IRELAND, DAY 3: MINARD CASTLE, THE DINGLE PENINSULA, AND SLEA HEAD DRIVE

 July 6, 2024

Our plan had been to start the day at Blarney Castle, but when we tried to get tickets online, they were sold out. That's okay--we didn't feel a great need to kiss the Blarney Stone and taking one thing off the schedule made for a more relaxed day.

We left the B&B at about 9:30 or 10:00 and headed west towards the Dingle Peninsula.

Our first stop on the Dingle Peninsula was Minard Castle.

To get there from the main road, we drove down a very narrow single-lane road. Every now and then there was a turnout so two cars could pass, but in most spots even our tiny car seemed to hug both sides of the road, and if two cars meet in an area like this, they both have to pull over into the weeds in order to pass.

Eventually, we came upon a windswept hill crowned by a lonely mid-16th century monolithic three-story ruin . . .

. . . that looks over a desolate bay of the cold Irish Sea.

IRELAND, DAY 2: ROCK OF CASHEL AND HORE ABBEY

 July 5, 2024

We were hitting jet lag on the afternoon of our first full day in Ireland, so I picked up a Coke Zero at the gas station. I was intrigued by the ingenuity of the attached cap. That's a great way to keep the cap with the bottle for recycling.

Not long after entering County Tipperary, we came across a blocked off right-of-way for a herd of milk cows. Now that's something you don't see everyday (or any day) in California.

Eventually we made it to Cashel, a little town of about 4,400 people with a BIG tourist draw, St. Patrick's Rock, more commonly known as the Rock of Cashel. The word "cashel" means "fort" or "castle" in Irish.

We had to park at the base of the rock and trudge up the hill, but the view looking up was quite impressive.

IRELAND, DAYS 1-2: TRAVEL, ARRIVAL, AND EXPLORING KILKENNY

 July 3-4, 2024

We left home at about 3:00 PM and made it through downtown LA and to our parking garage in about two hours.  Not bad.

We had an uneventful check-in for a non-stop flight to Dublin on Aer Lingus, a new airline for us. We were seated on the 3rd or 4th to the last row in the center section of a 2-4-2 configuration, but the last five rows or so only had three middle seats, making the aisles wider in the back near the bathrooms. Genius. Anyway, we both had aisle seats with an empty seat between us. Miraculous! And another miracle--I slept for a good part of the 9 1/2 hour flight, a rarity for me. We did have two meals. Dinner was tortellini with tomato sauce, salad, a roll, and chocolate mousse that was pretty good. Breakfast was a hot bagel with melted cheese and a sausage patty--not so good.  I watched one movie, Disenchanted with Amy Adams, sequel to Enchanted. Worst move I've seen in a long time. You can't win them all.

For a relatively small airport, we had a long walk between getting off the plane and passport control, but by then our suitcases were waiting for us. We walked to the car rental area to get our car from Budget and discovered why our rental (and every other rental we looked at) had been so cheap. They REQUIRE customers to buy insurance, which added $400, plus we had to put down a $2,000 security deposit. They must have lots of problems with people who can't drive on the left side of the road and with a steering wheel on the right. We had a very small Renault Clio with a manual transmission, but Bob, fortunately, is an absolute pro at shifting with his left hand and driving on the left side of the road.  

Our plan was to immediately leave Dublin and drive to Kilkenny, a distance of about 80 miles, which we thought might take an hour and a half. However, traffic was very heavy leaving Dublin, and not long after leaving the car rental place, the car began beeping at irregular intervals. Then the tire light came on, so we figured the low tire pressure caused the beeping. We got off the freeway, found a gas station, filled the tires, then figured out how to turn off the tire warning light. Sixty seconds into our drive, the beeping came back. Ultimately, I figured out that it was a sensor for lane control. Every time Bob began to drift towards a line in the road without signally, it beeped--and that was often. I found the instructions for how to disable that feature, and we continued our drive in peace.

GERMANY 2000: ULM, ROTHENBURG OB DE TAUBER, SPEYER

 December 20-21, 2000

We had taken the southern route near the Alps and the Austrian border on our way from Neuschwanstein to Salzburg, and on our way back into Germany we took the Autobahn from Salzburg to Ulm, bypassing Munich, which was a bit of a disappointment, but my mother said we were short on time and stopping in Munich would slow us down too much.  We also would have liked to stop in Dachau, which was just a few miles off our route, but again, my mother said no--there wasn't much to see.  

As far as I know, my mother never visited a Nazi concentration camp. If she did, it was one of the many things she didn't want to talk about.

