The Avon Breast Cancer Walk site has all kinds of information – more than you would ever think you needed to know about the event. One of the pages included a ‘what to pack’ list. Lucky for me, I like lists, and this saved me the effort of making one myself. Shorts, t-shirts, sleeping bag for me, extra sleeping bag for the sister flying down from Seattle, extra socks, sunglasses, an economy sized bottle of ibuprofen. All of this had to be stuffed into a bag that could weigh no more than 30 pounds (sleeping bag included) and had to be compact enough to stuff into a two man tent that was actually going to be holding three people (including gear). I am business travel woman – I know how to pack light.

I headed up to Napa and picked up my older sister, and then we zipped off to the airport in San Francisco and older sis wandered through the baggage claim area while I aimlessly circled the terminals (I think I went around at least four times before my little sister called me and we were able to all converge in one spot). And then it was off to the hotel. They’d set up a block of rooms at a reduced price at the Marriott in san Francisco, from whence we would all be bussed at o-dark-thirty Saturday morning to the start of the walk, so it seemed to make the most sense for us to just spend Friday night there.

The Marriott is conveniently located less than a block away from the Metreon, so we dumped off our stuff and checked in with husbands/kids and then we were off to go have fun – fun which consisted first of lunch (at a cafe in the restaurant) and then a movie and virtual bowling (not necessarily in that order). We decided to see ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ because as much as the three of us really wanted to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, we knew our husbands would be far less likely to be miffed at missing a movie if it was a fluffy chick flick. It’s a cute movie – fun and funny without requiring much in the way of thought.

The virtual bowling was my older sister’s idea. Younger sister and I were not too sure about it, but then we started playing and what do you know, it’s really a lot of fun. Also, I am apparently really good at it. First time in my life I have ever scored over 100 on a bowling game. Too bad I will never manage to match that kind of performance in the ‘real world’.

We had dinner at Mel’s Diner because we decided that when facing two days of intense physical activity, one should do some serious loading with foods that are frozen, buttered, or fried. We’d picked up our registration packets moments after they opened the doors, which turned out to be a good thing, because by the time we were done with dinner the line was out the door and things were getting a little crazy in the land of the bright and pink. So after dinner we decided that we ought to try to get to bed early so as to be ready for the far-too-early start the next morning.

The walk started at 7. The pre-walk pep talk started at 6:30. The busses started carting us over slightly before 5am. When we reached Golden Gate Park it was still dark outside, and the air was chilly. But they had a huge spread of food and coffee available, and there was a huge sea of people in pink, and they gave us a lovely little pre-walk talk and a cheered us on, and suddenly, off we went, a huge crowd of a few thousand women and men, transforming slowly from mob to line of walkers over the course of the next few hours.

Saturday’s route took us just a bit through the city before meandering off towards a rather nasty hill and then across the Golden Gate Bridge. From there we wove our way down under the bridge and around the coast and off into cute little coastal touristy communities. The air turned from chilly to almost a bit too warm to be doing this kind of thing. And my feet turned from happy about the whole idea to hating my guts. Ugh.

So once we hit the 13 mile mark, I decided I’d had more than enough pain fun and joined a large crowd of other similarly minded walkers, and headed off to the Wellness Village, which was the temporary camp they’d set up for us in Crissy Field. My older sister really wanted to do the full 26 miles on Saturday, so she and my little sister continued on (although my little sister ended up deciding to call it quits for the day at around mile 18). I figured I might as well get my gear, and our tent, and tried to get that set up, but there was a host of lovely volunteers who were more than happy to do all that for me, so instead I decided to take advantage of the free massages that were being offered.

By the time that was done, however, my right hip had started locking up, my right knee was pretty much useless, and my feet weren’t speaking to me anymore. So the next stop for me was the medical triage tent, where they sent me first to chiropractic, and then on to the physical therapy tent. The general consensus was that I’d managed to seriously wrench a few muscles and I needed to ice them, but it’s rather hard to hold ice onto one’s thigh for long periods of time, so they filled a few large baggies with ice and then used plastic wrap to ‘stick’ them to my leg. I joked that this was my spa treatment, and that at least the one thigh would now be thinner than the other.

My little sister showed up just as I was finishing up my treatment, so I helped her track down our tent. Imagine a sea of blue tents, all identical, set up in rows and rows across a field. Add in the factor of heavy winds that were merrily blowing away all the little markers the volunteers had so carefully laid out, and it meant that unless you had some kind of landmark to follow, trying to find your own tent was an exercise in futility. It was obvious there were people who’d done this before, because a number of tents sported flags, towels, balloons, and any other type of colorful item that would give their inhabitants some idea of how to get back.

