Get the F*#k out!

Looks like United has finally given up on Saskatoon:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/united-airlines-ending-direct-flights-between-chicago-and-saskatchewan-1.2747789?cmp=rss

This is a great victory for this blog, but probably not much of a victory for my wallet.

-RF

I hit my head, I'll balance it out by hitting my liver

...continued, sort of.

Our first day with Yang really seemed like 2 full days. After the zoo we drove back to the hotel to ditch the car. And I use the term "drive" pretty liberally here. I'm fairly confident we could have walked faster, and have evidence to back that up as a literal claim.

The route the that GPS suggested to get back to the hotel was basically putting us right through the middle of Dublin. This, being a Saturday we thought we'd be ok and miss any sort of rush hour. What we got instead was far worse to navigate...Dublin's gay pride parade. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem at all with gay pride or the festivities, but when I'm trying to drive through it, on the wrong side of the road, it was about the last thing I needed. Add to that the fact that Dubliners don't feel the need to mark their roads and when they do mark them they don't agree with the published maps, AND the totally terrible luck we kept having with one way streets and I was a bit of a wreck by the time I parked the car at the hotel. That poor can of (warm) beer in the room stood no chance!

And that was just the start of what seemed like a 2nd full day!

Our PLAN was to then go to tour the Guinness Storehouse. The app on my phone said it was a 30 minute walk, and we had 35 minutes until the last ticket was sold. My app was wrong. The Guinness Storehouse turned out to be just south of the zoo and took about 45 minutes of gay pride dodging power walking. Luckily my app was wrong again about the closing time, so we got in after our long walk. It was a good tour and ended with an outstanding view of the whole city of Dublin.

Getting there and getting in satisfied our primary goal, but the restaurants closed before we could accomplish our next goal of eating Irish stew, however, the restaurant staff pointed us in the direction of the place THEY'D go to eat some Irish stew and have great craic (that is spelled right, pronounced crack, means good times). So we went to Arthur's bar, and picked up a new friend along the way in a 14 year veteran F-16 pilot.

Arthur's was only the first stop, and set the tone with drop shots of Irish whiskey in Guinness. We next hit the International Bar for more beer. Then Dublin's major shopping street for drunken, impromptu frisbee throwing. Then Neary's bar. Then finally a bar I can't remember the name of in which we met a couple of great Irishmen who taught us about Gaelic football and told us about the upcoming playoff games the very next morning. I'm lucky to have escaped that last bar without serious liver damage. Turns out if you convince a waitress that you want to buy a beer for the 2 regulars you just met and totally hijacked 2 hours of their night to discuss Gaelic sports and language you become some sort of hero deserving of far more drinks than you need.

We made it back to the hotel late, but planned a long walk the next morning to go watch live Gaelic football. A great day, albeit fairly long.

Ryan

Meerkats make it better

Today we picked up one kind of animal then went to visit all kinds of other animals.

The first animal I'm taking about is @yangvonpang. The other animals were those we saw in the Dublin zoo. Both kinds were entertaining, but I couldn't go out drinking with the zoo animals later so I guess Yang wins the day as the best kind of animal to find in Dublin.

The Dublin zoo itself was a pretty good zoo, then again, I don't think I've ever been to a zoo I don't like. We got to start our day with the classic full Irish breakfast at the Meerkat restaurant. Named so because it was the only place where you could watch the meerkats. This pleased me greatly and I'm sure I could have stayed through lunch and beyond. But other animals needed viewing too so we went out into the rainy Irish weather to enjoy the zoo.

It was in the zoo that Mel and I started discussing a trend we'd noticed in Dublin, fathers out with infant children. This seemed a bit of a role reversal from what is expected at home. To be clear, I'm talking about dad out alone with the kids, not with mom as well. It just so happened that while discussing this trend, and pointing it out at the zoo that I noticed another trend. Only women carried umbrellas. Only women...and me. Moments after this realization I noticed a little tag dangling from my newly purchased umbrella that read, "Ladies hand umbrella" Combine that with the nice pastel colors and I felt a bit awkward in the rain for the rest of the day.

I didn't help my own cause at all by trying to lean into an enclosure that was glassed in. I hit my head pretty hard and managed to make a lot of noise. It wasn't even particularly clean glass I bashed my head on so I had no excuse other than being a bit emasculated and distracted by the animals.

