Explorers, Volume 2 – A drive from Dublin to the Atlantic and back in the Land of the Shamrock.

In contrast to personnel at O’Hare, the security for departures at Copenhagen Airport can easily be likened to a splendid and joyous salutations committee. No shoe removal, no belt removal, but pleasurable niceties all around. The flight was smooth and the tarmac at Dublin Airport upon arrival was studded with green lights, illuminating the runway – glowing emeralds from Oz, welcoming us to the country of lucky charms.

In picking up our vehicle rental, our American accents were obvious enough to where we were handed a pamphlet with instruction on how to navigate roundabouts.

It’s easy. Once you deduct the idea that you’ll be driving on the left-hand side of the road, while the steering wheel and pedals are on the right-hand side of the car, along with everything else being backward including the direction of the windshield wipers, you merely don’t signal to the right if you’re planning to swerve backward in a forty-five degree turn to the right, while beginning your turn to the left.

Don’t stop, only yield. Unless you see a car coming from the other way. Then you gotta stop or die. I might also add that all the gauges inside the car as well as the signage on the roads are obviously all in metric.

We swung around the semi-ring M50 Motorway to our check-in at The Dean in downtown Dublin. With a stroke of magically delicious luck they somehow accidentally reserved the penthouse suite for our stay instead of a regular room. The hotel, sort of a boutique itself, seemed it was directly in the middle of an EDM southside Irish club scene. Our sleek yet inviting room of dark hardwood and colours in green scheme came equipped with warmth – a turntable and a minifridge of interesting local beers. I got to crack a few and sit on the balcony in the mild city night and listen people entering and existing Sophie’s Rooftop and to distant ravers rave to whatever twenty-one year old children rave about in the Euro-nightlife.

In the morning I went to run a few laps around Stephen’s Green, an historical, rectangular garden park lined with lime trees, which is only two blocks away from The Dean on Harcourt. In one of the more memorable runs I’ve gone on, the classic grey, misty morning weather with a slippery granite sidewalk offered cooling sprinkles of drizzle from the sky. I breathed in the terroir from city aromas and greenery. I consciously tried to remember to run on the left hand side of the sidewalk out of a certain local respect for the Irish and the UK in general, but I wasn’t feeling as though anyone cared.

We strolled the capital city streets of all-cobblestone-everything-Dublin, the heart of The Pale. The vibrantly painted front doors of the upper-class Georgian Dubliners presented a telltale expressive array pulled from an artist’s palette and displayed as an active piece as we walked passed. Vivid reds and cool hues of purples and blues – navy to sea foam, radiating panes under fan lights.

At the south bank of the River Liffey we ventured to tourist-geared enclave Temple Bar, to me, the original NOLA French Quarter or Wrigleville of sorts. After imbibing at The Porterhouse, we settled in to a deep mahogany table of coziness at Gallagher’s Boxty House. Traditional boxty – Irish potato pancakes flung aloft to orbit the room, honing in to land on our plates like luscious UFOs.

After exploring Dublin Castle, adjacent the Dark Pool, once home to the Lordship of Ireland, we ventured to Phoenix Park. After Dublin and its hinterland were conquered by the Normans, the 1^st Baron of Castleknock, handed a spacious land acreage to the Knights Hospitaller. This land, Phoenix Park would be the location of the surgical knife stabbing of Irish dignitaries by the Irish National Invincibles, an insurgent, no-nonsense group of street toughs out for blood.

In present day the fallow deer herd about, and the shy jaybird flock along the greenery and pastures of Fury Glen. The large urban park holds monuments to an elegy and sandstone towers of requiem.

Dublin zoo, inside Phoenix Park holds the European studbook for Muloccan Cockatoos. Travels in zoology provided a chirping, yelping stroll past the Sea Lion Coves and an Orangutan Forest. Golden lion tamarins and ring tailed lemurs. Pigmy goats and Rodrigues fruit bats – every animal, adorable and atrocious, if they could fit it on the ark, we got to watch it frolic.

My follow up inquiry to you: how in the world is a giraffe any less of a mystical being than a unicorn? I mean just look at one in real life, grazing the leaves.

