DAY TWENTY-TWO: GALWAY TO DOOLIN

There are three official levels of roads in Ireland, not counting country roads and private lanes.  Here's a quick and handy guide to them, should you ever find yourself behind the wheel in the Emerald Isles:

M -- This is a freeway, minus the "free" part and generally minus a few lanes.  Excellent for first-time keep-to-the-lefters, M roads offer multiple lanes that are unique among Irish roadways as they are usually considerably wider than the average car, van, RV or bus.   M roads are toll roads.  Tolls are collected  the old-fashioned way, via toll booth (please have exact change and if you hand over the wrong coins because you just swapped out your pounds for Euros, try to find the correct change before hitting the button to roll your window up.  To do otherwise is to risk losing not only your dignity but also your forearm.  You can also pay your tolls online, by 8 PM the day of travel.  What happens if you don't pay them that same day?  Ask me in a few weeks.  We should know by then. 

N -- The so-called "national" roads are different from the regional R roads in that they have reflectors.  Otherwise I can't tell much of a difference.  Both roads are exactly 1.0003 car-widths wide, which seems to bother nor slow down local drivers not at all.  The reflectors come in handy because they offer lane parameters to help panicked visiting drivers avoid hitting either oncoming traffic or the stone walls that line 93 percent of all N roads in Ireland, even those that have cleverly hidden the walls behind foliage, leading unsuspecting visitors to sigh, "Well, at least if I hit something on the left it'll just be foliage," only to be quickly corrected by their (perhaps frightened wives): "The foliage is covering the walls."

R -- The "regional" roads, like the one we took for an hour today between Ballyvaughan and Doolin, are basically logging roads with white dots occasionally painted randomly down the middle to fool people into thinking the have two lanes.  As such you might think they'd be avoided at all costs by vans, RVs and huge tourist buses. If you think that you are naive and hopeful and maybe underestimating the intestinal fortitude of local bus drivers.  They're out there pushing that 80 k/ph speed limit (48 MPH), forcing novice Americans to pull into whatever wide spots they can find -- narrow road shoulders, small parking lots, street openings -- to avoid getting obliterated as they pass.  

Today is the last you will hear me speak of driving in Ireland.  I promise.  I will take up this crusade upon our return to England, when I will up the degree of difficulty by a factor of 2.4 by renting a car with a manual transmission.  Until then, assume I am handling driving in Ireland, it's roads so narrow as to make my life flash before me at least a half-dozen times today, with great aplomb and ease.  Unless something weird happens.  

Today we awoke in Galway refreshed and ready to move on, having avoided the temptations of race week for at least one night.  Just a glass of wine in a quiet (save for its terrible playlist combo of Motown hits and the worst possible tracks recorded by rock and roll geniuses, giving me wedding-goer flashbacks from my 20s) restaurant and back to the hotel.  We lolled about the hotel for most of the morning, not wanting to get to Doolin too early.  

While waiting for Sandra Bullock to finish up in the shower, I flipped on the TV for the first time in three weeks.  I channel-surfed for about 15 minutes, long enough to understand why Europeans' impressions of the U.S. are often inaccurate.  But maybe that's not a bad thing.  There are way worse ambassadors for the American Way than The A Team.  I like the idea of an entire continent using Mr. T as a stand-in for American values.  And those who don't, well, I pity those fools. 

Eventually I could stall no more and the road became inevitable.  We piled into the Nissan and pulled cautiously out into traffic, me actually saying "turn right, stay left" every time Siri instructed us to "turn right onto (name of road)" and silently cursing her when she said "take the (#) exit at the roundabout" for the seventh time within the first five miles.

Going native at Monks

"Don't worry.  Soon we'll be out of the city," Sandra Bullock said, fiddling with the radio until she found -- seriously -- Ireland's "classic country" station, which alternated Irish folk tunes with George Strait and weird "trucking and train" medleys featuring snippets of "East Bound and Down," "Folsom Prison Blues" and "On the Road Again."  I'm not complaining.  Took my mind off of oncoming traffic.

It wasn't so bad.  At one point we stopped to see the eerie Dunguaire Castle, mostly so I could prove that I had this under such control that we could casually pull over and see some landmark or view or something if we wanted without disaster striking.  We had an excellent lunch at Monks in Balleyvaughan, overlooking the Wild Atlantic Coast.  So confident was I by then that I agreed to leave the N road for the R "Coastal Road."  "How much narrower could it be?" I asked, rhetorically.

But some rhetorical questions are answered, whether you want them answered or not.  The Coastal Road is, in places, way narrower than the N road, which dissuades the tour buses not a whit.  They roar on, forcing oncoming traffic to the quick risk-assessment:  head-on collision with a bus or sideswiping a stone wall?  

Somehow, despite my best efforts, we made it through with only a few brushes against some roadside foliage  roadside foliage that was not, thankfully, concealing a stone wall.  This is why I bought the insurance.

Now we're in Doolin, which is a very small fishing village whose attraction to tourists is its

Doolin beach scene.

proximity to the Cliffs of Moher, which we will be walking -- not scaling -- tomorrow.  Also, it's supposedly the live traditional music capitol of Clare County.  After two days here I expect to be qualified to offer an opinion on that claim but not yet.  All I can say now is that it's pretty beautiful, has been found by tourists and isn't joking when it says it's the center of the "Burren," which is this series of coastal limestone fields that time and water have carved into these weird, gigantic blocks and might explain all of these stone walls we've been seeing.

