Jay's Bed Blog - Bed 1

• As I promised some of you, I'm keeping track of all the different beds we sleep in on this trip. I already forgot to take pictures of our air mattress that we slept in in our nearly empty apartment before leaving Ann Arbor and of our airplane seats for our red eye (we were more preoccupied with catching the plane). So, without further ado, bed number 1 (or 3, depending how we're counting):

Guinness and Newgrange

Yesterday another couple joined us at the AirBNB (the house has three rooms for rent), and we walked to a nearby pub so everyone could have some Guinness (cider for me, YUM). 

The country pub

Jay, in a comfy chair at the pub.
Apologies for the graininess.
It was dark and sometimes you just
don't feel like hauling around a DSLR.
Cell phone cameras, for the win!

We managed to stay up all the way till 10! The sun sets really late here. Not sure I'll ever manage to stay up late enough to actually see some stars. 

We'd already decided that we could go to Newgrange, but the lady at the tourism office in Drogheda had told us that we didn't need to get there early. The couple staying at the house with us, however, had heard differently. So we all headed to the Bru na Boinne visitor center (which is the only way to see Newgrange) and they were already almost sold out of the first tours. 

The path to the visitor center

Jay and I just wanted to see Newgrange, while our new acquaintances wanted to see Newgrange and Knowth, so we went our separate ways. Jay and I got on the 9:30 bus to Newgrange, which took us probably 2-3 km to Newgrange through some very pretty countryside. 

The view from Newgrange was stunning

Apparently, Newgrange is just the largest of approximately 40 similar passage tombs in this area. 

The Boyne Valley has an abundance of riches when it comes to neolithic sites. It's amazing to think of what the people were able to accomplish in a time before the wheel. Newgrange is very cool and we got to go inside, but there are no photos allowed in the inner chamber. The passage inside was low and narrow, so we had to do some ducking and twisting. On the way in you can see some 200-150 year old graffiti from the time that Newgrange was rediscovered and opened to the time the state took over its care and limited access. 

The face is all reconstruction, but using the materials that were already there.

The outside is almost all reconstruction, but it was all done with the rocks that were on the hill, and enough were still in place that they had something of an idea of how it was supposed to look. There were four types of stone involved in the construction and some of them came from as far as 80 km away. Scholars have estimated that it took 80 people 4 days to transport one of the large stones that sit at the base of the mound. 

The entrance to the chamber and some 5000 year old pictographs.

The inside is really well preserved and aside from a light bulb or two and a couple of supportive beams (for safety) its exactly how it was 5000 years ago when it was built. They also have a light bulb that mimics what it looks like on the winter solstice when the sun rises in just the right spot to shine in through a window above the entrance to the passage. It's amazing that they were able to create something with such precision. Apparently, you can sign up for a lottery to be one of the people that gets to witness the solstice sunrise. Only about 100 people get to do it every year, and I imagine that is divided up over the 6 days (3 before the solstice and two after) that the sun lines up. The whole thing was an awe inspiring experience and I recommend it to anyone who ever comes to the area. 

It was a GORGEOUS day

Into Drogheda

I slept. And slept. And slept. Apparently I'm Jay's hero, because he woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. And then he got up at 7:30, showered, and got ready to go to work. I know this because he provided me with a running commentary throughout this despite the fact that my face was buried in a pillow and the most response he ever got from me was a muffled "mrmph." Eventually he went away, but at 10 he insisted I get up. He was probably right, but I felt like I still could have slept for another couple hours. I had instant coffee, cooked us some eggs, and Jay continued to work while I played with photos on my computer. Around noon, Jay decided to take a long lunch and we went into Drogheda. The plan was to walk around and see what we could see, though in Jay's words, we had to go see "the dead guys head." More on that below.

(Side note: Driving was much easier and much less scary. This could be due to acclimation, but in reality, it's probably due to SLEEP.)

The tourism center, believe it or not. 

We found parking and walked toward West street, where the church is. We stumble across the Tourism Center, which does NOT look like a tourism center by the way. The lady in there helped us find a map that would work for us and gave us some tips for visiting Newgrange (tomorrow's adventure). Then we headed to the church.

St. Peter's Cathedral. Turns out, I don't have a wide-enough angle lens.
Pretty cool looking anyway.

St. Peter's Cathedral in Drogheda is a gigantic and beautiful building with all the elaborate décor that old catholic churches tend to have. But its real claim to fame is that is houses a holy relic: the head of St. Oliver Plunkett. Oliver Plunkett was the last victim of the Popish Plot, which based on a quick perusal of Wikipedia seems like a 17th century, anti-Catholic version of McCarthyism (though deadlier). St. Oliver was the last Catholic martyr killed on English soil. He is the patron saint of Peace and Reconciliation in Ireland. He's also our friend Oliver's patron saint (which we only found out after visiting the church). I know enough about relics that I expected it to be so encased in gold and decorations that it wouldn't be recognizable. Nope. I was wrong. That's a head. Looks like his portrait.

