Ireland/Netherlands (Eurotrip-2012)

            Margot and I were waiting in Holyhead for the ferry that would bring us across the creek to Ireland the last time I spoke with you. Boarding the ferry was a fairly simple process involving a long line, a bus ride, and reluctantly handing our bags over to some men whose shirts claimed they worked for Stena Lines although they stated that they worked for Irish Ferries. When we stepped on board I was a little surprised, this wasn’t so much a ferry as it was a cruise ship. Equipped with a casino, movie theatre and food court we began to navigate our way through this floating city in search of the observation deck. While on board this hunk of floating metal we finally found our way to the top of the ship and out onto the observation deck. It was a really cool experience, I felt like I was on the Titanic as the slowly fading coast line was engulfed by the never-ending sea. After gazing around and taking in the beauty of the ocean we completed the Titanic image with a couple pictures leaning over the railing of the ship and then stepped inside to relax for the rest of the ride. We ended up playing Bananagrams and while I wish I could say otherwise, Margot whooped my ass. After we docked in the Dublin harbor we stepped of the boat and I felt Dublin under my feet for the very first time.

Dublin:
 

At the present moment I still consider Ireland to be my favorite country of the trip thus far and it’ll be a tough task for any future countries to top its splendor. We got into Dublin about mid-day on Tuesday the 14^th but it took us a fair deal of time to take a bus into town and then find our way to the hostel, which included befriending a man named Jared who was from Belfast, really into skiing, and staying at the same hostel as us. Once he lead us to the Times Hostel we checked in and inquired about a meal deal for the pub around the corner that involved a pint of Guinness and a Beef Guinness Pie for just 10 Euro. We threw our stuff in the rooms and skipped down to the pub to enjoy a nice hot meal and a fresh brew. After inhaling the delicious food we decided to take advantage of the free wifi at our hostel and have a nice relaxing night catching up on our emails and Skyping friends. So we proceeded to stay up until about 2 AM engulfed in the land of free internet.  

                The following day we grabbed our free daily breakfast of stale bread and butter before venturing into the city. Unfortunately the weather was pretty poor so we decided to visit some of Dublin’s indoor sights while it was raining. First, we went to the National Library where they had exhibits on the writer James Joyce and the poet WBY (William Yeats). On Joyce they had copies of all of his drafts so you could see how the books progressed as he worked on them. Just looking at the pages was incredibly confusing and to the untrained eye appeared to be very unorganized. There were random sentences all over the pages that were scribbled out with crayon. According to the library Joyce would copy all of these sentences one by one into his next draft, crossing out the ones he had transferred with whatever writing utensil was available and would correct and add more as he went along. Another interesting part of his developmental process was that he never eliminated anything he already had in one of his drafts, he only added more. It was a really interesting exhibit that helped spark some ideas about catching up on my foreign literature, which shouldn’t be too hard based on the amount of time Margot and I will spend on trains during the next 4 months. In fact I’m just about done re-reading Anne Frank’s Diary and Joyce’s Ulysses and The Dubliners are on my travel literature list as well. The WBY exhibit was a bit more elaborate and I found it to be very informative and interesting even though I’ve never been able to get myself very excited about poetry and can’t recall specifically reading any of Yeats’ poems before. It was really cool to learn how famous and talented Yeats and all three of his siblings became during their lives but what I found most interesting was his love life and political influence. He fell in love with his cousin Maude early in life and while he had other love interests throughout the rest of his life, such as his wife George and an author named Margot Ruddock, it seemed that he never curbed the feelings he had for his one true love, Maude. Maude broke Yeats’ heart when she got married in 1904 to a man that Yeats openly expressed discomfort with and Maude apparently came to her senses when she got divorced after only a couple years of marriage. While Yeats and Maude never did end up marrying she was a very influential figure in his writing and his life. Yeats’ wife George on the other hand did something called Automatic Writing, which I understand to be a form of writing where you’re not in control of your body and some other invisible being is controlling your writing. It sounds interesting but I think I would opt for the much more plausible explanation, which is that George may have been a little crazy. Yeats was also an important political figure, using his writing to encourage the Irish people to stand up against Britain and fight for Ireland’s freedom. He was really upset when he missed the Easter rebellion in 1916 because he was working in America. He played a major part in the Abbey Theatre and thought of himself as not only a poet but also as a novelist and screen writer.

