DAY THIRTY-NINE: KESWICK

Is Keswick England's most dog-friendly holiday location?  

In a word: yes.

There are dogs everywhere; dogs on the street, often on leash, almost as often not.  There are dogs in shops, dogs in beer gardens, dogs waiting patiently for a table at a Mexican tapas joint, a genre of restaurant I never knew existed.  Dogs in bars, sitting under the table

Keswick is mad about dogs. 

but also standing in the aisle as a waiter tries to get by.  Dogs going crazy over some new chew toy while their owners down a pint.  There are statues of dogs, paintings of dogs, photos of dogs, framed prints with whimsical sayings... about dogs.  Dog jewelry.  Dog-themed gifts.   The Werewolves on London got nothing on the Dogs of Keswick. 

There are dogs walking the Derwentwater Trail, even the part where you have to go off of the original trail and walk through a field of very bored-looking sheep, though I can't really say if they stayed bored once that dog whose owner had it running all over the place reached them, because we were already through the field and into the woods when that happened.  This was early in the hike, before the confusion started.

Counter to what you may have heard or assumed, Sandra Bullock and I don't spend all of our time sitting in a pub, drinking beer and eating french fries.  Sometimes, on days like today, we go on ridiculously long hikes.  We don our hiking clothes, always vowing that, when we return to the states, we'll go buy more up-to-date outdoors garb.  We buy or download a map.  We throw several jackets into our backpacks because you should just assume that it's going to sunny then cloudy, then really warm and then it's going to rain.  We argue for a few minutes about where the trail begins and then we set out.

Last night we decided that for our one full, unplanned day in Keswick we would take a hike like this.  We would walk completely around Derwentwater Lake, even though nobody who works at our hotel has ever done it.  One guy made it halfway.  Total estimated distance:  10 miles.  Or eight miles, depending on which map you believe.  (Here's a thing that I can't quite get my head around; England and Scotland, whom I'd always assumed were the drivers behind the U.S.'s 1970s brief flirtation with the metric system, use miles, not kilometers.  Everything else is metric, but they use miles like us.)  The really lame tourist map we got at the hotel said 10 miles but also was so incomprehensible that we had to go to the tourist office, something we used to scoff at but now do regularly (shoutout Pilar in Dingle), and buy what we'd hoped was a better map.

It was not.  It wasn't even a map.  It was a narrative of the trail that may have been useful had sections of the trail not been underwater thanks to yesterday's heavy rains.  We paid 60 p for it anyway and, ignoring the tourist office lady's suggestion to go "anti-clock ways," we followed the signs "TO LAKE" and started clock ways, passing through a beautiful little park on the way.

Early in the walk, things were easy.

The sun was shining.  Everyone (and their dog) was out walking this trail, meandering next to the lake in their updated hiking clothes.  Almost no one was wearing sagging REI cargo pants that zip off at the knee, except this one guy.

"This is easy," remarked Sandra Bullock (who, despite acting like she's someone wearing a tired pair of sagging REI pants, was actually clad in some snappy trekking pants from Athleta) as we strolled by the lake.  

"Yes," I said.  "It's sort of like a giant Green Lake.  All we have to do is make sure the lake stays on our right."

We had been warned by the tourist office lady that the Chinese Bridge might be impassible because the rain may have "made everything a bit boggy."  I pictured fog, marsh gases, dragonflies.  The Chinese Bridge did turn out to be closed, which added about two more miles to our trip, but by the time we got there we were so far from our simple, well-marked trail that the closure barely registered.

The first sign of trouble came early.  Less than a mile in we reached a sign saying something about a “diversion.”  “Like watching a sitcom?” I asked, completely unclear on both the British definition of “diversion” as it relates to hiking and the universal definition of a clever play on words.

“I think we’re supposed to go this way,” Sandra Bullock said.  But the lake was so pretty, and this walk so pleasant, we ignored the sign; and kept ignoring it until it became impossible to ignore because the trail ended.  Okay, we said, we’ll take the diversion.

Sheep doing the downward sheep pose.

Soon we were in the aforementioned field of sheep.  Sheep all around.  Sheep within feet of us.  Sheep doing yoga while all the other sheep laid around, eating grass.  We walked carefully through the sheep and entered a forest.  

The trail turned muddy and narrow.  “As long as we see other people, we’re okay,” advised Bullock.  People were everywhere still, so we were okay, and eventually the diversion ended.  All was well, briefly.

The next problem was more dire and frankly, a little freaky.  Parts of the trail began disappearing under water.  The recent rains had raised the level of the lake, dramatically in places.  Finally, we came to a spot where the trail had become a rushing stream.  “Um,” I said.

Sandra Bullock cannot be stopped by a mere stream.  With confidence one can only gain by a childhood spent camping, she began fording.  I stood back, carefully choosing a path.  My dumb shoes are waterproof, but ironically have very slippery soles.  Soon an English couple who I’ll call George and Martha arrived.  They were completely geared up in outdoor wear.  George carried a real map, inside a plastic sheath.  I looked at them and shrugged my shoulders.  Eventually, with Sandra Bullock already on the other side, the three of us followed across the stream.  Though we would never introduce ourselves, have a conversation past “where are you from?” and wouldn’t exactly hike “together,” we were never more than 75 feet from George and Martha for the next hour of the hike, including a diversion to a waterfall where I discovered too late that we were actually following them without realizing it.

We continued on.

What I don't like is when things that are
supposed to be above water are under water.

The path got steep, rutted and narrow.  We kept trying to find the original path.  Sometimes it would appear for a hundred feet or so then disappear again under water, which, I’m going to admit right here kind of freaked me out.  What I don’t like is things that disappear under water.  Or things that are supposed to be several feet above water but have water right up to their edge.  I’ve had nightmare about it, in fact, roads disappearing under water.  But I kept my mouth shut.  Every time Sandra Bullock or Martha (George and I tended to hang back, even when we were 75 feet apart) tried some new, sketchy-looking path, I followed dutifully.

