Magical Mystery Tour!!!

When I headed out for Great Britain, there were three things to which I was most looking forward.  (I may have mentioned this before.)  The first was Blarney Castle.  The second was doing a Beatles tour in Liverpool.  I’ll get to the third in a later entry.

As you can probably imagine, there are lots of Beatles tours in Liverpool.  There were some that lasted all day and cost over $150.  While those include a lot of interesting things, I didn’t want to spend that much money and I found one that cost about 80% less, took two hours, and covered pretty much everything that I needed to see.  (I still had another full day in Liverpool in case I wanted to go out and see more.)  The trip I decided on was the Magical Mystery Tour, which is a bus tour to various Beatle-related spots throughout Liverpool, with stops at a handful of them.  It starts at the Albert Dock, so I went there to catch the bus.

Our guide was funny and very knowledgeable.  He was in some Beatles-related movie and knew Paul McCartney.  At least, I reckon he knows Paul McCartney.  He showed all of us a photo on his iPhone with him and Paul.  So, he had that going for him.

We went by a lot of cool places – at least cool as far as I was concerned.  We went by the birth homes of Ringo Starr and George Harrison.  We also went by one of the homes in which Paul McCartney lived and in which he and John Lennon wrote over 100 songs.  Another house we went to was the one in which John Lennon lived with his Aunt Mimi.  We went to Penny Lane but there were no pretty nurses selling puppies from a tray on the roundabout.  Very strange.  And we went to the red gates of Strawberry Fields.  At the end of the tour, we went to the Cavern Club.  I went in and wound my way down the stone steps to the bar/stage below.  It was extremely crowded, even at 5:00 pm, and smelled of stale beer.  I used the facilities but left before I got a drink.  I went back to my hotel, which was located just around the corner.

Now, I’d like to say a word or two about my hotel.  I stayed at a new Day’s Inn in Liverpool City Centre.  It has been open for less than three months.  I’m not sure what it was before it was a Day’s Inn but I’m pretty sure it was not a hotel.  My room number was M6.  To get to room M6 (on the mezzanine level), I had to go up three flights of stairs to the second floor (yeah, try explaining that) and then walk along the second floor corridor to another set of stairs and then go down two flights of stairs to rooms M6-M10.  There was a lift option to get up to the second floor but none to get back down to the mezzanine level, at least the part of the mezzanine level on which my room was located.  Inside my room was one of the best hotel televisions I’ve ever seen.  Unfortunately, there was no remote control to go with it.  I called to ask if I could get a remote for the television, but all they told me was that the last guest must have accidentally taken it.  I couldn’t care less what happened to it.  I ain’t a cop.  I just wanted a remote control.  Nope.  Okay.

Later that evening was the UEFA Champions League match between Manchester United and Barcelona.  I’ll go on from there in the next post.

Pilgrimage to Liverpool

We landed at John Lennon International Airport and I wasn’t sure if we’d have to deal with immigration and/or customs.  We were going from one EU country to another but some countries are pickier about such things than others.  Anyway, we didn’t have to worry with any of that.

I knew that National Express ran a bus to the Liverpool Coach Center and that taking it would be cheaper than a cab, so that was my plan.  As I walked around the airport, though, I was having all kinds of difficulty finding where to catch the bus.  There were other buses heading to the Liverpool City Centre but I had no idea where those were going to drop me off.  I saw the cab fares posted on the wall and they weren’t outrageously expensive so I decided to break a cardinal rule of mine and for only the second time ever in Europe, I used a cab.  I’ll get over it.

I got to my hotel and it was already starting to get dark.  And crappy.  The weather was pretty damn crappy.  I walked around the city center for a little while and then went to get something to eat.  In order to get something different, I went to a 1950s US diner.  The food was meh.  What I found interesting was that there were tons of American flags in the restaurant and they all had fifty stars, even though we didn’t have fifty states until midway through 1959.  So, I guess it was a late-1959 diner.  And there were only three songs that were playing over and over again and one of them came out in 1960.  If I was going to open a 1950s US diner, I’d pay attention to these little details.  But, then, I probably wouldn’t open it in Liverpool, so there you go.

I went out and got a drink before heading back to my hotel.  There are tons of bars in the Liverpool City Centre.  Even in my first hours in Liverpool, I was able to take notice of what would become my most lasting memory of Liverpool.  That is, of course, the rowdy, drunken, scary people all over the place.  There were people pissing on the sides of buildings and throwing up on the streets and yelling and random people on the sidewalks.  I’m not saying that I’ve never done any of these things but it was the first time I’ve ever been in a city where the behavior has been so prevalent. 

