Dubrovnik in the Rain – and Sun

It’s raining today, Sunday, in Dubrovnik. It may rain a lot this week. Two days ago – on Friday – we had a tremendous rainstorm, with incredibly heavy rain. It cleared in the late afternoon and we went exploring, walking through some areas we hadn’t yet visited. Later, the evening was spectacular: clear, with a tremendous light show, massive lightning far off on the horizon, with no noise (heat lightning, I think it’s called). We sat on our terrace and just stared at the sky!

Then yesterday, Saturday, we had the most incredibly beautiful, sunny day. Like October days on California’s Central Coast: bright, clear skies, warm in the sun and cool in the shade, with the ocean blue and sparkling.

We followed our steps from the day before, walking away from the Old Town and deeper into the peninsula called Lapad. After about 25 minutes of walking along moderately busy streets, past residences and small businesses, we came to the Cove, a long narrow bay filled with the blue water of the Adriatic.

A huge tour ship leaves the port

Pine tress on sharp rocks jutting from aqua water: must be the Mediterranean!

This is the area of massive tourist hotels, some built quite recently. But at this time of the year, at least, it is far less “touristed” than the Old Town, which swarms with sightseers day and night. We strolled on the path that followed the coast; looking past the railing, we could see the waters surging gently against the rocks not far below. The railing was interrupted periodically by concrete steps leading down to the water; while the rocks were jagged and dangerous, concrete had been poured to provide sunbathing areas, and access to the water. Each of these areas was small, and they were naturally isolated, one from the other, by rocks and trees and the curve of the shoreline. This late in the season they were mostly deserted, although there were a few sun bathers stretched out on towels. Quite pleasant (if you consider lying on concrete pleasant!).

Along the way there were no end of tourist “services’: bars and cafes, restaurants and hotels. The setting was spectacular, and after a bit we stopped at the Cave Bar More (associated with the Hotel More). And yes, it really was in a cave, although what drew us there was the terrace, and the little private nooks. We selected one and were glad for a rest, looking down at the water lapping at the rocks, and across the bay to the steep, tree-covered slopes; shade cloth stretched overhead protected us from the bright afternoon sun.

Our little "nook" at the Cave Bar

Our view across the bay -- I'm in no hurry to leave!

We really should have had someone take a photo of us both...

We stayed quite a while, as people in European cafes tend to do, watching the boats come and go and listening to the waves. Oh, and sipping our Cappuccinos (Cappuccini?), the best we’d had since leaving France (really!). And, like all the cafes and restaurants this side of the peninsula, cheaper than in the Old Town.

Before we left we visited the bar itself and, guess what, it really is a cave! Carved out of the rock below the hotel, complete with stalactites and –mites. Fantastic! Our day was getting better and better…

So THAT's why they call it the Cave Bar!

We continued our walk until we reached the tip of the peninsula. This area is dominated by large resort hotels. The path finally ended at the massive President Hotel. We knew we could catch a city bus in front of this hotel (our one foray on the bus took us down here), but the day was too lovely for riding. Instead we hiked back along the path, this time keeping the sea on our right.

Luxury hotel terrace: nice view!

The better hotels have pools, in case you don't like climbing on rocks! Looking north, up the coast

A private villa on the bay

Eventually we made it back to our own neighborhood, after stopping for an early dinner at one of the many fine cafes and restaurants we found in Lapad (again, noticeably less pricy than the Old City!). The sun was low, it was the Golden Hour (aka The Pink Moment), with the skies turning golden and the light soft. And as we walked the now-familiar streets, we kept finding new vistas we had not seen before: openings between buildings and along alleys showing the tree-covered hills to the sea, and the islands to the south.

Looking south; the Old Town is hidden behind those hills

Paula confers with Stanka, our Croatian neighbor

Our neighbor, David; that's our door there, just on the right foreground

Home Sweet Home! (for this month...)

And, finally, the view from our own terrace, familiar now and always appreciated.