Ultimately, it became too much.  We were forced onto the 1.5 lane road and spent about a half-hour dodging cars.  

Beauty overwhelmed us (when we weren’t dodging cars).  The lake, the mountains, the charming little villages.  Even Sandra Bullock, who was having trouble letting go of the idea that there was somewhere a MORE EFFICIENT WAY to handle these trail washouts, a secret path somewhere that was untouched or at least semi-passable, was blown away by the beauty, taking dozens of photos that she is presently curating so that only 10 of them will appear on her Facebook page.

The great thing about Keswick is not the dogs, it’s the outdoorsy lifestyle.  Hotels in the middle of nowhere had signs welcoming “dogs and walkers!”  And Catholics, one has to presume.  Not sure about Jews, though nobody said anything when we snuck into the Lodore Hotel and Spa to use the bathroom.

When we reached the Chinese Bridge, shortly after Lodore, it was immediately obvious that we would not be crossing.  We would not be coming anywhere near the bridge, in fact, because it sat far across what was probably a field three days ago but was now

English countryside awesomeness

part of the lake.  Not a puddle.  Part of the lake.  We all stood there, George, Martha, Sandra Bullock, a few other hikers, and me.  "I guess we go on the road?" I volunteered.  

A woman who may or may not have heard me wasn't having it.  Without a word, she strode out into the water and marched toward the distant Chinese Bridge.  The water came up to her knees but she kept going, wearing a coy smile.  "Well, what do you think?" George asked.

"You've got to be kidding," Martha said.  

We took the road, but I did think about whether or not we should've followed, until Sandra Bullock reminded me that following would mean walking in completely soaked shoes and socks for the rest of the hike.   Soon George and Martha caught up to us.  "Couldn't talk her into it?" I asked George.

"She wouldn't do it," he said.

"I considered it," I offered.

"I didn't," Martha snapped.

The village of Grange blew me away.

After this, we continued to be equal parts confused and charmed by the English countryside, crossing stone bridges and putting aside our confusion once and for all at Grange, where we bid our non-friends George and Martha farewell, gave up on finding the original trail and set for home on the now 1.25 lane country road.  There were enough other hikers to keep Sandra Bullock calm, though her anxiety at not finding the secret better trail continued to sometimes get the better of her (“I see people over there!  There’s another trail!  How do we get there?”) until I had a talk with her late in the day.  “Accept this trail,” I said, Yoda-like.  “It’s the right trail.  It’ll get us back.”

By then we’d actually found the suddenly well-marked Derwentwater trail.  We took it near the water, away from the water, past some houses, through a few more fields.  The miles piled up.  By mile 10, still two miles from home, we were tired, hungry and determined not only to finish but also to walk faster than anyone else on the trail.  We made it back to Keswick at 2:40, doing the 12 miles in about four-and-a-half hours, proud but tired and suddenly very aware that not only had we hiked 12 miles but we’d done it without a break.  No casual sandwich at the visitor center, a la Cliffs of Moher.  No sitting on the side of a hill, staring at sheep and reflecting.  Just walking. 

Which is why our pre-planned “walk around town and look into shops” ended up quite truncated and we didn’t even really explore Fitzgerald Park, partly because by the time we got to where they were playing cricket the match had ended.  Never let anyone tell you that I went to England, Scotland and Ireland and didn’t do my best to watch in person a sport I’d never seen before.  I tried, but the Gods wouldn't allow it.

No, we were pretty tired after completing the second-most epic walk of this sabbatical, so in the end we did what we know how to do: sat in a pub and had a beer and french fries.

Here are today’s mostly achy but ready to bounce back numbers:

32,974 — steps completed before dinner. 

109 — times I took off my glasses, put on my sunglasses, and did the reverse during today’s walk.

36:1 — ratio of dogs to children in Keswick.  The ratio of dogs to cats in not measurable.  There are no cats.

3.75 — number of times you’d have to walk around Seattle’s Green Lake to equal the distance around Derwentwater Lake.  “And that’s all flat and paved,” - S. Bullock. 

1 — cheese and onion Cornish pasty consumed in the late afternoon.  Yesterday we had two, but today we shared one.

6 — alcohol percentage cutoff that will prevent a pub from stocking a particular beer, per the cheerful guy at the Keswick Brewing Company.  “The English drink beer differently than you’re used to,” he advised.  “They’ll sit down and have seven or eight.  You can’t do that if your beer has more than five or six percent alcohol.”

4 — rivers crossed during today’s walk.  Not sure if Jimmy Cliff would consider that “many,” which didn’t stop me from having that song stuck in my head after we crossed the second one.

Probably the best thing about completing the Lap of Derwentwater is that tomorrow, while we’re sitting on a (hopefully eight-person) bus for our “Spectacular 10 Lakes Tour,” we can say, “Oh, yeah, we walked around this yesterday” when we get to Derwentwater.  Which is always a nice thing to have in your back pocket.  

DAY THIRTY-EIGHT: LIVERPOOL TO KESWICK

What to do if you've got 18 hours in Liverpool:

GO TO THE CAVERN CLUB:  This is technically not possible, but you can walk down Matthew Street, which is where the Cavern Club actually was, and see a doorway that marks the original location (#10 Matthew Street), which is where the Beatles famously honed their skills pre-Beatlemania.  You can also go to a "new" Cavern Club, which is a few doors down and exists only to trade off of the 292 appearances the Fab Four made at the

Here's where it went down in 1961.

 original between 1961 and 1963.  Or you can go into any of the many pubs, bars and restaurants on Matthew Street and see a guy playing Beatles songs on an acoustic guitar.  Matthew Street is Beatles Fisherman's Wharf.

Why is it that the tourist spots are always the easiest to find?

