consideration of those who would like to shop, about halfway through the period he will unlock the bus for people to stow any purchases.

Bob and I discussed our options, and I knew my primary objective was getting my smooch of that stone. We reasoned that we seemed to be arriving at a popular lunch hour, and that since we don't know what kind of line to expect at the castle, that we should first head to the castle. We followed the well marked path from the Blarney Woolen Mills parking lot out to the road, where we crossed the street and then walked through Blarney Castle's small parking lot. If they would have just made the space between the parking spaces and the fence a bit wider they would have had a nice walkway. At the other end of the parking lot we come to the park gate. No fancy indoor reception area here, instead they have ticket windows and turnstiles, so evidently the ticket selling and admission is handled in one step. We walked up to an open turnstile and told the ticket seller we were with Jerry's tour group, and she notices our badges and waved us through the turnstile. Even the turnstile here is an antique, its not the modern kind with three rotating bars coming out of a vertical cabinet, this is an older deign with a cross shaped top mounted on a pedestal. To discourage crawling under they have added a grate to the bottom of the bars. The pedestal is mounted flush with the side of the ticket booth, so the stile rotates into the ticket booth where I am sure there is some control mechanism. I had noticed books about the castle being sold by the ticket seller, but given the adventure ahead, I decided to pick one up on the way out.

We first went through a entrance plaza complete with gift shop, snack bar and restrooms, before heading out along a pathway that followed alongside a stream. When we were back as far as the castle, the path turned and crossed the stream with a narrow bridge. Some photos were taken , and when we crossed I had noted a sign that read "Blarney Stone at top of castle" I misinterpreted the sign as just a piece if information, but it looks like that sign might be just under the stone where you could look up at it the ground, however photo review reveals that to not be the case. We headed up alongside the castle and the first entrance, well its not the most glamorous, it leads to the dungeons. I didn't feel like a real life game of Dungeons and Dragons, and besides I didn't bring my torch, lantern, or flashlight with me, and it looks like those would be needed, We continued to walk around the perimeter where we passed by the round guard tower. At this point, we had seen a stairway up to the castle, but alas it was roped off. We continued along the perimeter trail, where we saw a path branching off for "Rock Close" Jerry didn't mention Rock Close or why we would want to see it, so we pressed on heading for the Castle. We climbed up some stairs, and passed a rest area before heading alongside another path that runs between Blarney Castle, and the newer Blarney House. Signs indicated that Blarney House was closed today, but we could explore the gardens. We declined that offer, and instead of going through the gate in the garden wall, instead turned and went through the castle gate.

We entered the courtyard where a gift stand was set up, but more importantly it was the pick up stand for the blarney stone photos. I noted the price, €10, though I knew I was probably going to buy one, no matter the price. From the courtyard we went inside and into the Great Hall. I noted the light blue signs on the walls kept pointing the way to the Blarney Stone. I also see a fairly modern wooden stairway, hey this doesn't look too bad yet. We climb the normal stairs to the next floor. We tour a room of the castle where we can see outside, and we can also go up a couple stairs and follow a passage which leads to the spiral stairs. Okay, here it comes, I enter the stairwell. The stairwell is not well lit, perhaps lit only by natural light in the windows. The stairs are narrower, shallower, and steeper than Bunratty, and get more so the further up you go. No handrails to be had, just a rope hanging down the center to grab onto. We slowly and carfully make our climb up the next couple floors, they don't make it well known but you could stop at any of the landings and further explore the castle. Towards the top of the stairs I am using my hands on the stairs as they become so steep. We exit the stair turret and then realize we are not on the top floor, we have to walk along a balcony around the turret, where we can see down into what looks like a courtyard in the center of the castle, which may have once contained the real great hall. We reenter the turret on the other side for the final flight of spiral stairs and step out onto the rooftop. Here is the place where medevil battle legends take place, the castle parapet. Don't lose track of your footing yet, as the walkway up here is up a step, two steps forward, down a step, two steps forward, up a step, and repeat all the way around, The Blarney Stone is about halfway around the parapet walk, and we walk about halfway along our side of the parapet before hitting the back of the queue. We quickly realize we are joining our group in the queue, and Father is just about 2 or 3 people in front of us. To help kill time you can look down into the courtyard, you can take pictures of each other, or if you are at the notches in the parapet you can look at the view. They have placed a bunch of signs some serious some humorous in the area to help as well. We no sooner got up there when the photographer had to take about a ten minute rest break, and everything just came to a halt till he returned.

As we made our way around to the stone, I noted the height requirement was at the operators sole discretion, and to be sure to secure all loose articles. No hats, glasses, or anything like that allowed, and we were advised that shirt and jacket pockets are also a bad idea unless they can be secured. Further signs alert you that you can take photos of the stone from this side (mostly blocked by the attendant), but not from the other side as that is an "Official Photographer's Stand Only". I eventually made it to the front of the line, and the procedure is approximately this, first they have a plastic box you can store loose articles in, then you lie down on your back on the ground, the railing and wall are actually notched out here so you are laying down at foot level rather than climbing up on the railing. They are thoughtful to provide a blanket here for your comfort. Once you have assumed the position, you are told to reach behind your head and take a firm grasp of two steel bars, then you are told to use the steel bars to pull yourself closer to the edge, and then bend your head way back so it is between the outer castle wall and the inner wall. Note that there is a gap between the two walls, and when you have your head in the right spot to kiss the stone embedded in the outer wall, and low down on the wall you are looking straight down at the ground. Yes this has caused some people to freak out, and yes they have added safety bars over the years so if you would slip you won't fall. Don't worry about that though, as this fine Irishman is holding onto you with a firm grasp holding you securely in place. It should also be noted that if the fear of heights doesn't get you, the fact your head is lower then your stomach and legs will. The human body just doesn't like this position, so the weird feeling some say they get when they kiss the stone is actually a reflex by the body on the position it has been forced to assume. When you are done, the operator helps you stand back up, you drop something in his tip jar, collect your loose items, and the photographer gives you a claim ticket. Note when I say photographer, I mean man who merely presses a button mounted on the wall which activates a fixed camera pointed at the position.

Now that I have shared that, I can also share the urban legend Father had shared with us before the trip, the legend being that at night the locals sneak into Blarney Castle and use the Blarney Stone as the world's most unique urinal and then laugh to themselves at all the tourists who line up the next morning to kiss it. The jury is still out as to the truth of this urban legend, but there are numerous websites that offer their opinion.

We continue walking around the parapet and come to the other turret, time to start the climb down. After the climb up, we were very worried about this, but it seems this stairway is in better condition, is wider, and has handrails on both sides. We go down one flight, and its back out onto the balcony where a display tells us about the great hall in the courtyard. Back into the turret and we again ignored the landing or two on the way down and soon found ourselves more or less exiting into the entrance hall. We exited the castle to the same front courtyard we entered and headed to the photo booth. We handed over our claim checks, and were shown two monitors with two different poses, one of you in the actual act, and one of you preparing to kiss the stone. The downside of the one of the actual kiss is owing to your position its hard to tell who it is, so I went with the preparing to kiss pose. It comes in a 5x7 color glossy inserted into a folder that has a picture of the castle on the front, and a certificate on the inside you can fill out yourself to mark the occasion. The folder was put into a paper bag and we were on our way. There was some chat and congratulations to each other outside the castle walls on our collective accomplishments, then we had the trek around the trail back to the admission gates. We made a quick stop in the entrance plaza before heading into the gift shop. I picked up the Blarney Castle book €5, and declined to by the shillleleagh my coworker asked for, just looked to bulky to try to get home (€20). I did note the gift shop made a selling point out of the products they had that could not be purchased at the giant Blarney Woolen Mills. With that we exited the park, and carefully made our way through the parking lot, across the street, and back the pathway to head to the restaurant at Blarney Woolen Mills

We entered the restaurant and found the plan worked perfectly as we walked up to an almost empty cafeteria counter. Stopping at the drinks station, I decided to try a bottle of the Fanta sparkling lemonade, and Bob decided to try one as well. When I first saw the menu I thought I would go with the chicken curry, but upon approaching the serving area, I changed my mind to go with the roast leg of lamb, served with peas and both mashed and boiled potatoes. I recall hearing at the pre tour social that no matter what you order you will get potatoes and sometimes two different kinds of potatoes. They asked if I wanted gravy, and they put gravy on my meat, but not the mashed potatoes. We then paid, and on my way to the dining room, I noticed a table with glasses, a big tray of ice, and pitchers of water, and decided that means I can have ice in my drink this time. I stopped off took a glass and filled it with ice before proceeding. We found a table in a quickly emptying dining room, but given the amount of work the bus boys were doing we must have just missed the crowd. It's a nice large dining room with a turning waterwheel inside for a pleasant relaxing atmosphere as we enjoyed our lunches. Yes, the roast lamb was pretty good, and don't you be thinking about one of those poor lambs we have been seeing all week at various farms that suddenly became my lunch. The lemonade was refreshing, once you got used to the carbonation.

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 16

2009-03-31T20:06:00.001-04:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
9/2/08-9/11/08
Part 16

We arrive at the loading area and with 13 of us, the other groups load in 4, 4 and 3, and the carts seat 4, so that means Bob and I get a private cart. I notice one key difference, in the pictures jaunting cars usually have the 4 seats facing outwards to the sides, on these cars they are still sideways but they face the inside. There is also a door that closes over the back opening, which I am sure is all for safety. To tell the truth, I was a little nervous about getting into the jaunting car when I saw the one step you have to assist you is barely larger than my foot. Bob climbed up first with the help of the jarvee and I, and then I climbed in, no problem. Since there were only two of us the jarvee took the other seat and closed the door. We were offered a blanket and introduced to our horse, Susie, don't ask me what the jarvee's name was.

We start on our way, and even though we are in the back of the pack, our horse seems eager to catch up to the next horse. Our jarvee jokes that our horse has a thing going on with the next horse, and also that since its 5pm, our horse is excited as we will be his last fare of the day, then they get to go to the stable. As Jerry said, even though our jarvee was friendly and very helpful, willing to stop when we wanted to take pictures and all, the narration was a bit more than jibberish. He pointed out some trees and the children's playground, and then he took us to see Muckross Friary. We parked in a jaunting car parking area, and our jarvee indicated this was as far as he was allowed to take us. He invited us to get out and take about 15 minutes to explore the Friary, then come back, and he'd be waiting for us. Since we had not yet paid him for the ride, I felt quite sure he would indeed wait.

We walked up the walkway, and looked at the signage before heading in. You first go through a graveyard, what we though was interesting is that not only can you some pretty old graves there, but you can also see some pretty new ones as well, in addition there wee some examples of celtic crosses. We headed into the friary building, or what is left of us. The walls are all intact, but the roof is totally gone. You can see in the walls where the windows and doors used to be, but they are also missing. So it's the ruined shell of the former Muckross Friary. In the first room, on one side we could clearly see a stone altar, and on the other side we could see a bunch of scaffolding. As I mentioned earlier, there are all sorts of preservation and restoration projects going on. The scaffolding is protected with a wood fence and numerous no climbing signs , then is covered in fabric most of the way up. We pass through a high tower in the center that still has glass in the windows and come to another roofless room, and I realize that might not have been an altar I saw before, these may be crypt style graves. We headed back under the tall point of the building and went down a short dark hall and came out into a nice courtyard with a tree in the center of it, more scaffolding, and some very dark passages leading off of it. We decide not to chance going further into the building and head back towards the graveyard to meet the others on the tour I'm still curious about the first room altar or tomb, I mean it does have steps going up to it like an altar and it has some real nice stone engraving work, like a frieze, leaving a great example of art behind it.

After we all met back up, we returned to our waiting jaunting cars and continued the ride. The next segment of the ride took us around some of the large lakes, offering wonderful views, and with a helpful jarvee, who even recommended a photo spot and everything it was a fun time. I did note on the walkways that you have to look out for the exhaust the jaunting cars produce, to put it nicely, if you are walking about the park, like several people were.

It was right after the nice views of the lakes with the mountain like hills in the background that my camera told me it had taken enough pictures for the day. Oh sure I had the battery low indicator almost every night, so I charged every night. When I got back home, I laughed when I saw a sign that said a heavy duty camera battery should be good for 80 photos a month - I was averaging 200-300 per day. We next went around the outside of Muckross House, just outside the formal gardens and we could see the vine covered walls of the mansion. I'm not sure I approve of driving the jaunting cars through the grass, but based on the ruts that were already worn into the grass, it won't be the first time, and it probably won't be the last. Besides, its their park so if they feel its fine, so be it. We then returned to the jaunting car loading area, and our jarvees took souvenir pictures of us, using our own cameras, for no extra cost. We got out of the jaunting car and then started to settle up. The lead jarvee thought I was personally banking the entire 13 person excursion and presented me with a bill for €127. I was not left on the hook for long as we have an honest group who probably didn't even realize what was going on, and when they all joined us to pay, she was agreeable to €9 per person. Since €10 is such an easier number, we told them to make it an even €10, and then settled up. We had no sooner started up the ramp from the jaunting car stand that Jerry was leading the rest of the group down the hill from Muckross House. Talk about timing, and we still had some time left to make use of the comfort station located at the coach park. After we boarded our coach we had some fun watching a coach pull in, realize the lot was full, and then have to back all the way out.

We then headed back to Tralee, and I realized we drove past Killarney Cathedral, so we did in fact take a Ring of Kerry tour, in terms of making a full circle drive. On the way back to Tralee, Jerry advertised that we had dinner on our own that night, but just in case anybody would be interested he had reserved some seats for the hotel dinner. The hotel dinner would be at our own expense, of course, and the negotiated rate would be €23 plus drinks. I asked Bob if he would prefer to eat on the town or in the hotel, and owing to him being tired, it being a Sunday, which Jerry had already mentioned a lot of stuff closes early or doesn't open on Sunday, and with it getting dark early he would prefer to eat in the hotel. So we raised our hands when he took a count, okay that's 7 for dinner then. Meet in the main restaurant, not the banquet room.