My older sister showed up a few hours later, having actually managed to finish the entire 26 miles in one day. By then, my little sister and I had already taken advantage of the fact that there was no line for the showers (they had huge trucks set up in a warehouse that were basically filled with rows of showers – wonderful showers with plenty of hot water and terrific water pressure) and had tried to organize all our stuff in the tent so there’d be room for three people in a space meant for two. The three of us headed off to get dinner, and to pick up whatever goodies were available at the various booths around the site, but then we all went back to the tent and pretty much collapsed. Despite the amount of ibuprofen I’d already taken, and the icing, and the physical therapy, my leg was still in a lot of pain, so my little sister gave me something stronger, and I curled into my sleeping bag, and we were all so tired that we started laughing, until we got fussed at from people in the next tent over, and then the something stronger kicked in and I fell asleep.

I have figured out, in retrospect, why I was having such a hard time with the walk, and my feet, and the pain and all, but at the time I was just annoyed and irritable about the whole thing. We did an insane amount of walking while we were in Ireland and while my feet would hurt sometimes from all the walking, it was a normal type of soreness – nothing like what I was dealing with at the walk. The problem, I’ve decided, is that in Ireland, I wore my hiking boots everywhere, and on the walk, I wore my sneakers, and obviously the two were not one and the same in terms of effectiveness. But Sunday morning I was in too much pain to really be thinking clearly about it. I took a lot more pain killers and we ate breakfast and took down our tent and turned in our gear again, and set off out of the campsite, setting our sights toward the next rest stop which was three miles down the road.

I really did want to try to do the whole thing, but by the time we were about a mile in, it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen. So I made it to the first rest stop and then finally gave up, and my two sisters went on without me. We finally met up again at the end of the walk, and we all got our walker t-shirts (even more pink) and stood around waiting for the post-walk celebration to begin. The crowd cheered for the organizers and we cheered for the volunteers, and we cheered for the San Jose police officers who volunteered their time to provide security and encouragement during the walk (and also a bit of eye candy, since they were all wearing tight shorts and were riding bicycles along the route). We cheered for the fact that as a three person team we managed to raise over $6000, and as a collective whole, we managed to raise over $5.4 million, and then it was finally over and we all collected our gear and piled onto busses and they drove us back to the Marriott. We walked just enough further to track down my car, which sat in a nearby parking garage all weekend, and we debated getting dinner, but by then we were all tired and getting dinner would have somehow required more walking, so we dropped my little sister off at the airport and then I drove my older sister back to Napa, and then I came home and took even more ibuprofen and collapsed and hoped that maybe I could just avoid moving my feet or my legs again for a very, very long time.

Despite the fact that it was an extremely painful event for me, overall, the walk was actually kind of fun. It’s quite possibly one of the most well organized events I’ve ever experienced. Throughout the entire event there were hundreds of staff and volunteers encouraging us, cheering for us, passing out drinks and cookies and buttons, driving by in crazily decorated cars and honking their horns, dancing for us, and supporting us in whatever way they could. Every few miles there were rest stops with water and gaterade and snacks, and medical people ready and waiting to treat sore, blistered feet. The Wellness Village (where we spent Saturday night) was extremely well organized and planned – from the showers to the full stocked medical tents, to the volunteers rushing over to help the walkers set up or take down tents, pack up gear, or whatever else might be needed. It’s definitely something we all thought maybe we might want to do again…except maybe next time we won’t be walkers. Maybe next time we’ll take part as either volunteers, or as staff, based primarily on one important criteria. The volunteers and staff had cars.

Pictures from the walk are all here.

Once we are finally over the post-vacation ick, it’s been a whirlwind of socialization around our house. First up was meeting up with a friend at Ben & Jerry’s, where we could sit outside and chat and people watch and catch up on our respective lives. He’s still working for the Big Fish (or rather, the company that swallowed the Big Fish, because that is the way of the tech business these days) so it’s always a challenge to hook up with him (and if he’s bad, his wife’s even worse – we haven’t seen her in quite possibly years because she’s also always on the go).

Next was a vaguely impromptu barbeque. Richard decided he wanted to do something with his grill, so we had a small crowd of friends over on Saturday night for hamburgers and hot dogs, corn on the cob, and white peach cobbler. Again, these were all friends we often have a hard time coordinating schedules with, so to get them all together on the same night was a welcome change.

