What's a little rain among travelling friends

A must on any vacation is a rain jacket and umbrella. Today that proved true as we set out towards the town of Sirmione on Lake Garda. It didn't actually start raining until we were on the bus but then it didn't let up for a long time. 

The coach dropped us off at the parking lot and we found out later that such drop-offs and later pick-ups must be scheduled and cost €45 each time. If the coach(bus) decides to stay it will cost €60 per hour. Yikes and I thought parking in Ottawa was expensive. 

Anyway, appropriately garbed we set out towards the area where we'd have a couple of hours to wander around. There were a few options and our first was to find a nice dry coffee shop, and as luck would have it we found one. There we enjoyed our specialty coffee and shared pistachio cannoli. Yum. 

But it was still raining. We wandered on narrow streets, making sure to stay to the right edge because cars are allowed. There were high-end clothing stores, jewellery stores and more than enough souvenir shops. We all resisted the temptations and kept walking.

And along the way we enjoyed the interesting architecture but above all the views we had of Lake Garda.

Our little troup reunited at 11:45 for a boat ride on the lake. The rain stopped, the seats in the boat were dried off, well, not really to the point of being dry but at least we weren't sitting in puddles. Then off we went, to the sounds of music we all enjoyed. Loud music. To the point where my watch gave a warning that I was in a Loud Environment!!

The sun came out and we had some lovely views as we cruised around, stopping to see the bubbles from geothermal "springs" under the water, castles and forests, and snow-capped mountains in the distance.

Once back on dry land, we followed our guide's flag on a bit of a hike, to our lunchtime pizza restaurant where we each chose a personal pizza which was quite large but mercifully had a very thin crust. My personal choice was ham and mushroom. Mmmm good. Our beverage was a choice of a small beer, a glass of wine, or a soft drink. I found the "small beer" to be excellent and indeed it was small.

Following lunch we boarded our trusty coach and headed for a surprise. Along the way we passed an amusement park, Gardaland - that's a reference to the area not the Irish police. The guide tried to convince us that a ride on a huge roller coaster was our surprise. We didn't believe her. The bus drove on and we ended up at a winery where we learned a bit of the history of that vineyard and the types of grapes they grow. This was followed by a tasting of their rosé, Benni. It was delicious, delightful and served nice and cold. Some of our group bought various bottles of their wine, but I declined.

We are now enjoying a rest, having walked only a little more than 8000 steps today. My feet are grateful. It was time to relax and unwind and get ready for dinner at 7.

This is a beautiful spa hotel but the dinner last night was disappointing. The salad was minimal and I just skipped it. I can get iceberg lettuce, tomatoes and grated carrots anytime I want them at home. The pasta course was tortellini - ho hum and the entrée was tough chicken, barely cooked potatoes in some sort of tasteless sauce. Dessert was good - tiramisu but obviously thawed and probably not made on site. Maybe tonight they'll do better.

Verona - a special place with an incredible history

Another sunny and warm day. Although our walking today involved fewer sets of stairs and inclines than did our Venetian adventure, I'm up to 11,200 steps and I haven't yet wandered down the corridor to dinner. My feet are doing better than I thought they would, but they are campaigning for overtime pay and a soak in Epsom salts.

We departed Lido de Jesolo at 8 am on the dot this morning and enjoyed the drive to Verona. Just short of the city we stopped at a rest stop which I presumed would be much like the stops on the 401 at home. Hah! We in Ontario have a long way to go before a comparison can even begin. You can get coffee, of course, wine, beer, cookies, candy, many kinds of food, electronics, toys, hardware, clothes I think ... And yes, there are washrooms too. Given that we are incredibly well fed on this trip, I didn't see the need to make any purchases. I must say a lot of wine and beer made its way onto the bus for private consumption. €12 got you a 3-pack of regular sized wine, i.e. 750 ml bottles. Not mini-bottles. 