Our view over Dubrovnik and the surrounding hills. Sunset.

So rain today? That’s ok. After a day like yesterday? Totally worth it!

Coming up: Probably something about the Old City, although tomorrow we leave for a week in a city up the coast called Split (which calls for some remark about Splitsville, but I'll leave that up to you...)

Skellig Michael (this time with videos)

It seems the video links did not appear in the email notice sent out: this is the same blog but with more robust video links!

In 1996 Loreena McKennitt released her album Book of Secrets. One cut from this album, “Skellig,” fascinated me with its haunting, lyrical tone. I HAD to know what a “Skellig” was!

Turns out Skellig is a 6^th Century monastery on a nearly inaccessibly island off the west coast of Ireland. I was stunned and intrigued: what would possess monks to go to this inhospitable place? And what, exactly, is there? Now, this might be a better (if highly clichéd) story if I vowed then and there to go to this Skellig place. But, I did not. Still, it seemed pretty interesting…

Flash forward some 7,000 sunrises (that’s about 19 years for those of you without a calculator), and we are planning our trip to Ireland. Paula knew that Skellig would be part of this trip. I have no objection! Ah, but landing trips to this site are very popular these days (remember that last scene in the recent Star Wars episode, The Force Awakens? Where an aging Mark Hammel, aka Luke Skywalker, is standing on an impossibly high cliff looking out to sea?) We knew immediately that was Skellig Michael, and I knew we would be going there (in spite of Star Wars and Mark Hammel).

Thanks to Star Wars many other people had the same idea; getting a slot on one of the few boats making that trip was not easy. Of course, Paula is very persistent, so she did get us a couple of places in of course a very magical and prophetic way. That meant that on the selected day, we needed to be in Portmagee, the town on the Kerry Peninsula from which boats leave for Skellig Michael. In a sense, then, our whole trip to Ireland was driven by our trip to Skellig.

 

The small town of Portmagee

Portmagee is a small town, only a ten-minute walk from end to end. We stayed a couple of miles outside of town, though, right across the street (literally) from the Cliffs of Kerry. These cliffs, dropping dramatically to the ocean on the western edge of the Kerry Peninsula, are perhaps not as extreme and dramatic as the famed Cliffs of Moher, but are far (far!) less visited. And, since they were a 5-minute walk from our Airbnb lodgings, and our host had an arrangement with the owners of the cliffs, we could just go there anytime we wanted.

The official Kerry Cliffs sign, with the two Skellig islands

Another Kerry Cliffs sign, with the two Skelligs

The Cliffs and the crashing waves below

Looking inland from the cliffs; the house where we're staying is there somewhere

No question about it, sunset was the right time for the Cliffs, and the night before our big trip we walked over for the glorious show. In the clear dry weather Skellig Islands (there’s two of them) showed up sharp and clear, pyramids in the ocean eight miles offshore.

The Skelligs at sunset

 The Big Day came and was sunny and warm – always a rarity in Ireland. The seas had calmed, a bit. Still rough. The boat crew passed out plastic “sick” bags. I took one, just in case, but only one passenger actually needed their bag (and it wasn’t me, not that I felt all that good on the way out). We arrived soon enough (read: eventually), and the solid ground felt good! After a collective safety warning about steep cliffs and narrow steps we were allowed to make our way up. And up. And up…

Ah, but words are useless. Watch this video. Note there are two Skellig islands. The smaller (imaginatively called Little Skellig) has never been inhabited; it’s all rock, and is a massive and very important bird refuge. (We cruised around it on our trip back to the Portmagee harbor). It is less than a mile from Skellig Michael (Great Skellig), and shows up prominently from the monastery.