The future very-end cap of our Ireland trip would eventually place us back in Dublin for a stay at The Mont Hotel near Merrion Square, unwinding in the basement bar Speranza for a final 2019 European cocktail, truly clueless of what would lie ahead in the year 2020.

A nearby parking structure would blow my mind that day, as below red neon lighting we would pull inside an elevator for cars. We waited patiently in a big box, and when the door re-opened, we then drove out on a different floor. I’m not certain if this invention only exists in the UK. I mean really it’s just a large elevator. But I want to say one thing – sitting inside of a vehicle while inside of an elevator is no place for the claustrophobic.

We were ennobled and elevated to dine extravagantly at Coppinger Row, a Mediterranean establishment to top a list of the greatest restaurants I’ve ever experienced. Hummus and sheep’s cheese and tzatziki and whole garlic and chili prawns a la plancha. If you would, multiply that by a Coppinger Row whiskey sour with lavender, egg white, fresh lemon, pineapple juice and bitters. Fuckin forget about it. Still day dreaming about this place.

But in prelude to any of that, we packed up to drive from Dublin to Kilkenny. Before launching I went out to grab coffee from Green Bench Café a stone’s throw away through a stone alleyway.

No sooner had I entered the narrow path, did I see a wee man skipping down the corridor. I do understand that my writings become whimsical to a major degree, but right now I’d like to just reiterate that he was literally skipping. Like, “not a care in the world” skipping. Now, listen well; the amount of fucks that that little sprite gave was on a level low enough to chill my spine. He was in a realm that could ONLY be known as Gangster with a capital G. My sole thought as that galloping pixie danced by through the cobblestone Dublin city gangway, was, you guessed it – Leprechaun in the Hood.

I want to pause here and talk about driving in the country in Ireland. Driving on the highway is no big deal once you get the hang of passing on the right. Driving in the city is difficult for a first time visitor like myself. Driving in the country or any type of rurality over there is terrifying to me, and there is no getting used to it. At least not in one week. Literally every single turn required teamwork for Americans like us.

“Ok what do I do here?”

“Just do the complete opposite of what you would normally do. See that car making a right turn in to the wrong lane? Just follow that guy in to the wrong lane.”

Then repeat.

To be sure, merely reaching for the shifter when attempting to reverse…every…single…time…my arm would extend to the right and bang against the door. Every single attempt to put my left arm on the window sill was met with my arm ghosting in to nothing, because when you drive on the right side of a car, there is no window sill to your left. It was truly baffling for me and it helped me to realize we are just animals that are conditioned by nothing but routine and comfort. Mere chimps, bulgy eyes darting around in some strange world where literally nothing has changed but whatever charade of habit we happen to be immediately used to.

The country roads are as narrow as bike paths and they are not lined with shoulders. No, these roads are all lined with either giant rocks, trees, or drop-offs that are probably one hundred feet down, which inevitably end with more giant rocks or trees and maybe an additional drop-off.

Any miscalculation will surely cause your vehicle to plummet to the depths of utter damnation. All I can compare it to is my journey down Pacific Highway 1 in California, but at least during that trip I was on the correct side of the road, and on the correct side of a vehicle.

As we skittered in to Kilkenny on the banks of the River Nore, I must admit, roundabouting in to civilization felt very nice. I had a pint of Guinness in a local Kilkenny pub. No matter how intentional I was on this journey to locate craft beer, save for a few occasions I mainly found a lot of Guinness handles, red ale, and lite lager. The Guinness was nostalgic for me. But I’ll be honest – it had been so long, I don’t know if the rumors are true that the recipe is different or not compared to the States.

Former brewing centre of the 17^th Century and home to Smithwick’s red ale, the town also contains Kilkenny Castle, a monument in symbolism of a medieval city. The four-towered beast was once seat to the Butlers of Ormonde – a family that changed their name to FitzWalter, I’d have to assume due to razzing from other royal families. No powerfully established entity wants to be named after the help, of course.

Black Abbey Church was built in 1225 and it was named after the friars of the Dominican Order who wore black cloaks. The place looks like it was set aflame, charred by Lucifer himself. While breathtakingly beautiful, also intimidatingly black like a demon from the crypt. Ash and cinder dominate the hellish façade. Inside, altars and stained glass complete the feel of a dark ritual from the spellbound and the profane.

