Saturday, October 19

Another leisurely morning feeling well-rested and ready for the day. Lucy took care of us this morning, with warm, fresh “pain au chocolat” (croissants with chocolate filling), and a pot of tea. Unlike yesterday, the weather is beautiful—clear, crisp, a refreshing 58 degrees. We ventured into downtown Holywood this morning for some shopping.

Holywood is a lovely town, really a small city, not too different in size from Auburn but with many more retail shops. The main shopping street slopes downhill to the “lough” (bay). There were green grocers, bakeries, butcher shops, a re-use shop, clothing boutiques, jewelers, and numerous “charity” (thrift) shops. It was interesting to see the food establishments right next to clothing and jewelry stores. Alison was greeted warmly at each establishment, often by name. Since each food shop was specialized, the goods were exquisite—fresh, homemade, natural. We got homemade granola, a loaf of fresh grain bread, croissants, meat, cheese, and more for our trip to Donegal.

Our lunch at home was a spread of fresh bread, ham, and 4 types of cheese just purchased at the cheese shop. Perfect for filling our tummies before our afternoon pub crawl.

Alison, Santo, and I went to downtown Belfast for a special Irish music pub crawl hosted by two local musicians. We met at one pub, where we enjoyed, along with our Guinnesses, traditional music on the Uilleann pipes and concertina. Between sets, the musicians provided information about the instruments and told us how a typical Irish sessions works. They are not jam sessions, as you would think of for jazz performances. Rather, all Irish musicans have stored over a thousand tunes (jig, reels, and slip-jigs) in their heads! One musician leads the session, and the others follow his lead as to what tune will be played next, cuing each other with a nod of the head or subtle smile. The tunes are played in sets of 3 or 4. We learned about the different rhythms: 4-4 time, the 4 beats counted by the mnemonic “Black & Decker;” 6-8 time with the mnemonic “carrots ‘n cabbages;” and 9-8 time with the mnemonic “carrots ‘n cabbages radishes.” The audience was challenged to guess the rhythms after hearing a few tunes, but the play was so fast that it was surprisingly hard to do.

The Uilleann pipes are one of the most sophisticated instruments in the world, much more so than the more familiar Scottish bagpipes. The bag sits under the players left elbow, and he pumps it by lifting his arm then squeezing with his elbow. There are stops on a large pipe leading from the bag, where there is also a button for turning the drone on and off (something not possible on the Scottish bagpipes). In addition, the piper plays a flute-like instrument with his mouth and fingers, pumping another bag under his other arm. It is incredibly complex and as you listen it seems impossible that all the rich sounds produced are being played by one person.

The concertina was a beautiful instrument with black and silver hand plates and leather bellows with a gold design. It is octagonal in shape, and the musician played it rested on his knee, though he told us this was not the way it was supposed to be played and he was often scolded by other concertina players. The concertina played the melody in long, haunting notes, with accompanying chords humming underneath. This particular instrument was 125 years old and insured for 10,000 pounds.

After about one and a half hours, we did our “crawl” to the next venue, another downtown Belfast pub. Along the way, our guides stopped at several sites important to the musical history of Ireland. We walked through the first floor of the pub on our way to the lower room. The place was hopping, people of all ages, sitting or standing, beers or Guinnesses in hand. In the back room, an actual session was taking place. The downstairs room was reserved for us. Our guides took their seats at the front of the room, where they were joined by a girl in a black ballet top and short skirt over black stockings. Our dancer.

After explaining a bit about how the dancers and musicians worked together, take cues from one another, she demonstrated several dances, arms tight to her sides, feet moving faster than seemed possible, legs kicking fast and high. The she got four volunteers from the audience to join her and taught them a simple dance, which they then performed quite ably.

When our guides announced that we were near the end of the tour, I felt a tinge of disappointment. I relished every moment of their final set. On our way out, we stopped upstairs at the session which included about six musicians, all male, around a long table at the back of the pub. There were violins, Uilleann pipes, guitar, and flute. I loved watching the eye contact among the players and the movements of their fingers as they played, all one with the rapid rhythms of the music.

We arrived home sometime after 6 pm. Alison and Lucy quickly prepared a meal of roasted pork chops, mashed potatoes, and green beans. I don’t know how they do it all in their tiny kitchen. The room is so small, one narrow aisle down the middle, that it is hard to help. On top of that, there are stockpiles of food in preparation for our week-long trip to Donegal filling up the kitchen table. There just isn’t room for any more bodies and no free surface to work.

