Howth

So, you learn the name of the place is not pronounced how-th, but hoat. Then you learn that the proper way for a non-Irish person to pronounce it is to go ahead and say the th.

So it's neither "howth" nor "hoat." It's "hoath."

It's silly because we should have known.

Anyhow, there was a fair there back in the beginning of July and Riko and I went. We were looking forward to a good lunch involving the fresh fish that's sold in the markets on the pier.

Anthony Bourdain had even been there and really seemed to enjoy himself. We saw it on the TiVo back in Frisco.

Well, good fish we didn't get. It was all pleasant enough though. We got the dog a collar, water bowl, and a stuffed bunny for the best prices we've paid for anything in Ireland: about reasonable.

OMG! More about the stuffed bunny later!



On the right is a photo of a fairly cute sort of sea critter they were feeding off the pier. An Irish Seal I believe.

Revolutionary Idea

All this strange-big-bird-on-a-river thing rang familiar to me since the get-go.

My first trip to Ireland was when I was a kid with my parents back in, I don't know, 1980?

My second was with one of my current bosses, Ben, in 2003. It was a sort of business / promotional trip.

The next time was about fact-finding for a move here way back in November 2006. On that trip I took this photo.

July 2007: That's our bird, and that's our "back yard."

Careful Understatement

Here's a monument

"Dedicated to the memory of the Officers and men
of the Third Battalion Dublin Brigade

Who Died For Ireland in 1918 and Since."

I assumed this was about expeditionary duty in the Great War and since, but I realize now that it may be relating to more local matters.

Regardless, there's a certain sort of poetic understatement in Irish expression that just destroys me. It reads, below,

"May They All Be On God's Right Hand."

Dog Damm!

The Dodder River, near which we live, seems to be controlled. I sure hope. If Irish flooding preparations are anything like those of the English or the city of New Orleans we're going to be right in the thick of it.

Here's Whiskey on a wall that looks over the uncharacteristically ugly water capacitating (my word) facility upstream.



And here's Riko crossing the wee footbridge leading to the house.

Hi Riko!

Men, check this:

Telescoping cherrypicker with treads!

Sweet.

There's so much to say about this image.

First off, for the literal-minded people in my audience, and there are several of you, that is a manipulated image. It condenses a sequence of images I captured one afternoon. I assembled them in an artful way I like to think.

We live by a river, the Dodder. We're in a house on the right. See the ReMax signs? The one in between. We've got upper and lower decks.

There's a Heron in the neighborhood. Its beat encompasses a 50 yd. stretch of the river just outside. We're Americans, we use yards.

Riko was excitedly pointing to the Heron (back when we were excited about the heron) and I was snapping three shots in short succession of it flying upstream.

It's a pretty good bird, and Whiskey wants a piece of it in the worst way. That dog will hunt. (Do you know how fast he is? Answer: surprisingly.)

When we arrived in Dublin, Whiskey was always drawn to something that looked to me like raisins on the ground by the walk along the river. Right where we usually see that bird sitting.

Whiskey ate a few of the raisins but I was always trying to keep him away from them. Riko'd been walking Whiskey along the same path but concluded that the same stuff was actually vomit. She convinced me of this.

One day I spotted an elderly neighbor woman doing something near the heron one morning. I asked and it turns out the stuff on the sidewalk wasn't vomit that never washes away as we thought. It's tuna-based cat food that the old woman leaves out for the bird. She's almost got the thing eating out of her hand. She refreshes the supply frequently and the bits that the heron can't get with its beak look like little golden raisin-y remainders of something unpleasant.

We don't feel so sick about whiskey getting a few nibbles of the stuff now.

Before we get back to the house and the river, here's one of an early trip to Tourist Central.

I thought this moment was special because we were right around the longest day of the year and the setting sun was shining down that street that runs east-west on the south side of Trinity.




As you can see, we had Whiskey with us! How'd we get him downtown?! I just don't remember.