The church was beautiful but not particularly touristy, and there were a few people in there who were clearly praying, so I didn't take my camera out. It also seemed pretty disrespectful to take a picture of a dead man's head. Fortunately, Wikipedia obliged.

That is, indeed, a head. (Wikipedia)

After visiting the church we walked around a little more and found a Tesco. We found food for our next couple of meals (including some gluten-free bread that isn't awful!). I'm two for two on my cashier needing to search around for a pen once they ran my card. I think this will be a common theme. We then walked to St. Laurence's Gate, which was built in the 13th century and is considered one of the finest of its kind in all of Europe.

St. Laurence's Gate

A quick walk back to the car, then my offline GPS app on my phone pointed us home. Jay's working again, and I'm SERIOUSLY fighting the urge to nap.

Jet lag, roundabouts, and driving on the other side of the road

 We made it to Dublin, we managed to recover my lost tripod and we got ourselves to the rental car.

Of the two of us, I'm the only one who knows how to drive a manual transmission (which makes for a much cheaper rental car), and (Jay's opinion) I'm the better driver, especially in stressful situations. The lovely (not being sarcastic) man at the Hertz rental desk kindly (no really, this guy was great) corrected our pronunciation of Drogheda (Draw-ada, sort of. If you think about the difference between "New Orleans" and "N'awlins" you're about 75% of the way there to pronouncing Drogheda correctly) but he also applauded me for at least getting the soft G right (I said Draw-heeda when he asked where we were going). He made sure I understood how to use the car, got us cleared away with insurance and sent us on the way to our little red VW.

Jay for size comparison

After stashing our bags in the back seat (because there is NO point to the trunk), Jay opened the door to get in only to be promptly reminded by me that he was getting into the driver's seat. I've made that mistake an additional two times so far, where I went to sit in the passenger seat and belatedly realized that the steering wheel is on the other side.

Me, white-knuckling it on the M1

Side note: I'm realizing I like to write with lots of parentheticals. Perhaps I should take up a footnote approach to blogging?

So, I got in the drivers side and evaluated the situation. It's a nice little car, with convenient stickers that remind me to drive on the left side of the road. The clutch is about a mile long, and I have to shift on my left, but other than that, I'm doing okay with the manual transmission, especially considering that I haven't driven manual since my sophomore year of college. However, at this point, the adrenaline of successfully landing in Dublin and beginning the real part of our trip was LONG gone, thanks to the aforementioned wait for the tripod, so I was dead-on-my-feet tired. Jay's wasn't doing so hot either. We both got (maybe) 3 hours of not-good sleep on the plane, and we'd spent the previous day in a panicked moving frenzy (no joke, I took >17,000 steps yesterday, according to my Fitbit. Normally I'm doing pretty good if I break 7500) so tired doesn't begin to explain it.

Remarkably we got out of the airport area and onto the M1 without any major setbacks. There was one memorable occasion where I missed my turnoff on the roundabout (which is CLOCKWISE here) so instead of going 270 degrees we got to go 630 degrees, but it all worked out. The ride on the M1 was easy, since it's a divided highway so everyone was going the same direction as me. We had to frantically dig out some euros (Thanks Aunt Betsey and Uncle Craig!) in order to pay a toll but we got to our exit without trouble.

So now we were trying to find our AirBnb. The place we're staying for these first couple of days is the residence on a large pig farm, so all we had for instructions on how to get here were "Go to Littlegrange (the name of the town) and when you see the big rock that says "Marry's High Health Pigs"  that's us." So we drove at a speed that probably had the local drivers cursing at us in inventive and colorful ways and eventually found the big rock.

The big rock

We pulled onto a long tree lined driveway and I started grinning like a fiend. We pulled up to the house (also gorgeous), knocked on the door, and met our kind host Colin, who gave us a tour, showed us our room, and then left us to our own devises. Jay got his computer set up and got back to work, and I took the worlds best shower. Not that the shower is particulary amazing, it's just that I didn't have time to shower after all that moving yesterday before getting on the plane, so this was overdue.

The road in to the farm. Cue happy dance.

One thing that I've learned from my more travel experienced friends is that the best way to get over jet lag and quickly shift to your new time zone is to NOT SLEEP until it's bed time in your new locale. So I had to find a way to stay awake for the next ~6 hours. One thing that I needed to do was go to the grocery store and get food for Jay and I for dinner. I was not looking forward to this. Driving was just a little too scary for me and I didn't really want to do it alone. But I finally got myself to go. Colin told me there was a retail park just past the entrance to the M1 where there was a grocery store. He told me the name of the grocery store, I remembered that it started with an L, but that was about it. So I got on the road back toward the M1, everything was going smoothly, I found the roundabout, got off at the right spot and:

Behold! A retail park!