When we arrived at the hotel, we had time to go upstairs, freshen up, and repack the carry on bags. During the day somebody mentioned on a prior trip having their passport in a plastic lined passport protector and the passport inside getting damaged with moisture from sweat. This of course meant I couldn't wait to check my own, since it sits behind a plastic window in its fabric holder. The idea is you can show it without having to pull it out of the case, and it has a pocket for your regular ID the same way. Of course, I have found in the real world of travel, airports and passport agents would prefer to have the actual document, out of its case in their hands. No damage there, and we were glad the hotel left the extra pillows in the room. I started to put a large pile of pocket change on the end table, and for some reason decided to sit there and count it. I was shocked to find out I had nearly €20 in change. I think this comes from my own reluctance to fiddle in change, but a count of it revealed I would have to do a better job of it. The coinage units mostly follow ours: 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 cent, and 1 and 2 Euro coins. The 20 cent coin was a hard one to get used to since I am more used to dealing with quarters, and I never did see the 2 cent coin. Those 1 and 2 euro coins start adding up in a hurry though. Before diner, bob mentioned he was low on Euro, and if I could pay the restaurant check tonight and he would pay me the equivalent in US Dollars. Fair deal wit hme, and we head on down. We get to the restaurant about 5 minutes early and wait till 5 minutes after our appointed time, and thought we had been left alone, but the others had already been seated. No problem, we were shown a table and handed a special menu. The menu was the banquet style menu, except this time it had the notation of the price for the meal service.

It was similar to what we had been having in service, we got some bread, we ordered beer and wine as suited us. When it came time to choose an appetizer, Bob went with the melon salad again, and I ordered the French onion soup, hoping it would not come from the puree school of soup. A short time later our first course was served and where before Bob got a little melon and fruit in a sundae glass, tonight he got a much larger salad plate sized assortment of fruit. I was even more pleased when my soup was served. It was served in a large bowl, much larger than you would want soup in, but that was because that was the outer bowl that held a sourdough bread bowl full of honest to goodness see the ingredients soup. After having soup puree the last couple nights, seeing real onion, croutons and thick melted cheese was a decided plus. The broth was a lot lighter in color than we are used to, but it was still great soup.

Next came the main course, and we had both elected the Cajun style blackened salmon. Hmm, both Cajun and blackened, this should be nice and spicy. Our plates come and we each get a very generous cut of blackened salmon atop a bed of mixed vegetables and a couple boiled potatoes to the side. It is easy to see why we assumed this was the extent of our main course, but then they sat another plate with more mixed vegetables and three scoops of mashed potatoes in front of me. We thought this must have just been a courtesy plate of additional sides to share, I mean the sides on our main plate are more than ample. They then set a similar side plate in front of Bob. Wow, talk about a feast! We joked to ourselves about how much better the meal service is when you are paying for it, than when it is included in the tour. After the main course, we finished it off with some lemon cheesecake. All in all not a bad meal for right around €60 with tip for 2 people. I had asked what the local tipping custom was, but the manager just gave me the unhelpful advice of "Tip what you feel is right", so we went with our usual tipping custom. We left the restaurant and after inquiring about internet service, I learned the public guest computer was out of service, but they did have wireless available if I had a laptop with me. We decided to just head up to the room, it may not seem like it would, but two back to back days with a lot of bus riding can really take it out of you, I think on past choir tours, we called it "Bus Coma". I have a feeling we may have over tipped when our server went out of their way to greet us and thank us profusely as we were boarding the elevator. Time for another great shower, and then off to bed, with a bit of world news from the TV. Even in Ireland, the United States managed to dominate the news coverage with the bank bailout.

Day 7: Monday. September 8, 2008

This morning we awake, and make it a point to be punctual after yesterdays dash to the bus. We don't want any more of that reputation, so its model citizens day. We head down to the banquet room for breakfast, and the hotel must have had more groups in this morning as there were more buffet lines set up. Mostly the same as the day before, and with the big dinner I had, I went with a lighter meal of fruit and cereal. We were out and on the bus noticeably early and seek to resume our proper slot in the seat rotation, which puts us in row 5. We start the day with a drive to Gougane Barra. We start the drive there while a soft rain falls outside. On our way there we drive past a castle arch in Macroom that is showing off some cannons out front. Macroom Castle is long gone, a city park sitting on its grounds, but the castle arch and a couple cannons remain as historical markers. We pass through the village and notice advertisements for Murphy's Stout on the walls, Jerry mentioned that this is a local competitor for Guinness, based out of Cork. Not to worry as we would also pass a fully loaded Guinness truck, not refrigerated enclosed truck, but instead more like an open flatbed proudly displaying its barrels of Guinness to the world.

We then passed a stately looking building that might have been city hall, and which review of my photos reveal had half staffed their Irish flag. We continued through the rather pleasant town square and like most roads it seems we started going down a road that runs alongside a river. We passed back into the countryside, as it would just not be a day in Ireland if we could marvel at the greener than green grass of the heather lines fields, with rivers and streams flowing peacefully in the valleys. We passed by farms, a few houses, a couple villages, and one house that looked like a mansion, with a wonderful setting.

We had been driving down one of Irelands two lane country roads when Jerry announced we were leaving the main road for something a bit smaller, a one lane road into Gougane Barra. We heard the story about St. Finbar, and my initial reaction was Saint Who? Anyway, he was the 6th century bishop of what would become Cork, and is said to have lived his life in hermitage at what is now Gougane Barra, he is also credited with createding a monastic settlement which has grown into the modern day city of Cork. Jerry pointed out a small stone chapel sitting on an island in the lake, the island that is claimed to the be the actual hermitage site. It was then announced that we would take a rest and Mass stop here. We parked the bus in the parking lot right next to a pub and hotel. It was raining lightly as we started to head to the lakeside to get photo of the chapel as it reflected in the water surrounding it. Jerry had also mentioned another site of interest, and that is that the park has won Ireland's Top Toilet award for the best public toilet.

I was a bit confused at first, as I didn't realize we would be having Mass inside the little chapel on the island until Father started getting his equipment out of the bus. First though, a trip to the Top Toilet, which was pointed out to us by a handy directional sign made to look just like a road sign. We walked along side the water with the reflections of the chapel getting better and better as the sun started coming out. We passed the locked gates blocking the bridge out to the island, and continued on to the top toilet. We did pass two wooden rowboats docked on the mainland side, which added to the park like setting. We arrived at the restroom building and found not a simple brick building but a round building complete with what at least looks like a thatched roof with a dome skylight in the middle. Well, it certainly is an attractive restroom building, and inside it is clean and well kept up, but I wouldn't say the inside was anything special. I noted the building was proudly displaying its award plaque, and I'll just comment that if in an Irish speaking area, and judging by the official park welcome sign, this is such an area, remember that "Fir" means men, and "Mina" means women. An important travel tip, just for you. After the rest stop we headed to the gates.

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 15

2009-03-30T23:02:00.004-04:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland

A trip journal by David Bowers

9/2/08-9/11/08

Part 15

It has been said that Charlie Chaplin really admired the Kerry region, and we saw evidence of that as we passed a statue of Charlie Chaplin in a park alongside the road. In this park was a bus pulled over and its tour group enjoying a picnic lunch. Jerry mentioned that the German tours generally prefer to have picnics instead of lunch stops at restaurants, this is facilitated by the fact that German tour busses will sell lunches to their passengers, and I suppose if they take them to a park off the side of the road, that sort of makes them a captive audience. In a similar vein he noted that Italian busses are often stocked with a coffee bar, and one tour operator he was talking to once noted that on a week long tour he can sell upwards of 400 cups of coffee. I don't recall coffee sales on the Italian tour bus I rode in Italy. It seems that Europeans have no qualms about taking bus tours to other European nations instead if air travel, and Ireland is not a problem as they have ferries that can accommodate the busses. Jerry noted that Irish busses, as a rule, don't sell any sort of food and drink.

Past the park, we saw something that I forget what it is, it's a small stone building much in the shape of the Gallarus Oratory we saw the night before with a series of huge stone rocks in a row leading up to the building. The area seems to be popular with tourists, and earns points from me for having an American flag along with the Ireland flag. From here the road kept getting higher, and we passed another roadside park that has a statue of Mary in a little green space separating the road from the park. We kept going until we arrived at our lunch stop, the Scariff Inn in Caherdaniel. Jerry made a special note that we should be sure to check out the fabulous view they have. By the time the road gets to the little end in the road is even with the dormers in the upper level windows. Just past its Irish flag, I see the sign, a sign inviting me to "Enjoy Ireland's Best Known View (fog permitting) From our Vista Bar"

We walk around to the end of the building to the entrance and step inside, as I suspected we had to walk down a flight of stairs into the Vista Bar once we entered the building. Another American item caught my eye, it was a folk art throw that represented the Betsy Ross 13-star flag with hearts instead of stars. Perhaps they wanted to make their American lunch tour group feel more at home. The throw was folded as to obscure the message "God Bless America" on the throw, well obscure it except if you can read mirror writing. We continued down into the stairs to the Vista Bar, and even from a distance the view out the windows is breathtaking. Hey look, it's the second snooker table I have seen in one day. They have skillfully laid out their restaurant so to get to the cafeteria serving line you have to walk through their gift shop. We managed to get out of the gift shop without buying anything and headed down the cafeteria line. I decided to try another Irish favorite, the shepherds pie, which was served with a dinner roll, cole slaw and tossed salad. Interesting to see those two together. When we got to the beverage case I was looking over the beers and I guess they sensed I didn't see what I wanted as a server approached me, "Drink from the bar?" I ordered a Guinness, and they had it out to me and on my tray before I got to the cashier station. Here is where I really hope the cashier collected for my Guinness, a reasonable assumption, as I know the bar attendant didn't ask me for payment nor did I stop at the bar on my way out. After I paid the cashier a waitress picked up my tray before I could and carried it into the dining room. Gee, I don't really need help, but then I noticed they were carrying everybody's trays into the dining room and seating people. We joined a single who was eating alone in our tour to better use a table of four.

Shepherds Pie is a neat concocation, you take a base made of meat, add to it some mixed vegetables and mashed potatoes, and then cover that all up with melted cheese. Pretty good quick lunch if you ask me. After eating our food, we left the table as the dining room was still busy with people looking for tables. Besides this way we can check out the view from the Vista Bar, and then we found out we can see the same view from the parking lot which has the benefit of not having to take pictures through windows. So we slowly gathered in the parking lot, taking pictures, socializing and looking around.

Back on the road we heard the legend of the Captain's House. All it is really is a house that is built to resemble a boat. Of course the locals and the guides can't let it go at that, so a legend has been made up about how the house belongs to a sea captain who wanted a home we could feel at home in. We then saw some nice beach areas along the shoreline. Further along we passed a house decorated with caricatures of famous Irish writers, I think we might have seen O'Connell's house, I know we saw the sign for it, but if we did I didn't have my camera ready fast enough.

Our next stop would be Sneem, and it would be a rest stop. Here we were able to get off the bus, take rest stop and then we had about have an hour to walk through the quaint little town. The main square was lined with two story stores, each with its own distinctive color, yes they might even be the same building but they want to make it clear that it is a different business. Again they use colors we just don't have, or at least not commonly use, making the village a prime candidate for getting "quaint European village" or "quaint Irish village" photos, right down to its Shell gas station by the bridge. Speaking of the bridge it overlooks a cascading rapids that runs down to a park below, and beyond that you have nice view of the village of Sneem. Walking back through the village, we stopped for an ice cream as a desert after our lunch. It seems like every other store in Sneem offers ice cream. Down one road we say a Doctor's Surgery, with hours that make our doctors look accommodating. Something like two to four hours a day. We took several pictures, enjoyed the town square with its old fashioned announcements board and modern art sculpture in the middle. After our stop at Sneem, we veered off the Ring of Kerry road, and headed towards Moll's Gap.

More scenic shots as a river cuts through a valley, and then we headed into Killarney National Park. Jerry mentioned we should be fortunate there are so many trees to enjoy, as during the years under English rule they had viewed Ireland as an inexhaustible supply of wood and deforested darn near the entire country. What wasn't left by deforesting was taken for "military reasons" to eliminate hiding places the Irish natives were using. He noted there is a problem though, there is one kind of plant that is growing so thick that it is cutting off sunlight to the ground below, if you drive through a patch of them, which we will, you will think you are driving through a tunnel. Our next stop was Ladies View, don't worry gentlemen you can see it to. So named because the Lady referrd to was the Queen of England who chose this sport as her favorite scenic spot in the area. Now we get to see it. It's a nice overlook where you can see the lakes of Killarney in the distance while enjoying the hills and valleys.

As we headed on, Jerry was just a bit late in asking us to pay attention to the next road sign. Oh I saw it, but I didn't get the camera ready in time. It looks like the traditional Irish road directional sign pointing across the road, except it was painted in bright colors and the warning was "Leprechaun Crossing". This, of course, prompted Jerry to tell us a leprechaun tale, after first making sure we were all familiar with the little playful elves that protect the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and all that stuff of Irish folklore. His story was that one day a boy was walking and he spotted a leprechaun, taking firm hold of the little guy and not daring to let go or let him out of his sight, he asked "Where is the pot of gold?" The answer "The pot of gold, oh its just right in the forest here, let me show you". Keeping a firm grasp so as to prevent escape, the leprechaun leads him deep into the forest., indicates a tree and says the pot of gold is buried right under this branch. Now this forest is full of the same sort of tree, and the boy lets the Leprechaun go, and of course the little man disappears in a hurry. The boy starts trying to work the ground but alas the ground is too hard. He decided to take a sock off, and tie it to the branch that was indicated, run home, get his shovel, and come back and get the loot. This plan worked just as intended until he got back to the forest, and found the same identical sock hanging from the same exact branch on every tree in the forest. Anyway, I hear the sign is taken in every night due to the constant roadway theft at night, by day it is next to a craft store that can keep an eye on it. I did not go into the store, but I have to wonder, if the signs keep disappearing if the store has considered mass producing them and selling them in the store? I know Kennywood amusement park sells their famous yellow arrow signs in the gift shops for a similar reason, just like they sell the mission bells that line the main mission highway in California. At least that allows honest people the chance to buy what they covet instead of having to turn criminal.

