Notes from the Emerald Isle

It's been a busy couple of weeks and I haven't been able to find the spare moments to compose a dispatch until now - on the train from Stuttgart to Munich. It occurs to me the last dispatch was written on the train from Beauvais to Koln. It goes to show you that when you're a captive audience, there's little to do but reflect, and in this case, write.

But my thoughts on Germany will have to wait for a few days, as there is so much to write about concerning Ireland. Deciding to deviate from our itinerary and visit Ireland was made very attractive by the cut-throat price war being waged between Aer Lingus, Ireland's major airline, and a low-cost competitor, Ryanair. For the astounding price of two euro cents (plus sixty euros worth of gate taxes) we were able to fly return between Beauvais and Shannon.

Now, there are few things you don't get with your ticket when you only pay the equivalent of a penny for it. Namely, any sense of structure or rules. Boarding at Beauvais was the equivalent of the cattle pushing and shoving to get into the abattoir. Ryanair tickets have a number at the top left between one and one hundred and eighty, and based on the number, you line up in one of two lines (typically, 1-90 and 91-180). I imagine how the system is supposed to work is the 1-90 people go first, and then the 91-180 people go; what actually happens is when the flight is announced for boarding, both lines stream and like two lanes of traffic merging to pass by an accident, flow out of the gate and onto the tarmac. From there you make your way out to the plane, and board from either the front or rear doors. There are no assigned seats, so it's first-come first-served.

You can tell there is an innovative strategy for making the airline profitable, and it's not based on the ticket price, given what we paid. I assume you'd pay more if you bought your ticket closer to the day, and you can only bring one piece of hand luggage onto the plane; any others must be checked, at ten euros per bag. While on board the plane, everything is for sale, including a pretty hefty duty-free section offering everything from booze and cigarettes to watches and cameras. And then there are the instant-win scratch tickets.

The best part, however, were the attendants, who would range from cheerful, warm and inviting, to clueless, cold and distant. My favourite was the attendant who was tasked to give the in-the-event-of-an-emergency briefing, whose command of French was excellent, but his English sounded like he was skipping every other word.

Wow, five paragraphs in and we're still on the plane. This is going to be a long dispatch!

It was raining in Shannon when we arrived; low-hanging, dense grey clouds greeted the plane on its descent, and it wasn't until just after the wheels descended that we actually saw green pastures and trees. I have to admit there was a part of me that wondered if we were actually going to land in a fogged-in airport, but I'm guessing there are rules against that. We breezed past security and picked up our bags, and were immediately greeted by my uncle William, who had driven out to fetch us from the airport, about an hour out from Fermoy, where my uncle Sandy lives; William, his wife Sue, and their son Nicholas were down for the weekend to visit.

Yes - I was a bit freaked out by the driving on the left, but only for a few moments. We encountered some fierce traffic driving through Limerick Junction, the city nearby Shannon, owing to the flooding of several roads. However it was William's view that since the explosion of the Irish economy, there is a huge increase in the number of cars, and expensive cars, on the roads, and the Irish road system just can't seem to handle it. There are apparently plans underway to create a beltway around the city, but there are some politics involved in getting the whole project moving.

(For the students of the Fermoy Adair school, which I'll talk about later, I'll pose a question for you to investigate: why would you put a belt around a city?)

Perhaps it was the rain, perhaps it was the traffic, perhaps it was the conversation - but I didn't smell Ireland when we exitted the airport. This point deserves some explanation. When I travelled previously to Ireland in 1998, my first experience that fired up the memory neurons was walking out of the airport in Cork to smells that harkened back to childhood visits to Ireland - in particular, the smell of peat moss. It was everywhere, and it's just something you don't smell in Canada. At least perhaps, the Irish variety of peat moss.

But the sights were very much as I remembered them, except it's clear that the driving economy has exerted its muscle upon things that were traditionally small and quaint. A few examples: massive housing development. The concept of a a planned suburb seems wrong for Ireland, where houses have a really unique character. But yet there they were, blocks of houses packed tightly together, each with a driveway and a patch of green grass. Motorways: with all of these cars, the major infrastructure had to be overhauled and augmented. So now the major north-south stretches have been expanded from two-lane highways to four-lane highways, complete with medians separating each side.