Two of our most memorable experiences of the trip happened in Ulm, and I'll get to those later. Ulm is a city of about 126,000 situated on the Danube River. Founded in 850, it is noted primarily for two things: being the birthplace of Albert Einstein in 1879 and having a Gothic church with the tallest steeple in the world (530 feet).

Our hotel was right by the massive cathedral, which my mother said is the largest Protestant church building in the world, but it actually ranks 4th in the world and 2nd in Germany behind the Berlin Cathedral. Still, it is a massive 5,950 square meters (or over 64,000 square feet) inside, seats 2,000, and is, indeed, the tallest church (of any denomination) in the world.

AUSTRIA 2000: SALZBURG

  December 18-19, 2000

Mom was excited to take us to Salzburg, one of the cultural centers of Europe for centuries. The area has had inhabitants since the Neolithic Age (10,000 - 4,500 BCE), so even for Europe it is old. Salz means "salt," and the name "Salzburg" first showed up in the 8th century when the local economy focused on salt mining.

We arrived on a stormy, blustery evening, the only really bad weather of the trip. Outside our somewhat dingy hotel, Mom had us park the car on the sidewalk, which seemed strange to us then but more normal to us now that we've spent more time in Europe. 

I wish I had better photos of the beautiful Christmas decorations. This much-faded photo I took doesn't do them justice.

But this nice picture of the city that I clipped from a brochure shows the city's elegance. The historic city center of Salzburg has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

GERMANY 2000: NEUSCHWANSTEIN CASTLE, FUSSEN, AND THE WEISKIRCHE

 December 18, 2000

Neuschwanstein Castle is one of those places that everyone has seen, at least on postcards and calendars and in travel guides. With 1.5 million visitors a year, it is one of the most popular tourist sites in Europe. We were excited to visit and see it with our own eyes.  It did not disappoint, at least on the outside. It is very photogenic. These are brochure clippings from my scrapbook:

And this is information about King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who built it. It makes a great story!

Located on the northern edge of the Alps about 60 miles southwest of Munich and not too far from the Austrian border, the castle is perched half-way up a mountain and can be seen from a distance on approach.

COLOMBIA: CARTAGENA, PART I

 March 15, 2023

Bob had arranged in advance for a private city tour in Cartagena, and after we dropped off our luggage at our hotel, we were joined by what turned out to be our best guide of the trip, a young woman named Carolina. She was excellent in perceiving our likes and dislikes and adjusting the tour accordingly.

Cartagena, founded by Spain in 1533 and located on the Caribbean coast of northern Colombia, is a city of almost a million people. It is a major port (one of the largest in South America) and historically part of world exploration and trade. 

Our hotel was kitty-corner from the Castle San Felipe de Barajas, a fortress built in 1536 by African slave labor under Spanish rule. It is an imposing presence and defended the city from attacks many times in the past. Along with the historic city center, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. These days it is used for social and cultural events. 

Our first destination was the Convent of Santa Cruz de la Popa, a convent built by the Spaniards atop Mount la Popa, the highest hill in Cartagena (about 500 feet high). From that spot we pretty much had a 360° view of the city. 

We could see the downtown/business district skyscrapers, which are almost all white. The contrast to the poverty-stricken areas full of cardboard shacks on our way up the mountain was pretty stark. 

PORTUGAL: SLEEPING IN FATIMA AND A TRIP TO ESTREMOZ

  July 1-2, 2022

After a long day of sightseeing, we were ready to dump our stuff at our hotel, grab a bite to eat, and go to bed. The only problem was that we couldn't find our hotel, the SDivine Fatima Hotel. Our GPS placed in in the center of a roundabout. We had to call the hotel twice for directions. We finally found it just off the roundabout on one of the many exits, but set back from the road with no visible signage.

We were still in the city of Fátima, and it was fun to see this azulejo depiction of the Visitation of Our Lady of the Rosary to the three shepherd children.

After unloading our luggage, we set out on foot to find something to eat. The only thing we found open was a butcher shop that made sandwiches and "toasts," or grilled sandwiches (kind of like paninis). The guy behind the counter spoke as much English as I spoke Portuguese, so we had a pretty funny pantomime exchange. He gave us some meat and cheese samples to try, and we pointed at what we wanted. When Bob asked for mayonnaise for his sandwich, the butcher was horrififed, basically refusing. The sandwiches were good, at least my toastsed one with melted cheese oozing out the sides was!

We also shared some very good sausage and olives.

The next day we got off to an early start because we planned to cover a significant distance.

