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Wednesday, June 5, 2013

More about Ireland...

Today is the first chance I've had to catch up on the blog so here is a data dump of the last week or so.
Ireland is a wonderful place to visit; beautiful, friendly, and very entertaining. The Irish know how to enjoy life, maybe not quite as much as the French, but close. Our days have been filed with sightseeing, good food and every evening a pint at the local pub where we enjoy some traditional music and maybe some step dancing. Things are a little more expensive than in the U.S.A. but heck, we're on vacation and I expect to be dead a long time, so let's have another pint and please strike up the fiddle!

We loved Dublin and stayed an extra day to see the Book of Kells and get a full 8 hours of sleep. Then we pointed our rented Ford towards the beautiful crystal factory and tour at Waterford. We watched skilled craftsmen melt and blow glass into wooden or cast iron forms to make the shape of a vase, trophy, or some other thing. There is a wood craftsman who makes the molds that shape the soon to be object of art for which Waterford is famous. After the object is formed by blowing into a molten lump of glass inside the mold, another artist grinds, and cuts the intricate designs into the surface. They have machines, into which they mount the object, turning and stopping at index points that are exactly the right number of degrees of rotation for marking with a felt tip marker. Off to the next station where another artisan grinds the pattern into the glass with a spinning wheel coated with an abrasive carborundum slurry. Many stages later another work of art emerges, gets the Waterford name etched on the base and a price tag is applied. The price reflects the huge number of hours by highly skilled people and if you can afford it, you may find it reasonable to buy.
I must warn you however, that in one part of the factory there was a computer guided machine, grinding patterns into the glass, just like the skilled craftsmen. Call me a cynic, but I suspect the fancy handmade stuff will soon be replaced by fancy computer machine made stuff and the only way to tell them apart will be the human made piece won't be as perfect. How then will a price be set?  Is the buyer paying for the craftsmanship of an artist, or the perfection of the finished piece? Which should be perceived as having higher worth? I won't have to worry much about an answer until I win the lottery... and then I won't worry much, but it does beg the question about how we assign value to objects. Should a perfect, machine made, mass produced thing be worth less than a pretty good similar thing that gains value because it is considered art? I'll answer my own question with the observation that there is art in the engineering and computer design and programming that allows a machine to make a perfect Waterford Class thing at a tiny fraction of the labor cost. I am more interested in the function of the finished product and don't need the bragging rights that it took x hundred man-hours to make it. I guess I'm just a tough sell when it comes to art.
I'll add to this instalment and insert the pictures when I have more time... it's midnight now and we are going to the races again in the morning. I seem to be having too much fun to write, but I will try to catch up soon.
More later...

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Blogging is tough when you are having fun!

It's only May 28th and now, for the first time on the vacation, I have a little time to write. I'll try to catch up as quickly as possible.

In the early morning of May 23 we drive to Miami airport to board our flight to Newark, then Dublin. All went well until we were ready to board; then the United Gate Agent said there was a "ground stop" due to bad weather in Newark. We might as well sit and read for a couple of hours. No problem, thinks I, we will have a three hour wait after we land for our connection to Dublin. Wait in Miami vs. wait in Newark... I'll take Miami. We board the plane a couple of hours later, settle in, open our magazines, buckle up, prepare to nap, when the gate agent comes on the plane and gives us the news that Newark is stopped again and it will be hours before we leave. We must de-plane.   :-(   OK, I was sad we might miss our connection to Dublin, but we would at least not be landing in a storm. I prefer being late to crashing and being dead. Now we have to wait for several hours to finally get to the agent who re-defines our flight plan. We will spend the night in the very comfortable Double Tree Inn at United's expense, dine as lavishly as the two $10 meal vouchers allow, and try again on the 24th. Actually, our travel insurance kicked in with an extra $150 per day each of additional funding of our pastime of eating and drinking. Yeah insurance!

After good sleep and much food we repeat the process, this time through Newark, London Heathrow, then Dublin. we arrived in the late afternoon of the 25th. One and a half days late, but OK.