Oh - the Irish have turning circles as well (they call them roundabouts, which is fitting, as the french call them rondpoints), but of course they were extra scary for me because we were going around them the "wrong" way. I'm glad I wasn't called up to drive. Getting off the larger roads as we got closer to home, the roads returned to what I remember on my last visit - thin, two lane roads that curve unmercifully and provide little warning for what is around the corner. Despite the drought-like conditions both Sandy and William would later tell me Ireland had experienced earlier in the summer, the trees, vines and shrubs at the sides of the road look as if they are leaning out into the roadway, connecting at the top to make it look as if you are driving through a tunnel of foliage. And then you make a sharp turn and pass within an inch of a delivery truck.

So yes, Ireland is being carried into the modern world, for better or worse. There's no question the standard of living has changed; the value of property has apparently sky-rocketted, even for land that would have little appeal. Now anything runs the risk of being expanded into, and speculators have the opportunity to make some serious money.

Apart from the flooding, our trip to uncle Sandy's was uneventful and we arrived just in time for tea. Not that there is a set time for tea - my aunt Maggie made sure we knew where everything was so that we could fend for ourselves if the need arose. As it happened, we were so well cared for I think I got to boil one kettle of water for coffee by myself.

Boiling water even gets some mention in this dispatch. The often-times damp climate of Ireland made the sale of a certain type of oven very popular. Known as an AGA, this oven looks like it's made out of plated cast iron. It burns anthrocite - don't ask me what that is, other than black, shiny coal-looking stuff - and it burns it very slowly and efficiently, provided it's stoked every once and a while. The residual heat is efficiently transmitted through the entire unit, and provides four oven spaces, and three hot plates. Since it's on all the time, it is useful for drying laundry as well as boiling wate, the latter being done by finding the "sweet spot" of heat on the hot plate, and the former being done by arranging folding drying racks around the whole thing.

Arriving at Gurrane, the name of the ancestral home where Sandy and Maggie live, you get the impression that tree-lined streets are not just for France. It's perhaps a minute-long drive to get to the house, well removed from the street, and on your left is a high hedge separating the drive from a pasture, and on the right are old, tall, trees. And I'll show off my complete ignorance of architectural styles by describing the house as a big box. With windows and doors and walls and such. As several people I know, who know architecture, are currently cringing at my coarse description of the house, they will be happy to know I did take pictures, which will describe the house much better than I ever could.

It was at the house that I saw why they call Ireland the emerald isle; there is a lot of green, green grass, and it's a different colour of green than you see most other places. I think it has a lot to do with seeing the sun fall on a grassy meadow while dark clouds are over top of you. It's a trick of the light that you see more of in Ireland because, well, it rains a lot, and there are lots of clouds.

Catching up with Sandy and Maggie, William and Sue, and several of their friends over the weekend, was wonderful. As Sandy pointed out in discussion of the blog, talking about relatives to people who don't know them is often uninteresting, so I'll spare the majority of you by saying that we had an absolutely excellent time and left with clean clothes and contented spirits.

One of the non-family things we did do was make a visit to the Fermoy Adair school, where Sandy is on the board of directors and was himself a student many years ago. Sandy thought it would be an interesting idea for Amy and I to visit with the kids and tell them about our trip around the world; also, they receive a computer class and might be able to follow along with our blog to keep track of where we've been and where we'll be going. There were two classes, a younger junior class and an older senior class, probably in the range of five to twelve years old. It was really interesting having to explain our trip and answer questions about it - some of the questions were actually quite tricky! But it was great to meet them.

I did begin to smell Ireland at Gurrane - in addition to the unmistakeable smells of Irish vegetation outside, there's an air of history wafting through the house that hasn't changed since my first visit some twenty-five years ago. I like how certain things will trigger memories, like a smell or a taste, and it's definitely the case here. I can remember how large this house seemed when I first visited, and even though I know it's changed only because I've grown, memories of sliding down the bannisters beside the stairs and playing games after dinner are conjured up just by breathing in the air.

