Rental Cars and Northern Ireland?

The plan for the upcoming (bank holiday!) weekend is to rent a car and drive (basically) completely across the island. In theory, 2 of my housemates and I will rent a car tomorrow morning and drive north with the stated goal of visiting Belfast, Derry, Donegal, Mayo, and Galway in roughly that order.

If that happens or not remains to be seen.
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Ennis and the Cliffs of Moher

Yesterday two of my housemates and I traveled up to County Claire to the town of Ennis and the Cliffs of Moher. The final destination of the trip, the Cliffs, was the furthest point north I had yet traveled to in Ireland and was the first time I had seen the Atlantic Ocean from Ireland. I had also never been to County Claire before, so the trip included a number of interesting new places.

It began with a bus that left Cork City at around 7.30 in the morning, which was not so much fun to wake up for. We then switched buses in Limerick and eventually stopped in Ennis. We had about four hours between our arrival in Ennis and the next bus to Doolin and the Cliffs of Moher so we had lunch and wandered around town for a few hours. Ennis is the largest town in County Claire and since Claire play Cork in an important hurling match tomorrow the town itself was draped in yellow and blue banners.

In Ennis we visited the creatively named Ennis Friary, which is right next to the Fergus River and was built in the 13th century. The town itself grew up around the friary, which was built by the ruling O'Brien family near their stronghold. Ennis itself is a nice town, considerably smaller than Cork with narrow streets and a rather small downtown area that includes a few main streets. The picture at the top of the post is of the main street of Ennis taken from the base of the O'Connell monument at the center of town. Below is the Friary.


After a few hours and lunch in Ennis we returned to the bus station to start the 50 minute bus ride to the Cliffs of Moher. The bus ride from Ennis to the cliffs provided gorgeous views of the Claire countryside. Claire is far rockier than Cork. Rolling hills extend into the distance covered with rocky-spotted fields bordered by rock walls, a sharp contrast to the empty grass fields bordered by hedges and trees of County Cork to which I am more accustomed. The main road to the cliffs passes a large quarry not far outside the town of Ennis. After about a half hour or so we came over the crest of a hill and saw a large bay (Lehinch, i believe), which was the first view of the Atlantic Ocean I have had since landing in Cork. The town of Lehinch (once again I am not positive that it is this specific town) had a couple of really cool-looking golf courses that had ruins of some ancient-looking fortifications between fairways. After we passed the golf courses we passed a very long, wide beach. We followed the curve in the bay and then started climbing the hill that would eventually take us to the top of the cliffs. Looking back from the bus:


We eventually got to the cliffs themselves and they were rather breathtaking. It was actually sunny or only partly cloudy for most of the day and fairly clear, so we got a good view of the cliffs and the surrounding countryside. The cliffs are about five miles long and rise slightly more than 700 feet above sea level at their highest point. They're pretty incredible.

The picture above is looking in the wrong way for them, but since it was clear we could also see the Aran Islands in the distance. There was also a stone watchtower near the middle of the cliffs, O'Brien's Tower (in the picture below).

Just as we were about to catch a bus back it started raining faintly and as the bus ride began it started pouring. Good timing on our part.
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Moving

On Tuesday everyone who works on my floor went to a meeting in which we were told that we were moving (effective immediately, pretty much) to various other places on campus so that they could renovate the floor. This was expected, but the extreme short notice rather surprised me. As a result I have done absolutely no chemistry since that meeting and have spent my time at work between then and now cleaning, packing, moving, and cleaning some more.

Unfortunately I found a ton of mystery sample vials under my bench. I do not know who they belong to or what they are which means I get to clean out and dispose of about 200 sample vials. Not so much fun. It also means that for the next week or so I will not be able to get any work done because we will still be unpacking and settling in to the new lab. Such is life, i suppose.
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Midleton

Yesterday I went with a few of my housemates to the Old Midleton Distillery, which is now owned by Jameson and is the distillery where over half of all Irish whiskey is produced. The old distillery itself was bought by Jameson in the 1960s and had previously produced its own whiskey since the mid-1800s. Midleton is a small town located about a half hour east of Cork City on the Owenacurra River. We went there by bus and it was actually rather remarkable to see how much of the one main street in town was shut down because it was Sunday.

