Emerald Isle

Vacation Eve: Oysters and champagne at the Standard Hotel, then stepped outside to share a very large beer at the Standard’s Biergarten.  We did not do any packing.  Typical.

Wednesday: Travel day, plowed through an impressive amount of work at home while packing and straightening up the house.  Flight uneventful.

Thursday: Landed in Ireland, picked up rental car/micro-machine, checked into hotel, walked around town, crashed hard in super-comfy bed.

Friday: Woke up late, had breakfast, drove to Blarney Castle.   Weather was really sunny and nice too, depending on who you spoke to people said it was the best week of weather in Ireland since either 2006 or 1995.  Everything was so nice and GREEN!  Castle and grounds were absolutely beautiful, we took a stroll around, checked out the "Poison Garden" which had many examples and descriptions of poisonous plants.  After that we crawled through the old hidey holes and tunnels in the bedrock of the castle – creepy and fun.

After that we walked up through the different levels of the castle on our way to kiss the Blarney Stone!  Unhygenic and historic – yay.  The Stone is kind of below floor level so you need to lie down, grab the bars, and lean your head backwards and down to kiss the stone.  As you can see, this makes for an extremely flattering angle. There are also some very nice gentlemen there to make sure you don’t fall through and die, also in any photos of your kissing the stone, it looks like the nice gentlemen are molesting and/or making out with you.  This photo is of S but mine looks basically the same, only with boobs and a bright blue teeshirt.  Aside from the castle and stone, there was actually a lot to do on the castle grounds.  We went for a nice long walk around a small lake and saw ponies and a donkey.  There was a rock garden with a waterfall, and wishing steps, and lots of curious things to see.  Very nice day trip.

 
 
The next day was the first day of swimming.  It was a bright day and the water was beautiful but only 9*C/49*F.  Super cold – the kind of cold where you feel like you’re being slapped repeatedly all over your body.  We were meant to do laps around a small island, which was supposed to be a loop of about a mile.  Here’s everyone starting out – I am the bottom/left arm with green cap.  If you look towards the front in the middle, the guy doing butterfly is training for an all-fly English Channel crossing!
 
 

Got acclimated(ish) to the water by the time I swam out to the island and rounded the first corner.  Everything was going fine, I noticed some people were getting really close to the edge of the island, but I was staying out a bit because I’m used to Alcatraz and other islands like that where it’s not good to get too close lest you be bashed by waves against jagged rocks.  Big mistake!  Everything was so green and looked the same so I accidentially somehow swum around the edge of another island and missed the turn to go around the edge of my original island.  Ugh.  Realized this way too late when the edge I’d been sighting on still wasn’t getting any closer after 20 minutes. 

I was all alone and feeling more scared than I ever had during an open water swim when I realized how high the stakes actually were.  I was at least a mile away from where I’d started, feeling cold and tired, and not really sure how to get back.  No escort boats, no other swimmers around, and not really sure where I was.  I even contemplated climbing up onto the island and running to the other end to see if I could see people/make my way back on foot, but there was about 10 feet of vertical rock around the edge, so it wasn’t really climb-able in bare hands and a speedo.  

So I took my best guest to self-correct, put my head down, and swam.  It sucked and my mind was racing the whole time, worried I’d gone wrong again and was going to die from my own sheer stupidity.  So scary.  I didn’t feel better until I saw the warmth of houses, then buoys, and then S on the water’s edge.  I felt like crap and came out of the water instead of continuing to do laps.  I re-warmed and we talked about what had happened out there.  I said something about taking a wrong turn and he said, "It’s an ISLAND.  You swim around it, how can you take a wrong turn?"  I couldn’t do anything but laugh.  I’d say I almost died, but given that another unfortunate swimmer just died attempting the Channel, this weekend I won’t go that far.  

After the morning swim we went to check into our rental cottage.  It was huge, two bedrooms, living room, dining room, open kitchen, and garden with BBQ.  Very nice!  The walls were almost 3 feet thick, and we had to stoop to get through two of the doorways – weird.  We had to head back to the other town to check out of the hotel and go to the afternoon swim.  I showered, did some work, then took a quick nap before heading out.  Check-in was at another hotel nearby, so we checked in and sat in the lobby.  Everyone else was outside soaking up the sun, but I hate the sun so we sat inside.  Chatted with a few other swimmers, went through the briefing, got ready to swim.  It was a nice swim, quick and warm compared to the morning debacle.  Tons of bridges and lots of people to pass, which made me feel like I was making progress for once.
 