WALK THROUGH A GIANT MALL:  Except that you might not realize it's a giant mall until you're almost through it and realize you just passed a Hollister Store.  Before that it might seem like a charming pedestrian street, and then a slightly less charming pedestrian street and then a pedestrian street with sketchy teenagers hanging out on the corners and then --viola! -- it's a giant mall.  It is true that you can travel the world buying only Swarovski crystals at each stop, but why would you want to do that?  If you continue walking through the giant mall, you will eventually emerge at the Hilton we didn't stay at but did pull into at first because I didn't read my calendar very closely.  Then you can get dinner at Bill's and understand only 33 percent of what your waitress is saying.

GO TO A REALLY COOL NEIGHBORHOOD:  Turns out Liverpool is the nightlife capital of

Bold Street: Highest hip restaurant
per capita  in Liverpool.

England, or claims to be.  Part of that is the corny bars near the Cavern Club (including the Cavern Club and at least a half-dozen other places whose names are either straight-up Beatle names, titles of Beatles songs or phrases taken from Beatles songs) but part is also the dizzying array of restaurants and bars in Ropewalks and the Baltic Triangle.  We set out after dinner, still a bit confused as to what in the world our waitress was saying 67% of the time, bound for the Baltic Triangle but never got there because Ropewalks satisfied our need to see the "cool" part of Liverpool.  

If you are of college age or slightly older, get on a plane and fly to Liverpool (John Lennon Airport, of course), take a cab into the center of town (don't drive) and ask to be let off on Bold Street.  Make sure you're hungry because every other storefront is a cool restaurant, and then if you're still young, head to one of the Ropewalks' huge, loud and colorful bars.  If you are old, skip that part.  In fact, skip the restaurant, too.  Just walk up and down Bold Street marveling at all of the activity, then continue through downtown until you find someplace quiet like the Globe Hotel.  

DON'T GO TO THE BLOB SHOP:  Unless you recognize an awesome bar when you walk past it, even though it's full of old guys, is "way too bright inside" (S. Bullock) and is called The Blob Shop, go ahead and keep on walking.  We did and I'll regret it to my last day.  How can you not go into a bar called The Blob Shop?"   Go there if you're Steve McQueen.  Go there if you have this song stuck in your head.  Go there if you saw the dumb 1980s remake starring Kevin Dillon.  Go there if you watched the original in the Stroney's basement when you were nine.  

Some people wonder what they're going to do when they retire.  When I retire, I'm going to move to a small town and open a bar called "The Blob Shop."

GO TO THE GLOBE HOTEL INSTEAD:  Because you can't hack it at the Blob Shop.

ENJOY A LUXURIOUS HOTEL ROOM:  Okay, so maybe you messed up and booked at the Doubletree, not the Hilton, which resulted in 20 minutes a inching down congested city streets while dueling navs battled for control of your heart and mind.  In the end it was worth it because your Hilton Honors membership (anyone can sign up!) got you a huge room with functioning a/c and good bathroom light.  Despite Liverpool's 24 hour party reputation, you'll want to spend as much time in this room as possible.

WONDER WHAT ALL OF THOSE COOL OLD BUILDINGS ARE:  And then don't find out.  Let them remain a mystery.  Wonder if John and Paul maybe sat on those steps when they were teenagers, John trying in vain to convince Paul of the awesomeness of Gene Vincent, Paul pretending to listen, writing dance hall ditties in his head and nodding.

WAKE UP AND WALK AROUND IN THE RAIN:  37 days in England, Scotland and Ireland.

You could get a lot of mileage out of
having this name in Liverpool.

So far 34 have called for rain.  Only two have really delivered, one day in Cork and one day today.  "We have one week left, we're going to tough it out," declared Sandra Bullock this morning, despite being in full knowledge of the sad fact of her hair's future, despite the "excellent dryer" at the Doubletree.  "I'm going to walk outside and my hair is going to get frizzy instantly," she explained while we walked, hoods up, to a small coffee shop nearby.

Little-known trick:  If you are walking with your wife in the rain and both have your hoods up, you can stop, call her name, and then watch as she walks 0.75 of the next block before she realizes you're not there.

ORDER THE TOAST:  Lovelocks coffee has only a few pastries, but it does have a long menu of toast that you can order if you're not wary of all eggs that are not scrambled.  You can get toast with avocado, toast with barbecued beans, toast with cheese, toast with whatever you want as long as you also want baked eggs.  If you don't want baked eggs, you may end up not eating until 3:30, after you decide twice that you don't want to "get involved in driving around a different city" to get lunch and just stay on the M6 until you get to Keswick.  You will arrive starving and will remember with longing what the barbecued beans on toast looked like when it arrived at someone else's table at Lovelocks.

Sandra Bullock got the avocado on toast.  She still wasn't hungry at 3:30, when I forced her to join me in a Cornish pasty.

BUY SOME STUFF AT THE LAMBRETTA STORE:  And convince yourself you're not just like the guy who buys a Ferrari polo shirt. 

CHECK OUT THE ROYAL ALBERT DOCK:  Anyone who's read any kind of Beatles biography probably remembers Liverpool being described as a "dreary industrial city," like an English Pittsburgh.  The drive to escape Liverpool was part of what made the lads so focused on rock and roll greatness.  Well, Liverpool heard what people were saying about it, so it went on a huge kick to reinvent itself as a tourist location, transforming its once-gritty docks into museums, shops, bars, restaurants... the usual catnip for visitors, though so far it seems to be drawing mostly people from other parts of England.  All of the Americans can be found taking pictures next to statues on Matthew Street.

Royal Albert Dock Fisherman's Wharf rating:  54.7 percent.