Earlier we took a walk down to the pier to check out the Burren, which in Doolin doubles as a sort of beach (that's what the sign said) but not the kind of beach where you lie around on a towel, play volleyball and surf.  More it's the kind where you sit on a rock and watch really cold, really dramatic-looking water pound into more rocks that've been carved into amazing almost square shapes while a brisk wind blows through your Ben Sherman jacket, keeping you from sweating for several glorious minutes.  

'sup, Ireland?

It's also a place where you can finally get the soft serve ice cream cone you've coveted for most of the past three weeks then walk back to your hotel (which is also a hostel for the more budget-minded), buy a beer and sit outside with your wife, looking out at all of those green fields and the thatched-roof cottages and thinking about how this finally looks like the Ireland that the ruined romantic poets you'd been wondering about when you started planning this trip, six months ago, spend their lives missing terrible and writing odes to, and that pretty much makes the white-knuckler of a trip it takes to get here worth the hassle.

Here's today's Wild Atlantic numbers:

10,000,000 -- what you'd have to pay me, in U.S. dollars, to drive an RV on a regional road in Ireland.

500 -- what you'd have to pay me, in U.S. dollars, to attend a James Taylor concert.  Presented for perspective only.

33 -- people we've seen, since arriving in Ireland, wearing Boston Red Sox hats and/or t-shirts (often both), which, if you think about it, makes sense.  

6 -- extra time, in minutes, you will spend taking the Coastal Road from Balleyvaughan to Doolin instead of the N road.  Each of those minutes will be subtracted from the end of your life.

15 -- minutes it took us to check into the Doolin Inn because Effie, the woman working the front desk, was very friendly and didn't want us to take the walk down to the pier without turning at some point and looking up to see the tower on the hill behind us.  

0 -- items purchased at Doolin gift shops and/or woolen stores.  Our MO is usually to buy a bottle opener wherever we go, but Sandra Bullock "doesn't want some dumb Guinness opener," and as you've heard it never gets cold enough where we live to buy a sweater, so our perfect record of non-purchase remains intact.

Tomorrow our plan is to walk the length of the trail leading to the Cliffs of Moher, past the visitors' center ("It'll be cheek-to-jowl" with tourists," explained Effie, "but they stop there. None of them keep going on the trail.") and then decide whether to walk back or take the bus that runs every half hour, is small and green and emblazoned with a leprechaun (eye roll from Effie).  The trip out is a brisk 7.5 miles, child's play for those used to logging 20k steps daily.  But are we up for the full 15?  It's been almost 40 years since I did my last March of Dimes walk, so we'll see.

DAY TWENTY-ONE: AROUND GALWAY

Here's how your plans go south:  sometimes it's a big deal, an argument, equipment failure, second thoughts; sometimes, it's no deal at all, almost imperceptible, a casual comment or question, posed in the late morning while still in bed, reading, your husband absorbed in a crossword puzzle on his iPad.  You lean over, check the clock and notice it's way later than you thought, so you think for a moment and then off-handedly comment, "You know, we don't have to do that drive today if you don't want."

"No?" says your husband, his voice betraying his relief.

"Sure.  We can just stay around here."

This drive was hatched as a concrete plan while we floated in and out of civilization yesteray on Innis More (sp!).  We would get in the Nissan of Terror earlyish, say nine or ten, and meander north, stopping in various villages, visiting Connemara, a big national park, checking out an abbey, then continue along the coast, through ancient fishing villages before landing back in Galway in time for our tapas reservation at 19:30.  This was no spur-of-the-moment thing.  It was carefully constructed via Rick Steves Bible and Google maps, though not finalized. 

And just like that: poof!  Gone.

Okay, full disclosure.  The plan was in trouble by the time we woke up, an hour later than we'd originally planned.  It wasn't in tatters, but it had basically imploded the night before at around 8:30, before dinner, when an exhausted Sandra Bullock, who'd early suggested that the day's 25,000 steps and tenuous contact with civilization had taken such a toll that a good idea for tonight was "room service and, like, maybe watch a movie," did a sudden, if weary, about-face, stating, "We took showers.  We should at least go out to dinner."

Which was fine with me. I didn't come 6,000 miles to sit around a hotel room, not even one with surprisingly effective air conditioning.  "Great.  Find a place to eat that's close," my wife ordered.

Aside: my least favorite thing to do in the world is "find a place to eat."  It's also my burden and mine alone, because I'm "difficult," i.e. an actual vegetarian, not a part-time one.  Since, the reasoning goes, I'm the one most likely to object to a menu, I'm the one charged with finding an acceptable restaurant.  At home or on the road.  It is my albatross.  

Sometimes I like out and find a place that works.  I'm a hero then.  Most of the time, though, I flail and flail and we end up wandering around looking for "something that looks good," a scenario that too often ends with us holding laminated menus and me grumbling about "tourists."  Sometimes I'll choose a place and it'll be terrible, causing a heavy pall to hover over us the entire meal.

Worst of all are the times I have a name and an address but can't find the place.  This is a disaster and most of the time ends with a hasty Plan B and laminated menus.

Last night, though, dumb luck prevailed.  The Hyde Bar, three doors down from our hotel, was great.  Our Australian waiter was (maybe a bit too) attentive, the vegetarian options shined and the seafood was prime.  Success!

We finished dinner at 9:45.  At this point, Connemara was still very much in play, probable, even.  It stayed well in sight even when Sandra Bullock, buoyed by our great dinner, suggested we "have another drink" and watch the acoustic duo put their guitar/bongos/iPad spin on a really strange set  in the bar. 