The tour of the Distillery itself was pretty awesome. We were led on a tour of the grounds and buildings where they at one time produced very large amounts of whiskey, although now all the production occurs at a modern distillery pretty much next door. The old distillery is in fairly good shape for its age, however, and going through the grounds and learning about the distillation process was especially fascinating for me as a chemist. For most of the tour whenever the guide mentioned distillation or their big condenser I was constantly reminded of work and the ochem lab I took for all of last year.

In any case, the tour took us around the grounds for about an hour and enlightened us to the basic principles of distilling whiskey in addition to the differences between Irish, Scottish, and American whiskeys. Generally, the differences lie in number of distillations, the way the barley is heated and dried, and the type of barrels in which the whiskey is aged. Irish whiskey is distilled three times, and the first of the stills (distillation vats) is (or was, it was not too clear) the largest still in the world.


After the tour they had a whiskey tasting where they had us compare small samples of American, Scottish, and Irish whiskeys, and seeing/tasting the differences between them was actually quite intriguing after having been walked through the process of making them and having the differing points of their production described.

Completely unrelated random fact: According to Wikipedia, Cork Harbor is the second biggest natural harbor in the world (behind Sydney, Australia).
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Failure

The past few days can be summed up very well by this picture. On Friday I figured out that the compound that I have been working on for the past week or so degraded so it is now useless. Today I attempted to go up to Thurles to watch Cork play Galway in hurling but we were not able to get train or bus tickets that included a return journey so we gave up. Both disappointing, but these things happen.

It was a gorgeous day in Cork today and walking back from the bus station after realizing that going to see the match wasn't feasible we saw some people doing a bizarre sort of martial art seeming thing except it was not any recognizable martial art I have ever heard of. In any case we returned home and watched the match on TV. It was an incredible match that ended up as a Cork victory by a mere two points after battling back from being behind at halftime and playing a man down for the entire second half. It is disappointing to have missed it but the match itself was still very exciting on television and there was no real way that we could have made it to Thurles in time once we realized what was going on with the train and bus.

The past couple days have remained sunny (for the most part). It has been over a week since it last rained harder than a 20 minute drizzle. It's almost spooky.
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Is that....Sun?

Today is, I believe, the 6th consecutive day that it has not rained significantly in Cork. This is by far the longest streak of its kind since I've arrived in Ireland. Its almost spooky. We've had brief drizzles on a few of the six days, but they have been so inconsequential that you would not be able to tell that they were happening if you were inside. Its a different side of the Irish weather, I suppose, although one that does not often stick around for more than a day or two.

Yesterday I walked into the City Centre Center and passed a pub named Costigan's. I'm sure I've passed it before because I have walked down this street before but this was the first time I really noticed it. For maybe the next 10 minutes all I could think of was DiCaprio's character from The Departed.

Tennis balls are expensive here. The cheapest can I could find was 5.50 euro, which is ridiculous when compared to 2 or 3 dollars back home. Its easy to pay 10 euro for a can as well, which is roughly a third of the price of a (slightly discounted) GAA jersey I saw in the sporting goods store where I saw these tennis balls. The thought that nine tennis balls could be worth the monetary equivalent of a replica jersey of any sort is completely mind-boggling to me.
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Hurling in the Land of 5 Line Poems

Today I traveled to the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick to watch the Munster Hurling Final, Tipperary versus Claire. While the match itself left something to be desired in terms of competitiveness, the trip itself was a lot of fun. Fortunately I got to watch the tail end of the youth final (either under 18 or under 21, I'm not sure), which was actually quite exciting. Cork's youth team beat Tipp's by only a point or two and I witnessed a number of lead changes and ties in the final few minutes that I watched. The outcome was in doubt pretty much down to the wire. As a bonus, the weather held and I wasn't rained on at except for the last mile or so of the walk home from the bus station in Cork.