DRIVE FOREVER AND WONDER WHEN THIS CITY ENDS:  You may think that Liverpool

Please import this car, Volvo.

is a small city, since like every other city in England it dwells from deep within the shadow of London.  Flying into John Lennon Airport does nothing to dispell this untruth.  For a city of a half-million (I checked) it's got the airport of a much smaller municipality.  It's not until you get in your rented Volvo V40 (please import this car to the U.S. Volvo) and start driving that you realize that 90 percent of Liverpool is outside its downtown.  It takes 25 minutes of driving through increasingly run-down semi-suburbs to break free of Liverpool's grips.  By then you've forgotten all about it being England's nightlife capital and have begun to understand why John, Paul, George and maybe Ringo (I always always under the impression he was from somewhere else), plus all of the other Merseybeat guys, ended up moving to London first chance they got.

Here are some numbers for today:

5 -- number of times Peter O'Toole and Princess Grace's cab driver dropped f-bombs yesterday while driving them to the Dublin Airport.  The hack, who will soon celebrate his 28th wedding anniversary, plans to celebrate by take a Ring of Kerry tour and pushing his wife out of the car halfway through.

7 -- percent of times you drive past road construction signs, see a lane closed off with cones and actually see some people working on the road.

3 -- total number of lightswitches in our room at the Keswick Park Hotel that have no discernible function.  This is about average for aged hotels in the U.K. with "character."

2 -- pairs of socks worn today by me after suffering a water breach in my left shoe while walking around Liverpool.  Watch for this to potentially grow into a crisis as we near our return date, as I am very low on socks.  These shoes are supposed to be water proof.  Otherwise I wouldn't be wearing them, because they're dumb-looking.  At least be water proof, dumb-looking shoes.

0 -- aggregated total mentions in Liverpool of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, OMD, The Merseybeats, The La's, Echo and the Bunnymen and Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Icycleworks, the Boo Radleys, Dead or Alive, The Searchers, The Lightning Seeds or any of the dozens of other bands who came of age in Liverpool, though we did see a guy playing "The She Goes Again" on a really cool hollow body electric Epiphone before the pedestrian mall turned into an actual mall.

77 -- average width, in inches, of the eight free parking spots behind the Keswick Park Hotel.  We opted to pay three pounds per night for public parking a few minutes away.  

Tomorrow:  Is Keswick really England's "most dog-friendly" holiday location?  Does it really take four hours to walk completely around Derwentwater Lake?

Come to this space to find out!

DAY THIRTY-SEVEN: DUBLIN TO LIVERPOOL

Today -- actually, in a little less than an hour -- we leave Ireland and return to the U.K. for the last week of sabbatical, but as we do it we carry with us a profound sense of loss.  This morning, after a "solid" breakfast at our hotel, Peter O'Toole and Princess Grace boarded their flight back to the U.S., where elegance, elan and 3,200 square feet in the suburbs await.  Sandra Bullock and I are, once again, alone.  

I wish our losses ended there, but they do not.  Among the missing: my new sunglasses.  They are not in my jacket pocket where I thought I left them.  They are not in my backpack.  They did not fall onto the floor and roll under the bed. Most likely they are rattling around the back seat of the cab we took home from Guinness yesterday afternoon.  There was a reason I didn't have them with me after changing jackets before the Book of Kells.

#1: soothing photo of a pedestrian bridge,
taken last night after everyone else went to bed.

But don't completely give up hope; what if they're somewhere in my enormous Patagonia bag?  I repacked it so efficiently, devising a way to hold all of my stuff plus the bottle of Ballykeefe gin wrapped in the pullover I got at the golf course Kenmare, leaving no free space and no way to get anything except my clothes for tomorrow without ripping everything out (before realizing the sunglasses were gone) that I'm loathe to start digging into it until we get to Keswick (tomorrow).

So we live with hope, however delusional, whatever the folly.  Lets be honest; all signs point to the sunglasses being gone, the second pair I've misplaced since leaving a weather-beaten pair at a restaurant in Seattle over the holidays.  These ones are two months old and no good to anyone besides me, unless whoever got in that cab immediately after us just happened to need a +4.00 vision correction.  Adios, Ray Bans.  

My punishment will be familiar.  I know how this game is played.  I'll have to lay low, donning my back-ups, a pair of vintage 1990s wrap arounds with peeling tint, until such time has passed that my punishment is complete.  Only at that point will I be granted a new pair of sunglasses.  My back-ups now?  A terrible pair of converted regular glasses that I did a few years ago because I thought they'd look cool.  They're about as creaky as the cab that now serves as my Ray Bans' permanent home.  

That this is the biggest tragedy of the past 12 hours is cause for celebration, because it could've been way, way worse.  Last night, as we lounged around our room basking in the glow of a fantastic Greek dinner, Sandra Bullock casually asked me to "make sure we check in" for the flight from Dublin to Liverpool.  It seemed a little strange that I hadn't gotten an email or text already from Ryan Air (Ireland's #2 airline) reminding me already, but I shrugged it off, dutifully logged on... and found nothing.   No confirm.  No reminder to check in.  Crickets.  

No evidence existed of the reservation I'd made on Ryan Air, except for an increasingly

#2: relaxing photo of the pond at St. Stephens Green.

enigmatic note in my Google Calendar with flight time, flight number and two confirmation numbers, neither of which existed in the world of the Ryan Air website.  I felt a hot wave of terror pass over me as I went to my email and searched for the Ryan Air missive that must've come when I made the reservations.  Nothing.

Inwardly, I was sweating, hard; outwardly, I appeared calm. At first.  The last thing I wanted was for Sandra Bullock to get wind of this before I could resolve it, lest it confirm for her what she's suspected for 27 years: that I am a card-carrying incompetent.  President of my local chapter.  A legend in the world of incompetence, actually.  

Five minutes of searching the website and my email and my panic betrayed me.  "COME ON!" I thundered at my hapless iPad, reaching for my laptop because, I don't know, I guess I have more faith in my laptop?  It seems more capable of finding a non-existent email because it's heavier?