Then the races ended. 

This week is, of course, Galway Race Week, the Kentucky Derby of Galway only a week long, drawing race fans, fans of dressing up and wearing outrageous hats and fans of being drunk from all over the country.  At 10 PM, they streamed into the Hyde Bar.  

Connemara was in trouble.

How are you supposed to leave this?  Your quiet bar with the weird acoustic duo is suddenly over run by girls in dresses and heels, weird hats, guys in foppish vests and ties?  You're supposed to just go home and not watch this?   You do this you miss out on waving off the photographer when he tries to snap you in your non-dressed up garb.  You miss the stocky little drunk guy get busted by his drunk fiancee when he tries to entice your wife to come out to the (makeshift) dance floor.  You miss learning that some hats are actually headbands.  You can't miss this.

Still, when we walked out at 11, Connemara was gasping but still alive.  It wasn't until we heard the country music coming out of the bar across the street that Connemara died.  We just didn't realize it had died until 10 hours later.  

Murty's Rabbit looks like a tourist bar and maybe it is, but on this night it was packed with Irish people of all stripes -- and us.  Another American couple poked their heads in but, aghast at the guy in the suit with the planets all over it, maybe, or the table full of moms singing Irish folk songs, they quickly ducked out.  We stayed.

Because wouldn't you stay if the guys in the corner who looked like they'd come to fix the clog in the sink turned out to be the band?  And if that band played a mix of oldies, country tunes and Irish folk songs, wouldn't you stick around if only to marvel at how every song, no matter the genre, came out sounding like an Irish folk song?  And then, when the elderly sisters get up and start swing dancing to "Stop the World and Let Me Off" at midnight, then, my friend, you'll understand that it is you, and not the other Americans, who has made the correct choice, even if the cost of that choice is Connemara. 

People were still streaming in -- mothers with their grown sons, middle-aged guys in slacks, post-adolescents and of course, racegoers dressed to the nines -- when we dragged ourselves away at 12:30, fooling ourselves just a little bit when we agreed, before turning out the light, that we'd "decide tomorrow morning" about driving to Connemara. 

No chance.  Connemara knew it was dead even if we wouldn't admit it.

And then: "We could just hang around here."  So that's what we did.  We got up and walked all the way to Salt Hill, the "popular tourist resort" a few miles to the north.  We walked the promenade, hugging the shore, mingling with locals and some tourists, finding Texaco stations that have minimarts but no public restrooms, LeisureLand, which is surprisingly not a retirement community but instead a children's amusement park, quiet residential streets where every third house is a B & B and so many places to buy soft serve, even the Texaco without the bathroom. 

We strolled through Galway's West End, me cursing us out for not discovering this lively but local district a few nights earlier, then returned to our tourist cohort in search not of jugglers

Stradivarius for the win!

and street performers (those were easy to find) but our afternoon infusion of beer and french fries, and maybe a place to watch some horse racing.  After what seemed like an eternity of ducking into bars called (Irish first name like "Paddy," "Michael" or "McGettigan") (Irish surname like "O'Brien," "O'Connor," or "McGee) (apostrophe) and finding no food and a male-to-female ratio that sunk to 100:0 once we left, we found our fries at Garvey's, where a spirited crowd of locals had gathered to watch the Galway Races on TV, then thrilled as Stradivarius came from well back in the pack to surge to a win, his fifth in a row, per the elderly William S. Burroughs doppelganger sitting to my right. 

So yes, Connemara was doomed long before we said it out loud, as doomed as our plan to hike to Dun Aengus the day before.  But as with Dun Aengus, the alternative turned out to be just fine.  I've been telling Sandra Bullock  that my favorite things are the ones you don't plan for, like finding the Scottish kids playing music "under the tent" in Inverness or stumbling across the Dundee Crew in Aberdeen; or finding a bunch of plumbers playing "Dirty Old Town" as a pair of elderly sisters swing dances on a makeshift dance floor.  You plan too much and you end up missing out on having William S. Burroughs explain that the horse you just saw sweep to victory from behind does that all the time and who wants to miss out on that?

Lawless Poles.

Final full disclosure:  Connemara might have been derailed even earlier.  The end may have come on our bus ride back from the Aran Islands ferry, when we sat behind a lawless young(ish, maybe not as young as they'd like you to think) Polish couple whose non-stop PDA may have been fueled by the vodka (or gin) they were drinking out of a soda bottle and the beers they poured 10 minutes before we pulled into Galway.  After an hour of watching that, we were rattled.  Tough to bounce back from that.  Sorry, Connemara.  

Today's numbers:

81.7 -- distance, in kilometers, from the Park House Hotel in Galway to Connemara, wear and tear not inflicted on the Nissan of Terror, thanks to us.  Your welcome, Nissan.

8.94 -- distance, in miles, we covered on foot today, burning 2,600 more calories than we would've burned sitting in a Nissan, save for the 300 or so I might have burned via anxiety.

66 -- estimated height, in inches, of the lead singer of last night's band.  "That's how tall Roger Daltrey is, you know," I confided to Sandra Bullock.  "He is?" she said.

4 -- number of times I've heard the song "Wagon Wheel" in the past 24 hours, once live. 

56 -- total number of Europeans spotted wearing Yankees baseball caps.  

94.3 -- percentage of Europeans spotted wearing Yankees hats who have Chicago Bulls jerseys buried in their closets back home.

