Ireland and beyond

We're back from the land of rainbows, funny accents, and sausage-for-breakfast. And although it sounds a lot like San Francisco, it was actually Ireland, ancestral home to the Boston Celtics and fruit-buster Gallagher, among others.

Due to the constant drizzle – or mizzle as we learned – the Irish are very accustomed to staying indoors and amusing themselves. This is probably why they've given the world a disproportionate amount of good writers (James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, etc.) and a disproportionate amount of good beers, (Smithwicks, Harp, Killian's, and, of course, Guinness).

We were able to sample the mother of all dark beers at a small pub called Morrissey's located in the small historical town of Abbeyleix, located somewhere in the middle of Ireland. This old guy comes with the place, apparently. Whether you want him to or not.

The Irish have also thankfully given the world many famous and gymnastic sports mascots, including Lucky, the Celtics mascot (anything but your traditional Leprechaun) and, of course, Mr. Fighting Irish himself, the Notre Dame mascot.

While there, we drove all around the land of Lilliputians, but we started with a night and a day in Dublin, the capital, where we strolled by the River Liffey and made our way through the shops of Temple Bar. While here, we learned about the importance of reading the road.

Afterwards, we made our way south to Cork, the country's second largest city and spelled Corcaigh in Gaelic or Gaeilge. This city (of about 274,000) is cute, welcoming, walkable, and filled with violent stabbings, apparently. Thankfully, we deftly avoided the fighting Irish and their stabbings and made it through without any blood loss. We also thoroughly enjoyed staying at our cutesy B&B, located just minutes from the knife attacks.

The next morning Kate and Kathryn traded in their euros for various forms of herpes simplexes when they voluntarily kissed an old, often-peed-upon rock called the Blarney stone. Here, Kate is getting accosted by another old man (not the one at Morrisey's) just before the herpes infection.

And here is DCMOM right afterward. She seemed to have survived just fine.

After a good helping of Irish coffee (or tea in Kate's case), the viruses on their lips were accompanying us on our journey to Killarny, a town with a rougher name than Cork (note the "Kill" part) but fewer stabbings. Here we stayed at another B&B just outside the pedestrian zone and enjoyed shopping, eating, and avoiding the rain. It was at this point that we began to realize that this country has more B&B's than should legally be allowed in an already overly-effeminate country already known for its tea, lace curtains, and rainbows.

In Killarny we (the viruses and us) followed a PBS news crew aroundsome local and scenic lakes and were chased away by pestering Irish bugs with funny accents (Buzz, sez I. Buzzzzzz.).

The next morning we were off to a west coast peninsula called Dingle, famous not only for its beautiful sites but also for its wonderfully delicious berries. After a short walk through the town of Dingle and a long drive out, we made it to see the most magnificent views that Ireland has to offer.

Actually, what we saw were the Cliffs of Moher, Gaelic for “Cliffs of the Ruin,” which rise about 600 feet above the frigid Atlantic Ocean and offer stunning views.

I can't say enough about how beautiful this place is. In fact, both Kate and I were so enthralled with the views that, upon closer inspection, we fell. Luckily, thanks to our superhuman strength and the wizardry of the photographer, we were able to climb back up.

Afterwards, we stayed in the small town of Ennis, located at the intersection of nowhere and nowhere, and spent the night sleeping soundly in quite possibly one of the most popular hotspots in a 25-mile radius – the Old Ground Hotel. Sounds like a blast, right?

On the next and final day, we hustled through a quaint castle and accompanying village (rebuilt for tourists with heavy wallets) and took some time to compare the old-fashioned, smelly 16th Century Ireland with the old-fashioned, smelly 16th Century America. Personally, I like the 16th Century portrayal at the Renaissance Fest the best because you can get all the authentic smells plus a diet coke.

So, after much spending, eating, and driving in the western part of Ireland, Kate said, “Take me home!” So we drove all through a country the size of West Virginia on the country roads, mountain mama, and made it to the airport in the nick of time.

More pictures in the next blog.

DC MOM in the Rhein Valley

I have been invited to do the entry for the portion of my tour of the Rhein Valley in which Kate and I visited Rüdesheim and Assmannshausen on Monday, Aug. 21 – no photos for these since we both forgot our cameras – Heidelberg on Tuesday and Limburg and Koblenz on Wednesday. You will find that I am much more detail oriented than clever; bear with me.

