Me in Place

When we had visited our new friends’ house for dinner, I noticed she had made a pavlova for dessert. My one major collection is my cookbooks and when we travel, I buy a cookbook from the place we’ve visited. So when I saw her bring out her pavlova with the chocolate drizzled strawberries on top…ooh, I knew I had met my expert who could advise me on a good Irish cookbook. My question precipitated an invitation to join them for a walk along the cliffs and then a visit to a well-known cookery school on Monday. So Monday morning we drove back down to Cobh to meet them for our walk. This turned out to be my very favorite FAVORITER, favoritest thing we did the whole time and was our favorite scenery and oh, it was the day I think back on when I think back to our trip. There’s really not much for me to say about our hike, except to show you the pictures. Hopefully they capture a bit of the beauty.

We drove from Cobh over to Ballycotton…which is right on the Atlantic. It was just us and a windy day. We passed maybe four people on the hike. They’ve created a little dirt path that follows the cliffs and walks you through farmer’s fields (with little concrete twisty things – like a turnstile – that you have to twist through…this is so the animals can’t get out.)

Finally! Someone to walk with! Steve laughs at me, because in our vacation pics, there’s always just a ton of the back of me. I walk way ahead of everyone else. Which is not my fault. It’s the way I was raised – the Massey influence in my life. “So much to see and do! Don’t dawdle! Get to work!” But here, I had met my match in Ann…the fastest walker this side…er, that side of the Atlantic!

This yellow-flowering bush is the gorsebush. Remember gorsebush? Eeyore gets stuck in it? Which made me think of my dad. Which made me sad. But sad in a good way, if that’s possible. I knew he would have loved hearing my stories of Ireland. Remember his interest (obsession?) in St Patrick? On St Patrick’s Day, we went to a service at night where the pastor talked about the real St Patrick. I was blinking back tears, knowing Dad would have loved to hear the sermon spoken in an Irish brogue in Ireland. Sniff.

We walked (Maybe a mile and half? mile?) to this little hidden beach.

Steve tests the waters to see if he could just swim back home.

Back to the start for our picnic.

Lighthouse – at the begining of the trail. Remember our obsession with lighthouses? It was fun to see one here!

You’ll be thankful to know we’re almost at the end of our trip! But first, a stop at Blarney Castle. The castle itself is beautiful and on gorgeous grounds. It’s also the most touristy place we stopped. (But we loved it!)

The Blarney Stone you kiss? It’s way up at the top of this:

Most awkward moment award goes to…

To kiss the stone, you have to lean over backward, grab on to the bars and then reach out to kiss the stone  – which is on the parapet around the tower. They have bars there so you don’t fall to your death (has happened) and a man who holds on to you. Travel Buddy spotted a bottle of anti-bacterial spray cleaner…we were relieved to see that. It took some convincing, but Travel Buddy did it too. (We suddenly realized how silly it sounded when we tried to explain to her that she HAD to kiss this stone!)

View from the bottom looking up to where you kiss the stone:

Strange warriors (?) hiding out in caves beneath castle:

Wrong stone, Steve.

Getting my Tourist on…

The next day we left bright and early with our new friend, Kai. We were out to conquer the Ring of Kerry. I’ve read that it is one of the Top Ten Scenic Drives in the World. The world. Now… Top Ten Scenic Drive and you want me to keep the post short? Hm. I’ll try! Here we go:

On a Top Ten Scenic Drive you:

1. Come upon rundown castles in people’s backyards.

2. Come upon very cool, very old bridges. Which are one lane and scary. But pretty.

3. You stop to get your photo taken so you can prove you’ve been on a Top Ten Scenic Drive. You get your photo taken on rocks that  have been there forever and then you’re there for one minute and then you’re gone. And you wonder if you really matter in the scheme of things. But if we hadn’t stopped for that one minute, maybe we would have put into place something dire and drastic.

4. You and Travel Buddy try not to get carsick in the backseat on the scenic roads.

5. You admire the scenic nature of the scenic nature.

6. You get your picture taken with a statue of Charlie Chaplin. Of course!

7. You stop and let the boys climb on the random, rundown castles. Boys will be boys.

8. You feel very much the fool for being hooked into paying 3.50 Euro to see cliffs. Long story, but I’m A) pretty sure I got charged more for being from Chicago and B) when your Travel Buddy has to go, she has to GO and it’s worth every little cent. (Oh, and in the distance, you can see the Skellig Islands. Ever heard of them? Very cool. One is called Skellig Michael and has a monastery on it that you can visit in the summer months. Skellig Michael is the farthest one on the right.)

9. You find only one cafe open in the entire town on the Top Ten Scenic Drive if you’re Top Ten Scenic Driving in the off-season. But, hey, it was the best chocolate filled croissant I’ve ever had. Maybe this angry man came in the off-season and really, he was just hungry.

10. You stand in front of old scenic houses. In your head and heart, you’re thanking the Lord for bringing you safely along a windy, one laned Top Ten Scenic Drive. Maybe you can live to see Top Ten Scenic Drive #2.

Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?

He is Risen!

