Coming Full Circle: Ennistimon Then and Now

Since 'Full' seems to be the theme for the day...

As I mentioned, near the tail-end of my day yesterday, I stopped off in Ennistimon to revisit the spot where I had arguably the best night of my trip here two years ago, culminating in a fantastic evening of craic at Cooley's House pub downtown.

If you haven't already done your homework, go back and re-read "A nod towards Ennistimon". The most astute of you may recall that this is not my first time back in Ennistimon since I came over here. During my first week when I was staying at The Flowing Tide, I accompanied Bill, Tania and some friends to a gig at The Falls Hotel. I made note of a couple changes and left some questions. But it was night and we only passed through the darkened downtown stretch. This time, I got to walk around again, and was able to get some answers to said questions.

Alright. All caught up now? Right. Moving on....



The More Things Change.

I first took some time to wander the town a bit, making my way over to get a photo of the old Post Office. Slight angle and lighting differences aside, I think these two photos, if nothing else, show the difference in photo quality between my old Nikon and my Canon. The Canon's great for its speed and easily fits in a pocket, but I really think the Nikon's image quality is superior, despite being a much lower megapixel:


2005 - Nikon Coolpix 850
2007 - Canon SD600

Crossing the street from the old post office, I wandered down by the falls for some more comparative photography:

2005
2007
Then, it was back to the main street to check out the places I recalled from before. In the past couple of years, Ireland has introduced some incredibly stiff new legislation to crack down on drunk driving. While that seems great in theory, the sad effect is that it has apparently been decimating Ireland's pub industry, particularly in the small rural towns. It can't be understated what a huge part of Ireland's cultural identity the pub holds. It's not just a bar for drinking, but a place of music, conversation and friendship. It is very much the social hub that brings and holds Irish communities together. I was curious to see what effect it had had in Ennistimon since 2005.

This is what apparently used to be Cagney's Pub. It's possible that it still is, but with no name painted on the sign, there was little indication whether it is still in business or not.



Here is the Fisherman's Rest, formerly The Carrig. Walking by, not being fooled by its much more pleasant exterior demeanor, I only quickly looked inside and saw that it's been completely gutted and re-arranged inside as well. The bar has been moved to the other side of the room, and the interior decor... well, at least there IS interior decor now, and that's change enough.


Fortunately, Cooley's House has not gone anywhere, and has changed little. The Budweiser sign is gone from the outside, and the bright, hand-written neon orange sign proclaiming "Saturday - Folk Songs and Ballads" has been replaced with a bright, hand-written neon green sign proclaiming "Wednesday - Traditional Music".


I stepped inside, and had really hoped to find Joan still standing behind the bar.

But instead, a young guy with curly hair and glasses was standing in her place. The place was nearly empty when I walked in, then those who were there left, and after a bit a few more came in their place.



I pulled myself up to the same bar stool (fourth one up from the bottom of the pic above) I'd sat on that fateful night, and struck up a conversation with the man behind the bar, Jerry. (I'm now convinced, if I weren't already, that there is a town ordinance mandating that all people in Ennistimon must have names starting with 'J'.) He was every bit as friendly as Joan and I started asking about the folks in town that I'd met.

View from "my" stool at Cooley's House
Joan does still work there. I just happened to be in on her night off. Jerry assured me that she remembers just about everyone though, and promised to tell her that the guy from Chicago who played the harmonica there on his birthday--which was also Mother's Day--two years ago stopped in and said 'hi', and he assured me that she'd remember. Jimmy is still around it seems, and as I suspected, the new look and feel of the Fisherman's Rest is nothing but lipstick on the pig still known as 'The Hatchet'.


Mural on the back wall of Cooley's House, depicting largely what it was like by the end of night that I spent here in '05. Sadly, on this trip, I had to get back to Galway, so I only stopped in for one quick pint in the mostly-empty pub.

The Full Monty

Nope, this not a post about nekkid English blokes. Sorry ladies.

Rather, its about one of my favorite aspects of Irish culture... well, other than the Guinness, and the pubs, and the music, and the scenery, and..............

I'm talking about the traditional "Full Irish Breakfast". If you've ever had bacon and eggs for breakfast, you've had the scrawny, watered-down, bastardized great-great-grandson of the Full Breakfast, but until you've had it over here, you don't know what breakfast is.

It starts, naturally with eggs. Typically fried, sunny-side-up or over-easy. Then add rashers. Rashers are the Cadillac of bacon. Not some brown, dried up scrawny little strips of mostly fat, rashers are wide, thick slices of lean cured pork meat, more similar to Canadian bacon than the anemic stuff we use in the States. Next up are the bangers. You'd recognize them as sausage links, but again they really aren't comparable in quality to their American counterparts. Juicy, fresh and whitish in color, they have distinct and wonderful mild flavor.

Now, what really sets the breakfast off as an full Irish breakfast are the black and white puddings. These aren't chocolate and vanilla, and your tastes will be in for quite a shock if you bite in expecting such. Black pudding is essentially a blood sausage, with congealed pigs' blood mixed with other fillers such as grains, suet and meat. White pudding is similar, but is made without blood, so it is whitish in color and milder in flavor.

I have to admit black pudding is a bit of an acquired taste. It may taste pretty disgusting the first time you have it, and only slightly better the second, third and fourth times.... But eventually you'll come around. Why bother trying something repeatedly that you don't like? Well, here's a short list of some of my favorite things, which I wouldn't touch if I hadn't made myself keep trying them until I liked them:

• Beer
• Coffee
• Hummus
• Guacamole
• Indian food
• Black pudding

After the puddings, the meal also generally includes a side of baked beans, fried tomato, or sauteed mushrooms. Toss in some white toast and/or Irish brown soda bread and a cup of tea or coffee, and you've got yourself a Full Irish Breakfast!

