Posted from Vernon, Conn.

Karen's brilliant recipies:

Recipe for GAMMON: Buy a deboned salted gammon joint (pork) from a trusted butcher. Simmer it in water 20 mins, which takes the salt out. Drain gammon & remove casing. Coat casserole dish with set-honey, place gammon in & coat with honey (the boiled pork will warm the set honey so it can be spread) & sprinkle with ground cloves. Bake at 200 until honey is brown almost burnt. The crusted honey will keep the pork moist, ham will brown, some suger & clove will seep in. Peel off honey after, & discard. The meat should be loose & tender kinda like bbq pulled-pork. Serve with chicken & salad.

Recipe for CHAMP: Mashed potato, cream, scallions, bacon bits. Serve with beef-sausage & steamed cabbage. Steam cabbage then add balsamic vinagrette & some red onion.

Recipe for BREAD PUDDING: Use blue-molded or stale sliced bread. Butter both sides. Layer in casserole, sprinkle suger & sultanas (like raisins but softer & less sweet). A few layers then sultanas on top. Mix eggs & double-cream, pour over top. Nutmeg optional. Bake till crusty brown then serve with custard over it.

Say Grace.

Cafe menu near Giant's Causeway on Sept 20 (pounds sterling):

£4.50 quiche
4.95 cottage pie
2.20 stuffed sausage
3.95 veggie chili pasta bake
1.50 sausage roll
1.50 wedges
Internet £1/15 mins. STEEP!

Gas in Ireland was about €1.16 /liter = $6.15/gal
Gas in N. Ireland about £0.95 /liter = $7.20/gal
Today €1 = $1.4
£1= $2




My route through Ireland Sep. 11-21, 2007....loopy like I had a few pints!! Instead of the planned 2 nights in Northern Ireland & 2 again in Galway, I ended up 5 nights in the north............... $350 to move my flight an extra day well worth it! Same $$$$$ for an extra day whether I departed Dublin or Shannon. 2 1/2 hours to Dublin Airport on the M1. Toll takers are on the RIGHT-hand side and there to take my .75 euro was a smiling lass.






Road signs are bilingual in Ireland. During the 1700s or so, the English anglicized the place-names. In Northern Ireland, signs are English only. Look for the Gaelic "Uisce" it means Water & where we get Whiskey. Sharon said anyone can be an Irish citizen if you have Irish grandparents and learn Gaelic.



















This hotel was the most bombed in Belfast during the Troubles: 26 of about 40 planted went off....

















Seisun, Longford Arms Hotel. Tenor banjo is on the left, then Uilleann Pipes, then two right the Bodhran which is a handheld drum.

















Belfast murals


















Armagh





Glenariff, one of the Nine Glens of Antrim. My drive took me down Glenariff to a Strand (that's what they call beaches), along the coast a few miles northwest, then up Glendoe. The road from where this picture was taken will take you along the northern (left) slope of Glenariff.











Antrim coast near Cushendun. The sea is very FAR below try to even hear it! You hear Sheep all over ireland, even in the middle of nowhere they blend in with the rocks you hear one. Check out Scotland on the horizon, bout 11 mi. away (closest point between)















Clonmacnoise, south of Athlone & near the Blackwater Bog where they harvest the peat. The most visited Catholic site featuring celtic high crosses, round towers, & temple ruins. Clonmacnoise is a monastic site founded in 545 by St. Kieran along the river Shannon, about 160 miles the longest in Ireland. The Pope preached from that modern pulpit in around 1989.

Posted from the public library, Ballymena

Once more I don't have the connections to upload pictures to this blog!

Giant's Causeway is a series of cliffs along the Antrim coast, with 300-foot-high (at least) basalt columns going straight down, and overlooking the hungry ocean. The spanish armada vessel La Gitana crashed there in 1588 and all but five were lost. I took the best 4-hour walk ever along the top of the cliffs & I pretty much had the whole massive area to myself! I went barefoot cuz the trails were mainly grass! I then contemplated that the earth is a zillion years old. The cliffs looked like this, except I was looking from above:

* * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * * * *
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ (hungry ocean)

After the causeway I went for the quiche for £4.98. Irish keyboards have £ where your @ is in the US. I headed in the direction of Giant's Causeway on Wed.(bout 45 mins from B'mena) but ended up on the wrong road, which Karen said is nearly impossible! Yet I managed. I drove up a scenic bypass up Glendoe, one of the Nine Glens of Antrim which was just as rewarding!