Across the bed (the only place to sit in our Temple Bar hotel room) and like me bathed in sweat, but in her case it was because the room had stayed at a face-melting (if you're a Victorian-era noblewoman wearing prehistoric cosmetics) temperature, despite the best efforts of our slightly-operational hotel-issued fan, Sandra Bullock raised her eyebrows.  "What's the matter?"

I tried to sound like I was still in control of the situation but failed: "I, uh, no problem, it's that, hmm... the... I can't seem to find, um, any, well, evidence of our tickets."

"Are you sure you made a reservation?" she said, lowering the temperature in the room by 10 degrees.

Here was my thinking:

I made the reservation.  If I didn't, this had to be the biggest practical joke in the history of the travel industry.  Or maybe not.  Maybe they do this sort of thing all the time.

Or maybe she was right.  Maybe I came this close to finishing this reservation but forgot to press "send."   

Maybe I made the whole thing up.  

#3: mouth-watering photo of delicious
millionaire bars.

Maybe we were stuck in Dublin for another night.  I went to Ryan Air and logged in.  I had made myself a Ryan Air account, but there was nothing on it.  "No flights planned."  It was time to come clean.

"There's no way I didn't make a reservation."  I pled my case: flight number, time, confirm.  And yet.

"Well, it doesn't look like we've got a reservation."

It went on like this for a few minutes, me doing the same things over and over -- trying to confirm, searching my email, etc. -- expecting a different outcome each time.  I checked Ryan for other flights: nothing available for tomorrow.  We'd be in Dublin for two more days, the money we'd already spent on a room in Liverpool and a car rental basically turning to ashes as we wandered up and down Temple Bar, full of self-loathing and frustration.


But wait.

"Maybe I'll just search 'Ryan.'"

It hit.  I'd bought the tickets through a third party.  SkyAir, or something vaguely generic like that.  Tragedy averted, we unconsciously began to prepare for the trauma of my lost sunglasses.  

That brings you up to date on our departure from Ireland.  This morning after we said our good-byes to O'Toole and Grace, we went back to the famous bakery on Grafton street for two more scones the size of my old roommate Mark's head and did a little aimless wandering for awhile, picking up a millionaire's bar (Google it) and taking some scenic photos which I've chosen to disperse throughout this post to ease the anxiety you might feel while reading it.

REAL-TIME UPDATE:  The anxiety one might feel driving a car through the middle of Liverpool might exceed the anxiety one feels upon realizing his sunglasses are gone. 

At noon we hopped in the Chattiest Cabby in Ireland's car, came to the airport and dropped into a brand of chaos we can only assume is unique to the Dublin airport.  Now we are here, waiting for our flight.  It boards in two minutes, so I'll give you a break here and come back post-flight to add some numbers.  

I'm back and in Liverpool, in our hotel room after only 25 minutes of driving aimlessly around

#4: way overdue photo of our heroic-sized bags.

downtown Liverpool as the car nav battled Sandra Bullock's phone nav for superiority, undermining each other by delivering contradictory instructions at each turn.  It's time to wrap this up and go see how the Cavern Club has been Disneyfied, but first, a few impressions of Ryan Air.

DON'T USE RYAN AIR.

Unless you have to.  Take Aer Lingus.  Take United.  Take Logan Air.  Take the ferry.   Don't take Ryan Air.  Unless you have a thing for elderly 737s, confusing boarding processes, trash strewn about cabins and finding out too late that the 7-up and Twix bar the flight attendant just handed you will actually cost you 4.50 EU and that her mobile card reader (since you dropped what was left of your Euros into a charity box at the Dublin Airport and have no more cash) will not accept any of your credit cards, leaving you embarrassed even though both the flight attendant (who was, inexplicably, Croatian) and you understand that the problem is the reader and not the cards, because what are the odds, and maybe even thankful because you don't really need a Twix bar but then the woman in the next row offers to pay for your stuff, leaving you fat (because you ate the Twix and drank the 7-up) and humiliated, now that some woman flying from Dublin to Liverpool thinks you're a really sad person with a wallet full of maxed-out credit cards.

If that sounds appealing to you, by all means, fly Ryan Air.  If not, don't do it.

Today's numbers:

45 -- estimated distance, in feet, between the door you enter after getting off your plane in Liverpool (and walking outside across the tarmac, of course) and the strange, isolated baggage claim belt where your luggage is waiting.

1500:1 -- odds that the entrance to the parking garage located 15 feet from where you've finally parked and are waiting for your wife to check into the hotel, which is across the street, is actually the entrance.  It was the exit.  We had to drive around the block again.

21 -- time, in minutes, it took today to secure our vehicle from Hertz at the Liverpool airport.  If anyone reading has experience as a car rental agent, can you please tell me what they're doing when they're staring at the screen, typing a few numbers, and then staring more.

2 -- times Sandra Bullock made that scared sucking in her breath noise during the half-hour trip from the airport to our hotel, which, with me behind the wheel, represents improvement in my U.K. driving skills.  Once was when I inexplicably stopped in the middle of the street while making a right turn because the light had turned red, which had nothing at all to do with driving on the left side so there goes that excuse. 

England (and dinner awaits.

DAY THIRTY-SIX: DUBLIN IN A DAY

This morning we awoke with one day to experience Dublin and a loose plan as to how to go about it.  Mostly we knew we weren't going to Howth, a charming seaside village reachable from Dublin by taxi or train, even though last night's cab driver insisted that if we went we "wouldn't be sorry."  Sorry or not sorry, we will never know.

Instead, we decided to limit our hard stop commitments to two -- the "Guinness Experience" and the Book of Kell's tour at Trinity College.  This would give us plenty of time to wander the city streets, giving me many opportunities to take off my jacket, put it back on, take off my sunglasses, put them back on, wonder if I should've worn long pants instead of shorts, congratulate myself for being so savvy as to wear shorts, etc.  As discussed in these pages earlier, if you don't like the weather in Ireland, just wait a few minutes.  It will change.