Once we arrived in Verona we met our guide, Monica. Unlike yesterday's microphone problems for Elizabeth, the guide du jour, the microphone chosen today was perfect. We each have a receiver, on a lanyard of course, and an earpiece, and we could hear Monica tellling us the incredible history of Verona. It's a very beautiful city and once we reached the old historic part, we were surrounded by what I call "eye-candy." There's an old Roman colisseum sort of 'arena' that has been upgraded to now be a theatre. See photo below. We didn't go in, but I believe it was featured in the opening ceremonies for the recent winter olympics. 

Walking around, admiring the buildings and alleys, we learned of the famous inhabitants, much of which I can't recall. I believe it was the La Scala family that seemed to have been everywhere. They even have a very extravagant set of, um gravestones? They were huge sarcophaguses (sp?), statues, ornate structures topped with a figure mounted on a horse. 

We learned the original story of Romeo and Juliet, and after lining up with hundreds of other tourists, we did enter a courtyard to see Juliet's balcony. Yes, of course I took a picture.

After a wonderful lunch, we had some free time to wander around. There are stalls in the open air market square and in the surrounding streets are designer stores. Chanel, Boss, Cartier, Rolex, um, I don't shop at those stores so can't recall the names of others. The store windows are inviting but not being a shopper I gave them little notice. Besides, my budget would not like to be totally used up in one shop.

About the food - eating three course meals is a struggle. I consume only half of what is put in front of me and still get more than enough. All the meals are included on this trip, and apart from tonight's very disappointing dinner, which was pretty awful, the food has been excellent. At our previous hotel the meals were amazing. I skipped dessert the first night but had chocolate ice cream, (not gelato) with fresh strawberries last night. I turned down the Creme Brulé and Tiramisu. The salad each evening at the Bristol hotel was a huge selection of roasted or otherwise cooked veggies, and was wonderful. The appetizer always had pasta as a choice, and the main course was top notch. I had Grilled swordfish the first night and poached sea bass the second.

The lunches we had were in fabulous unique restaurants and the offerings were really tasty. Today's lunch had a tray of mini pastries for dessert. Our opening course of salad was nice, and the main course was delicious pork (don't recall the name of the dish). Potatoes seem to be served at every evening meal.

My only complaint is that dinner doesn't start until 7:30 and takes at least two hours. We're so tired from all the walking that we hit the sack shortly after dinner. This is not optimal but, hey, this is Italy.

Here is today's photo offering - it was hard to choose which pictures to include: they didn't download in order that they were taken.

The pastry selection at lunch today

Interesting street facade

Enter this shopping street at the risk of serious budget damage

A roman ruin repurposed to be a theatre - didn't get inside

Interesting campo (plaza) in Verona

Enjoying a limoncello spritzer in Verona

The view from my room near Lake Garda

Venice in the sunshine

 What can I say about Venice. It exceeds all expectations of beautiful buildings, narrow and wide canals, interesting bridges (unless of course you have to walk up the many steps on one side and then down the other), and hordes of tourists. This is not yet tourist season and Piazza San Marco was a moving tide of humanity. Many, like we were, followed a guide who held up some sort of unique flag so that you would follow the right leader. 

We indulged in a lovely gondola right along mostly tiny canals but did get out to the Grand Canal by the Ponte Rialto. This time we didn't have to climb up and down that bridge. Then it was back to the small canals and a return to our starting place.

It was hard to choose the pictures for today. The entire place is eye candy. But here's a selection.

Rialto Bridge

Lunch which was Venetian tapas and we enjoyed each one,
 well, other than the sardines

Typical view of a small canal and bridge

Ponte Rialto again from the gondola

Coming to the end of our ride

Piazza San Marco with the basilica at the back

Breakfast in the hotel offered many options. My favourite choices were the capuccino and a croissant, but the prosciutto was pretty tasty when paired with a slice of cheese. And the fruit salad was fresh and tasty. We boarded our deluxe coach for the 30 minute drive to the dock where we, eventually, boarded our boat to Venice. The entire trip from the hotel to setting foot in front of the Doge's Palace, took more than an hour. I briefly wondered if we'd have been better staying in the city itself, Then I saw the people wheeling their suitcases which would have needed carrying up and down those bridges. Nope, right choice of hotel.