And now we interrupt our program to bring you St. Stephen's Green

Riko wandered down to St. Stephen's Green one day, a very long time ago it seems.

I provide you with her photos by way of a brief intermission.

The real action is the views off the back deck. Yes, there's a river there. The Dodder. It's stocked with trout.

The House

It's not too bad. Here's the front of the property. This is the dull side.

... And no, those aren't oddly-routed black pipes. I applied those to the image so you can tell where the property lines are, so stop asking about it!

The Reward ...

... Followed hard upon our arrival.
(note the teapot just behind the bottle. If you look closely enough you won't see anything like this.)

The Real Dublin

Actually, Dublin wasn't all rainbows and happiness.

After two days of speedy, comfortable driving from Heathrow to Bath and up through scenic Wales, Dublin was a huge frustration. We seemed to take every possible wrong turn and get into all the biggest traffic jams available. We were also stuck on the wrong side of the Liffey, after starting on the right side (the South side... the side with the even-numbered postal districts. We live in Dublin 4... more on that later).

We were just trying get up into the center of the city close enough to find a decent currency exchange. I (Mike) brought U.S. cash along for the first month's rent, and I needed it in Euro right away.

We arrived in Dun Laoghaire at about 11AM on Friday. We needed to meet the real estate agent by 5PM. All we had to do was change the money and get to the agency. If we didn't, we would be shut out of the house until the following Monday.

Well, I think we finally made it to the real estate agency around 2:45. I think I made every amateur move in the book as far as driving around Dublin goes.

But then...

Then on Friday, June 15th,

DUBLIN!

Holyhead car ferry port.

We rolled into the car ferry port at Holyhead. This is a sort of close point between the UK and the Republic or Ireland -- except of course for Northern Ireland, which is a really close part of the UK to the ROI.

It doesn't look like much, but we felt a certain excitement and tension. You pull up in a lane then you sit and wait. Driving the car onto the ferry was fun. I kind of did some bumper-car action on the guide rails. Right-hand drive really throws off that car-to-body cognitive mapping.

Holyhead, btw, is a bit of a dump.

human-operated canal gate -- with human!

File this under Infrastructure.

I don't know why she was doing this, but she was turning the crank that opens a little door allowing water into the lower level. From there the gates are swung open under human power.

Bath again. A view of St. Michael's from across the river. We went on a good little dog walk the next morning prior to resuming the drive to Wales. It rained plenty on this walk. We didn't know this rain would be ever-present not just for the rest of the drive, but for at least the first two weeks in Ireland.


Oh yeah, and I made up the part about it being St. Michael's. I have no idea what the name of that place is.

SFO to LHR to Bath, England

The flight went surprisingly well. I had rented a 4x4 for the final day in SF, because I didn't have a car and because I needed enough room to carry the dog's giant crate and all our luggage.

I got the biggest fully loaded Suburban I'd ever seen, and the biggest thing I've ever driven.

It seemed like we nearly filled the thing.

The flight and arrival went well. We got the rental car then searched for and eventually found the dog prison at the airport.

We took a look at a map and decided that the historic city of Bath would be in the right direction and not a terribly taxing drive. About 4 hours from LHR?

Pictured above is our hotel. Bath is a pretty interesting sort of place. The bigwigs came here when Britain was part of the Roman Empire. Well, maybe not the biggest bigwigs. They came to take baths, believe it or not. Yep, once a year, whether they needed it or not.

No rest for the wicked

Kind of creepy, yes I know. We threw the mattress out on the sidewalk for Sunset Scavenger to come get the next morning. At his first opportunity, Whiskey, who has never been allowed on the bed, deposited himself on it.

So here we are on the sidewalk in front of the house.

He was very happy to be on that mattress.

Going away party at the Argus Lounge

Our going away party at the Argus Lounge.

We took a big chance on inviting the people we did, but Amy and Spence didn't give us any trouble when it came to letting Alex in.

Here, Jack keeps Alex entertained.