Newgrange

September 29, 2012

We slept like a log last night!  And how does a log sleep??  I guess it was the 4 hours of sleep on the plane and the walking all over Dublin yesterday.  However, the 6:15am wakeup call this morning was early. 

We met the Mary Gibbons’ tour at a local hotel at 7:15.  We were the first to be picked up, even before Mary herself!  Our tour went to Newgrange which is the largest of the many passage tombs.  It was about an hours drive and Mary described all of Ireland’s history.  I enjoyed the scenery and the history lesson. 

Newgrange is a huge lump on the ground.  It and the other smaller passage tombs in the area, Knowth and Dowth, were built in 3200 BC.  That is 5000 years ago in the late Stone Age.  Whoa!  (Ok, side note:  When Mary was telling us about Nowth, Dowth and Newgrange I immediately thought of the Nina. Pinta, and the Santa Maria.  I know, I know, wrong country and era.) There is an interpretive center where you are assigned a colored sticker with the time of your shuttle to the actual Newgrange.  The interpretive center is interesting as it gives you some background on the passage tombs, who built them, why, etc. 

I was impressed by the size of the Newgrange tomb.  It is “surrounded by a kerb of 97 stones.”  Or as BC says, “It had to be a couple hundred feet across.”  The tour guide was very informative and interesting.  Basically “they” built this passage tomb to align perfectly with the winter and summer solstice.  So for 17 minutes, twice a year, on the equinox of December and June 21^st the sun rises and shines perfectly through the roof box above the entrance.  They only allow a certain number of people to enter the tomb and go into the chamber.  You must walk pretty much bent over, holding your bag to the front of you as you enter the passageway.  It’s pretty tight on the side too.  You stand in the chamber and the guide demonstrated how it is in the chamber at the Winter Solstice.  It’s totally dark and then the shaft of light magically appears.  The entire mound is heavy slab rock that was brought from about 15 kilometers away via the River Boyne and then somehow brought up to the site and stacked up and up to create the cross shaped chamber and covering mound.  The graffiti inside the tiny chamber are people’s names and dates carved from when the tomb was unearthed “recently”.  The dates are 1871, 1901, etc.  They believe that special people’s cremated remains were put in the chamber.  But they aren’t sure as Newgrange was over grown and “lost” until 1699 when a guy was looking for rocks to make a road and stumbled onto it.  It is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.  I’m so glad we were able to see it and go inside.  I suspect that not too many years from now, it won’t be open to the public.  Oh!  If you want to enter the lottery to be one of the people who get to be inside the chamber on the winter equinox, you can put your name in for 2013.  Only 24 of the 32,000 people who signed up this year were chosen. 

The carvings on the stones around and inside the mound are interesting.  I plan to use the swirls in a quilt.  It is interesting what constitutes religious art, huh?

At the end of the tour, you get to take your colored time sticker off and put it on a poster.  Another great show of color!

                                   

Next we drove to Tara Hill.  Now, this is where the Druids began Halloween.  They dressed up in masks, drew pictures of skeletons on their clothes and had a party on October 31^st.  Tara Hill is another group of odd hills.  It was very windy up there, but you can see so far away.  Ireland is so beautiful. They say at the top of Tara Hill you can see 3/4 of Ireland.  And all this time I thought Tara was a plantation in the south!  Hollywood!!

                                     

We came back to our room to rest and write the blog.  In a little while we will go back to The Chop House for a nice dinner.  Tomorrow we pick up our car and start driving! 

I hope we haven’t bored you with the Newgrange and all.  It truly is amazing and well worth the trip. 

 Take care, bc and gc

Dublin

September 28, 2012

Phew weee…. Are we tired!

Our flight from JFK was blissfully short, only 5 ½ hours.  The only problem was the WHINNING KID in the bulkhead in front of us.  I wanted so bad to hear his parents say “No!  Be quiet!”  But alas, our sleep was broken up by the child screaming. 

But I jumped ahead….

We went through security at JFK and landed at the only food/bar place on the concourse. 

When I was 17 or 18 I remember sitting at the dinner table with my folks and somehow the conversation turned to music and my mom said something like “in the future music will be electronic.”  I rolled my eyes, sighed and thought, my mom knows nothing.  Guess what? My mom was right.  Love you mom.