Switching to a grimmer topic, earlier on our trip, somebody had asked about the Irish Famine, and Jerry indicated he would hold that story until he had suitable time, and now he figures he has suitable time. Before I begin, I will say it was fascinating hearing about a historical event that I've heard before from the Americans point of view, being told by the Irish point of view. Instead of an Immigration story, its an emigration story. The story as we have usually heard it is when we learn US history in school, about the melting pot society and the great influx of immigrants in the 1800's It as usually explained that the reason they wanted to basically leave everything behind and start over in a strange land is they were coming for a better life. Now we hear the story from the other side.

You may recall during the week Jerry had laid the foundation for this when he talked about feudal society on the first day, and the about the difference between the castle dwellers and the cabin dwellers on the third touring day. It only make sense that on the 5th touring day (6th day of the trip) we have the story come to a head. You might recall I mentioned how the commoners were only allowed to keep enough money to live a bare bones lifestyle, if that. As it turned out the Irish diet was heavily laden with potatoes as they were the only crop that could sustain their lives given their small land areas. As you might fear, this works out fine until the potato crop fails, which it did, several years in a row. When the potato crops failed hunger became a real issue, and that was including possible eviction by heartless landlords when the money stopped rolling in. Lack of nutrition lead to diseases spreading very rapidly. What's worse, is there was ample food in Ireland to share on a food aid basis, but as the people of Ireland continued to suffer, England continued to export large amounts of the food from Ireland for its own use. Public assistance wasn't helping out much either, as the rules were written in such way to preclude most from being eligible. There was a rule about if you had more than a quarter acre of land, which in an agricultural society is highly likely, you could not claim public assistance. Some fled to the workhouses on the sheer hope of being allowed in and being fed. Those that could, started to emigrate from Ireland, often to North America. Those who couldn't afford it were sometimes sponsored by their landlords who wanted to be rid of their now non-producing tenants with a sort of international severance package. Most though caught boat rides on unscrupulous ships that were either low priced or they traveled free on an indentured servant type arrangement.

Here is where the situation worsened, as the owners of the boats had very dangerous practices, for starters they would crowd the boats way over their intended capacity, oftentimes turning former cargo holds into massive dormitories with very close quarters. Of course the more room in the boat they use to cram full off vulnerable poor people who are willing to risk it all in the hopes of a better life, the less room they have for provisions. Severe overcrowding, with inadequate provisions is sure to be a disaster waiting to happen, and it was. Estimates say usually a third of the passengers on any of these boats usually dies en route and since the other passengers who were in tight quarters for maybe a month or more didn't want to deal with the stench and possible illness that could be invited by hauling a dead body, they mercilessly threw them overboard. Jerry quipped that the sharks used to just follow behind the boats. Arriving in America was no assurance either, as we had instituted a quarantine program to prevent whatever disease they had from spreading into the United States. The quarantine period is said to have been the last straw for some that made it. Jerry admitted that since there is no good documentation of what really happened, the political sides will skew the death/emigration rate as suits their cause. Those who wanted a free Ireland compare it to a genocide by England on the Irish people with a large toll on the population, those in favor of staying with England will say that it wasn't nearly that bad, and cite a much lower number.

So, there is the Irish Potato Famine in extreme Cliff's notes version. The history lesson allowed us to get to Muckross House part of Killarney National Park,. We enter the park and pull into a crowded coach park, taking the last parking space remaining. Large friendly signs warn us the exit gates will automatically close at park close. We depart the bus and head up a trail stopping just outside Muckross House. Muckrosss House is one of those giant mansion homes in the center of a park and garden, sort of like Biltmore back in the United States. Here Jerry divides the group up into those who want to ride the jaunting cars, and those who want to take a walking tour with him. We join the jaunting car group, which winds up being 13 people. At about this time, a representative of the jaunting car attraction meets us, and Jerry gives him some instructions regarding what to show us and the like. This particular area of the park is motor vehicle free, and in addition to guided park tours, the jaunting cars can also serve as a sort of taxi service. One the details are arranged, those of us who are to take the ride head off with the jarvee, and the rest of the group meets up with Jerry.

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 14

2009-03-30T00:22:00.002-04:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
September 2, - September 11, 2008
Part 14

The food came, and Bob's melon salad looked a bit small in a sundae glass, and I must admit I was thinking of chicken and bacon salad as in pieces of meat on top of lettuce. I must have totally blanked on the concept of chicken salad, like you would find on a deli sandwich, but that's what it was except it had big chunks of chicken and not a lot of sauce. The cream of potato soup followed the puree school of soup preparation, and tasted like watered down mashed potatoes, with no chunks of potato. The pork loin was good as well as the usual sides it was paired with, and the apple crumb cake was a cross between apple cake and apple pie, it looked like a cake with its rectangular slices, but it tasted like Dutch apple pie, complete with pie filling. Unlike Jurys Inn, towards the end of the meal the barmaid came back around to settle bar tabs making that process that much easier. We were informed to return to the same tables in the morning for breakfast.

We then returned to our room, and turned the news on TV, it wasn't CNN, it was something like Skynews or something like that, but it had the 20 minute news loop format. I'd say there are most a dozen TV channels, maybe a couple more except in the 19 channels on most TV's some were taken up by audio feeds from radio stations. At first I thought it was just a limited hotel TV package, until I looked at the TV section of a newspaper and realized that yes, it really is just that limited. Jerry quipped towards the start of our trip that while in the hotels, we could take a look at Irish TV, and said "That will be good for about 5 minutes" He wasn't too far off, he would later quip that the state run broadcasting service, RTE, stands for "Really Terrible Entertainment", in actually it's the initials for Radio Television Ireland - in Gelic.

It was soon shower time, and when Bob was finished he reported having all kinds of difficulties with the shower. Seems the water would not turn on unless you turned the cold water on first, and if you turned the cold water off, it all went off, and he couldn't get it quite hot enough to his liking. I brace myself for another sub par shower, but I do take slight consolation in the fact I have a bar of soap to use. I got into the shower and saw what looked like an old style two faucet system except the faucets were mounted on either side of a metal box like enclosure. Recalling that in Ireland, cold is on the left, I turned that one and yes water came on. Then I looked over to the right, and the other faucet was weird, I could see it was calibrated in degrees Celsius, so what we really have is another way of implementing the same shower setup we had seen the past three nights. Whereas before the outer knob controlled the flow, and the inner knob controlled the temperature, here the left knob is the flow, and the right know is the temperature. I noted the knob would not turn past 38C which just isn't hot enough for me, but then I noticed a red button that functioned like a child proof top, squeeze in on the red button and the knob will turn past 38 up to a more reasonable setting. Having figured that out, I had the best shower so far this trip, and I find comfort in the fact I get to have it again tomorrow. So with that, we prepared for bed, and with the help of ordering up a few extra pillows, had a good night.

Day 6: Sunday, September 7, 2008

This morning we woke up, ready to start out Sunday morning, and after getting ready we appreciated the fact we got to stay here a second night, and we put the stuff we absolutely couldn't be without in a fold up gym bag and left the hand luggage in the room as well. We headed back to the banquet room and found our same table. We spotted the buffet setup in the next room. I liked how the juice dispenser sits in a bed of ice, but found the breakfast buffet to be lacking. Sure it had eggs, beans, and bacon, but what happened to the puddings I was acquiring a taste for. They did have breads, cereals and a fruit bar, so it was more than enough just no breakfast meat to my liking. So, we all got seated at table, and there was a hot thermos like pitcher, the kind you serve hot drinks in. One person at out table is feeling helpful and goes around, asking if we want coffee, and filling the coffee cups provided. We had just moved on to adding cream and sugar when the server sit an even larger thermos down on our table and says "Here's your coffee!" We slowly take a taste of the hot beverage we thought was coffee, and found out it was tea. Well, I've heard of people using cream and sugar in tea, so why not try something new. It wasn't bad by any means, but I chased it down with a real coffee.

There was some confusion regarding our assigned time to be on the bus, and by confusion I mean strong opinions that the departure time ranged anywhere from 8:00-8:30. Our group usually does better than this, so I am thinking he may have stated two different times. We went up, retrieved our coats and the gym bag, and headed out. The elevator was full, so I took one for the team and dashed down four flights of stairs. Well, I guess those of us who thought 8:30 were wrong as our group ran out of the hotel bringing up the rear. Well, I hope this is the first and last time we are the last ones on the bus. We headed to our assigned seat rotation seat, but it was taken, so Jerry pointed us into the empty front seat. Sure, it's the same seat we were in yesterday, but we do have another scenic drive day, so maybe good things do come to those who wait.

We headed out of the hotel, and we first passed alongside a domed indoor water park. What a neat idea given Ireland's history of bad rainy weather in the summer. Our first stop today is Killarney Cathdral for Mass. We arrive at the church, which owing to its position is hard to get pictures of and head inside. The church has a lot of windows which helps to allow a lot of light in which gives the place a light airy feeling. I noted that this cathedral, while the altar has been moved to center of the church, still has the tabernacle way at the back in its original spot. This led to a pause before and after communion where some people whispered "Where did he go?" An interesting piece of art was above the altar the church had the usual suspended crucifix above the altar except the two beams were different, and this time the vertical beam was short, and the horizontal beam was really long, it just looked different. I also noted the church has provided televisions for the benefit of those with out a clear view of the altar. What I noticed was that even though we had a small private mass, which seems unusual on a Sunday morning, the television system was still on, and it changed cameras from altar to podium as required so it was manned and operating. As we were finishing up, people must have started arriving for the 10:00 Mass as they came in and took seats off to one side. When Mass ended we headed out to the bus, by way of walking back past a large crowd in black suits, almost tuxcedos carrying black folders that looked suspiciously like music folders. I also noted another tour bus parked out front, so I am willing to bet that there is a touring choir heading into perform Mass right after us. Having been on a few church choir tours with Mom, I know what that's like.

We next headed out of Killarney alongside a river to start the Ring of Kerry tour. The Ring of Kerry is another one of Ireland's famous scenic drives, and again we were lucky to enjoy perfect weather conditions for it. On the outskirts of town, we stopped, but did not enter Kerry Bog Village, which is another historical park where you can see thatched roofs and the like. Jerry commented that its much like Bunratty Folk Park on a smaller scale, and that we didn't really need to see it. We did though, stop in the neighboring pub for a rest stop, and I noticed the Bog Village and Pub were doing a big business with attendants parking busses almost as tightly as he could reasonably get them. We were told that the house specialty at this particular pub is the Irish Coffee, or coffee mixed with whiskey and topped with whipped cream. Bob and I decided we'd like to try them, so we headed into the Red Fox Inn.

The pub was buzzing full of tourists, and when we entered we noted on one side they have the bar, but on the other side they have a sales table expressly for the purpose of selling Irish Coffee. We got in the short Irish Coffee line and they had row upon row of glass coffee cups sitting there with shots of whiskey already poured into them. All they needed to do when you ordered was add the hot coffee and the whipped cream. (Not from a can either). We took our Irish coffees and headed to the dining area. I noted a postcard rack where they sell "Their famous Irish Coffee recipie". And we tried to take photos of ourselves with our Irish Coffee when a tour mate came up and got our photos for us. I also took a close up photo of the large County Kerry flag in the pub before we headed to a quiet corner of the pub. They had plenty of tables, but we decided to just stand. I also noted the room we were in had a non-alcoholic coffee bar in it was well. After finishing our morning pick me up, we took a look around the pub using its large facilities, and I took a look in the gift shop. In the gift shop I noticed a nice green Ireland shirt with the word Ireland in celtic script, and its even in my size. So I bought the shirt and as I was heading out I made the big blunder of the trip. I snatched up a Ring of Kerry book in the wrong language. I think I got the French version, so that's €5.50 down the drain, but hey I do get the nice pictures that are in the book. The T-shirt was a good deal at only €9.95.

After I left the gift shop I took a look towards the back areas of the pub and chanced upon a coin operated pool table that just didn't look right. Getting a closer look, I realized the table was equipped with Snooker balls just as I suspected. I returned to the main room o the pub and if I thought it was crowded before, well now the main room is just jam packed. I decide to head out to the parking lot and wait there, I left the pub and I spotted Bob outside as he had already decided to get out of the crowd. After the pub stop we started on the scenic drive

The scenic drive was similar to Dingle Penisnula as we drove around the outer border of another peninsula like area with the sea to one side and the mainland to the other. In fact at one point I think Jerry mentioned we could see the Dingle peninsula from where we were. We also had a good dose of Irish history today, first hearing about the Penal Laws which might be of interest as this deals with all the laws Great Britain had passed to try to suppress the strong Catholic presence, really trying to make like so hard on them they would convert. Stuff like taking away rights to vote, hold public office, own a horse worth more than 5 pounds and so much more all aimed at making life very hard on them. He referenced some of the long tern hunger strikes that went on, and early forms of civil demonstration that went on. I liked the line where the leader, a Daniel O'Connell I believe who had rallied a lot of the Catholics at the time into a large group who were civil and not forceful in their protests and then saying "Would you rather me hand them over tp some hothead notw that they are well organized?"

For stretches of time, instead of a narration, Jerry would let us enjoy the scenic drives on the trip with soft background music on the busses on board entertainment system. This caused a fair bit of trouble at first, as I suspect the other busses CD players worked like those in your car, but this bus had a high tech audio visual entertainment system that kept giving them fits. When they did put the CD's into the dashboard mounted CD player, they played only on a speaker clearly meant for the drivers personal use. Eventually they did figure it out and he played a variety of contemporary Irish music, stuff from the High Kings and Sharon Shannon. I liked the music so much I bought my own set of the CD's off of Amazon. He even threw in a CD with the traditional Irish songs being played on panpipes. Jerry had mentioned earlier that there is no sheet music with proper Irish music, it should be played as the musician feels when they play it, and also that the songs are either usually very happy, or very sad with no middle ground.

