Anfractuosities: Twists and Turns

AROUND THE UK AND IRELAND
With the Lonesome Traveler

London

The adventure has begun. If I were writing this a hundred and fifty years ago, I might have put down: The ADVENTURE has begun—but nowadays that would be considered capital punishment. I arrived in London about noon, an hour late, but by airline standards, the very soul of punctuality. In the terminal I immediately booked a bus to Edinburgh for later in the afternoon. On the way into London, my quick trap- like mind began to work; and I realized that waiting around for the bus another seven hours, after a plane ride of ten hours, plus a bus ride of another eight hours might not be in my best interests. Instead I got a hotel for the night and rebooked for the morrow.

Looking at the foregoing, I get the feeling that this trip is going to be as formless as this introduction. I haven’t the foggiest notion of what I’m going to do in Edinburgh or where I’m going from there. For someone who has always meticulously planned his trips, this is a real departure—so to speak.

I took a brief nap when I got to my hotel, but not before I rinsed out my clothes. Yes, that might sound inconsequential, but there may be some among you who have questions about the new type of technical travel clothes. Rinsed out at night, will they dry by morning? Do they wrinkle? Will they make the wearer look svelte and debonair? Stayed tuned, I will keep you posted.

On to Edinburgh

I arrived in Edinburgh this evening around eight p.m. after a long ride. I don’t know if I would do the bus again; trains kept zooming by as if we were standing still. Our lack of speed, however, had more to do with horsepower than it did desire on the part of the driver. As we careened over hill and dale and through city streets, I realized that a constant battle with motion sickness was on my agenda.

I suppose there must be something nice to be said about the countryside between London and Newcastle, so I will try: it’s not Kansas—but only because it’s greener. As I always say about much of the Midwest: the scenery actually looks better if you go through at night. After Newcastle we traveled along the coast; and around Berwick the environment began to improve. This was my first “Maybe I should have stopped here” location. What! You don’t know where Berwick is! You’re telling me you’re not following these peregrinations on a large wall map with colored pins? I’m flabbergasted and semi-demolished.

Now where was I? Oh, after “where in the dickens is Berwick?” (as far as I know, it does not appear anywhere in his novels), both the scenery and I began to perk up. Down in one lonesome, little valley by a meandering stream stood a ruined castle. There were no houses nearby, and I couldn’t see a road anywhere. Stick something like that in America and there would be eight tour buses, five fast food places, and an Indian casino next to it. Speaking of fast food, over here McDonalds is a restaurant—and I thought the Brits were the sophisticated ones. KFC, however, is still just KFC; I like a joint that knows its place.

In Edinburgh I found a nice Bed and Breakfast (hereafter referred to as a BB), and ate at a bistro type place. I walked back to the BB about 10:30, although it was still twilight this far north.

I love the Scottish accents; they’re thick enough to spread on a sandwich. However, between my lack of hearing and the more curdled ones, I could use a translator. I bought a ticket to Inverness for the day after tomorrow—at least I think I did—I couldn’t prove it by anything the ticket agent mumbled.

Edinburgh

I toured Edinburgh today; one can pretty well walk anywhere in the Old Town. There’s a wonderful castle on top of a crag, old buildings and churches everywhere, and lots of green parks. Scottish people seem friendlier and less reserved than the English. It’s a very busy, not so little town, the capital of Scotland with three universities and a medical school. I saw the crown jewels at the castle, and these are the genuine articles, not the facsimile ones which are foisted off on an unsuspecting public at the Tower of London—as our very Scottish guide kept pointing out. By the way, the Queen can only touch this crown; she’s not allowed to actually wear it. I seemed to sense a mild anti-English sentiment hereabouts.
I know you’re waiting with breathless anticipation, but I’ll save my soggy clothes report for a slower day.

Inverness

I’m on the bus getting ready to leave Edinburgh, heading nonstop to Perth; there I will have a whole five minutes to make connections to Inverness where I will stay the night. The folks at my Edinburgh BB called ahead and made reservations. So far everything has been a little over my proposed budget of about twenty-five pounds a night, but the comfort of knowing I have a place at a popular location on a weekend is worth a few extra dollars. Anyway, we’re moving, so I’ll stop writing; I can feel the urps coming on.

It’s evening now, in Inverness; there’s no sign of Nessie, but I’ve seen only the river, not the Loch. Originally, I had planned to arrive here by way of the coast route. I wanted to stop at Stonehaven and see Dunottor Castle, a ruin perched on a cliff above the sea. But that route would have necessitated another night before Inverness, so I opted for a ride through the interior instead.
Today there was scenery worthy of the name: rolling hills with occasional cliffs for variety, but nothing I would be tempted to call a mountain, and long, long valleys always accompanied by a river. There are many more trees than in England, also more uncultivated areas of almost wilderness, but true wildness lies still farther north. Sheep are everywhere, lying like rolled up socks on the hillsides or lolling in streams, as it’s a muggy day and they are still unshorn.

I’ve booked a bus and ferry ride to the Orkneys (check your wall map). I don’t know a lot about them, but I seem to remember reading about ancient burial grounds, standing stones, high cliffs, tons of birds, and, of course, the sea, which always draws me.

I ate this evening in a restaurant called Little Johns and am currently sitting in an internet café called the Gate where someone next to me is dancing with himself and bumping my elbow. I’m hoping it’s not some sort of Scottish mating ritual. At Little Johns I had chicken stroganoff without much stroganoff. They also served traditional haggis, and I was briefly tempted—but the phrase “steaming entrails” put me off, and I passed—although I’m not sure the haggis would have, as I had a vegetarian version the other day that stuck around like a visiting mother-in-law.

And so, another day fades into a haggis-like sunset—they do linger around these parts. I’m beginning to question my rather frenetic pace; it seems as if I’m constantly on the move. I’m not going to see but a smidgen of what’s out there, so maybe I should take a little more time to just soak in the ambience of places.

Well, this has been a good day; it’s coming your way, and I recommend it highly. Use it well.

Leaving Inverness

I’m leaving for the Orkneys this morning, but first some exciting news. After eating last evening, I walked back to my BB. I crossed the River Ness and decided to take a stroll along the bank. It was late although still twilight, and the area was completely deserted. The river flows quite swiftly, and I stopped to watch a flock of seagulls floating backwards and bobbing for scraps. Suddenly, they all rose, as in a panic, and flew toward shore. I saw what had disturbed them, a large v-shaped ripple moving rapidly against the current. I watched curiously, wondering what could be pushing so powerfully against the force of the river. Then the ripple turned and came toward the bank where I was standing. I stood in wonder and then fear as a large, tubular shaped object reared high out of the water. Submarine? Periscope? I thought confusedly, until I noticed big round eyes almost covered by coquettishly long lashes. And then, at least twenty-five feet past the head, I saw a tail flick out of the water. Stunned, I could only gasp, “Nessie!”

Then, to my even greater amazement, the cavernous mouth opened, and past rows of large yellow teeth, a thick brogue emerged, “And just who else did you think it would be, Sherlock?”

I staggered back; “You…you don’t eat Americans, do you?”