6 -- bars visited before finding one that had food, this after eating over 50 percent of our meals in bars that serve food, conveniently stumbled upon by us during the first 20 days of this trip.

71 -- percentage of races Stradivarius has started and won in 2019.  Total earnings before today:  2.336 million EU.

Tomorrow we leave Galway and drive to Doolin, the "home of traditional Irish music" and the cliffs of Moher on the "Wild Atlantic Coast."   All of the plumber bands and elderly swing dancing ladies can't change that. 

DAY TWENTY: GALWAY, ARAN ISLAND(S)

We're still running a day behind, so lets try something: a two-part entry, yesterday and today, entered into my iPhone from our perch on the second level of a double-decker bus (on the left side for optimal views) while Sandra Bullock ticks off all of our hiking options today during our trip to Innis Mor (sp?).  

We'll begin with a recap of yesterday, our first day in Ireland:

There's a very good reason I hit the hay so hard last night, despite already logging an hour of a nap so deep as to be prehistoric only a few hours earlier.  The aggregate mental stress of the following events took its toll:

1) Fell asleep at 1 AM after whooping it up in Inverness with the Crown Prince of Plate Glass and his Sun Devils, only to awake a few sweat-saturated hours later, at 5:30 AM.  Gathered our stuff.  Got into a cab.  Drove through the countryside and -- surprise!  -- an airport appeared.

2) Flew from Inverness to Dublin on a pretty small plane, but honestly not so small that you spend the entire hour-long flight making jokes about how small it is, like the group of pretty large young Americans seated in front of us in row two.  I mean, there was a jet engine outside my window, not a prop, right?  Pump the brakes, young Americans.  It's not like you looked out and saw propellers spinning and were sitting in front of Teddy.  Nice Crocodile Dundee hats, by the way.  

3) Landed in Ireland and suddenly realized, with a cold flash of heartless fear, that in juste a few minutes I'd be let loose on the streets, driving a car on the wrong side of the road.

I'd known it was coming, so it's not like I was surprised.  It'd been looming for days, the sole reason I always sat shotgun (the uncoveted "dad" seat) when we took Ubers in Edinburgh.  I'd sit up there and try to visualize myself behind the wheel, staying to the left. 

Terror, thy name is Nissan.

And let me tell you this -- you're sufficiently warned.  There are signs all over the place from the moment you touch down in Dublin.  "Drive on the left."  "Stay to the left."   Even the rental car itself -- sorry, "car hire" -- has sticker on the windshield:  "stay to the left."  And yet, park yourself as I have behind the wheel of an otherwise benign-seeming Nissan Weird Model Not Imported into the U.S. and you'll find yourself repeating it over and over like a TM mantra only instead of a relaxing "om" it's a nerve-wracking "stay to the left."   And you'll want to keep that to yourself so the confident woman sitting to your left doesn't hear you and begin to understand the absolute peril she placed herself in when she slid into the seat reserved for the driver in 90 percent of the world.  "Stay to the left.  Stay to the left."   Om.

Here's a tip for you, though:  do as I did and hit the freeways first.  The M roads.  This may seem counter-intuitive; it did to me.  Knowing that my baptism under fire would take place on Dublin's crowded M50 made my fears even more acute, until I realized that by choosing to do that, drive directly to Galway, do not pass GO do not collect 200 EU, I'd given myself a nice long ramp for left-lane driving orientation, where what was at stake was merely the difference between plodding along in the slow lane (the left) or pulling out to pass (the right).

Here's another tip, something you may night consider when planning your right-hand-drive adventure, something the cheerful young girl at Enterprise Rent-a-Car (wordwide) neglected to warn me about when I asked "got any tips?"

"Stay to the left."

But not too far to the left.  I settled into that right seat, checked my mirrors, noted how weird it was to have the gearshift to my left, pulled out into traffic... and immediately became a mirror image a teenager on the day he got his learner's permit, so terrified of oncoming traffic that I was driving almost out of my lane and onto the curb.  Don't do this.  It will seem like you're driving down the middle of the road but you're not.  

Take this advice so you don't, say, nail a curb about a mile into the drive, seconds after breathing your first sigh of relief and thinking, "Hey, I think I've got this," as your passenger sighs, "Maybe we should've gotten the extra coverage for tires and windows."

You don't got this.

At this point Sandra Bullock decided that her duties, already quite extensive (mapping, audio) included frequent lane position checks.  "You're getting pretty far over."  "You're actually close to the middle line right now."  "Try to line up with the dotted lines."  (sounds of a Nissan Not Imported to the U.S. bouncing off of road reflectors)

How did this happen?  I've been driving for 38 years.  On the left side of the road.  

4) After two (mostly) drama-free hours we pulled into Galway... and promptly drove right past the turn in for our hotel's parking garage, ending up two minutes later facing a brick wall at the end of an alleyway with a BMW three feet from our back bumper.  "You'l have to back out," my wife, who'd decided to commit herself to keeping me from losing my mind from anxiety, said evenly.

"There are so many reasons why that can't happen," I said back, on the verge of tears.  We sat there, waiting for the BMW to clue in and leave.  Finally it did, leaving me free to execute and 11-point turn and carefully drive around the block for another shot at our garage, which turned out to be another dead end, this one terminating in a bunch of cars seemingly piled haphazardly on top of each other.  Then Sandra Bullock, my savior, spoke the words I'd been waiting to hear all day:  "I think they have valet."