I'll only regret not spending more time in Ireland, and it's the best kind of trip that leaves you wanting more. Next up: Germany!

Au revoir, la Loire

Welcome to Beauvais, France - 547,000 people, hub for industry, home to an international airport, site of the largest cathedral in France, but it doesn’t warrant more than a half-page in the Lonely Planet France guidebook. And the page it does get isn't very complimentary... perhaps the author didn't have a very good time here?

I can completely relate, if that's the case - at least the point about having a horrible stay somewhere. We found Beauvais to be warm, charming and friendly. However if I were to be tasked with giving a report on Florence, Italy, I would probably describe the terrible stay I had there rather than the wonders of the city. But one thing I've learned with guidebooks, and people's opinions in general, is that they're usually based on singular experiences. Just as a theatre critic reviewing a play writes the text based on the night on which the performance was viewed, a travel writer reviews based on their experience over a given time. And in the case for Beauvais, my guess is the particular writer didn't spend much time there, and the time he did spend wasn't very good.

In the end, we didn't spend much time in Beauvais, either. Beauvais was just a stopover point for us to drop off the car we'd rented (now christened, "Franz") and pick up a flight to Ireland to visit some of my relatives there. But I'm getting ahead of myself, as what I really wanted to cover in this dispatch was the remainder of our time in the Loire valley.

So in the last dispatch, we had been through some of the eastern parts of the Loire valley - Blois, in particular. For the remainder of our trip we headed in a westerly direction, partially on information that our quest to pick grapes during la vendage could be attained in other regions of the Loire that had commenced their harvest. Each region in France grows only a certain type of grape - I believe it's set down by law - and in this particular area, they grow the Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc grapes. But between those two varieties you can achieve a wide variety of different flavours and styles, as we found out through various tasting visits...

Our first stop after Blois was Vouvray, a very small little village to the east of Tours. We had picked up two pairs of clippers at a Wal-Mart type store outside of Blois, practiced our sales pitch and marched off to a few vineyards suggested by our brother-in-law Steve, who had travelled through France and participated in the harvest some years ago. Our first two visits were greeted with notre equipe est pleine - our team is full. Luckily the vineyards were close by to each other, so we could walk to each, but it did take a bit of the wind out of our sails. We then drove around for a half-hour trying to find a third vineyard and getting pretty lost in the process, which is surprising given that Vouvray is so small - perhaps five thousand people. But eventually we ended up back where we started, and were nicely directed by one a vineyard employee who had originally indicated to us that we weren't likely to find work in a vineyard around here, but we could try one up and around the corner.

The vineyard up and around the corner, when we did find it, was closed and desolate, but we did find a guy wandering around in green hipwaders that responded to our hails. We explained our situation, and it was only then that we found out that la vendage hadn't even started yet, at least in Vouvray, and wasn't likely to start until well after we left France. But he did let us into the little piece of information that different regions start their harvests at different times, and that we might have better luck in another town that had already started. He pointed us in the direction of Mesland, a tiny little village to the northeast, to a vineyard that still did everything by hand. If we were interested in harvesting by hand (fewer and fewer vineyards did it this way, he explained, showing us a huge wine harvesting tractor across the street), this particular vineyard might be one to try.

By this time it had reached the end of the day, so we spent the night in a place in Vouvray and headed off to Mesland in the morning. By this time Amy and I had driving and navigating pretty well in hand, and we arrived without incident less than an hour later. Arriving in Mesland however, the vineyard looked much more industrial than our friend at the Vouvray vineyard had imagined, and we were dismissed pretty quickly with the knowledge that first, their team was full, and second, the harvest had not yet begun. We were starting to get a little disappointed that firstly everyone's team seemed to be full, and secondly, that no one seemed to know when the harvest was or wasn't in full swing, so we decided to pick up our spirits by doing some more sight seeing - to Chenonceaux and the mushroom caves.