And finally, there was the usual gathering of the families for the Fourth of July. Originally we’d talked about tossing a big hunk of salmon on the grill, but while at the grocery store on Monday night, none of the salmon available looked very good, but there just happened to be a turkey available. So…we grilled up the turkey. It’s a very American bird; somehow it made sense. We also had corn on the cob (again, because it was so good!) and I made a chocolate tres leches cake, and I was worried there wouldn’t be enough food from the turkey so I also bought a few containers of potato salad. Richard’s family showed up first, bearing sodas and birthday presents for me (including a huge stuffed dragon that’s covered in swirls of color – it’s very cool). My parents came next, with salad and bread, and finally my older sister and her family arrived bearing a huge bowl of fruit salad.

I think that this Fourth was quite possibly one of the most fun gatherings of family we’ve had in a very long time. Not that family gatherings are so awful, but this was one of those times when everything seemed to click. The boys are both old enough now to be able to hold understandable conversations.

We’d bought a pile of bottles of bubble solution and sent everyone outside while dinner was getting ready, to blow bubbles and enjoy the backyard. My dad brought over his bocce ball set and his new croquet set and the entire family either played or watched the others playing. Turns out those DG paths we’ve got in the backyard make great Bocce ball courts, and my nephews were really getting into it.

The turkey actually took far less time than we’d expected and was done an hour before people were to arrive, so dinner took very little additional work. There was, of course, far more food than we could possibly eat (I didn’t need to get that potato salad after all) and it was all delicious. The cake was a bit experimental, since I’d never made this recipe before, but it turned out pretty good (although I did discover that when they put an expiration date on the can of sweetened condensed milk, they really do mean it).

We weren’t sure if we’d still be able to see the fireworks from the backyard, but this year, at least, it was still possible. The neighbors behind us planted some fast-growing evergreens and they’re just getting to the height where any lower-flying explosions were partially hidden behind them, but since most of the explosions took place higher in the sky, it still worked out. It started getting pretty chilly once the sun began to set, so I ran around gathering up any available blanket, jacket, or sweater (apparently I need to make a few more afghans – they would have come in useful) and passing them out so that everyone would be warm enough.. This is the first year both boys have been willing to sit outside for the whole event, and the fireworks show was pretty good.

Today there are signs lingering everywhere I look of the fun. Even though we foisted leftovers on everyone we could, there is still an entire container of potato salad in the fridge, and slightly less than half the cake (we ate some of it for breakfast this morning), and a huge bag of turkey in the refrigerator. The weather outside is still lovely and there are jars of bubble solution lined up on the raised flower bed where everyone was hanging out, and an extremely colorful stuffed dragon sitting in front of the living room fireplace, and there are the cats, all slowly creeping back into view after all the noise and activity from before.

I have pretty much given up on ever finding a way to replicate those cinnamon chip scones that Starbucks used to carry, but at least the search has turned up a few new scone recipes that are (almost) even better. These Pumpkin Scones, for example, are amazingly filling, and manage to avoid being dry and crumbly like most other scones. And while browsing around the internet one bored afternoon recently, I found this recipe. I’ve made them twice now (the only change was that I substituted whole wheat flour for half the white flour) because they are so very good.

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Apparently this is the week for unseasonable weather all over the country. The East Coast is getting hit with rain and storms, but here on the West Coast we’re getting slammed with unseasonably nasty heat waves. It’s this kind of weather that reminds me of just why it is that one of these years I need to move out of the Sacramento Valley (preferably to somewhere where in the winter, it snows). Ugh.

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After several years of forgetting to go, I finally broke down and went to the dentist yesterday afternoon. The verdict? Three new cavities. Hooray for crappy teeth.

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I have no idea what the graphs from this site mean, except that they somehow graph how your site is connected across the internet. But I will admit that I think the pictures produced are kind of pretty.

Here’s the one for this journal

And here’s the one for Knit One, Purr Too

Before we left for Ireland we were dealing with a situation between Rosie and Checkers that we knew was going to have to be resolved one way or another…but which we also knew had to wait until we returned home. Rosie, unfortunately, is a bit of a bully. With the other cats in the house there’s never been a problem, because if she tries anything, they either ignore it or have enough backbone to smack her, and that ends the issue right there. Checkers, however, has turned out to be a first class wimp, and unfortunately, this has only made matters worse. Rosie charge her every time she sees her, and has taken to lying in wait in the library and essentially trapping Checkers in one of her hiding spots. If Checkers would just haul off and smack Rosie upside the head even once, it would end right there, but since she won’t, things are just getting worse and worse. With the summer heat coming on in full force lately, shutting the door to the library just isn’t an option – it gets really hot in there when there’s no air circulation, even with the air conditioning on. And we also really do not want to have to keep Checkers separated from the rest of the house forever. It’s not fair to her or to the rest of us.