The two dinners we enjoyed here in the hotel were fabulous, if rather over the top in quantity. There was a "salad" bar of mostly roasted veggies and they were the most delicious ever. I must try to follow what I was told was the way they cooked their spinach. Simple sounding, but I'm not sure mine will be as good. Then there was an appetizer, a main course and dessert. I managed to avoid dessert yesterday but succumbed to the lure of chocolate ice cream with fresh strawberries. I could have had tiramisu, creme brule, lemon gelato, more sliced fruit, and a selection of cheeses. 

Tomorrow we are off to Verona and have been promised less than today's almost 13K steps on flatter territory. 

Bags are to be outside our rooms by 7am, followed by breakfast and an 8 am departure by bus. The drive is about two hours. My feet are grateful.

I didn't recheck this post for grammar or spelling - please forgive me as my eyelids are heavy and it's time to get some sleep.

La vida Italiana

 Greetings from my current location - very close to my very comfy bed that is calling quite persistently. I've been up for about 36 hours give or take 5 minutes and will gratefully tumble in very soon. 

The flights to get here were all on time and relatively smooth. The airports all provided great walking opportunities that I didn't realize I wanted. Actually, I've always wanted to ride one of those extended golf carts in an airport. Today it was not to be. 

Departing Ottawa at noon on Wednesday we flew to Toronto and got in the first 500 miles on foot. We thought that was a lot. Then we flew to Amsterdam and the amount of walking puts Toronto to shame. And then we arrived in Venice, and mercifully found a few of those moving sidewalks after we claimed our luggage. Our bags were loaded onto a bus and the tour group embarked on a water taxi ride to Murano. The idea was to have lunch and visit a Murano glass factory. Ha ha ha. We did those things but there was at least an hour of walking on a bright hot sunny day. The weather forecast had been for rain and I was never more grateful for a wrong forecast. Tomorrow now promises to be much the same. With lots of walking.

We finished the day with a lovely dinner in the Bristol Hotel where we are staying. Each room has a balcony and mine has a view of the beach. I will not be getting up early to walk on the sand before we set out for yet another day of endless walking. And after our bus and water taxi rides we are to do a walking tour of Venice and have lunch. Then five of us are taking a gondola ride - just because we can!!!

Too tired to write more, Here are some pictures. This is the reverse order of how they were taken but I'm too tired to rearrange them. Apologies for grammmmmer and sprelleng errirs. 

Murano in the sun

Street in Murano before lunch

A much faster water taxi than ours

The interior of our water taxi with its supremely uncomfortable seats. See me smiling - that smile is hiding the discomfort my backside was enduring. Besides, it was early in the day and before our many more steps.

Our water taxi waiting for us to board

A destination to explore and an experiment along my personal "road not taken" in 2008

The destination in the title was the Yew Tree Graveyard. Inspired by a conversation at Egan's Pub, with the folks pictured here, I decided to explore a place I'd bypassed time and again.

The Bradburys are Kehoe/Keogh descendants
 and possibly very distant relatives

I'd seen the brown sign, indicating a place of historical importance, on every trip to Ireland. It's right near Minmore Mews where I usually stay, and my previous thought was "so what?" Then on one of my recent trips to and from Bunclody or Carnew, I saw the same sign, pointing the other direction. I was passing both ends of a road I'd never travelled, so why not take that road?

The day began with a vigil, hovering over my keyboard, waiting for the message to check in for my flight from Dublin to Toronto tomorrow. There are 4 unsold seats, and 4 standby passengers. So far so good. If the unsold number remains the same, we'll all be airborne together. Finally, I got the email and immediately completed the procedure. Now it's a matter of crossed fingers and timely arrival at the airport.

So what about the rest of the day? Time to get out to visit that ancient graveyard. And so I did. No messing about with directions, I knew how to get there, but would it be obvious from the road when I got there? Yep.