Travel Buddy and I hopped the train back down to Cobh and met up with Steve (Mr MIP) and the other guys. We had been graciously invited to dinner at a house that ended up being right on the harbor. So beautiful to look out their front picture window and see the water. As a side note, the previous time we had been to Cobh, we asked about visiting the cemetery to see the Lusitania grave, the lady said, oh, maybe a twenty minute walk… yeah, um, not so much. We walked FOREVER and were about to give up after the second hill, but I said to my Travel Buddy, “We cannot travel all the way from Aurora to Cobh and give up five minutes away from our destination!” After having pulled out the Mom’s Motivational Speech for Walking Really Far Without Complaining, we finally found the cemetery. It was funny, then, that we were in Cobh a total of three times, two of which we could have just asked them to drive us out there. Oh well, we suffered for family. Tradition! Tradition!

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Before dinner we had a wonderful walk along the harbor with Ted as our host and tour guide. He gave information about the city’s history and the city’s future plans and was very interesting to talk to. He was originally from South Africa and also told me interesting stories about his time working for the Dept of Agriculture in South Africa. He would go to different small farms and teach the farmers how best to use their land, etc. Very interesting. Here are various pictures from our walk:

Downtown (I hope you’re noting the narrow, narrow streets!)

Apparently nobody told them the news. It’s gonna be a long wait for your boat, guys!

Another first for us! Travel Buddy gets to ride a scooter for the first time! I’m in the background, making a weird face as Ted tells us cool stories.

I actually really liked this statue. It was called “The Navigator,” and he’s looking on the ships – helping them get safely to their destination. (Obviously, he was only built A.F.  – After Flooding.) (See where the buildings start to curve in? Right there is where the Lusitania memorial is – right in the middle of that street.)

Okay – again, not the best photo. But it’s to show you how their apartment looks onto the harbor there. Go beyond that harbor and you’re in the Atlantic Ocean. And, for a certain occasional reader of my blog, ahem…look closely enough and you’ll see the Caprese Salad. I ate a whole extra serving in your honor.

As an additional note, they recommended a movie made about a man from South Africa who has had a great outreach to people with the gospel. The movie’s title is Faith Like Potatoes. It’s a true story and they highly recommended it. I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s on my Netflix list. Just thought you might like to put it on your list.

Left to our own devices, Travel Buddy and I took the train down to Fota Wildlife Park. A 70 acre wildlife refuge. There were not many animals there (I mean, we’re spoiled with Brookfield Zoo!), but the way the park was set up was very cool. There were few barriers and you could get up fairly close to the animals. The monkeys were out on an island making quite the racket, and for some reason, I became obsessed with taking photos of Irish birds. I’ll spare you those.

No fences or barriers between the llamas and the people.

The humble Humboldt penguin:

Had to:

When we were done, we had to wait to catch the train again – back down to Cobh! I found it very fun to sit and wait for a train all by ourselves in the eerie gray afternoon. Spooky. Ever read Daphne DuMaurier? I could picture her books so much better here.

Again with the “Everything’s More Fun in Ireland!”

Thanks for reading about our trip! Lots of people are asking the most important question, though. And that is: How was the food?

Well, in some ways, it was a disappointment. We had our handy travel guide, and every restaurant we tried to go to from there was closed. I am not sure if this was a seasonal thing or if they saw us coming and locked up shop. But, on the other hand, we had some great food memories:

1. NO Starbucks! Poor Mr Mip! But they did have Costa:

2. Travel Buddy and I walked to Dunnes Store one day (kind of like a Meijer store.) and bought groceries for a couple meals at the house we stayed at. Why is it so much more romantic to buy hot cross buns in Ireland than it is to buy dinner rolls in Aurora?

3. If you eat at a pub or any sort of smaller restaurant or really, anywhere they’ll feed you something, and you don’t know what to order, just say: “I”ll have the Toasted Special.” This is a grilled cheese sandwich with or without ham, red onion and tomato. I thought Fruncle Roger would really like them…And everything comes with chips on the side.

4. The weather was probably in the 50′s, low 60′s the whole time we were there. And so I’m not sure why I felt so cold the whole time. That’s why I was thankful to be introduced to the National Pasttime. That of Drinking Tea By the Gallons. It was so good. And it was the first question many people asked us, “Can I get you a cuppa tea?” They drink it with milk and sugar. Which makes it palatable to me!

That’s why this is what most of Ireland looked like to me:

Look, even the monkeys at the wildlife park are addicted to tea:

5. But, really, I know the question that’s burning in your mind: “But, Kelli… what about Shamrock Shakes?”

Yes, they have them. And Mr MIP got to try his very first Shamrock Shake in his life in Ireland! How fun is that?

6. And now, I’ve saved the best for last. My best food discovery was this:

Do you understand what that is??? It’s a Cadbury Creme Egg McFlurry! I don’t like McFlurries, but I do like my darling Cadbury Creme Eggs! It was this amazing ice cream with Creme Eggs all crushed up in it and then extra orange syrupy fondant mixed in. Pot o’ gold, people, pot o’ gold. I didn’t take a picture of myself gorging on the treat, but I did get a picture of Roger enjoying his:

Excuse me while I go crawl back in bed and shed tears over McFlurries remembered.