So after we got back and monitored the situation for a bit to see how things were going, we finally called our marvelous housecall vet, and both Rosie and Checkers are now on Praxil. Yes indeed, folks, my cats require behavior alterating drugs. Rosie gets it because it should mellow her out enough so she will stop fixating on Checkers, and Checkers gets it because it should make her feel less anxious and more willing to come out of hiding and try exploring the rest of the house again, once Rosie stops harassing her.

I had to do this twice with Sebastian, but that was years ago, and at that time he was on Buspar, twice a day. It worked, but it was expensive. I was getting it at cost through a vet friend so I was only paying about $1 per pill, but still, he was getting two pills a day and I do not even want to think about how much it would have cost if I’d had to pay the full marked-up price.

With the Praxil, we only have to pill them every other day, which makes all of our lives much, much easier (and also cheaper – because since we got it through our local pharmacy, it’s costing us much more than the Buspar did). This is especially good because while Rosie is fairly easy to pill (in the grand scheme of things), to Checkers the simple act of trying to hold her head still and pry open her jaw is the same as if we were trying to kill her slowly, by ripping off her paws. However, I am hopeful we’ve found a solution – this morning I put her pill in her little plate of wet food and she wolfed it down without even noticing it was there.

There has been some progress, in the week they’ve been on the drug. Rosie isn’t hanging out in Checkers’ room as much anymore, and there hasn’t been a single screaming match between the two of them since they started the medication. And two days ago Checkers came to the very edge of ‘her territory’ and yelled insistantly at Richard until he came into the room to play with her. She hasn’t done that since this whole thing with Rosie started. So this is a good first step.

This morning we had a short list of errands to run. We needed to buy the last of the summer birthday presents, come home, wrap them all up, drop off my dad’s Father’s Day present at my parents’ house (since he’ll be flying away tomorrow), and ship out the birthday presents that need shipping.

So the first thing we did was head off to the store, where we tracked down the thing we were looking for almost immediately, and then we came home and got the presents wrapped and I rummaged through my yarn stash and found the skein that I wanted to send off to my One Skein Secret Pal, and things were going along swimmingly. We got my dad a croquet set, which wasn’t exactly easy to wrap, so instead I decided to just tape a card to the outside and leave it in its case unadorned. As we were gathering everything up to take it out to the car I swung it up onto the kitchen counter (it’s kind of heavy) in order to put it on a flat surface so I could attach the card. I am only mentioning this mundane little detail because it’s important later on.

First stop, my parents’ house. I’ve got a key, and I knew they were off at the Methodist convention in Sacramento so I figured I’d just zip in, leave the croquet set on the dining room table, and zip back out again. Nothing to it, right? Less than a minute and we were off to the UPS store, to get all the packages into the mail. And as we were standing at the counter, my cell phone rang.

“Were you in our house?”

At first I was confused – I thought they were staying in a hotel, so I’d not bothered to ring the doorbell.

“Yes. Sorry – I thought you guys were gone-”

“The security group just called us. You set off the alarm.”

The alarm. Oh yeah. They have an alarm. After they had their house broken into a few months ago they had an alarm system installed. And guess what both Richard and I completely forgot about? Since I’d only been in there for barely 30 seconds I wasn’t there long enough to hear it when the sirens started. And naturally, the security system not only called my dad, they also called the police.

So I left Richard at the UPS store to finish getting the packages shipped and dashed back to my parents’ house, fully expecting to have to explain everything to the police when they showed up (if they weren’t there already) and feeling like a complete idiot. But by the time I got there my dad called back, and let me know that the police call had thankfully been cancelled. Phew. Luckily my parents have a good sense of humor and so we could both laugh about this, and as my dad put it, at least now we’ve successfully tested the system and discovered that it works quite well.

So back to the UPS store I went, picked up Richard, and we headed immediately home. We walked into the house I immediately smelled gas. A LOT of gas. And one look at the oven confirmed my suspicion. Remember when I swung that croquet set up onto the counter? I can only surmise that I must have accidently hit the burner knob, and turned it on. It didn’t light, but it was on just enough to release the gas. And it had had a bit over half an hour to fill the house up with a whole lot of it, because we could smell it *everywhere*.

Luckily this part of the store has a happy ending. Once I figured out the problem I immediately turned off the burner and then we raced madly around the house opening every single window and turning on every single ceilng and exhaust fan. Within a few hours the house was clear and the gas smell was gone. But even though I can laugh about it, and I joked to my knitting friends at the gathering later this afternoon that at least none of the cats had taken up smoking, I know just how damn lucky we were. Because we could just have easily decided to go somewhere else today. We could have gone grocery shopping, or decided to drive off to Costco, or a hundred other errands that would have had us out of the house for a few hours instead of just thirty minutes. The simple act of opening the garage door could have created enough of a spark when we returned. Even during that short time we were gone, there was enough gas in the air that there would have been damage, and if we’d been gone longer the cats might not have been so lucky either. All the windows were closed (because it’s hot out and the air conditioner was on) and a few hours of gas might have meant that some of our cats might have never woken up again. It makes me a little queasy just thinking about it.