You may note that it doesn't include hash-browns or other potatoes. While it is occasionally served with them, more often than not, they are omitted. Funny for a country who's entire cuisine is believed to revolve around the potato!

One of my top goals when I get home is to find a place that will import black and white puddings, as well as real Irish rashers and bangers, for the occasional weekend treat.

Full House, etc

Julia moved in to the house yesterday, giving us a full allotment once again. She's from San Jose, and is a current Harvard undergrad working over here for the summer.

I did get my bike back yesterday morning, too. For €30 I got a new chain wheel, new back tire and a new cable for one of the shifters. The front shifter is locked up and wasn't going to be worth fixing, so I don't think I'll be taking it on any treks out of town, but it'll be good enough for getting about town quicker.

That scratchy throat I had the other day has developed into a full-fledged bug. Bit of a nasty sore throat and cough this morning. Need to head out and get some OJ and/or Vitamin C supplements, but don't think I'll be doing too much else exciting today. Oh well, I need to log some hours for work anyways.

Oh, and I finished watching the third and final season of Father Ted yesterday. Good stuff. A bit odd and certainly different, but at times, truly hilarious. I may need to add it to my collection when I get home.

Mini-trip report: The Burren and northern Clare

Despite it only being a day-trip, I took enough photos to break them down into three separate galleries:

• Abbey Hill
• Ailwee Cave, Ailwee Mountain and Ennistimon
• Sunset and the trip back to Galway

Apparently the first "mountain" I climbed is only a hill, called Abbey Hill. Still not too shabby, it's the right-most peak seen in this photo that I took on Monday evening from the park near Salthill:



Abbey Hill was a fairly easy climb. Mostly large, stable rock, at a gentle enough incline. At the top was a large stone pile and the intersection of several stone fences that cut the mountain like a pie. The peak of Abbey Hill can actually be seen in high res satellite images on Google Maps here.

Lunar landscape on Abbey Hill

As I got near the top, I saw a man sitting on the peak, possibly wearing a hooded sweatshirt. He appeared to be sitting there, having a picnic with a bottle of wine next to him. As I got a bit closer, I realized the bottle of wine was in fact a person, and the man was the stone pile. By the time I reached the peak (I laid back and made my way to the large plateau area just below the peak to the north to give them time), whoever had been there was gone. I had the mountain to myself, it seemed and I lingered a good half hour or so, busting out my whistle to play a few tunes. After a while, a man and his young son came along. I left the summit to them and started making my way down.

Panoramic view from the peak of Abbey Hill

When I got back to the car, I decided I'd play normal tourist a bit and find Ailwee Cave. Not a difficult challenge, what with large signs for it all over the region and all, but I'd heard good things about it--plus... it had just been featured in an episode of Father Ted that I'd seen the night before!

Ailwee Cave is not just a cave--it's a showcave. And it's not just any showcave. It's Ireland's Premier Showcave. Seriously, its pretty impressive. It's very much developed with a visitor center, gift shop, cafe, guided tours and the whole works. The cave itself runs for something like a mile into the mountain itself. Only part of it is open to the tour, for obvious reasons, but most of it was big enough to walk around in, with a few chambers that were several stories high, including this one with a waterfall:

Back in the parking lot, is the starting point for a mountain walk up Ailwee Mountain, in which the cave is set.

Ailwee Mountain was a much rougher hike than Abbey Hill. There were a lot of short, but steep terrace sections that often involved a little bit of climbing on all fours, at least for stabilization. Nothing like true rock-climbing that would require equipment or spotting or anything, but not a simple walk, either. On top of that, much of the terrain was covered with scrubby grass, which actually made for difficult walking. The grass was generally just a thin layer of growth over the rocks, which did nothing more than to hide the gaps and loose, smaller stones. It was on this terrain that I did take a few small spills, mostly on the way back down, twisting my ankle and scraping up my wrist and hand a bit on one.

On top of that, the mountain just seemed to keep going and going. Particularly near the top, it was actually relatively flat. Large, sloping fields were frustrating as I kept trying to find the very peak. I finally set my sights on a large rock pile that appeared and made it my goal to get to that. It was certainly a local peak, although the field appeared to continue to gradually climb up a bit to the north from there, there didn't seem to be much indication that it was going to be much higher.

It was from this point that I texted-in the post below, describing the fantastic view that was to be had, seen in the round, here:

Panoramic from Ailwee Mountain.

After I made it down from Ailwee Mountain, I headed off to nearby Kilfenora, where I finally got to (re?-)meet Raeanne, and her husband Mike. Long-time readers will remember me mentioning Raeanne in several of the early posts, as she was very helpful in providing info and advice during the planning stages of this trip. She immigrated to Ireland from my own hometown several years ago after studying abroad here and meeting and marrying Mike. We chatted for a while about home and Ireland over a pint at Nagles Pub in downtown Kilfenora. Unfortunately, I had the camera in my pocket the entire time, but forgot about it until I was about a mile down the road. So, no pictures of Raeanne and Mike.

By this point, it was dinner time, but I still had plenty of daylight, so I headed down the road to the site of my favorite memories from my previous trip: Ennistimon. My return to Ennistimon and the reflections on the prior trip--particularly Cooley's House pub--are worthy of their own post, which will hopefully follow tomorrow. But if you haven't already, I highly recommend as a primer, reading my thoughts on my first trip there: A nod towards Ennistimon.


