sorry for the extended absence…we
sorry for the extended absence…
we have just finished a month-long holiday of hosting guests, travelling europe, and traipsing across ireland. it was everything I thought it would be, and as always, there were some unexpected things too.
my parents came to visit first. we walked around cork, we walked through muckross park, we walked in west cork and we walked down by the river. they even went walking up by the old mental asylum that is being turned into yuppie apartments and up to the old gaol. we nearly walked ourselves right out! we went to kinsale and ate fish & chips by the harbour. we also took a day trip to the waterford crystal factory and watched the workers blowing and cutting crystal. my mom & I walked through an abbey from the 15th century in muckross park. It was in amazing condition considering the age of the building. As is the case with most religious ruins in ireland, the inside of the building and the surrounding grounds had been since used as a graveyard. the dates on the headstones varied from only a few years old to the 1600 and 1700′s. We walked through the different areas of the building and came across a courtyard that had a yew tree growing inside it. the yew had grown right up so that the top of it was sticking out the top of the courtyard, but I could imagine the days when it was a tiny sapling being tended to by brown-robed monks. there was something about this abbey that I found very real – I could feel the lives of the people that lived there and really imagine them walking around the same way I was walking.
then we went off on the epic journey that was our visit to amsterdam. we could have gone for the direct flight from cork-amsterdam, but it was a bit pricy and we (or at least I) was feeling adventurous so we chose to fly from dublin-charleroi(brussels) and then take the train into holland. everything went smoothly on our way in, but on our way home we saw way more of charleroi airport than anybody should have to experience. our flight was delayed by 5 hours and we had to board and take off within 10 minutes – the flight attendants were doing their safety speech at doubletime while the plane was taxi-ing down the runway. I wanted adventure, and that’s what I got!
Brussels itself was beautiful though, and the day that we spent there did make all the hassle worthwhile. the architecture is incredible; there are unbelievably ornate statues and gold plating on most of the buildings, even the modern ones had coloured marble and modern art on them. everyone speaks french, and there is the smell of money in the air. there is a famous statue of a peeing boy, and we saw this reproduced in everything from keychains and corkscrews (guess where the corkscrew was?) to a giant cow with the boy on her udder.
travelling at the end of june is the absolute height of the tourist season, and this was painfully obvious in Amsterdam. every single place we went was crammed with people, and it was hot too – almost 30 degrees celcius. hot sticky crowded tram rides with too much luggage (why on earth did I think it might rain??) – blech! Once we got settled into our hotel everything was much better. Most of the time we spent in Amsterdam we just wandered about looking at stuff – and there is so much stuff to look at! innumerable restaurants, shopping districts everywhere, museums, art galleries, headshops, coffeeshops, canals, architecture, and of course, the vondelpark. We spent most of one day looking at the rijksmuseum, which has lots of paintings by rembrandt and a whole section devoted to dutch history, which includes huge wooden models of windmills and gunships. Another day was spent at the van gogh museum. the thing that struck me the most about seeing these famous paintings in person is the element of three-dimensionality that just cannot be captured in a print. the rembrandts glowed – the faces and eyes and detail in the portraits had a life and spirit that cannot really be explained. and the van goghs had this pixellated energy – like the image on a television if you get too close. they seemed to have movement waiting under the surface, like a freezeframe of a film. The three of us – tom, dwayne & I – decided that when we get rich we are going to go on an art tour of europe. first stop amsterdam, next stop the louvre!
After the incident at charleroi airport and the long drive home from dublin, we toured around ireland with dwayne. we went to a beach called sandycove and looked at tidepools. tom found a creature we’d never seen before – we think it was a sea slug. dwayne picked it up, and one part fell off and rolled back into the tidepool… maybe it was two mating?? we went out on the town to show dwayne the irish lifestyle – 6 pints of guinness and a whiskey shooter later, well, I don’t really remember. we went out to west cork and stayed at andy’s for a few days. we drank crystal-clear water from the well down by the river, we met rob-the-hippie, his ex-wife and daughter becky. becky was absolutely ethereal. she looked like a pixie with crazy dreads and two perfect curls above her ears. we went swimming in the ocean at barley cove on a sunny day and got the taste of salt water and the sensation of being carried up and away by the power of the ocean. we climbed lough hyne on a cloudy day and it was absoultely magical. there was no view at all, just whiteness everywhere, but the trees came alive with moss and green vines.
And even after all our activities over the last month, there are things I learned and gained and shared that cannot really be explained. these are the really valuable things that I will take with me as the days get shorter and the rain becomes more frequent and I go back to answering the phone. I feel more whole than I did before. Seeing people from my life in canada here in ireland has connected these parts of my life that had previously existed in two separate spheres. I am whole; the same and yet different. I also learned that I have the power to make things better with positive thought and action.
Photos from my parents visit are already up – click on the photo in the previous entry to see them. My own photos will be up soon…