No biggie.  I’m used to drunken people.  Often, I’m drunken people.  I’ll move on.  In the morning, I went to breakfast at the hotel and it was bad but filling.  The sausages were pretty good.  And I figured that since I was in England, I should have baked beans for breakfast.  Oh, the English . . .

After breakfast, I headed out to the Albert Dock.  The Tate Museum is in that area but I wasn’t really in an art museum mood.  Instead, I went to the museum in which I was really interested – the Beatle Story.  Needless to say, though I’ll say it anyway, it’s a Beatle museum.  It had some really cool exhibits, mostly from the early days, like instruments from the Quarrymen days and relics from the Casbah and Cavern clubs.  There were also brief exhibits for each of the Fab Four during their post-Beatle years.  My favorite exhibit from that section was a glassed-off room that had John Lennon’s white piano, a guitar and a pair of Lennon’s glasses.

The Beatle museum, however, was just a lead up for one of the things on this trip to which I was most looking forward – the Magical Mystery Tour.  Yes, I’m a Beatle freak and this trip to Liverpool was a pilgrimage of sorts.  I’ll move on to that in the next entry.

Poison Gardens and English Markets

Before leaving Blarney Castle completely, I want to mention that after coming down from the castle (which took considerably less time than going down), I came across the castle’s poison garden.  I’m not sure of the origin of the poison garden and I’m aware that there are similar gardens elsewhere, but it was the first one that I had ever seen and I thought it was pretty cool.

I left the castle and headed back to Blarney to catch the bus back into Cork.  The roads were being cordoned off for something.  There was a stage set up and people were just beginning to line up on the side of the road.  I’m not sure if there was some sort of parade or if it was the finishing line of a race.  Truth is, I just didn’t care that much.  I was hungry and I wanted to get back into Cork.

Somewhere along the line, something happened to my ankle.  I’m not sure what is was or where it happened, but my ankle started to get really sore.  I’m thinking that maybe it’s just stress on the Achilles but I’m a lawyer, not a doctor, so I’m just guessing.  Anyway, it was making walking around for long periods of time mighty painful, so I decided to try to cut down on the walking.  Soaking my foot for a while in the bathtub helped, but only for a short period of time.  Okay, enough about me.

 That evening, I tried to walk around and take some more photos but the weather still wasn’t great for it.  I toyed with the idea of going to the Butter Museum down the street because I had never been to a butter museum before, but then I decided that there were two reasons that I had never been to a butter museum.  First of all, I had never seen a butter museum.  Secondly, I’m just not that into butter.  Nevermind.

I got up fairly early on Friday.  In the afternoon, I was going to fly to Liverpool and I didn’t have to check out of my hotel until noon, so I decided to go out to the English Market.  It was good enough for Queen Elizabeth II when she visited Cork the previous week, so I figured it was good enough for me.  I had general directions, and it was pretty close to my hotel, so I headed out in search of the landmark.  After about forty minutes, I gave up.  I couldn’t find it.  I decided to head home.  Much as was the case with the Dublin castle, on my way home, I happened along the English Market.  Go figure.

The English Market is pretty much what it sounds like.  It’s a market.  Lots of butcher shops within with some pretty, pretty meat products.  Lots of fresh produce.  Also, there were a few stands selling prepared food.  I, being hungry, decided to indulge.  I had a sausage sandwich on a sub roll with onions, peppers and mustard.  Nothing like ballpark fare for breakfast.

I returned to the hotel and packed up.  I walked back to the bus station and got a ticket for a bus to the airport.  Because of the time I had to check out, I got to the airport about four hours early.  The baggage check didn’t open for two more hours, so I downloaded Angry Birds and just killed time that way.  I checked my bag and went to the bar near the gate for some Murphy’s.  While I was there, I started reading reviews about Ryanair, which was the airline I was taking because their prices were so cheap.  The reviews were nearly universal – Ryanair sucks.  A grand total of two out of ten on the website at which I was looking.  I was nervous but it turned out not to be too bad a flight.  The only problem was the other passengers, many of which, I’d be willing to bet, had never been on a plane before.  People were walking around the cabin throughout the flight and as we were taxiing to the gate after we landed.  US Marshals would have gunned these people down.  If I was packing . . .