I left Ennistimon as the shadows were getting long, and made my way towards the coast, taking the lengthy, scenic coast road all the way back around and into Galway, stopping frequently to take pictures of the gradually setting sun over the Atlantic, and nearly full moon rising over the Burren.

Sunset over the Aran Islands--my next mini-trip destination???

All in all, it is difficult to imagine how the day could've been much better, other than to have possibly had someone to share it all with.

But that's where you come in.

Well that was a great way to spend my "1 month until I go home" day!

I have a scratchy tingle in the back of my throat, I tweaked my ankle apparently worse than I thought and put a bit of a gash in my right wrist and hand.

And I feel as healthy as I have in quite some time.

Today was one of the best days I've had in a while, and mind you, I haven't been having many *bad* days since I left!

Two mountains climbed, a cave explored, a fellow hometowner connected with, a favorite pub and town revisited, and just some amazing scenery the whole way through.

Tons of pictures to follow tomorrow, but here's a (lame compared to most of the pictures, but it works for symmetry with the picture posted below) teaser:


Galway City, as seen from The Burren across Galway Bay

Blogging from a mountaintop

this morning i climbed a mountain. them i did it again. as i look out right now, i can see galway, the 12 pins mtns in connemara,croagh patrick in mayo, the mcgillicuddy reeks down in kerry, and even some mtns far off to the east that i think are the wicklows near dublin. pics to follow tonight.

Land of the midnight sun?

Maybe not, but closer than I expected. As I was walking home around midnight tonight from a session at Richardson's (oh yeah, I've finally found a great, laid back session for intermediate-types, in a fairly dead-empty pub. Perfect for working on brushing up some tunes and skills!), I noticed a bit of a glow in the sky.

It was the slightest lingering glow of the setting sun. At midnight.

I'm looking very much forward to being way up in the highlands of Scotland on the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year.

But first off, I have some mini side-treks I want to take. I'm going to try to make the first one tomorrow, to do some hiking here:

The Burren, of County Clare, as seen from across Galway Bay

That shot is one of many I took while walking along the bay this afternoon. The best of the rest are all found here and may be some of the nicest shots I've taken.

So yeah, my plan is to try and rent a car (the bus schedule is just not conducive) in the morning and head down to Clare to do a bit of light hiking in the Burren. I'm also going to try and meet up with Raeanne and her husband finally since they live down that way, and depending on how things go, may try and grab one quick pint (and only one, sadly, since I'll be driving) at Cooley's House in Ennistimon, just for old time's sake.

If I haven't posted anything further by Thursday, send a search party. ;)

The funny thing about travelling is... you get used to it.

One thing that's really stood out to me, particularly on my various side-treks, is that the more you travel, the more you do get used to it.

Sure, this can lead to a lower level of anxiety because you have a better idea of what to expect in general, even if it's a place you've never been. Knowing the routines and general ins and outs of foreign travel can be handy and tend to be the same wherever you go, so being a seasoned travel vet can make it easier.

But the bigger impact seems to be that it is much harder to be 'wowwed' by what you see when you get there. That's not at all to say that you don't still enjoy and appreciate your destination. Rather, it's just that in some of my earlier travels, there was often this feeling of absolutely giddy fascination, born sometimes simply out of the shock of "being there" as much as by the sites to be seen.

I haven't really had that feeling much since I left, which has been a bit of a surprise. I realized on Day 1 here in Ireland, while Bill and I were driving through the rolling Clare countryside back to his school that, this being my third trip to Ireland, the countryside was no less beautiful, but didn't have this "wowwww... cooooool" effect on me that it had previously had. A quiet, warm smile of appreciation still crept across my face, but the adrenaline rush that might have accompanied it in the past was gone.

Even on seeing completely new places like Italy, Germany and France for the first time, those sorts of feelings were diminished some. It's been a bit sad in a way that seeing such distant and foreign places no longer gives quite the same level it once did.

But here's something to chew on for a bit:

"Which is worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored?" - Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent

From the dusty backhall archives of Internet lore

I can't believe this page is still in existence.

An absolute classic from the early days when the entire web was just simple static HTML put up on industrious college students' websites, its rustic look and feel are as fittingly cold and simplistic as the message it gets across. Ten or so years later, and a couple thousand miles away, the page is as timeless and constant as its subject matter:

"I Just Want to be Friends" - Joelogon's Foolproof Guide to Making Any Woman Your Platonic Friend.

God bless you, Joe Logon, wherever you may be today. I'm not sure I could ever manage this tricky feat without your step-by-step guide. Oh wait... yeah, I manage it all the time. But at least it's good to know I'm not alone. Well... yeah, I guess I am, otherwise I wouldn't be digging up this dusty ol' page every couple of years. heh.

Feck it, anyways... thanks for still being there for a laugh.

Drink! Feck! Arse!

Er, sorry about that. Spent some more time watching "Father Ted" last night. While the Dougal character had the honor of making my Top 10 TV Idiots list, it's the drunken, abusive Father Jack that really makes the show. It's impressive how much mileage actor Frank Kelly is able to get out of a character whose dialogue consists 95% of shouting "Drink!", "Feck!", "Arse!" and "Girls!" at random.

But regardless, that's an appropriate sentiment for my feelings towards the weather at the moment.

I got up this morning and it looked nice. A few clouds in the sky, but sunny. I finally decided to take my bike down to the shop. Well, I first took it down the other day, and got air in the tires, but he was too busy to have a look at the fact that the gears aren't shifting, so he told me to brink it back later in the week. Trying to ride it home (now that it had air in the tires) I found that the chain is also slipping something fierce.

So, I go get the bike out of the back yard and as I'm starting off from the house, it starts to sprinkle. That continues the whole way down to the shop.

