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January 17, 2006
Report on Euro 2006
NEW YORK CITY – Tiffany and I returned home from Ireland yesterday. Getting here involved about 20 hours of travel, starting at 9:30AM on Ireland’s west coast. From there, we drove the entire width of Ireland to Dublin, where we caught a flight to Heathrow and connected to New York. At the equivalent of 5:30AM Irish time, a car dropped me off back in Harlem.
It was only my second time in Europe in winter, and January proved an excellent time to visit Europe’s more popular attractions. Amsterdam’s canals had an icy shimmer, while a cold wind blew off the North Sea into the nearly-deserted Gothic city of Brugge, and Kensington Palace was absorbed in all of the formality, dampness, and grayness that must have driven Di crazy.
Ireland was still somehow green, excepting the part near Galway that reminded me of Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula. We’ll be the last to argue against the “Emerald Isle” designation. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I hired a car at Dublin airport, gave Tiffany a road atlas, and set a course (on the left-hand-side of the road) to circle the northern half of Ireland in four days. Tiffany didn’t know what she was getting herself into, as on several occasions she came within a few feet of stone walls, hedge rows, and parked lorries as we zipped down winding country roads near the speed limit of 100 kph (62 mph). More on that later.
LONDON was its typical self – chilly, a bit foggy, and bloody expensive. The Tube fare has been hiked to £3, or $5.29 per ride, compared to $2 in New York. We stayed in Notting Hill, a less touristy section of old Victorian houses dating to around 1850. Franklin (Columbia ’06) advised on a hotel near Portobello Road, a major antiques centre. Tiffany even found an old pink sign inscribed with “princess sleeps here,” though prices were so outrageous that only the Japanese were buying anything.
Tract housing in Notting Hill
We ventured to the City to visit the Tower of London, where my mother fainted on her honeymoon upon hearing how various famous prisoners were executed there. The Tower dates to the Norman Conquest of 1066 and is guarded by Yeoman Warders (“Beefeaters”), and order founded in 1485 as Henry VII’s bodyguards but today are former military officers who give tours of the Tower. The only way to get your £11 worth is to join a Beefeater for a tour as he tells of various executions, body disposals, torture, and other gory details of Britain’s past. (A sign, however, proclaims that “torture was rare in Britain.” Sure.)
Tower Bridge: not falling down
BRUSSEL. From London, we took the train through the 31-mile tunnel under the Straits of Dover to Belgium, where I lived for seven months in 2004. We caught up with Alexander and Jens for some Flemish food and drinks. Brussels is one of the only cities in the world where most of the educated people are trilingual, which leads to situations where one can address someone in French and receive a reply in a different language, such as Flemish (a dialect of Dutch spoken in Flanders). Alexander found us a Flemish restaurant and was very excited to be greeted in Flemish rather than French. The three guys ordered the deer, which led Tiffany to dub us the “Three Musketeers.” (The next night, we found a Spanish tapas place where the waitress seemed content to speak Spanish rather than either French, Flemish, or English.)
Tiffany with the 3 Musketeers
What did I airbrush out here?
I remember having a conversation with a client in Paris in May 2004 where I said how pleased I was to be working in Paris. The client, a young former marketing manager at L’Oreal, pointed to a café across the street. “Paris never changes; there’s nothing new,” he said. “That café looks the same today as it did forty years ago, and it will look the same in 40 years. Is that really where you’d want to live?” Brussels is similar; almost nothing had changed in a year, except for the Senegalese immigrant who set up a handy new PCO (cheap overseas call office) in Brussel Centraal station. Although I could see myself living in Brussels, economic trends are not favoring Old Europe. Trends are my friends.
******
In 1501, the first Portuguese ship laden with pepper and cinnamon docked at Antwerpen, signaling the beginning of the end for Brugge, which had become one of the medieval period’s most important trading centres, boasting a population twice London’s. Brugge’s canal, its lifeline to the sea, began to silt-up. By the mid-1500s, one of Europe’s largest cities was abandoned. Not until the late 1800s did Brugge awaken, this time as a tourist centre. Some two million tourists a year cram into the city. Located in central Flanders, it is one of Europe’s best-preserved medieval cities, with most buildings in Gothic style dating to 1300 to 1550. Fortunately, in winter, Brugge is reclaimed from the tourists by the Flemish, making an ideal time to come and contemplate the reflections in the canals.
Ferdinand Khnopff would be happy
Just as Antwerpen put the kibosh on Brugge, so would Amsterdam put an end to the wealth of Antwerpen. The final straw was the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, when the United Provinces (later the Nederlands) closed the river leading to Antwerpen, leading to a boom in Amsterdam.
AMSTERDAM - We followed the historical trend, traveling from Brugge to Antwerpen to Amsterdam. Tiffany was especially taken by the multitude of canals in Amsterdam, most of which are lined with Dutch Renaissance houses from the 1600s boasting high gables and glassy exteriors. It’s particularly interesting to follow the patterns of medieval and renaissance art and architecture through Brugge (pre-1550) to Antwerpen (roughly 1400 to 1650) to Amsterdam (1600s).
We particularly enjoyed the Dutch versions of Bob Evans, small cafes in canal houses serving well-presented breakfasts all day for around $6/person. I even managed to get Tiffany to check-out the Red Light District, where bored bawds sit in their skivvies waiting for horny guys to come knocking on their red-light-lined windows. Surprisingly, we got no offers of cocaine, though the hotel provided a convenient wallet card with advice on smoking marihuana. Featuring a smiling roll of bud, the card advises, “Using HASH or WEED can make you happy and relaxed, but there are also risks.” Among the risks: “Hash + Magic Mushrooms can lead to very nasty trips.” Just what we were hoping for. [read more] We joined Rune, from the firm’s Amsterdam office, for drinks, where we all sighed when Tiffany remarked that it’s a shame that a beautiful city like Amsterdam is known best for its whores and weed.
