Church Cross and Baltimore

Failing for the moment to secure insurance so I can drive my new MB, we opt for a rental for a week or so and hit the road (sort of). Actually Francie decided a little isolation in a West Cork cabin would be good for us, so our destination is Jason's cottage, just down the road between Skibbereen and Schull. This turned out not to be the best. The little Ferringi owner, in addition to charging us way too much for a house in the middle of nowhere, also wanted us to pay ALL the utilities. There was no mention of this during the reservation conversation or on the website. When we told him we weren't staying because of this unannounced expense he was quite put out and withheld part of our money. Can't say we recommend this particular cottage.

On the other hand, it had a peek-a-boo view of the infamous Fastnet light between Heir Island and Cape Clear. That was pretty cool for an old sailing romantic such as meself.

So, once again fancy free and foot on throttle, we set out for parts unknown. Baltimore looked interesting, we could see it across the water from Jason's. It appeared to have a waterfront and somebody told us there was a ferry we could take from there to several islands. Well, none of the B&B's right in town were open, but

Rolf's, up the hill was. Turned out to be OK, once we got through the issue of not being able to rent the "cottage" for less than a week.

The ferry to Cape Clear, and across Roaring Water bay is pretty iffy this time of year, but we were able to take the short ride out to Sherkin Island, home of the O'Driscoll's.

There's an abbey right at the ferry landing that provides some history of the area and lots of grave sites. This is one of the wierd things you see in Ireland - all the abandoned christian religous sites have grave stones everywhere, inside, outside, on the remaining walls - everywhere. Many of the stones are quite recent, 2000, 2001. It must be considered a very good thing to be buried in this hallowed ground.

There were a couple pubs and a little general store and that's about it. One of the pubs was closed, the other larger one served dry sandwiches for too much dinero, but they had good beer. We hiked around much of the habited part of the island, visiting a remote beach and a small country school. Caught the last ferry off the island, the one that waits for the school teacher. Lucky for us she was a little late (the teacher that is).

Corcaigh

At last we reach what has been Francie's goal all along, Ireland. I was sort of looking forward to it too. But 50 deg N in February? It's freakin' COLD here. And about 3 hours of feeble twilight that calls itself a grand sunny day. We shoulda gone to Africa. Or stayed in Thailand! It was pretty darn nice there.

Anyway, we're in Cork at the Kinlay guest house. Appears to be one of the larger ones here, everybody seems to know about it, even the cab driver. Despite my whining about the latitude, the attitude is a whole different thing. The people in Ireland, even in this decade of boom and immigration, are the nicest you'll find anywhere. They like to talk, they have interesting things to say. There's a genuine feeling of welcome and human-ness. Even the dogs are friendly. All of them. I figure that must be because the people they meet are nice to them, so why shouldn't they be friendly?

Kinlay house is a rambling old structure that's been around since 1700 or so, home to the destitute, old folks, soldiers, and now young immigrant wannabe's from all over the EU. Mostly Frankish this week. Man, the girls are cute. Sorry lads, no pics.

It's right under the famous Shannon Bell tower, part of the St Anne's church, which has been here since the late 18th century. The clock faces, known as the "Four Liars" are among the biggest in Europe. They're called that because the hands are so big they're affected by weather and don't all show the same time. They never have.

I fixed a couple of their badly managed computers and earned free internet, as long as I use my laptop (which I would prefer to do anyway), so things are good here for figuring out what we're going to do. Which is a problem, because we weren't supposed to get to Ireland until April or something and the house isn't available yet. Francie did talk with Tom and the house will be available on the 21st of Feb, but that leaves 3 weeks up in the air.

So we hang at Kinlay in Cork for a week or so to sort things out, like buying a car, trying to get insurance, getting warmer clothes, figuring out where we might want to go for the next 5 months etc.

Turkey, in both senses of the word

The name of this file is Turkey. That about sums it up. Istanbul is a turkey of a destination. The weather sucked, the people (with a couple major exceptions) were rude and obnoxious, and it was very polluted. But the bus and ferry system worked well, provided you had a map of the city in your head, because there were no usable maps of either system to be found anywhere.

Istanbul is the only major city spanning two continents; they have cute little signs saying "Welcome to Europe/Asia" on the the two bridges that span the Bosphorus Strait. Our friends live on the Asia side of the city, which is the newer side. Not too much in the way of old buildings or historical sites. But we got to take the ferry to get across to the other side which was kinda fun.

The first several days there, while we were getting over our jet lag, it was pretty nice, although 10C seemed really cold after Thailand. We got to tour the main shopping area. Then it snowed. And blew. The weather man said warmer and sunny the next day. He was wrong. For 4 days it snowed and blew. We did go out and play in the snow a little, but actually going touristing was pretty much out of the question. Finally, it cleared and warmed up a little, so we moved into Eminonu, the old city. This is where we were introduced to the extreme "entrepreneral spirit" of the turkish people. Every man on the street (and they were always male, even the children), wanted to sell us something, usually "turkish" carpets. They would not leave us alone, following us up the street shouting lower and lower prices as we walked away. They even would pretend to be "volunteer tour guides" around the big mosques, just to get a chance to say, "Won't you come into my shop and buy a carpet?" The national motto is "How may I help you spend your money?" I suppose if we were from New York City or hadn't just come from sweet genteel Thailand it might not have felt so assaultive, but we aren't and we did, so we didn't like it.

On the other hand, once you get past the assault of the Mongols (look up the history of this area for an idea of where the aggressive attitude comes from), there are some amazing historical features here. Things like the arm, hand and part of the skull of John the Baptist, weapons and other booty from half a dozen civilizations over the eons. One of the more interesting ones was (part of) an obelisk from Egypt. It was dated ~5000 BC, yet was obviously of far better material and craftsmanship than far more recent artifacts seen here.
Since we had so much fun here, we plotted an early departure. Problem is, it's still frozen in Spannocchia. Also, it turns out there are no ferries from Turkey to Greece (Doh! Read a little world history already. These guys have been skirmishing since time began.) So I don't get to take the ferry across the Aegean. Then there's the luggage problem. Flying on the major airlines is possible but expensive. But in Europe (and the UK and Ireland) one can fly on Ryan Air, EasyJet or the like for practically nothing. But you don't get to take much luggage. So, it's straight off to Ireland where a house awaits us. Or so we thought...

PS: It probably wasn't as bad as this makes it sound. After all, we managed to take 500 pictures. Perhaps I'll come back and write some more about Istanbul. But not right now.