That ended my Irish adventures for the time being.  I’ll be back in Dublin for a few days at the end of the trip.  Next up in the blog will be Liverpool.

County Cork and a Load of Blarney

I got up early on Wednesday in order to get to the bus station and head out of Dublin.  Somehow, I managed to get lost on my way to the station but I still got there in plenty of time.  The trip took about four-and-a-half hours and there was a stop in the middle for about fifteen minutes for food and toilets.

I got into Cork and, once again, it was pretty easy to find the hotel from the bus station.  The station is in the middle of town, close to St. Patrick Street, which is the main retail part of the city, and there were signs directing me to the hotel.

The weather in Cork was similar to the weather in Dublin.  I’ve never seen the weather anywhere in the world change so often in a single day.  We would go from heavily overcast to sunny to rainy.  Sometimes it would rain while the sun was out.  It would change from the time I left my room to the time I walked out of the hotel doors.  The one thing that was constant was the wind.  In the hotel rooms, I could hear it howling and it would cool me through my clothes whenever I tried to walk through it.

I walked around and took some photos but the weather wasn’t particularly cooperative.  I grabbed a late lunch and then returned to the hotel.  Between the cold and the previous night’s insomnia, I decided that it was time to take a nap.  I got up around eight and went out for some beer and some dinner.   It was another relatively quiet night as I watched some television and wrote.

There were three things in particular that I was looking forward to seeing on this trip to Great Britain.  The first one was Blarney Castle so I would have a chance to kiss the Blarney Stone.  I’m not sure why.  It’s not that attractive.  I’d be kissing something that has been kissed by millions of other people, even though it’s probably not the first time I could make that claim.  Nevertheless, I was really looking forward to this part of my trip.

I got up and went to the bus station to get a ticket to Blarney.  From Cork, the buses run pretty much every hour and a round-trip ticket costs around $8.  After buying the ticket, I had some time to kill until the next bus so I grabbed a sausage and egg sandwich and waited for the bus.  The trip took about thirty minutes and dropped us off a short walk from the Blarney Castle complex.  It was strange because even though the castle is a huge structure on top of a hill, you still have to follow the signs to find the entrance to the complex because everything is hidden behind the trees leading up to the castle.

It costs ten euros to get into the complex and from there, it is maybe a quarter-mile walk to the castle.  As you come around one of the bends, the castle jumps out at you as large structures tend to do.  As far as castles go, I don’t suppose that it’s the most impressive structure, but since we don’t have castles in the United States, I found it quite interesting.  Still, the weather was constantly changing and as it started to sprinkle, I decided to head straight to the entrance to get inside.

Inside the castle, there was a long line, predictably, leading up the steps to the top, where the Blarney Stone is located.  It was dark and dank inside the castle with a few plaques explaining how the castle had changed over the years.  The trip to the top of the castle went up narrow, steep stone steps.  (Say that five times fast.)  It probably would have been a pain in the ass to go up quickly, but we were only going up a step or two at a time because of the line of people in front of us, so it was quite a leisurely trip.  Once at the top, the line winded around about a quarter of the way along the castle wall the to the Blarney Stone.  I had made it this far, so of course I had to kiss it.  While we waited, though, there were some great views from the top of the castle.  

Kissing the Blarney Stone isn’t as simple as it sounds.  It requires you to lie down on your back; lean half of your body over the edge of the castle roof; bend over backwards from the middle back; and kiss the bottom white stone of a broken wall.  It’s safe enough but it did cause all of the blood to rush to my head which made the next forty or so seconds fun as I felt like I had just finished off an ounce of jerk chicken.  Anyway, I don’t know if I’ve been granted the gift of gab as promised by all of the legends, but at least it was something else that I can now cross off my list of things to do.

That’s it for now.  I should be able to finish up Blarney and Cork in the next entry.

Dublin Down

My next day in Dublin, my second, was also to be my final day in Dublin for a while.  I’m also planning to spend my final two days on this trip in Dublin, though, so I’ll be back.