When I arrive and tell him of the problem, he says to me again, that he doesn't have time to look at it now, and further that if its the chain and the gears, it's likely to cost more than it's worth to fix. My 'free' bike is now looking anything but. But he says for me to chain it up to the post outside and he'll have a look at it later.

As I'm in the process of trying to chain it up, the sky just opens up and starts dumping all it's got on me. I get the bike chained and duck into a shop across the street to wait out the rain a bit. When it slows, I make my way back up the hill. As I'm walking in the door, the sun peeks out from the cloud again in all her glory.

I used to describe the springtime weather back in the midwest as "schizophrenic". It would amaze me how, usually in early-to-mid-April, there'd be a span where the temperature would swing 30 or 40 degrees back and forth for a few days in a row. It would not be uncommon to be wearing T-shirts and shorts one day, and have snow the next. When I first got here, I marvelled at how un-schizophrenic the weather here is. The entire time I've been here, the temperatures have very rarely travelled more than 10 degrees either side of 65.

But the weather here is no less fickle. It's the precipitation and cloud cover, not the temperature, and it's on a much shorter scale. It'll switch between sunny and downpours four or five times within a couple hour span at times. You don't know the definition of 'scattered showers' until you've lived in western Ireland.

As I was sitting here a few minutes ago, it was looking like it had cleared up, so I was going to head down to the farmer's market to have a look around. I got my wallet and was just about to walk out the door when it once again started to pour.

I think I'll stay inside for a bit longer.

Although it's looking rather nice out at the moment....


ps - "Feck", while often used as a socially acceptible alternative for a certain other word, is actually derived from an Irish word 'feic', which means 'to see'. 'Feck' is also used to mean to nab, or steal, as in "feck a loaf of bread".

TV Land

After an initial burst of watching a lot of TV when I first got here, I've pretty much cut that out completely, except for a bit here and there when eating. It seems Stargate SG-1 always seems to correspond to my breakfast/lunch time. And in the evenings, its typically Mythbusters. Go figure.

But last night I had the pleasure of watching the first season of "Father Ted" on DVD. It's a pretty wacked out Irish sitcom about three outcast priests who have been assigned by the church to "Craggy Island", an isolated rock off the coast. Goofy, ridiculous but with some real genuine laugh-out-loud moments, I think it's going to bring 'feck off' into my daily lexicon for a while, much the way Deadwood did for 'cocksucker', for better or worse.

Watching the show inspired me to put together a list of my Top 10 Favorite TV Idiots:

10. Lowell Mather, "Wings"
"I give blood all the time. Just between you and me, Roy, I'll do anything for a sugar cookie. "

9. Michael Kelso, "That 70's Show"
"I wonder if that's what I'm doing right now? Sometimes my brain is doing things that I don't even know about."

8. Klinger, "M*A*S*H*"
Frank Burns: "Klinger, I want you out of that dress tonight!"
Klinger: "Never on a first date, sir!"

7. Sean Garrity, "Rescue Me"
Chief Jerry Reilly: [watching Sean Garrity and Probie playing Scrabble] "Look at this - a meeting of the minds and the minds are a no-show. "

6. Oswald Lee Harvey, "Drew Carey Show"
Drew Carey: "Hey, what were you doing upstairs?"
Oswald Lee Harvey: "I was using your blow dryer to defrost my crotch."

5. Woody Boyd, "Cheers"
Diane: "Methinks the man does protest too much."
Woody: "Excuse me, Miss Chambers, but shouldn't it be 'I thinks?'"
Carla: "Not in your case, Woody."

4. Entire cast except for Stewie and Brian, "Family Guy"
Chris Griffin: "Dad, what's the blowhole for?"
Peter Griffin: "I'll tell you what it's not for. And when I do, you'll understand why I can never go back to Sea World."

3. Father Dougal, "Father Ted"
Ted: "You can praise God with sleep, y'know, Dougal...
Dougal: "There's lots of ways to praise God aren't there Ted? Like that time you told me to praise him just by leaving the room...."
Ted: "Yes, that was a good one..."

2. Jayne Cobb, "Firefly"
Jayne: "Do you know what the chain of command is here? It's the chain I go get and beat you with to show you who's in command."
---
Mal: "Are you offering me a trade?"
Jayne: "A trade!? Hell, it's theft! This is the best damn gun made by man. It has extreme sentimental value. It's miles more worthy than what you got."
Mal: "What I got? She has a name."
Jayne: "So does this!" (caresses the gun lovingly) "I call it Vera."
Mal: "Well, my days of taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle."
---
Mal: "Looks can be deceiving."
Jayne: "Not as deceiving as a lowdown, dirty... deceiver."
Mal: "Well said. Wasn't that well said, Zoe?"
Zoe: "Had a kind of poetry to it, sir."
---
Jayne: (wearing ugly homemade hat) "How's it sit? Pretty cunning,don'tchya think?"
---
Jayne: "I'll be in my bunk"

1. Dwight Schrute, "The Office"
"Ever since Michael dumped Jan for Carol, Jan’s been bitching out on him. Reject a woman, and she will never let it go. One of the many defects of their kind. Also, weak arms."
---
"Dammit, he put my stapler in Jell-O again!"
---
"Aw, man! Am I a woman?!?"
---
"In the wild, there is no health care. In the wild, health care is, 'Ow, I hurt my leg. I can't run. A lion eats me. I'm dead.' Well, I'm not dead. I'm the lion. You're dead."
---
Dwight Schrute: "What does the female vagina look like?"
Toby: "Technically, I am in Human Resources, and Dwight was asking me about human anatomy. Um... I'm just sad the public school system failed him so badly."
---
"I have been Michael’s number two guy for about 5 years. And we make a great team. We’re like one of those classic famous teams. He’s like Mozart and I’m like...Mozart's friend. No. I’m like Butch Cassidy and Michael is like...Mozart. You try and hurt Mozart? You’re gonna get a bullet in your head courtesy of Butch Cassidy."

