1st-3rd Days in Dublin…and on to LA…

Well, folks, these are my last few days in Europe…

Here I was in the suburbs of Dublin, in an apartment built in the 1850’s for coal miners, with nothing touristy nearby, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave the apartment. I was mentally and physically exhausted by travel. Living out of a carry on bag had it’s advantages of course, but it’s limitations as well. While I was in Paris I thought it might be cool to go to the west coast of France, rent a house and hole up there for a month, but figured I might miss out on visiting all the other places I’d been since. Prague, Berlin, London, Bath. So I’d kept moving. And eventually, that takes some travel enthusiasm out of you. My host has a large video library and I ended up doing nothing but watch movies and surf the net.

While web surfing, I discover there’s a road in Northern Ireland named Ballymongan. That is interesting because I was just doing some random searches for my family name, Mongan, and found that it links to Ballymongan. With the suggestion in articles I’m reading that’s where my family hails from originally. Back in the states I’d spent 100’s of hours researching the families Irish roots but had never stumbled onto Ballymongan. I had traced the surname Mongan back to the year 630, but had never pinpointed an area of origin this concisely. Ballymongan is basically just an ‘area’ of Ireland now. The family is fairly scattered. Three hour drive NW of Dublin, and less than an hours drive due east of Donegal.

Back in the early 1960s, one of my distant cousins had traveled to Ireland and came back with pictures of what they said was the Mongan family castle. I remember looking at them, and it’s as you would expect, the pictures showed a ruin. Still, if I could get over there to Ballymongan and perhaps find a long lost relative, maybe visit the castle if it’s still there, that would be cool.

So I ask my host if he’d have the time to drive me over there. I’d pay for everything of course. Unfortunately, he’s too busy to make the trip. So close, yet so far.

I start trying to find some means of transport over there that would work and find an AirBnB apartment to stay at…but travel exhaustion was hitting me hard. Couldn’t bring myself to do it. My European trip was over. I just wanted to get back home, sleep for a week, and then rest for a month without traveling anywhere. To hell with it. I checked ticket prices for Irish Air and bought a ticket for a couple days on that gave a $1,000 break on the price over a flight tomorrow. When my host got home later, I asked if I could stay another night (I’d only booked 2 nights). Necessary for that airline ticket price discount. But turned out he had another guest showing up the day I wanted. So back online, I find a nice hotel that was having a price special and reserved a room. This would put me right downtown Dublin so I could do a walkabout whenever I wished while I stayed there.

2nd Day in Dublin…

Next morning, showered, had breakfast, cleaned up my messes, locked up and dropped my key in the mailbox slot as I trudged off into town. And as I passed a gentleman my age behind his fence, I asked where the nearest bus stop was? He stares at me for a few moments, mumbles a couple words I couldn’t make heads or tails out of,  turns and walks back into his house. What the hell? I had my Android tablet set up with GPS mapping and decided to hoof it instead of taking the bus. It wasn’t all that far. That would give me more of a personal view of Dublin and her people.

Soon I was near the river, just a couple blocks distant. My GPS mapping was working fine as I walked into a newly rebuilt area with fancy condos, a hotel, government buildings, a small park, the works. All spruced up. Without a single fukin’ street sign on any street corner, or on any building like they do in so many cities. WTF? This huge area had absolutely no help for someone trying to find an address. There weren’t even any building numbers I could find. And my GPS got confused around this time. I think it was because of being surrounded by highrises.

Now, I knew I was only a few blocks away from where I wanted to be, no biggie, but it would have helped if the city of Dublin would have required building contractors to install street signs in this large area of town. Wow. I did find a city crew working in an alley and I got to talk to the foreman a bit. I was laughingly complaining about the lack of street signs after I’d gotten directions from him and he didn’t believe me. Until we walked into that new area and I pointed it out to him. He’d never noticed. Funny.

Following his easy directions, I was soon right where I wanted to be. This is the main drag and the hotel is nearby. I haven’t been yet, I’m approaching it though. Dragging my bags.

This statue is on O’Connell Street, downtown. Sort of the city center. A way on is O’Connell bridge that has some famous history. But, remember I was sick of traveling so I didn’t bother to investigate the history of Dublin.  Everything is nice and modern. They even have a trolley system.

And here we are at the hotel. I walk in and try to check in, but they can’t find my reservation. Then they find that I’d reserved a room at the other hotel of the same name. It’s 5 blocks over that way across the river. Gah! No thanks I was about to say. I’ll find another hotel. Wait, she says, I’ll just transfer you over here. Oh, OK. Thanks. Check in was at 2 PM and it’s only 11 AM so they store my luggage for me while I explore downtown.There’s the River Liffey there just past that barrier in the picture below. I’m staying at the Arlington Hotel…also shown on that map link, hotel is right behind me as I took this shot. It’s a pretty nice hotel. Has a medieval theme, a patio cafe’ with an extensive menu, a huge bar with many excellent beers on tap, and in the back, another huge bar, usable but sparsely populated until later. Then there’s another venue in the basement for theater shows, and another outside seating area at the back of the building where I spent some time surfing the web in the sunshine.

In many ways, this hotel looks nothing like a modern, cookie cutter hotel. Everything looks like you’re stepping into the 1880’s or earlier. The hotel was build in the late 1700’s, but it’s been remodeled not long ago. The rooms and decor were just excellent. Large and bright rooms with windows you can actually open for fresh air, flat screen TV hidden inside a antique cabinet, large clean modern bathroom, great shower with working fixtures, very comfy King bed, and on and on. Someone should work on their website, doesn’t in any way convey how nice this place is. Just up the street from the hotel is the Bachelor Inn. Has all these neat sayings on it that Irish writers and poets have said or written over the centuries.  Pretty cool, huh? I don’t recall what it looked like inside but here’s a picture of the bowl of soup I had there. Excellent after a dash of pepper.