Link to YouTube Video: Skellig Michael Photos

So, who were these monks, and why did they come here? I don’t actually know, and apparently, neither does anyone else. A docent at the monastery (the collection of huts seen in the video) was giving a lecture, but our boat was leaving at 2PM, and I did not want to be left behind, so I listened to very little of it. But the monastery was started in the 5^th or 6^th century, and may be been abandoned due to climate change: the weather got colder in the 8^th century, perhaps the seas got rougher. Or it may also have been due to changes in the church structure. No one really knows. But our visit seems all the more rich for the strangeness and mystery…

Link to YouTube Video: From the TOP: Views from the peak of Skellig Michael

Getting off the island was a bit of a challenge that day, as the seas were a bit high. But the boat captains are well experienced, and today there were no fatalities (although a wave did sweep over the pier where people were waiting to board; I think someone got wet).

Soon enough it was over, and we were heading back. Well, not quite “over;” our trip to the Skelligs included a tour around Little Skellig. This is a bare rock, less than a mile from Skellig Michael. No one has ever lived on it; there is no greenery. It is inhabited solely by birds, and is, in fact, an important international bird sanctuary. In the season, there are as many as 75,000 gannets resting, nesting, and flying about the island. This is second largest colony in the world.

Link to YouTube Video: Boat Tour of Little Skellig

This trip is and will be one of the highlights of our entire European odyssey!

Pretty Wild in Dingle, Too!

The wind blows. The rain falls (horizontally). The windows rattle from the impact of the drops.

Sounds a lot like Connemara, except we’re a good bit south down the coast, on the next major peninsula. We’re staying in a trailer, a single-wide “manufactured home,” in this case manufactured probably sometime in the 1970s. Funky? Very! No hot water (communal showers up the road) No Internet available. When the wind blows, it moves right through the trailer (and it blows all the time!). But we are perched over a small cliff with the Atlantic Ocean rising and falling just below us. 

The "good weather" view out the window

And THAT’S why we picked this funky trailer for these three days! Followers of this blog know we are not "five-star hotel" people; it's the experience, not the amenities that attracts us. On this little spit of land there are eight or 10 of these trailers and nothing else. Location, location, location: the trailer is like a cabin in the woods. (For further explanation, check that “good weather” photo!)

As for the storms we encountered, remember the stories of Jon Muir, the American naturalist and activist, who reportedly tied himself in a tree to better experience a thunderstorm. I can hardly claim that our enthusiasm and commitment matched that of Mr. Muir, but I understand his desire for that extreme experience. Note, however, that our trailer on the cliff edge was far safer and more comfortable than Muir's tree!

Not-so-good weather on the Dingle Peninsula

        

Our time in the trailer was amply rewarded with some fine views; after all, that south-facing window looked out on the ocean, where we once, briefly, saw the island of Michael Skellig (until the fog closed in again). Then after a rain storm on our last evening we saw a fantastic double rainbow, one to rival what we had seen a few days earlier in Connemara. (I’m beginning to understand why the legend of Leprechauns and pots of gold started in Ireland!) We went to bed grateful and satisfied, and ready to pack up and leave the next morning.

After the storm

Make that a double!

    [Note: These links to videos may not show up in emails; you will have to go to the blog website to see them]

                                             Rainy day in our Dingle trailer

           

                                                         After the storm...

Eight in the morning, the skies a dark gray; we awaken to the sound of howling winds and rain blasting the windows. The trailer shakes, the walls flex; small things fall off shelves fastened to unstable walls. The storm continues all morning. Whitecaps build in the sea. Rainwater streams down the window. Bushes and long grasses shake furiously. Pictures don’t do it justice, but here are some videos!

                                                The Final Storm: on moving day!

I’m not really worried; this trailer has been here for decades, and has withstood worse (this is, after all, a summer storm). The trailer next door has wide straps over it, tied to heavy bolts in the ground (and, oddly, water bottles under the straps in the corners; to distribute the load of the straps?) So a little bit of flexing and shaking is ok. Or so I tell myself…

We pack up and reluctantly leave, I’d love to spend the rest of the day watching the storm from this vantage point over the sea. But others are coming in, so we must go.