So once again we are served a magnificent meal, having done nothing to help prepare it. The pork chops are delicious—roasted then topped with applesauce and blue cheese and placed under the grill til the cheese melts. Three votive candles in the middle of the table create the familiar warm atmosphere of our home away from home. We enjoyed our meal, more stories, and laughter.

We ended the night in the living room, first watching a political satire program, Have I Got News for You, on BBC 1, which included some pointed barbs about Trump that really hit the mark, then a few episodes of Father Ted, a 1990s sitcom about 3 priests on a remote Irish island that is so silly and over-the-top that it is surprisingly hysterical.

Another full day of enjoying Ireland, enjoying our dear friends, who are getting dearer every day, and basking in the warmth that surrounds us.

Friday, October 18

We started our day with “bacon buns”—bacon and grilled onion on a lovely bun. Slept late again—til 9:30. What is going on with us? The bed is quite comfortable, but still. Are we just totally relaxed? Definitely in vacation mode.

Our agenda for today is a busy one. Belfast Titanic Museum, dinner at the Golf Club across the street from Alison and Maurice’s, and a student musical concert in the local church in the evening.

The building that houses the Titanic Museum is the start of the whole museum experience. It is modern, with jagged silver panels forming the shape of the bow of the ship to the exact scale of Titanic. We bought tickets for the Belfast Titanic Experience and headed up the escalator to start our tour.

This museum is unique because you learn about Belfast at the time the ship was being built in the Belfast shipyard. It took 26 months to build and tens of thousands of workers. On top of that, other industries in the city provided materials for the construction, so that the project consumed much of the city’s labor force. Belfast was also one of the world’s top producers of linen, employing many of the women whose men were working in the shipyard. All the bedding on the Titanic was linen and because there was no laundry aboard ship, they had to bring all the linens that would be needed for the entire trip. There was also a water aerating company that created tonic water, ginger ale, and other “aerated” drinks.

The most fascinating part of the tour details the construction of this massive vessel. Over 3 million rivets were used in the construction and each required 5 men to hammer each one in–2 on one side and 3 on the other, often using one left-handed and one right-handed hammerer to more effectively pound the rivets through the thick steel.

At one point in the tour, we boarded a moving car, like a Disney World ride, which took us down through life-size displays of the interior of the ship during construction. The scale was massive, almost unimaginable, as much as the museum was trying to help us imagine it.

There were interactive exhibits showing how the engines worked, how the steam moved through pipes to turn the gigantic gears that would turn the propellers, how the keel was laid on a wooden form, and how the rudder was forged and installed to steer the ship. In order to turn the large vessel, the rudder needed to be an equally gargantuan size.

In one area there were projections on two angled screens of rolling ocean waters. You could stand at the rail and imagine you were on the moving ship. Another recreated the launch of the ship in May of 1911, witnessed by 100,000 people in a city of little over 300,000. Once launched, it would take nearly a year to outfit the interior of the ship. Some of the wooden cabinets and chairs were made by Harland & Wolff, the shipbuilders who manufactured the rest of the vessel. The furniture was made to match the style of the wood paneling. Even the pianos were encased in matching wood.

One of my favorite parts was the platform where you stood surrounded by display screens that created the illusion that you were inside the ship and moving through it. This included a walk up the grand staircase and a view from the crow’s nest where two crewman were stationed the day of the crash. Because there were no binoculars, the sighting of the iceberg was too late to save the ship.

The sinking was a perfect storm of factors that came together to propel the Titanic to disaster. A display showed how these factors resulted in a number of new safety standards for ocean-going vessels. The factors and the resulting changes were:

FACTOR: Failure to see iceberg early enough (and excessive speed)
RESULT: Formation of the International Ice Patrol, an agency of the United States Coast Guard that monitors and reports on the location of North Atlantic Ocean icebergs.

FACTOR: No binoculars in crow’s nest. The binoculars were usually stashed in a locker in the crow’s nest but the key to the locker wasn’t on board because a sailor who was reassigned to another ship forgot to leave the key behind when he left.
RESULT: Ships required to have binoculars for each lookout in the crow’s nest at start of voyage.

FACTOR: Radio operator on nearest ship to Titanic was not on duty.
RESULT: Radio communications on passenger ships must be operated 24 hours along with a secondary power supply so as not to miss distress calls.

FACTOR: Not enough lifeboats.
RESULT: All ships must have enough lifeboats for all passengers and crew. Lifeboat drills must take place before ships depart and once during voyage

FACTOR: Height of the bulkheads. Those on Titanic were above the water line but not high enough to prevent water from spilling from one to another.
RESULT: Bulkheads must be high enough to make the compartments fully watertight.

Displays at the end of the tour focused on survivors and lives lost. There are artifacts from the ship along with stories of their owners. On a giant black wall along the stairs leading to the exit are all the names of those who perished on Titanic.