A few hours later, after exploring the area of the city nearby, I wandered into the hotels restaurant for dinner, and asked the waiter to recommend a traditional Irish meal…and here’s what he recommended. Very, very good. Beef stew and mashed potatoes.  It came to around $28 USD. The conversion from English pounds to USD wasn’t very good for us Americans back in 2014. Still had enough daylight to wander the streets nearby some more.  And then later that night, I entered this ‘free to hotel guests’ River Dance type show in the basement of the hotel. Had some traditional Irish singers and those dances.  I didn’t stay long. A little loud for me and I hadn’t brought my ear plugs. So I went back to the bar upstairs and enjoyed a few beers. The bartender did this neat thing with the foam so I ended up with a foam shamrock. A regular next to me told me that he was one of the few bartenders in all of Dublin that could, or would, make a foam shamrock on your Guinness. Pretty neat. Why didn’t I get a picture?

3rd Day in Dublin, and on to LA…

The bartenders shamrock was much like the coffee foam shamrock I got the next morning for breakfast. Along with a nice raspberry tart.

Since I had some hours to kill before my flight that night, I checked out of the hotel, and walked up the main drag, found where I’d need to meet the airport shuttle, and happened by Carroll’s Irish Gifts. Oh, hell, I hadn’t bought a damn thing for my own kids. So in I went, spending a good hour and a half picking out stuff for them. They do shipping so had the entire selection boxed up and shipped to Dan’s house in California, I’d separate it there and send it on to the kids.

Late in the day, right out front of Carroll’s Gifts, boarded the shuttle heading for the airport, and hours, I mean lots of hours later, I’m at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Just a note here, I’ve not flown a lot in the last decade, but before that, I’d flown into Chicago’s O’Hare many times and it was always a huge hassle. You’d have to walk miles to make your connection. Or jump on a tram if you could find one going to your concourse. But on this trip, when Aer Lingus passed me off to United Airlines at O’Hare, I found that they now have an elevated railway system to take you from one section of O’Hare to the next. Only cost $1.50 and well worth it. After arriving at the arrival concourse, boarded the train, and was at my departure concourse in less than 15 minutes. And 45 minutes later, we’re boarding for the last leg to LAX. Easy. But LAX? It is now a very screwed up US airport. But I digress, I arrive in Los Angeles June 14th, 2014.

I call Dan just after arriving at around 5 PM, he tells me he can pick me up. I go in search of food and a bar. I’m very tired of traveling. Nearly an hour later, I’m still trying to find a stinking food court at LAX. They are remodeling and have closed the entire food court I’d used two months ago to the day. Didn’t even do it in sections, closed everything there all at once. Getting a little angry because they couldn’t be bothered to put up any signs. There was an airport employee sitting near where the old food court had been and I stopped and asked her where I could get food and a beer now? She has a thick accent and tells me there isn’t any food or beer at LAX anywhere. WTF??!!

I knew that was bullshit so walked on further, found a couple guys who looked like they liked food and beer and they pointed that-a-way. Miles away (it seemed to me in my tired state). So off I go, and after making my way through and around construction areas, find the only bar left in LAX that has some food. Order a beer and dinner. Dan calls just as I’m finishing and tells me he can’t pick me up after all because his car is filled with bags of cement, and he’s injured and can’t empty it. And didn’t want to drive that far with that much weight inside. I hurriedly finish my beer, and head on out to departures to catch the last bus to the intercity train station. At 8 pm I’m boarding the last train north and at 10 PM Dan picks me up in Lancaster. So nearly a mirror image of the beginning of the trip two months previous. The car looks funny with all that weight from the cement in the back.

Off we go to his house and I fall into bed exhausted. Slept for 10 hours. Stayed in bed another hour after waking up. Didn’t do a damn thing for a week but rest. Whew.

Didn’t take another picture until July 1st.

So that’s it. The end of my postings regarding my two month long trip to Europe. Highlights are Pompeii, Paris, Marseille, Prague, Bath, and that hotel in Dublin. Those are my favorites. Very happy I was able to make the trip. Wish I’d had a significant other to take along for company, but, maybe next time. All in all, the trip cost near $10,000. That’s $5,000 per month. It’s twice to three times my normal monthly living expenses. It only took a year of saving to have the extra money to pay for the trip by scrimping, staying at inexpensive RV parks or at friends, taking a paying job for two months, etc. Didn’t have to go into debt at all. Purchased tickets in advance wherever I could, did lots of web surfing so I’d be knowledgeable about bargains, and used AirBnB to save lots of money on housing.

Would I do it again? Well, not two months probably, but another trip to Europe? You bet. Maybe for a month or a month and a half my next trip. And over to Turkey and Greece. I’m also planning a return to Ireland for a two week visit to the Ballymongan area. Rent a car, try to find some distant relatives. Then I’d like to spend a month in Da Nang, Viet Nam. Turns out I have a friend up in Alaska who was born, grew up, and has family there. She’d like to visit her dad and take her spoiled rotten granddaughter along to meet him and wouldn’t mind if I accompany them on the trip. I’d like to visit to see how it’s changed since I was there as a Navy sailor. We’ll see.

Well, hope you enjoyed my ramblings, I’m probably going to take a break from posting for a bit. But I do need to finish up 2014 soon. Since it’s 2015 and all. Bye!