“Give me credit for some taste, Laddie; though actually I turned vegan a hundred years ago.” I fumbled excitedly for my camera. “Nay, we’ll have none of that; more publicity is all I need.”

Disappointed that my fifteen minutes of fame was going glimmering along with the twilight, I put the camera aside. “You were coming up from the sea,” I said; “Been away?”

“Aye, been visiting a lass that summers in a Norway fiord.”

“Excuse me for getting personal; but although you’ve got those long lashes you keep batting at me, and although your name is ‘Nessie,’ you don’t sound female.”

“And that I’m not; I was christened ‘Robert,’ but you can call me ‘Bob.’ Take everything you’ve heard about me with a shaker full of salt.”

“Besides you and the Norway girl, how many of your kind are left?”

A sad look came into his eyes, “Not many: a fellow down in the Congo and a cantankerous, old biddy in Lake Champlain; that’s about it.”

“You got anything going with this Norway gal?”

“Nay, Lad, we’re just friends. Our whole clan put a moratorium on that kind of thing a few hundred years back. We older ones can take care of ourselves; but with all your technology, sooner or later, you would have captured one of the wee ones; and then it would have been dissection or Marine World. We couldn’t have that. When we go, that will be the end of it.”

We were silent for a while. “Tell me, Lad, do you believe in the Abominable Snowman…Yeti, Sasquatch, Bigfoot?”

“Not really,” I said, “although I could change my mind. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know,” he replied after a long moment. “I guess I don’t believe in them either…but I would like to. The world needs something like them, odd, mysterious, not pinned down by science. Something you can’t quite believe in, but something you can never be quite sure about. Am I making myself plain, Lad?”

“Yes, you are; I felt that way myself until quite recently.”

“Well,” said Bob, glancing around, “I must be getting on. To tell the truth, I’m just a wee bit afraid of the dark. It’s been a pleasure.”

“The pleasure was all mine; are you sure about that photo?”

“I’m sure; it just won’t do.” He hesitated, “But I’ll tell you what, hand me your camera” I did, and a long, pink, surprisingly delicate forked tongue flicked out. One fork held thecamera, and the other fiddled with the controls, “Say ‘Cheese.’”

“Cheese,” the camera clicked, and the flash illuminated the fading twilight. “Nobody’s going to believe this,” I said.

“You’re right, Lad; but you will.” He dropped the camera in my hand, and then the great bulk slid backwards into deeper water, the head disappeared with a last wave of the lashes, and I watched until the v-shaped ripple vanished upriver into the gathering night.

On the Bus

We left Inverness around 2:30 p.m. and headed north up the coast. I saw my firth oil platforms, great, hulking, ugly, rusted iron brutes. They’re being closed down, but no one knows what to do with them: dismantle, minimum maintenance, hotels and casinos? Probably nothing will be done, and eventually they’ll flake away.

This part of the Scottish coast is lovely but not nearly as dramatic as the central part of California’s. But for some reason the country up here seems to be on a larger scale: endless sea and sky and rolling hills. You can see so much farther, or so it seems. Buildings appear to get lost against the backdrop of the landscape. Sheep, though, stand out; they’re great wooly beasts almost like miniature mammoths. With their unshorn coats, they are almost as wide as they are long. They look inflated, as if someone blew them up with bellows. Maybe they are inflatables, designed to impress tourists like me. They don’t appear to move—I take that back: there was a lamb so large that it had to get down on its front knees to nurse. Its tail was going round and round like a little propeller; had he been any more ecstatic his hindquarters would have lifted off the ground. I saw another sheep lying partly on its back and partly on its side with all four legs sticking straight out. I laughed and laughed: such a silly way to sleep. There is certainly a plethora, a sufficiency, a repleteness of sheep in this country. Anyone trying to count them would soon take leave of his census.

Eventually we reached John O Groats, the farthest point from Lands End in Cornwall where I was in April. There may be many places that are more remote, but I suspect that few of them look the part any better. It’s just a few buildings perched on a barren shore, seemingly at world’s end.

The woozy urps had been besieging me on the trip up, and I now faced a forty-five minute ferry ride across open water. But I had discovered a secret weapon in my recurring battle with motion sickness, and at a small store I replenished my arsenal. This weapon is none other than—drum roll, please—Scottish oatcakes! These cakes are quite a mystery to science; no one understands how something this dry can actually stick together. The most current theory postulates some kind of subatomic attraction, perhaps an abundance of overachieving muons, gluons and morons. I myself have no trouble visualizing the sandy parts of the Sahara as crumbled-up oatcakes. I believe they prevent rolfing because it takes a least a modicum of moisture to puke; and any kind of damp simply cannot survive in their presence. It has been estimated that the victim needs at least eight gallons of water to wash down one; from my personal experience that estimate is conservative. Anyway they worked, and I stepped ashore on South Ronaldsay with nary an internal gurgle but with an overpowering need for the bathroom. Perhaps it would have been just as convenient to throw a couple in the ocean and walk over on dry land…Ha! now we know how Moses did it.

The Orkneys: love at first sight—rolling hills, infinite skies, sparkling waters; old, old stone buildings everywhere, many ruined and roofless. But against this landscape even the whole buildings have an air of impermanence. Most really ancient buildings seem to be a part of the land they stand on; but here they merely lease it for a time. There are sixty something islands in the archipelago, but only sixteen are permanently inhabited. They are bigger than they look on the map—but what isn’t? On these little islands, which are connected by bridge, causeway, and ferry, there are 350 miles of road. I’m staying on the biggest island, oddly called the Mainland, which has Kirkwall, the capital; but I’m moving on to the smaller town of Stromness, about seventeen miles away. We finally arrived in Kirkwall about 7:30 p.m., but all the buses were bedded down for the night. I had to find a taxi.

Stromness

I’m at my BB, Mrs. Hourston’s; it cost less for a night (eighteen pounds) than my taxi here (twenty pounds). I have a quick decision to make after breakfast. There are some of the oldest (predating the pyramids) Neolithic ruins and burial chambers hereabouts. Do I tour those, or opt for a ferry ride to the neighboring island of Hoy, which has an old man and the highest cliffs in Britain? No contest: I’m off to Hoy.

(Evening) “Ship a Hoy,” I shouted merrily as I boarded the ferry this morning. Although they must have been bursting with mirth at my witticism, the half of my fellow passengers who were English greeted my statement with typical reserve. The other half, who appeared to be mostly German, were just as undemonstrative; apparently, it did not translate well.

After a thirty minute ride, we landed and scattered; some walking, some on bikes. I took a minibus six miles to the other side of the island, my destination the cliffs and the Old Man of Hoy. On the way we stopped and took a short hike to the five thousand year old Dwarfie Stane (stone). It’s a low, flat topped burial chamber for...dwarves? It’s built in a Mediterranean style, the only one like it in the British Isles. The most recent theory is…I don’t know what the theory is, and I don’t care. Why does there always have to be a theory? You want to know what the dad-blamed theory is, you come over here and examine the silly thing yourself. Probably some short, Club Med male got lost, refused to ask directions, ended up on this forsaken island, and died of embarrassment. Or maybe the locals got tired of piling dirt in mounds. It’s here, okay; what are you going to do about it?