                From there Margot and I took a short walk to the National Museum, which had exhibits on the Romans in Ireland, Vikings, and Ancient Irish artifacts. The Irish used to hoard all of their belongings and bury them near lakes or rivers. Historians don’t know exactly why they did this but we’re lucky that they did because this helped preserve their belongings over huge periods of time so we can enjoy and learn from them today. After the museum we walked over to St. Patrick’s Cathedral which was very similar to the cathedrals that we found in England except not as large. Inside the Cathedral they had this old oak door with a hole in it which used to be the door used to block an entrance to a safe-hold within some Irish city. Well one day there was a huge battle and one side felt defeat quickly approaching and ran for the safe-hold, locking the door behind them. The general of the opposing side proceeded to watch the battle get way out of hand as soldiers from both sides were dropping everywhere. So he approached this door and informed the general hidden inside that he desired a truce and asked him to open the door so they could negotiate one. The hidden General thought that this was might be some sort of trickery and decided that he would not risk everybody’s life within the safe-hold by opening the door. So the General screaming for a truce took out his war axe and chopped a hole in the door, then stuck his arm through it as a sign of good faith to all those inside. Appeased, the hidden General opened the door and a truce was created and signed. I thought it was a pretty cool story of heroism from an Irish General.

                Margot and I then walked back to our hostel for a free dinner before we decided to go out for the first time during our Eurotrip and enjoy Dublin’s night life. We went to a bar called The Auld Dubliner in a nightlife area call Temple Bar and met these three girls who turned out to be a ton of fun. Kate and her friend Bec were both from Australia and last year they met this Irish girl named Christy when she was on vacation in Australia. Well both Kate and Bec are in the middle of Eurotrips themselves right now and decided to meet up with Christy in Dublin so all three of them could hang out together again. They had a ton of energy, especially Kate and we had a great time dancing and enjoying each other’s company. After exchanging numbers and Facebook names we stumbled back home and I immediately passed out. The following day was not wasted to a hangover though as we spent it on a six hour bus ride from Dublin to Doolin through Limerick. 

 

Doolin:

When we finally made it to Doolin on the west coast of Ireland we were exhausted, I’ve found it incredible during this trip how exhausting simply sitting on a bus or train for umpteen hours can be. In Doolin we stayed at this great hostel named Flannigan’s, the owner of which gave free Irish dancing lessons to all his guests and was incredibly friendly. We decided to go into town and grab some food before we collapsed and I had a delicious meal of Lamb Roast while Margot had one of the eight Shepard’s pies that she’d eaten in the past week in a half. We met this bar tender at the bar named Cathal, pronounced ka-hil, who grew up in the area and was incredibly friendly. In fact I think the general consensus among Margot and I about the Irish people is that they’re all incredibly friendly. After dinner we went back to the hostel to take a nap before going back into town to see some live traditional Irish music and then get some Irish dancing lessons. Unfortunately, we never woke from our nap and missed all of these awesome Irish events. After waking up the following morning and vouching not to miss both of these things later that night we started our walk out to the Cliffs of Moher. It was about an hour in a half walk to get to the cliffs and then we spent a couple hours exploring them. They were absolutely amazing! The cliffs are by far the coolest thing I’ve seen on this trip so far and might be the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. They were about 600 feet tall and the cliff wall was a sheer drop, allowing you to peek your head over the edge of the cliff and get a hearty feeling of vertigo. The cliffs went on for miles along the west coast of Ireland and we caught beautiful weather while we were on top of the cliffs. I totally recommend visiting the cliffs to anyone who’s still reading this blog post and would be more than happy to go back and re-visit them with you in the future.