There were a few things I wanted to see.  All of them were either weird, arcane, or weird and arcane.  First, I wanted to see the spot where Glen Hansard is busking in the opening scenes of Once, a great Irish movie that nobody seems to talk about around here, so busy are they commemorating the time John Wayne filmed The Quiet Man in Dingle.  The spot was at 62 Grafton Street, in the middle of a pedestrian shopping mall and a block from Bewleys, where excellent scones and a stellar European bathroom experience (two Dyson dryers) can be had either dining in or for takeaway.  The white chocolate hot chocolate, though, was a bit much even for me.

Unfortunately, like most of the weird and arcane sights I seek (except the Billy the Kid grave; that was cool), the spot where Hansard busked was difficult to find and an anti-climax.  I've only seen the movie once, but I don't remember him busking in front of a Disney store.

Hugely deserved statue.

Even more weird and arcane but not one bit of a disappointment was the statue of Phil Lynott, founding member and primary songwriter of Thin Lizzy.  I am presently searching Thin Lizzy on Apple Music to see if I've actually heard any Thin Lizzy tracks.  Don't let my ignorance diminish the magnificence of the Phil Lynott statue, one block off of Grafton Street.  There he is in peak mid-1970s glory, axe by his side, weird Irish afro reaching toward the sky.  

Jailbreak and The Boys are Back in Town.  So I do know a couple of Thin Lizzy tracks.  Also, you can buy a small replica of the statue here.  

Our traveling party understood that if my weird and arcane desires were met early, the rest of the day would be left open for more generally rewarding pursuits, the kind you can actually post on Instagram without your friends responding with either sarcastic comments or complete befuddlement.  From Phil we went on to St. Stephen's Green, a lovely (note assimilated use of Irish slang) green space that, per placards distributed throughout the park, was an important site during the 1916 Easter Uprising, during which Irish citizen rebels occupied the park (and the supervisor's house, scaring the bejeesus out of his daughter by threatening to blow the place up and then setting up snipers in the upstairs windows) and even a pub on a street nearby.  I came to Ireland completely ignorant of Irish history.  Now I know about 0.005 percent of it but am eager to learn more.

The great thing about St. Stephen's Green is that it is located on the outside border of the Georgian District (I'm getting the name wrong but don't have enough time or wifi power to research), where Princess Grace hoped to find all of those whimsical painted doors she read about while looking for things to do in Dublin.  Alas, we walked and walked (and walked) and saw some beautiful brick buildings (mostly used now as offices for solicitors and tech start-ups) and maybe a few bold door statements -- a red one here, a light blue one there -- but nothing close to the core of door after stunning door we'd been led to expect.  After about a half-hour, we all agreed it was time to move on.

The next goal was to see Christ Church, one of Dublin's many significant churches.  I swear, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a church in this town.  Most of the larger ones, including St. Patrick's, ask a cover charge of anyone who wants to go inside and view their treasures.  We were satisfied looking from the outside.

Texting, not navigating.

On and on we walked, our ultimate goal the Guinness Experience in St. James Gate.  Navigation superiority became a fluid thing, passed back and forth between Princess Grace and Sandra Bullock.  Don't let the photo to the right fool you; O'Toole is texting, not mapping, having stated sotto voce to me that he had "no interest in navigating," certainly not after he voiced his desire to "go see the Dublin Castle" only to be abjectly ignored by our twin leaders.

We did end up seeing the castle, which, frankly, was a mess.  Built during medieval times and finally and triumphantly turned over to the new Irish government led by Michael Collins, who I can only picture as Liam Neeson but probably wasn't 6'4", it's a weird hodgepodge of eras, of towers and halls, stones and stucco, gray and colors and all but demanded eight EU to anyone wishing to go inside.  We demurred.  An unimpressed Princess Grace ("You could go to

Philadelphia and see things older than this") and Google offered an exterior tour for five, a much better deal.

Dublin continued to impersonate Boston, Massachusetts.  At one point, walking down a street of bow-fronted brick buildings outside St. Stephen's, I announced brazenly, "If you told me that was the Boston Common, I wouldn't argue," drawing a few puzzled looks and eventual nods from passers-by.  

REAL-TIME UPDATE:  We are now halfway through Apple's "Thin Lizzy Essentials" playlist.  Still only two songs I recognize.  

After walking around the outside of a few more churches and through "not a really nice" neighborhood, we arrived at the Guinness Storehouse in St. James Gate, along with everyone else visiting Dublin today.  We were all a bit skeptical of this spectacle, had been all along, but so many locals and expatriate Dubliners had sincerely recommended it to us that we were swayed.  

As a veteran of many brewery and distillery tours, almost enough to now actually understand how beer and spirits are made, I can honestly say that Guinness is a better or

Not your average brewery tour, clearly. 

worse experience, but it certainly is different.   For starters, nothing you see looks like its anywhere near a place where they make beer.  There are purple lights, interactive displays, videos, restored old fermenters and barrels.  There, under glass, is the 9,000-year lease (you heard that correctly) signed by Arthur Guinness upon moving into the St. James factory in 1759.  Does the same landlord still own it?  If not, is the lease still valid?  It's still got some 8,739 years left on it.

It took a almost an hour for all of us to succumb to museum face.  By the time we got in line for the tasting experience, we were wearing matching thousand-yard stares, mine interrupted briefly as we marched down a darkened corridor toward the promised "tasting room."  "What if this is like Soylent Green?" I wondered, but kept walking.  I'm pleased to say it wasn't, and we all survived.  In fact, at the other end of the corridor was a cool white room like the one Willy Wonka employed to test out Wonkavision and then another room that seemed lifted from the Haunted Mansion.  All of this for two ounces of Guinness "that you're supposed to gulp, not sip."