Just like on the Dingle tour, we would occasionally make use of the roadside pull offs to stretch our legs, get some air and take photos. We did, in fact pull off where we could get a nice view of the Dingle Peninsula from the Ring of Kerry. What a way to tie the two days touring together. Shortly after the stop to see Dingle we passed by some houses, but what made one special is that it was equipped with a tall in ground flag pole, and on the flag pole was proudly flying the United States flag. Just something truly special when you see it displayed so proudly abroad. I suspect the owner of that house just might be a transplanted American. I hate to sound like a broken record but more greener than green heather lined fields, more breathtakingly clear bodies of water, I can easily see why anybody would want to move here. A bit later we passed a sculpture on the side of the road that Jerry referred two as the four monks in a boat, or 4 men in a tub sculpture., properly known as the Skellig which was built as a tribute to the Augustine monks. A bit further we passed a massive restoration project going on to restore the O'Connell Memorial church. I mean massive as in scaffolding almost completely covering the exterior of the building. Further along, we came to a storefront that announced it was a bookmaker. Given the large posters of horse racing in the windows, I doubt I would see the publication of any great works of literature inside. It is nice though, knowing that some nations take a "if you can't beat em" attitude and let it operate right out in the open, which may even mean its more regulated than shady back room operations, we then passed an Anglican church that has since been converted into a coffee house, and hey there is Tom's Tavern. We have a lot of Tom's in my family, I should feel right at home.

As we circle the Ring of Kerry we pass a fairly modern looking school, complete with hurling pitch in the back, then a building claiming to be the Valentia Meteorlogical and geophysical observatory, showing there is room for education and science way out here in the midst of all this beauty. Speaking of science and technology a bit further he pointed out a building he said used to be a trans Atlantic cable station, now a Garda or police station. We got s short introduction to the trans Atlantic cable. At issue was Ireland's desire to communicate with the new world the problem was the only means they had was by sending messages on boats that cruised to North America and back. The speed of these boats was an issue of course, you were looking at a month each way, and that is if you were lucky enough to have good seas and good weather, otherwise it could get much longer. The idea for a sunken cable wasn't a new one, as it had connected Ireland to England that way, and other European nations had cables. Going clear cross the Atlantic Ocean however, was untested. From what I was able to read later, it actually took several tries before they finally got one to work, at great expense as they had to hire two boats, build the cable have two boats cruise the ocean carefully deploying cable and then meeting somewhere in the middle and hooking it up. Eventually they hit on the right combination and had a working cable. It worked, but it was also pretty slow taking 3 minutes to signal one word. He joked about now, they get impatient if it takes 3 seconds for an American web page to load. The problem was that people back then, even though they finally had a faster means of communication, it wasn't fast enough, and they tried to signal faster and faster, causing the electric lines to heat up as more juice was being put through them. Finally just 3 months after the first cable line opened for business, they burnt it out. The investors didn't want to sink any more money into the project, but one Irishman realized that if he could control the only source of instant communication to the new world, that position ought to afford him some power, influence and wealth. He bankrolled another cable, using a thicker cable with more insulation learning from the earlier mistakes. He also used only one boat deploying all the cable going one direction then hooking ti up to the other station. And thus trans Atlantic instant communication began.

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 13

2009-03-28T22:57:00.001-04:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
September 2, 2008 - September 11, 2008
Part 13

On the way to Dingle we passed the South Pole Inn, which was founded by Tom Cream, a survivor of the Shackleton expedition. At times the road would veer inland so we would have those wonderful fields on both sides of us, occasionally spotting villages off in the distance. When we got to the actual town of Dingle, we took a short rest break, the area was adjacent to a harbor where we could walk dockside admiring the ships on one side, or the town on the other. The harbor area had some public facilities available, and it was noted we would be on a long drive before our next stop. That's all that really need be said to start a parade from bus to bath. After taking care of nature we looked around the main street of the town and the harbor area.

We left Dignle on Slea Head Drive to continue our scenic drive. On the way out of Dingle, Jerry told us that this is here Ryan's Daughter was filmed and how that has really opened up the tourist industry in Dingle. It seems before the movie Dingle was a quiet town that sort of kept to itself as it was sufficiently far away. Then the movie studio came, and suddenly a car dealer that usually sold a car every week or two, sold 7 in one day. Suddenly the Hollywood money was flowing into the local economy, and the resulting movie made the area famous. He told the anecdote of the star David Lean who wanted to ride a horse on the Dingle countryside despite never having ridden a horse before. The movie studio rejected his wish stating their concerns for his safety and their filming schedule and budget. Well, as movie starts often do David wouldn't take no for an answer and despite the movie studio insisting on several precautions, he did take a ride did fall off, and the movie studios worst fears were realized when this brought production to a halt for a month. It's said that several of the cast or crew still remain attached to Dingle, and some have even moved there.

As we continued out towards Slea Head, known as the westernmost point in Ireland, the terrain gets more rugged the shoreline more jagged, and the road just that much more interesting. As the curves got tighter, Jerry made an open invitation to anybody who ever wanted to try to drive a tour bus, now is your chance. There were no takers to the humor filled offer. Just then we came upon a nasty curve known as the Devil's Elbow. This is an evil hairpin turn, made more evil by the fact there is no room for error between the guard fence on one side and the sheer rock face on the other. As if that weren't evil enough, there is a spot a couple yards long where there is no road, instead the steam has overtaken the road and you drive through the water. It was noted you have to be on the watch for hidden jagged rocks below the surface. Jerry mentioned this turn is hard in a passenger car, it's a challenge in a normal tour bus, so we'll have to see how John handles it with an extra long bus. It took some time, but we got around and through the turn.

Further along, we came to a stop in front of a house that has, to it's right a 'bee hive hut", which is a early stone building that has a dome at the top similar to a beehive. Before we can get out to take pictures, Jerry indicates the reason he is stopping the bus but not letting us out is the owner of the house and the bee hive hut aren't exactly friendly to tourist and will demand a fee from you for taking photos, however they have found they can't do anything about a bus that happens to park in front of their place for a few minutes so this is as good as it gets for a photo.

Not to worry, as with any scenic drive, this one is built with a number of pull offs offering places to stop and take pictures, stretch your legs or get a breath of freah air, and we would take advantage of a few of them. A little bit later we passed a giant crucifix statue on the inland side of the road. I got my camera out just a bit too late for that shot. Since we had a particularly clear day, we were rewarded with great views of the Blasket islands as we started to near the end if Dingle peninsula. Here I noticed the road was definitely one lane, so I presume we are on a one way only scenic drive.

Our next stop is Gallarus Oratory, and we will actually get to go and see this one. The story behind Gallarus Oratory is that it is believed to be 1,300 years old, which would mean it was built in the 700's . The construction style is real simple in nature, it's a dry masonry building, meaning no cement or mortar was used to hold the stones together, just weight and careful design. It's not a large building, maybe able to hold about a dozen people squeezed together, and not a fancy building. The two side walls from a giant A-frame with supporting walls front and rear. All four walls slope out as they go down, forming a sort of mini pyramid. The building was designed as an early worship site, and other than the walls the only other features are a doorway in the front, and one window in the back. It may not be much to look at, but its claim to fame is that it has stood for 1300 years, again with no mortar or cement, just gravity holding the building together, and not only has it stood the test of time, it has lasted on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and is still waterproof. In that way it is an architectural wonder.

Before we arrived at the oratory, Jerry informed us that we are in a Gaeltacht area. Remember a few days ago, I mentioned there are some fantics in the vocal minority to make Irish (Gaelic) the only official language? Well, here is where the story plays out, there are certain areas in Ireland where the citizens have gotten together and said "in these areas, Irish will be the only official language". These areas are referred to as Gaeltacht areas, and there is usually a sign when you enter one that reads "An Ghaeltacht". You will soon realize you are in one as one of the things they do is bring back an old law that is still on the books but was never inforced, that law being that road signs be in Irish only. As you can guess this can cause all kinds of problems if you have only an English language map with you. Luckily most travel guides are good enough to warn you about this, and more and more maps are coming out with major cities in Gaeltacht areas labeled in both languages. This beats the alternative which is to get an Irish map and do side by side comparisons to find your way. I did note that in an interest of safety some of the safety signs are still bilingual. The shame here, is in some cases they didn't put up new Irish language only signs, but rather they painted over or otherwise covered up the English, sometimes in a different color just to taunt you. It's said that the citizens here only wish to speak Irish but somehow like any foreign country those that earn their living off the tourist may make exceptions. None the less Jerry taught us the traditional Irish greeting of "Dia Dhuit" (or "hello") so that when we pass through reception we can greet the attendant in their chosen native language.

I can't stress how important this is, I found when going to Italy, that even though most of the tourist oriented areas speak at least a working amount of English, that if you speak to them in the local language, even if you don't get it right, as long as you show you are making an attempt to respect their language, you will generally get better treatment,. Some will even naturally try to help you with the language so you can do better next time. It may also take the edge off of the "Ugly American" syndrome if you at least try to act respectful and willing to take the effort to speak their language. Jerry hinted that at one time you could just park and walk up and see the oratory but over time they have built a fence and a gatehouse around it. We parked in the coach park, and walked to the reception building. The reception building, as is common in Irish attractions is the ticket office, gift stand, and snack bar all in one. Jerry went in first and introduced himself, and then waved us in, on our way through reception, we walked in the front door, Jerry had a stack of tickets with the stubs already detached and he handed us each a ticket stub on our way into reception, and we walked right out the back door.

The first surprise is we thought the Oratory would be right behind the reception building, but its actually back about a good 5 minute walk along a trail to the oratory. At the end of the trail we come to another fence, but the big auto gate is open, so we don't have to squeeze through the thin pedestrian lanes. We pass the interpretive signs and head up the final walk to the oratory. We take some photos, we walk inside the empty building, no furniture, no lights. We feel the walls and they are indeed nice and dry inside despite the fact Jerry had said Ireland had rain for about a month. There were some photos taken involving people looking into or out of the small window in the back wall. After satisfying our curiosity and our cameras, we took the walk back to the reception area, where some use was made of their comfort facilities, and we also decided to get some ice cream from the snack bar area in the reception area, a Choc-Ice which is kind of like a Klondike bar,. Once the group was assembled he headed back to Dingle. I noted the ticket stubs we were given were quite large and had pretty much everything Jerry told us about the oratory printed on them, along with a sketch of the building itself. Handy keepsake, those tickets, as I didn't see anything in ther gift shop I wanted.

On the way back to Dingle, Jerry reviewed our Killarney national park options for tomorrow, and took the vote. What do you know, the vote came back pretty much evenly divided between the three options. Jerry commented he would have to think about this, and Father mentioned "Be Solomon, and decide what to do". We had this conversation as we drove through the town of Dingle, and just before we reached Tralee, Jerry figured it out. "Okay, if our goal is to satisfy the majority of the group, and if I can arrange for two of the three options, that is two thirds of the group or the majority." He proposed that he would, of course, offer the walking tour of the Muckross House gardens, and there just happens to be a station for the jaunting car ride at Muckross House. When we get there, he can drop those who want a jaunting car ride off at the jaunting car station, take the rest of the group on a tour, then come back and pick the jaunting car people back up. Sounds like a great solution to me. Of course, some asked about the boat, and Jerry reminded us that we really need a large group to make that financially feasible, as there are no public boat tour rides, so we would have to charter a boat and captain. That settled we returned to the Hotel Brandon to check in.

We arrived at the Brandon hotel at just about the same time as another group. A key difference I noticed between our two groups is that while we were having our luggage taken care of by the hotel porters, the group on the other tour bus were handling their own luggage. As usual, Jerry went in first to make the arrangements, and then returned with a plastic basket. It seems that the Hotel Brandon still uses mechanical room keys. His first thought was to read off the room assignment sheet, then you could grab the appropriate number key out of the basket as you got off the bus. That didn't work out too well, and we went back to the spread them out on the reception counter approach. So we picked up our one key per room, attached to an obnoxiously large key ring, as in gas station restroom key large key ring.

It took some time waiting in line for the elevator, but soon we were up to our room on the top floor. When we started walking down the hallway, we noticed people having trouble getting into their rooms. We inserted the key into the door, turned one way, nothing, turned the other way, we heard the lock click, but the knob wouldn't turn and the door was still firmly locked. We tried the other way, the lock clicked again, still remained locked, and the knob wouldn't turn. We turned it back around the other way, click, knob and door still locked, repeat. Finally Bob gave it a try and noted that the key came to a hard stop one way, but not the other way, so we turn it around once, click, door still locked, turn it around a second time the same way a second click and the door pushed open. It turns out the knob never does turn, and both the deadbolt and the regular door latch are operated using the same key. Come to think of it, that's how my front door works, so I'm a little embarrassed I didn't figure that one out. Of course, once you know the secret it's easy, but it sure gave a lot of people trouble that first time. Bob just said some locks have a personality, you have to play with them.

We got into our room, and I didn't have too much stuff to add to the carry on bag, so mostly we just looked at the room and waited. We had a street view, and being on the top floor had a pretty good view of Tralee from our bay window, in fact the whole room jutted out to form the bay window, which allowed for a nice size table and chairs. We were getting settled in when Bob announces "You won't believe what's in the bathroom" I look in the bathroom, and after three nights of liquid body wash from miserly dispensers I see bars of soap. Sure they are small bars meant for the sink, as there was a body wash dispenser, but that's not how we intended on using them.

Given the time we had to spend waiting for the elevator up, we decided to leave the room a bit early, and of course an empty elevator was just sitting there waiting for us. We went down to the lobby, and found out we weren't eating in the restaurant, but we were shown back a hallway to the banquet room area. It looked like we would be eating with the other tour groups at the hotel, so we went to the tables marked for our group. Ah, I see the table marking says "Abbey Tours - Jerry" on them, so Abbey Tours must be the Irish tour company that Pentecost Tours partnered with. We took our places at a giant 10 person round table and studied the menu. I see we have gained a course, now we get to choose an appetizer, a soup, a main course (which will of course be served with the ever present mixed vegetables and potatoes), and a desert. When the server came, I opted for the chicken and bacon salad, cream of potato soup, pork loin (w. apple sauce), and the apple crumb cake. Meanwhile, Bob went with the melon salad, ham and turkey, and ice cream. Bar orders were taken, and I had a Guinness and Bob had some wine, and these arrived pretty quickly.