After taking in this amazing product of nature we turned around and made the trek back into town to grab some food and rest at Flannigan’s. Then we went back into town to get Margot’s ninth Shepard’s Pie while I had some amazing Irish Stew. The band started up about halfway through dinner so we enjoyed some nice Irish music while we chatted with our friend Cathal. Then we saw Shawn, a man in his mid-twenties from Australia who is working at the Flannigan’s, and he invited us to grab some drinks with some of the other hostel occupants at the bar down the road. We met up with them there a little later in the night and I met a kid named Con who is a little younger then Margot and I, from Germany, and also working at the hostel, as well as a kid named Mathew who is from just outside Paris and gave us some great tips on what to see when we’re in France in December. We didn’t stay out too late because we wanted to do Irish dancing back at the hostel but unfortunately discovered that it wasn’t happening that night after all.

               

Inis Mor:

The next day we caught a ferry to Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands. It took us awhile to get out there so we didn’t arrive at the Kilmurvey house B&B until about 6 PM. The bus we took to the hostel from the ferry gave us some really interesting information on this island with a population of just 900 people though. The island is 11 miles long and 3 miles wide at its longest points and in 1790 the island had its largest population in history at about 2,500 people. Due to TB a lot of the islands families were completely wiped out just after this and the population has never been able to build up to its former glory. The island is divided into 14 counties, has two secondary schools, one primary school and a college where students all learn Gaelic. There are also twelve houses on the island that still have traditional thatch roofs made out of hay. This is different from the thatch roofs that you see on the Irish main land which are made out of reed and only need to be re-thatched about every 15 years. The hay roofs on Insi Mor need to be re-thatched every 2-3 years and therefore are a lot harder to maintain. The whole island is also covered by stone walls, separating everything into little subdivisions which makes the whole island look like one giant maze. It was really cool.

After storing our stuff in our rooms at the B&B we caught a ride with owner of the house we were staying at named Bernte. He wasn’t much into conversation during this ride as Margot discovered when she inquired about how his day was going and only heard the cool ocean wind pass over the car as she waited for a response. I falsely assumed this was because he had something against American or non-Irish travelers but figured out a little later in the night that he didn’t respond because Margot had called him Bernie instead of Bernte. So giving up on the conversation with Bernte during this first drive we turned to the couple next to us in the van and discovered that Peter and Sarah were both originally from Georgia but were in the middle of a two year foreign business adventure in Milan, Italy. Peter was working at PWC in Milan as an Accounting Transaction Consultant while Sarah was working part time as an Accountant. We ended up getting dinner with them at a pub in town and I couldn’t help but discuss Accounting topics with them until the conversation moved on to their humorous wedding circumstances. They had gotten married just a year before in order for Sarah to be included on Peter’s work visa, otherwise she would have been left behind in America. They were already engaged so it wasn’t as huge a deal as it could have been when Peter called her up and asked if she was busy this Friday because they kind of needed to get hitched. So they ended up getting married with fifty strangers in a mass wedding, of which there were only two Caucasians in the entire court hall and they just happened to be named Peter and Sarah. One of the other fifty people sitting next to them engaged in some conversation during the heart wrenching ceremony and they discovered that he was a pimp marrying one of his working girls. They couldn’t help but chuckle when the pimp brought his soon to be wife, wearing Nike Air Jordan High Heel Pumps, up to say, “I do” and the judge informed him that he was still married to his second wife. He then reached into his pocket and produced a death certificate of his late wife so that the ceremony could proceed. The whole story was very amusing and the good times continued to roll as our three hour dinner with Peter and Sarah flew by in what seemed only a matter of minutes. After we noticed the time and ran to the meeting spot to catch Bernte before he left without us we had a lively discussion with Bernte about the island and his family during our ride back to the B&B.