Well, I don’t know what brought that on, but I feel better. Actually, I do have an idea: I suspect it had to do with breakfast. I had kippers, so I had a bone or two to pick from the beginning. Why would I order kippers for breakfast? Why would I order them ever? I think it has something to do with nostalgia: I like to revisit breakfast often during the day. I will have more to say on British meal customs, but back to the Old Man.

The starting point for the hike is Rathwich, a community on the southern shore. It was once a thriving town, but there’s very little there now. Hoy, which is the second largest island, has only 450 residents; it had 50,000 during the WWII. There are no stores or other services, just a few inhabited houses and, of course, sheep. Shoving aside a few dozen of the critters, I started up a steep hill above the cliffs. After a mile or so the trail began to level off. In places it was rocky, at other times it consisted of a black loam. On these latter sections I began to notice a bounce in my step and a song in my heart. For a while I thought I was shedding the years like a scab, but soon realized I was walking on springy peat. Disappointed, I went back to my usual shuffle accompanied by a dirge.

After another mile I rounded a corner, and there, still a mile away, stood the tip of Old Man Hoy, rising some fifty feet taller than the cliff itself, an impressive sight. I finally stood at the edge of the four hundred foot sheer cliff. About a hundred feet away a tremendous rock spire rises out of the crashing breakers and towers above, about four hundred and fifty feet overall. Farther north the cliffs rise to over eleven hundred feet. The guidebook suggests photographing these cliffs with an oil tanker or large passenger liner as a backdrop to lend a sense of scale. Silly me: I forgot to make the arrangements.

I strode along the cliffs for another mile or so but began to notice a feeling, which I later identified as tiredness; so I turned back. Ah, me lads and lassies, ‘twas a grand day and the best weather yet that I’ve seen in Scotland. I returned to my BB and talked awhile to Mrs. Hourston, a woman full of an inexhaustible supply of the “lovely, lovely” lovely’s. Then I ate and collapsed.

Back To Inverness

This morning I took a bus, then another bus, then a ferry, and then another bus to Inverness. I then took another bus to Drumnadrochit, about twenty miles down the road where I will stay the night. Tomorrow I’m off to the Isle of Mull.

Drumnadrochit to Iona

Drumnadrochit, situated on Loch Ness, is the epicenter of the Nessie craze. It’s a small town with two large monster exhibitions. I tried to explain to everybody I met that they were going to have to change everything from “Nessie” to “Bob,” but got nowhere. I’ll shake the mud from my sandals (it’s raining again) and go Mull the situation over. The ride down to Oban, the jump off point for Mull, was breathtaking. We were always in sight of lochs, forests, tumbling rills, rushing rivers, open meadows with—would you believe it—sheep. Rhododendrons and wildflowers everywhere, moss encrusted rocks, mist, intermittent sunshine, and small islands, some with the obligatory ruined castle on the shore—I can’t do justice to it all. Too bad Mrs. Hourston, my Orkney landlady, wasn’t around; she would have been spewing out lovely’s like a gatling gun.

(Later, sitting in a pub, waiting for the bus to Iona) A lowering grey sky has finally turned to rain. I just found out (quite luckily overhearing someone’s casual conversation) that the ferry I was planning to take to Northern Ireland isn’t running this year. So, I’m in the market for an alternate route: any ideas?

While I’m waiting for the bus, I will tell you a little about Iona. Don’t worry; it won’t take long; I don’t know that much. Iona is a small island about a mile off the southwest tip of Mull (itself an island). St. Columba founded a monastery there in 563. He was a former Irish warrior who had been involved in fighting and killing. He had a change of heart and decided that he needed to save at least as many souls as he had killed. Christianity had not yet been introduced to Scotland; so he thought it would be fertile ground. He attracted many followers, and pilgrims soon started coming to the island. Later Columba and his followers took Christianity to the mainland. After Columba died in the 590’s, Iona’s influence began to decline as the Norse stepped up their raids. The Book of Kells (more later) was actually started on the island, but was removed to Ireland for safekeeping. Iona is still considered a holy place, and the current Abbey attracts many modern pilgrims. During the day hordes of tourists tramp about the island, but most of them leave at night, and things are supposed to quiet down. I plan to stay at least a couple of nights.

(Later yet, on Iona) The trip through southern Mull was nothing like I expected. It’s gorgeous: a wilderness of tall mountains with innumerable streams cascading down their sides, a river running through the valley, sometimes meandering and sometimes rushing, then a chain of lakes, next a long arm reaching up from the sea, and finally the sea itself dotted with islands and fringed with cliffs. I am out of superlatives, so I say simply: lovely, lovely, lovely.

The thirty-mile bus trip to Iona’s ferry was on a one-way road with turnouts. There was surprisingly heavy counter traffic (all those pilgrims returning), complicated by sheep with a penchant for grazing with their heads in the ditch and their arses on the road. If I were a local, I would tie a big, fluffy pillow to my bumper and see how many of the silly creatures I could send flying bum over air-filled head into the scrub.

(Still later, I’m trying to catch up) I went to the Abbey for a nine p.m. vespers, a simple but poignant service. From a pile, we each selected a rock, symbolizing commitment. During the service, we placed them on the floor by a small cross in the middle of the church. There is a profound sense of continuity worshipping in a place that’s been used for that purpose for fourteen hundred years: truly a blessing.
At ten o’clock I returned for a piano recital by a young German who was working as a volunteer at the Abbey. A wonderful sound in the old place: both Schumann and Schubert were on the program. I was glad he played both composers right away, as I hate hearing one and then waiting around to see if the performer is going to drop the other Schu. Tomorrow I’m taking a day trip to Staffa, the Cave of Fingal, and the Trennish Isles. You’re welcome to join me.

(continued)

Boats, Birds, and Caves

I woke up to a nice day, a little cloudy, but threatening sunshine. The Trennish Isles and the Isle of Staffa are uninhabited and lie about an hour away from Iona. Our little boat was crowded but congenial, boarded mostly by birders as the Isles are home to large nesting colonies. At the first landing our dock turned out to be a rock. As the boat bobbed up and down in a heavy swell, we all timed our leaps and prayed. Everyone made it: old ladies in walkers, men in wheelchairs, mothers nursing their babies; the lame, the halt, the blind. Never in America: there would be a Congressional sub-committee holding hearings--appropriately--on the poop deck.

Birds were everywhere, nesting on the cliffs and in the tall grasses. I will list them for you ornithologists. There were some fairly big ones, some middling sized ones, and some smaller ones. There may have been others, but those were the only ones I positively identified. I had always thought of birders as little old ladies (some of them men) standing around in gaggles and arguing over whether they had just spotted a rustfooted boobyhatch or a nutchested finchburger (or, if in a whimsical mood, whether or not male titmice should wear brasseries), anyway, not exactly a hardy bunch. But I was wrong. After following some of the group along goat trails over treacherous cliffs above dizzying drops falling sheer into haddock infested waters, I know better. And you have to be brave in other ways: aggregations of birds in these numbers smell—nay, they reek. It was interesting for a while, but this is one time it can be safely said that once you’ve seen ten million, you’ve....