I got up early and decided at first to just walk around the city and see what I could learn.  Along the way, I stopped by a shopping center for some coffee and walked through a few parks in/near the heart of the city.  I also noticed a few things.  One thing is that any woman with an Irish accent is hot.  I don’t care what she looks like.  She’s just hot.  Once she starts speaking Gaelic, that all changes, but as long as it’s English with an Irish accent, she’s hot.  Another thing that I learned is that almost every store/shop front in Dublin makes the place look like an Irish pub from the outside because of the font and size of the lettering and the dark windows.  Dentist offices, hardware stores, cheese shops; they all look like Irish pubs from the outside.  One more thing I learned is that it seems to stay light outside mighty late here.  We still have nearly a month until the longest day of the year here and at 10:00 pm, it’s still not completely dark.  Sort of reminds me of Madrid.

I walked around and through the Trinity College campus.  It wasn’t huge, as far as I could tell, and I didn’t bother to do the complete tour.  I strolled around and took some photos and then headed over to Grafton Street to see if there was anything going on.  It reminded me a lot of the Temple Bar area, which also was close by.  For lunch, I got off of my Irish food kick and stopped by the Hard Rock Café for some wings.  They were my first wings since Panama and made me happy.

After winging it, I started to search for the Dublin Castle.  I knew its general vicinity but didn’t know exactly where it was.  After walking around for an hour, I happened along a sign identifying the pedestrian entrance to the castle.  Evidently, I had walked past it a few times over the two days I was there and never even realized it.  Better late than never, I figured, and I went in.  It had started to rain, so it gave me a place to hide from the weather.  I took some photos but since the clouds were so heavy, they couldn’t help but be dark. 

Early in the evening, I walked towards the neighborhood of the bus station because I knew that I was going to have to find that early in the morning in order to catch my bus for Cork.  Not too far away, I saw a restaurant that looked pretty Irish and had relatively affordable prices.  I opted for Bangers and Mash and wasn’t disappointed at all.  I generally like spicy sausages, but the mild bangers in onion gravy kick some serious butt.  I wolfed it down with a few beers and returned to my hotel.  It was becoming painfully obvious to me, though, that I wasn’t going to be able to go out and eat and drink beer at every meal.  Dublin is pretty damned expensive.

I watched Sky News on television and brought home some Murphy’s.  I had hoped to get to bed early because I had an early bus out of town, but that didn’t work out well as insomnia took hold.  I’d like to blame it on jet lag but this seemed like good old-fashioned insomnia to me.  I finally went to sleep around 3:30 am.

I’ll pick up the trip to Cork in the next entry.

Guinness - It's More Than Just a Book of World Records

The plane didn’t crash and security didn’t escort us from the airport to make room for the Obamas so it was time to find my way into the city of Dublin.  Immigration and customs was a breeze and I was able to change some money and buy a bus ticket into Dublin City Centre from a booth in the baggage claim area.

I had looked up the bus stop closest to my hotel in Dublin and I had looked up directions from Google Maps and looked at the walk from the photos on Google Maps.  It was the first time that I had tried it and I’ll do it every time from now on.  Even though I had written down the directions from the bus stop to my hotel, I never even took them out of my pocket because having followed the direction photos on Google Maps it was like I had already been there.  It was pretty cool.

It was too early to check into my hotel, but I was able to drop off my bags and peruse the brochures at the hotel to find something to do for a handful of hours.  Needless to say, once I saw a brochure with a picture of beer on it, my mind was made up.  Yes, I decided to go to the Guinness Storehouse.

The Guinness Storehouse was about a twenty-minute walk from my hotel, under perfect circumstances.  Circumstances weren’t exactly perfect, however.  As it turned out, President Obama had decided to stalk me all the way to Dublin.  Consequently, many of the roads that I wanted to use in getting to the Guinness Storehouse had been blocked off for his visit.  I managed to get through the maze of police barricades but then it turned out that my directions to the Storehouse weren’t as good as my Google Maps directions and, all-in-all, it took about an hour to get there.  Meh . . . I had time to kill anyway.

I wrote about the Heineken Museum when I went to Amsterdam.  The Guinness Storehouse wasn’t much different other than the fact that the beer was much darker.  And better.  You got to see some hops, you got to see some barley, you got to see some water and you heard about the “special” yeast that Guinness uses.  There were old advertisements and bottles (always my second-favorite part of these tours) and free beer at the end (my favorite part of these tours).  My beer was cold.  It was good.  I was happy. 

After the Guinness Storehouse, I made my way back to the hotel in order to check-in.  My trip took me through the Temple Bar area and by this time the crowds waiting for Obama were getting huge.  There were thousands of people, many of which were carrying around American flags and wearing Obama gear.  I even heard some people chanting “USA!  USA!”  After all of my travels, I have to say that it was a little refreshing to see people with an American flag in one hand without having a lighter in the other.