The match started at 4, so I left Cork by bus around 12:25. It is around an hour and a half journey and the scenery on the way there is gorgeous. Open fields bordered by hedges and trees spreading over rolling hills radiate outwards from Cork city and as far as I've seen from my travels in Munster over most of the southwestern part of the province. We crossed a few rivers in our journey from Cork to Limerick although I have no idea what their names were.

Once in Limerick I began the rather long walk to the venue pretty much alone. The closer I got, however, the more people I ran into. The vast majority of people I saw while walking to the match were Tipp fans, and as we crossed the Shannon River and got progressively closer to the stadium our numbers swelled. Along the way as we began to get very close to the grounds (within a mile or so) we began to run into enormous groups of fans spilling out of hotel bars and pubs drinking beer or cider from plastic cups, vaguely reminiscent of an American college on a weekend night. A friend had dropped off my tickets at the reception desk of a hotel close to the ground, so I went and picked them up. Unfortunately my friend from Claire ended up not being able to make it at the last minute, so I was only able to use one of the two tickets I had at my disposal.

After picking up the tickets I continued on to the stadium itself, walking into bigger and bigger crowds as I went. One of the striking differences about sporting events here and sporting events in America is the way everyone arrives at the venue. In the United States, most stadiums have enormous parking lots surrounding them or at least very close by. Here the stadiums are built into the cities themselves and therefore have no room for large expanses of blacktop to park cars on. As a result, everyone walks from a relatively far distance. It generally ends up being a really cool experience just walking to the match because you get to see the crowd getting denser and denser as you approach the stadium.

Anyway, I got into the stadium and made my way to my seat, which was in the 5th or 6th row on one of the sidelines about 40 yards from the end (the field is around 140 yards long). I pretty much immediately realized that the atmosphere at this match was going to be much better than the football final of last weekend. It seems that more people in Munster care about hurling than care about football. The stadium was packed and was about half blue (Tipp) and the other half yellow (Claire) although I think that overall the crowd was more pro-Tipp. Flags waved all over the stadium although they were concentrated in the terraces (cheap tickets where you don't get a seat at both ends of the pitch). I unfortunately didn't get any pictures inside the stadium, mostly because it didn't cross my mind at all.

The match itself started off quickly. Tipp scored the first point and never trailed after that. In the first half (and to a lesser extent in the second as well) the Claire attackers were woefully inaccurate with their shots, missing at least as many as they put on target. This delighted the Tipp fans I was surrounded by, although the volume of shots Claire were getting worried them. By halftime Tipp had scored a goal and was well in control of the match winning 1-11 (14) to 0-6 (6). The vocal support after points and other good sequences of play were impressive, and the collective outpouring of joy after Tipp's first goal was one of the loudest cheers I have heard in an outdoor stadium, although this may have been because I was in the middle of it yet not exactly a part of it in the same way that everyone else was. It was exciting, of course, but not having any significant allegiance to Tipp I didn't feel the same connection with fellow celebrating spectators like I usually do at sporting events.

Claire looked better in the second half and it began with the two sides trading points. This made for a slightly more interesting match for me although since Claire was down by 8 points this could not last if Claire wanted to have a shot at winning. After a few minutes, however, Tipp seemingly began to go flat and Claire exploited this, starting to slowly draw closer to their opponents. The end of the pitch with all the Claire supporters got progressively louder and more excited as the momentum shifted in favor of Claire and the Tipp fans sitting around me anxiously watched the match, getting progressively quieter as they began to fear that Claire were taking over the match.

Fortunately for my Tipp neighbors, with about 15 minutes to play a Tipp hurler scored an impressive goal to reestablish an 8 point lead and effectively squash any hope of a comeback by Claire. Almost immediately after Tipp got another point to make it at least a three goal game, making the last bit of the game a mere formality. With only a few minutes to play the Tipp goalkeeper made a rather spectacular save to deny Claire a consolation goal and as extra time began Tipp supporters had already begun jumping the barriers between the stands and the field in anticipation of the final celebration. They barely stayed off the field long enough, and the tide of joyous blue-clad supporters rushed onto the field at the final whistle waving blue and yellow flags.