Ryan

...ps, to be continued

You know you're Irish when...

...you never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

That was one of our Dublin tour guide's favorite sayings, which meant to me that the better the story was that he was telling us the less likely it was to be true, but still good and worth listening to.

Unlike the Munich and Paris walking tours that pointed out a lot of monuments and listed things to do after the tour, the Dublin walking tour was more of a mobile history lesson. Not that I'm complaining, it was still a great tour and the only one we've been on that included a beer stop!

The Irish claim to be the second largest beer consumer per capita (after the Czechs), and the world's largest tea customers per capita, even ahead of the Brits. What he didn't mention, which the news had been saying for a few days was that young Irish people are also Europe's highest group of people as they smoke more weed than any other country on the continent.

So they get drunk, get lifted, then apparently drink a bunch of tea the next morning with their full Irish breakfast to restart their systems. Maybe their leprechaun accents magically help cure hangovers too. So if you see me drinking tea on a Sunday morning one day and talking in a terrible Irish accent rest assured it isn't because I've had a stroke, I'm just trying out a new theory.

Ryan

No Aliens Here

We made a stop on our drive from Belfast to Dublin at Bru Na Boinne burial sites. This was another UNESCO site. It is actually a collection of many burial mounds in eastern Ireland. Some if these mounds are structures 40 meters across and 8 meters high. They date from 5000 years ago which makes them about 1000 years older than the Egyptian pyramids and 500 years older than Stone Henge.

This was another very impressive site that archeologists are still learning a lot about (ie, the tour guides left a lot of stuff up to our own interpretation). Easily the most impressive feature was a light box in one of the big mounds that only let light in for about 14 minutes each year. Only at sun rise of the winter solstice would light ever get into the inside of the mound. The whole mound was built so precisely that after a few minutes in the morning on one day of the year no more sunlight would get in until a year later. And this was no accident. There is a sister site some miles away that only lets light in on the same day, but at dusk.

This precision has lead some...weirdos...to speculate that aliens were involved in the construction of the mounds. Why aliens would come here and build big mounds of dirt and rock is beyond my reckoning. Then again, humans spending upwards of 3 generations building big mounds of dirt and rock is also a bit perplexing. All I know is that I now have a plan for what I'm doing as next year's spring landscaping project.

Ryan

The Titanic Experience...Without the Drowning

The Titanic was mostly constructed in Belfast, so naturally they have a big museum there dedicated to it. We decided to spend a day going through the museum. It was interesting more from the perspective of seeing how the actual life was at the time than it was from the design and ultimate flaws in the ship. And a bit disappointing was the fact that they really didn't focus much on the reasons for the sinking or what could have been done to avoid it. But they totally made up for that by having a ride in the museum. Possibly the weirdest thing to put right in the middle of a museum, but a nice touch.

What we really wanted to see though was the Iron Throne from the Game of Thrones set. A lot of the sound stage work is done just down the road from the Titanic museum at the Titanic Studios. The day before we were there the queen herself (the real one...like "of England" real) visited the studio and got to see the throne, so naturally I assumed we would be able to get in. Apparently I was wrong on this account. Don't they know who the hell I am?! No? Oh, ok then. I'll settle for watching the rest of the series on tv.

Ryan

Moving Slow in Belfast

Let's start with a quick geography lesson. Ireland is a country all on its own, definitely not part of Great Britain, the United Kingdom or England. Northern Ireland, which is the northern part of the island is however part of the United Kingdom. What this meant to us was that lots of things change. For one, the currency changes from the Euro to Pounds Sterling. We knew and expected that to happen, but what I somehow didn't realize was that the speeds and distances would change from metric to Imperial. There was no indication of this change anywhere, it just changed. I thankfully didn't spend too much time crawling along at low speeds. What I did do was keep wondering why it was taking so damned long to get anywhere. Obviously this is because distances were listed in miles and I kept thinking km in my head. Took 2 full days to finally figure that out...just in time to leave Northern Ireland and head back across the border.