So I am counting us lucky right now, even though maybe two crazy things in one morning might not seem like luck to a lot of people. But the luck is that they were only close calls and nothing else. They were only Almost. And that’s pretty darn good luck to me.

How easy it is to slip right back into normal life. The first time I pulled the car out of the garage I moved to the left side of the road (luckily we live at a dead end, so there’s never any traffic); Richard reminded me to move to the right (and I wasn’t even the one driving in Ireland!), but after that, back to the right side of the road and not another thought. We spent the first few days home being sick, which meant plenty of time (between napping and coughing and wheezing) to go through three weeks of accumulated mail (most of it junk anyway) and settle back into the house. There have been the usual things – allergy shots and doctors appointments and going to work and making plans. There have already been birthday celebrations and shopping for presents for all the other upcoming birthdays and other occasions (graduations, Father’s Day, and so on), and boxes from Amazon have already begun to arrive on our doorstep as a result. My knitting mom called me on Friday afternoon to remind me that that night was a knitting night at the home of our friend-with-a-yarn-store, so after work I went to her house and got to meet her latest batch of tiny foster kittens and then we headed off to the knitting night and it was so nice to be back among all of them.

There are things we really ought to be doing, now that we are home. But with the residual low energy from being sick (and having it settle in my sinuses, of course), I am finding it hard to get motivated to do much more than the basics. We did some serious grocery shopping this weekend, but so far that’s about it. There’s a desk we need to list on Freecycle, and a share in a ranch we need to sell, and goodies from Ireland we need to ship off to various family and friends, but really, it won’t hurt anything to let those things just idle for a little bit longer. There are movies here to watch, and computer games to play, and new Terry Pratchett books to read, and cats to pet and colds to get over, and right now, that’s about the most we want to do.

The flight home was thankfully uneventful, since Richard has been getting slowly sicker over the past day or so. Both planes – the one from Dublin to London, and the one from London to San Francisco – were packed, but I managed to get us both aisle seats on the London to San Francisco leg, so it wasn’t nearly as horrid as it could have been, especially considering that we were on a 777, which means 2 seats on either side, and then 5 in the middle. I sat next to a family of three who insisted on getting out and going to the bathroom at least 4 times during the trip, and all as one group. By the last time the guy on the other end of the row and I were starting to laugh about it, because they would always make me move so they could get out, but not once did they ever make him move. Not that it was a huge hassle – it gave me an excuse to stand for a little while each time, and when you’re squashed into coach seats on an international flight, you take any excuse to get up and move about that you can get.

But I am getting ahead of myself. There was the very short flight over to London, where we had to collect our bags. We were both expecting to have to go through customs since we were actually leaving the airport for the night (and thus entering a new country) but there wasn’t a soul around to check anything. We just got our bags and left, right outside to the taxi queue, where we paid a huge sum of money (huge if you take into account that the dollar is doing spectacularly crappy against the pound) to have a taxi drive us to our hotel for the night. It was a typical business type hotel – you have to pay for anything and everything, including breakfast – but it was a million times better than sleeping on the floor of the airport terminal, especially when one of you is sick.

Heathrow was rather a nasty time-suck of a maze when we flew over to Ireland, but that was because we never left the terminal. This time around it was a piece of cake. We checked in, dumped our bags, and then camped out in one of the little waiting areas in the middle of the duty free shopping district and obsessively watching the little monitors for when they would finally tell us the gate number. Heathrow does it different than any airport Ive ever been in in the US – you don’t actually ever find out the gate number until they are ready to board, so we weren’t the only travelers nervously staring at the screen waiting for it to change from ‘pending’ to something actually useful. And then once it finally did there was the mad dash to the gate, or rather, we were nearly trampled by several other people who apparently did not grasp the concept that every single other person on the flight had also been waiting for the gate assignment and thus the plane was not likely to take off at a moment’s notice if they didn’t race insanely down the corridor no matter who got in their way.

We touched down in San Francisco and got to pick up all our luggage again, and lug it all over the place to go through customs and security and then check it right back in, before boarding our very last plane of the trip, which was a teeny tiny little toy of a plane that had actual propellers in the front, and was so small and compact that my head was barely grazing the roof (and I am 5’3″) and the flight attendent actually had to tilt his head to one side when he stood. But the flight itself was ridiculously short, and finally we were back in Sacramento, where we were met by my parents, and we got our bags, and they drove us home and that was it.