In other not-so-new-news--as it's been official for a few weeks now--Veronica Mars, the show that, in conjunction with TiVo, is most responsible for my relapse into watching TV shows again, has been cancelled. Not a terrible surprise, but disappointing. Hopefully Detroit-native Kristen Bell can spin her short-lived success and brilliant performances on the show into a promising career elsewhere, along with her other castmates, particularly Jason Dohring, Enrico Colantoni and Percy Daggs.

I haven't watched any new episodes of Veronica Mars or any of my other current shows (Heroes & The Office, mainly) since I came over here, and we have a monthly bandwidth limit on our ISP, so I haven't been downloading them. But when Justin comes to visit in a few weeks, he's supposed to be bringing me a few discs to help me get caught back up. In the eternal words of Eric Cartman.... "Super-sweet!"

Permapost: Happiness Is...

Any of my old-school (I mean really old-school) APO folks who might happen to be reading this would remember ConferU. Confer was sort of a pre-cursor to modern day message boards, where we had various pre-defined topics that anyone in the group could add their thoughts to. One of them was "Happiness is..."

In order to bring a bit of an interactive nature to this site, I'm going to put up a permanent link on the right-side navigation to the comments on this post. Please feel free to leave comments there and tell us what's making YOU happy today, or any day. Post as often as you like! (Within reason folks. Unless you're a spammer, then by all means, please clutter my little sunny corner of the net with your V1ag ra and m0rtg^ge rubbish!)

Seriously, I'll leave it un-moderated and open for now, as long as there's no problems.

I'll start...

Normandy Report: - Post-Post-Script

I nearly forgot! Not wanting to clutter up my Blogabond map with too many details, I decided to create a second one just with the details of my stops for this trip. As with the map on the side, you may not be able to see the embedded version here if you are using an older version of IE, but you should be able to click HERE to view the map directly on Blogabond.



This, like the map on the side, is an interactive Google Map, so you can drag it around, zoom in, zoom out, and switch between Map, Satellite and Hybrid views to really get a sense of the places I stopped.

Normandy Report: Post-script - There's Hertz... not exactly.

(Or, The $100 quarter tank of gas.)

I mentioned that I was cutting it close on my timeframe getting back, right? And alluded to credit card problems? Yeah... that kind of bit me in the butt.

I'd hoped to be able to get back to Beauvais on one tank of gas, but as I was rolling along the Calvados coast, it became evident that wouldn't be the case. I stopped and filled up in a small town and figured I'd just have to top off when I got back by the airport. I was proud of myself for noting when I left that there was a station right near where I came out of the airport, so I figured I'd be all set.

Well, as I was rolling into Beauvais, it was just after 8pm. My flight was at 9:50, so I was already at about the time that I would've liked to be checking in. But, small airport and all, I figured I was still okay. I made the mistake, however, of assuming that a town the size of Beauvais (moderately large, but not a really major city) would have fairly good signposts to the airport.

Not so much. And, I found out as I was rolling in, that the directions I'd printed off consisted of "Now entering Beauvais; Turn left". No indication of what I was turning left onto, or what signposts to look for.

So, I lost about 20 minutes driving around Beauvais trying to find the airport. I finally get near by it and pull into the gas station. The station itself is closed, but it's a modern BP station with Pay-At-The-Pump. No problem. Until the card reader rejected my card. Every card I had.

There were no other gas stations in sight, and at this point, I do not have time to try and find one, so I take the car in, with the tank 3/4 full, hoping that they'll let it slide or that I can convince them to cut me a break, as the fee for not returning it with a full tank is 73 euro.

I pull in and the Hertz "return" booth is empty. I go around to the main rental office and there are about half a dozen people in line in front of me and two clerks slowly working the desk. I stood in line there for about another 20 minutes. I finally hand over the keys and contract and the desk clerk has to go check the car. He comes back five minutes later, hands me the receipt to sign and says I'm all set.

Now at this point, I'm down to only about 45 minutes before my flight is scheduled to leave, so I didn't pay particular attention to the bill. The desk clerk didn't mention anything about the gas, so I figured it wasn't a big deal and hastily signed off on the bill.

I got home later and took a look.

An extra 73 euro tacked on. That's $101 and change. For a quarter of a freakin tank of gas.

Yeah, my own fault for signing without looking at it, but even if I had, I'm not sure I'd have been able to argue it down. I signed the agreement ahead of time that I'd pay 73 euro if I returned it without a full tank, and I'm not sure how understanding they'd be if I tried to talk my way out of it.

Just another sign of why car rental companies are among the most evil, bastardous, blood-sucking businesses out there.

Normandy Report: Part III - Omaha and the Calvados Coast

The plan for Friday was to check out of the B&B early and begin to head east back towards Beauvais, taking the coast road along the Calvados coastline, hitting Omaha, Gold, June and Sword Beaches, along with other points of interest on the way.

This portion of the trip was intruiging to me, because unlike the Cotentin peninsula area north and west of Carentan, which had been the base of the US airborne operations, I knew very little about the action that occured along Calvados. Moving west to east, the beaches were designated as Omaha (US 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions), Gold (British 50th Infantry Division), Juno (Canadian 3rd Infantry Division) and Sword (British 3rd Infantry Division). On the left (eastern) flank of the invasion, the British 6th Airborne Division was dropped in and tasked with protecting the invasion's flank, as well as capturing key bridges in the area.

