Ireland
I promised a recap of my trip to Dublin, and now that I have a little extra free time, I might as well make good.
I had mentioned before that we had trouble getting out of the US. We did manage to get to Dublin, obviously, but it took an extra day. Instead of arriving Saturday morning, we arrived Sunday morning. However, other than the one-day delay, our flights departed and arrived very close to schedule, much to our relief. I slept the entire flight, other than while eating and watching xXx 2, a movie I highly recommend if you are forcibly restrained in a chair at 35 000 feet over an ocean, even if it is a smaller, pansy ocean such as the Atlantic.
I would take this opportunity to say that the food in Continental's international BusinessFirst is not as good as BA's, so if that's a concern to you, I'd try another carrier. I've wanted to try Virgin Upper Class, but I had half a million OnePass miles to kill, so I burned 400k of them on this trip. Yay rule buster.
One of the first things we noticed when taking the cab into the city was how much construction was underway. Ireland is leading the EU in GDP per capita, and business investment is accelerating at an amazing pace.
Once we made our way into the city proper, we checked into our hotel, the Merrion. This hotel has two parts, the difference between which I had read to be significant. One part is made of four Georgian houses on Merrion Street, fused together. One of which was where the Duke of Wellington was possibly born, much to his chagrin. We had a small one-bedroom suite in this part of the hotel, upon the recommendation of Nota Bene. The other part of the hotel is the "Garden Wing", which is apparently just a bunch of normal hotel rooms.
The nice thing about the Merrion is that it's not ostentatious from the outside. There's literally a small brass plate of about one foot square with the hotel's name on it, and a doorman who occasionally pops outside. There are flags on flagpoles, but otherwise, you wouldn't notice the building. It's right across from the Republic of Ireland's equivalent of the office of the PM, the Taoiseach and other irish government buildings, which would be more likely to draw your eye.
Down the block is Merrion Park, around which is the house wherein Oscar Wilde was born. In Merrion Park one finds an amusing juxtaposition of sculptures. One is of Oscar Wilde, in repose, with a painful smirk on his face and his right hand, slightly raised from his torso, clenched in a loose fist. About 15' in front of this memorial are a series of sculptures on low poles, primarily of nude male torsos. The placement of naked manflesh in front of a perpetually wanking Wilde is possibly intentional, and I am surely not the first to notice the coincidence.
I have to say that our experience at the Merrion was not the perfect one. Being a five-star hotel, I expected a certain level of service. Calling down to the front desk of our hotel and asking for laundry service, or any service for that matter, gave one the impression that one was imposing upon the staff, and that they would get around to your request when it was convenient for them. Staying at the Park Hyatt in SF just a week earlier, only a 4.5 star hotel, was a completely different experience, with smiling staff who appeared to believe removing your room service table was the acme of their professional experience.
Had I read the review in the guidebook left on the coffee table in the sitting area in our rooms prior to making our arrangements, I probably would have booked at the Clarence instead. However, I try to avoid hotels described as "the trendiest", just because I hate cruising through people trying too hard to be noticed. In addition to "trendiness", the two biggest draws for the Clarence are that it is owned by Bono and The Edge (contributing in no doubt to the previous "benefit") and that it has a view overlooking the Liffey, the river that bisects Dublin.
The river is not a beautiful thing, being murky green and full of detritus. Kat compared it to the Ankh without taking too much license.
The lack of "obsequious service" aside, the Georgian rooms in the Merrion were quite well restored. Our ceiling was ornately plastered, especially around the crystal chandelier in the center of the bedroom, and the sofa was possibly the softest, squishiest sofa I've ever experienced. Nota Bene was right again, though, in that the maintenance of simple items such as televisions, drapery, bedspreads, etc., was in woeful neglect, and a mild refurbishing is overdue. The bed was strangely comfortable, despite being a typical european "king" bed made of two very firm full-sized mattresses pushed together. On more than one night, I slept about fourteen hours, dreaming not of work but of being in the happy land of Guinness.
Let me make one thing clear at this point. No matter how opulent the surroundings, a week in Dublin is too much. We were close to St. Stephen's Green, which is a lovely little park for a stroll, but without a car, one can see pretty much all the interesting sites in the city itself in three days. Taking one of the hop-on/hop-off tour buses, you could fit it all into one day, but that pace would be too heavy for me. We also made it to St. Patrick's Cathedral, which I imagine is a real hot time on the seventeenth of March.
With shopping (surprisingly well-appointed with Hermes, LV, Gucci, etc. all ensuite in Brown Thomas) and souvenir hunting for family, four days without boredom is probably as much time as you could spend in Dublin without feeling as if you were in any random city in Europe, or Canada for that matter.
