Broke-Ass Stuart’s Goddamn Website

I tore into Northern Ireland’s capital like a mad man recently released from military service. My stretch of recuperation was done and I planned on letting this city do what it wished to me. The days are long here and I continuously wander among the marvelous architecture just trying to absorb as much of Belfast’s energy as I can. Queen Victoria would be proud of the way her pet city looks today. It’s a fine mixture of 19th, 20th and 21st century buildings, all blending together in some sort of weird…not harmony exactly, but more like a coexistence. I guess buildings can reflect the people who live within them.

Take Great Victoria Street for example. On one side you have the newly refurbished Europa Hotel, a modern looking 20th century building which at one point had the lovely distinction of being ‘the world’s most bombed hotel’. Directly across the street is the Crown Liquor Saloon, built in1885 with enough beautiful Victorian decadence inside to bring a drunk of any era to tears. These building don’t look odd standing across from each other; on the contrary, they almost look natural.

Despite the coexistence of the buildings and, for the most part, the people, there is still an air of tension in some parts of the city. One day I took a Black Taxi Tour, which brought me through both the Falls Rd. area (the hard-line Catholic neighborhood) and the Shankill Rd. area (the hard-line Protestant neighborhood). I saw the amazing murals and heard the rugged stories of Belfast life from the mid 60’s until the 1994 ceasefire between the IRA and the various Ulster armies. The “Peace Wall” is still up, separating the two sides. Those whose houses border this wall still worry about the occasional Molotov Cocktail that manages to find its way over.

But this is a new era in Belfast.Café culture is taking root, and the night life is insane! The people here, especially the young people, don’t want anything to do with the Troubles of the past. Good things are happening here, it’s impossible not to feel it.

As for me, I’m tired of the road and it’s starting to snow here in Belfast. In three days I’ll be back in San Francisco. I’m going to miss the stout beer, the lovely lasses, the random pub conversations with old men, and most of all, the craic. I’m definitely gonna miss the craic.

Goodbye Ireland.

Stuart’s Euro Saving Tip of the Day: All throughout Northern Ireland there is a restaurant chain called Lloyd’s No. 1 where they offer 2 for 1 meals all day long. So if you go in for lunch, and order 2 meals, you can box up the second one and bring it home for dinner. Genius, I know.

Letterkenny, County Donegal; last stop on a blitzkrieg three day tour of the Republic of Ireland’s wild and untamed northwest.

Three days prior, I pulled out of Galway in a brand new rent-a-car, pristine, like a new born baby in swaddling cloths. “Extra insurance?” the devil behind the car hire desk asked. “You bet your ass,” I answered; I knew what those god damn roads were like.

The upside to this road trip though was that at least I had a traveling buddy. My friend Elodie’s friend Camille was going the same way as me. For Camille it meant not having to take the bus, and an excuse to practice her English (she’s French). For me it meant one less car ride spent talking aimlessly into a digital voice recorder.

We lit out of Galway and headed for the Connemara, the northwest region of County Galway. The thing about Ireland is that each time you think you’ve seen all the beauty this island has to offer, you enter a new region and are awe struck once again. Between the placid mirror-like lakes, pale mountains, deep valleys and more than occasional rainbows, the Connemara is so gorgeous it hurts.

We hit Westport by nightfall, and this was where the wear and tear of a week in Galway finally caught up to me. I was worn out, tired and sick. But I’d heard that Westport had a must see traditional music scene, so of course we went to the pub that night where I managed to thoroughly insult a local man when I wouldn’t let him buy me a beer because I felt too lousy.

The next day rivaled its predecessor in sheer physical beauty but completely outdid it in bodily sickness. We flew through west County Mayo, a region even more unruly and wild than the Connemara, hitting remote places as the stunning and almost haunting Achill Island (only accessible by a little bitty bridge). By nightfall we were in Sligo, the famous muse of WB Yeats.

Hugging the lazy river Garavogue, Yeats’ Sligo is a charming town with brightly colored buildings and absolutely nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon. So we headed out of town to find Queen Maeve’s grave - roughly 40,000 tons of stone sitting atop a hill, with a 360 degree view of County Sligo. Apparently if you take a stone from the bottom of the hill, and carry it with you for the duration of the 35 minute hike to the top, you can place it on the enormous pile of rocks and make a wish. Unfortunately we didn’t know this until we got back to town.