5) So you can forgive me when, after a strolling through Galway's shockingly crowded

Not pictured: flash mob.

pedestrian mall -- turns out we stumbled onto Galway's Arts Festival, which included food trucks, Macy Gray playing in a giant tent for 35 euros and street performers because when traveling who doesn't want to see a juggler?

6) Also, there was a flash mob whose members showed up and did wild, simultaneous dances while singing along to a song only they could hear through the headphones they wore, in this case "Mamma Mia."  They were part of the Arts Festival, art being that which is best appreciated by people who shout SO GOOD SO GOOD SO GOOD whenever "Sweet Caroline" comes on at the bar.  Maybe while drinking a Long Island Iced Tea, if there's a special.  

7) After that, I was spent.  We walked back after dinner, had some ice cream (it pushed Sandra Bullock "over the edge") and sacked out.  The last thing I remember is my lovely wife, enrapt in her latest mystery novel, telling me I "look tired."  Eight hours later we woke up, had a muffin, got in line for the bus to the ferry that would take us to Innis Mor.  

That brings you up to date.  For now.  

REAL TIME UPDATE: it is with heavy eyelids that I type this, my one-beer-in-the-afternoon malaise eased just a little by Sandra Bullock’s glee in finding that by avoiding the huge crowd huddled under the shelter we actually became the first people to board the 5 PM return ferry to Galway. 

Today we managed the ultimate July travel life hack: distanced ourselves from the crowds that descend on Aran Island every day in July. How did we do this?  We got lost. 

The goal was to walk to and from Dun Aengus, an Iron Age ruin of some sort whose majesty we’ll never know because after several mis-starts we finally gave up on the idea of reaching it when we realized the utterly deserted “road” we’d chosen was not just the road less taken but in fact that road never taken, except by us. 

Peace, peace of mind... and mysterious walls.

And you know what? It turned out fine. We didn’t see Dun Aengus, but we did see tons of abandoned stone farm houses and lots of lots of stone walls. Stone walls reaching out like octopus arms into the distance in every direction, relics... of what?  Ancient Aran Islanders who gave up the project hundreds of years ago and the stone walls were too heavy to pack?   One bored and obsessive person’s time-killing hobby?  We saw few livestock and no farming. Just these walls. 

We walked without seeing another human being for at least an hour. We stopped and scaled a stone wall to eat lunch leaning against the ruins of a barn. We practiced responsible access, though we were no longer in Scotland. 

By the time we re-entered civilization, it was with great relief (we will make it back in time for the ferry!”) and a little bit of sadness (oh look: people).  Saying goodbye to unspoiled grandeur is never easy. “This just convinces me more,” said a steadfast Sandra Bullock as we walked down the empty hill leading to civilization, “I want my next house to be away from everyone. I want an empty view.”

We probably would’ve appreciated the rest of the walk more had we not just spent two hours walking through the equivalent of earth before Major Taylor discovered that the paradise he thought he’d found was actually earth in the future and was ruled by apes.  The road back was a “single-track” (h/t George for the local lingo), but it was the main rod back to town for all manner of traveler. We dodged the occasional car, lots of bikes and more than a few horse-drawn carriages, never quite certain how much further we had to walk, then stopped at Joe Wattey’s, which rose out of the fields like the Emerald City of Oz to sit at a picnic table and enjoy a late-afternoon beverage, which eventually led to the semi-conscious state from which I address you, pushing hard to wrap this up before the ferry takes off and I start wishing I’d taken that second Dramamine. 

Here are your Aran Island numbers:

23,030 - steps. 

99:1 - ratio of bicycles to walkers on Aran Island.

0 - number of attractive Irish wool sweaters purchased by us for two reasons: 1) buying them would make us the tourists who buy “San Francisco” hoodies from the tourist traps along Pier 39 and 2) it’s never cold enough where we live to wear a luxurious wool sweater. 

12 - midge bites on my arms and legs that I didn’t notice until this morning. 

1 - place on Innish Mor to buy soft serve. We never found it. 

16 - cookies in the bag dropped by a determined bicyclist as he rode past Joe Wattey’s.  As the cyclist who picked it up, then tried in vain to get his attention but could not explained, in a thick Italian accent, “He ees wearing headphones.”

3 - people we asked for directions to Dun Aengus.  Despite their being Aran natives and us having a (lame and inconclusive) map from the tourist office, we still got lost. 

0 - regrets that we got lost. 

Looks like the ferry is about to pull out, even though it’s 4:42, this is a 5 PM ferry, the woman at the tourist office told us we could get back at 4:45.  Good thing we didn’t make it to Dun Aengus. We’d still be on that road, watching as the ferry pulled away, wondering where we were going to spend the night.  

DAY NINETEEN: SKYE, INVERNESS, AIRPORT

Here I am again, sleep-starved in the early morning, typing.  This is becoming habit-forming, with a twist.  This time I have the luxury of a laptop, not an iPhone, and I’m in one of the three departure gates at the small but not notably tiny Inverness airport.  In one hour we depart for Dublin, at which point the 18 pounds, 21 pence in the pocket of my Levis will become worthless.  Not worthless like everyone we’ve met over the past three weeks has insisted it’s become since Brexit but actually worthless as in “not of any value as tender.”  

Again this journal is a full day behind, so let me get you caught up.