There were two more floors, including the "Guinness Academy," where people who aren't us can stand in line for the opportunity to learn how to correctly pour a glass of Guinness.  We skipped that and went to the seventh floor to claim our free pints.  The seventh floor, which offers a 270-degree view of Dublin through floor-to-ceiling windows (like a lesser version of that place we went to in London several years ago... or at the beginning of this trip.), was mobbed.  Views were at a premium.  We lucked out, though.  A family arose from one of the few tables just as we settled in a few feet away.  We stood there gulping our beer, then actually TOOK our beers downstairs to the gift shop, because if you can't enjoy your Guinness wherever you want at the Guinness Experience (maybe not it's official name, but it should be), something's not right.

REAL-TIME UPDATE: I didn't make it through the Thin Lizzy playlist.  Statue's still really cool, though. 

Pretty cool.

The plan after that was to walk through the intermittent rain to Trinity College for the Book of Kell's, but a majority of our group was done with walking so we too a cab, hung out at the hotel and walked over to Trinity, where several hundred people also wanted to see the Book of Kells.  We donned our earphone things and dove in, learning about 8th-century monks and pigments and leather bindings and the four gospels.  I was feeling another bout of museum face coming on when -- wham! -- there it was: the Book of Kells.  Over 1,000 years old with steadfast colors as brilliant as they were the day whatever 18-year-old monk/scribe (who, we learned, was prone to writing things like "Am I ever going to be done with this?" in the margins) etched it with his goose quill.  

Truly stunning, but for me the highlight of the Kell's tour was the Long Room upstairs, a 200,000-volume library housed in what was Ireland's largest room/hall when it was built in 1712.  Imagine joining 400 teenage Italian tourists in a room where Samuel Beckett did his homework?  I inhaled the ancient book dust over and over, tried to read the titles on the ancient spines, looked at pictures of Beckett and Brendan Kennelly, wondered what happens if a kid at Trinity needs a book from the Long Room for a project.  Does he just push a few tourists out of the way and grab what he needs?  Is the library only open at night?

Travel is all about the questions.

Here are today's one-day-only numbers:

9 -- buses parked on the street outside Merrion Square but eerily, no tourists.

8 -- total number of weeks Thin Lizzy's four biggest hit singles spent in the UK top ten. 

1 -- Star Wars movies filmed in the Long Room at Trinity College.

2 -- number of times we have heard U2 played since we got to Ireland.  The second was today, blasting over the speakers at the Guinness gift shop, which kind of makes sense. 

less than 150 -- total square feet in our room at the Temple Bar Inn.

0 -- donuts consumed by either Sandra Bullock or me, despite threatening to march right in a buy one every time we pass a donut store, and the Irish, per my wife, "really seem to love their donuts. 

Today was our last day in Dublin, our only full day, and we chased it with gusto.  Tomorrow, Peter O'Toole and Princess Grace return to the U.S. Sandra Bullock and I move on to England for one more week of travel, diminished a bit by losing our travel partners but determined to log our 20,000 steps, drink our afternoon gin and tonics and push this thing all the way until we get back on the plane at Heathrow on the 23rd.  

Dinner is in 12 minutes.  This is a first draft.  Sorry for the typos.  

DAY THIRTY-FIVE: GETTING TO DUBLIN

Beautiful Inistoige is like "stepping back into
the 1700s," per our cab driver.

Today was a travel day, our last with Peter O’Toole and Princes Grace, that began from our air conditioned perch in Stag City, carried us through the highly-touted Inistoige and deposited us in the middle of Temple Bar at the Temple Bar Inn. More specifically, directly across the street from what has to be the world’s sole extant Hard Rock Cafe, stumbling distance to a half-dozen Disneyfied Irish pubs and a block from TGI Friday’s, just in case any of us want to wrap up tonight or tomorrow with a nice plate of potato skins.  Don’t say we weren’t warned. 

The shock to our collective small village systems actually began about 12 miles from our hotel, and hour or so into the drive when Princess Grace, who was operating her own independent nav system alongside my sad lair of backseat shame where power windows are a luxury afforded only those who’ve earned a front seat spot (I ceded all driving responsibilities to Peter O’Toole before we even left Kilkenny, saying, lamely, “It seems like everyone is more relaxed when I’m not behind the wheel.” Not sure they bought it, because Sandra Bullock quickly corrected me, saying, “You’re more relaxed, at least.”), blurted, “It’s going to take 47 minutes to go the last 12 miles?”

The back seat is a primitive place indeed.

It seemed absurd. Dublin is a city of 550,000, barely larger than the imminently manageable Edinburgh. 47 minutes to go 12 miles? Siri had clearly lost her mind.

Siri was an optimist. Around and around we went, veering this way and that, stopping and starting, until finally, after a missed left turn that added 15 minutes to our ETA, provoking a chorus of moans from all of us — including one front the normally unflappably O’Toole, though it must be said that his moan, truthfully, did have an slight undertone of breeziness — Sandra Bullock overwrote the front seat nav system. “Just turn here!” she said, her failed attempts to control her voice betraying the depths of her panic.

We turned.

And found ourselves in the middle of Temple Bar, surrounded by tourists but not yet frat boys (they’ll be coming later, we’re told).  “I see a sign for the hotel,” O’Toole said jauntily.  He pulled forward, into a very narrow alleyway that seemed to dead-end in a brick wall.

“Where’s this hotel?” I asked warily.

“The sign.  It’s written on the side of this building.”

I saw nothing.  

“Lets just parallel park here and carry our stuff up,” offered my wife.  I hopped out of the car and waited for everyone to follow, which almost happened.  