Our first stop in Northern Ireland, and one of the best parts of the trip, was a visit to the Giant's Causeway. Google it if you're interested in the details, but basically it is a natural rock formation that was the source of some great stories about giants building a bridge between Ireland and Scotland. It is also a UNESCO world heritage site in a really scenic part of the country. I highly recommend it to anyone who might be traveling in the area.

Ryan

Princess for a Day

We went up to the north west part of Ireland today, near Donegal and Sligo (pronounced SlyGoh, you're looked at like you're uttering obscenities if you say SleeGo).

When checking out of our Cork hotel the girl at reception said, "Oh, that area is really beautiful! You'll love it there." I think what she really meant was the accent in that area is really beautiful. Not that the the scenery wasn't, but I don't think I can kidnap the scenery and take it home like I threatened to do with some of the people I met at the castle hotel we stayed in.

And yeah, you read that right. Mel's wish of staying in a castle and being a princess for a day came true, complete with breakfast in bed the next morning. My wish, though a bit less lofty also came true when no castle ghost tried to murder me in my sleep.

Maybe we were spared the ghost visit since we were staying in the Tom Watson room...and he hasn't died yet.

Ryan

Fore!

Today we played some golf at a course billed as, "Probably the most unique golf course in the world." That is a bold claim, but it certainly was a different kind of golf course.

It was listed as an 18 hole course, but had only 10 greens. 8 of those greens were used for multiple holes, you'd simply tee off at a shorter or longer tee box. For example, number 1 was something like a 175 yard par 3 to a well protected green. Number 10 was about 155 yards to the same green. Only one of the holes used both 2 sets of tee boxes and 2 greens (but still shared the fairway).

Needless to say, this was a bit weird, but worked out well actually, especially since it wasn't busy at all.

Before learning about this characteristic of the course we had already decided to only play the front 9, which I guess meant we got a pretty good idea of what the back 9 would have been. When all was said and done Mel really only played the front 7 1/2 holes. We had agreed that if we lost all the balls we bought to start with we'd call it a day. I finished up with only one ball left, Mel's last one ended up as fish food on the 8th hole.

To add to the weird course layout there were also 2 trams one had to use to climb up between holes. Don't really know what to say about these. There were trains. On a golf course. It was weird.

Kiss This

We visited the famous Blarney castle today to kiss the Blarney Stone. Kissing the stone is supposed to imbue you with the gift of eloquent and persuasive speech. To test how it worked they include a garden of poisonous plants. I assume the goal is to try to convince your friends and family to try tasting some of the plants. Apparently I still wasn't persuasive enough because Mel wouldn't sample any of the plants.

I was also hoping it'd imbue me with a bit of an Irish accent. I'm pretty sure the accents here are more than capable of convincing me to do things.

It'd also be great if there was a stone I could kiss that would make me better at driving on the left side of the tiny little roads here. After 3 days it still feels terribly awkward. I don't know if I'm going to swap mirrors with the incoming traffic or put the passenger side of the car into the rhubarb. So far neither has occurred. I hope I can keep it that way.

Ryan

The Irish Open

The PGA ad campaign saying, "These guys are good." is really under-selling the skill on display at a high calibre tournament. Some slogans they might want to consider:

"These guys are magicians."
"These guys are using the force."
"These guys have real life cheat codes."
"Ryan please stop referring to the course marshals as golf leprechauns."

Well, maybe not that last one, but it's true. Everyone here is a leprechaun.

The Irish Open was a great day. We decided to go Friday since the group containing both Rory McIlroy and Padraig Harrington teed off at 1, which we could make in time after driving from Dublin. That turned out to be a good choice since Rory didn't make the cut anyway and we wouldn't have seen him on the weekend.

There were an estimated 28,000 people out Friday, and a lot of those were following the lead group, but lots were also just hanging out in the tent village drinking beer, this is Ireland after all.

We did a little beer drinking and a lot of golf watching. Some players were great to watch and loved the crowds (Levy), other players (Willet) were total dicks. We had several opportunities to be standing right up on the rope watching guys hit and listening to their banter with their caddy.

Mel and I both decided it wasn't the driving or putting that really showcased the player's ability, it was their approach shots and bunker play. Some guys really had their game tuned in.

The final round is tomorrow and there are a few Irishmen still in contention. Should make for an excellent finish.