IRELAND – Tiffany wasn’t thrilled to be climbing into the passenger’s seat of our Seat Cordoba (basically a Spanish version of the Volkswagen Golf). It turned out that driving on the left was the least of our concerns, as most Irish highways are unmarked, narrow horse-and-buggy routes loaded with S-curves and lined with tall hedge rows or stone walls. The speed limit is 62 mph, though the general rule seems to be to go as fast as you can, which is rarely 62 mph. As we set-off up the M3 to get dinner in Kells, County Meath, I was tired and thirsty, and about ready to throw in the towel when we stopped in Kells at a service station to ask directions to the restaurant, which we then noticed was across the street. A bit of Irish mash, mushroom soup, and chicken got us to Cabra Castle, County Cavan, where Tiffany fulfilled a lifelong dream of spending the night in a castle.
The next morning, we proceeded up to Belfast, Northern Ireland, which was the center of Protestant-Catholic fighting until the 1994 ceasefire. Nowadays, one would hardly know that Belfast was a terrorist center, save a few billboards and murals. There’s no border control between Northern Ireland (part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland; the only way to know is that the Gaelic street signs give way to English-only signs, and one passes a military installation.
Belfast is a pretty but expensive town that look straight out of the late 1800s, the city’s Golden Age. Two giant yellow shipbuilding arms loom over the Harland & Wolff shipyard, which built a Royal Mail Steamer named Titanic in 1910. It must have been stunning to see such a large ship rise over the city of Belfast, and a drive by the shipyard today confirms just how large the project was. [more on H&W and the RMS Titanic]
We couldn’t stay long, though, as we were racing the sun to get to the northern tip of Ireland to see Giant’s Causeway. We spent a few minutes, however, at Ballycastle to take this picture of the cliffs:
Ballycastle, Ireland: windy
At Ireland’s far northern tip, Giant’s Causeway is a unique series of hexagonal basalt columns. Although they formed as a result of a volcanic process, the Irish have a more interesting explanation:
In one legend, [Finn McCool] is the creator of the Giant's Causeway, a peculiar series of volcanic rock formations on the coast of Ireland. One day, Finn grows angry when he hears that a Scottish giant is mocking his fighting ability. He throws a rock across the Irish Sea to Scotland; the rock includes a challenge to the giant.The Scottish giant quickly throws a message in a rock back to Finn, stating he can't take up the challenge because he can't swim to reach Ireland.
Finn doesn't let the Scottish giant off so easily. He tears down great pieces of volcanic rock that lay near the coast and stands the pieces upright, making them into pillars that form a causeway that stretches from Ireland to Scotland. The giant now has to accept the challenge. He comes to Finn's house. Finn, masquerading as a 18-foot baby, bites the Scottish giant's hand and then chases him back to Scotland, flinging huge lumps of earth after him. One of the large holes he creates fills with water and becomes Lough Neagh, the largest lake in Ireland. One large lump of earth misses the giant and falls into the Irish Sea; this lump is now known as the Isle of Man. [source]
Giant's Causeway: windy
From Giant’s Causeway, we took dinner in a pub in Derry, one of Ireland’s larger cities. Like every town in Ireland, it claims to be a “historic town,” complete with a series of city walls. We found the city boring and overrated and quickly moved on to our overnight lodgings, a country house in County Donegal that dates to 1695. We walked in without our bags and were asked if we had a reservation. We said we did and were promptly seated in the dining room and presented dinner menus. Eventually I explained that our reservation was for the hotel and not the restaurant, though they let me keep the glass of wine.
The Drawing Room at Castle Grove, where one puts on his drawers
The next day, we drove all day, including several diversions. A half-hour south of Sligo, we found some Stone Age burial mounds. Getting there involves taking a series of roads, each narrower than the last, until finally one is on a gravel road leading up to a gate saying, “Please Close the Gate Behind You.” Suddenly the nearby “Rest Home for Donkeys” looks like an appealing place to visit. One enters the gate and drives in first gear about a mile up a muddy, rock-strewn, one-lane path that would challenge even a Land Cruiser. It was nearly impossible for our mini-sedan (and violated the car-hire agreement), but thanks to Tiffany’s surprising skills in off-road navigation, we made it to the top, where the wind was fierce, but there were 270-degree views for miles around. There were also several Stone Age burial mounds, which contained large chambers, presumably for burying the dead. You can judge the size of the mound by comparing them to Tiffany's height; she is standing at the left.
We did't spy any Stone Age bones in these tombs; the Bone Age was yet to come
Late in the evening, we reached the former ancestral home of the Guinness family, perhaps the most famous family in Ireland (see: Guinness Beer; World Records, Book of). Ashford Castle, first built in 1228 and later added to several times, was converted to a hotel in 1939 and has hosted such visitors as Pierce Brosnan (married there), Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair, and even Jerry Springer. It was really one of the most amazing hotels, including several public rooms that, were this a museum, would be guarded with sensors and velvet ropes.
Tiffany's princess complex got quite a workout here
This has become a really long post, so that’s it for now. Here’s a final picture that I quite enjoyed, taken at a harbor near Galway.
Who opened the drain?
Posted by adrianjo at January 17, 2006 04:33 PM