In County Tipperary we visited the Rock of Cashel. So what happened is the Rock materialized in what is now a mountain called the Devil’s Bit, thirty kilometres away. After Saint Patrick banished him to the isolated peak, the Devil took a bite out of the mountain and spat the Rock in to a hovering stasis, which ended up in Cashel.

Cormac’s Chapel located on the rock is an Irish-Romanesque structure, with wide arches and barrel-vaulted ceilings. There is a sarcophagus at the western wall with intertwined beasts, eternal life conceptualized, frozen in stone. The chapel was built from sandstone and became waterlogged over one thousand years, causing damage to the wall frescoes. Now the chapel contains interior dehumidifiers used to keep the stone dry. We had to time our entry in to the chapel as to not have the door open too long. The humidity levels as a life support system are meticulously kept track of by computer, and if they get too high, a company in Greenwich England is notified. I don’t know what they would do, but they must have a series of moisture graphs on display next to the atomic clocks.

There is a spirituality up there on top of that Rock in which humans and computers cannot convey. It’s a strange place on Earth. It comes with a feeling one cannot describe, and it shall be contained in my being. In a feeble non-attempt I will at least just list the things I saw: An enormous cruciform cathedral with limestone outcrop and no roof, petroglyphs, edifices of grotesque heads to scare fairies, a round tower built in 1100 AD, big bats, black crows, a plateau with an astounding view of the countryside and lazily grazing cows. A spine-tingling cemetery where Nosferatu haunts, containing Scully’s Cross, a giant gothic gravestead that was struck by lightning. It is enough to make the most eager, stone-rubbing enthusiast turn tale and scurry like a titmouse.

Medieval stronghold, Blarney Castle in the townland of Blarney, built in 1210 AD is in partial ruin yet most definitely explorable to tourists capable of making the trek through the upward winding staircase. Specific body-types can and will get lodged in the spiral. There is no rail, but a rope for guidance. Blarney Castle is the epitome of why people should travel while young. There is no ADA compliant route through the structure.

Built by the MacCarthy of Muskerry dynasty, the castle and the Scottish baronial-style mansion, known as Blarney House are all maintained on the demesne.

Atop Blarney Castle lies The Stone of Eloquence, also known as the Blarney Stone. It used to be a machicolation – an opening through which rocks or boiling oil could be dropped on attackers at the base of a defensive wall. Machicolations, in themselves make me wonder how often they were actually used. As soon as you even get word that there is a device that drops boiling oil, or boiling anything on someone, is there really even a first attempt, let alone a second attempt? In an entire millennium of medieval barbarism and warfare, has any machicolation anywhere, ever had to have been utilized more than one solitary time?

People stand in line on top of the tower and lower themselves down backward, craning their neck, having to be suspended by an employee, in order to kiss the Blarney Stone in hopes of mystically gaining the gift of eloquence. It could be an ironic spoof that a gift such as flattery might be handed down after performing the most awkward, unflattering act I’ve seen to date. I did not kiss the Blarney Stone.

I heard a rumor that locals pee on the stone because they think it’s funny that tourists come from all over the world to kiss it. I will say that making the trek up there combined with security and cost of admission as well as how many proud people are there, it seems unlikely that this would happen often. Possible but not probable.

The truth is it wouldn’t matter. Someone’s urine running off the side of the Blarney Stone would basically be sterile compared to the number of mouth germs left behind by tourists from all over the world. Leaking saliva from every walk of life, swimming with potentially every disease worth carrying in the oral cavity. Regurgitated garlic and onion residue, gingivitis-plagued mucus, plague-plagued mucus. The vague idea of some local kid urinating on the stone for kicks, only serves as a chance to cleanse the damn thing from five-trillion microbial cells of small pox, leprosy and Black Death coming from everyone and their aunt mashing their slimy food holes against that damn rock.

Surrounding the skylifted castle battlements lie gardenways and trail systems. Pathways, the Druid’s Circle, and the Druid’s Cave, where the old bedraggled hermit once lived for a haunted century – one the very first Irish cavedwellers. At Rock Close in the Blarney Ring, tree roots grow around ancient stones creating canopies of shelter over twisted faces in rock formations.