The “going,” in this case, takes about ten minutes, into the town of Dingle where Paula has booked a room at a B&B. After showers, and a celebratory Internet frenzy, we walk into town, only five minutes to the nearest pub (of 53 in town!).

Downtown Dignle, Ireland

Turns out Dingle is a very satisfying town. Many tourists, but many pubs to hold them all. A few art and craft shops for the local artists, some music stores, but no massive “tourist” area.

We had an excellent seafood meal at a nearby pub and learned about the Dingle pubs. At one time they all had multiple functions. Where we ate was a drapers shop; the hooks to display the merchandise were still visible in the ceiling. Other pubs were, and still are, in fact, hardware stores, or farmers’ supply depots.

And, the pubs are small. Or at least the first room, the one that opens on to the street, is small. They have several more room in back; during the tourist season, all the rooms are open; wintertime, maybe only that first room is used.

Pub in Dingle

One of the huge draws for visitors to Ireland is the traditional music, or Trad. And Dingle is a real hot spot for Trad, as well as other, less traditional, kinds of music. We were fortunate enough to find a little of both. One real gem, something I will always remember, is the pub we passed where locals were singing, unaccompanied (A capella is the term, I believe, but that is far too formal for what we saw!) I did manage to get a bit of video of a woman singing a very moving traditional song. I just wish I had video of the skinny guy doing Tennessee Ernie Ford’s Sixteen Tons; he was a real hoot. (Ah, the one that got away…)

           

                               Traditional song in Dublin Pub (video)

And a couple of audio files of singers in the same pub (please forgive all the ambient noise, that's what it really sounded like!):

                                                 Trad song, heartfelt and tearful!  (audio)
                                                                The Liar Song   (audio)

              Note that these links take you to Dropbox files; you can download or play them directly
AND, this is a bit experimental as I've never linked to audio files before.Let me know what happens!

Dubrovnik

We came around the corner and there it was, all white-washed buildings and red-tiled roofs: Kings Landing! But wait, where’s the Great Sept of Baelor? Oh, right…

We left Dublin today in the rain. Up well before dawn for our 7:30 flight, we figured the airport at 5AM would be deserted. Wrong! It was a madhouse. We slowly threaded our way along, stopping at all the stations: boarding pass kiosk, luggage drop-off, security hassle. Then an hour-and-a-half wait at the gate to get on the plane. We sat on the tarmac, waiting our turn to depart, the leaden skies beginning to lighten as the sun rose, and we could see rain falling on the green, green fields around the airport. The rain seemed appropriate, somehow, as our parting scene from Ireland.

The plane took off, and we did not see the ground again until somewhere over Luxembourg. The Alps of Austria and Northern Italy were spectacular, and around mid-day we were flying along the Dalmatian Coast, white, with its black spots... No, wait, that’s the dogs.

Photos taken from commercial airliners are generally crappy, but the scenery really was great

How green was my valley? In the Alps, incredibly green!

We were flying along the Dalmatian Coast, with its sere, grey peaks, steep slopes whose lower regions were clothed in dark green vegetation, and finally, red-roofed villas covering the coast, all set off by the clean, blue Adriatic. We were back in Mediterranean climes! Our landlord had sent a driver to meet us at the airport, a self-admitted chatty fellow who took us the half-hour to our apartment. Along the way the terrain felt very much like Provence, the hilly region in France up behind Nice and Cannes: the same whitish, rocky land, the same scrubby vegetation; the same subtle feel to the sun and air. We could, in fact, drive there from here; up the coast, through Slovenia and west over to Italy, turn right at Venice; then to Genoa and over the mountains into France. Fifteen hundred kilometers, take about three days; but we just got here, and aren’t going anywhere! (Besides, we can’t go back to the EU for another month.)