Many people said this before we left, and we had the strong suspicion of such after spending time in various similar cities around the world, but since I thought two weeks away from my project at work would have a negative effect on its outcome, we didn't really have time to do what we both would have originally preferred -- flying into Dublin, renting a car, spending a few days there, and then either driving clockwise around the island, or driving north, through Northern Ireland, into Scotland, spending two or three days in the interesting waypoints along the route.
One week for such a trip would be brutal, and we realised it would be better to return slightly bored, than feeling as if we spent the entire trip in a car, especially a backwards car. We had also read time and time again that Dublin has done its level best to discourage driving in the city, by reducing the number of parking spaces.
Conveniently, one of the churches had marked out an answer to the inevitable question,"who do I have to kill to get a parking spot in this city?"
One day, to mitigate our immobility, we signed up for a tour around Wicklow County by minibus. We were hurried past U2's original recording studio on the way out of Dublin, to the tower you'll recall from the first chapter of Ulysses, and past Enya's now-barricaded house.
We then stopped at one of the only catholic monasteries to survive the destructive wrath of Henry VIII following his schism with the catholic church.
The main part of the monastery is in relative ruins, but the primary tower is almost completely intact.
"St. Kevin's Kitchen", which I still think is something from an unpublished Douglas Adams book, was in fairly good shape after a restoration.
We hiked a short bit up to a couple dark-watered lakes, passing over peat-browned streams.
According to some of the signage seen on the trail and by the lakes, the area is used by Ireland's space agency for training astronauts.
It is also occasionally used by Jesus for his aquatic strolls.
We stopped once again at an estate owned by the Guinness descendents, surrounding a huge black lake, shaped roughly like a full pint. To complete the effect, the family had tons of white sand trucked in, and a beach was laid where the head of the glass of beer would be.
This estate spanned about 6400 acres (about 10 square miles according to what I recall of the Homestead Act from second grade), and has been used as the site of films such as Braveheart.
After this, we drove up into the peat bogs, where peat, or "turf", used to be harvested by families, dried, and brought down to the cities and towns to be used as fuel. Today, one old fellow still cuts turf, but he's all that remains. Having smelled the peat fires in our hotel, I can understand why the practice has died out, as it is an unpleasant smell, almost as bad as the smell from the chestnut carts in New York in the autumn.
Being difficult to top "bogs" on a tour, the bus cruised rapidly back to Dublin, which was just fine, as I was tiring of the slightly surly demeanor of the driver by this point. Also, since he had our money, rather than drive everyone to their hotels, he took the most direct route that passed close to the hotels, dropping everyone off no closer than a block or so from where they were picked up. It's a small, petty thing, but it definitely ended the tour on a down note.
The next day, we toured the Guinness Storehouse, which is a museum dedicated to the history of liquid ice cream. Don't go in expecting a working brewery, because what you will see is definitely a designed and planned museum, with exhibits and videos.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect is the exhibit demonstrating how the hundreds of coopers employed by Guinness worked in the earlier part of the century, making all the barrels and casks necessary for transporting a huge quantity of Guinness around the world.
The Storehouse is a seven-story museum, with progress measured in altitude. At the top of the museum is where you can redeem your entry ring for a free pint (or a soda or other beverage if you're a philistine), in a room with a fantastic view of the city.
The museum was a little too crowded (on an apparently "slow" day) and a little too commercial (hey, Guinness is a brand as well as a tasty beverage, so you'd expect the same of a Coca Cola museum, or whatever your fancy) so I was happy to make it through and make our way out.
(It is clear how important Guinness is to the Irish -- they even build churches to them.)
Needless to say, I drank a fair quantity of beer, mostly Guinness with one "Oyster Stout", purportedly made with fresh oysters, on the trip. As a result, most of our meals were in pubs, and consisted of pub fare. Kat's a big fish & chips fan, so she wolfed down a lot of that, while I made do with the traditional repasts of bangers & mash, shepherd's pie, etc.
One night, however, we treated ourselves to dinner at Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, the only Michelin two-star restaurant in Ireland. One of the advantages to being a guest in our hotel was that we were able to secure a same-day reservation at the restaurant, and they actually opened the restaurant early to accommodate us. I can't remember precisely what I had, but I do remember starting with a foie gras dish, skipping a fish course, and having sweetbreads for an entree, in addition to the plates of amuse-bouches brought out while we were perusing the menu. Dessert consisted of a plate with miniature versions of all of their chocolate offerings, some quite ornate and all quite splendid. We drank a very fine Chateauneuf-du-Pape (well, I drank the bottle, and Kat drank a glass) chosen from their absolutely huge wine list. The book holding the wine list was easily 2.5-3" thick, and I think a party of four could have a great time sampling three or four bottles over a long dinner. I had forgotten to do the euro-to-dollar conversion, so our wine turned out to be quite easily the most expensive bottle of wine I have ever consumed. Oops. By the time we were done, the meal ended up around five hundred euros, and worth every sou.