We gazed down the mossy green stone Wishing Steps. If one is able to walk down and back up these steps, backward, with their eyes closed, without thinking of anything other than their one true wish, then that wish will come to fruition within one year. Now I want to be honest here, my then-girlfriend, now-wife wished for a baby. Within a year she had two babies so I’m not quite sure she understood the goal of the activity.

A fire is lit every night by the Witch of Blarney as she attempts to fend off the cold in ember and coal. The firewood stolen from the estate is in an understanding that she must grant the wishes of the visitors. The Witch of Blarney has been frozen in time, green in captivity of the Witch Stone. Leave a coin and make a wish pure and true before whisking away to the fairy glade and the olde flax mill, where one river passes under another.

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Cork city centre stands as a full island between two channels of the River Lee, spotted with quays and wharfs leading out to Cork Harbour.

Dinner in Cork was at The Franciscan Well in North Mall under dark sky and starlight, with a Rebel Red and a Friar Weiss. These beers were incorporated with wood-fire pizza and an award-winning Jameson Whiskey barrel-aged pale ale, bright and shiny to cut through the grease.

The Well opened in Shandon Friary, a Franciscan Monastery dating back to 1214. The water from the courtyard well had curative properties in the realm of the miraculous, and multitudes traveled from afar just on an idea of claiming a chance to sip from the copper bucket of eternal life. Franciscan Well formulates their beers with this wellspring of holy water in an age-old tradition of a blending of classical beer styling with magical potion and elixir.

Cask is a cocktail bar that made me feel very at home on MacCurtain Street in Cork city. In an old building in Victorian Quarter, taxidermy mammals and blue plush seating welcomed us to seasonal, nature-led drinks. Under cozy dim light we cheers’d tumblers and stemware of Cask chocolate woodland liqueur and sorrel margaritas with rhubarb grown right on the rooftop.

The cocktail menu at Cask flips gears every three months and it is founded on wild, local Irish ingredients, which can be foraged only during that time of year. Research from petal to root in attempt to harness flavor combinations to dazzle the wild eyed and spin the naysayer.

Cork Coffee Roasters in the morning filled our canteens with liquid stimulus derived from their heavy metal roaster. Nuanced flavors sprang from my vessel as we boarded our machine once again to navigate urbanscape and countryside, heading toward and adventure along The Ring of Kerry.

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The stunning, scenic and vast counter-clockwise loop of The Ring of Kerry was an experience to behold. The route takes in rugged coastal landscapes and seaside villages off to the distance, traversing the spectacular green pastures of Ireland. Deep verdant, and mossy aromas abound. The scent and visions inspired a true harmony in which photographs could never show.

The Cascade of the Wild Boar, the Torc Waterfall, drops from on high out of the Devil’s Punchbowl, a glacial corrie tarn at Mangerton Mountain. Native red deer lap at the cool stream where it ends at the base of majestic Torc Mountain along a Ring of Kerry detour in Killarney National Park.

We arrived at Muckross Traditional Farms in County Kerry, to find a 1930s version of Ireland before electricity had been introduced to the countryside. Like a living version of M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village”, we walked past mules, and talked with farmers and blacksmiths who may or may not have realized it wasn’t the past.

Laborer’s cottages, carpenter’s workshops, a schoolhouse. Wheel barrels of peatmoss and a family of pooping pigs. We saw giant, majestic wolfhounds howling to the pastures, Clydesdales, and a stable packed full of baby animals – puppies, ponies, goats, kittens and lambs all housed together in adorable mayhem.

It was a tinge odd and sort of confounding. Were these people working here all actors? I have to be honest, I still don’t know for sure.

We declined a carriage ride due to a mildly cautious feeling of abduction on the horizon. As the farm closed down for the evening we trekked back toward the front gates of present day society.

We made it to the West of Ireland and landed in the City of Galway. Once ruled by an oligarchy of fourteen families called the Tribes of Galway, the city houses the Irish port for Spanish and French trade. From the Irish Potato Famine all the way to the Celtic Tiger, Galway has been the Coat of Arms and the Graveyard of Ambition.

Walking through a Spanish Arch, one of the two remaining arches on the Ceann an Bhalla, we were delighted to score a small table at The Pie Maker in Galway’s Latin Quarter. I juggled spelt flour royal pies four at a time, popping them in to my mouth to an eccentric applause and standing ovation from strangers.