The following morning Margot and I had planned on waking up at five to catch the sunrise at the fort just up the hill but after staring blankly at each other and struggling to keep our eyes opened we decided to catch a couple more hours of sleep before venturing up to the old fortress. We still managed to get up there to experience the dawn and also beat all of the tourists, so we had the whole place to ourselves. It was a really cool fortress that looked very similar to the castle that was at Old Sarum since both no longer had any walls and appeared to be made out of similar stone. During its hay day the ancient fortress only had three outer walls, leaving the fourth wall open on the west side which gave a direct view over the Atlantic and to the crashing waves directly underneath the fortress. The fortress was built on top of a 100 foot cliff that mirrored the ones we had seen at the Cliffs of Moher the day before but on a much smaller scale. I can only imagine how many drunk Irish soldiers accidentally fell over the cliffs and were lost to the sea over the years.

After taking some fun pictures on the edge of the cliff we made our way back down the old fortress pathway to our B&B for a glorious breakfast of eggs, yogurt, scones, sausage, bacon, bread, and to my dismay some blood sausage. You see the day before when our ferry docked at Inis Oirr for a couple hours Margot and I got some lunch at a cheap lunch stand sitting on the beach. Margot got a cheeseburger but as I’m constantly trying to eat the local fare wherever we go I got some blood sausage. Unfortunately a cheap rusty lunch stand on the beach was probably not the best place to eat my first few links of blood sausage. It was fucking disgusting, but I couldn’t bring myself to waste the money I had spent on the sausage and throw it away so I stomached the sausage and fought a queezy feeling for the rest of the day. So when I ate what should have been a delicious piece of blood sausage the next morning I was immediately reminded of the previous days’ sausage and it just ruined the whole experience.

                After the sausage, Bernte took us by the islands seal colony on our way back into town to catch the ferry to Doolin. The tide was still too far in however so we could only see the seals swimming around and none of them were out sun-bathing yet. It was still pretty cool and Bernte said at least a hundred seals lived in the cove there. After reaching town we geared up for a long day of traveling and with a bit of luck it went off without a hitch. First we took the ferry back to Doolin, making stops at Inis Meain and Inis Oirr. The previous day Margot had befriended a couple from New Jersey on the ferry into Inis Mor and they happened to be on our same ferry going back to Doolin. So Margot struck up another conversation with them and by the time we were cruising into Doolin they had offered to give us a ride into town to the bus stop. By the time our ferry got to Doolin the tide was all the way out and so we had to anchor the ferry about 1,000 yards from the dock and get relayed onto shore on a little boat that only held about 10 people per trip. Luckily we got on the second boat while the man from Jersey had gotten on the first and was running to get the car for us. We found him when we reached shore and he dropped us off at the bus station literally one minute before our bus arrived to take us into Galway. If we had missed this bus we would have had to wait another 3 ½ hours for the next bus so thank god we caught it. Then we had to endure the 6 hour bus ride back to Dublin and ended up staying at the same hostel as we had earlier in the week. After another low key night we got up early to catch a flight to Amsterdam.

Amsterdam:

            When we arrived in Amsterdam we started walking through the airport to find the metro and noticed a couple young security guards armed to the teeth with an AK, two hand guns, a couple tazer guns and a bunch of other handy gadgets. It didn’t bother me but was a bit of a reality check as to where I was and how things were different here from back in Colorado. When we got off the metro at Centraal Station I was amazed at how huge it was, I’d never been in a train station that large before. After visiting Copenhagen I’m beginning to realize how common these huge train stations are but at the time it blew me away. From Centraal Station we had a short ten minute walk to our B&B, which happened to be just 5 minutes down the canal from the Anne Frank house. After getting situated we spent this first night just walking around exploring the area, grabbing some dinner and eventually venturing over to the Red Light District. We didn’t stay out too late this first night and got a good night rest instead. The following day we went to the Westerkerk which translates to Western Church and is located right next to the Anne Frank House. Frank frequently referred to the church in her diary, saying that its bell tower gave her comfort when it chimed and that she became disgruntled when the Nazi’s melted it down to use its metal to make bullets. The church was very different from those we saw in England and Ireland. It had no stained glass, which may have been due to the destruction of WWII, but was also completely white and gold inside. It was bright and picturesque whereas the cathedrals in England where decked out in stained glass and the interiors were decorated in very dark colors. The contrast between them was very dramatic but I found both of the styles to be beautiful in their own ways.