So I peeled off and clambered up the cliff like an arthritic goat. From the top I could see islands everywhere and the mountains of Mull looming in the distance. Simply a gorgeous day: I’m really lucking out; it seems that every time I have an outing planned, the sun shines, and every time I have a travel day, it rains.

I found a half dozen ruined stone houses on the north slope, vintage unknown, but only the walls were left. What would it have been like to live in such a place? I can’t really imagine, but I feel more than a touch of envy. When I find places like this, I begin to have visions of living alone in them for at least a year. Could I do it? I don’t know, of course, but I think maybe I could. Would there be any epiphanies of self, God, and the universe; or would I come back a little odder, but none the wiser? If you would like to find out, someone start a fund; and I’ll give it a whirl.

We stayed in bird land for a couple of hours, reboarded the boat without loss of life, and headed for Staffa. The wonders on that island are caves and unusual rock formations. As we approached, we saw a great cliff face made up of basaltic, hexagonal columns pockmarked by caves large and small. The biggest is Fingal’s Cave, named after a giant who had a quarrel with a fellow hulk on the coast of Northern Ireland where there are similar formations. Anyway, they started slinging rocks at one another, and—I forget the rest of the details, but there you have it—or do you? Fingal’s Cave is two hundred and forty feet deep, eighty feet high, and narrows from a fifty foot wide entrance. After landing we made our way along the rock wall and about halfway into the cave before the ledges became too narrow and slippery to continue. Felix Mendelssohn came, was inspired, and wrote a piece to commemorate his visit. No, I’ve never heard it; have you?

Glasgow Bound

I woke up to a blustery, drizzly morning; I had thought I might stay another day and walk Iona, but it was so cold and windy, I decided to move on. I am on the ferry going from Mull to the mainland, trying to work out a new route to Ireland now that my ferry has gone belly up.

(Late afternoon) Well, it ain’t Ireland; it’s Glasgow. There’s a ferry that goes from a town called Stanraer (a red pin) to Belfast (yellow would be nice), but my bus was late getting into Glasgow (purple, maybe), and I just missed connections. I’m staying the night at, of all things, a Holiday Inn. It’s only a block from the bus station, and I wasn’t in the mood to go BB hunting. I wasn’t planning to come to Glasgow at all, but with my original ferry moribund and more, all sea routes to Ireland come through here. The ride from Oban to Glasgow was—surprise—spectacular: rugged mountains, green valleys, and lochs. Just so you’ll know there is an occasional down side, and so I can take on the air of a jaded world traveler, I am beginning to think that the motif of the crumbling castle on the deserted lakeshore is becoming a trifle clichéd. We all have a finite supply of “oohs,” “aahs,” and “lovelys”—Mrs. Hourston being the one exception—and I’ve about used up my ruined castle quota.

Still in Glasgow, Beware the Underwear

This town is like the Hotel California; you can check in, but you can’t check out. Actually, I do have a ferry reservation at Stanraer for 4 p.m., which means I’ll be getting into Belfast around 10 p.m. Glasgow is big, about a million people, and it’s harder to pin down and take in than was Edinburgh, especially in the short time I have. I walked down to George Square this morning and listened for a while to a jazz band, a rather surreal experience with all the old buildings looming around. There’s a bronze William Gladstone in the center of the square; I wonder what he would have thought of the music—probably he would have blamed it on Disraeli.

Glasgow was once known as being somewhat pugnacious, but it is now a friendly tourist town. The square had all kinds of things going on: puppet shows, gold body-coated angels with gossamer wings, and assorted other Disney-type characters. I don’t know if this was a usual thing, or if it was all being done in my honor.

Next, I strolled a mile or so to Glasgow Cathedral, a sooty old thing, but impressive nonetheless. In the center of the church, there was a strange sculpture, consisting of cardboard cutouts, some three-dimensional, some not. The figures weren’t cartoonish, more like realistic comic book types. I asked three older ladies at a booth what the thing represented. Quite vehemently, and all at once, they assured me they didn’t like it in the least and had had absolutely no say in it being there. After they calmed down, they explained that it was “supposed” to represent the resurrection...maybe so. I left them muttering darkly and went to visit the tomb of St. Mungo. Who is St. Mungo, you ask? You’re asking the wrong person. However, I did some quick research in my guidebook and found out he is the person buried in St. Mungo’s tomb. If some of you have detected a somewhat cavalier (or is it roundhead?) attitude toward historical details, it’s not really so. It’s just that there is so much, and any attempt to take it all in would interfere with what I’m trying to do—which is to try to soak in the atmosphere of this marvelous country.

And since this is a slow day, I will now give you my Wicked Wicking report. First, I want to thank you for your patience. I know that some of you have been waiting with bated breath (no, don’t tell me what you baited it with!) for the long promised dissertation on the drying properties of my underwear. It’s not as if any of you have asked via email, but I put that down to your politeness and restraint. Without doubt, these are the lightest, most comfortable clothes I’ve ever worn. They are so light and unobtrusive that I go about in constant fear that I’m not wearing them—and an even worse fear that nobody will notice or care. However, you want to know about the clothes and not my psychological quirks, so here goes.

The shirts are simply amazing; they don’t wrinkle (if I see wrinkles, I know I forgot to put one on); and they go from damp to dust in a twinkling. The pants take only a little longer to dry, mostly because of the waistband. One of the pants is convertible and can be transformed into shorts in an instant by a simple zip of the zippers.

Let us now delve into the nether world of the underwear. I have two kinds; one is Coolmax, and they dry about as well as the pants and shirts. And then there is the other kind, the crinoline ones. No, I don’t mean “crinoline,” I mean “capilene.” I get mixed up because of the ruffles. No, “ruffles” isn’t exactly what I mean either...I need to slow down and admit something. (Excuse me, while I take a deep breath.) These particular underwear confuse and trouble me. The word “voluminous” springs to mind, but it is completely inadequate. I don’t understand the amount of material as it relates to the intended purpose. While I can’t say there are ruffles, there are folds, plaits, creases, swathes, crenellations, and, yes, caverns, and maybe chasms. These features make a certain object difficult to locate especially under pressure. Of course, one can always explore upstream to the source, but by then it is too late. The waistband is normal, but after that it is one size fits all—and I mean collectively, not individually. I now have a better concept of the expanding universe. I wish I had kept the original packaging—the part where it explains how the underwear can double as a portable carport or a parachute.

Sadly, I must turn to the socks. The salesman assured me they were quick drying. He lied. Or else he was a former geologist and was thinking in a completely different time frame. I wring those suckers out at night until not a whimper of moisture remains. Then in the morning, I wring them again; and they flow like Niagara. They actually seem to draw water out of the atmosphere (perhaps the marketing people missed the mark; they should have been sold as dehumidifiers). In truth, I think they may be some kind of predatory sponge, disguised as common socks, so they can attract some poor, unsuspecting sole. Actually, I think the problem is they are not truly and fully “technical.” Somehow some miscegenated cotton or wool got mixed in.

Okay, end of report: from now on, unless there’s a ripping good reason, I’ll leave the underwear where it belongs—acting as a tent for some Midwest revival meeting.