Mushroom and kale, and Irish beef pies, sweet potato and white chocolate – sugary and savory alike. Mashed potatoes, mushy peas and red cabbage were all a part of my routine as I gorged without a care, while walls of emerald and copper surrounded the cozy square, wooden tables. We felt lucky enough to be there that we held camp for about as long as we felt we could.

The night capped at Hyde Gin Parlour, a venue in the Forster Court Hotel, with the most extensive gin collection in all of Ireland. A catalogued motif of spirit bottles from all over the world on display behind glass.

From the aperitif to the digestif the drink menu was like pouring over a colourfully written essay, each segment I wanted to unfurl and analyze to the fullest extent. Not unlike many of the establishments I’ve documented, I wish I had a six-hour stint of time to just hang there and explore the drinks.

Of the many cocktails they slid in our direction, the standout was called Hyde Your Wives. With Hyde Gin, green Chartreuse, passion fruit, orgeat, tiki bitters, pineapple and lime in our glassware, beneath a red, white and neon pink flower mosaic on the wall adjacent, we talked about the travels to occur in the coming days

Before exodus from the city of Galway, at sunrise we stopped at Badger & Dodo Artisan Coffee for an aeropress pour. Understanding that heat needs to be controlled to extract various and unique flavours from the beans, Badger & Dodo’s cast iron roaster, Doctor O, blending artistry and scientific appeal, becomes an paintbrush of precision. They import their coffee straight in to Port of Cork from Brazil and Colombia, bypassing England, as to maximize income for the farmers and well as emphasizing the Irish economy.

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Sea cliffs at the southwestern cusp of the Burrenregion in County Clare, the Cliffs of Moher are a jarring and breathtaking natural phenomenon, towering heights of seven hundred feet over the crashing Atlantic Ocean. Spanning over nine miles, from Hag’s Head to Doolin, sea fog and drizzle, the sights and views of the ocean are majestic. O’Brien’s Tower, a cylindrical stone structure from 1835 caps the highest peak of lush green over deep brown Namurian shale and sandstone. An organic structure, the Cliffs of Moher were developed over three hundred million years.

Atlantic puffins congregate on Goat Island to watch the seals, dolphins and sharks bask and the sunfish swim below haystack rocks. Feral goats and badgers skitter by as lazy cows graze and relax in the mild ocean spray climate.

There is a certain portion marked off as national park area trail, and either side of that fence is, well, potential tragedy. People don’t care. Thousands of people every day climb over the rail and walk over to the areas where it says not to walk over to. Call me reserved if you will, but I felt odd seeing that.

Relatively speaking, not many people fall, but it does happen. And when they do fall it most certainly is to their death. I read sixty-six people fell off in the last twenty-five years. That’s over two people a year who accidentally go diving of the cliff in supersonic freefall.

In 2016 a guy fell off attempting to get the best selfie he could. I found it interesting that people don’t care or don’t seem to understand that it’s all a natural phenomenon and only certain parts are somewhat promised not to spontaneously erode right underneath your feet due to the weight of your body. The views of the ocean and cliffs are truly awe-inspiring. Why ruin a photograph in the first place by blocking the scenery with your mug? I’m persuaded to believe this regret of pure vanity might be someone’s final analysis as they drop unencumbered at Mach 1.0 full gravity to the blue riptide waves and jagged rock shards below.

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Welp. I mentioned above how difficult it was for me to navigate the Irish countryside roads. I will now shift focus on navigating the Irish countryside roads at night.

I don’t know how we ended up driving at night because we very intentionally decided that we would not allow ourselves to be stuck driving those narrow, winding cart paths in the dark. We only assumed there would be no street lighting and I wished we had been incorrect. We also began to learn when the sun started to set, along with our confidence that Murphy’s Law originated with Ireland. That “luck o’ the Irish” merely reflects the idea that most Irishmen don’t die on the roads out there. I don’t have one drop of Irish blood in my veins.

The speed limit is typically 80kph because Ireland is on crack. We barely broke 55kph because those roads were designed for horse and carriage, not rental car Honda Civic and tour bus.