But how the hell do I get in to it.

Oh crap, another roundabout! Um, I'll try going this way.

Still don't see how to get in to the retail park.

Crap. ANOTHER ROUNDABOUT. I'll go this way.

Why is that taxi honking at me?

Whoops that was a curb.

Look! A place to pull over.

Deep breaths. 

I went back the way I came and discovered that the way into the retail park is, SURPRISE, a roundabout. So I got into the parking lot, down shifted, and rumbled my way around looking for something that resembles a grocery store or starts with an L. No dice. I go almost the full circle around the park before I just decided to pull into a parking spot and set out on foot. I back tracked, peering in the doors of each of these massive shops, but I wasn't finding a place that would sell me eggs. I was mentally cursing Jay for "making" me go do this alone, and I was seconds away from going back to that cell phone store and buying a prepaid plan so that I could get access to Google. I'd reached the entrance of the park (with the cursed roundabout) and I was going to the cross walk when I saw it. It was there all along, at the entrance to the park. So I finished my marketing. It wasn't too crowded, so I don't think my wandering and staring was too annoying to the regular shoppers, and I managed to get through the check out without any difficulty. I hiked back to my car and made it home without event. We had gluten free pasta, smoked salmon and tomatoes for dinner. It was actually pretty good considering how completely out of it I was feeling. Then Colin took us around the farm, showed us how the farm works and some of the pigs, gave us a quick history of the area, and patiently talked with Jay while I played with my camera.

I don't think the piglet is a fan. 

By the time we left this spot, we had about 10 cows
hanging around wondering what we were doing.

I'm having fun with my tripod. :)

Finally 9 o'clock rolled around. I think Jay and I were unconscious at about 9:01. I slept 13 hours.

No regrets.

And now we wait....

We made it to Dublin!

And then I left my tripod on the plane.

So now we're sitting in an airport café waiting for them to bring it to me.

Oh well. At least there's free Wi-Fi. Pictures soon.

Of course the first day didn't go smoothly....

Tuesday, July 26th, 2016

8:23 PM Eastern Time

We aren't supposed to get to Dublin till the 27th, but for the sake of the blog I'll start the story now. Years of dreaming, months of planning, and weeks of packing later, and our trip is finally here.

However, before we could leave Ann Arbor, we had to finish packing up our apartment, moving everything into storage. I'd been working on it for weeks, but apparently not hard enough. Today's was possibly the worst experience of my entire life. In the grand scheme of things, I guess that means I've led a pretty charmed life, but there is no denying that today was tough. I have never been that panicked for that long ever before in my life. Turns out, we had a LOT of stuff. And quite a lot of it was destined for the dumpster. And I still had quite a few boxes to pack, and space was getting tight in the storage locker.

We got almost everything done. The storage locker is packed tight, and we've made it to our airplane: I'm writing on board the plane now.

However we have a couple of thanks to send out into the universe before we can really start the trip.

1: My wonderful beautiful friend and neighbor Larisa, who saw how much work I had to do this morning and came down to help me pack while her baby girl was napping. But that's not all.

At one point it became pretty clear that it wasn't going to be physically possible for us to completely clear out the apartment before we needed to get going to the airport. Larisa, in all her kindness and generosity, agreed to finish cleaning out our apartment, saving us from the agony of either missing our flight or paying a sizeable fee to our landlord due to a failure to clean the apartment. We owe her more than we can ever tell her. Needless to say, we will be taking Travis and Larisa (and Eva) to a nice dinner when we get back. Also, I'm putting it I'm writing that, when the time comes, I will fly back to Ann Arbor to help her pack up her home, though I doubt she'll be as disorganized and panicked as me.

2: Thank you to Nina and Oliver for their travel advice, a ride to the airport, and a place to store the stuff  that we couldn't get in to our storage unit. A 10x10 wasn't big enough to hold all our stuff. I shudder to think there was a time we thought a 5x10 would work. Guess we'll be getting a bigger truck too.

The flight to Dulles is taking off. Its about an hour delayed and we have a short layover. Its currently hit or miss whether we'll be making it to Dublin tomorrow morning… fingers crossed.

Me at the Detroit airport, talking to my mom for the last time without Skype for two months

Post note: We made it!

11 days and counting....

...And I've booked out places to stay, our first rental car is booked, we have a fairly concrete (but not TOO concrete) itinerary, I know what clothes I'm bringing, we've got our backpacks...

Now I just need to finish up this silly dissertation.