Exhausted emotionally from the tour, Santo and I wandered into the gift shop. There were keychains with rubber Titanics and other tchotchkes with representations of the ship. It just felt wrong. We looked at each other and silently departed the gift shop. We grabbed a quick but delicious bite at the museum café, then headed across the street to the Titanic Hotel housed in the former offices of Harland & Wolff. The hotel is large and elegant. The bar where we had a drink while waiting for Alison to pick us up was the room where the drawings for Titanic, and other ships made by the company, were created. The room had a vaulted ceiling almost completely made of glass that provided natural light for the draftsmen.

We had time for a short rest at home before we dressed for our dinner at the Golf Club. It was raining when we arrived, but over the course of the meal the mist lifted to reveal the lights of Belfast City and the mountain behind. We all enjoyed delicious meals (sea bass with asparagus and leeks for me followed by a white chocolate cheesecake with raspberries).

After dinner we drove to the local Anglican Church for the Holywood Music Festival—performances by local students of classical and traditional music on piano, violin, flute, cello and voice. The final pianist was absolutely remarkable, rivaling the Ukrainian pianist who was featured at Chautauqua this past summer. I was moved to see these young people, some as young as twelve, so devoted to their craft and so accomplished on their chosen instruments.

When we finally got to bed, we had much to savor from this very full day. We are feeling mightily blessed.

Thursday, October 17

We slept in until 10:30 am, unheard of even for us! After croissants and coffee we headed out for a drive to the Mourne Mountains. The skies were quite changeable, sun and clouds swirling around us the whole day. It was just beautiful. It wasn’t long before we spotted our first rainbow. “There it is,” we cried. “The end of the rainbow that had started at the Syracuse airport.”

Our first stop was Dundrum Castle, the ruins of a 13^th century residence high on a hill overlooking farmland stretching to the bay. In a small hut at the end of the parking lot, the history of the castle was laid out in clever and informative cartoons along three walls, representing scenes and legends from eight centuries. As we took in the view one more time, the sun broke through, illuminating the hay fields to a shade of nearly-white.

Driving closer and closer to the Mournes, the fog and mist that had been covering them lifted, revealing the black mountains behind. They are a range of rounded shapes, resembling the backs of prehistoric beasts. As the skies changed, so did the color of the mountains, becoming mottled in shades of black, brown, and gray. Along the road and crisscrossing the fields were miles of Mourne stone walls. Unlike any stone walls I had seen before, they were constructed from large rounded boulders, tightly packed and, remarkably, level on top. Because of the shape of the stones, holes were inevitable and these allowed the green and gold of the fields beyond to show through.

Our next stop was for a picnic lunch at a park at the base of the mountains. Alison had packed rolls, turkey, mustard and mayo, along with cheddar and relish chips and a cold Pellegrino, and laid everything out on a wee table in the trunk of the van. While Susie sniffed around the field, we ate our sandwiches, talked, and watched the clouds and mist dance around the mountains.

Then it was on to Slieve Donard in Newcastle, a magnificent hotel perched above a long sandy beach, its waves rolling in low and strong. We entered the long brick structure through the main doors and stopped in the rustically elegant lobby, admiring the carved wooden fireplace which roared with a log fire. Almost immediately, a hotel worker in a tweed vest and tie offered to take our picture in front of the fireplace. Then he encouraged us to browse around the hotel at our leisure, even though (maybe because) we were not guests. He even showed us a wall with pictures, menus, and other items from the hotel’s past. We wandered into the dining room, snooker room, card room, and one cozy sitting area arranged below a small domed ceiling.

At one point, I asked the young man how long he had worked there and he said “About a year.”

“Do you like it?” I asked.

“It’s alright,” he said with a smile. “It was supposed to be just a few months, but that was back in January and here I still am.”

“Things happen, right?” I said, and we shared a wee laugh.  

On our way out, he offered each of us a pen with the hotel’s name on it. Our first souvenir.

Arriving back home around 6 pm, Alison and Lucy prepared our dinner of pies (steak or chicken and ham) they had picked up fresh from the local butcher that morning. Along with the pies were chips (French fries) and a bag of frozen peas and corn. There was both vinegar and ketchup for the chips. The pies were hot and delicious. And even though they are not something we usually get a home, they still felt like comfort food. Perhaps it is the air of warmth and hospitality that we breathe in this house that makes everything taste like comfort food.

Once again we lingered at the table, no one in a rush to clear dishes or wash up. More stories were shared, more laughs were had. So relaxing. We are home — over three thousand miles from Auburn.