Just beside this fence is the entrance, secured by a chain looped around a gate and fastened with a carabiner. Undoing it was a simple matter and I set off. In retrospect, I could have driven through the gate, up to the actual site and there was room to do a 25-point turn to get out. But I parked in a kind of clearing near the road and walked. It was an easy stroll, not much up and down.

Beside the road was a field where there was a great crop of, um, something green. I'll check that out later. And in the midst of all that green, was a clump of coral poppies. Unexpected and very pretty.

Eventually, well maybe half a kilometre later, I arrived at the entrance of the graveyard itself. Apparently, some families still own the rights to be buried there, but I saw no modern personalized headstones.

Here it is, complete with a "kissing" gate

Each of those stones marks a grave. The cemetery is very old.
From what I've read, there are no ancestors of mine interred there.

Once I'd wandered enough, I returned to the car and set out in the same direction to get to the end of the road nearest Minmore. Then I decided to drive along a road I'd been on once before, but only for a few hundred metres. I'd have to drive much farther to really explore it, and I did. 

I was pretty sure I knew where I'd end up and I DID. Along the way I pulled over, on the off chance that there would be another car, and took some pictures.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
OK, you can't see the yellow here but it was all around

And here's a closer look at the sign so you'll know precisely where I was:

There were no hikers along the Wicklow Way at the time
and you probably recognize some places I've named in the past week

The road was pretty much like this all the way
And I arrived in Shillelagh, eventually, despite going
in the opposite direction from the above sign.

This was the same road that Dad and I didn't take when we were searching for Coolruss in 2008. And what a blessing that decision was.

As the adventure-du-jour was over, I came back to the cottage and enjoyed a glass of Merlot followed by a wee nap. It will soon be time to pack. I didn't bring much so it should take about 15 minutes, if I don't rush.

I'll be heading out at zero dark thirty, to the airport. I'll make a sandwich this evening to bring along as it will be too early to eat. 

I expect my wrap-up post may be delayed until late Monday, since my arrival in Ottawa will be after midnight. The first thing I plan to do is go to bed. For me it will be after 5 am, having been on the go for 24 hours. 

A little late this time

Yesterday, Caroline B. came over for lunch and a good chat and a wee bit of family history talk thrown in. Then it was off to the Rocktavern to catch up with the next generations of Byrnes and Parsons. Everyone is in good form and most are very busy – the parents for chauffeur services and kids for gymnastics and a variety of sports.

Mary Harte was chipper after a journey to Dublin to check on a problem with her eyes. All is well and apparently she has almost 20/20 vision at the tender age of 99. As far as anyone knows, she is not taking medication for any conditions, which puts her miles ahead of most. For possibly the only time in all my visits with her, she had already eaten and I was not the recipient of an extra dinner. I'd had supper at the Rocktavern. And tasty it was, as usual.

I have not turned on the tv here at all so I have no idea how well it works. The wifi has been spotty at times but it came through in spades today. When I got the message to Check in for my flight home tomorrow I was "on the case" that very second. I've completed the process and hope that I was the first standby passenger to do so. 

Last update was that four seats remained unsold on the flight and there are four standby passengers. First one to check in gets the first seat, etc. I won't know until I'm at the airport tomorrow whether or not I'll be on the flight to Toronto. That is the ideal scenario.

Should I not be fortunate enough, I might find a seat on the flight to Calgary which departs not long afterwards. I believe there are ample seats unsold, but the route will be rather long. I'd fly from Dublin to Calgary, waving at Ottawa as we fly overhead. After a bit of a wait I would connect to a flight from there to Ottawa. Back and forth across the country. Or rather, forth and then back perhaps.

No matter which flight I'm on, arrival in Ottawa should be shortly after midnight, local time. That would be after 5 am for me. Happily, a very kind and loyal friend who is of the night owl persuasion, has offered to collect me at the airport.

I won't know the final route until boarding time. It's a bit stressful, but I have no commitments on Monday at home and will be able to crash for as long as needed.