Instead, apparently while I was standing there on the sidewalk looking at the wall for the name of our hotel, everyone else decided to stay in the car and park in the garage at the end of the alleyway.  I’d missed that part.  I kept standing on the sidewalk, pretty happy to be out of the car finally.  Sandra Bullock shouted at me, “Get in!” but it didn’t register.  I just nodded.  Being out of the car was okay, even if it meant standing in Temple Bar and dodging tourists.  “Just go,” I said absently, as if in a daze, completely forgetting my responsibility for one of the humongous bags wedged into the rear of the Micra, resting on

Take your pick: tourists, or the car?

top of, I will continue to insist even as the rest of my traveling party takes my certainty as further evidence of my descent into insanity, the 24 ounces of water that mysteriously disappeared this morning from my water bottle.  

No, seriously.  There was water, and then it was gone.  This morning I carefully filled my bottle from the sink because I wanted to make sure I drank water today.  I’ve been lagging on my water consumption.  I filled the bottle, shoved it in the side pocket thing of my backpack, carried the backpack to where the Micra was parked, tossed it in the trunk, got in the car and drove back to the hotel.  Then I went upstairs to get the rest of the luggage.  When I came back down and pulled my backpack out of the trunk, the bottle was empty.

Where does 24 ounces of water go?  My backpack was dry.  Was the Pembroke Hotel in Kilkenny plagued by thirsty gremlins?  Did a hungover hen party participant seize the water during an arid morning after walk of shame? 

My wife spoke in code.  “Are you sure you filled it?” she said benignly, meaning, “You forgot to fill your water bottle, you idiot,” but I’m telling you, I’m not budging from this story.  24 ounces of water disappeared.  

Or did it?

Many hours later, having seen a few drops of water on the outside of my continent-sized Patagonia bag, I pounced.  “Aha!” I said, “The water spilled into the trunk!”  Or bonnet, if you’ve assimilated better than me.

Sandra Bullock mentally rolled her eyes.  “No way.  You’d already taken the empty bottle out of the trunk before you put that bag in.”

“But what if…” I protested.  Nothing.

By then, the issues surrounding my economy-sized Patagonia bag weren’t about whether it had absorbed 24 ounces of water while leaving everything inside dry (it did) so much as how the bag, by necessity, had gotten from the parking garage to the street while I stood on the sidewalk with no phone connectivity, blissfully waiting for my party to appear.  “Our hotel is down there!” I said strongly, deflecting, pointing with authority down the street toward where our hotel lurked, hidden behind a crowd a people carrying shopping bags.  

That seemed to satisfy everyone, so we walked to the hotel, whose lobby was a stellar example of the Rainforest Cafe school of interior design.  It was sultry and subterranean.  Upstairs, the rooms were small.  So small that “we’re going to have to take turns getting dressed while one of us waits in the hall,” per Peter O’Toole.  I piled my shame atop the humiliation I earned earlier when I refused to drive.  You see, I made these reservations.  I pored over hotels.com for hours, finding the perfect spot.  I checked Trip Advisor.  I even glanced at Rick Freaking Steves.  And I ended up putting us here, in the Rainforest Cafe, across the street from the Hard Rock Cafe.  

Can't get enough of those ruins.

Not my best day.  I had consciously avoided driving the narrow streets of Inistoige, leaving Peter O’Toole at the wheel while we navigated past its beautifully maintained cottages and had not even enough humility to smile pleasantly like the rest of my group during lunch, when the young twins at the next table serenaded us with an hour of Teddy-worthy, paint-peeling whining.  “They’re piercing my brain!” I muttered as Sandra Bullock continued her comprehensive survey of Ireland’s brown bread, recalling the exhaustive key lime pie research she underwent during the legendary trip to Key West for O’Toole’s 50th birthday.  

Inistoige was inarguably beautiful, with its trees, its vintage homes and the gardens and ruined mansion of Woodstock, and its Cadbury caramello bar, available at the local convenience store and and effective tool for soothing nerves worn thin by stereo whining lunchtime twins.  

From Inistoige the drive to Dublin was all M roads, clear sailing at 120 k/mh — and then we entered the city center.   It only got worse during the 1.7 miles drive from Temple Bar to the Enterprise car rental return center, where they protested weakly that I”d promised to return the car at 10 and only shrugged when I told them I’d called and said I’d be late. 

It was during the walk back to the hotel that we realized our small town Irish idyll was finally and completely over.  (The walk took 20 minutes — same as driving)  So many people.  So many donut shops.  So much graffiti.  Sandra Bullock narrowly avoiding getting hit by someone turning right onto a side street.  100,000 Dubliners and an equal number of tourists crowding onto the ancient O’Connell Bridge.  “It’s sensory overload!” said my wife.  

It was true. After two weeks in the relative wilderness we were unprepared for the pace of a (at first glance, somewhat gritty) big city. We sought refuge in a pub, searching for peace, a beer and our daily allotment of fries (in that order). Even that became so perilous that at one point, both O’Toole and Grace suggested separately and half-jokingly that we just “give up and go to the Hard Rock.” 

Finally we ducked into some place a block away. Inside, some guy was playing U2 covers on an acoustic guitar to an attentive gathering of people visiting from Texas. We walked through the bar to an empty back room and sat. “This’ll work,” said Sandra Bullock. They drank beer and talked about tomorrow’s plans. I wrote this. 

Here are today’s numbers:

4 — Subways passed during the walk back from Enterprise.  Not once were we tempted.

.

7.35 — price, in Euros, of a pint of beer in Temple Bar.  Michael the cab driver was right.

9 — time, in minutes, I spent behind the wheel today before giving way to Peter O’Toole, who said later, “I like driving,”

312 — distance, in feet, from the Temple Bay Inn. to the nearest Starbucks.

1 — number of Cokes I’ve been drinking each and every day.  Add that to the list of bad habits I’ll be challenged to break once we get home.  

18 — more minutes until our cab comes so I’ve got to wrap this up.

Tomorrow, per S. Bullock, we’re just going to “get up and start walking,” which should be cool.  Dublin’s a big place and we’ve got to see more of it than the somewhat overwhelming Fisherman’s Wharf outside the front doors of our hotel.