Further investigation into finding a vineyard that would need us for la vendage brought us to a few other towns in the Loire, including Chinon, Amboise, Tours, and finally Montlouis-sur-Loire. While we got better at our sales pitch, and had been told confidently by each place we left without success that the next region had surely begun their harvest, the lack of workers on the vines was the telltale sign that we were probably going to be out of luck at our next stop. Still, it was fun to visit the vineyards, and we made sure to taste a few of the local vintages to keep our 'spirits' up.

Our visits to Chinon and Tours coincided with an event held all through France, La Patrimonie, a national heritage weekend, where museums and chateaux owned by the government would be offering free or reduced entry prices, and most privately-held institutions that offered visits or tours would likely be offering reduced rates as well. As a result both cities were swamped with people and cars, and there was a mad rush on places to stay. We managed to find excellent accomodations in both places, and took in a few sites as well.

Chinon astounded me by having some of the thinnest, roughest streets in France; there's no way that two cars could pass by each other, and driving over the cobblestone would have been very noisy and bumpy. I say would have been because we parked our car and left it for the duration of our stay, and were quite content to walk anywhere we needed to go. The size of the streets did not inhibit in any way the speed at which the local drivers would drive. They would slow slightly as they went by, but wouldn't be shy in the least as they sped past a sidestreet.

Most of our first day in Chinon was, in the end, taken up by actually figuring out what we were going to do, and where we going to stay, on the night of our second wedding anniversary in Montlouis-sur-Loire, the following Monday. Unknown to us, Montlouis-sur-Loire at that moment was the site of a popular jazz festival, and every bed in the town (population 8,000) appeared to be taken.

As Amy valiantly called place after place to figure something out, I struck up conversations in French with the hotel owner (whose phone we were using) and in English with another travelling couple, Marvin and Karen from Oregon. The next day they were going to embark on a bicycle trip from Chinon to Tours (perhaps about fifty kilometers apart) and were trying to sort out how they were going to get their bags there. They were trying to sort out a panier, or saddle bags, or some kind or rig to carry their packs, but were not having much success. I suggested that since we were going on to Tours the next day, and had a wealth of space available in our car, it wouldn't be any trouble for us to take them with us and drop them somewhere convenient. It's a funny thing when you first meet people, and perhaps even funnier when you're travelling and out of your native element. But you haven't got much to go on except your gut feeling, and I very much had a good one when it came to talking to Marvin and Karen. Also taking into consideration that so many people had helped us during our travels in France, I really felt it was time to make a donation into the karma jar. I guess they must have had a good feeling about us too, as after only some very polite protestations they were happy to let us take their bags.

The next morning we took advantage of La Patrimonie to get in free to the Chateau Chinon. It's really more in the style of a fortress than the other Chateaux, a long, tall structure perched on the hillside overlooking both sides of the town. On our northern side, a vineyard (whose wines we tasted, of course) and on the southern side, the Loire and surrounding buildings. Ancient walls and battlements were connected at irregular angles with three-story towers, which you could enter and climb to the top for an even higher view of Chinon. The exterior view is actually more interesting than the interior, as this chateau, compared to the majestic trappings of Cheverny and Chenonceaux, was completely void of furnishings, so you would have to use your imagination to figure how it would have been set up for use. This chateau was very much a practical one, used for defence and also as a prison. In fact, four of the French Templar knights arrested at the end of the prominence of that order spent their last days in this castle, toiling in cells in the third floor of the subterranean excavation below the castle walls.

There were royal quarters in the castle, but again, you had to use your imagination as to how they would have been laid out. The one interesting factoid that was related in this part of our tour of Chateau Chinon was that when travelling from place to place, the king (or presumably, any level of royalty or class) would bring a whole train of furnishings with them. So for the most part, when the king was away, his castle was empty. My guess is that there would be an advance party that travelled more quickly than the royal transport, and would be charged with setting everything up and getting everything ready for the arrival of the king. The one prominent piece of furniture in the royal chambers in Chinon was a large dining table, which you could see was composed of several smaller pieces, and could be (relatively) easily disassembled for transport.