Belfast is where they built the Titanic you know. Our bus tour guide on our red tour-bus thru Belfast pointed out some marketing genius, which was a Thai restaraunt called THAI tanic. What is not brialliant about that?! THAI tanic! Nigel (friend of Karen's) & I were on that bus tour & which included the area of the Troubles (the Unionist and Nationalist neighborhoods). Other grand sites on the tour: the Parliament building, Queens College, & comsmopolitan Victoria Street. Belfast now has a ton of construction going on, since the peace was signed several years ago, and there has been investment going into the city.

The bus really FLEW and I barely had time to photograph the fantastic political murals. But I did so look for them on a future post. The bus goes fast (stopping only for lights etc) but you can hop off & get on the next tour-bus any time. But Noboby seemed to do that.

After Belfast, Nigel and I then took the hour-drive up to Bushmills whiskey distillery. It's about a half-hour tour & with a shot of whiskey at the end. We went for the 12-year single malt, available only at the distillery. Over ice & with water. Part of the Bushmills secret is they use water from the local rill which flows through or over basalt. The distilling-room and oak-barrel rooms there smelt fantastic! Irish whiskey is distilled 3 times, scotch 2 times, & bourbon 1 times.

This post must be brief because Karen will soon be serving up sausages & champ (mashed potatoes & scallions). In England they call it bangers & mash. I had champ & meatballs w/gravy for lunch yesterday at Balloo's Cafe so Karen is now up for showing me how champ is really made.

JOHNNY KEENAN BANJO FESTIVAL

Irish seisuns ("sessions") are an informal gathering of musicians playing Irish tunes like jigs and reels. They're most commonly seen in corner booth-tables at pubs. There were tons of seisuns going at the banjo festival hotel (Longford Arms) & other pubs, like a huge one with 20 musicians at Tally Ho!

******* The bluegrass equivalent of an Irish seison is a Jam session. I did not see or play in any jam sessions, except I heard there were jam sessions after midnight but I preferred sleep. It turned out that Aleesh, lovely girl I was chatting with at the hotel bar, turned out she's a civil engineer working on Galway road projects, & plays flute in seisuns. Brothers in arms. I thought I'd see her again Saturday, see if she could meet in Galway but did not see her again. :( Fenton, a guy in the bluegrass banjo workshop, lent me his Irish tenor banjo, so I learned the basics on that instrument in an Irish banjo workshop. Tons of nice folk mostly from England that I met anyway.

BYE BYE LONGFORD

The drive from Longford to Ballymena was from 10:30AM-7PM Sunday, with stops in Armagh, City of Cathedrals for sightseeing, & a modern mall outside Portadown. Gorgeous early fall-like day Sunday, sunny but there were a couple five-minute long downpours. If ya don't believe me, just ask Annie Lennox who said so over the mall loudspeakers that it was falling on her head like a memory. The whole ride thru Co. Monaghan was scary SLIPPERY because someone's fuel tank apparently leaked all down the road!

I arrived at my friend's an hour late because I mapquested WAY instead of AVE but got there in time for chicken n pork dinner and lots to catch up on after 6 years! We'll head over to a freind of theirs tonite for more catching up & drinks.

Today sightseeing & museums in Carrickfergus Castle & museum just up the coast from Belfast. By myself since the gang is at work & school. Karen suggested I see some fantastic murals in Belfast, since I would appreciate the artwork. The murals are a product of the political situation. I am not to drive my rental-car in that area because it has a southern registration. They have what are called black-taxis that can take you thru the troubled sections.

The food in Ireland is fantastic. Irish breakfasts have an egg, sausages, rashers (lightly fried ham slices), pudding (patties of pork and pork-blood), hash browns, tomatoes, mushrooms, soda bread. The At the Centra's (like a Mobil Mart), quiche & fancy wraps. Nice hearty food at supermarkets like tons of soda bread.

Posted from Longford!

Connemara, from Shanapheasteen Road (say it shanafeshtheen)



looks very much like my Greece painting







Clonony castle, co. Offaly or Westmeath. One of tons of roadside castles.


























Me at Stables after horse trek




View of mountains from horse. Probably Carrantoohil Mtn. in the distance.











Peat harvesting by machinery to feed West Offaly Power Station which provides 4% of Ireland's electricity:

I've been much on the go, driving so many miles. I skipped the first banjo concert last nite & continued reading The Bogman by Walter Macken. It's about a guy that lets his gramps push him around and into an arranged marriage, which doesn't seem like it's going to work out!!! In Ireland, bog peat is dug up and used for fireplace fuel, and commercially to produce electricity like in my picture. This afternoon I went on a bog tour and learned how to dig bog pieces by hand like in Macken's book. How bout that, being able to experience the book you're reading about?