It was getting dark by the time we left Queen Maeve, so I dropped Camille at the station so she could catch her bus, and I headed Letterkenny where I now sit, exhausted, and coughing up phlegm.

Stuart’s Euro Saving Secret of the Day: Learn how to drive stick shift - it’ll save you LOADS of money.

I am glowing in Galway. I am in tip-top shape baby, hip, happening - there is something going on here. You don’t just walk down Shop Street, you glide. Galway has an energy that you can feel and you know, you know, that there is no place like it in all the rest of Ireland. Slide baby, glide baby, crawl honey, it doesn’t matter - just do your thing.

You can creep through the medieval streets at night drunk on stout, high on hash, energized from espresso or sober as hell. You can bounce from Trad session to Indie rock, swanky lounges to old man pubs. “What do you want lads?” Galway seems to whisper. “Whatever it is, we got it.”

Ah Galway. It was on the wire from the second I landed in Ireland. I was tired of walking into tiny pubs in tiny towns and getting the hairy eyeball from all the locals; not so here. You can let it all hang out in Galway.

Dingle was cool, a tiny little place with eccentric shop owners and charismatic bars. It’s good for a night and a day, two if you plan on seeing the friendly dolphin in the bay. Then there was Limerick, good old “Stab City”. Not nearly as dangerous as the moniker suggests (especially when you’ve been living across the Bay from Oakland, CA for the past four years of your life). And now, Galway. Did I mention that I like this place?

It was from here that I caught a ferry to the Aran Islands, 3 tiny little pieces of land surrounded by water, where the locals speak mostly Gaelic and the ruin-filled landscape looks like the deities got too lazy to give the place proper vegetation. It was wet and it was cold and it was beautiful and it was old. I hiked up to Dun Aengus, which is a roughly 2000-year-old stone fort whose back end is perched upon a sheer cliff. Up there I imagined myself as an ancient warlord looking out across my domain satisfied that I had properly protected my people. I also got rained on, a lot.

I’ve got plenty of photos of The Aran Islands but unfortunately Galway cast quite a spell on me and I didn’t get around to taking many photos. You’ll understand what I mean when you get there.

Stuart’s Euro Saving Secret of the Day: Make friends with bartenders and bar owners; when you do, shots of Jaegermiester flow like the River Euphrates.

The Irish countryside rips past me as I push The Beast harder. The kilometres per hour are clocking up; 90, 100, 120. I have no clue what this means in miles, but right now, I am King of the Road, I mean, I am F-L-Y-I-N-G, man. The Beast is really moving now; I am at one with my machine. Then there’s the sign - “Improved Road Now Ending.” DAMMIT! I knew it was too good to last.

Now it’s back to the little, bitty, curvy, two-way roads where, each time a truck passes you, you grip the steering wheel for fear that it might be the only thing in this entire world that you have a grip on. Just minutes ago, I was King of the Road - now I’m back to being me, Stuart, a Lonely Planet writer who’s tired from driving all day and just wants to make it to Dingle before nightfall. And The Beast? Well, The Beast is still The Beast; a determined, tiny, silver Hyundai Accent that I rented at the Kerry Airport for an exorbitant amount of euros.

But it’s all worth it. The Kerry countryside is gorgeous out here; there’s no room for complaints. Smoke scrapes the sky as farmers set fire to their fields in an almost yearly ritual of renewal. The greens of the fields, the browns of the mountains, the blues of the ocean; this is the Ring of Kerry, baby. The most common sound heard here must be the smack of someone’s jaw hitting the ground at the sheer beauty of the place. Descriptive words don’t quite do it, but that’s all I’ve got; that and maybe a few pictures. Definitely not enough. The downside to all this beauty is the constant fear that I’m about to die in an inferno of silver car parts, green fields and brown mountains.

Driving these roads is a beautiful yet harrowing adventure, one where I’ve realized that the roadway infrastructure in Ireland was planned out by either a madman or a junkie. I’m driving on pure adrenalin; I feel like I’m constantly on the brink of crashing the car. Combine this with the fact that I’m listening to Tom Waits’ The Heart of Saturday Night and driving on, what is for me, the wrong side of the road, then the sum of all parts equals a truly vivid, unforgettable day.

In the summertime the road around the Ring of Kerry is bottled up like the arteries of doughnut factory worker, but today? Today the road is all mine.