On the subject of transport, it was teeming with rain during the morning, and we arrived back at the car to find a note on the windshield from Marvin, letting us know that the bike ride was off due to rain, and could we leave their bags at the hotel where we'd met. On our way back with their bags, we ran into them in the Place Jeanne d'Arc, and decided since their bike ride had been cancelled, the least we could do was go to lunch. We dined at the Cafe des Arts, a very bohemian cafe-restaurant in downtown Chinon, and went our separate ways.

I'll say this about Americans: it's a rare occasion that I meet one that gives a bad name to the country. Perhaps that type of American doesn't leave the country? Certainly, Marvin and Karen were some of the most forthright, interesting and likeable people I've met, of any country, and I hope that one day we'll meet again.

We bid adieu to Chinon, making our way to Tours on rainy roads and light traffic. I recalled that passing over France by plane, we would see the green and brown patchwork of farmers' fields, separated by thick green lines of trees. At regular intervals we would see small collections of houses and larger buildings; I couldn't figure out at the time whether these were small suburbs outside of a larger city, or small cottage communities, or what; driving along the roads put the puzzle pieces together. Rural France really is a collection of hundreds of small towns, some so small they only appear on the largest of maps. The main road passes through them and there are no signs to slow down. And yet at some point in history, there would have been some reason for people to settle at this particular point, and develop an infrastructure. And yet, they remain so small that driving through, you will be about a minute between the sign announcing your arrival, to the sign announcing your departure from, the town. In Canada, there is a movement towards amalgamization of smaller communities into larger units which can share services more efficiently. I wonder if this will ever take root in France.

We arrived in Tours just in time for the end of the work day, during La Patrimonie, in rush hour. Needless to say we crawled along like sharks looking for parking spot prey, and didn't find one until we were well outside of the city core. Fortunately it wasn't a metered spot (they're marked payable on the road beside the spot) so we left it there for the better part of the weekend. We marched like veteran soldiers to the Office du Tourisme (interestingly, not Le Bureau de Tourisme; Amy suspects, and I think rightly so, because the place is staffed by officiels) and picked up in rapid succession, a map of the city, a schedule of hotel listings, and a local guide for La Patrimonie. Armed with this we called around until we found a bed available at the Hotel Regina, a one-star not four blocks away from the Tourist office.

We also ran into Marvin and Karen again in the Office de Tourisme - they had some time to kill between trains, as they were on their way to Ambroise. It really can be a small world sometimes.

The Hotel Regina was staffed by Girard, a thin, lanky Frenchman in his fifties, wearing shorts, sandals and a hawaiian shirt. Girard very patiently explained all the rules of the hotel, including the fact that it would be closed during the afternoon of the Sunday until six so that they could get out to see some of La Patrimonie. You left your key at the door when you went out, and picked it up when you came in. This struck me later as very trusting - much more so than you'd ever see in Canada. But then again most hotels were like that; we've only recently come across places that ask for payment in advance. The majority just write your name down, give you a key, ask you if you'd like breakfast and tell you where the room is. Very civilized.

That night we walked around Tours, and more specifically, the old quarter. The newer sections of Tours all spiral out from the centrally located old quarter, a collection of stunningly old, but well-maintained buildings. These houses are archetypically medieval France: a criss-crossed lattice of wooden beams forming the walls, solidified with plaster, and painted jolly colours. The main square proved to be the social hub of the whole quarter, if not the whole city, with each cafe, restaurant and creperie having its own ten feet of patio space in the centre of the square. The square was a buzz with the sound of conversation, cutlery clattering, espresso cups clinking and wine being enjoyed. It was a very lively scene, and as we surveyed the menu of one of the many creperies I couldn't help but notice one of the customers already there had the exact same copy of the Lonely Planet France guidebook we have. This turned out to be Kimberley, a fellow Canadian from British Columbia doing a tour on her own through France. We ended up chatting and eating together, swapping travel tips and suggestions, horror stories and successes. By the time we finished eating and had decided to move on it was well into the night.