 

           After the church we grabbed these awesome sandwiches at a local sandwich shop and Margot couldn't help but laugh at the size of my sandwich compared to hers. During the course of the trip up to this point my main goals when ordering food have been to experience the local fare and to get large portions. However, exhibited by my consistent answer of, "I'm starving!" whenever Margot asks if I'm hungry, I've failed to the point of hilarity in achieving large meal portions. Somehow whenever we order food Margot always ends up with a larger portion of food than I do, no matter how hard I try to combat these disproportionate meal sizes. My stomach finds it torturous but I can't help but laugh at the consistency of my meal failures. From the sandwich shop we went to the famous Rijksmuseum and spent several hours admiring all of the artwork. The trademark Dutch delftware was all over the place and incredibly beautiful. They also did a great job of telling the Dutch history through the artwork which I must admit I didn’t know a whole lot about beforehand. There was this one painting that stuck out to me during my visit because it was so different from the rest of the art. While some of the art in the museum was somber or displayed warzones from afar, only one picture was actually gruesome. It was a painting of the De Witt brothers after they had been lynched in the late 17^th century by an angry mob. Johan De Witt was an important Dutch political figure during the Franco-Dutch war and was supposedly in charge of keeping the Amsterdam safe during this time, which he failed to do when the French and English attacked the city. As retribution when another political party took power, Johan and his brother Cornelis were taken from their jail cells and lynched by a large mob that mutilated their bodies and even ate some of their body parts. This was a painting displaying the aftermath of the events. The museum also contained the original painting of the Night Watch by Rembrandt which was pretty cool. So far during this trip I’ve been much more fascinated by sculpting’s though and I really enjoyed one they had at the Rijksmuseum of Cupid. He had this mischievous look on his face and was reaching into his quiver for another arrow while holding his finger to his lips telling someone to be quiet.

                After the museum we walked over to the van Loon museum which Margot obviously found an interest in since her last name is van Loon. Unfortunately, the museum was closed on Tuesdays so we couldn’t go inside but we still managed to snap a couple pictures of Margot in front of it. We continued to move on down the road to the Tulip Fair which was huge since Amsterdam is famous for Tulips after all. Then we went home to get some rest before going back out later that night. Margot really wanted to go to an Indonesian restaurant for dinner since the Netherlands colonized Indonesia but instead we kept running into Argentinean restaurants. They infested every street corner and we couldn’t figure why there were so many in Amsterdam but we finally found an Indonesian restaurant and ended up having some great food. After dinner we took another stroll through the Red Light District and decided that the Monday night girls were much better looking than the Tuesday night girls for some reason. And laughed about how well the prostitution fit in with the surrounding people and business establishments; there were families and high class restaurants sharing walls with many of these places. After enjoying a lengthy night stroll we found our way back to our B&B and got up early the next morning to go to the Anne Frank House. This was a really interesting and emotional experience and my favorite part of our time in Amsterdam. I hadn’t read Anne Frank’s Diary since middle school so I was a little fuzzy on the details but the exhibit did a great way of introducing and feeding you information about her experience. At the end you got to see footage of Auschwitz after it had been freed from the Nazi’s and heard from Anne’s father Otto. This was probably the saddest part of the tour since it really hit home what happened to all of these people and what Anne eventually went through. Especially after getting to know Anne through her diary, seeing how human she was and noticing the similarities between herself and you, seeing what went on in these concentration camps became incredibly disheartening. But it’s also something that I would definitely recommend seeing and experiencing yourself. One thing that I’m disappointed not to be seeing during this trip is Auschwitz, because even though it’s a really sad and depressing place I feel that it would be amazing to see since it is such a huge part of human history.

                After the Anne Frank house Margot wanted to go to the Tulip and Cheese museum, which she did while I went shopping for delftware. Afterwards we got an amazing lunch at the Pancake Factory, grabbed our stuff and had a couple beers by one of the canals while we waited for our overnight train to Copenhagen.