Some of you have asked me about the food. For the most part it has been good, if not remarkable. Breakfast at the BBs always consists of eggs and pork; each person gets a whole pig. The portions are not those curled up, cinderized, get-lost-in-a-cavity slices of bacon that are served in America; we’re talking slabs of porkified sheetrock accompanied by logs of sausages.

The eggs come any way one likes: poached, pilfered, stolen, borrowed, filched, and confiscated, to name a few. Along with the eggs and pork, one can order tomatoes, mushrooms, haggis, and, occasionally, the “I’ll-come-back-to-haunt-you kippers.” Toast with jam, and tea or coffee is mandatory; and there are assorted juices and fruit, mostly canned but sometimes fresh—oh, and various dry cereals with yoghurt. I usually eat two meals a day, supplemented with oatcakes when I travel. Since I’ve been close to the sea, I’ve had lots of fish for dinner; but steak or lamb is commonly served. In most places there is at least one vegetarian dish, and one can always order a plate of vegetables. Salads are, well, adequate; but the soups and stews have been universally good.

I love to sit in a restaurant and watch the British eat. They all seem to be conducting a two-handed symphony as knife and fork cut graceful arcs through the air. Beethoven’s Ninth seems very popular, and I often find myself humming along. It’s fascinating to watch an older couple; they are often on the same note. There are a few people who seem to feel they must subdue their food before eating it. They attack with relish, using rapier-like thrusts and ripostes.

When Brits eat soup or ice cream, they often seem a little nervous; as if afraid the idle hand is going to do something naughty. I am amazed and jealous at the way even small children can shove peas on the back of the fork tines and mash the little green marbles before they can escape. Then they eat them as if this were a normal human activity. I tried it, but my peas fled to the far corners of the room and hid.
I’m in Stanraer awaiting the ferry to Belfast. I’ve seen the first signs of security since I left America; it’s minimal, but it lets one know he is entering Northern Ireland. The ride down from Glasgow was uneventful and unspectacular. Off in the distance I could see Arran and Kintyre, the last bits and pieces of Scotland, still exerting their siren call. Reluctantly, I’ve put away my guide and map of Scotland, but, with anticipation, have replaced them with their counterparts for Ireland.

For you history buffs, here’s a suddenly recalled snippet of Scottish history. There are over forty kings of Scotland buried at Iona, including Macbeth and the predecessor he murdered, Duncan. I don’t know Mrs. Macbeth’s present whereabouts, but I suspect she is in a much warmer clime than Iona.

(On board the ferry) Finally we’re moving—or the shore is. Did I say ferry? Strike that; floating palace is more like it. It’s huge, holding 1500 passengers and 375 vehicles. There are bars, game rooms, restaurants, and who knows what else. I’m going to find a seat, plop down, and coast. I’ve run out of oatcakes, but this baby isn’t going to quiver in anything less than a Category Five hurricane. I’ll let you know later if I survive the rigors of the crossing.

Anyway, we’re gliding across a calm Irish sea; I’m watching the sun slowly set, thinking of home, and wondering what the morrow will bring. May God’s blessing, or the blessing of whatever you believe in, be with you.

Barely in Belfast

I have almost nothing to say about Belfast (originally, I had not planned to be here at all). I arrived after ten p.m. last night, and was gone by eight this morning. I have an impression—maybe not fair—of empty streets and silent people behind shuttered windows. The town seems depressed—or was that me? In any case, I fled at the first bus opportunity, heading south for Dublin.

Dublin

I walked a million miles today—well, sometimes I exaggerate, so you can cut that in half. I did see a lot of Dublin, some of it inadvertently. I was looking for a modem adaptor for my handheld, and it wasn’t easy to find. I covered most of the miles on foot, a few of them by city bus. Unless you have a long way to go or have reached an advanced state of poopidity (which I finally did); it’s probably as fast or faster to travel on foot. This is an absolutely wonderful old town: such a hustly-bustly chaotic madness of pedestrians, cars, buses, and lorries. The confusion lessens some, but not much, as you get away from the city center, which takes in both sides of the River Liffey. There’s an ongoing game of “I dare you” between walkers and drivers; I don’t know why the streets aren’t littered with bodies.

The modern and the ancient blend in quite nicely, and monumental buildings are everywhere. I took in two cathedrals, strangely neither one Catholic in this Catholic country. The first was St. Patrick’s (and the man himself was said to have baptized converts on its grounds). Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) was dean for many years and is buried there. The other church, only a few blocks away, has a wonderfully spooky old crypt running under the nave.

I also went to Trinity College, a huge walled-in block in the middle of the city. One of the wonders of the Western world resides there, the Book of Kells that originated on Iona. It is a beautifully illuminated (illustrated) volume of the four gospels that was begun around 800. It’s done on vellum (about 185 calves worth) and is in remarkably good condition; today it was turned to the illustration of Christ’s temptations. It’s called the Book of Kells because it was taken to that monastery after Iona. Later Kells was destroyed and the book disappeared for a while. After it was recovered, it was taken to Trinity for safekeeping. It really is a marvelous, beautiful old thing, and I feel privileged to have seen it.

Upstairs is a room that took my breath away; it is without doubt the most remarkable room I’ve ever seen—and that includes those in such places as Versailles. For some reason it brought a lump to my throat. It’s called the Long Room, and it contains 250,000 of the oldest books the college owns. They are shelved in two-story alcoves lined on the lower level with the busts of famous people I don’t know. Each alcove, upper and lower, is about fifteen feet high and has a ladder to reach the top shelves. It’s a working library, and I was simply overwhelmed.

(Later) I wandered back to my hotel and then ate at a Thai restaurant. It was a nice, little place, playing early Bob Dylan in the background—go figure. My last three meals have been Italian, Chinese, and Thai; I’m not sure if there is a distinctive Irish cuisine—pub food, or maybe meat pies, stews, and surely potatoes. Actually, now that I think about it and judging by the number of establishments, it’s probably Guinness.

I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to rent a car for the rest of my time in Ireland. Public transportation is just too spotty and unreliable, and right now the trains are on strike. I can’t believe that my time is already half over. Keep me in mind and maybe pray about my driving on the other side of the road.

Connemara Here I Come

I called my daughter (a travel agent); and she arranged a car for me, a forest green Ford Fiesta. I left Dublin around ten this morning, and I must admit to some degree of trepidation as I squirmed behind the wheel. My main fear was that I would find myself driving down the wrong side of the road with a lorry bearing down on me—the stuff of nightmares. Besides the wrong side issue, shifting the manual transmission with my left hand took some getting used to. However the hardest thing to deal with at first was simply knowing where the left side of the car was situated in space. I finally quit thinking about that and concentrated on how close I was to cars passing on the right. That seemed to help, and I quit nicking the curb, berms, dogs, and people in wheelchairs.

Motoring out of Dublin, I found myself on a highway heading much farther south than I had intended. After a few miles, I felt confident enough to take on secondary roads, so I cut back north through the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Naturally, I got lost...well, hold on just a minute; that L word is a little hard on my delicate male ego. I will admit that I had no idea where I was, hadn’t the foggiest notion of how to get where I was going, and had only a rudimentary grasp of how I had gotten to my present location. But come on: Lost! That’s harsh. Maybe we could say that I was temporarily whereabouts challenged.