Tomorrow will begin early as I have at least a 90-minute drive to Dublin airport. First stop will be to fill up the gas tank on the rental car before returning it for the use of the next client. Then it'll be the shuttle to the terminal and checking in with WestJet. Fingers crossed that my quick check in and hopefully first arrival at the counter will get me a (middle) seat on that plane. If all goes well I'll have time to stock up on Butlers or Lillies chocolate at the airport.

It's off to the Yew Tree graveyard shortly. It's a very old cemetery and not far from here. I've passed the signs so many times over my visits here that I've lost count. That will be my outing du jour. There will be a final trip to Coolruss to find a home for any uneaten provisions and say a final farewell.

There might be a post later, but I'm making no promises. Tomorrow's report will be delayed due to travel, no matter which route gets me home.

A beautiful journey

Today's adventure was on the road from Clonegall to Castlecomer. I let Google lead the way and indeed it did a masterful job. What I hadn't expected was that the drive would be through such beautiful territory. The fall colours are not as vibrant as Canada's but there are plenty of changes in the foliage to mark the season. Along one particularly long and winding road, the view through a few clearings was over a flat stretch of the midlands far below me. The sun was shining but I only caught glimpses of the view. There was no place to pull over and take it all in. I allowed myself a fleeting side eye peek and had to store it in the memory bank.

Along the way I turned down the opportunity to visit the graves of Walt Disney's ancestors. I'm sure it would have been, um, extraordinarily similar to visitng the graves of anyone's ancestors. Perhaps one day I'll be consumed with regret, but that day was not today. If I find out the headstones have Mickey Mouse ears I might regret not stopping.

I found the Castlecomer library easily enough. Parallel parking to access the library was a tad trickier. Although driving a manual transmission is not an issue, it does add an extra element of "don't stall now" to parallel parking.

The very helpful librarian brought me the most useful books on local history and I was permitted to photographs as many pages as I wanted to. And I did. The atmosphere was anything but quiet as the local knitting club had assembled in the library. No shushing was possible - their volume was certainly tuned to max. 

I think I found everything I could in the couple of hours I spent there before heading out for lunch and the planned visit in the afternoon. Deciding whether to leave the car and walk, or move it closer to my afternoon destination was made easy by the fact that it was pretty chilly. I moved it and found a space a few feet from the front door I'd knock at a little later.

Catherine Comerford was a true delight. She was very welcoming and certainly knows her local history. She didn't have great breakthrough information for me, but knew someone who might know someone else and made a call. The original source she was thinking of didn't work out, but two more potentials came out of that phone call. I left my contact information and hope to hear something some day soon. 

I purposely left part of my head out of the photo because today was not a good hair day. I'm in desperate need of a trim. I certainly hope that Angela is available soon after I get home.

Anyway, I left Castlecomer wishing that Google didn't start with "head east." How am I supposed to know which way is East? I don't even know which direction I'm facing at home. For once, I headed in the right direction! Yay for me.

I followed the same route home and got here in time for a ham sandwich before heading to Egan's Pub. There I met a Kehoe/Keogh family that just might be distantly related to mine. We'll probably never know but they were very friendly Canadians from Toronto. Later we were joined by some of their local relatives and had a great time.

This was the second day I travelled on a new route and I didn't get lost. By now they are doing triple toe loops in hell on that nicely frozen rink. I wonder, do they have a Zamboni?

Back at the cottage now, it's getting late and the old eyelids are drooping once again. A friend is going to join me for lunch tomorrow and I'll pop over to see Mary Harte once more. She's promised to sing another traditional folk song for me. 

Prospects for returning on Sunday are getting iffy. There are 4 unsold seats and 4 people on standby. First to check-in when the 24-hour reminder appears, will get the first seat. I'm not a nail-biter but this could make me wish I were. I really won't know until after I've returned the rental car and appeared at the gate. 

That's today in a nutshell. Who knows what tomorrow has in store.