My first stop was Pointe-du-Hoc, just east of the town of Grandcamp Maisy. Pointe-du-Hoc is a rocky outcropping that was the site of a large gun battery, capable of raining fire down on both Omaha and Utah beaches. Though the site had been heavily bombarded in the days and weeks leading up to D-Day, it was not destroyed, so the task of neutralizing the guns fell to the men of the 2nd Rangers battalion.

Equipped with specialized climbing equipment, the Rangers managed to scale the sheer cliffs from the sea and captured the site--only to find out that the five 155mm guns which were there objective, had been previously moved inland to a different location. Resistance had been strong, nonetheless and casualties were high.

The most striking thing about the Pointe-du-Hoc site is that unlike the other sites, where farmers were eager to regain use of their fields after the war, the terrain at Pointe-du-Hoc has been left more or less as it was, which is to say, so pockmarked with bomb craters that it has an eerie, lunar feel:

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Pointe-du-Hoc

I had planned to hit the Rangers Museum near Pointe-du-Hoc, but apparently the museum is in the town of Grandcamp Maisy, and I somehow missed it while passing through. Nonetheless, the site at Pointe-du-Hoc was incredible, and is an absolute must-see for anyone interested in visiting the D-Day area. The beautifully scenic views of the coastline offered from the point strike a hard contrast with the brutal ruins of concrete tumbling in the countless craters covering the expansive site.

From Pointe-du-Hoc, I continued on into the town of Vierville-sur-Mer, at the western end of Omaha Beach.

In general, I was surprised at the contrast between Utah and Omaha, not only in terms of terrain, but also level of development. Utah was a gently sloping beach with short, grassy dunes at the top. Inland from the top of the dunes, stretched a low, flat expanse of quiet, sleepy farmland that feels as though its been perfectly preserved in time. Were it not for its historic significance, it seems few folks other than local farmers would visit the area.

Omaha Beach, and the entire Calvados coast (the west-to-east coastline that encompasses Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword beaches) for that matter, has much more of a resort/beach town feel to it. Many such towns stretch across the entire coastline area. Omaha Beach itself has a nicely landscaped, paved road right along the top of the beachhead, with a string of vacation homes, restaurants and guesthouses lining the opposite side of it. Behind the road and the beach homes are tall, scruffy bluffs that made for a formidable defense. It's not surprising, therefore, that the assault on Omaha was much more brutal, and took much longer, than the one at Utah. Atop the bluffs, the region is still farmland, but it is more nicely manicured cropland, whereas the Cotentin region behind Utah seemed to focus on livestock pastures and had a much more rustic feel.

Omaha Beach
Near the center of the 3.5 mile beach stands a monument, and a sculpture, entitled Les Braves.

Les Braves

At this site, there was a plaza with a series of flagpoles, and as I was there, a ceremony of some sort was going on. I didn't quite get what the ceremony was about, but I did manage to catch some video of what was one of the most poignant and emotional moments of the trip:

American flag being raised over Omaha Beach

After the ceremony, I headed to the D-Day Memorial Museum which was right up the road a few hundred yards. It was nice, though smaller than the Utah Beach museum. There are at least two or three D-Day Museums in the Omaha Beach area alone, though, and this was the only one I got the chance to visit.


I'm now going to jump out of order for a moment.

The next spot that I visited was the American Military Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, overlooking Omaha Beach. But I'm going to save those thoughts and pictures for a fitting end to this post.


The next site moving east was the third and final gun battery location that I visited, near Longues-sur-Mer. This battery sits in a wheat field high on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the English channel between Omaha and Gold Beaches. It is the only battery in Normandy to still have its original gun turrets in place.

One of the gun emplacements at Longues-sur-Mer

Looking east from Longues-sur-Mer, one could see the remains of the 'Mulberry' artificial harbor that was built off the town of Arromanches at the western end of Gold Beach:


Down the road from Longues-sur-Mer, I stopped off on the cliff hanging over the eastern end of Arromanches, where there is a cinema presentation called Arromanches360. It's a 15 minute-or-so film presented on 9 screens in the round, which brings together vintage film from WWII, along with scenes of Normandy in the modern day, many of which were filmed in the round, from helicopters, ships, and people walking through streets. It's presented without words and is a very moving (emotionally and at times, physically). Very cool and another site I would highly recommend for anyone touring the area.

From the cliff outside the theatre, you have a beautiful view overlooking the town of Arromanches, which seems that it would be a fantastic place to stay if someone were looking for a more traditional vacation getaway:

Unfortunately, by this point, I was running short on time and did not have a chance to explore the town in detail, though it looked lovely.

Starting to crunch for time, I was frantically calculating how much time I was going to need to get back to the airport. I'm notorious for giving myself far more time than I need (generally a good plan, I feel), but in this case, I knew that doing so would cheat me out of seeing one or two more things that I might regret missing later. After quick deliberation, I decided I could still squeeze in a quick visit to the Juno Beach Centre in Courseulles-sur-Mer.

After all, how many places in the world outside of the Great White North and various Olympic Ice Hockey venues do you get to see Canada take center stage?
I talked a bit about my stop at the Juno Beach Centre previously, and it was definitely one of my favorites of all the museums I visited. Like I said, it was the only museum in Normandy to feature a curling stone:

After my brief stop at Juno Beach, I quickly began to make my way back towards Beauvais. Unfortunately, I had to skip past Sword Beach at that point, and did not get to visit any of the British-oriented museums. My route (aimed to not only maximize my sights along the Calvados Coast, but also to circumvent Caen and any traffic problems I might have run into there) took me through the towns of Benouville and Ranville and past Pegasus Bridge, which was a major objective of the British 6th Airborne during the invasion, but by then, I definitely did not have time to stop. Back on the A13 tollway shortly after that, I was cruising my way back to Beauvais.


