5/5/06 - The Grass Is Always Greener...

Tralee, Co. Kerry, Ireland

Now I know why green is the national color of Ireland. "Sure," you might think, "it rains there all the time, of course it's green." But you wouldn't nearly be doing it justice, because this isn't just green; it's super ubergreen. It's emeralds and antifreeze and pondscum and Midori and old-school Philadelphia Eagles jerseys all tossed into a blender and then injected with a heavy dose of steroids. Seriously. If you wanted your lawn to be this color, you'd have to fertilize it with nuclear waste, and I'm still not even convinced you'd get the same result. Although the higher mountains are more brown, at lower altitudes there are a million different shades of green, interrupted only occasionally by roads and houses and the brilliant yellow flowers of gorse bushes, and the colors change subtly whenever the light changes. That's pretty often, because the weather also changes pretty damn quickly. Everything you might have heard about the Irish skies are true -- it rains a lot, and often heavily, but just when you think it's never going to end, it dries up. I've actually been pretty lucky, only having been caught outside in one steady rain, walking to the bus station in Limerick. Even then, the sun was shining 30 minutes later (once I was on the bus, of course...)

Daily Summary:

• Mon, 5/1 - arrived Shannon Airport, walked around Limerick. lucky enough to be in town on the right day to witness the one and only Irish National Freestyle Kayaking championships, being held on some 'rapids' on the River Shannon. met some ATA flight attendants on a layover in Shannon over a few pints. not exactly 'meeting the locals', but a good time & ended up being a late night despite the jet lag.
• Tues, 5/2 - Hunt Museum in Limerick (interesting collection of antiquities, including a horse statue by Da Vinci and supposedly one of the 30 silver coins given to Judas as payment for his betrayal of Christ). bus to Tralee, a small, very pretty city at the foot of the Dingle peninsula.
• Weds, 5/3 - bus to Dingle, the main town on the Dingle peninsula. rented a bike, rode from Dingle up to the Connor Pass (the highest mountain pass in Ireland, although at 456 meters it's not exactly in the stratosphere).
• Thurs, 5/4 - cycled around the western edge of the Dingle peninsula, through Ballyferriter, Dunquin, around Slea Head, & through Ventry. granted, I'm not used to being on a bike for extended periods of time (or multiple days in a row), but I'm in decent shape, and after that ride I could barely walk. either Lance Armstrong is in fact doping, or he's one hell of an athlete, and anybody who says differently hasn't ridden a bike up & down hills for more than a mile or two... had a few pints & heard some traditional irish music in some Dingle pubs.

Overall Highlight

This is going to sound a little lame, but honestly, it was the bus ride from Limerick to Tralee through rural Co. Limerick and northern Co. Kerry. I've already waxed poetic on the beauty of the countryside here, but this was one of the reasons I came to Ireland, and the bus out of Limerick through the farm country was my first taste of this magical landscape (it's surprisingly easy to picture leprechauns scurrying around the fields...)

Runner-up: cycling around Dingle.

Random Observations:

• The Irish are NOT the English, and don't make the mistake of confusing the two... I had actually been guilty of this serious offense once before while living in Dusseldorf - while talking to a guy from Belfast I knew, I made the mistake of referring to 'my other English friends' even though I knew he was (Northern) Irish. He promptly tore me a new asshole. Although in general the Irish are a very friendly people, there's definitely a certain animosity towards the English here (in many ways justified, given the long Irish history of oppression by their neighbors to the east). While out and about in Limerick, I was talking to a young student & Carrot-Top look-alike named Tommy, who had been in California for most of last summer. While there, he went to a Dodgers game, and I compared baseball to cricket in terms of the complexity of the rules (although it's been explained to me multiple times, I still haven't got a clue when it comes to scoring in cricket). Oops, bad move...to paraphrase Tommy: "F*ck cricket, we f*cking hate that f*cking English game." Unfortunately the heavy brogue doesn't come across properly, but you get the gist.

Blog Issues: I think everyone should now be able to post comments (the feature was turned off before). Still getting the hang of the new digital camera, but I'll try to post a few pictures going forward as well.

Photos

Next Stop: more of the southwest (Killarney, the Beara Peninsula, Cork City)