I finally made it through the blooming mountains—actually more like hills by California standards. It was wild country though; for miles I saw no houses and only a few cars. I eventually got on a road to Galway, and coming into that city, I had my first real encounter with roundabouts. On main roads in this part of the world, there are seldom intersections; instead the driver rides a carousel. The rules are simple: go around clockwise and yield to the vehicle on the right. A few are controlled by lights, but most are self-regulated and work amazingly well. The first few go rounds were exciting, however; there were about ten of them getting into Galway, and they kept trying to hurl me off into the vortex of the city center. I resisted bravely; and through skill, determination, and lightning-quick reflexes (read luck and the grace of God), I managed to stay out of the black hole of Galway. Finally, I was through and on my way to Connemara.

(Later) A look at the map will tell you that a coast-to-coast drive in this part of Ireland is about a hundred and fifty miles. I did well over two hundred; but that’s okay: I did it my way. After Galway the scenery was pretty, but not spectacular (Scotland spoils you). Sheep are plentiful, but not ubiquitous as in Scotland. (Perhaps the same thing happened to them here as occurred in Turkey. There fifteen hundred of the dazed creatures suddenly decided they were lemmings and took a header off a cliff; a thousand or so survived as the pile got higher. I thought that counting them engaged in that activity might help me sleep at night; but it didn’t. It’s hard to doze off when one can’t stop chuckling.) I stopped at a small ruined castle, Aughnanure, built by the O’Flaherty clan around 1500. The main fortress has been well restored, but the rest is nicely crumbling. The O’Flaherty’s apparently got too big for their knee jerkins and were exiled somewhere. I figure a little history, very little, won’t hurt you.

A few miles after the castle the scenery picked up considerably as the Twelve Pins (Gaelic: Bins) a series of rugged granite peaks hove into view across an open valley dotted with lakes—honest-to-goodness mountains for a change. I finally came to my destination for the night, Clifden, a village sitting at the end of a sea inlet. I found a BB a few miles from town right on the edge of the water, a tranquil location. I went back into town for dinner and had the best meal of the trip so far: pan seared salmon with a dill sauce, simple but delicious. I was so inspired I had dessert, something I seldom do: ice cream and an excellent slice of apple pie.
It was just 8:30 when I was done, but I was tired; driving was a bigger strain than I realized. I filled up with gas; two hundred plus miles, and it came to sixteen pounds, about thirty dollars, and this is an economy car. There are some advantages to bus travel, but I feel so much freer with my own set of wheels. Public transportation worked out well in Scotland; because of all the ferries, a car would have been a problem. But here in Ireland, a vehicle of your own is the only way to go—or, Yuck, a tour bus.

Tomorrow I’ll finish up Connemara, try to sneak through Galway again (the only way to avoid it and go south is to detour by way of Scandinavia), then head for the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher.

(Later: some late evening ruminations) I’ve been thinking about that Long Room in Trinity College and my reaction to it. I suppose 250,000 is a lot of anything, sand grains and such excepted. But there is something else I’m having a hard time putting my finger on. All those old, old books—with how much effort over how many years have people tried to understand themselves and the world they live in? In some strange way I see those books as an antidote to 9/11, the Holocaust, and all those terrible sicknesses that we visit on each other and ourselves. The books contain the best we have to offer, or at least they are an attempt to understand and record what is best in us. I know they have lies, errors, and misconceptions, and some may have been written in plain bad faith; but the greater numbers of them are trying to tell the truth as the authors saw it. Of course, our truths are always partial and come at best in fits and staggers. Some of us may believe that the book in the room below, the Book of Kells, is all truth; but even it is not that: the Truth will always be beyond us. Anyway, the room gave me a sense of joy, a twinge of sadness, and a touch of pride in that spirit within us that is always striving for a clearer understanding of the world and of ourselves.

Inishmor

I wandered around Connemara, with some of those wanderings being completely involuntary. (Connemara is one of the Gaelic speaking centers of Ireland, and the road signs are in that language with English sometimes added as an afterthought—well, smarty pants, maybe you’d get lost, too.) I really don’t have a great sense of direction; I do all right with up and down and am passable with left and right; but after that, it’s a crapshoot. But eventually I seem to get where I am going which in this case was the Arran Islands. They are a group of three low lying rocks off the southern coast of Connemara. The main attraction for me was on Inishmor, the largest island, about forty minutes by ferry from the mainland. Dun Aengus, an old hill fort, was built there, the finest of its kind in Europe—do I sound like a guidebook? The island is about nine miles long and three wide, so I broke down and took a tour van. There are no buses: the roads are too narrow, seemingly having been built for snakes. The tour turned out fine as there was no guide, and the driver stayed behind while we walked a mile to the site. The fort is 2500 years old and looks every day of it. There are walls and a few preserved rooms, but the charm is in the location. It perches on the very edge of a three hundred foot cliff that falls sheer into the sea. The wind howls, the sea roars, but the silence of the ages drowns out everything else.

Inishmor itself is an island of stone: stone houses, ruined and inhabited; a warren, a maze, a labyrinth of stone fences; and stone, stone, stone every place else; great limestone slabs paving acres of the island interspersed with small avenues of green grass.

I made it through Galway, came to the little town of Kinvarra, had another great meal, and bedded down.

(continued)

The Burren, the Cliffs of Moher, and on to Dingle

This morning I visited a little castle in Kinvarra, really a fortified town house that became fashionable in the Middle Ages, built for looks rather than protection. Next, I headed into the interior for an isolated ride through the Burren, a treeless, wild land filled with rocks and, at this season of the year, wildflowers. In the middle of nowhere, I came across a portal tomb, huge slabs of upright limestone, with one balanced on top. Next, I drove to the small town of Kilfenora and visited the partial ruins of a 12th century church with several high crosses; then it was back to the coast and the Cliffs of Moher, dramatic and wild, about seven hundred feet high, and more accessible than those of the Orkneys; and finally, on to the Dingle Peninsula, of which I will have much to say—later.

(Later: time flies when you’re having fun) I first heard of the Dingle Peninsula when visiting Bath in the spring. At the library there was a photo exhibit by a local who had been there several times. Most of his pictures were just snapshots—but, ah, the place itself. I knew then that it was one Irish destination I had to see.

As I drove down into the peninsula, the landscape turned from merely splendid to phenomenal. The road started up the north side of a range and curled over a high pass heading south. There spread out before me was a green valley against a backdrop of dramatic mountains, and fog rolling in on the far southern shore. I came to Dingle, the main town, bustling, but too touristy for my taste. I checked the guidebook and picked a promising sounding BB out near a little village called Ballyferriter.

Driving out of Dingle, I immediately got lost in a maze of hills. Small villages, really just clumps of houses, appeared out of nowhere, Gaelic names only, no road signs, and the fog getting thicker. I stopped at a pub and asked directions: “Aye, Ballyferriter, about five miles down the road; can’t miss it.” Could, too! I was still looking ten miles later when it suddenly appeared on its own. I tried to call the BB, but the telephone box kept spitting back my money; so taking my chances, I went looking but couldn’t find it. I saw a lady out walking in the lingering twilight and asked directions: “Oh, that place, they closed it down; went on the auction block today…Yes, there’s another bed and breakfast somewhere down this road; you could give it a try.” I did, there was, and they had quite a room at that, furnished with a queen and two doubles. I could Goldilocks it to my heart’s content.