We’ve been on the road for a good ten weeks, through Brittany and England and Ireland. Experiences have been coming in faster than we can process, let alone record. I’ve got hundreds of photos still to go through, and we’ve got several blogs (at least!) to write. We’ll be here in Dubrovnik for the next five weeks, and catching up will be done, I promise. Although there is a whole new city to explore, stores to find, streets to learn, and food labels to decipher. In France, I was conversationally fluent, and Paula got along pretty well; in England and Ireland, we both got along fine; here, neither of us has the first clue about the language. It’s an adventure!

Islands in the Adriatic Sea, Slovenia and Northern Croatia

Up next: still lots to tell about Ireland!

Wet and Wild on the Atlantic Coast

The wind blows. The rain falls (horizontally). The windows rattle from the impact of the drops. The tide goes out, slowly exposing bits of land in the bay (with all this rain you’d think the bay would fill up!). We’re in Connemara, the western-most tip of Ireland (where they say the next parish to the west is Boston). Fully exposed to the storms off the North Atlantic, and populated mainly by hardy and patient sheep, it really is the wild and woolly west!

And we watch it all from a cozy room with large windows. This afternoon it will let up a bit, and we’ll go into town, Clifton, a large-ish town for these parts; we’ll go to the bank, do some shopping. If the air clears a bit we’ll try the “Sky Road,” a road running along the cliffs just south of here with spectacular views (except in the fog!).

View from the window when we arrived in Connemara (Letterfrack)

After the storm we went walking in the late afternoon, just up the road from the house where we are staying. Spectacular light, as the sun got low and the clouds cleared. Unreal colors! (These pictures are mostly unprocessed, as they came from the camera. Some reviewers say this camera, a Sony RX-100 Mk4, is a bit too saturated; possibly, but these pictures aren’t far from the reality!)

View from the road where we were staying near Letterfrack, Co. Connemara

Further down the road...

Fuchsias in bloom; also other wild flowers, orange and yellow, and green everywhere!

After the storm, a rainbow

Looks like I need a wider lens!

View from the window at sunset. Yes, pink!

             Connemara National Park

Yesterday was calm. We went hiking in the Connemara National Park, not far from where we are staying, and ended up taking the nature walk tour. Learned about the three types of heather, including one unique to this region. Walked through the bog, on a board walk; began to learn about peat and how it forms. Experienced the wild beauty of Western Ireland; contemplated what it might have been like for those early Irish monks, in the 6^th and 8^th Centuries, who came over these hills (or hills much like these), green and rocky, or wet and boggy. Treeless rolling hills that do little to stop the gusty winds.

Looking out towards the coast from the National Park

Paula on the board walk over the bog

Treeless, rolling hills

My “peat education” continued when we got home, with a long discussion with Gerry, our host. Many people in the area – indeed, all over Ireland – burn peat. It’s common to see it drying in piles along the roads; in recent times past, families would go for a day’s outing to picnic, drink beer, and cut peat, although now it’s mostly done by machines. (the peat cutting, not the beer drinking).

In this room where we’re sitting, watching the storm, is a stove and a basket of dried peat. It’s in clumps, each slightly smaller than a loaf of bread, and very light. The energy content isn’t high, and it burns at a relatively low temperature, producing plenty of white smoke. We see a few houses around with smoke pouring out of the chimney. The smoke is relatively cool and heavy, barely escaping from the chimney to slide down the roof while being dissipated by whatever breeze there may be. The smoke has a distinctive, earthy odor, appealing to many (but not all!).

Paula, in the cozy room, watching the storm outside

A basket of genuine peat

            Alcock & Brown, and Marconi’s Wireless

Since Connemara is the western-most point of the western-most country in Europe, it is the closest point to North America. This in turn has given it a couple of distinctions in the history of modern technology.

In 1907, Guglielmo Marconi established the first regular transatlantic radio service between Ireland and Newfoundland (called “wireless” at the time, a name which is once more in vogue). The European transmitting station took advantage of Connemara’s geographic location. The wet, boggy ground, electrically conductive, helped improve the radio signals, and rock outcroppings provided secure anchors for the tall antennas.