We had reserved a car from EuropeCar and when we tried to pick it up, our $172 price quote had grown by another $270 for insurance! I politely told the lovely rental agent that we had insurance through our regular car policy and the Collision Damage Waiver by way of our exalted status in the credit card world. Not so fast says she. Many cards don't offer CDW in Ireland and we must have a letter from our credit card bank saying we do. Slightly irritated, but not defeated, I walked over to my favorite rental counter, Hertz, where a helpful agent said he only knows of one card that worked for sure in Ireland and it was the rare, Bank of America "World Card". Well, being worldly travelers, and with a slightly smug smile on my face, I quickly produced said plastic from a dark recess of my wallet. Oh joy! How much will your car be Mr. Hertz man? The reply; only a little more than double what the first car would have been! Drat! Curses! Foiled, like other mice and men's best laid plans. I checked with Alamo too; no Joy.   :-(

Then I saw Darren Byrne smiling behind the Budget counter. For the sake of completeness, I might as well be tortured by him too; but no! Darren had a heart of gold! He appreciated my predicament and offered help. Not only did he call my bank and allowed them to send the requested letter to his fax machine, he even suggested I take it back to EuropeCar as he was afraid I would lose my deposit with them. All charity! The letter came and I learned after a second call to my Capital One Visa Bank, that not all cards work, Band of America did, Capital One's Spark Card did not. I asked if any money had indeed been charged by EuropeCar and it had not. I had only reserved. So I went back to Budget where a still smiling Darren not only rented me a car, he beat the price of EuropeCar! I will sing his praises for a long time. Darren, if you are reading this blog, thanks, I really mean it.

Next stop, the Leeson Bridge Guest House, http://leesonbridgehouse.ie/ where Emma and Mary delivered superb service. If you want a nice place to stay in Dublin, with a great location, breakfast, and service that rates 5 stars, this place won't dissapoint. They even had secure parking, the better to protect our coveted Budget rental car! I'm looking forward to writing a glowing review in Trip Advisor. When we didn't have any euros for bus fare, Emma even dug into her pocket to help us get to some proper Irish Pubs for dinner and drinks. We love Emma!

Dublin has a very cool bike rental system.
For a 150 euro deposit, on your credit card, you can rent a bike for almost free. OK, the three day contract is 2 euros or only 10 for a whole year and when you use the bikes for more than 30 minutes, there is a modest hourly fee, but it is cheap. I thought this would be a great way to get around so I put my American credit car into the machine only to find that our cards don't have the little chip embedded in the plastic that the European cards have. My cards would work in the ATMs and restaurants, but not the bike machine. Oh well... we walked; burning enough calories to justify a pizza, several beers, an ice cream and a bottle of wine. Pretty good deal if I did my caloric math right.

Short list of what we have done so far:

Hop on Hop off tour of city for two days
Visited Trinity College and the Book of Kells http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells
Ate and drank in many Temple Bar area bars... big fun
Had a good dinner and saw a great song and step dance show at the Arlington Hotel
More eating and drinking and singing and pub crawling... great fun, walking off the calories between pubs!
Did the factory tour for Waterford Crystal. Very cool and a great place to take pictures!
Now we are in Kinsale for an evening of dining, singing and drinking... we walked so it's OK.

I should warn you of some deceptive marketing we encountered. Yes, I fell for the free beer trick. Always read the fine print. You know what the lawyers say..., "The large print giveth and the fine print taketh away".

I could go for hours writing about Ireland and the nice people we met, however, it's almost 1 AM and I have to drive to Blarney tomorrow to kiss some rock or something so I'll try to improve these musings at the next opportunity, add some photos, and tell more tales of our adventure. For now, goodnight.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Packing Again!

Ok, I've been very bad about keeping the blog up to date. Since the last post we went on a couple of cruises, a couple of trips to Las Vegas, did a week on a houseboat in Lake Meade, ate a lot of crabs and in general had a wonderful couple of years.

The trip we are starting now, however is a biggie! Our friends at Bare Necessities are letting us join them on a fantastic sailing ship cruise around the Baltic! Since we are flying to Europe and have more time than money, we don't want to use the airfare on just one cruise, so we will start this trip in Ireland on June 24th and do a circle around the country until June 3rd. then, we will be staying with new friends John and Joan Ryder on the Isle of Man to see the world famous TT Motorcycle Race, see: http://vimeo.com/53551115 for a taste, then on June 8th we will fly to Manchester, England to rent a car and motor around Scotland until June 13th. Stockholm will be next for a couple of days, then we board the Star Flyer for a ten day cruise to Sweden, Russia, Estonia, and Finland.

Best of the Baltic 2013I don't know how much Internet access we will have, so much of the writing and pictures be added to the blog when we get back. Watch this space for updates as time and access allow!

Bon voyage to us!