Except, of course, that this isn’t exactly the end, because when doing a head count of all the cats once we got inside we discovered that Azzie was nowhere to be found, even though we tore the house apart top to bottom (and trust me, we *know* all the spots in this house where cats can hide), and to make a long story short, it turns out that the pet sitter had accidently left the back door ajar when she and her boyfriend were cleaning up and while they saw Sebastian sneak out, Azzie (who has never before shown the slightest bit of interest in the big scary outdoor world) slipped out without them ever knowing he’d escaped. There was an hour or so of traipsing around in the backyard with flashlights, calling for a cat (who of course never comes when you call in the first place) and accidently waking up the neighbors, and then finally we heard his very distinctive little whine, and after an exciting chase through the thickest and thorniest of bushes in the backyard, we got him back inside. And by this time it was after midnight and Richard was wheezing and we were both in tears because we were really relieved that he was okay, and that seemed like as good a time as any to just go crawl into bed, and that, then, was finally the end.

Today we decided to just take it easy and not try to do much of anything at all. It’s our last day in Ireland and there is a ton of stuff we could have tried to go see in Dublin, but we’re both exhausted, Richard’s coming down with a sore throat and a bit of a cold, and we just needed a day to unwind and not stress about getting to somewhere at any particular time.

So this morning we ate breakfast leisurely, and then checked out of the hotel and dragged our bags up the street about 4 blocks until we reached a bus stop where we could catch a bus that would take us to the city center. We didn’t have long to wait, and we both collapsed in a seat with our suitcases and our coats and stared blearily out the window until we started to recognize where we are and knew it was time to get off.

The internet cafe where I’m typing this entry allows you to leave your luggage for a small fee, which was a plus since it turns out that our hotel had nowhere to stash our stuff once we checked out, and the guy at the tourist info office yesterday had serious doubts as to whether there’d be any working (or available) lockers at the main bus terminal. So we dumped off our bags once we arrived this morning, and the rest of the day has been spent ambling slowly around. We found a used bookstore and miraculously tracked down used copies of two books by Terry Pratchett that are no longer in print in the states, so of course we had to buy them. We found another bookstore – this one huge enough to have three floors of books, stationary, and music, and also a rather nice coffee shop on the top floor, and we lingered there for an hour or two, drinking coffee and eating scones and reading. We ate lunch in a bagel store, with signs everywhere touting the great health benefits of bagels (this amused us), and I took pictures of the four huge statues that line O’Connell street. They’re all shaped like giant stretched-out rabbits, all made of the same black material, and not a single bit of information about who made them or what they are anywhere to be found.

Yesterday as we were on the Hop On, Hop Off tour bus, we both spotted a Starbucks somewhere near the city center, so this afternoon we spent about half an hour wandering around looking for it. Amusingly, after getting shrugs or only vague slighly confused directions from the various Irish people we asked, we finally got correct directions from another American and finally found it down the one street we hadn’t yet wandered. We found chairs in the back and Richard read a book and I did some knitting, and sitting there, sipping our frappuchinos, it was almost like being in any Starbucks back home.

The first distinct difference between being in a B&B and being in a hotel was quite obvious this morning when, for the first time since arriving in Ireland, we actually had to (gasp) pay for breakfast. Heh. Ah well.

Today we decided that our best bet would be to do one of those Hop On, Hop Off bus tours around the city. Last night we hiked out to the closest stop to our hotel, which is the one at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, so this morning after breakfast we returned there and waited until a bus showed up so we could buy our tickets and then climb aboard. It turned out to be a pretty good way to at least get a view of the city, since doing it by foot would have taken far more time than we’ve got available to us during our two short days here. The busses run every 15 minutes or so and you just get on or off at any of the 20 or so stops along the way, all of which are situated near something interesting.

Our first stop was the old Guiness Storehouse. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bother with the tour, since I’m not a big fan of beer (I really cannot stand the taste of it), but it turned out there’s nowhere around where I could linger in a coffee shop while Richard went off by himself, so we figured what the heck and did it together. And it was actually pretty interesting, even to a complete teetotaler like myself. The old storehouse facility offers a self-guided tour that covered the history of coopering (making the wooden casks used to store the beer), brewing, and of the company itself, especially its impact on the economy of Dublin, which has been substantial. In centuries passed they’ve been the primary employer for the city, and during parts of our tour around the city throughout the day we heard about various parks and buildings they have either donated to the city, or for which they are providing sole financial support to keep them from going into disrepair. Also, I am apparently a clueless idiot because it wasn’t until today that I finally made the connection between the Guiness Book of World Records and the brewing company (duh).