I settled in and then headed back to Dingle for a late supper. Afterward, the drive back to my BB was surreal. It was after ten and any lingering twilight had disappeared in a thick fog. I got lost (do I repeat myself?) and ended up on a one-lane road, a cliff falling into the sea on my left and rising out of sight on my right. A light rain was mizzling down, and small streams were flowing out of ravines and washing across the road. I rounded a corner, and there in the headlights against the stark cliff was a life-sized statue of a crucified Christ, painted red blood seeming to flow. I stopped and stared. Eventually, the turn off to Ballyferriter appeared (on the wrong side of the road); I found my BB and tumbled into bed.

A Dingle Day at the Blaskets

It was nearly Christmas, 1946. A storm was raging late at night. A young man lay sick with a pounding headache that had lasted for days. His sister and some older women applied cool compresses to his head, but they hardly helped. He finally fell into a restless sleep, and in the flickering candlelight the women gave each other troubled glances. Finally, the older women left, and the sister tried to sleep. When she next checked on her brother, he was dead.

Off the tip of the Dingle Peninsula lie a group of small islands called the Blaskets, the farthest west that Europe goes. The largest, the Great Blasket, is only three miles from the mainland; but in 1946, in a storm, it might as well have been on another planet. It was there that the young man Seainin O’Cearna, Sean Kearny, died without benefit of doctor or priest. His death was the straw that finally broke the will of the few remaining islanders and led to their final evacuation in 1953. For centuries, between two and three hundred islanders had been eking out a living from soil and sea. The island produced some of Ireland’s finest writers, but after WWI the population gradually declined. Most of the younger people left, looking for jobs; that was why Sean’s death was such a blow to the community. When the final evacuation took place, only twenty islanders remained to be resettled on the mainland.

A small ferry took me to the Great Blasket today. It is without doubt one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been—but I haven’t lived there in a howling storm. After only fifty to a hundred years of neglect, most of the stone houses are roofless and starting to crumble. Some have been kept up, and a few people stay in the summer. A cafe and hostel have been built, but there is still no electricity; the workers have cell phones.

After landing I wandered awhile among the ruins, and then started straight up the slope toward a distant track that curled around the mountain. My foot slipped sideways, and I felt a nasty pop that I knew meant one thing, a muscle pull. I limped back down and took stock: I could wait around for another five or six hours until the ferry came back, or I could hobble somewhere. I decided to hobble and found I could get along reasonably well on slight inclines and the level—two commodities in short supply on the Great Blasket. Stubbornly, I kept going, and while there was no spontaneous healing, I managed a nice four-mile limp.

I wish I had words to describe this island: it’s just a treeless, grassy, mountainous lump rising straight out of the sea; but it is truly beautiful. Coming back from my circular jaunt around half the island, I rounded a corner, and there, spread out before me, was the ruined village, a sandy beach, another beautiful grassy island, the sea, and the mainland.

I felt an inexplicable joy: so much beauty in this imperfect, old world. And with the joy, a touch of sadness—that beauty and grace like this are always only for a moment. I have had this feeling only rarely; and, perhaps it’s just as well that it does not last: I’m not sure I could stand it in more than the dribs and drabs with which it gets doled out. Maybe it’s a taste of that constant joy we’ll feel in the hereafter, minus the pulled muscles and the pangs of brevity.

On the way back on the ferry, we were heading toward a dark shore and rain clouds above the mainland: I looked back: the Great Blasket was in sunshine—a final benison.

A Crash in Killarney

I’m in Killarney—for the second time today and wishing this was one story I didn’t have to tell—sometimes nightmares do come true. I left Dingle early, came to Killarney, and walked awhile in the national park—more of a city park, really, than the wild ones we’re used to in America. I ate lunch and about 2:30 p.m. left for the Rock of Cashel, another fortress. I got off on another of those roads to nowhere (surprise!) and finally decided to turn around. I have no excuses or rationalizations for what happened next; I was tired and simply lost concentration. I started back the way I had come, trying to remember where I had made a wrong turn. Suddenly, a feeling of something not quite right hit me; but before I could react, a small lorry came charging around the bend on my side of the road (actually, his side). All I had time to do was shut my eyes (I have a horror of glass getting into them)--and no, your life doesn’t flash before your eyes, just the thought, “Crappola!” I guess T.S. Eliot was both right and wrong: the way the world ends is not with a bang or a whimper, but both.

Time and motion were suspended for an indeterminate while, but I finally noticed what appeared to be smoke pouring from the dashboard (it turned out to be steam); and I thought it might be a good idea to vacate the premises. The doors were jammed, so I kicked one open. I crawled out, leaned on the top of the car, and looked at my fellow impactees; they seemed a trifle disconcerted but otherwise okay. As it turned out the truck had relatively minor damage, but my car was totaled. When we hit, I was still in third gear, and the other driver had slowed somewhat for the corner, so our combined speeds were only seventy or eighty miles an hour. Our bumpers were locked, and my car had apparently been shoved back a ways; it could have been worse.

Eventually, the Garda came, took a report, and the lorry drove off. No one made me feel like an idiot—no one had to. One of the Garda even explained that these wrong-side-of-the-road accidents almost always happened like mine: a turn onto a road without lines and the person at fault driving alone. They took me back to Killarney and the car rental office. The people there didn’t make me feel stupid either; but since this was on a Saturday and the insurance office didn’t open until Monday, there was no way to get another car—which I doubt they would have given me anyway.

Tomorrow there’s a bus heading for Rosslare, my ferry point to Wales; and I was planning to turn in the car anyway. So, I’m back to public transportation. Would I drive again in the UK or Ireland? Maybe foolishly, the answer right now is “yes.” But that could be bravado; in a day or two I might not be so sure. By the way, my daughter talked me into full coverage; I didn’t have to pay a penny.

How am I? Thanks for asking: I’m grateful, depressed, and angry (at myself) in no special order and at various times to varying degrees. I got a BB in Killarney and spent three hours walking around in the rain, much to keyed up to sit still. Physically I appear to be okay; no one suggested a checkup. If you’re walking and coherent, apparently everybody figures you’re all right. My left hand is pretty well scraped up, probably from the airbag deployment. Over the next few days I suspect I’ll discover some aches and bruises, but I think it’s depression I’ll have to fight off. That is from an old perfection thing: come on, I should be able to drive around Ireland without a head on--or, figuratively speaking, was that what I was doing?

But as always, I’m probably concentrating on the wrong aspects of the experience: I’m alive and ambulatory, and yesterday I did know joy—and this, too, shall pass.

On to Wales

(Back on the bus again) I suppose there is something to be said for this mode of travel if a person is just heading for an end destination. I can relax; it doesn’t take constant vigilance, at least on my part.