Yesterday was DAY TWO of our Skye Island adventure. It dawned cloudy and threatening (in enormous contrast to the Arizona-like atmosphere of our room) as I walked the mean streets of Portree (population: “around 2,000” — George) looking for the seasickness cure that would ease my fears about the afternoon’s ferry ride.  I’m no stranger to ferries and do actually go out of my way to schedule a ferry trip whenever we’re in the great Pacific Northwest, but on DAY ONE, as we sat on the side of Sir Ian Noble’s mountain and watched the sheep, I noticed in the distance a sea teeming with whitecaps.  As I already sensed that George was beginning to notice that the other male in his car was not the most manly fellow  — I was short one stint in military intelligence, three motorcycles, an equal number of bicycles, one pizza oven and a love for shops whose selection features an abundance of tools — I was hoping to avoid spending the ferry ride on my knees in the head, praying to the porcelain god of mal de mer and confirming to George that in case of emergency he’d be the one fighting off the mongol hordes as I cowered like Bonnie Prince Charlie in the back.  Unfortunately, the Boots pharmacy was closed.  Double unfortunately, on my way back to the hotel I ran into a chipper George, who’d already been out taking pictures.  I confessed.  He chuckled.  “It’s not a long trip.”  I was suspicious.

Though the day was marked by on-and-off rain squalls, DAY TWO delivered as grandly as DAY ONE.  We never ended up on the side of a mountain, but we did start off at the Faerie Pools, a very popular four-mile hike (Sandra Bullock and I in appropriate clothing; George in his tie.  Did I mention that George  is 67 years old and sometimes, when his Land Rover Defender needs work, drives to the repair shop and then rides his mountain bike the 25 miles home?  Uphill?) whose revealed beauty, both S. B. and I later admitted, was a bit tempered by its midge infestation.

What is a midge?  There are comparable pests in the U.S. — gnats, no-see-ums — but they don’t bite.  The midge on Skye, who bites often and with great enthusiasm is a prominent beast, a large part of local lore.  Later, at Annandale Castle (one-time HQ of the MacDonald clan) gift shop, I saw a display of children’s books featuring a highland cow, an anthropomorphic haggis and yes, a talking midge. 

As we pulled into the car park, George tossed a bottle of SMIDGE into the back seat.  “We’ll need loads of this,” he said.  Interesting.  Then we noticed that the woman in charge of the car park was wearing mosquito netting.  Her daughter had taken the SMIDGE, she explained.  George rolled down the window to talk to her.  Midges immediately swarmed into the car.  From the back seat, Sandra Bullock and I began madly applying SMIDGE in oceanic quantities.

Not pictured: midges

The hike itself was epic.  Nobody had a heart attack, unlike some poor guy last week, who was “gone before he hit the water (in the Faerie Pools)” per our be-netted parking attendant.  Everyone was bothered by the midges but nobody turned back.  Instead, the trail was full with tourists swatting at their faces, alternately making cracks about the midges and George’s tie as we passed.  Also a few “mermaids,” people for whom “the Scottish experience,” one explained to us as we gawked, was incomplete without a quick dip in a Faerie Pool.  The view was, of course, spectacular.  But we’d gotten used to that. 

On the way down, Sandra Bullock pointed at my forearms.  I’d already acknowledged a midge in my right eye and a few in my mouth, but hadn’t realized that my exposed arms and legs had become midge burial grounds.  Each limb was dotted with tiny carcasses.  It was grim but as always, worth it.  A little midge vengeance doesn’t feel terrible, too.  

It began to rain as we drove across the island toward the ferry, stopping first at a tiny whiskey distillery where we could not ship bottles to the U.S. so instead bought little airline-sized bottles of a blended whiskey whose name I could not pronounce if you put a gun to my head.  It tasted pretty good, I mean, as good as someone who knows zippo about whisky can tell.  Then we stopped at Annandale Castle, which is in ruins because the MacDonald’s, “Lords of the Isles,” gave up on it in the early 1900s after generations of fighting off their hated rivals whose clan name I wish I could remember.  Mac-something.  

At this point the scene on Skye Island resembled Washington State so strongly that I fully expected the ferryboat Yakima to float toward the tiny island dock.  It did not.  In its place came a tall, narrow boat with a surprising amount of three-across seating in its three-deck passenger lounge.  As we crossed the Straight of Sleet (sp?), Sandra Bullock and George huddled on the top deck, watching minke whales and harbor porpoises (pronounced por-POISE) frolic in the rain.  I was still wearing shorts at this point, and freezing, so after a day of insisting to George that, while I was unable to participate in all of the manly joys he found so workaday, I was at least plagued with a hot furnace and burned so brightly that I would wear shorts in a downpour I ended up sitting alone in the passenger lounge, secretly eating a bag of crisps I bought from the ferry’s lone vending machine.

Some Harry Potter viaduct thing.

After lunch at an adorable converted rail car in Glen Finnan, we joined legions of Harry Potter fans at the visitor’s center and hiked in the now light rain to see a train trestle that is of great importance if you’re a Harry Potter fan.  If not, it’s just a really cool-looking train trestle, especially if you’re a fan of dramatic cloud formations and rain, which I am.  

Poor Bonnie Prince Charlie.  His reputation is already dubious (I personally found myself torn between thinking he was an insouciant hotshot hero and a snotty, spoiled rich kid coward; imagine if a large part of your regional history depended on this guy?), enough so that George felt it necessary to point out that the Bonnie Prince Charlie statue planted at the foot of the ocean in Glen Finnan was actually intended to honor any old Highland soldier.  And now, at least in Glen Finnan, where the Jacobite train apparently resembles the one that carried wizards-to-be to Hogwarts, whatever credibility he did have as a Scottish hero has been all but supplanted by Harry Freaking Potter, a fictional character.