Rüdesheim and Assmannshausen are both on the eastern bank of the Rhein and both are incredibly quinsy with half-timbered houses, cobbled streets, and castle ruins and Gothic churches everywhere. The great part about this day was that we took a cable car ride – I love cable cars – to above Rüdesheim, over vineyards, which surround every town in the Rhein Valley, to a monument on the hillside and then after a walk through woods we took a chair lift down over vineyards to the town of Assmannshausen. After touring this town we took a boat ride back up the Rhein, passing a castle that sits in the middle, and stopping at a town on the opposite bank, Bingen. We then returned to Rüdesheim. All of this for only 10 euros. I thought it was a great bargain. But unfortunately no photo record exists for us, or for the readers of this blog.

For the Pecos aficionados, he did not accompany us on the above trip since he was exhausted from his mountain climbing in Switzerland and had engaged in some bad behavior involving my bed on Sunday evening. He remained at home in Wiesbaden to rest and reflect.

Next on to Heidelberg.

I was very interested to see this city since it was the first city in Europe that I visited 36 years ago. There are many more people in the world now, MANY MORE. Below is Elizabeth’s Gate and if we had waited all day we would never have gotten an image without others in it.

I remember being completely wowed that there was a castle on the hillside above the city, easily reached by foot.

My college friend and I walked up to the castle and toured it solo. We were the only visitors to the castle at that date and time and there were no such things as tours. There was art restoration ongoing in the interior. The art work having only just been discovered, thanks to a fire. But that was the only activity in the castle. Well much has changed….bus loads of people everywhere, handheld tour recordings in five languages, tour guides, a bar, a gift shop, a fee to get onto the grounds and another fee to get inside the castle.

We did not have time or inclination to pay to go inside so I have no idea of the status of the recently discovered, 36 years ago, art work. And 36 years ago I missed this two-story wine barrel. That’s a lot of wine.

The next day Pecos accompanied us to Limburg and Koblenz. Limburg is a very charming city filled with half-timber houses. And what a great surprise to Kate and I when we passed Ben Stein – of Blair High School, Takoma Park, and “Win Ben Stein’s Money” fame – in a square of Limburg. Montgomery County, Md., everywhere. Pecos did get to swim in the Lahn River. Limburg is home to the oldest inhabited half-timber house in Germany, built in 1289 (shown below).

Afterward, we went on to Koblenz, which Kate found much more tolerable now that it is later in the summer and the hoards of tourists were somewhat diminished. Pecos and I are at the base of Kaiser Wilhelm’s statue with the Rhein (right) and the Mosel (left) in the background. After a pastry and coffee we posed with Pecos at a fountain with a sculpture depicting the history of Koblenz from Roman time to present.

Now off to Ireland.

From our heart to yours

While Justin, Pecos, and I hiked a very difficult but very beautiful trail this weekend, Justin explained that taking trips to places like Florence is awesome, but trips like the one we were on in Switzerland mean a bit more to him. In his words, "It makes my heart happy."


Amazingly, it seems Justin's heart was so happy that it appeared in a sweat-shaped heart on his shirt. Unfortunately, my quick-dry shirt foiled my heart's attempt to make a sweat-heart to show my love for Justin.

This picture is also a preview of the Valentine's day card we are hoping to sell through Hallmark. Would you buy one?

Below are some other pictures my mom and I thought deserved some blog space, some for their cuteness and others for their amazingness. Also, my mom wanted it to be clear that we hiked to a glacier on our first day. It was a for-real massive glacier and it was far, far away from our car. You can see it behind me in the pic with the Swiss flag. Enjoy and make sure to read the post below this one (it's new too)!

Which wristwatches are Swiss wristwatches?

This weekend, we (Justin, Kate, Kate's mom, and Pecos) sojourned into the craggy bergs of central Switzerland. Home of a whole lot of people whose names are really hard to pronouce, this landlocked country is beautiful, expensive, and smelly.

OK, so I knew it was going to be beautiful and expensive. I mean, any country that considers itself to be "too good" to be a part of the EU, has got to be downright narcissistic. But I didn't think it'd be smelly.