I am pretty sure my horse-trek guide's name was Giselle, so I'll change Wednesday's post. I hit a pub in Galway later Wed. nite where the game was on & Ireland lost to Czech Rep. and is no longer qualified for 2008 world cup. There was quite a bit of cussin' for a country full of cathedrals & convents!!! Thinking back I should've flirted with the barmaid more. It's not unheardof for bartenders to just up n come to America, I thought afterward what do the readers think?? Big match of Gaelic Football (same as soccer 'cept you can use your hands) this Sunday, Cork vs. Kerry.

Posted from Galway. From an internet creperie called Buon Appetito. How cool is that, except what makes sense about the name??? The feta & sundrieds crepe was ok but I'd go for the strawberries next time.

On my flight Mon/Tues I did not sleep. I discovered on this my second day here, that Ireland is even better when you sleep the night before :)


KILLARNEY RIDING STABLES

According to my horse-trekking guide Giselle, it is a university requirement in France, to work a year (any kind of job) in an English-speaking country, to help learn English. So Giselle is a French college student working abroad in Ireland this year. I chatted with her the most during the trek. The other guide was Finnish & the trekkers were an Irish guy, English woman, German girl (Maria) and American (me). I chatted some with Maria some, but major language barrier. Just the same, I got Maria in trouble because when she held my bag while I took a picture from my horse, I dropped my whip(not a mean whip, but a short flexible stick called a Crop in the States)............So Maria hopped down from her horse to get it from the ground for me. Right away then Giselle was all, no
no
NO you're not supposed to get off the horse! Ask for help next time! Safety rules, which she admitted she did not tell us. Sorries all around. Maria is from Germany and owns four horses including a Hannover Reiner, am I spelling that right?

************ We rode Irish Draft Horses which I noticed all over Ireland and mine was named Indiana. I explained to Giselle that I was taking riding lessons and she was all, are you up for cantering? Which I have never cantered. I was all, yeah, sure! Cantering is going pretty FAST. So a few times, she took me ahead of the group and we cantered, then galloped, which is scary-fast. It was a fairytale magical experience hard to describe, riding thru narrow trails in ancient woods then coming out to a field with a glimpse of a stone cathedral over the trees. There were mossy woods, cow fields, a castle across Lough Leane (Lough means lake. Pronounce it Luck in the south but might be said Loof in the North) & the highest mountains in Ireland surrounding. Supreme, the best 50 euro I ever spent.

Bunratty Castle was right on my way up to Galway. Apparently big on the tour-bus circuit if you check out the parking lot. In the four towers of the castle, narrow spiral stone staircases. With people going up & down the stairs, it's all about having to go back, up, or step aside when otherw are coming up & down. Good workout. It had an awesome medieval great-room: tapestries, carved wood thrones, 30 foot ceiling at least. The original McMansion.

********************* My b&b (Rockfield House) a farmhouse in Moycullen is cosy and the hostess (Kathleen) gave me tea & biscuit & somegood tourist info. I'll go on a short loop of Connemara that Kathleen recommended - from Moycullen, north to Oughterard & thru Connemara on Shanapheasteen Road & back round the coast to Galway - before heading to Longford (2 hr drive) and banjo. Say it SHANAFESHTHEEN. I caught up with my friend Karen (finally) & will be off to Ballymena on Sunday - Tues! She's been lecturing at a local college.

No pics again this post... it's not my camera - the internet cafe's haven't had the right socket for the picture cards.

KILLARNEY, Co. KERRY

I made it safely to Killarney (2 hr drive from Shannon Airport) on this day and checked out Ross Castle, Dunloe Gap, Killarney Center, and Ring of Kelly - a scenic coastal loop in County Kerry! There were large moundy hills and farms along the coast. The remoteness and desolation of the scenery was dramatic. And I am doing well on the wrong side of the road. However, the coastal roads are so narrow and windy, with rocks and plants straight up along the sides, that I managed to put a nice scrape along my poor Nissan Tino! Good thing I got the maximum optional insurance.

The locals have thick accents, so it's been hard getting information. My b&b hosts have been keeping to themselves, running the farm.

Nice flight and great beef with noodles on the plane (bland, in a perfect British way!) Killarney is touristy, not much cultural going on. Tomorrow I have a 2-hr horse ride (with a guide and other tourists), then a 3 or 4 hr drive up to Galway to sightsee. More of an arts scene in Galway. No photos this post because they don't have the right hookup for my camera, here at this cafe in downtown Killarney. Mild weather, probably in the 70s even now almost 9PM.