A Day Out

We're back in Dublin for a week, staying at my aunt's house. She's so good with Mr Baby (and so are my cousins and my uncle...what a gift). The second day we were here she took care of Mr. Baby all day long. All Day Long!! Amazing.

We went to see some great art, particularly the work of Ms Riven Neuenswander.



We both took wishes from this great exhibition where you were invited to take someone else's wish that was printed on a ribbon and tie it around your wrist. Mine was "I wish I could live without fear." India's was "I wish 1. to know my next step 2. to pay my debts 3. to be in love."

Then we had lunch at Avoca which I loved but which made my sweetie grumpy. She thought it was an old lady shop. I took lots of photos of her and then she cheered up.

We walked around downtown Dublin for a couple of hours, looking for shoes and clothes, but settling on a guidebook for Barcelona and a Spanish-English dictionary. Then we got back in our car and attempted to navigate the streets of town, where we were faced with traffic and lots of one way streets. It was all good though, after asking several sets of people for directions, including a taxi driver, a gas station attendant, a couple of people on the street...we made it to the village of Ranalegh where we had Kir Royales at a place called Cinnamon. It was a great day. When we got home, the little one was sound asleep in his dinosaur pajamas.



Thank you auntie b!

Country Living

For the past ten days we've been in Kinsale, a little town on the water. It's a tourist spot in the summer, but relatively quiet in January.






We're staying in a renovated barn on a dairy farm.


Mr. Baby loves it. This is our view.


It's a total change from being in the city. He can go outside and run around anytime he wants. We see cows every day, and he even got to see a one-day-old calf. There are three dogs and one cat, and did I mention the view?


It's an actual working dairy farm, and it's small -- only about 20 cows. All farms in Ireland are much smaller than US farms; the farmer here told us that a large farm would be about 200 cows, and that all the milk and meat in the country comes from family farms like this one.



Kinsale is only a short (though curvy, narrow and sometimes treacherous) drive from Cork, so we've still been able to visit Granny and other family. We also got to meet some cousins I'd never met before who live in Sandy Cove, in an amazing house with an amazing ocean view. We forgot our camera that day, urgh.


We leave tomorrow, back to Dublin. That's the plan anyway. It's such a difficult time to leave because Granny isn't well, and we're worried about her. So should I stay or should I go?

Goodbye Cork City

We're going to Kinsale this morning, after two weeks in Cork City. We'll miss our endless runs to the Spar, eating at the pub across the street, easy access to the downtown. But it will be nice to be somewhere a little more clean and fresh, with somewhere for Mr Baby to go outside.

Cork was holy,
Gritty,


And colorful

Bye bye!

Out all day

This is our last full day in Cork, tomorrow we're going to see cousins so we wanted to make the most of being close to town.




We walked around, Sacha pointed out the sculptures.

We spent an hour in a fabulous toy store.


We had hot chocolate.

We ate soup and toasties at our pub.

It was a good day.

Sometimes simple is simple...

Sometimes simple means simple. Really simple.

Mr Baby was in a mellow mood today after a lovely dinner with family last night. His uncle played with him for an hour, making the cars go up and down on an old Fisher Price car park.

So today we just took it easy. Played with the trains in the morning. Took a 20 minute walk around Cork, the highlight of which was "making a phone call" at a rare phone booth.



Played with the puzzle. Then we went across the street to Fionnbarra, a pub that looks a bit grimy from the outside, but which had been recommended to us as a good place to eat. It was surprisingly romantic, with lots of candles and red light. We had a ham and cheese toasty and a bowl of chili for 5 euros.

It's hard for me to want to keep it simple. I constantly fight the desire to pack our days full of activity. Every day I learn the lesson again. Simple is good. But for me, simple is always a challenge.

A journey is like marriage

A journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
John Steinbeck

Kinsale at night

Granny

I didn't grow up with my grandmother. She lived thousands of miles away, across the ocean in a country I knew hardly anything about. I didn't miss her because I didn't know her.
She's 92 now, and I'm finally getting to know here. It's totally worth it. And it just shows, it's never too late to make those connections.

Our Travels So Far

Our street in Cork City

We've been traveling for almost three weeks now, and I've decided to start a blog to chronicle what we're doing and so people can keep up with us. It's a big adventure. An interracial lesbian couple and their three year old son buy one-way tickets to Dublin, rent out their house, and then proceed to travel Europe with little money but lots of time.

So far, we've stayed with family in Dublin,

Familia

We've ented a car and driven to Cork, rented a flat in Douglas Street, and done more visiting.



We've seen one castle, one picture perfect harbor town, lots of sketchy looking dudes in track suits and hoodies, endless numbers of narrow cobblestone streets and pubs and the rest.

The place we're staying now can only be described as mediocre. It's close to the town center, and there's a hippie deli across the street called the Buddhafly. The interior is clean, but gets hardly any natural light. There's a huge TV in both rooms. The fridge kind of works, the heat kind of works, the internet kind of works, you get the idea. But it's ok, it's more than ok, it's amazing. We're in Ireland, we did it, and every morning I wake up still not believing we actually did this thing.

On this street there's a liquor store, a Spar (convenience store), a flower/design shop that sells cappuccino and several pubs. One of which is a gay friendly pub. So far so good.

Best part of the trip so far has been visiting with family.


More soon,
j.