PORTUGAL: GUIMARAES PALACE AND CASTLE AND AN OCTOPUS LUNCH

 July 1, 2022

Our next stop was Guimaraes, another UNESCO World Heritage Site. We spent several hours on the grounds of Guimaraes Castle, the place where the first King of Portugal, Afonso Henriques (1109-1185) was born. Construction began in the mid-10th century. Obviously, it has had a few renovations since then.

We walked past it on the right side . . . 

. . . admiring its square, crenellated tower and the way it is literally built into the rocks.

PORTUGAL: OBIDOS CASTLE

 June 26, 2022

After swooning over the basilica and palace in Mafra, we headed north towards Óbidos, a distance of about 45 miles. (We never had to drive very far in Portugal to get to the next amazing destination.)

No urban sprawl here. We drove through some beautiful country. This windmill looks just like the ones near us.

PORTUGAL: SINTRA'S PENA PALACE

 June 23, 2022

After our first night of blissful sleep in Lisbon, I walked down to breakfast in the hotel and passed under a waterfall coming from the ceiling. Apparently it was part of the "little leak" that had set of our alarms the previous evening.

After a very quick breakfast, we walked to another hotel two blocks away to be picked up for a small group day-trip to Sintra, a beautiful town about 17 miles west-northwest of Lisbon that is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We met our guide, Filipa, there, and then picked up another couple from Great Britain and a family of four from Northern California. As is usually our experience on tours like these, everyone turned out to be very nice, and we had a wonderful day together.

Anticipating crowds later in the day, Filipa drove straight to Sintra's main attraction, Pena National Palace, built on top of and around an early 16-century monastery in the 1800s by Ferdinand II, King of Portugal from 1837-1853.

We began with a lovely walk from our parking spot through Pena Park, a rather dense forest of trees from all over the world. In fact, there are 500 different species, including some giant redwoods from California.

Doesn't that look like Narnia's lamppost on the left?

I was not quite prepared for our first views of the colorful palace. Gold, blue, purple, black, red--I'd never seen anything like it before. Each section was a different architectural style and a different color.

PORTUGAL, LISBON: CITY VIEWS AND THE CASTELO DE SAO JORGE (ST. GEORGE'S CASTLE)

 June 22, 2022

Feeling fortified by an excellent seafood meal, we continued what had turned out to be a much more lengthy and difficult "walk" to the St. George Castle than we anticipated.  Suddenly stops along the way to take in the view seemed unusually appealing. Of course, how could we say no to this view?

The large dome on the left is the Church of Santa Engrácia, one of the many churches we never made it to.

One of the building walls near the view area had this azulejo (glazed ceramic tile) depiction of Commerce Square, the large plaza facing the ocean we had seen at the beginning of our walk.

The bougainvillea was in bloom all over town. I'd like to copy this look in my backyard, right down to the real bird on the edge of the birdbath.

Still going uphill, we reached another large plaza with a large statue at the center.

POLAND, WARSAW: ROYAL PALACE

June 27, 2019

Old Town Market Square, where we were staying in Warsaw, is only a block from the beginning of Castle Square, which is the starting point for the Royal Route, a 7-mile road that leads from the Royal Castle to King Jan III Sobieski's 17th-century personal residence. A main artery of the city, it is chock-full of things to see. 

The first thing we noticed when we entered Castle Square was a 72-foot-tall column topped by a statue of King Sigismund II of Vasa, who moved Poland's capital from Krakow to Warsaw in 1596. The column was erected in 1664 and has the distinction of being the first secular monument in column form in modern history. You'll notice, however, that although the king has a sword in one hand, he is carrying a cross in the other hand. Not much separation between church and state in those days.

Sigismund made it through the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland, but on September 1, 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, the column was demolished in bombing raids. Miraculously, the figure of Sigismund more or less survived. 

Photo from Wikipedia

Sigismund had some reconstructive surgery after the war and was re-elevated to the top of a new granite column in 1949. Today the column is a popular gathering site. Every time we were near it, there was a busker of some sort playing on the steps and dozens of people languishing on or near its base.

To the right of the column is a huge red brick building. This is the Royal Castle, once the home of Polish monarchs (including Sigismund, the dude on the column) and now a Polish art and history museum. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The castle's clock tower is almost 200 feet tall, and its base dates to the mid-14th century. The castle was hit by bombs during the initial invasion of Warsaw in September 1939, which destroyed the roof and turrets. Immediately after the Germans seized the city, they cleaned out everything that was valuable from the building, sending some items to Germany and giving others to Nazi officials living in Warsaw.  However, some of the art was secretly smuggled out by Polish museum staff at great risk to their lives. The Nazis dynamited what was left of the 600-year-old building in 1944 in retribution for the Warsaw Uprising.