The bus ride back was marred by some traffic, but aside from that pretty uneventful. The city itself was quite empty aside from Claire and Tipp fans and most of the shops were closed. I was quite impressed by the complete lack of any sort of antagonism between opposing sets of fans. The hooligan culture of European soccer supporters evidently does not carry over into GAA fans.

Sorry, that was long. Here's a picture of what I think is Limerick Castle, viewed from a park along the Shannon River.

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A Weekend of Hurling

This weekend is shaping up to be a potentially rather sports-packed few days. Later today Cork play Dublin in an All-Ireland hurling qualifying match at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork. I'm still debating if I should go and watch that match live but i will definitely at least watch it on TV. The more exciting hurling-related event of the weekend, however, takes place considerably further away.

The Munster hurling final is on Sunday. It is Tipperary versus Claire and is taking place in Limerick at the Gaelic Grounds there, one of the largest GAA venues in Ireland. The plan is to take either a train or bus up there from Cork around noon to make it there in time for the 4pm match. Its supposed to be quite a good match, and I get to see a town that has poems named after it in the process.
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Grass Court Tennis

It wasn't exactly Centre Center Court at Wimbledon, but yesterday afternoon I played tennis on the grass courts at the Brookfield complex where I'm staying. The grass was quite long and looked like it had not been cut in a rather long time, one of the courts had fallen tree branches occupying one of the doubles alleys. In spite of the less than ideal condition the court was in, I was pretty excited to be able to play on the surface that inspired serving and volleying.

The courts themselves were riddled with divots and only about half of the lines were straight. The ground was so uneven that about every other ball resulted in a bad bounce. Normal rallying beyond 3-4 balls was incredibly difficult because one person would usually hit an inadvertent winner. After about 5 minutes I completely abandoned any attempt at hitting a topspin backhand because it was nearly impossible with the erratic bounces. My hitting partner and I both ended up looking like idiots a bunch of times swinging and missing at balls that didn't bounce as we expected them to. In spite of all the inconveniences, it was still really cool to see chalk fly whenever we hit a line.

After having played a set on grass, I now understand why the English developed serving and volleying and are more prone to using the continental grip. If the ball doesn't bounce on your side of the net it is a massive advantage because there is no chance of a bad bounce. Similarly, a continental grip on the forehand makes it easier to adjust to bad bounces.

After we were finished playing, the balls we had used were grass and dirt stained. If I hadn't just finished using them I would've guessed that they had been used by a dog owner as something for Fido to fetch for the past few weeks.
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Munster Final (Football)

Today at 2pm, Cork played Kerry in the Munster Final for Gaelic Football at Páirc Uí Chaoimh just outside of Cork City. I was fortunate enough to go to the match and watch Cork pull off an amazing comeback upset over Kerry, the reigning All-Ireland and Munster Football champions. The final score was Cork 1-16 (for a total of 19) to Kerry's 1-11 (for a total of 14) after Cork had trailed at halftime 0-3 to 1-8. The game was immensely entertaining and a ton of fun to watch in spite of some very fickle weather.

We arrived at the stadium by bus about 50 minutes before it was supposed to start and got to watch the end of the Minor (under 18) Munster final between Kerry and Tipperary, which ended in a draw. As we arrived it was raining fairly steadily but not particularly hard and that rain kept up until about five minutes prior to the throw in of the Cork-Kerry match. The weather and expected result (a lopsided victory for Kerry) kept attendance on the rather low side, with the announced attendance at the Páirc Uí Chaoimh only around 22,700 (its capacity is closer to 30,000 or 40,000).