-Ryan

A country after my own heart

A country needs 2 things to raise their status in my esteem: Good beer, and good breakfasts. Outside of Canada with our abundance of maple syrup, our strange claim to bacon and a good selection of tasty brews, the only other place I have visited to make the cut so far was Belgium. They brought us waffles and their monks gave us plenty of delicious beer.

They were the only other country up until today. I pretty much knew what to expect with respect to Irish beer, but what I didn't expect was their love of a good breakfast too. Now admittedly after only one day I have a pretty small sample space. But considering my breakfast was at a gas station and included the likes of beans, mushrooms, and black pudding along side the usual suspects I'm inclined to believe it may even get better from here.

And if it doesn't, then I'm sure a pint of Guinness will do the trick.

Ryan

Update: after getting some wifi on morning number 2 I can confirm the Irish don't mess around with breakfast!

Ryan 0 - Botanical Gardens 1

One of the things listed in tour guides to do in Lund is to visit the botanical gardens. I made a point of taking a walk over to the gardens to check it out and regretted my decision about 6 minutes after arriving.

It is 20 acres housing about 7000 different types of plants...all of which are trying to have sex by spewing forth clouds of pollen. For someone with allergies going to the botanical garden in June was about as smart as going to the local animal shelter and rubbing my face on the cats for an hour.

I left the gardens and walked up wind for a bit. Not having any antihistamines with me I sought out the next best thing, beer. It isn't as immediately effective, but after enough it gets the job done anyway.

I started my day wanting to see the sights of Lund and ended up drinking beer by myself with tears streaming out of my itchy eyes. Next time I guess I'll start with beer in the morning.

-Ryan

Swedish Saunas

In neighboring Finland saunas are a big deal, in Sweden I'd guess they just use hotel rooms instead of building specific sauna rooms. For the most part our room stayed at a balmy 29C. No AC in most hotels here, but they were generous enough to supply us with a fan. This fan was just barely powerful enough to blow receipts off the table, nothing more.

We've spent 4 nights here now and will head over to Ireland in a few hours. Southern Sweden has been a very nice place to visit, and as usual tagging along to Dr Fauchoux's conferences makes for some interesting days.

One of these glorious days of vacationing while Mel worked was spent fishing. I took a bus out of town, rented a boat, and borrowed some gear in the hopes of catching some Swedish pike, perch, or pikeperch (and I fully expected them to be blond haired and blue eyed just like everyone else in Sweden). I spent about 6 hours rowing and motoring around the lake in the sunshine, and thankfully didn't leave empty handed. Besides the nice sunburn I got I managed to catch one perch, which is infinitely better than no perch. It didn't have blonde hair or blue eyes and wasn't interested in wearing the wig or contacts I insisted on either. But it was still a fish.

Another day was spent learning about some culture and history of southern Sweden at Kulteren. I learned 3 things: 1) Mowing the top of your sod-roofed house probably sucks. 2) Creepy museums are extra creepy when you're the only one there. And 3) Having a toothache back in the day wasn't cool as the town smithy was probably the one to extract it.

I can't imagine a greater day than mowing your roof followed by having a blacksmith ever so gently extract a tooth (possibly by just slamming your head on an anvil).

Ryan

Train rides to the forest.

We were advised to not drive out to Gillette Stadium for the football game Sunday. Instead we were told to take the Patiot Train, a train that only runs once and only on game days. Overall this was good advice. It was just a bit surprising to us when, after an hour and a half, we simply stopped in the middle of the forest and were told to get out.

This wasn't some kind of joke. The train platform in Foxboro is big enough for about 2 cars. I think our train had over 2 dozen. The car we were in was hanging out in the bush still. It was a good thing your average Bostonian is in good shape because the hike to the stadium would probably have killed fans in most Texas cities.

The game was good and the Patriots dominated the Buccaneers, much to the delight of the hometown crowd who were all deeply in love with "Gorgeous Tom Brady". I'm sure half the men in the crowd had gotten laid at some point in their life by making up a story about how their second cousin's neighbor had once seen Tom in a grocery store.

Good thing we only mixed up Paul Revere and Paul Bunion instead of Tom Brady and Tom Hanks! We'd have been thrown into the harbor for that kind of indiscretion.

-Ryan