On to Dingle baby, follow the road, here we go.

Stuart’s Euro Saver Secret of the Day: The rental car companies in Ireland are carniverous heathens who hold you by your ankles and shake until the last cent falls out of your pocket. If you must hire a car, approach the situation as one who approaches a battle for one’s life.

What a weird day. I arrived back at Baltimore after my night on Cape Clear, just in time to miss my bus, so instead of waiting four hours for the next one, I took some initiative and decided to thumb it to Skibbereen. It was about a half hour before a guy finally stopped and picked me up. Apparently he thought I was one of the two Lithuanian guys he was supposed to pick up to work at his son’s mussel farm, but due to his incredibly thick West Cork accent, I didn’t realise this until ten minutes later when we were still sitting idly in the car waiting. Once it was cleared up that I was neither Lithuanian nor had any plans to work on his son’s mussel farm, we proceeded to spend the next hour waiting for the men and then ultimately going door to door so I could inquire about the missing Eastern Europeans. Thankfully no-one answered their doors; I really didn’t want to have to explain to unsuspecting Irish folk why a Californian was canvassing their neighbourhood in search of a couple of lost Lithuanians.

Later that day, back in good old Skibbereen, I was waiting at the bus stop, when I spied the cutest little old-time store in the world. Of course I had to go inside. Instantly I was in a different era. A very old couple sat behind the counter, chatting with a local woman who had probably popped into the store every single day of her life. We got talking and inevitably the question of whether or not I had any Irish ancestry arose. When I answered, “No, I’m all Eastern European Jew,” the local woman squealed, “Ooh! We LOVE Jewish people!” The three very sweet people then proceeded to tell me, earnestly, that they loved Jewish people because they were basically doing God’s work by being in Israel and fighting the good fight that would help bring about the End Days, and the return of the Messiah. “We’re basically Zionists,” the local woman told me.

With a new odd sense of being, I guess, appreciated, I caught the bus to the town of Schull where I intended to stay the night. Almost immediately I managed to get myself adopted by a group 15 or so university students from Dublin who were in town for some type of sailing competition thingy. Evidently more intent on partying than sailing, they very easily persuaded me to go back to their place and start drinking at 5:30 pm. Jesus, I forgot what college binge drinking was all about. Let’s just say that at one point an entire room full of Irish people began chanting, “U-S-A! U-S-A!” out of nowhere, which they then followed with “Lone-ly Planet! Lone-ly Planet!” Of course after each time cheering happened we were all meant to down whatever beer we had in our hands. The funny part about the whole thing was that they weren’t even doing it to take the piss out of me, they were actually being sincere. Ah, it’s nice to feel loved.

I’ve found that trying to leave cities like Dublin and Cork is a lot like trying to leave the mafia.Every time I attempt it, they GRAB me and pull me back in. I’ve somehow landed myself in Cork three times in less than two weeks, and for some reason, each time I end up there I see this same guy named Andy (I think) and each time he laughs at me for not making it out yet. The most recent time was two days ago when I was just supposed to transfer in Cork, but missed my bus. This time I’ve made it out though; I’ve cut the damn umbilical cord, and I’m not going back to Cork…I think.

Yesterday I took the bus from Cork to Skibereen and from Skibereen to Baltimore, which is a giant city of roughly, ooh, 250 people. To give it credit though, it is supposed to get packed in the summer time, and is apparently famous for its scuba diving. It was here in Baltimore that I caught the ferry over to Cape Clear Island. For some reason during the ferry ride, two high school girls adopted me and basically told me their (short) life stories, after which they also told me about the small island and informed me that at the dock, I’d be able to catch the bus up the hill to my bed & breakfast. Upon disembarking, I found the “bus” to be a woman named Mary who drives a silver van around the island, and will take you where you need to go, for €2. I spent most of the 10-minute ride talking to a guy from El Salvador who was elated to find someone else who spoke Spanish.

The family who ran the B & B were fantastically warm and, after I dropped off my bags, my landlady put a flashlight in my hand and sent me out the door to find the pub. You see, Cape Clear only has 120 people, so during the winter there is only one pub/restaurant open which serves as the social centre for the entire island. Another woman named Mary runs the pub and can tell you about EVERYONE’S business on the entire island. She was amazingly sweet, but given her vantage point, I’d imagine that this is not a woman you’d want to cross if you plan on staying in Cape Clear for any extended period of time.