Waterfall, sans midges.

The rain continued, but the hiking was not complete.  Late in the day, after a disturbing period where Sandra Bullock could not keep her eyes open, leaving me alone to pepper George with questions about flora and fauna, her subsequent re-awakening and a run to George’s village, where we (finally) saw a bunch of highland cows and red deer (worth it), then sat back and relaxed as George regaled us with tales of his controversial speech at last January’s Burns Night festivities, we parked in a small village and climbed down to Foyer Falls (I think that’s the name), a peaceful, dramatically wooded canyon thankfully and gloriously free of midges.  “How did you know there’d be no midges?” Sandra Bullock asked George off-handedly.

“I guessed.”

George dropped us at the still-sweltering-despite-the-cool-weather Pentahotel, where I was “rude” to the desk clerk because I didn’t smile and say “that’s okay” when told there were no fans available.  This turned out to be fake news it was later confirmed when, after a delightful evening of pizza and Black Isle beers with the Crown Prince of Plate Glass and his Sun Devils, head Sun Devil Janelle strongly suggested “I would’ve demanded a free night” if similarly confronted with a blithe desk clerk offering no fans.

And here we are, awaiting our flight to Dublin at 7:28 AM, pockets full of useless money, devices running low on juice.  I think I’ll close here and gird myself for the terrifying reality that in about two hours I’ll be driving a car on the wrong side of the road.  Per the CP of PG, you just have to “follow the guy in front of you.”  I’ll keep that in mind.

Here’s today’s/yesterday’s numbers:

2 — hours it takes to properly heat up a pizza oven like the one George bought on the urging of his nieces.

3 — gates at the Inverness airport

60,000 — estimated attendees at the annual Rock Ness music festival.  George worked the Red Cross volunteer tent last year.  Most of the festival goers visiting the tent came for sunburn.  George sent them on their way.  They just wanted free creams.

0 “really cute” t-shirts with a small cartoon highland cow silkscreened on them purchased by S. Bullock, because there’s “no room in my bag.”

4 — guys bringing motorcycles onto the ferry, despite the day’s inclement weather.  The Scots are a hearty bunch.

64 — midges who came to my forearms for an easy meal and found death instead.

1 — mirror taken out by a mini collision between RVs driving on a narrow road leading to downtown Portree.  Both drivers continued on as if nothing had happened.

too many — Harry Potter souvenirs at the Glen Finnan visitors center. 

They just called our flight.  See you in Galway.

DAY EIGHTEEN: SKYE AND THE HIGHLANDS (DAY 1)

Apologies for yesterday’s skipped post, but it’s going to get worse. Today I come at you at 6:45 AM from an aged, a/c-less hotel room in Portree, Skye Island, accompanied by a lone Sandra Bullock and the Most Useless Fan in the Universe. 

Have I mentioned that it’s warm?  Only in this room.  Outside it’s 62 (16 C).  Tonight I might just sleep on a bench.

Skye Island insane beauty #1

My reporting today is shoddy because this update will not actually include today’s adventures, seeing as it’s 6:45 and they have yet to occur.   Also, as I am not a chipper morning person and am typing with my thumbs besides, this recap of yesterday may be less than stellar. But if you’ve read this far you may already know this.

Also, there is no WiFi at the Royal Portree Hotel so it doesn’t really matter when I do this, you won’t be seeing it until tonight when we return to the (also a/c-free but at least with functional fans) Pentahotel Inverness (UPDATE: There are no fans at the Pentahotel Inverness). But I wanted at least to jot down a few things about DAY ONE of our two-day Isle of Skye (Skye Isle? Not sure about the nomenclature) trip, with our guide, former British Naval Intelligence Officer George. 

SYesterday, after a refreshing morning meal of warm carbonated water, a muffin and sweat, George picked us up in front of the Pentahotel and loaded us into an eight-passenger VW Van, which seemed a bit ambitious for our party of two, as did George’s outfit, which included a tartan tie. We were in shorts. 

Off we went, six empty seats, broken a/c (that one earned my wife a withering “of course” look from her on the brink of blurting“I’m sick of Europe and it’s fetish with making sure everyone is uncomfortable and sweaty!” husband) and a guide full to the brim with naturalist and historic knowledge (and corny jokes, though the one about Angus the dog, I’ll admit, was pretty funny). 

Skye Island insane beauty #2

Early knowledge: Inverness is the fastest-growing city in Europe. It has an old cathedral, a place where anyone can workout for a small fee, an arts center where we’d unexpectedly stumbled across a really great and youthful trio playing music that sounded like Astral Weeks without the vocals under a tent the night before our Skye trip. Hats off to you, Ali Levak. 

Scotland has achieved 42 percent renewable energy, but sometimes the costs (clear-cutting trees and building access roads) are high enough to make one wonder if it’s all worth it.  Urquart Castle was once owned by a guy named “Sir Hugh Grant.”   That one slipped past everyone without comment, a sad reminder that it is no longer 1994.  Irresistible floppy hair and a charming stammer, it turns out, have a finite shelf life. 

In 1995, or maybe it was 1992, George isn’t sure, though either date puts some context around that scene in Trainspotting where Tommy makes them all ride the train out to the middle of nowhere so they can enjoy the Great Outdoors, Scotland passed a law called the Responsible Access Act, which forced big landowners (much of the country is owned by a few, even parts that seem to be parks) to allow public access to their land, provided that those using it practice “responsible usage,” which means they shouldn’t leave a mess or act like fools. If you can manage this behavior, you’re free to walk all over the place, camp wherever and whenever the mood strikes you.  Sort of tough to get your head around, right?  And yet so logical.  Even so, it doesn’t stop the “convoys of caravans coming from Italy” that make July and August simultaneously the most maddening and George’s most profitable months. 