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 12

2009-03-22T17:03:00.002-04:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
9/2/08-9/11/08
Part 12

Banking done, we returned to the visitor's center. It was just about time to rejoin the group but not before a quick look through the gift shops and food options. We decided against any snacks, but I noted one of the gift shops had a big display of Ireland travel books. They are mostly picture books with some narration describing the key sites in Ireland. This same publisher "The golden book" has a series of titles covering several countries and US cities and states, so we have come to acquire a collection of their books as we have traveled. So for €11.99 I added a copy of their Ireland guide to my collection. For some reason the price annoyed me, mostly because I received a near useless Euro penny as change. My coworker just returned from Italy, and he remarked that their merchants rounded nearly everything to the nearest whole Euro, while I didn't notice that in Ireland, I did notice that most people rounded their prices either to the nearest 50 or 20 cent increment. I suspect the difference is pre-Euro Italy used the Lira which had gotten to the point where it took 2000 lire to make $1, with their smallest note being the 1,000 lire note. I recall from my trip there in 2001 that they had coins available for smaller amounts but they were seldom seen. With almost all prices being posted at the next 1,000L level, which leads me to believe that they just can't get their minds around fractional currency units., whereas Ireland used the Irish Pound which was based in structure on the British Pound, so for Ireland the transition to Euro still resulted in prices with a magnitude they are used to, including the fractional portion.

Having purchased this latest item, we got back on the bus and headed to our next stop Tralee. This was yet another pleasant drive past farms and fields, even a river running right alongside the road with what looks like a nice park on the other side. Did I mention the grass is much greener on the other side of the ocean? On the way there we drove around one of those pretty roundabouts I mentioned, in this case the Clashlehane Roundabout which features a nice football (soccer) statue in its center. This would also mean we must be nearing Tralee as the roundabout is bordered which shopping centers, which would suggest a major city. We also passed a graveyard, and from what I can tell they like to use stones that cover just about the entire ground area of the grave. I'm not sure if this means they are closer to vaults like in New Orleans or what, but they do look a lot more cluttered.

Back when Jerry was talking about sports, he mentioned that in Ireland their major sports divisions are by the county, and that each county has a unique set of colors that naturally become the team colors. The sports fans of the counties proudly decorate using flags, streamers and whatever else they can find in their counties colors. If you ever thought American sports fans were crazy with team flags and such, you haven't seen anything. In Ireland its not uncommon to see flags or other decorations with the county colors flying at nearly every home and business, sometimes with the adage that the more they decorate the better. Tralee is in County Kerry, which is yellow and green, so all over the county you see yellow and green decorations. Jerry also mentioned a program change for us involving the next two days. The change is that in the printed guide, dinner would be on our own today, and the tour would furnish dinner tomorrow, well they are moving the furnished dinner to tonight, and we will be responsible for tomorrow's dinner on our own. We pulled into Tralee which is a nice built up town that still retains its quaintness. Jerry mentions that this will be our lunch stop, just about half an hour or so for lunch. We do pull onto Denny Street which seems to be the main street here. In the center of the street is the Pikeman monument, commemorating the 1798 rebellion (to separate from Great Britain), and at the end of the street near where we parked are both the Kerry county museum (decorated in Kerry colors of course) and a rose garden, as in the Rose of Tralee.

Tour directors typically give a few suggestions and Jerry mentioned that if you wanted a fast lunch, that Micko's on the other end of Denny Street is a fast food restaurant, our you could try a pub or one of the hotels along Denny Street. He also mentioned that if we want french fries, the term is potato chips, and that if did want what we call potato chips, to ask for potato crisps. He cleverly did get a jab in, asking "or are they still called Freedom Fries in America?" Given the short time stop and wanting to geta a few photos, Bob and I headed to Micko's, besides this way I can see what Irish fast food is about.

We walk in and the dining room décor is out of the 1970's and the dining experience about what you would expect. You walk up to a service counter and here I was somewhat surprised that they described their hamburgers in ounces. I had thought the metric system would apply here as well. I went with the Big Micko which amounted to a double quarter pound cheeseburger, then I noted I could upgrade my meal for just €1 more. I took the upgrade and soon had the sandwich, a very large order of potato chips (fries) in a plastic box, and about a 20 oz. Coke. (Remember, the custom of refills has not yet been commonly adapted in Europe.) Bob ordered the single quarter pound cheeseburger, standard size and received what we would term small fries and a drink, almost a child size drink back home. Paying the counter attendant I was a bit dismayed that just this small fast food meal came out to about €10 or $15, especially in comparison to the cafeteria meals where we had gotten full dinners with two sides and a drink for just €2 more. We took our food over to a table, minding our heads on that low stairway right in the middle of the dining room.

We chose a table by the window to maximize our people watching ability. As for the food, the burger wasn't bad, and came fully loaded with just about every standard topping. The ketchup had a slightly different taste and texture to it but we didn't think it was a bad sandwich, In review, I noted that Mickos apparently doesn't have a website, and on Ireland forums tends to get low marks. I did note the wrapper for the hamburger proudly claimed it was made from 100% Irish Beef, and then I started noticing places that serve beef wanted to make that clear. I'm guessing in response to the mad cow disease over in the UK. The potato chips (fries) were above average in my book, not having a greasy taste to them at all, and I like the ketchup packets they used. Back home, ketchup packets are just way too small, here the packet resembles a long thin tube, I'd say at least 6 inches long. While eating I noted that while we just walked right up to the service counter, by the time we had started into our sandwiches, a sizeable queue had formed, so we evidently just beat the crowd. I did get the impression that they market to children just like our fast food restaurants used to do, with a bright colorful interior, and arcade machines. They had two of them, one being a claw game with the usual stuffed animal prizes, the other machine being much more dubious looking. It's a crane machine variant where instead of a crane you operate an electromagnet suspended by a cable. You move the magnet around the case just like on a crane game the difference is the prizes are in little plastic boxes with a metal ring at the top. Protecting the metal ring is a plastic lip that sticks up an inch or so surrounding the metal ring. The catch is that the dangling electromagnet won't pick up the box unless it can fit all cleanly inside the plastic lip. It's a very hard machine to win, and back in the States the boxes usually contain jewelry or nice lighters. In this place, the plastic boxes are filled with money, and the machine proclaims "Win up to €50!" Looking around I did see at least one box that held a €50 note. I noted the cost per play was €1 and decided to not try for it. The people playing this machine, mostly children.

After we had finished our meal I took a walk upstairs where the restrooms were located. I know I promised not to bring up restrooms unless something noteworthy came up. I think this one qualifies, in fact let's just get it out of my system. As I might have mentioned, they don't use ephuseums and are more likely to label these particular facilities "Toilets", sometimes in large type Short, simple, tells you exactly what you need to know, even if it may sound crude to us. I went into this particular toilet, and when I was done I looked around for the sink. Not finding a traditional sink, I saw two semicircular holes built into the wall at just about the right height. Noting it had a nozzle on top and a small basin with drain at the bottom, I stuck my hands in. Here I found where the industrial age meets the bathroom sink.

When I inserted my hands and tripped the sensor ,the thing went through its cycle, first dispensing a little bit of soap, and then pausing, then letting the water run for a few seconds, pausing again, then an air blower turned on for a few seconds, all in one unit. A remarkable machine designed to be vandal proof, while conserving water and other resources, as well as being space saving and promote sanitation by being totally hands free. Why then, is this hands free bathroom wonder sitting next to what might be the only manual flush urinal I saw in Ireland. Manual flush is so rare they felt the need to post a large sign with large bold type right above the button begging you to flush. Traditionally in England and Ireland, urinal flushing is all automatic, not by way of sensors but by a timing device. As I understand it the timing device can be as simple as a toilet tank mounted on the wall high above the urinals, water slowly fills the tank, and when a float valve detects the tank has filled to a certain level, the tank dumps, flushing the urinals, and then starts to refill. The urinals themselves, while starting to be replaced by individual units, in most places are still troughs or in its simplest form, just a designated wall to face while you do your business. A gutter at floor level alongside the designated wall carries the waste away, and water runs down the wall to flush it. In some places they have installed dividers to make it feel a bit more civilized, or in some cases have retrofitted it with modern individual urinals, though you can see the floor gutter still in place. Now, aren't you glad I got that out of my system?

We left Micko's but not before noting something clever they do at the trash bins. One major annoyance has to be partially finished drinks that add weight to the trash bags, so next to the trash cans they have a basin, no plumbing, so it probably just runs into a bucket or tub specifically for you to pour unfinished drinks into. Across the street is a Penny's store, I don't know if its related to our JC Penny's but they had a Kerry sportswear window display. At the end of Denny Street is something that when I first saw it, I thought it was really neat, now I'm not so sure. It's a traffic island with crosswalks to all three sidewalks bordering the intersection. The idea is to cross the street, no matter where you want to cross to, you first cross to the traffic island and then cross again to your destination, Looking back on it, this means you have to cross twice to get anywhere, where if the island was omitted you would only have to cross once. I'm wondering if the island has more to do with traffic flow than making life easier on pedestrians. At any rate it gives a great place to photograph the pikeman statue and the street in general.

As we walked back down Denny Street, we noticed what looked to be the wiring frames for some light up roses that we guessed make the street look nice at night, Speaking of pretty were some of the doorways and sides of buildings that had flowers covering the whole façade of the building, neatly trimmed so as not to block the windows or doors of course. When we got back to the museum end of the street, we carefully crossed back over and looked in the rose garden for a few moments. At just about this time it was time to board the bus to head to our next stop.

On the way out of Tralee, Jerry pointed out the Hotel Brandon where we would be staying the next two nights, and then we set out on the road passing the Blennerville Windmill, Ireland's largest still functioning windmill. The road out of Tralee followed alongside a river and had some other interesting buildings, like the round building near the Pier 17 sign. On the way to our next stop, Jerry wanted to discuss plans for the next day. We have in our schedule some time to see Killarney National Park which was left as free time. Jerry offered us some options for our free time in the park. The first option was that he would be happy to lead us on a walk around the park and walk around the gardens and exterior of Muckross House. He would be willing to do that for us at no extra charge. Alternatively for an extra charge, he could arrange either a ride through the park in a jaunting car. A jaunting car, as made famous in the movie The Quiet Man, is a variant of the horse and buggy ride. The key difference seems to be that the seats face sideways. Jerry indicated that the driver of the jaunting car, known as a jarvee, usually provides a narration of the tour, however it is also customary for their narrations to be nearly indecipherable, even with a firm grasp on the local dialect. The attraction here is you get to ride instead of walk, and the jaunting car is a uniquely Irish experience. Jerry could arrange this for us at a cost of €10 per person. Option three is that the park has several large and connected lakes, and he could arrange to hire a boat and captain to take a cruise along the lakes of the park, for this option we would need the majority of the people to commit to taking the cruise in order to get the per person cost down to a reasonable level, also €10. Again a narration would be provided, and he mentioned that all three options would cover much the same area. He was asked about the weather prediction and he responded that it was supposed to be nice, but rain is always a possibility in Ireland. It was also noted the boat would have a canopy for just such an event. Jerry said no need to rush to a decision, to be thinking about it and he would take a vote towards the end of the days activities.

We nest headed towards Dingle. I could tell the way to Dingle was going to be rugged when the road narrowed down to maybe 1.5 vehicles wide, if that, and featured numerous curves. Jerry noted the road follows the route of the old railway, and at some points you can still see remnants of the railway trestles and lines. It seems that owing to the topography of the land that they could not build a straight railway, instead it too had numerous curves, which had the effect of totally eliminating and speed advantage the railway may have had, thus it fell into disuse. Jerry did tell the tale of an unusual railway, evidently the train had two sets of hanging cars with the track in the middle of the two cars. The trick is that both halves of the train had to be kept balanced in weight, so at every station stop, it was necessary to move passengers and cargo around to keep the load balanced. This made things particularly tricky on farmers who wanted to sell livestock, and take the train. They had to take two calves for every cow they wanted to trade. On the way to the city the cow would ride in one car and the two claves in the other, if the cow was sold on the way back the calves rode separate one on each side. The drive along the Dingle peninsula is a very scenic drive with the sea on one side of you, and those patented Irish heather lined fields on the other. We were once again awarded with a wonderful day weather wise, nice and sunny, no fog. Better yet, per the established seat rotation program it was our day up front.

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 11

2009-03-15T00:27:00.001-04:00

The Emerald Shored of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
9/2/08-9/11/08
Part 11

We headed out the front door of the castle, down the wooden stairs, and then reentered the castle through another ground level door. In this hall one long wooden table ran down the middle with the sugar and creamer stations at one end, and the coffee and tea serving stations at the other. So I helped myself to some coffee, trying the brown sugar in it, why not. I noticed the signs and decorations around the room seemed to suggest that we might just be in the castle dungeon. The full hall could not be seen as it was blocked off by a portable wall like you would use to divide meeting rooms, just past where the stairs came down from "the secret panel" We lingered around coffee for 15 minutes or so until we noticed the group starting to head out. Time to carefully make our way ou the castle walk, up the 8 or so stairs, and now through the really dark folk park back to the admission gate. The large exit gift shop was closed at this time, so they routed people out through the entrance gate, where we boarded our bus.

It was perhaps a quiet trip back to the hotel as Jerry let us talk amongst ourselves about all the fun we had. We were dropped off at the back door of the hotel with the directions to have our bags in the halls by 7:15, breakfast at 7:30, and the bus would meet us at the back door at 8:30. A check of the watch revealed it was almost midnight, time for some fast sleeping. I did put the camera on its charger, but not much else got done tonight before grabbing a quick sleep.

Day 5: Saturday, September 6, 2008

Saturday morning arrived, and we had the usual morning routine. This morning we had the challenge of finding breakfast in the hotel dining room. Luckily we had passed it on the way to the lobby for the banquet last night, so we had a general idea. After first heading into the wrong banquet room, we determined the two rooms met up in the rear so snuck in the back way. The meal was similar to that served at Jury's Inn. Some differences would be a wider selection of fruit juices, and the removal of the white pudding and porridge. The setup was in portable buffet chaffing dishes, and after filling our plates we found a table. Servers were coming around the dining room with the coffee, tea, and toast. It was certainly a filling breakfast, and after having our fill we headed back up to our room to get our small bags and coats. I then realized we had to return the keys to the front desk, but would be picked up at the back door. I decided to run both keys back for our room, and then headed to the back door to get on the bus.