Cape Clear is absolutely beautiful; I don’t think I could spend more than a day there. Cape Clear is absolutely beautiful; I think I could spend the rest of my life there. I’m actually not really sure about how I feel about the place, I just know that I’ve never been anywhere like if before. The smallest place I’ve ever lived in was 50,000 people. At 120 people, Cape Clear is just slightly smaller.

All roads lead to Dublin, and I think it’s because of this that I find myself here again. I’m on the better end of three and a half weeks in Ireland and, just as the water on the banks of the river Liffey seem to slightly rise every day, so does my affection for this city. This has been a city considered in the up-and-coming category of European capitals for the past 15 years or so, but anyone who visits today can clearly see that Dublin is far more “up” on the spectrum than “coming”. Having emerged from the fog and rain of history, it is now Ireland’s day in the sun, and nowhere is this more evident than here in it’s capital. Just today I read that Dublin is the 16th most expensive city in the world (just as a point of reference, New York is 27th). Every single day of the week the streets are packed with people shopping, just spending money for the sake of it, and never in my life have I seen so many “Help Wanted” signs. Luckily with the advent of the EU, every week Dublin sees new immigrants coming from different parts of Europe, who are more than happy to fill these vacant positions.

There are certain by-products of this Celtic Tiger economy though that were completely unforeseeable, things that the famous capitalist theorist, Milton Friedman, could never have imagined. One thing in particular is that Dublin is a city full of men with very dirty hands. I mean this literally. Somewhere along the line, the bar owners of Dublin decided that, since people have more money to spend, they should make their establishment appear up-scale by having a bathroom attendant in every men’s room in the city. Big mistake. Given the choice of using the sink and having to tip the attendant, or just walking out of the bathroom, hands unwashed, no drunk man in his right man is going to choose option one. That is, at least no one that I know (present company excluded, of course). And so it is, that the nasty underbelly of capitalism is shown to us again, making one wonder, is there not a better form of commerce? One where men can feel free to relieve themselves without the guilt of not tipping after washing one’s hands? I leave you with this to contemplate dear reader. Viva la Revolution!

Come to Cork. Seriously, stop reading this blog, open up your browser, and buy a plane ticket. Come on do it! What was that? You’ve got work tomorrow? Alright, I understand (sigh). No, I’m not hurt; it’s just that I was really looking forward to sitting with you in this great little pub I found, listening to some traditional music and drinking some Murphy’s (that’s the big stout down here, not Guinness). I also really wanted to take you to this Nigerian restaurant I went to the other night. There were three of us, a German guy named Kevin, a British guy named Stuart (good name), and myself. We were hungry and walking down MacCurtain St. when we found the little unmarked restaurant. Oh, it was SO good, and seeing that we were the only non Nigerians there, it’d be pretty safe to say that the food was authentic and not some kind of new age fusion. But then again I’ve never been to Nigeria.

Anyway, just a couple days ago I went to visit the town of Cobh (pronounced Cove), where the ship, the Titanic made its final departure from. And the day before that I went with Evalina and Maria, two Greek girls I met, to visit Blarney Castle. Yes, I did kiss the Blarney Stone, and yes I do know that the locals supposedly pee on it at night so the dumb tourists can kiss their urine the next day, but how could I make it all the way up there and not kiss it? Especially when there is this crazy 65 year old guy up there whose job is to support you while you hang upside down to it.

I’m telling you, you would love this place. Did you know that Cork was the 2005 European Capital of Culture? I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I do know there were all sorts of fireworks and festivals and concerts and craic. Craic (pronounced Crack) is what the folks over here call having fun, or a good time. You’d say, “Let’s go over to An Brog, it’s good craic over there.” In fact An Brog really was a good time. On Sunday a Canadian named Eli took a group of us; a Hungarian, a Swede, a Croatian, an Aussie, and myself, to An Brog. It was easily my favourite night here so far. The DJ played Stevie Wonder, James Brown and Curtis Mayfield, the whole bar was dancing and jumping and sweating and screaming, and it was incredible!

So are you coming or what? Seriously, if you come to Cork, you won’t regret it. It was the 2005 European Capital of Culture for Christ’s sake!

Well anyway, this is your boy Stuart signing off from the People’s Republic of Cork. Wait, what was that? Oh yes, I really look forward to hearing from you again too. Peace.