Unlike the hotel, the service at the restaurant was definitely on the obsequious side, necessary to secure and maintain their two stars. Kat was nervous because a handful of young men were employed solely to monitor the status of each diner, to see when they were ready for more water or wine, or to have plates removed. She felt very conspicuous, but it all worked out rather smoothly.
The next day was our last full day in Dublin, and we spent it trying to find suitable gifts for family back in the US. We ended up running into a Waterford representative who kept trying to guess my ethnic origin (no one seems able to do it, as, like most Americans, I am a one-man-melting pot) while helping point out a few items that would satisfy mothers, and also be unavailable in the US. Fathers are easier, as footie shirts seem to make my dad happy, and Kat's dad goes in for sweatshirts.
(Remember this the next time some clever punk asks you "why are manhole covers round?" in a technical job interview.)
Coming back was the true adventure of the trip. We arrived at the airport on time, to be told that our flight to Newark was delayed three hours. We were rebooked on our connection from Newark to DC, and went into the Anna Livia Lounge to spend a little time before boarding. The flight was otherwise undelayed, and the Irish demonstrated an unheralded organisational genius at this point by having US Immigration officials process our passports and documents before boarding the plane, allowing us to avoid the long, surly, suspicious lines in Newark airport. Our flight, apart from being late, went off without a hitch, until we landed and came to the gate.
"Would passengers, Smith, Jones, and Mylastname please see the flight concierge at the jetway."
This is never a good sign. It's a good sign if you're in coach, right before takeoff, because you're about to receive a battlefield upgrade, but it's never, ever good when you're leaving your plane, and hoping to catch a connection in ninety minutes.
We were handed a boarding pass for our original flight (the one we missed, and were rebooked off of) and told to exchange it for an Amtrak ticket to Washington. I showed her our boarding cards for the 5pm flight, instead of the 1pm flight, and she could only tell us to,"go to the other end of the jetway and find someone in a Continental uniform to help."
Since we were outside customs and immigration at this point, our resources were quite limited, but by talking to two additional employees, we found out our 5pm flight was cancelled. By finding another employee, we were told (erroneously, I might add) how to get to the Amtrak ticket-exchange place, and three more Continental employees were necessary to find out where to go, what to ask for, and how to get home. One of the people even told me that we had to take the train to Penn Station and get our Acela/Metroliner tickets there, and ride back to DC. Had that been the case, I would have rented a car and driven.
It is at this point that I will remind you that this itinerary cost 400k miles, which is double what most first class international tickets would have cost had I not done a "rule buster". Had I paid cash, it would have been about $8000.
We find the Amtrak people, who are incredibly helpful and knowledgeable, which was a huge surprise and a great joy at this point. Booked on a train, we were looking at another five or six hours before we would get home.
Not only were we booked on a 4-hour train ride instead of a 37-minute flight, we were booked in "coach reserved" which doesn't actually mean "reserved". What it means is that you have a guaranteed pass in one of the coach cars. Except that the train before the one we took was cancelled due to maintenance issues, so we had two trainloads of people on our one train. Oh, and all the flights from Newark to DC were cancelled that day, so we were also carrying everyone on those flights as well. It was hot, sweaty, crowded, and we were lucky to be seated several feet from each other, even if we couldn't sit together. It was an OK ride, though, and we made the most of it and had a nice conversation, embellishing it a bit because of the slightly retarded-seeming girl in the next seat who was obviously making notes about what we were saying.
But, we were home, at Union Station, a short cab ride from Bethesda. Except that, to shorten the line as quickly as possible, the cab dispatcher was packing at least two stops in each taxi. This is legal in DC, but only if the additional stops do not take you more than five blocks from yours. We were joined with a whiny lecturer bound for UMD, who insisted on being first, and listening to his mewling voice was the only reason we acceded to his request. "I am very late, I cannot have any intermediate stops." I expected to turn around and see a white rabbit repeatedly looking at his pocket watch.
Finally making it home, the cab driver tried to overcharge us, asking for more than it would have cost to go from Alexandria or National Airport to my apartment (a number I am very familiar with, having paid it over 150 times in the past two years), and I lost it on the poor gentleman. DC cabs don't have meters, but have a zone system or a mileage-based system, and he was trying to take advantage of both, despite the fact that he had broken the law in taking two stops, and charging us for the total distance, even including a 10-mile detour to College Park. But I was home, so I paid him a bare minimum, took our bags, and got inside. Happy for working air conditioning, a super-soft bed, and our healthy cats. I was not especially looking forward to the next week, with flights to Minneapolis and LA, but for the next day, I could relax, lounge around in my pajamas, not shave, and I found it more relaxing than much of the vacation.
(Since I can be catty about this now, who but Accenture would be proud of the fact that they can exert a great deal of effort, get nowhere, and claim they're successful?)