Before we left Ennis, we made our daily Mass stop at the Ennis cathedral. We were given about 15 minutes before Mass to look around, so instead of heading in the side door like most of the group, we headed around to the front to get pictures. On the other side of the church away from the street is a real nice fountain depicting a hand rising up out of the water. The signage indicated this was "Saints Peter and Paul" I noticed several flagpoles around the front and signs of the church that weren't in use. We entered the church, and I noticed a lot of the usual church statuary, and a fairly modern altar with a fish inscribed in the front.

Father came out for Mass, and in his pre-ceremony remarks noted that he graciously agreed to use our Mass as the days radio mass for the shut-ins. As such, the homily and intercessions were changed as appropriate. When the Mass was concluded we had some more time to wander about the church, I noted they must get a large crowd as they have on either side of the altar balconies with stadium seating. As we were looking around the church it looked like a family was getting a start on decorating the church for a wedding. The church was also in the middle of a vocations drive, and the sacristan gave us some free bookmarks from that drive as a keepsake of our visit. After walking about the church some more noticing the statues and stations and other artwork, we left by the front door. There I noticed that in the short time we were in there for Mass, somebody had raised a variety of international flags on their flagpoles: Poland, Ireland (on higher center staff) and Spain in the front, and Vatican City, Italy, and Norway on the side.

We got back on the bus and started to head towards Limmerick. We headed there by backtracking once again down the motorway past Bunratty. On the way to Limerick, Father had to tell us about an amusing anecdote. During the Eucharistic prayer, it is customary to include the name of the pope and the bishop, sometimes using "and the bishop of this local church" if not known. Well, during this particular Mass the bishops name was announced as "Willie", now in the States "Willie" is a very informal version of Bill or William and would not be used in a formal context, thus there were a few chuckles when he said it, and he admitted afterwards that he asked the sacristan no less than three times if they were sure they really wanted him to say Willie.

When we got to Limerick, Jerry took the time to introduce the form of poetry known as the Limerick, gave a few examples, and announced a bus wide contest to develop the best limerick of your own, with prizes at stake. Limerick is a bustling town with a busy city center. We didn't really stop in Limerick as much as pass through. Jerry turned the conversation to sports, and indicted that Ireland is quite involved in their local sports teams. It would seem that rugby had just finished the season with County Limerick taking that title, so the flags were flying and celebration was in order for that, and that football soccer would be starting soon on the international stage. He did take the time to make clear the difference between when they say football and when we say football, a game they call American Football. The third sport that is real big over in Ireland is Hurling, and we have arrived on a very special week. It seems that on Sunday of the week of our visit would be the All Ireland Final where County Killkenny and County Waterford would go at it for the title, with County Killkenny apparently highly favored. Of course this meant that an explanation of Hurling was due, and when I heard it I thought I was hearing a description of Quidditch . The game is played on a field roughly comparable to an American football field. 15 guys on a team at the highest level, who are all engaged in one thing, getting the ball to their opponents end of the field and scoring it. There happen to be two methods of scoring, and the goal looks like what you would get if you crossed a soccer goal with the uprights of an American football goalpost. In fact, it kind of reminds me of the setup I see at some municipal parks where a field can be used for both football and soccer. Or maybe we do have some hurling action here in the states, or maybe those combination goals are actually hurling goals. Anyway, in Hurling, getting the ball through the uprights is 1 point, and into the goal net is 3. Now, what makes the game particularly interesting is the ball is a cork filled leather ball, roughly the same size as one of our baseballs, and the way they get it around the field is passing it to each other using wooden sticks called hurleys that are about a yard long. Play it in the air, play it off the ground like a golf club, just don't let it get out of bounds. Here is where I thought of the beaters in Quidditch.

In the spirit of that two way dialogue technique I mentioned, we tried to let Jerry in on our summer sport, baseball, and I think he found baseball as odd and unusual as we found hurling. The next stop on our travels would be to Adare. Adare is charming villiage where one can still find thatched roof buildings that aren't displays in a folk park. Thatched roofs can still be found in some parts of Ireland, and we were surprised when Jerry said they can have a 20 year life. We first drove down the main street in Adare then pulled into a parking lot. We entered Adare through a heritage center. This would provide a needed rest stop, and the heritage center has the usual tourist services like gift shops, eating places, information booths, and the like. We made a quick rest stop, then I picked up a free town map from one of the gift shops. Then since this was free time, we headed out the front door of the visitor center to the main street.

We made a left turn and headed to Holy Trinity Abbey Church, founded in 1232 according to the sign. This building used to be a Trinitarian Monastery , in fact the only Trinitarian Monastery in Ireland, now being used as the parish church of Adare. We took a quick look inside and out, and then headed across the street to get some pictures. One end of the church looks more like a castle, but when viewed from the other end it looks more like a church. Of particular note is the fountain outside the entryway that has a spire in the center topped with a celtic cross. The town had thoughtfully provided a pedestrian island right by the church to make crossing the main street easier. I am suspecting they get a lout of tourists from countries like ours that drive on the right side of the road, as painted on the ground are big warnings to "LOOK RIGHT" or "LOOK LEFT" as the case may be. We took a walk around town, to admire the thatched roof buildings and to see some of the paint jobs. In Ireland, and other places in Europe they use exterior paint colors that you just don't find too often around here. They are not afraid to use violently loud shades of colors, for example right across from the visitors center, there is a bright orange building. It reminded me of when my room was painted in a similar shade of orange, I suppose I had odd tastes as a child.

On the way back towards the visitors center, I did stop at the bank. With lunches running €12 or more and buying all keepsakes I had a suspicion the €190 I entered Ireland with was not going to last me. I walked up to an ATM located just outside the bank and found it to be pretty simple to use, just as easy as back in the states. Insert card, enter your pin code (and my thoughtful banker at home reminded me to make sure you use exactly 4 digits for your pin code with no leading zeros, oh and their keypads might not have the letters on them, so make sure you know the number), select withdrawal, select account. Now its time to enter the amount and its one of these ATMs that recommends certain levels to you which were noteworthy in that it wasn't in multiples of 20 or 25 or anything like that, for example I selected the €170 button. I almost wonder if the machine recognized the card I inserted as from the United States and tailored my options, I say this because when I got back home and looked the transaction up on my bank's online banking service, it came across as $250. The machine issued me three €50 notes and a €20 note, I was a bit concerned with the big bills, as I know it can be hard at times at home to use $50 and $100 bills. I recall being happy when I received my initial Euro supply back home that it came to me in a nice assortment of bills: 5 €20's, 5 €10's, and 8 €5's adding up to €190. The Euro complies with the conventions that every denomination bill is a different color, and that they grow in size as they grow in value.

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 10

2009-03-09T00:16:00.001-04:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
9/2/08-9/11/08
Part 10

On our way to Bunratty Castle, Jerry told us a bit about the banquet, namely that it would include chicken and spareribs, and that the only silverware we would have is a knife. There were some groans as it sunk in that this would be an eat with your fingers meal. Jerry also mentioned how this dinner has changed over the years, how they used to not even give you a plate, just a large slab of the stalest bread they could find to use as a plate, and that it was a messy uncivilized affair. But now, we can relax in the knowledge that it has been made a civilized banquet. As a guide he asked if we remembered what he had said earlier about castle stairs, and we nodded that we had. He mentioned the program for the evening would begin in an upper level hall, the only access to which is up one of those spiral stairways, and that if we didn't feel like we could make it up the stairs we could decline the cocktail reception and go directly to the main banquet hall on the entry level. Speaking of the cocktail reception, he explained that we would be given a cup of mead, which is basically wine made from fermented honey. Then we would all move down to the main hall for the banquet, and that while there is some entertainment during cocktails and dinner, the main entertainment is after dinner. Mental calculations were starting to be made in our heads as we realized we had an 8:45 seating, and this sounded like it would be a long affair. He then came down the aisle passing out our dinner tickets, which he suggested we could retain after the meal as a souvenir.

We then pulled into the Bunratty Folk Park car park, and it seems like I was just here. We stepped off the bus and moved into the reception area, just like before. This time we had tickets to get in and after clearing the entrance gate we moved as a group to the castle. While the castle has some nice floodlighting, the walkway from the reception area to the castle could use some more light. We were almost to the castle, which is an authentic castle that had been left to ruin but was purchased in the mid 1900's and restored as a tourist attraction. Jerry had mentioned the furnishings of the castle, while mostly period furnishings, are not original to this castle. Well, we were almost to the castle the walkway went down about 8 stairs (there was a ramp bypass available) then we walked more or less in a straight path to the castle. We found the main entry to the castle to be so far up it required one or two good flights of wooden stairs up to the front doors.

When we entered the castle, we would find all the people working the event were dressed in period costume, and most if not all also were in the cast for the entertainment. Part of the period effect was addressing everybody with "My Lord" or "My Lady" as was appropriate. "Good Evening, My Lord!" as the attendant at the castle door tore the stub off the ticket. This had the unfortunate effect of removing all traces of what the ticket was for, as the stub is a generic stub for all of Shannon Heritage's events, and only the part they tore off referenced what it was for. After tickets were torn, we were directed to the spiral stairs where we made our way slowly and carefully up to the Great Hall. As we entered the Great Hall we were again welcomed, "A cup of Mead, My Lord?" I took the cup that was being offered to me and made my way into the hall.

In the center of the hall was a raised platform with a harpist and a violinist playing some background music as people arrived and took places along walls of the room forming a large circle. I noticed they were wise enough to put heavy duty dust cloths on the castle furniture, particularly those pieces likely to be used as tables to return the mead cups. Looking around the room was furnished by furniture, tapestries, and decorations that one would expect in a castle. I did note the mead cup I was given was a most unusual piece of crockery that had a green, yellow and brown pattern to it, unlike anything I had seen before. The mead itself was almost sickly sweet, and that sweetness demanded you take it slow. After the guests had assembled a character I will refer to as the MC addressed the crowd, introducing you to the castle. He pointed out some of the furniture and other features of the room. There was some more music while he got out two crowns. At this point he pulled two people out of the audience and made them the honorary Duke and Duchess for the evening.

After the crowning, it was time to head to the banquet hall for dinner. This took some time as there was only one stairway, which is one person wide, and is in uneven so you can't move too fast. When we did arrive in the banquet hall, I found a large room with a multitude of long wooden tables with bench seats (no backs), mostly set perpendicular to the stage area, with a really long table that stretched across the back of the room parallel to the stage with only a break by the throne. The servers/entertainers directed people in an orderly fashion to the benches, so no free choice here. We found ourselves at the really long back table facing the back wall, not exactly prime seating, but luck of the draw. The servers also made sure that each and every place was taken, so if you like personal space, forget about it.

Looking further around the room, I saw the throne at the end of our table, and up front was a large fireplace/hearth that served as a stage area. The harpist and violinist from upstairs setup on either side of the fireplace to provide dinner music. Looking in front of me on the table, I don't think one square inch of the table top went unused. Each person had a plate in front of them, which held an empty bowl, to the left was your napkin, to the right was your knife. In front of you each person had a small finger bowl, as well as a cup similar to the one they served mead in. Taking up most of the room in the center of the table were pitchers of water, red wine, and white wine. About every two or three people, there were raised pedestals on the table, and at the start of the meal there were platters with loaves of bread sitting on the pedestal stands, and the salt and pepper shakers hid quite nicely in unassuming wooden shakers under the pedestal. What room that was left held the candleholders, each holding a lit thick white candle.

After everybody was seated, our host appeared at a balcony and used a popular story telling device: he told us that when we entered the castle this evening he stepped not only into a historic place, but into a historic time, at this point the bright house lights went off, and the theatrical lights came on. He summoned the ghosts of the castle to join us as we were special guests to be afforded the privilege of dining in the castle. The safety notices took on a comedic historical beat. "I bring bad news from the east! The MacNamara's have been spotted headed this way! Should the need arise to flee the castle, you may do so either by the doorway which you entered, or through the conveniently labeled secret panel next to the throne" Conveniently labeled meaning a regulation European fire exit sign was mounted just above the panel in question. "The smoking of the tobacco leaf, recently brought to us by Sir Walter Raliegh is forbidden inside the caslte", "If you are using the sorcery known as a mobile phone, for the consideration of your fellow diners, the cast, and ME, please turn it off at this time. If I so much as hear it chrip, I will have you thrown into the dungeons"., "Due to the nature of this hall, please speak softly as sound carries, at appropriate times you may show your appreciation by cheering, callping, or banging gently on the tables" and "After each course, any remaining food will be placed into alms bowls and given to the unfortunate souls down in the dungeons" I will say our host had a way of commanding attention that didn't seem overbearing. The host commented that he noticed we had all brought our daggers with us. (The furnished steak knives, to simulate using no silverware except the dagger the person would have carried with them) He hoped we came in good voice because there would be chances to sing along during the evening, starting with "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" led by the host who would quickly recite the next line for the benefit of those of us who don't have the songs memorized. He explained we would be having a multi course meal, and you can bet each course was introduced with great fanfare.

The first course was the soup, a Cream of Vegetable soup. Of course all the food items were "The finest for miles around", after the soup was introduced the first bowl went to the honorary Duke who was asked to taste it, "If you do not agree this is the best soup you have ever had, you will be replaced!" Needless to say the Duke approved of the soup so the servers came down the rows ladling the soup into the waiting bowls. As there were no spoons, you were expected to drink your soup. Here is where you become happy the Irish school of soup indicates that soup stock must be pureed until it has the consistency of mashed potatoes or baby food. I must say it was a good bowl of soup, with an unexpected hint of spice. Some were using their piece of the loaf of bread to sop up the soup with, others just going ahead and drinking it. Our servers were nice enough to warn us to go ahead and take all the bread now as it would be removed soon. At this we divided up the remaining bread, and not too soon. The servers then came around and collected the soup bowls, leaving the empty plates underneath, and then collected the bread platters from the pedestals.