Every person has a mental list of certain goals they’d like to achieve before they die: visiting Machu Picchu; climbing Mount Everest; witnessing the Northern Lights. Regardless of what your goals are, there are few things more satisfying than checking one off your list. Today I had something very special happen to me; I was able to both realise I had a goal and then check it off my list, within moments of each other. Today I had my first Turkish Hot Towel Shave. There is nothing in the world quite like having an unenthusiastic man from Istanbul take a straight razor to your face and neck after attempting to smother you with a hot towel. It makes you feel ALIVE, goddamn it! Although parts of my face are probably the smoothest they have ever been, the man’s lack of pride in his work resulted in me being left with a few rough patches along my jaw and one of my sideburns half an inch longer than the other.

Truly though, on Thursday I did have one of the most amazing experiences thus far on my trip. I was staying in the beautiful medieval town of Kilkenny when I heard about Kells Priory, the romantic ruins of a 12th century monastic castle. Kells is about 13km out of Kilkenny, and since no buses really go there and I’m terrified of driving on the opposite side of the road, I had to hitchhike out to the site. My first ride was from an old man who told me that the only time he’d been to the US was for one day in New Mexico. Since he didn’t elaborate and he let me out shortly afterwards, I’m still completely puzzled as to how one comes all the way from Ireland just to spend a single day in New Mexico. The next car that picked me up was driven by a Romanian man whose job it is to travel all over County Kilkenny teaching children to play chess. He was able to drive me all the way to the elementary school in Kells.

The Priory was absolutely awe inspiring, and the best part about it was that I had the site completely to myself. Well, completely to myself and the sheep. There were loads of sheep just hanging out, doing their thing, being sheep. I hung out there just taking photos and walking around and thinking how cool would it be to have a giant broke-down castle, next to a stream, right across from your town?

I hitched back into town with a sociology professor whose work focuses on the changing nature of Irish society with regards to the Celtic Tiger. She was wonderful and dropped me off right at my hostel where I grabbed my gear, got on a bus and headed for Cork where I’ve been ever since. Cork is a lovely town which I’ll tell you about later. Wish you were here.

Goin’ to leave this Broke-down palace

On my hands and my knees I will roll roll roll

Make my self a bed by the waterside

In my time - in my time - I will roll roll roll

-Robert Hunter

Wexford is a very small town. I say this not because you can walk from one end to the other in less than 15 minutes, or because the population is roughly 9500 people. I say Wexford is a very small town because this morning a girl in a little red car waved and honked at me as she drove by. This is by no means intended to infer that a certain small town friendliness compelled her to do it. No, I say this is a small town because she was the exact same girl who drove by me last night and shouted out the window, “Nice arse!” as she sped away.

Truthfully I arrived in Wexford a day or so later than planned. I had spent close to a week and a half in Dublin and was preparing to leave when my friends Victoria and Padraic made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: “Wanna come with us tomorrow to Newgrange?” asked Victoria. “It’s an ancient burial structure an hour north of here that predates the building of the Pyramids.”

Padraic followed this by saying, “And then we’re going to Belfast for the night to meet up with my mate Riggsy. You have to meet him Stuart, he’s a BBC radio host and simply one of the best people to know in Belfast.” Before I could answer though I managed to miss pour our friend Traci’s glass, and spill cabernet all over Padraic’s flatmate’s pool table.

Given the possibility for adventure, and the fact that I’d almost ruined a man’s billiard’s room, I had no choice but to agree to go along. And I’m certainly glad I did. Newgrange was incredible and I got some of the best photos I’ve taken yet on this trip. And Belfast, well Belfast was a blast. We ate at what, in my very limited experience, is one of Ireland’s most delicious restaurants, Archana. If you like Indian food and find yourself in Belfast, you must eat here!

After dinner, and a well deserved nap, we partied it up with Riggsy and the locals, and then retired for an even more well deserved night of sleep. I hadn’t realized that I’d not slept more than 5 hours in a night since I’d arrived in Ireland. A week and a half in Dublin will do that to a person.

The next morning we took quite possibly the world’s worst guided tour of Belfast, (Stephen Hawking would have been a more engaging tour guide) and then we zipped back down to Dublin where I picked up my gear, hopped on a bus, and managed to make it down to Wexford just in time to get cat-called by the girl driving by in the little red car.