The Connemara station employed local people, and included a peat-fueled electrical generating plant. The station became of great strategic importance during World War I.

A decade or so later John Alcock and Arthur Brown, two British aviators, were the first to cross the Atlantic by air, leaving from Newfoundland in June of 1919 and crash landing not far from the Marconi site in Connemara 16 hours later. (They had intended to land, but didn’t realize that open grassy field was in reality a bog!)

Today there is a new memorial commemorating both of these on a barren, wind-swept bog in Connemara. There’s not much there yet but a car park and some informational panels. We would have explored longer, and brought back more photos (of sheep and rocky bog land), but the increasing rain drove us home. Still, both of these accomplishments are memorialized with the names of Marconi, and Alcock & Brown, on numerous enterprises, restaurants and hotels.

Curious sheep at the Marconi / Alcock & Brown memorial site

            Kylemore Abbey

The Abbey today

It didn’t start out as an abbey, it was built as a private home for a rich industrialist from London, Mitchell Henry. THAT part of the story really put me off, given the injustices and pain inflicted by England upon the Irish for hundreds of years. Yes, the construction, in the late 1800s, provided much-needed jobs for the locals, and the gardens, grounds, and upkeep of the house gave on-going employment. But this does look like another case of a rich English lord arriving to assert himself over the Irish peasants. Still, he was very good to his tenants, helping them out when times got tough, and installing glass windows in everyone’s houses. (A stiff tax on window glass at the time meant most homes had no windows, so were dark and stuffy. This tax led to the expression “daylight robbery.”) He was, according to the website, “an enlightened landlord and vocal advocate of the Irish people.”

AND, he did build it for love, as a wedding present for his new wife. Then I learned his parents were Irish, and had emigrated to Manchester, England, where his father made a fortune in textiles. So maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all, but a good guy caught up in a bad system (maybe kinda like Father Junipero Serra?).

The house itself is fantastic, on a site of great natural beauty. Only a few rooms can be visited, as it is now an active abbey for Benedictine Nuns (long story, that). So that part of the visit went quickly, and we moved on to the chapel, built by Henry as a memorial to his wife, who died suddenly from an illness. Small, but incredibly detailed, with marble columns from the four major provinces of Ireland: green from Connacht (Galway), rose from Munster (Cork); black from Leinster (Kilkenny); and gray from Ulster (Belfast), all set off by Italian sandstone. Next, a long visit to the walled Victorian garden.

The Memorial Chapel

Interior, with pillars of marble

Pillars of marble from the four parts of Ireland

Chapel seen from the woods

The formal Victorian garden

Head Gardener's cottage, with peat smoke

Interior of Head Gardener's Cottage

The vegetable garden (adjacent to formal garden)

          The Sky Road
We did eventually take the "Sky Road," a loop around the headlands with magnificent views west over the Atlantic. This is part of the "Wild Atlantic Way," no doubt a concept from the Irish tourist board, a series of roads that skirt the ocean all along the western coast of Ireland. (Perhaps it's just me, but it seems that the word "salmon" should be in there somewhere!)

Along the way we realized we could discern the locals from the tourists: the locals, mostly coming the other way on this shoulderless 12-foot wide road, would flash by hardly slowing down; the tourists would stop far down the road, and we'd pass them slowly and notice their big round eyes and hands clenched on the steering wheel...

View from the overlook on the Sky Road

Nice place to live, right across from the overlook!

The Sky Road sign at the overlook

Same spot an hour later!

Our initial plan was to stay in the region for only a couple of days. We had juggled our schedule around a few times while still in England, adding a quick trip to Northern Ireland and Belfast, but finally dropped all that and came directly to Connemara from the ferry dock in Dublin. While I do regret missing the northern coast, and Ireland’s other major city, we’re both very pleased with having extra time in this fabulous raw and unspoiled area.


Here's a few more photos taken on our walks along the road where we stayed in Connemara.

                                              Connemara: a very magical place!



Next up: Our wind-swept trailer near Dingle