 
  
The next day was another organized swim, in a local lake/loch.  It was a point-to-point, so we got ready at the finish point, then got loaded into a van to take us to the start.  Kind of crazy – Ireland has really winding and super-narrow roads, so being in a huge van with the doors open in just a swimsuit was kind of nervewracking.  The swim was good though, the loch was really pretty, the freshwater felt okay, and I was able to maintain a good speed over a longer swim route, which helped build my confidence.
 
 
 
Had an intense day of work on Monday, stayed up pretty much the entire night which kind of killed Tuesday.  The next few days consisted of lots of laps around that island, nice walks around town, and nice dinners, mostly at home.  I was zonked almost every day, not sure if I wasn’t at full strength or if the cold water just really took it out of me.  Got stung by some jellies I am not used to which made a lovely rash on my arm and up my sides.  Other than swimming we spent a lot of quality time on the couch, curled up with a book or watching a show.  Our rental house had a large bookcase full of novels so I really took advantage of that, and S was in heaven with non-stop "Top Gear" and "Border Security" on television.  There was an arts festival going on throughout Kinsale and people seemed to be really excited for the weather, it’s such a nice little seaside town and everyone was in great spirits. (I also later learned that OD’s own canister was in Kinsale that week, performing as part of the festival.  Such a small world!)

On Thursday afternoon we took a drive up to Dublin to meet up with my lovely fave, homebird, at the Gravity Bar atop the Guinness Storehouse.  It was so much fun and [homebird] and her husband D completely spoiled us.  We had pints of Guinness and great views overlooking Dublin, then we took a ride to an amazing restaurant, Fire, in the center of town.  The restaurant is built into the old ballroom of the Mansion House, which has been the residence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin since the early 18th century.  The space was really spectacular and the food was delicious!  S and I started with lamb "lollipops’ served with naan and a yogurt sauce, [homebird] had a lovely seafood salad that we all shared on slices of the amazing Irish brown bread, and her husband D had yummy looking fishcakes.  For our mains, [homebird] and I both had fresh panfried hake over a delicious puree,  D had roasted monkfish, and S had a really tasty Irish Hereford fillet served with frites the size of my wrist!  So good.  For dessert S and I shared a limoncello sorbet cake thing, just as good as it sounds!  I forgot what [homebird] and D got, probably because we were so focused on the limoncello dessert.

In addition to the historic setting, this was a noteable night in Ireland – basically right on the other side of the compound, the Irish parliament was working on some landmark legislation while interested parties held candlelight vigil outside.  After dinner we took a walk over to the beautiful Shelbourne Hotel for a drink at their classic Horse Shoe Bar.  We had the place pretty much to ourselves since all the legislators who would usually be drinking there were all at the vote.  Really neat place, great spot for conversation in a cozy booth and I could just picture it all smoky and filled with gruff politicians and journalists, drinking whisky.  I could have stayed there all night but [homebird] saved the best place for last – just down the road, called Cafe en Seine!  To me, this is pretty much the perfect bar.  Huge cavernous yet warm feeling space with pillars, skylights, indoor greenery, stained glass mirrored ornate baroque everything – completely over the top and a perfect cap to the evening.  We sat at a high table across from the Havana Club rum bar and chatted away.  Seriously could have hung out all night but we had a decent drive back to Kinsale so we said adieu around midnight and hit the road.  Can’t wait until their trip to NYC in December!

Next few days were more of the same, and then all too soon it was time to go home.  We checked out of our cottage and into a bizarro spa/hotel/compound on the edge of town.  I think they forgot our reservation but upgraded us to an absurdly huge suite.  The bed was really comfortable and I meant to take a bubble bath in the jacuzzi tub but didn’t even do that.  Airport early the next morning and then home again home again.  NYC was in a heatwave too, so we didn’t do much except work last week.  Luckily a lot of people seem to be out of town so the pool wasn’t incredibly crowded, which would have made life so much more annoying.

Other than that, on Tuesday we went to a reading of two in-progress screenplays, one by a really young guy just out of film school, and one by an established writer.  It was okay but there is something incredibly awkward about watching people read from a script, being all actor-y.  Afterparty was equally awkward, so we bailed early.  Other than that the highlight of the week was the JAY Z / Justin Timberlake concert.  We bought tickets that same afternoon, and luckily decided to head to S’s office to print them, then hung out there until we needed to leave for the concert.  Even at 8pm the temperature was something like 100 degrees fahrenheit, but the show was awesome. Getting home on the subway afterwards was predictably awful, went right home afterwards and didn’t wake up until brunch the next day.  Library after brunch, home after that and the rest of the weekend was spent in bed.