But with all the swiss cheese, livestock, and environmentalist hippie types, whose idea of a good time is foregoing hygiene and better judgment just to say you camped out in the highlands of Switzerland for two weeks, it stunk. To continue this comparison, Switzerland is slightly less than twice the size of New Jersey and has almost as many pharmaceutical companies calling it home.

In addition to cheese and cattle, lots of things typify Switzerland: chocolate, bank accounts, chard, the army knife, etc. But these are only trite examples of people less observant than us.

So, for your viewing pleasure, here are some things we found out about Switzerland on our trip, as told through pictures:

1) While attempting to see if edelweiss flowers are really "soft and white," always beware of deviously cute kitty cats, whose wily ways can never be trusted.


2) Yodeling with your eyes closed does not, in fact, help to extend the reach of your voice. It does, however, indicate that you're probably doing it too loudly and will, within minutes, give yourself a hernia. 3) If you happen to miss the last cable car leaving town, don't worry. The Swiss are knowledgeable enough about the way human psychology works, that they'll lead you to believe that you're stranded and forced to hike back down the mountain you so proudly climbed, as this will make you feel pathetic and dim. But, they only do this because they know you'll be twice as happy when a magical, mystical cable car from beyond shows up ready to whisk you back down the mountain.

DC Mom in 'da house

As some of you may know, my mom flew to Germany early this week. We are very happy to have her with us and she will be here until the 30th. During her stay, we plan to daytrip around Germany, travel to Switzerland for hiking, and fly to Ireland for a long weekend. All in all, it will be an action-packed, fun-filled two weeks.

Mom landed Monday morning and after she took a brief nap, I took her on a walking tour of beautiful Wiesbaden. Justin joined us later for an evening of Bavarian food (read: meat and beer). Justin got to fullfill his latent carnivorious tendencies by splitting a dish chock full of meat with my mom. They had pig knuckle, leberkäse (liver cheese, but don't ask me what it actually is), and some other pork products. Needless to say, jet lag could not keep Mom from sleeping after that meal.

On Tuesday, Mom and I headed to the city of Mainz for a day of enlightenment. First, we were spirtually enlightened during a self guided tour of a Catholic cathedral. Actually, the cathedral was perhaps more depressing than enlightening as most of the art in the cathedral was morbid and focused on skeletons opening coffins and saints holding their heads under their arms.

Feeling satisfactorily Catholic, we decided to enlighten ourselves about the exciting life of the printing press. Gutenberg, father of moveable type, was from Mainz. In his honor, Mainz has a Gutenberg museum that is devoted more so to printing than to Gutenberg's life. We spent about two hours looking at old printing presses and prints made from old printing presses. We even got to learn a bit about book binding. All in all, it was exhaustive and exhausting.

And, yes, we forgot to take the camera.

Mom and I returned to Wiesbaden where we had a nice family dinner with Jay (Justin's Dad), Linda (his wife), and Baci (their dog). It was the first time Justin and I served dinner to guests in our new apartment and it was very exciting. However, it was not as exciting as Pecos trying on his new Halloweenie costume. He wants to bite, I mean thank, Jay and Linda for this wonderful gift.

Today, we remembered the camera!

Mom and I headed up the Rhein on a driving tour. We passed many castles on the way to our turn-around point at the Lorelei. After gazing at the big rock for a bit, we were fortunate to leave Lorelie unscathed, though a bit damp from the intermittent showers. We then ventured to the town of Oberwesel which has the most (18!) intact medeival lookout towers of any town in Rheinland. In Oberwesel, these towers are so prevelant they have been incorporated into people's houses and churches, as pictured below (and no, I am no where near as good at perspective pictures as Justin is). The town was cute-ish, but the cuteness is more condesened in the nearby town of Bacharach.

Once we arrived in Bacharach, Pecos got to play in the Rhein for the second time in one day. We then headed into town and up to the castle above Bacharach. The walk was wet and the castle was pretty. After a slippery descent we strolled through picteresque Bacharach and headed to the car as the rain hastened and our clothing went from damp to wet. It was a fun day, though I hope the weather clears tomorrow.

Now, the exciting part of the entry, for Carole. Here are some pictures of the 98% completed living/dining area of 'da house. The pictures don't do it justice, of course, so you'll just have to come visit to see how beautiful the room is.