Our next stop was the Kilmainham Gaol, which we’d been told by someone (neither of us can really remember who now) was a place we shouldn’t miss. I was expecting lots of wandering around and peering into tiny stone cells, and there was a very small bit of that, but the tour itself primarily focused on the fact that a number of the leaders of the 1816 Easter Uprising were held and executed in this particular facility, and not so much on the actual building itself. We did get a bit of additional history of the facility itself, including the fact that the youngest person ever imprisoned there was an 8 year old boy, and that at one point they were shipping prisoners from this jail off to Australia. And the museum section gave a lot more history on the design of the building itself, including an overview of how views on how prisoners should be housed and treated changed over the centuries.

Third on the list was to stop at the city center; or rather, the area near the main bus terminals and the tourist information office, in order to track down bus schedules. We did a little bit of gift shopping, but after chatting with a very helpful man in the tourist office, we have now tracked down where we can store our luggage after we check out of our hotel tomorrow morning, what bus we need to take to get to the center of town, and how we can actually get to the airport tomorrow night without having to try to track down a taxi.

Our last stop for the day was to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, and it turns out we were lucky to arrive when we did. When we asked about purchasing tickets the man behind the counter told us that actually they were just about to close, so he simply let us walk in without paying and told us we had about five minutes to take it all in. So we bypassed all the rather interesting-looking displays and exhibits about the Books themselves and found the room where the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow are displayed. Since it was nearly time to close, there were actually only a few people there, so we had the books nearly to ourselves. There wasn’t much time to linger, but there was enough time to at least get a sense of how incredibly detailed and vividly colored these books are. I’m not sure how old the Book of Durrow is, but the Book of Kells was written in (I think) 800-something AD.

We also had a chance to walk through the Long Room, which is simply amazing. It’s this huge long room that is filled, floor to ceiling (two stories high) with ancient books, whch are situated in little alcoves down the room. The entire room has that wonderful smell of old books and I am sure I am not the first person to wish that I could just start at one end and work my way through every single one of them, just to have the chance to turn the pages and read those old, old words.

Luckily our timing with buses from yesterday didn’t carry over today, and we managed to catch the very last bus for the Hop On, Hop Off tour, which took us back to the cathedral where we started. We ate dinner in a trendy little restaurant and bar, and then, through trial and error and poking our heads into any shop that looked promising, eventually found somewhere that sold bus tickets. So we are now set for tomorrow with one-day passes that will supposedly let us get onto any bus in the Dublin system including the one that will eventually take us to the airport, in less than 24 hours, heading in the direction of home.

Pictures are online for Kilmainham Gaol, and from around Dublin.

As we packed up our things this morning I couldn’t help but feel a little bit sad about the fact that this was our very last B&B. Tonight and tomorrow night we’re spending in a Travelodge that’s in the less attractive area of Dublin (south of the Grand Canal), mainly because we just wanted to make sure we’d have a room somewhere (it’s a bank holiday on Monday and everyone kept telling us it would be next to impossible to find a B&B if we put it off like we’ve done for all the others). But we have already realized just why it is that it was good we gave up our car this afternoon. Driving in Dublin would have pretty much turned both of us into a quivering wreck. It was bad enough sitting in the back seat of the taxi as the driver careened through the streets for us.

But I am getting ahead of myself. This morning we started of in the teeny tiny little town of Slane, in elaborately decorated house of our very last B&B. We ended up chatting with a young couple from Ottawa who were traveling with their three-year-old son, who was pretty cute and quite charming to everyone, and our host, who was an elderly gentleman who loved to chat. When he found out we all intended to go to Newgrange, he volunteered to call and make reservations for us, which was very nice since this is one of the few sites in the country where the number of visitors is restricted.

It didn’t take long to drive to Bru na Boyne, which is the Visitor’s Center for both Newgrange and Knowth. We checked in and managed to get seats on the tours for both of the tomb sites, and then had a short period of time to mill around in the exhibits before hiking off to the bus stop, which is located down a ramp and across two bridges from the visitor’s center.

Our first tour was of Knowth, which is the largest of the passage tombs they’ve uncovered (there are three main ones, Knowth, Newgrange, and Dowth). It’s quite an impressive thing to see – this giant mound that was constructed completely by hand, first creating the central chambers, then the passageways lined with huge stones, and then layers of stones and earth over that to create the huge dome of the tomb. Knowth is surrounded by lots of smaller passage tombs which aren’t nearly as grand in appearance or structure, but still impressive when viewing the site as a whole.