I'm going to wrap this post up now with some final thoughts and photos from the American Military Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach at Colleville-sur-Mer. The cemetery has all the appropriate grace and dignity that the men who rest there deserve. It is beautifully laid out, and the absolute precision with which the crosses are aligned in every direction, make the cemetery itself a work of art, fittingly memorial. From nearly any point among the markers, lines seem to radiate in every direction as the crosses and gaps between them line up along such perfect edges, as though the spirits of the men who lie there--and of freedom itself--are radiating out from that very spot.
















For the rest of my pictures, please see the following links:

• Pointe-du-Hoc
• Omaha Beach and museum
• American Military Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer
• Longues-sur-Mer, Arromanche, Juno Beach and museum

Hats off to the Red Wings

They had a heck of a run this year. Each year lately folks have been wanting to claim that the end of the era that produced the three Cups has finally arrived, but this year they came back as strong as they have since '02. Datsyuk did a lot to shed his 'playoff choker' image and it seems like the team grew up. Hopefully the younger guys just keep getting hungrier and hungrier and they can stay at or near the very top for years to come, drinking from Lord Stanley's Cup at least once or twice more in the near future.

Moving on, Go Senators! As if wanting to keep the Stanley Cup out of Disneyland wasn't enough reason, this should convince you.

Normandy Report: Part II - Utah and the Cotentin Peninsula

After such a short night sleep and a long drive the day before, I knocked off pretty early, so I didn't have much problem waking up at 5:30 the next morning. I packed my camera up and quietly snuck out of the darkened B&B in the earliest traces of morning light. Or rather, morning grey.

It was heavily overcast, with light sprinkles. I knew I wasn't going to get my great sunrise photos, but I was already up, so I wasn't going to stop now. It was a quiet, pleasant 20-minute drive on deserted country roads to reach Utah Beach. I pulled off near the museum and climbed up the back of the small dune at the top of the beach, and was there.

It was low tide, and the beach spanned for several hundred yards in front of me. Far out, near the water line, several tractors with their lights on were combing back and forth across what were apparently mussel cages, literally farming the seabed. I had a quiet moment of reflection, took some pictures, and texted in this post from my phone at exactly H-Hour (the designated time of the landing on D-Day): 0630.

Utah Beach at H-Hour

I spent about 20 minutes wandering the beach and reflecting before heading back to the car. I decided to cruise up the road a bit and stumbled across the remains of a pillbox, or German bunker.

Pillbox near Exit 3, Utah Beach

I cruised up the road a bit more to the memorial at Exit 4, then decided to make my way back to the B&B for breakfast. After a nice, light breakfast of a croissant, a bit of yogurt and some bread (I've decided by the way, that I think Ireland may be the only place in the world where the 'breakfast' part of 'bed & breakfast' is taken seriously.) I gathered the rest of my stuff and headed back out.

I passed by Dead Man's Corner, but as the museum wasn't open yet, I figured I'd hit that later in the day on my way back into town. Just a stone's throw up the road was the town of St. Come-du-Mont.

Let me step aside here for a second and say that a lot of my prior knowledge of the spots in this region, and the action that occurred here in early June of 1944, came not only from HBO's "Band of Brothers", but also from the "Brothers In Arms" series of PC games which follow a fictional squad of paratroopers from the 101st Airborne, from D-Day, through the fall of Carentan, and beyond.

I realize it seems trite to look back at something so serious and significant as the Normandy campaign through the glass of a video game screen. However, in the case of the BiA series, the team at Gearbox Software put a phenomenal amount of time into framing the events as realistically and historically as possible. Each mission in the game is based on actual after-action reports filed by paratroopers of the 101st, and is set in a game world that was modelled with an extreme level of authenticity and accuracy. Further, as you progress through the game, the perks that you unlock are, in many cases, small featurettes that delve even further into the history of the real events, people and areas, including maps, diagrams, photos and reports.

My experience playing that game was, in many ways, my guidebook to the region, and it was fascinating, and at times, eerie, to visit these locales and have the distinct feeling that I'd been there before. It, like "Band of Brothers" and the many various movies, TV and other media representations of war, was, and is, to many, the key to unlocking a deeper interest in the history behind the entertainment.

The first such spot was St. Come-du-Mont. St. Come was where the troops gathered and regrouped before making their push into Carentan along the road I drove up and down several times, known in history as "Purple Heart Lane".

The south entrance St. Come du Mont along the N-13 highway.

Passing through St. Come du Mont after a few pictures, I continued to St. Mere-Eglise. St. Mere-Eglise was the first town in France liberated by American forces, and is the home of the Airborne Museum honoring the men of the 82nd and 101st. The museum features two buildings, both shaped like parachutes, which house a C-47 Dakota and a Waco Glider, among other various vehicles, weapons and artifacts.

The church in the center of St. Mere-Eglise has a mannequin of a paratrooper hanging from its steeple, a dramatic portrayal of Private John Steele, whose chute snagged on the steeple during the D-Day drop. Private Steele hung from the tower for 2 hours, playing dead, before being briefly captured by the Germans.

Interesting side bit I just learned while checking wikipedia to try and recall Steele's name: The airdrop for the 82nd Airborne into Normandy was known as Operation Detroit. The 101st's drop was known as Operation Chicago. Both, obviously, were sub-operations of the overall invasion plan, known as Operation Overlord.