I mistitled that last post. This one is the family one, because it explains why I was so totally excited to be able to visit Cobh. Because in my husband’s family, they have the Alamo story, and in my family? We have the Lusitania.

Here is a picture of Clifford and Lily:

Clifford and Lily had a dad named Dick Lockwood, and a mom named Florence (Robshaw). The two had met in England and then moved to New Jersey – the suburbs of New York City. Meanwhile, (here’s where I have tried to keep the facts straight – but, hey, it’s my blog…) Florence’s father back in England was not too thrilled with his daughter’s marriage to a welder. The father was the president (or owned?) a company and thought a welder wasn’t quite up to snuff for his precious daughter. The Lockwoods have two children – the dear ones shown above. Meanwhile, Daddy Robshaw gets sick back in England and Florence decides to go back and visit him and take her two children. Her husband can’t get the time off work and doesn’t go. Guess what ship she and the children sail on? The Lusitania. Which, in case you didn’t know, was torpedoed by the Germans when the ship was about ten miles off the coast of Ireland. The Germans claimed that there was ammunition onboard (something that is still debated to this day) and that’s why they attacked. There were warnings in the U.S. papers that if you sailed to England during that time, there was a possibility you could be involved in acts of war. But still… nobody expected the Germans to torpedo a passenger ship. The Lusitania sunk in 18 minutes. Dick Lockwood remarried and had two daughters, Ruth and Louise. Louise Lockwood Massey is my grandmother. Dick Lockwood never became a U.S. citizen because he was upset about the government losing his family.

Many fishermen from several towns in Ireland rowed out to try to help the drowning men, women and children. And there were survivors. But 1,198 people died that day – Clifford, Lily and Florence among them.

There is a beautiful memorial in the town of Cobh to the sinking of the Lusitania. An angel looks over two anguished fishermen as they mourn the tragedy:

Further out from town (read: two hills more to walk!), next to an Aldi grocery store (!), is a very old cemetery. In the cemetery are a couple mass graves of Lusitania victims. We walked out to the cemetery and visited Lily (from our research, it seems she is the only one of the three family members whose body was found and identified and further proof shows she was buried in this site. Side note: Actually, there’s a documentary made by National Geographic that shows her lying in her coffin – she looks so peaceful…like she’s sleeping.):

View down the row from the mass grave:

Graves at the front of the cemetery:

Cobh has a great museum called The Queenstown Story. (NB: The city of Cobh used to be named Cove, then one time the (English) Queen visited and they got all excited and renamed it Queenstown, then they were like, dude, why’d we rename it after the Queen, we’re tired of being bullied about by the British and they renamed it Cove, but not just Cove, they named it with the Irish spelling  of Cobh.)

Cobh’s harbor was the last port of call for thousands of people fleeing Ireland during the Potato Famine years and then during the era of the large steamships of the Cunard and White Star Lines. Including, in fact, the Titanic. Cobh was the Titanic‘s last port of call.

Travel Buddy waits to board a ship to…well, Ag Ullmhu Don Aistear, of course.

Travel Buddy recreates a scene from the Titanic, B.F. (Before Flooding.)

Nice little building where the first class passengers waited for a small boat to come pick them up and take them to the Titanic (B.F., of course.)

The evening of St Patrick’s Day, we went to a church service where the pastor talked about the true St Patrick. Very interesting and the accent sure helps – might be something my brother should look into for his congregation. Anyway, the next day, my Travel Buddy, the 9yo,  and I boarded the train from Cork to Cobh (pronounced “Cove.”). The trains there are very clean and much nicer than the Metra…but very similar in a lot of ways!

9yo was in love with the jam doughnuts they sold at the train station. And had two of them (that made an impression on me, because sometimes she can be a little picky!). I made her go up to the counter herself to pay with a Euro. (The bad thing is, they have really high taxes there, the good thing, they’re already added into the cost – so if something says “1 Euro,” it’s 1.)

We traveled to Cobh to see a couple things. First, to see the Queenstown Story, a museum built in an old train depot. And secondly, to visit a relative.

First of all, Cobh is built on a harbor of the Atlantic Ocean and, for many years, was the last port of call for huge steamer ships coming and going between England and America. In fact, the Titanic made its last port of call here. In earlier years, this was also the port where thousands of people left Ireland during the Famine Years to go to America. There is a beautiful statue outside of Annie, a 15 year old girl, standing with her two brothers. They are leaving Ireland to go to New York to meet their parents. Annie was the first person to be processed at Ellis Island. So if you visit New York, you’ll see another statue of Annie and her brothers – arriving in NY.(Note that Annie is looking back toward her homeland, while the brother is pointing forward to America.)

After a wonderful lunch at a restaurant that overlooked the harbor, we began our walk. I hadn’t realized how hilly the cities would be! We started out down by the water, and after climbing tons of steps like this:

We finally made it to the top of the hill – where you could overlook the city below. (Then discovered yet another hill to climb…)

Picture taken from the train. Not a great picture – but I wanted you to see how “romantic” the scenery was. Much more romantic than “Lisle…next stop…Lisle.”