We watched from the very top of the West Stand, the end closest to the city. We happened to be surrounded mostly by Kerry fans with a few Cork fans sprinkled here and there between them. Cork and Kerry are rather bitter rivals as they border one another, and their teams are referred to, interestingly, as the Rebels (Cork) and the Kingdom (Kerry). The match started out pretty well for Cork with the Rebels scoring the first point within a minute of the start of the match. It remained fairly even for a few minutes after that until it was tied at two points each. At that point, Kerry began to run away with the match. By halftime it was 0-3 to 1-8 in favor of Kerry and the general feeling was that it would be kinder to use some sort of mercy rule so that the Cork players didn't have to suffer anymore. The only solace for the Cork fans was that after the rain had stopped just prior to the start of the match the sun had come out and the weather had turned quite warm, sunny, and very plesant.

After the last of the stragglers wearing Cork red trudged to the locker room for halftime, a sort of mini-pitch was set up in the middle of the real field and the girls teams from Cork and Kerry ran out to play a football match of their own, presumably for halftime entertainment. About 60 seconds into their mini-match, however, the sky darkened and the entire stands rustled as literally every person in the stadium put their jackets back on and reopened their umbrellas pretty much simultaneously. It was actually quite an impressive sight to see thousands of people very abruptly and rather frantically put on water-resistant outerwear. Just about as the last of the fans were done getting ready for the rain, it began pouring. It was quite possibly the heaviest rain I have ever been in. In about 60-90 seconds the weather went from quite warm, sunny, and apparently perfect to buckets of rain and strong wind. Fans huddled under umbrellas, some crouched against the back wall of the stand, others rushed out of the stands into the inner hallways of the Páirc Uí Chaoimh. The pouring rain persisted for pretty much the rest of halftime.

Strangely enough, the rain began to taper off before the half started and after about two minutes of the second half the rain had stopped completely although some clouds persisted. Cork looked better to start the second half and began to pull some points back but after about 5 minutes a Cork player was sent off for a second yellow card, making the outlook for the Rebels even bleaker than before. Nearly right after he was sent off Cork scored a point, but it seemed small consolation as Cork were still down 5 points and a man.

The Rebels didn't give up though, and a few minutes later scored a goal to put them within 2 points of Kerry, making the match interesting once again. At that point you wouldn't have been able to tell that Cork were a man down without counting. A mere minute or two later a Kerry player was sent off for what appeared from my angle to be a vicious elbow/shoulder to the head of a Cork footballer sprinting down the wing. At this point Cork were trailing by two but seemed by far the better side of the half, and they quickly got two more points to draw level with the Kerrymen. The teams traded points, but by looking at the two teams it seemed only a matter of time until Cork pulled ahead for good, which they did soon after. Cork eventually won by 5 points, a remarkable achievement considering that they were down by 8 at half time.

The announcer made repeated requests to fans to "please stay off the pitch" after the match was over, but these requests went completely unheeded. Eventually the police simply opened the gates onto the pitch so that the supporters didn't have to hop the fences.

The Cork captain raising the cup (taken from the pitch).

As we made our way out of the stadium, it began to rain once again. The Cork weather ended up bracketing the match with rain before, at halftime, and after. Somehow the times when the players were actually playing stayed fairly dry. Read more

Killarney + Pictures

Yesterday one of my housemates and I traveled to Killarney. Killarney is about an hour and a half bus journey northwest of Cork City a few kilometers past the county border between Kerry and Cork. The bus takes small, winding roads and we left at around 9:30 in the morning, so by the time we arrived in Killarney i was actually rather nauseous. The bus actually had seatbelts as well, a fact that surprised and initially sort of confused me coming from a land with seatbeltless busses. Fortunately, Killarney itself was a great place to visit and offset any lingering nausea in a few short minutes. After a brief walk from the bus station to the city center, we were greeted with the street in the picture to the left, followed by two busier and more main streets filled with all sorts of restaurants and assorted shops, including butchers, bakers, sports shops, betting places, and a bunch of gift shops (Killarney has been a tourist destination for hundreds of years).