Hey good lookin', watcha got cookin'

Due to the photo of our kitchen shelves in the previous post, a certain someone, whose name starts with an "L" and ends with an "iz," questioned whether we actually moved to Germany. We had similar kitchen shelves in Chicago (though they were not built in) and this individual is suspect that we would live in consecutive apartments with open kitchen shelving. To prove that we actually live in a different apartment, here are some more pictures of the kitchen. My real reason for posting is that it's the only room where we have put stuff on the walls and I want to show it off.






In other exciting news, there was a fire in our building last night and it was not caused by us and our many transformers. Our downstairs neighbors, who have a reputation of being bad tenants, somehow had a mattress catch on fire on their balcony. No, I don't know why they had a mattress on their balcony, but it's not there anymore. They weren't home, but the firemen came (three trucks worth) and took care of the blaze before any serious harm was done. During this middle of the night emergency, I learned that the one thing I grab before fleeing a fire is Pecos, though I think he would have preferred it if I left him sleeping.

I can’t believe it’s not clutter!

We hauled. We unpacked. We arranged. We unpacked. We rearranged. We unpacked.

And after all that unpacking, we bought some stuff and unpacked that. It got me so frustrated I had to get this step-stool stuck on my head.




Phones are even confusing; here's a pic of a European phone plug.

Unless you’ve done it before, you have no idea what it’s like to bring all your electronic devices to Europe hoping that they’d work if you just buy one of those voltage-changer-thingies. Well folks, let me tell you, it ain’t easy. Those voltage-changer-thingies don’t come easy or cheap or one-size-fits-all or user-friendly or in fun colors.

Nope, they come in ugly colors and are very difficult to work with. Most plug-in-voltage-adapter things convert U.S. plugs to mainland Europe plugs, but we bought one and tried to use two others that convert U.S. plugs to U.K. plugs. The old tenant also left two of them with broken fuses (who knew they contained “fuses”?). Some have switches; some don’t. And some things, like lamps and computers, don’t need ‘em. It’s like Harry Potter flavored jelly beans. Most are bad, few are good, and the ones that are good still give me bumps on my tongue after I lick them.

But, after days of confusion and small electrical fires, we’re unpacked, hooked up, and ready to blow a fuse.

Our place is great, btw. I just asked Kate what she likes about it and transcribed her comments. Here’s what she said:

“I like that it’s old, it has high ceilings, the kitchen is functional, that it’s painted colors – it’s not just white – that it has views of trees out of all of the windows, it has an office that fits two desks, it has built-in shelving units because there’s NO CLOSETS IN GERMANY, the bathroom is like two times the size of our one in Chicago, no, like FIVE times – our bathroom in Chicago was like CRAZY small – it has a balcony that Pecos likes to watch the day on, did I say it has views of trees? And the office is really great – it fits two desks…”

On and on it went. But, I’m happy here; Kate’s obviously happy here; and Pecos is continually spooked by the mysteriously loud clangs that toll from the church every fifteen minutes. His ears go back and he tatters closer to mom, eyes aglow with unknown fear, every time that happens.

This is the view from the front door. I feel it’s a bit too Martha Stewart Living, but, hey. What do I know?




And here’s the office (with two desks) that I'm writing this from. You can probably guess from the wires that this is where the first electrical fire will be.

A break from our normally scheduled program

I know there are some individuals who read this blog who feel there is too much dog here, but bear with me. If you've been to my parents' house sometime in the last 15 years, you most likely met Barney. Sadly, Barney has eaten his last marshmallow, chased his last rock, and wagged his last wag. Barney passed away Sunday night.

Please give your pets (or someone else's pets) some extra love for me. Pecos seems to think I have already given too much love to him and I have officially infringed on his strict 22-hour a day sleep schedule. I hope all the furry, feathery, and scaly ones in your lives live as long and happy a life as Barney did.

P.S. Liz, is this better than charades or worse?

Moving in

Finally. We're happy to report that after months of living enslaved in a small hotel room, eating out every day, getting maids to clean our place, and having free television and laundry, that we're finally free.

Last Tuesday we got our keys to our new digs and have been cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. We've also been buying lots of Ikea stuff, putting together lots of Ikea stuff, and, of course, getting frustrated with Ikea stuff.

But the greatest happiness of all is unpacking our goods and thinking, "why do I still have this shirt?" At least that's me.

More pics and updates to come shortly!