We sat at a far back table at this bar and I was suffering.  The music was so loud, so electronic, (how many times can you say “Oh baby oh baby?” apparently dozens of times and call it music.)  I guess we could have left and gone to Panda Express…..

                                                 

So, we put on our noise canceling ear phones.  Yup, all our kids are cringing right now, but we sat at the table by the window with our headphones on.  It certainly wasn’t quiet, but it helped.  Hey, who will ever see us again?  And sanity is an important vice. 

Eventually we got on the plane and put on the earphones again.  It helped drown out the shrieking kid, but not enough. 

Once in Dublin, our adventure through customs, bag collection, and taxi ride to the Grand Canal Hotel was blissfully easy.  They even had a room for us at 10am!!  I laid down for a 2 hour nap. We took showers, and were new people! There is a little pub next door to the hotel where we went for some lunch.  They eat a lot of food here.  I thought about getting some chili.  Then I saw the guy in front of me order it.  Take a large plate, add a very large portion of thick cut French fries, 2 huge scoops of rice and then top it all with several ladles of a chili and bean/meat sauce with Velveeta poured all over it.  It made my stomach hurt to look at it.  I had a nice bowl of green pea soup.  It hit the spot.  BC had pasta with a cream mushroom sauce. 

We caught a cab to the Guinness brewery.  That’s an interesting place.  It is 6 floors of how to make Guinness beer.  When we first walked in I saw the display of beer bottles.  Is this not the most amazing color spectrum you have ever seen?!  The rest of the tour was interesting and fun.  Especially getting down the elevator from the 6^th floor with the piano guys. 

                                      

             

Here’s a shout out to our daughter in law Jenn Gilroy Carroll:

                             

We then caught a cab to the Trinity College.  What a beautiful and amazing place.  We paid our fee (BC saving $1 due to being a senior citizen) to go see the Book of Kells exhibit.  Now this was truly amazing.  Really….. And then we went into the “Long Room” where I now understand why Andy was so ecstatic when he and Joy were there last August.  I’ve never seen so many books.  Two stories high, marble busts, literally hundreds of thousands of books.  Old books.  Really important books.  They don’t allow photographs.  Sorry, you’ll have to imagine it.  As a side note, the next day, the Trinity College students were protesting.  They are upset that they must pay $3,000 Euros a year for college.  That’s not much compared to what US colleges charge.  Until 4 years ago, all colleges were free. 

                                            

Because we had our second wind, we decided to walk back to our hotel.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.  The cab driver from earlier in the day said it was a "very short walk". After traversing 75 miles, well, yes, I’m exaggerating but it sure did seem like it, we got back to our hotel.    

We rested a bit, took some Ibuprofen for our aching legs and went to dinner.  We went to the Chop House a short walk away.  OMG!!!  The food was wonderful and our waiter Jaime was perfect.  We made reservations to return tomorrow night. That was fun. 

While there, we toasted Thomas Barnes and Stacey Carroll on their wedding nuptials with lemoncello.  We love you both and are so happy for you.

                                  

We are so impressed with how kind the Irish people are.  The 3 taxi drivers went out of their way to assist us with future travels, the hotel staff is great…   Maybe it’s because our name is Carroll?  There is a souvenir shop named after us. 

We have an early call in the morning so good night!  bc and gc

PS.  We weren’t able to get the pictures into this blog last night, we were so tired.  So, we are posting today instead. 

Bc and gc

JFK

September 27, 2012

We had an uneventful flight from LAX to Philly.  We went through Chicago, but got to stay on the plane.  Mike picked us up as usual and we were at Mike and Jenn’s by late evening.  Oh it was so good to see them and Sammy and Sydney.  Mike and Jenn are amazingly busy.  Mike is working on a “situation” that he couldn’t tell us about because he would have had to kill us.  Jenn made some fantastic tomato soup which we ate while we caught up and the next day BC and I were in charge of S&S.  We dressed them in their matching pink Sacramento shirts, or as Sammy calls it Santa-mento. 

 

We went for a walk in the morning and never did find the playground.  But it was fun and we did check to see if the BBOY was around.  No luck. 