After arriving in the downtown area (which consists of 2 major streets that basically form a big T) we got some food, which was cheaper than it would have been in Cork which could have been a result of practically every other shop along the two main streets being some sort of restaurant. There was a Subway and a Burger King as well, which didn't quite seem to fit in alongside O'Connor's Butcher Shop and O'Leary's Pub. After lunch we walked over to St. Mary's Cathedral, which was built in the 1800s and I believe it is the seat of the Diocese of Kerry. It is a functioning cathedral and there was actually a wedding finishing up as we went to check it out, so we didn't go inside.
Across the street from the entrance to the cathedral (directly behind where that picture was taken from) is an entrance to Killarney national park, an enormous plot of land owned by the Irish Government which contains the Lakes of Killarney, a few picturesque mountains, and the ruins of Ross Castle and Innisfallen Island, home to Innisfallen Abbey, one of the oldest monasteries in County Kerry. The park itself is gorgeous, and attempting to describe it is pretty much pointless, so here are some pictures:


The above pictures are of some of the fields near Killarney taken about a 5-10 minute walk from the cathedral.

This picture with mountains and Lough Leane in the background was taken from about halfway between St. Mary's Cathedral and Ross Castle.

This was taken from the base of Ross Castle looking out over Lough Leane.

All in all, it was a great trip. As a bonus, it didn't really start raining until we were boarding the bus to return to Cork. As we drove back, we could see from the bus window the same rolling hills with their peaks shrouded in low, wispy clouds. It looked really cool. It was a rather exhausting day, but completely worth it. The next travel goal is to head to a county not called Cork or Kerry and venture beyond the far southwest corner of the country. Read more

A Token American in a Foreign Country on the Fourth of July

Today was the first time (and it may turn out to be the last time as well) that I have ever worked on the 4th of July. It was a Friday so it was a rather light day, but it still felt weird to be working on a day that (in many cases) is part of a four day weekend in America. Its also interesting to answer my coworkers questions about what the 4th is like in America. Just to give a general flavor of the questions, here is a sampling:

"So what do most people call it? Independence Day? The 4th of July?"

"Does everyone just....have fireworks?"

"Do English tourists get harassed on the day?"

For some reason, people seem to think that Independence Day is a very anti-British holiday. I don't know where they got this idea, but it seems to be fairly widespread. Everyone seems to think that the whole fireworks part is really cool, especially when I explain to them that fireworks are the only universal official celebration aside from what everyone chooses to do themselves. It was a rather curious experience to go to work today especially because the date seemed to emphasize the fact that I'm an American and, therefore, not Irish. That was an especially interesting feeling because generally in the United States 4th of July celebrations have quite an opposite effect.

Also, it has been raining (hard) today since about noon. Also something I'm definitely not used to on the 4th of July, although since I was at work I didn't notice as much as I would have normally as I was inside all day.
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Lawyers, Guns , Money?

Predictably, the day after I write about the sluggishness of the PPS number saga, the numbers arrive. We've given our paymasters the numbers and will hopefully be paid sometime in the next week or so. If all goes well there will be money in my Bank of Ireland account by the end of the week, which would be ideal because the current plan is to visit Dublin on Saturday and a working Irish ATM card that doesn't charge me any fee would be a godsend.

I've been watching a good deal of Wimbledon, which isn't difficult because its on when I get home from work. On Monday night we got to see Andy Murray come back from down 2 sets and a break to beat Gasquet in five sets, and earlier today we saw Nadal completely destroy him in less than two hours (I think). Evidently John McEnroe's commentary is also played in Ireland. His tennis commentary empire extends beyond the United States and to the BBC. I had no idea. I also didn't realize the extent of the pro-Murray hysteria among Wimbledon fans. Quite entertaining, in any case.

Speaking of Wimbledon, I discovered yesterday that the Brookfield complex (where I am staying) has two grass tennis courts. This is, of course, AWESOME. It's been raining ever since I discovered the courts themselves, but once it stops I'm heading down to play on the surface that inspired serving and volleying.
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