It was now time for the next course, which would be spareribs, same deal about introducing it with much fanfare, and getting the approval from the honorary Duke This time "If you don't agree these are the best spareribs you have ever tasted, our chef has cooked his last meal in this castle!" The ribs met his approval, and then the servers brought around huge platters of ribs and placed them on the pedestals on the tables. We decided to pass the platters around the area family style each taking one of the precut half slabs. There was a light amount of sauce on the ribs, enough to flavor without getting your fingers too messy. They were willing to supply extra napkins just in case. The ribs were okay, and we finished up the bread as we gnawed on the rubs, either breaking them apart by hand, or using the dagger to cut them apart. About halfway through the ribs course, wooden bowls were distributed, and we were told to toss the rib bones into the bowls. At the end of the ribs course, the plates, bone bowls, and platters were all removed. I should note vegetarians were served a melon salad in place of the ribs, and hey they get a fork. It was just in time for, "Hold It!, this banquet cannot continue until we settle a very important matter." Time for some showmanship to cover the food service crew bringing up the plated dinners. .It seems as if one of our fellow guests has broken one of the castle rules, he has become a bit too friendly with one of the ladies of the castle, to put it nicely. What should be done with, him, and right on cue without provocation the audience calls for him to be thrown into the dungeon. Man can be cruel to fellow man, see examples in the gladiator battles of Rome. I think he was spared a trip to the dungeon but not before fulfilling some nonsensical task imposed by our Duke, that of doing a rendition of "Walking on broken glass" that Simon Cowell would call Karaoke or cabaret at best. I think the whole thing was staged.

Well, now its time for the great fanfare to introduce the main course. This time our host finally mentions about the need for food tasters back in medieval days, leading me to wonder why this wasn't needed for the first two courses. So our host asks if we want him to taste the chicken, and of course the audience says yes. He takes the smallest bite he possibly can, to which the crwod asks for him to take a bigger bite. After waiting about 30 seconds and fining out the host is still okay, we are of course told this is the finest chicken anywhere, we go through the usual Duke approval taste.

Dinner was served already on plates but instead of being brought to each person the servers started passing them out at the ends of the rows, and you were expected to keep passing. Sadly, this sometimes called for the firm instruction to "Keep Passing!" I think the hitch came when a vegetarian in our row refused the chicken plate not realizing they were to pass it along. I'm not exaclty sure what the vegetarian substitute was for this course. When the dust settled I looked at my plate and saw a nice breaded chicken breast on it and lots of mixed vegetables. Not easy to eat stuff like corn on the cob or brocolli, no I mean cut up mixed vegetables. May I remind you that we weren't given forks. The servers also brought around small pitchers of brown sauce (translation: gravy) and placed platters of boiled potatoes on the pedestals We passed the potatoes around for people to finish their plates and then started to eat. Bob scores points for realizing the bone in breast of chicken provides a nice handle to hold the meat while you gnaw at it, alternatively you could use your dagger to "kill the chicken" or cut it up. I also found the dagger good for quartering those boiled potatoes. During this course a lot of proper adults came out of their shells and realized that they weren't kidding about no forks, and said "Hey, we get to eat like we're kids again!" Once that barrier was broken people started settling in and enjoying their dinners. Towards the end of dinner the wooden bowls came around, with the instructions that contrary to what was said before dinner, do not toss your leftover food into the bowls. They then said "Please place your daggers into the wooden bowls" Smart idea, they can then be collected separately as to prevent sharp blades when clearing the tables. The plates and bowls collected, it was time for one last course.

With almost no fanfare the servers reappeared at the ends of the rows passing out, "Keep Passing!" little bowls that held what looked like a small round strawberry cheesecake, similar to what we had last night. They were also kind enough to include small desert spoons. As our server was taking out desert bowls back, she hinted that we may want to turn around on our benches as the rest of the evening would be show. She did say that for the inconvenience of having to turn around, we can use the table as a backrest during the show portion of the evening.

Not too long afterwards the host made pretty much the same request, "For those with seats facing away from the fireplace, you may want to turn around for a better view" A moment later "For those that didn't get the hint, this means now" The show consisted of a lot of musical numbers, some folk songs, some songs to highlight the harp or the violin, and some to highlight "The Ladies of the Castle" known previously as your servers. There must have been some prearrangement as during one folk song it makes reference to seeing the parson, and the singer looked right at Fr. Barry as he sang that verse, and he responded. Perhaps the most touching point of the musical entertainment was during an a capella version of "Danny Boy" sung by the Ladies of The Castle. Our host made point of the fact that s special multi voice rendition of the song had been created just for this event, and to please, no matter how hard it may be, do NOT sing along. No matter how tempting it may be, NOT THIS TIME. What followed has to be one of the prettiest singings of Danny Boy with the multi voice polyphony and the acoustics of the castle banquet hall all coming together. After the musical portion of the evening was finished, it was time for the theatrical lights to go off and the house lights to come back on. Yes, the spell has been broken, the ghosts of the castle have left us, we have returned to our own time. However, before we leave, they would like to offer us one final beverage before we go, and thus we were invited to have some coffee before we leave, served in the room just under this one. Not surprisingly the directions given to get to the coffee social were just like the ones for fleeing the castle.

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 9

2009-03-04T23:24:00.001-05:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
9/2/08-9/11/08
Part 9

We noted the castle to be towards the left, so we headed to the right. We first passed the closed main gates, and then signs for a shop dealing in heraldry and family crests, this seems to be a big deal in the area. We then came to an area with thatched roof buildings and vintage farm implements strewn amongst them. One of the thatched roof buildings housed a tea room, so we headed into another one that looked like it had some antiques in the lobby. We would later find out that we had ventured into the Corn Barn, which is where we would have eaten had we done the traditional Irish night. The building is done up to look like you are outside in an Irish village on the inside, complete with road signs and all. We headed further up the roadway and passed what looked like big haystacks on wood pedestals and eventually came to a village. Down ths nice cozy street you had the old schoolhouse, a pub, and a lot of stores that still do sell whatever craft they represent. Its an area sort of like colonial Williamsburg with character re-enactors and such. Past the village we came to what were clearly gypsy trailers, and reading the label, yes that's exactly what they are. We then decided to not get too far that way in case the rains came down harder, and headed back past the front gate the other way to where the craft demonstrations are like the blacksmith shop and the like. We had just gotten to this part of the park when the skies really opened up and a deluge of rain came pouring down. That was when we threw in the towel.

We headed to the park exit, which was in a building that flanked the entrance courtyard. The exit building of course contained a large gift shop that you were basically required to go through to exit. While in this gift shop, I did pick up a book about Bunratty Folk Park and Castle (€5), as well as an Irish flag (€7). I have a great interest in the flags of the world, and have a small collection of flags, so I thought an Irish flag, purchased in Ireland would make a great addition to the collection. Truth be told, its not a good quality flag, which for the price and the fact the packaging made it clear by the cartoonish design that it was being sold as a tourist novelty product. We made our purchases in the gift shop and headed out to the bus. We were not too surprised to already find a half full bus when we got there. With 15 minutes or so to go we were almost all there, and with 10 minutes to go everybody was back. Pretty much, just what Jerry thought would happen given the weather pattern.

We then headed back to the hotel to freshen up and relax before our banquet. On the way out Jerry pointed out Durty Nellie's and posited that it is a pub owned by a woman named Nellie who doesn't take much of an interest in cleanliness. The legend here goes that a gentleman once went in there and ordered a Guinness, which is a very dark solid beer you can't see through. Well the man is about a third of the way through his pint when he discovers a mouse in his pint. Horrified, the man calls the barmaid over and points out the mouse and asks "What are you going to do about this?". In response, the barmaid takes the man's glass back, plucks out the mouse, then takes the glass over to the beer tap, tops it off, and returns it to the man!

Speaking of Guinness, it is sometimes referred to as the "National Drink of Ireland", Jerry mentioned that in most countries you judge the state of the economy by the price of a loaf of bread, but in Ireland, the barometer is the price of a pint of Guinness. The going rate for a pint of Guinness during my visit seems to average around €4. He gave us the short version of the history of Guinness, or I should say how Guinness is no longer owned by the original Guinness family. The downfall came when the original Guinness wanted something more than money, more than a castle , more than influence, he wanted a royal title. He thought that with a royal title he would be even more powerful. So over the years he leveraged more and more of the breweries money, selling off more and more shares of it in what would ultimately be a fruitless attempt to obtain a royal title. What's in a Guinness, just your basic ingredients: barley, hops, yeast, and water. The exact mix, is of course, the secret, and apparently much of its unique taste comes from using roasted barley.

After our brief introduction to Guinness, Jerry also told us more about castles. Castles were, of course, more than just living and entertaining spaces, they were also strongholds for defense. Jerry went over some of the peculiar measures built into some castles. They seem to have an affinity for what they call the murder hole, which is an opening in the ceiling right about the castle entrance, where if they really don't like you when you come approaching the castle they can pour vats of red hot molten liquid on you from above. Architecture also plays a key role, and he said some castles even have false rooms, where the enemy would break into a castle and think they were inside but instead they would be in a sealed off isolated area, that just so happened to be open on top so that the guards of the castle could attack the invaders from a relatively safe position. The stairs also aided in the defensive effort, spiral stairways were the norm, and if done properly were built so you went up in a clockwise direction. That way a right handed attacker would find his sword hand in the tighter inner curve of the stairs, while the defender coming down would find his sword hand on the wider outer curve giving the defender an advantage. Another trick was the intentional variation in the heighth, depth, and even angle of some of the stairs. The adage was the more energy you spent having to watch your footing on the strange stairs, is less energy you can spent on attacking. Clever.

We then arrived back in Ennis, the road from the main highway into town featured several examples of a roundabout, which is a popular European alternative to intersections, they are even starting to appear here in the United States. The idea is instead of a hard stop and go intersection, you build a circular road with an island in the middle of it, then connect the various streets to it, much like spokes to a hub. Traffic is continually moving in one direction around the circle road taking people from one street to the next. The approaches are usually flared a bit to ease pulling into and out of the roundabout, often with a small raised platform in between the incoming and outgoing lanes to assist in pedestrian crossing. The rule is that those already in the roundabout have the right of way, so in the case of some busier sections where one or two entrances might monopolize the traffic in the roundabout they have resorted to traffic lights, similar to the meter spacing lights on busy highways. They also might have an outer lane which allows people going from one spoke to the next adjacent spoke to avoid the roundabout altogether. This may also be useful in cases where making the turn to the adjacent road may prove too sharp an angle, or if you are entering on an inner lane not having enough time to get over in time. This situation of making multiple trips around a roundabout has been a comic staple for movies set in Europe. In our case, having the particularly large bus meant taking an extra lap in the roundabout in order to get a more graceful curve.

Technically speaking, the island in the center of the roundabout is off limits to all traffic and pedestrians, and that has led to some areas utilizing the space for pretty floral displays, statuary, or other public art. The center also usually has a sign with the name of the roundabout, so I suppose you could give directions like "Stay on Main Street to the O'Brien Roundabout, then get on Central" As we got into town and the roadways got narrower, sometimes the center island gives way to a domed bump in the center, which is supposedly to give trucks and busses more room to maneuver around the tighter radius circle, as they can run with their inner wheels up on the gradual slope. I'm sure it also has allowed for some short circuiting the roundabout during those slow times with no traffic. Some don't even have the bump, they just have a large white painted dot in the center which serves the same purpose. A noted benefit to roundabouts is it forces people to drive slower, since they are always merging in and then having to curve around the roundabouts. In general we found drivers in Ireland to be much more courteous and patient then drivers back home, almost being too nice in yielding to each other. I don't even think they blow their horns, everybody just seems that much more relaxed and laid back at driving. In general, road signs, particularly those giving directions are written in both English and Gaelic with the Gaelic in top in italics and the English below in regular type.

We continue into Ennis and proceed to our hotel, the Auburn Lodge. We first stopped up at the front building for Jerry to run in, confirm arrangements, and get the keys. Owing to the layout of the hotel, which is a complex of several connected buildings, we drove around the outside of the hotel, where we passed a nice looking indoor pool area before coming around to the entrance nearest our rooms. Since it was still raining, we were told to collect our carry on bags and meet Jerry inside the hallway to get our keys. Once inside the hallway, we obtained our keys and then looked at the signage in the hotel. Interesting it seems that the first digit has no bearing on what floor you are on, contrary to many popular numbering systems. It would seem the first digit tells you what building you are in, but the second does not necessarily indicate the floor. So we followed the signs up the stairs to the upper level (recall they have no elevators), and into the first building.

We get into our room, and Bob mentioned what a fantastic view we have, I look out the window to discover we have a nice view of the parking lot and the hotel service building. Can't get lucky all the time. The room is laid out almost exactly like the one in Galway, except with a hint of being older. Instead of the small wall mounted reading lights, there were nice lamps with older looking lampshades. The older mechanical key lock was still in the door with its bolt removed, so a slightly older place but still comfortable. Bob came out of the bathroom and warned me to watch myself with the sink. I went in and looked at the sink and I spotted the problem, the hot and cold water taps were reverse of what we are used to, and it was the type of sink where both the hot and cold water have separate taps that don't merge together. I was a bit dismayed to see the same shower faucet and pump bottle of liquid body wash. It took a bit longer for the bags to arrive, what with no elevators and all, but I could still repack my carry on bag to accommodate the days souvenir purchases. I also opened the flag I had just bought to take a closer look, the flag was folded in the package so you could see the whole design even though it was folded into a section just inches by inches, and it is a 3'x5' flag. This tricked me because I felt ridges where the colors changed and thought it might be sewn together, but it is in fact an all printed/dyed flag, with no label detailing manufacturer or country of manufacture. It will still go great in the flag collection, so I folded it back up, and it and all the other souvenirs went into the bottom of the carry on bag, so the stuff I need on a daily basis can stay on top.

Eventually the big bags came and we freshened up. Bob had mentioned wanting to get some rest, so I headed down to the hotel pub. It wasn't hard to find with my internal sense of direction. I headed down a stairway at the other end of our building, then going through a really nice leaded glass door walked along a windy corridor that wrapped around the banquet rooms until it finally came to the lobby. The doors to the pub could be seen down a short hallway from the lobby. I entered the pub, and not seeing anybody from our group, did as so many country songs say "I ordered up a beer and sat down at the bar" The beer in this case was Guinness, and I was keen on watching the famous Guinness two part pour. You don't pour Guinness like most beers, you pour it about 2/3 or so in the usual manner, glass tipped at an angle to avoid forming a head. Then they stop the tap and set the glass aside and let the contents settle. If you are lucky enough to be able to watch it you can see the remarkable sight of the bubbles racing down to the bottom of the glass. After it has completed surging, as the call it, they take it back to the tap, but they pour it slower and with the glass straight up, intentionally causing the half inch creamy head you expect on a glass of Guinness, then they may set it aside again to let the surge finish before they serve it to you, or they may expect you to follow the protocol and visually enjoy the beer before actually enjoying the beer.