The next day tackled a task that had been slowly building up: our laundry. It's just different over here, and relatively expensive. But we were well taught by the laundromat's owner, who happened to be by to give the place a good rinse. The laundromats (at least, all the ones we've seen) operate by dropping coins into a central command station, and then you push the relevant button to either dispense packets of soap (1 euro), start a washer (3,95 euros) or run a dryer for five minutes (90 euro cents). The real challenge wasn't getting the machines to work right, but getting enough change to make the machines work at all, as we were doing this on a Sunday morning where there wasn't a lot open, and all the ATM would dispense was 20-euro notes. A few croissants later, we came back with a few damp clothes, but at least they smelled a bit better.

Armed with fresh clothes, we decided to hit day two of La Patrimonie, deciding to focus on two nearby museums. The first, the museum of wine, we figured we would be spending a lot of time at. It turned out to be a real dud, with what looked like someone's collection of wine-related paraphenalia packed into a church basement. Yes, some of it was interesting, and we probably hadn't been misled by the literature, but it felt like a gaggle of things with a very loosely unified theme, rather than an educational experience. The best part about it were two tourists from the Phillipines, who proceeded to videotape faithfully every square inch of the museum, going up and down in an orderly sequence around the exhibits.

The second museum was thoroughly more interesting. La musee du compagnonage focussed on the history of a society of tradesmen - carpenters, metalworkers, bakers, you name it - where apprentices would walk from town to town learning new elements to their trade, and improve their craft. At the end of their tour de France they would produce a masterpiece in their craft, and if it was judged to be especially brilliant, they would receive a special walking cane commemorating their status as a master craftsman. The best of the best was put on display in this museum, and were it not for the prohibition on photographs, there would be plenty to accompany this dispatch. There were many, many amazing displays in almost every discipline you can think of where something is crafted by hand with a tool: complex maquettes of intricate lattice roofwork, delicate and impossibly curved stairways, violins and city scenes made out of pasta, and what I found to be the highlight, a massive, ornate and complicated steel lock, complete with security measures and secret hinges.

The museum was also accompanied by a special walking tour of the city to commemorate the holiday. Our very knowledgable guide Bernard led a group of about twenty-five up and down the sidestreets of Tours, pointing out interesting sites related to La Compagnonnage. By the end both Amy and I were getting a bit tired; the pace was a slow, ambling one, and we found that once we actually parted ways with the other 'tourists' and started walking at our regular pace, we brightened right up.

We did end up finding something for Montlouis-sur-Loire, but for the Sunday night, a small, nice hotel right in the city centre. For our anniversary we had an extraordinary dinner at La Cave, a restaurant attached to a local vineyard, and actually fitted out from within one of the massive tuffault tunnels that bore into the French landscape. It was a bit more high-end than we were accustomed to, but we managed to dress up for the occasion, and ate and drank very well. In the end we decided to walk back and forth from the restaurant, which caused real consternation for the restaurant owners, as there really isn't a sidewalk to Montlouis-sur-Loire for a part of the walk back to the town centre. But we took our time, wore bright colours, and made it just fine.

On our way back out of the Loire towards Beauvais, we decided to break up a longer trip into two smaller ones, stopping in Amboise very briefly and Fontainebleau overnight. Fontainebleau is host to the chateau Fontainebleau, a huge estate bursting with history (and rooms, 1,900 of them). In the end, in the two hours we spent there we didn't even go inside, preferring just to walk through the massive grounds and gardens. But Fontainebleau as a city was very nice, and just by the park where we left the car, we happened upon some free wi-fi, and took a few moments to send a few emails, including doing some organizing for our first WWOOF visit and coordinating a visit with my cousin Mary.

Which brings us back to Beauvais. As I write these words Amy and I are riding a train from Beauvais in a German direction, having had an amazing time visiting in Ireland; I'll save writing about that for a future dispatch. This one's already achieved a record length.