This is just the warm-up, this barrage of facts. So is Loch Ness, if you can believe it. Take away the possibility that an immortal faux dinosaur has been living there for at least 1,600 years and you get Scotland’s biggest lake (loch), 250 meters deep and 23 miles long, with mostly uninhabited shores and lots of photo-ops. So basically about 2/3 of Lake Tahoe, only

Sheep enjoying Skye Island insane beauty.

without permanent residents (besides a mythical monster, of course) and a completely different sort of seasonal hordes.  Less skiing,more gawking  So it’s a basically a big, beautiful lake, and that’s it, plus a myth, which makes it kind of funny to see everyone gathered at each vista spot staring at the water, hoping to see something that’s been (allegedly) spotted a handful of times in the past century.  You’d have better luck staring down at the BART tracks and hoping to see a mouse. 

(REAL TIME UPDATE:  George has allegedly spotted the Loch Ness Monster, on sonar, while skippering a tour boat on Loch Ness.)

From there it was onto the depths of the Highlands, a rugged and mysterious place once far more populated until the sniveling (or maybe brave; I’m very conflicted) Bonnie Prince Charlie screwed everything up and turned tail and ran, leaving all of the fierce, lawless, suddenly badly defeated Jacobites with three options: 1) get killed by the redcoats (fat and away the most popular option), become enslaved to the redcoats, 2) get kicked off their land in favor of sheep and move to Tennessee. 

We liked the Highlands because they more closely resembled Oregon and Washington than any other part of the U.K., with towering strands of trees, rivers and steep mountains. We enjoyed George’s tales of the Five Sisters and realized with horror that he planned to have us pose for pictures at every stop, an uneasy sense that increased when we looked at the results and found that when you spend three weeks eating cheese and French fries and not working out you end up looking different in pictures than you’re used to looking. 

Portree, Skye Island insane beauty.

We avoided most tourist sites. We were the only ones. The one time we did stop, at a castle whose name I did not write down because I figured I wasn’t going to post today, we were greeted with hordes, crawling around this hapless Castle like a modern version of the marauders who’d stormed its walls so many times in the past, only this time armed with phones and cameras instead of swords.  The castle offered nothing in defense, save for a small cafe and a gift shop. 

At this point George became convinced it was time for lunch and this was the place to have it. “The line’s not so long,” he offered. Now was the time to establish a tone. “Yeah, let’s keep driving,” I said. “Someplace less crowded.”

“You probably won’t find that,” he said sadly, but it took less than 15 minutes to prove him wrong.  Sitting almost adjacent to the castle was an almost-empty small town whose one pub had almost shockingly good food (for a pub),  picnic tables overlooking a lake/loch and best of all only a handful of other patrons. 

Now relaxed and feeling so clever, we entered the Isle of Slye via parabolic bridge built in 2005 and initially requiring a toll until the locals rose up in rebellion. Now it’s free. 

S. Bullock and George examining photos of
Skye Island insane beauty.

And there we were: Skye.  Where “every other house is a B&B” and Scotland’s most stunning visuals (arguably) await, if you can sweet talk your way past the guy standing next to the “Road Closed” sign or the “Carpark Full” sign (which George could).  One by one the sights piled up - stunning coastal views, dramatic rock formations, red and black mountains. Sheep.   Go to Sandra Bullock’s Facebook page for 11 pictures.  She had to exceed her daily limit, there was so much to see. 

t all peaked (literally) at Cuith-Raing, where we hiked a mile (George still wearing his clan Campbell tie) and sat on the side of a mountain, staring out at Skye with awe (us) and great appreciation (George). It was, indeed, the “icing on the cake.”  

Even Cuith-Raing, which sure looks like a public area to me, is privately owned, this time by the eccentric Sir Ian Noble, who will do business with those who agree to speak to him only in Gaelic. 

Thank you, iPhone, for not auto-correcting Gaelic to “garlic.”

Today we’ve got 10 more hours of this. Sandra Bullock is beside herself with joy. I’d like to go sit on the side of that mountain again, but I trust George to carry us through another memorable day, functioning a/c or not.  You won’t hear about it until tomorrow, though, because upon our return to Inverness we’re meeting our friends the Crown Prince of Plate Glass and his family of Sun Devils, who we didn’t know were also going to be in Scotland, for dinner. This is our only overlap. After that we’re on to Ireland and they’re on to St. Andrews, where they’ll actually play golf instead of watching other people play golf. 

Yesterday’s numbers:

2 - times George sweet-talked his way past guys trying to keep people out of places

1 - guy with a drone at Cuith-Raing.  Not illegal, but annoying. 

0.005 - amount, in miles per hour, that the fan in our room actually increases the speed of the air in the room. 

22,000 - population of Skye Island. This increases to 1.7 million if you count temporary residents from Italy in July. 

75 - photos of us taken by George.  Approximately 4 of these are suitable for public viewing. 

Next time you hear from me I’ll have hopefully navigated our way from Dublin to Galway via private vehicle. Shout out to Sandra Bullock, who continues to respond with a breezy “you’ll do fine” every time I express out loud a sliver of the anxiety I am feeling about driving on the wrong side of the road.