As it so happens while I was watching my Guinness being prepared, two other people from our group came in and took up the seats next to me at the bar, and before my beer could be served we were already engaged in lively conversation. I'm used to bars running a tab and paying for everything when you are ready to leave, but apparently the Irish custom is to pay for each drink as it is served. They were nice about it though, a gentle tap on the elbow I had nearest the bar and when I looked over she handed me a check. So we paid for our first round, then since we were already up to 3 decided to move to a table.

To make a long story short, (too late!), it seemed that one by one at least 15 people from the group made their way to the pub, eventually allowing us to commandeer and entire corner alcove section. We were sharing the pub with a boisterous party that seemed to be involved with a wedding. This made things a bit busy at the bar, which is where you must go to order your drinks, no service directly to the tables. Somewhere between Guinness 2 and 3, Bob decided to come down and join the ever growing party, and some even ordered some appetizers so we'd have stuff to munch on while we sat and enjoyed some lively conversation, probably got to know people better here than anywhere else on the trip. So if we came looking for the "craic", I'd say we found it, even if just amongst ourselves. I also learned there were a few other Xavier University alumni on our tour, who had noticed my rather large class ring. Oh, and if you were wondering what was on the TV in the pub, it was the presidential conventions, yes back from the United States. That was odd. Bob joined me for my third round of Guineess and about when we finished that, we decided it was about half an hour to our pick up time for the evening banquet, so we all adjourned to our rooms to freshen up. Or tried to anyway, it seems all the meeting room doors are also leaded glass, and I think me must have tried every single one of them before coming to the last door, the one labeled "Bedrooms" We returned to our room, and I admit to being a little buzzed by the beer. Anyway time for a quick freshen up, then return back down to the hotel lobby which is where Jerry said he would pick us up, which is located next to the pub. Almost as if Jerry knew what people would do. In the hotel lobby, before boarding the bus, we did observe the last couple hands of an informal hearts game that had started in the lobby between tour participants, then at around 8:00 we boarded the bus.

The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 8

2009-03-02T23:59:00.002-05:00

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
9/2/08-9/11/08
Part 8

We then continued out to a hospital, which looked way smaller than our concept of hospital, almost more like an urgent care facility, and hey it even had a pharmacy located right next door. The luggage was dropped off, Jerry was picked up, and we continued on our way. We then left Galway via a major motorway and headed to Bunratty.

On the way to Bunratty, Jerry mentioned we were on one of Ireland's new major motorways, a divided highway (or "double carriageway" as they call it). He mentioned that one of the benefits of the new highway is that it allows us to bypass Ennis on our way to Galway, a move that cuts about a half hour off the travel time. My Hitchhikers Guide voice inside recited the quote "It's a Bypass, you've got to build Bypasses" On the way to Bunratty, Jerry explained that we would be making two stops, one at the Village of Bunratty which would make an excellent lunch and shopping stop, then we would head to Bunratty Folk Park. Bunratty Folk Park is an Irish amusement park of sorts, a heritage park that endeavors to let its visitors have a glimpse of the "Good old Irish Days". The park consists of thatched roof buildings, crafters plying old time crafts and other exhibits of a historic nature. Then that night we will have a schedule change, yesterdays schedule change was minor, we merely reversed the order of the attractions, today the change would be to our dinner. We were scheduled to attend dinner at the Corn Barn in the Folk Park, which is meant to present a traditional Irish dinner from the common citizens point of view, with Irish Stew and other traditional favorites followed by some singing, dancing and storytelling. The problem is that since our tour group grew so large, the hall could not accommodate us all at one sitting, and wanted to split us up between the two sittings. Well on a group tour, the logistics of that would have been difficult to say the least, but the Folk Park also puts on a medieval banquet in the castle, which is cost wise a more expensive option, but they also could accommodate us all in one sitting, so we would end the night with the medieval banquet.

The nature of the folk park and the banquet allowed Jerry to give us our Irish history lesson of the day. We had heard that they had a feudal society where there were very few landowners, but they owned large amounts of land which they rented out to others to work, so they were particularly well off. Well, the other side of that coin, is that the rents were so steep that they left the renters with just enough money to survive, if that much. Jerry referred to this as "Castle vs. Cabin" You were either very well off, or you were just scraping by. Apparently the landowners knew they were not the most popular people in the city, as when the tenants came to pay their rent, they would sit at a large table that had a drawer in it. The tenant would place their rent in the drawer, which would be rotated around so the landlord could empty it. That way the two parties were kept reasonably far apart. Well, this led to the creation of a union of sorts, the Irisah Land League, whereby the farmers got together and they were wise enough not to pay norent, but they only gave the landlord what they thought was a fair and just share. This went over about as well as you may have suspected, and the landlord evicted them. This is when phase two of the operation came about when no one would associate themselves with the landlord, conduct business with him, buy anything, in effect isolated him. This led the landlord to have to hire people to harvest his crops, then hire security to protect the hired workers, which in turn meant that his overhead costs became more than the crop was worth. The name of the hapless landlord? Charles Boycott, and as Paul Harvey would say, "Now you know the rest of the story!"

As we were nearing the village, Jerry made some more important announcements, this one having to deal with a subject dear to anybody's heart: legally avoiding the evil tax collector. One of the benefits of being a non European Union citizen in Ireland on a valid Tourist entry is that we are not obligated to pay the Value Added Tax I mentioned yesterday. Recall the Value Added Tax is similar to a sales tax and weighs in at a staggering 21%. We are obliged to pay the tax on food, services and any items we buy for use while in Ireland. However, any items we intend to export out of Ireland unused, we basically have the right to attempt to not pay the tax on. Since we are talking about trying to deprive a government of tax revenue, you can be assured they did not make this process easy, not at all.

You see, it is up to each individual merchant to decide if they want to participate in the tax free shopping program, and the reason they might not is the burden of work that falls on the merchant. If the merchant decides to offer tax free shopping, and do it themselves, they have to fill out a form when you are at the store detailing your purchase, and collect the tax anyway. Then you have to fill out part of the form with your mailing instructions, and information required by the government such as proof of nationality, given as entering your passport number. You then have to take the items with you to the port where you leave Ireland, haul them over to an inspector who will look at your form, and could ask to see the items, mind you this is after baggage check. If he is satisfied, he will stamp your form, then you have to drop the form into the mailbox. Once the merchant receives the form back on the mail, it is on them to process and mail out a refund check. Worse yet, they will most likely write the check in Euros, causing you some bank service fees to get it cashed. You can see why merchants may not want to get involved, and those that do may impose minimums to make sure it is worth their while. Ireland has no legally mandated minimum, say like Italy that restricts the program to big-ticket items only.

The more common option is the merchant has outsourced this operation to a broker, in which case the forms used will be the standardized forms of that broker, the good news for the traveler is that instead of merely dropping off the form in the mail at the airport, they will see a cashier affiliated with that broker who will pay them the refund, in cash right at the airport. The merchant likes it because they are out of the whole claims processing end of the business, and the cost of the service is paid by the customer in the form of a commission off the total refund due. The customer then takes the refund to the foreign exchange window at the airport and pays yet another commission to get the money converted into their currency. The bad news for the customer is that there are at least three brokers offering this service, and they are not interchangeable, so if you gather forms from all of them, plus some independent merchants forms, you could be standing in 4 or more lines at the airport to get your refunds, then stand in the currency exchange line. There has been some relief to this in the provision that if you pay by credit card, the merchant could have you fill out the forms, and deduct the tax right at the store and be done with it, and in this case, if the merchant does not get your form back within a certain time period they can charge your card for the tax due using the authorization form you signed.

Then there is the newest form free system, in this scheme you get a plastic card at your first merchant, and as you shop at participating stores they swipe your card through the cash register and the computer will keep a running tally (and even print tickets showing the tally). Then when you get to the airport you swipe your card through a self serve kiosk at the airport, then swipe a credit card and the system will process your refund electronically and debit your credit card. (There is a provision to have the system mail you a check, of you don't want to give up your credit card number) Jerry mentioned that the largest store here, a branch of Blarney Wollen Mills uses this new high tech solution, and that when we look at their price tags we will see two prices: Regular and Duty Free, we will be paying the Duty Free price, when all is said and done. He said just mention you are with Pentecost Tours, he has pre-registered us and that way we shouldn't have to show passports or anything like that.

There was some grumbling in the group about why Jerry didn't mention this to us before the stop at the marble company where some people made some significant purchases. If I heard correctly, Jerry responded to at least one person that in the case of the marble company they quietly charge tax free prices with the assurance you are on a tour group and will thus be exporting the merchandise. In other ways your tour leader becomes your sponsor while in Ireland, and with that you don't have to leave your passports at the front desk of a hotel as you would had you booked your own arrangements. Apparently, hotels in Europe are required to hold the passports and report to the authorities about any aliens, authorized or otherwise, staying at their hotel. Being on a tour exempts you from this, although a form I filled out in my initial packet indicated it would be provided to tour agents, I suppose that means all the registrations were taken care of before we arrived.

We received a return time of two hours, Jerry mentioned the recommended eating is in a restaurant on the upper floor of Blarney Woolen Mills, which is also a souvenir super store. Jerry encouraged, if you see something you really like, buy it now as you may not see it again, and we can't come back. He balanced this with the advice that it may not be worth the hassle to try to get he tax refund back on a €5 sale, but if you take advantage of a store like this and bundle all your small items into one large bundle the merchant will be more willing to work with you. So we left the bus and stepped out into the rain. The bus parked behind one store, but Jerry showed us the way to Blarney Wollen Mills. When we entered the store, the first order of business was the comfort stop. We followed the signs in the store and when we arrived at the back corner of the shop, we found out there was only a women's restroom on the sales floor, but both were available up in the restaurant. We went up to the restaurant level, took care of business, and then I asked Bob, "Shop or eat first?" We decided on the shopping and thus returned to the sales floor.

This is like a department store, and it has departments ranging all the way from the "Tacky Souvenir Department" (not really called that, but you know what I mean) all the way up to rooms dedicated to Waterford Crystal, fine china and name brand weavers. Guinness even has a room with Guinness souvenir products including miniature bottles of Guinness. We did spend some time in the Music and Movies department where they have travel DVD's. We asked the department clerk if their DVD's were suitable for use in the United States as the packaging was silent on the point, except that they are region 0 DVD's . The clerk assured us they were suitable, so I bought an overview DVD that covered all of Ireland, a second DVD that is a music DVD with traditional Irish music over scenes from Ireland, then I headed to the "Tacky Souvenir Department:" where I bought an Irish and European flag refrigerator magnet. They had one with both Irish and American flags but I decided to go for the all Europe look. I also bought some leprechaun magnets and ink pens to give away. Then I saw the stuffed animals, and I saw a stuffed leprechaun that plays "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" when you squeeze his hand. That also went into my cart. They really weren't carts the way we think of carts they actually look more like the small hand baskets you get in groceries, except they also have wheels on them, and a long folding handle at one end. You can carry it with one handle, or roll it with antoher, your choice. I thought that was a rather cool idea. I then hauled all this stuff up to the register, and indicated I was with Pentecost Tours. She issued me a tax free card, rang up my purchases, and I can report my Mastercard from back home worked just fine. (I had called the bank to inform them of my travel plans) A review of the receipt reveals that just under €60 was collected from me, and that price includes the tax, I was then asked if I wanted to conduct the sale in dollars or Euros, and since their exchange was better than what I had seen so far, transacted in dollars, so it came in at just under $90, I was also given a ticket showing that I had accumulated just under €7 in my tax refund account, which is "The total VAT tax collected less an administration fee" I was also provided with a brochure about the tax free scheme and instructions for submitting my claim for a refund. With the major souvenir run of the trip out of the way, it was time to go upstairs and eat.

When we got to the top of the stairs, we explored our options, to the right we had a sandwich shop, and to the left the cafeteria. We each had the same thing, a Coke, bread, and some Irish Stew. In this case they took a large bowl and filled it most of the way with the stew, then they topped it with three large scoops of mashed potatoes. This meal ran us the usual €12 and then we headed into the dining room to get a table. Well it wasn't actually a large dining room as it had a huge empty space in the middle of it that was open to the store below. In fact after two laps of the circular ring of the dining room, we were still searching for a table. It was about this time that another family, one that was not on our tour, offered to share a table with us. They weren't very talkative , but we appreciated the seats to sit down. I will also say the Irish Stew was quite tasty with huge hunks of meat that needed to be cut up, the sauce had a nice flavor and the whole thing was nice and filling.

After lunch we walked back outside, and unfortunately it was still raining, however we joined up with the rest of the group that was starting to congregate in a sheltered breezeway. I did note the village map, the British style phone box, and was able to grab some photos of Bunratty Castle proudly flying its Irish flag, as well as the infamous Durty Nellies Pub. I also spotted an American flag in the cluster welcoming us to Bunratty. After the group had reassembled we took the very short drive, really just from one end of the parking lot to the other, to Bunratty Folk Park.

On the way to Bunratty Folk Park, Jerry mentioned the rain, and the fact it was getting even harder than it was when he last saw us when he dropped us off at the Village .Our original plan had called for a 2 hour stop at the Folk Park. Digging into his experiences with past tours we suggested we return to the bus in an hour and we'll see how it goes from there. He did offer this time saving suggestion, since we are now booked in to the castle for the Medieval Banquet, we could safely skip the castle as we were touring the Folk Park as we would get a tour of the castle with the dinner.

We started to head into the folk park, and were directed into the first door on the left which leads to a reception area with a gift shop, ticket sales, and the admission gate. Jerry went ahead of us to the admission gates and using his influence as tour leader we were able to enter the Folk Park without tickets. On the way in we received a park guide and then headed out the back door of the reception building onto the main path.