From St. Mere-Eglise, I headed northeast, to the gun battery at Azeville. Azeville was a relatively small battery site, compared to the other two I visited, but the admission included a guided tour of the tunnels connecting the various bunkers and pillboxes. The most impressive site at the Azeville site was a hole that was punched in the back wall of the firing room of pillbox #3 by a shell from the USS Nevada, shown in the following sequence of photos:

These photos shows how amazingly precise the shot from the Nevada was. That window is only about 3-4 feet high and maybe 15 feet across. The Nevada was about 14 miles away. The second photo shows our guide next to the hole for scale.

The shell punched through the wall without exploding, and into the command room on the other side. This is the hole as seen from inside the command room on the other side of the wall (top). It glanced off the floor and up passing through the back wall of the command room (bottom).

This is looking back from outside the command room, following the path of the shell. It passed right through the entire pillbox without exploding, but the concussion alone killed 15 officers and soldiers manning the gun there. It was a demoralizing blow for the German garrison stationed there and led to the surrender of the site.

From Azeville, it was a short hop up the road to another gun battery at the hamlet of Crisbeq, near Saint-Marcouf. This site included several bunkhouses that had been set up as dioramas, and in at least one case, fully restored with its interior, to convey what life was like for the German soldiers stationed there:

Occasionally, I'd stop off to try and get a photographic sense of the countryside. Here are a few shots that I particularly liked:

Farm fence, peeking through a hedgerow, and cows

From Saint Marcouf, I started to make my way back down towards Utah Beach to catch the museum. On the way, I passed through another town that had been represented in "Brothers in Arms - Road to Hill 30": Foucarville.

Foucarville, it seems, has not changed much since 1944. In the game, you begin in the building on the left and make your way up to the crossroads, making a right and eliminating road blocks ahead, before securing and defending the church.

From Foucarville, I cut back over towards the beach and caught back up with the shore road near Exit 4, the northernmost of the four designated exits from the beachhead that were to be secured by the 101st Airborne in order for the armored and supply units to be able to move inland. (In anticipation of the invasion, the Germans had flooded the low-lying fields all up and down the peninsula, making the roads the only way inland from the beaches.)

Monument at Exit 4

I headed back down the road from Exit 4, passing by the pillbox I'd explored earlier that morning and back towards the museum. By this time, the grey clouds were finally breaking up, allowing for some nice shots of the museum and beach in the afternoon sun.

The beach shines in the sun, while the museum structure guards over the beachhead

An LCVP (or "Higgins" boat) personnel carrier sits at the entrance to the museum

"Hedghog" beach obstacles on display near the museum

This gun was one of the guns captured at Brecourt Manor by Dick Winters and the men of Easy Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne. This assault on the gun position was portrayed in the "Day of Days" episode of "Band of Brothers".

I spent a good hour and a half to two hours perusing the museum and the beach some more, before starting to make my way back down the road towards Dead Man's Corner and Carentan.

Dead Man's Corner is so-named because early in the fighting, a US tank was destroyed at the corner, and for several days, it was left there, with the driver's body fused to the turret. The men began to refer to it as "the corner with the tank with the dead guy". Eventually, the "Dead Man's Corner" moniker stuck.

The house that is now home to the Dead Man's Corner museum was there in 1944, and was used as a German command post prior to the invasion. The fighting that took place in this area is well represented and well modelled in "Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30":

On the top is a composite image showing the house at Dead Man's Corner as it was in 1944, and how it was rendered in "Brothers in Arms". On the bottom is how the house--now a museum--appears today. St. Come-du-Mont lays half a mile down the road on the left, while Carentan is a mile in the opposite direction.

Inside the museum are a number of displays, including some that are centered around and show an appreciation for the attention drawn to the area by, both "Band of Brothers" and "Brothers in Arms":

The "Band of Brothers" display features equipment and personal effects of Dick Winters, Carwood Lipton, and other members of Easy Company, while the "Brothers in Arms" display focuses on Col. Cole's historic bayonet charge on the edge of Carentan, which was featured in the game.

By the time I was done with the DMC Museum, it was nearly 6 o'clock, so I headed back into Carentan. As I mentioned above, the road between St. Come-du-Mont and Carentan, particularly the last half mile or so, is a stretch known as Purple Heart Lane. The low lands on either side of the road were flooded and crawling in German soldiers a week after D-Day. In order to move in on Carentan, the Airborne forces had to advance along this road, flanked on either side, with basically no cover.

Purple Heart Lane

After dinner in Carentan (fish this time, not sausage), I had a few hours until sunset, so I just went for a drive. I tried, unsuccessfully, to find the location of the Battle of Bloody Gulch, near Hill 30 just outside Carentan, where the 101st, with the assistance of the 2nd Armored Division, repelled a German counter-attack on Carentan. Instead, however, I took a nice drive through several sites to the north and west which were represented in the sequel, "Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood", including Baupte, Etienville, and the locks at La Barquette.

Etienville

Picauville

Chateau le Bel Enault - I'm not sure if this was the chateau represented in "BiA: Earned in Blood". I've seen some stuff online indicating that it was, but I'd have to go back and check the game to be sure.

By that time, dusk was quickly approaching, so I returned to Carentan for the night, a full day complete.

For more photos on these areas, see the following sets on my Flickr account:

• Utah Beach and Museum
• Airborne Museum and St. Mere-Eglise
• Gun Batteries at Azeville and Crisbeq
• Dead Man's Corner, St. Come-du-Mont, Road to Carentan
• Miscellaneous Shots around the Cotentin (farmland, Foucarville, Baupte, Etienville, Picauville, La Barquette)

To be concluded soon with a summary of Omaha Beach and the Calvados coastline...