After I checked into my hotel, I went upstairs and took a nap.  I was pretty much dead on my feet at this point.  I woke up around six and went back out to get a beer or two and some Irish food.  After stopping at a few places for a few Guinnesses (Guinnii?), I stopped into a restaurant for some Irish Stew.  I got a pretty good stew with potatoes, carrots and onions and a large-ass lamb shank in it. 

That was pretty much it for excitement for my first day in Ireland.  I’ll get to the second day next time.

Destination Dublin

I’m back on the road again, so it seems like an appropriate time to start writing about it again.  This trip is much shorter than any of the others, lasting only a tad under two weeks.  Also, it is primarily covering only a handful of cities in two countries – Ireland and England.  The plan is to spend four nights in Ireland, six in England, and then finish with two more back in Ireland.  First stop:  Dublin.

The first part of the trip, as always, was the trip there and, as always, involved adventures in air travel.  This season’s contestant was US Airways.  Let’s see how it did.

The first flight was from Raleigh to Philadelphia.  I got to the airport early, like I always do, and checked in easily and quickly, like I always do in Raleigh.  Getting there early paid off in this case, for a change, because I was hungry and the Five Guys at RDU Airport has finally opened.  I do love me some Five Guys.  So, there was that and there’s always wifi at RDU and plenty of places to plug in my computer.  As far as waits go, it’s a pleasant place to do it.

The flight to Philadelphia was also painless.  I got my aisle seat and my Coke Zero and I was happy.  The time in Philadelphia, though, was a little less pleasant, albeit not horrible.  There is no wifi at the Philadelphia airport and it’s always crowded, so finding a place to plug things in takes a little work.  Fortunately, however, I arrived this time when shops were open, so I did get some Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.  I do love me some Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.  Getting something to eat was a little more difficult, however, despite being necessary since I had a six-hour layover.  For some reason, the entire population of Philadelphia was in the airport, sitting in the airport bars and restaurants.  Don’t get me wrong; I don’t blame them for wanting to leave Philadelphia, but I wish some of them would have taken the train or driven.  Eventually, though, I got some food and got on the plane.

Getting onto the plane to Dublin turned out to be chaos.  Our plane was changed so we were moved from a 767 to a much smaller plane.  This resulted in a lot of people being moved around to different seats, including several people being separated from their dearly beloveds.  I wasn’t moved, but that wasn’t a good thing.  As it turned out, my 16E, which was an aisle seat on the original 767, was now a middle seat.  On a full flight.  Crap!!!  When I got to my seat, somebody already was sitting there.  He wanted to sit next to his wife, so whatever, I decided to take his seat.  It couldn’t be worse.  Well, it wasn’t any better.  It was another middle seat.  When I got to that seat, sure enough, somebody else was sitting in it in order to sit next to HIS wife.  Okay, where are you supposed to be sitting, buddy?  I took his seat and I ended up in a window seat. 

The last time I took a window seat on a long flight, it was a red-eye from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. and I had a little bit of a panic attack.  The claustrophobia got to me.  I’ve refused window seats ever since.  This time, though, I had to suck it up.  I had a few moments of discomfort at the beginning of the flight, but it settled with a handful of Tylenol PM.  It turned out to work to my benefit since it’s a lot easier to sleep in a window seat and I did get about three hours of sleep on the six-and-a-half hour flight.  I’ll take it.

As soon as we got into the air, the pilot told us that he was going to try to cut off some time in order to get us into Dublin a half-hour or so early because Barrack Obama was scheduled to arrive at the airport around the same time that we were scheduled and the pilot was afraid that they’d shut down the airport and we would have to land at another airport if Obama beat us there.  He was true to his word and we arrived a little early, but not without incident.  The winds in Dublin were pretty bad, with gusts of over 30 MPH.  After the landing gear came out and we were approaching the runway, you could look out the window at the wings and see that we were definitely fighting to be level.  This wasn’t lost on anybody on the plane as we heard a steadily increasing number of gasps as we got closer to touching down.  As the plane landed, you could hear a collective sigh that sucked all of the air out of the cabin and a flight attendant came on the intercom and said, “Well, how about that, then.  Welcome to Dublin.”

We were safe.  We were ahead of Obama.  All was well.  It was time to make it into the city.  I’ll get to that later.