White knuckled I drove on and on in the dark, unaided by sunlight waves, wondering yet again what people did before Google maps.  Any attempt to momentarily shift focus from road toward the idea of how the hell we miscalculated our remaining daylight hours, was quickly shuttered by oncoming cars and busses passing mere inches away. At least by that point we would have zero clue of what size boulder we even hit if we were to plow in to it or over it. Surely we’d be dead before the reaper grabbed us by the collar and flung our corpses to the abyss.

You might guess since you’re reading this that we made it out unscathed. You would be wrong. At some fateful point a baby kangaroo ran out into the road. I don’t know that kangaroos exist in Ireland, but this is how I remember it. In an attempt to avoid smearing it in to the street, the car skidded off to the side. I was not driving at that point. If I were, I’d have plowed right over the filthy nocturnal marsupial. Regardless, two of our tires were now stuck in the mud, spinning. Gunning it only drilled us deeper in the wet topsoil and peat. We were going nowhere and the witching hour was swiftly approaching.

We got out and walked to the nearest farmhouse off in the distance. There was one dim light on, so we knocked. Secretly I hoped no one would answer. I didn’t care what the alternative to that was. I just hoped no one would answer. No one did.

After a few too many futile, anxiety-inducing phone call attempts at locating a tow company in a foreign land that was A) open, and B) close-enough by, we found a guy, thee last tow guy in the area, who through heavy Gaelic dialect would tell us he could be there in an hour. Where “there” was just happened to be our best description of wherever we had landed.

We called Spanish Point House where we were headed, a good thirty minutes away, and we let them know we would be very late for check-in. They were highly sympathetic to our cause and it was honestly comforting how concerned they seemed about us.

The tow guy arrived and thankfully he didn’t murder us and/or steal our car. He was kind. He set up shop and in a red haze of tail light glare in the chilly night fog, he slowly dragged us out of the muck with his flatbed and chain. We paid him in United States dollars, which he was not thrilled about, and we jetted, mud flinging off our tires in to oblivion.

It had been a long time since we had eaten when we reached Spanish Point. There weren’t many stores or restaurants in County Clare, but that didn’t matter – none of them were open. We stopped at an old Irish pub in high hopes that they were still serving food, assuming they even did serve food. If you haven’t been to Ireland, every stereotype of old men drinking Guinness in a pub while Celtic music plays in the background, is true to the very last detail. These particular old men were very friendly, but the pub was closing. There was no food anywhere to be found.

We drove to Spanish Point House, our early-Victorian guesthouse overlooking the coastline. We found a fine young chap waiting up for us. We saw him sitting at the window and as we arrived he adorably jumped to his feet to greet us and see if we were ok. We asked with fading dreams if they had any food to spare or if he knew offhand of any places that might be open still. From behind the clerk desk he pulled out a phone book, flipping through paper pages and dialing a few places. I’d kill for more boxty.

No luck.

He then informed us that he could search around the kitchen and bring us up a bunch of snacks. After we settled in for a moment, he came up brandishing a large plate.

“I found biscuits and chips and beer”

By that point we were so hungry the tray of snacks might as well have been a silver platter fit for the Butlers of Ormonde, sparkling with succulent pig, and foie gras. We thanked him profusely while diving in the pot of gold at the end of our rainbow. Fig Newtons and crackers for dinner. A small bottle of wine – and an iconic yet inappropriately green bottle of Heineken with a glass. It no longer mattered to me that I hate Heineken. I was in no picky mood that night I will tell you. I enjoyed the hell out of that skunky mess of a lukewarm horrible beer, and the brand, well, I now will always hold a small piece of love for.

In the morning, we got to see the Atlantic Ocean surf breaks causing waves to crash on to Spanish Point Beach from our hotel window. Quite a few ships of the Spanish Armada wrecked on that beach. Breathing in that misty morning air was about the best thing I could imagine after that night we had. I sat contemplative, thinking of the Spanish Armada survivors who were all quickly executed by the Sheriff of Clare, wondering if we had damaged that rental car, curious if whoever owned that land we tore up was pissed that fine morning, hoping that baby kangaroo was appreciating his spared life, and reminiscing about the only bottle of Heineken I’ve ever enjoyed.

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deandublin.ie

themonthotel.ie

caskcork.com

badgeranddodo.ie

coppingerrow.com

hydebargalway.ie

spanishpointhouse.ie