We didn’t get to go inside the main tomb in Knowth very far, since the inner chamber has collapsed and they cannot really repair it without doing serious damage to the entire structure of the tomb. Knowth is the site with more archeological interest because first there were the tombs (built thousands of years ago, and at least 500 years before the oldest pyramids in Egypt), but then various groups built settlements on top of the main tomb, digging ditches, carving out suterains (underground food storage areas that also served as places to hide during times of battle), and so on. In a way, their activities helped to protect the tomb itself, because when the first group dug the ditches around the tomb, they tossed the excavated dirt over the kerbstones, which are massive stones (brought from miles away, according to the archeologists), thus protecting them from erosion so that many of the original carvings are still visible today.

After the tour we were allowed to wander around the site on our own, and here is where Richard and I ended up being the idiot tourists I’m sure all the guides mock. We really did think we were okay on time, but suddenly Richard looked at his watch and realized we were supposed to be getting back on the bus right then, and as we both went dashing down the hill, we heard the tour bus drive away.

Luckily this was still early enough in the day that the tourguides on site were able to contact someone and send out an extra bus just for us, but if it’d been later in the day or later in the season when they’re much busier, we’d have been stuck there til the next tour arrived, which would have also meant we’d have missed the trip over to the Newgrange site. As it was, we roared back into the tour bus stop just moments before the Newgrange tour was to board.

The Newgrange tomb is, of course, the most well-known, since it was found over 300 years ago. And it’s more interesting from a tourist’s perspective because unlike Knowth, you can actually go inside the passage and chamber of Newgrange and see the carvings on the stones above the little chambers, as well as the huge stone basins at the end of each of the little chambers where they found cremated remains of ancient humans. For whatever reason, it appears no one decided to do any kind of settlement on Newgrange, unlike on Knowth (or at least they’ve found no evidence of settlement) so the tomb has remained far more intact.

I’m glad we were able to see both tombs because I think otherwise we would have missed out on some of the interesting history and information surrounding the tombs. The guides were quite clear that there is only speculation on the reasons for why the tombs were built, why or how they were used, and even whether they are even tombs at all; nor is there anything but a number of educated guesses as to the meaning of all those concentric spiral patterns that are seen all over the rocks lining both the outer edge and the inner passageways of the tombs themselves. Still, it was fascinating to see them, in the same way it was so fascinating to walk around Staigue Fort – we were standing in a structure built by humans who were intelligent enough to grasp rather complex math, science, astronomy (the way the entrances to the main tombs are aligned); people who lived thousands and thousands of years ago.

We ate lunch in the visitor’s center at Bru na Boyne, since by then it was nearly 2 and we were really hungry. And then we hopped back in the car and headed off to the HIll of Tara.

Tara is an area of great significance in the mythology and history of Ireland, since this is where the ancient Kings of Ireland were crowned, and where each successive civilization made their mark, all sharing the same feeling that this was a symbolic and sacred space. Over the centuries, such as when Patrick showed up to spread Christianity, and even in more recent times when political leaders of Ireland wanted to make a statement, they would use Tara to do it.

Knowing all this, it was still not as interesting to actually *see* as Newgrange and Knowth. For one thing, it’s really just a bunch of hills and mounds and valleys. There’s a tiny little passage tomb (and they’re pretty sure it is a tomb this time, since they’ve found lots of remains inside, and lots of bodies buried in the earth covering the mound as well), and even after thousands of years, when viewed from the air it is obvious that there was once something there, just by how the ground has been shaped from digging and building and so on. But it seems a little disconcerting to wander around a site of such historical and legendary importance, and to do it while having to watch where you’re walking for fear you’re going to step in one of the too-many-to-count sheep patties that were everywhere.

And on that note, we were done with driving around on our own. We dropped the car off at the airport (and it was a lot easier to find our way this time, now that we’ve got the hang of the roundabouts and the road signs) and then found ourselves a handy taxi, piled all our stuff into his trunk, and set off for Dublin itself.

So here we are, having made pretty much a complete circle around an entire country in just under three weeks (and having already compiled a rather huge list of things we really hope to have time to see the next time we can visit), finally in Dublin, and only two days to see as much as we can see here. Our first night here and we’ve already tracked down two laundrettes (not that we need either of them), four internet cafes all within the span of one block, and the presence of more Spar markets than might be considered necessary within walking distance. As I mentioned above, it’s not the most attractive area of town, but it’s a room, and it’s a bed, and for two nights, it doesn’t really matter.

Pictures are online for Slane, Newgrange & Knowth, and the Hill of Tara.