In the afternoon we borrowed Jenn’s car and took S&S to the grocery store to buy some important items.  A bottle of wine for Mike and Jenn’s upcoming 5 year anniversary and cake-a-party supplies!!!  Yes, Sammy will be 3 at the end of October so we had a cake-a-party yesterday evening.  Lots of fun, as the pictures show.  Sammy liked her butterfly jacket and the new “work station”.  She learned to write her first word….BOB!! 

This morning we played with the girls while getting in a load of laundry.  You know the rules of the road.  Never turn down a bathroom or a washer/dryer!  Jenn took us to a local hotel in South Jersey where Parnelli Abdul picked us up and drove us to JFK.  He was a little late, 12:45 but made great time.  We got to JFK at 2:15.  BC paid extra for us to have the back far seat.  You know, the one with minimal padding and a great  bounce?  BC says Parnelli was normally driving at 82 mph, but I reminded him that the entire drive was “Slow for Construction” so BC confirmed that Parnelli was only going 77mph in those zones.  We did get to see the Freedom Tower and the Statue of Liberty from the Verrazano Bridge on Staten Island.  We noticed that Brooklyn hasn’t changed much, 1.3 million tall brick buildings.  “Where do you live?” “In the brick building over there.” 

We got through check in fine and got rid of our 1 big bag.  Now we are just waiting for our flight this evening at 9pm. In a little over 48 hours we have been at LAX, Chicago, Philly and JFK.  Talk about fun people watching!  We saw movie stars in LAX, (well I think they were, they acted like it. Who wears 4 inch heels, a green chiffon caftan type thing that reaches her, uh, well, bum and has long “real” blond locks and talks on the phone all the time?  I didn’t see her little dog.)  Everyone here at JFK wears black.  Maybe they are mourning not being west coasters?  Ha!  Probably not. 

Because there are no pictures of BC while we were at Mike and Jenn’s (my bad), here’s one of him enjoying the spinach dip.  So far his planning of this trip is amazing!

We plan to sleep on the 5 hour ride over the pond because we will hit the ground running tomorrow!  Talk to you later!  

bc and gc    

September 25, 2012

 

We had a great start to our trip yesterday.  Lunch at the airport Vino Volo.  That place is an oasis of quiet in an airport.  Then I even had time for a single shot massage (15 minutes) at the massage bar.  Did I tell you BC likes to be at the airport way early?  This is why I only have 3 more punches on the massage bar coupon till we get a free massage.  In any case, it was great.  After a quick flight to LAX, we settled in at the Sheraton.

We had a wonderful dinner last night with Andy.  He will be 29 on October 5^th so we celebrated early.  He looked so dapper in his hat and though we wish his fiancée Joy could have joined us we enjoyed a great meal.  They even had a special dessert for him with the prerequisite singing waiters.  Neither of the waiters spoke English all that well so it wasn’t so bad.  It was so good to catch up with him and hear all about the wedding plans.  Sure wish I’d taken a picture of him.  I’m going to have to get better about having the camera ready. 

 

Did I mention BC likes to be at the airport really early?  So, here it is 7:30am and we have already ridden the shuttle bus with the horde of Chinese men who just about knocked me over getting onto the shuttle, walked back to section 1 from 2 because the shuttle driver didn’t stop at 1, checked our bag, passed through TSA (!!) eaten some breakfast, and are now waiting for the 8:25am flight to Chicago/Philadelphia.  LAX is so…. LAX-y.  So many people, so much noise, I think I’m just cranky because I got up so early…. But we’re early so we have time to get See’s candies for Sammy and Sydney.

 

We are so looking forward to seeing Mike, Jenn and the grand babies Sammy and Sydney tonight.  Yeah!  I found the girls matching pink Sacramento t shirts. 

The search for the Big Ball of Yarn in Ireland and Scotland

Well, we are off again for the search for the BBOY.  Please don't tell Bart (our car) that he won't be able to join us on the search for the BBOY in Ireland and Scotland.  You see, when we bought him we didn't buy the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang add on package that would allow him to sail over the Atlantic Ocean.  (Those of us that watched that movie in the theatre are dating ourselves.  It was one of my favorite movies!) 

So we'll pack up our cold weather clothes.  I don't know about you, but I am so done with summer!  Please give me something other than 94 degrees.  I know, whine moan complain!

Thanks for joining us! 

Bob and Geneva