My night in Killarney was restless, full of ugly dreams; at times the daylight hasn’t been much better. I close my eyes for a few moments and…unbidden, the lorry appears, barreling around the curve, the windscreen framing the open mouthed face of the driver. I feel that moment of astonishing impact, the explosion seeming to come from inside of me. Next, I relive those awful seconds when time and space are suspended and the silence is absolute; and then, finally, I begin to breathe, as the world ever so slowly reclaims me. I will the images to go away, but they won’t, replaying in an endless loop behind my eyelids. Perhaps, somehow, they’re a semi-conscious reminder of that mysterious event, common to us all, but which we can never remember: the time we were expelled from the warm, comforting darkness into the harsh light of reality.

I am sure these images will slowly fade along with the aches and bruises. I am somewhat stiff-necked, a bit more pharisaical than usual; but on the upside I hardly notice the occasional plaintive moo emanating from my torn calf muscle. I do have a constant headache, so I probably suffered a mild concussion. Last night as I walked about Killarney, I stopped at a bookstore and picked up a volume of poems by Seamus Heaney, Ireland’s Nobel Prize winner; he, too, is helping to keep things in perspective.

(Later) After a six-hour ride, I’ve arrived in Rosslare; and I’m looking across the Irish Sea toward Wales, invisible, at least on this overcast day. We came through Cork, Ireland’s second largest city; it seems older, seedier, and much less vibrant than Dublin, but that may be just a reflection of my mood. I have a two and a half hour wait for the ferry and then a one and a half hour ride—I’ll go back to Seamus for a while.

(Later yet) I’m on board now, and we’re moving. This is a smaller boat than the palatial Stanraer one, and it looks like a rougher passage (oh, oatcakes where are you!). Ireland is slipping away from me into the mist, perhaps forever. I’m not ready for any sort of summing up, but I will say this: it was a coming home to a place I’d never been. And, although I pose as no expert, I will also venture this opinion: if you come to Ireland and have only a few days: see Dublin, go to the Dingle Peninsula, walk on the Great Blasket—and you will have missed nothing essential.

Wales

The ferry opened its maw and upchucked me onto Wales last night around eight o’clock, a light rain falling. I took a taxi into Fishguard and found a BB on the main street. It’s a nice little town sitting on a hill above the harbor, but on this Sunday night it was closed down tight. The dining room was also closed; but the proprietors, a husband and wife, kindly rustled up a good makeshift meal. Encased on a wall in the dining room was a seven-pound shot, fired from John Paul Jones’ ship during the War for Independence. He held up the town for ransom; and when the townspeople tried to welsh on the payment, he fired off a few rounds to encourage their cooperation. This particular ball struck one Mrs. Fenton on the heel, and she limped the rest of her days—all because of that no good, no better than a pirate, J.P. Jones. That was my host’s story; for all I know there may be a Fenton cannonball in every guesthouse in town, but who wants to spoil a good story by checking it out?

I had a better night; the dreams turned from ugly to merely homely. I still have a stiff neck, but that probably won’t get better until I stop lugging a thirty-pound rucksack around.

I’m on a pilgrimage—well, at least a half of one. I’m off to St. David’s, a place where Pope somebody declared that two visits were worth one to Rome.

(Evening) The bus ride to St. David’s was worth every pence—and then some, since it only cost 1 pound 35 p. The two towns are only sixteen miles apart, but the journey took nearly an hour; I think we covered the whole peninsula. The Welsh scenery is striking, both inland and coastal. Tiny villages pop up unexpectedly; the roads are—I didn’t think it was possible—even narrower than Ireland’s, many of them one lane for quite long distances. There are few turnouts, as the roads often run between embankments five or six feet high; fortunately, traffic appears to be very light.

St. David’s is a quiet little city, plain and unpretentious. Its glory is its cathedral, an anomaly in this small settlement (glorified village, really) in the middle of nowhere. The cathedral sits in a little valley below the town, a bubbling stream running through it (the valley, not the cathedral). The building is certainly no St. Paul’s or Salisbury Cathedral; but it is quite impressive in its own right, especially in its beautiful setting. It is more solid than soaring; but I love the feeling inside, not gloomy at all, but open and airy. St David founded the place in the 5th century, so people have been worshipping God here for fifteen hundred years.

The present church was started in the 11th century, and has been added to and modified countless times; but to my untutored eye, it all comes together quite nicely. Next door, across the stream, stand the ruins of the Bishop’s Palace, a complex of rooms, halls, and chapels. Besides being the abode of various bishops, it served as the Ritz for the many well-heeled pilgrims who came seeking a blessing. It is a mightily impressive ruin, the more so because it is so little restored; however, a pox upon them, as I noticed a lot of scaffolding about.

The tourist office in Fishguard booked me a room for two nights in St. David’s. When I first saw the BB, my spirits sank a little; it was across the street from a Texaco station and the town garage. And then they showed me my room in the back, with nothing in view except fields, hills, and a faraway coast. It is, without doubt, the nicest room so far on this trip.

After touring the cathedral and the palace, I stayed for evensong, sung by an all girls’ choir of twelve strong. They weren’t completely polished, some beginnings a little raggedy, but what a sweet sound in the old cathedral. Sunshine finally broke through the clouds around 5:00 p.m.; but now, at nine o’clock, it’s raining again. I’ll let you know what the morrow brings.

The Pembrokeshire Coast

I awoke this morning to a light rain patterning down. I skipped breakfast and lazed around until 11:00 a.m.—my, I didn’t know you could do things like that on vacation. I finally shoved myself out the door and had a baguette and hot chocolate. Fortified with a Snickers bar and a bottle of water, I set off for what had drawn me to this area in the first place, the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path. The way there is a half-mile through town and then another half mile along narrow country lanes. I intersected the path at the ruins of St. Non’s Chapel, with the rain still falling and darker clouds and mutters of thunder out to sea.

St. Nons was the mother of St. David; her original chapel is just a few low-lying walls in a little swale. Nearby is a small well with stone steps and an arch, the water overflowing and gurgling down to the sea. This well came into being during a thunderstorm the night of St. David’s birth. You can still see St. Non’s handprints where she gripped a stone in the throes of her labor—well, don’t be too skeptical: I once passed a kidney stone, and I could have left imprints in a diamond. It’s claimed the water has healing properties; I thought about dipping my neck but couldn’t visualize a possible position.

I stood hesitating for a while, taking stock of the weather; but, as it appeared no worse, I set off down the coastal path. True to its name, it stuck as close to the cliff’s edge as possible. It faithfully follows the curvature of every inlet, bay and ravine. On this section at least, it about doubles every straight-line mile. It’s narrow, but well defined and well maintained. Today it was muddy and puddled in places, but rocky enough that it didn’t get too sticky. I met perhaps a dozen other people, so I was encouraged that I wasn’t the only idiot out walking. It wasn’t cold at all, virtually no wind, which I’m told is a rarity; usually when it rains, the wind howls. There were wildflowers everywhere, no trees but lots of heather. The cliffs are only fifty to a hundred feet high, but sheer; I saw no way down to the rocky beaches. Just offshore, a boat kept pace with me for a while, a lobsterman out checking his traps.

After I had walked an hour, the rain got wilde, coming down in earnest; and realizing my performance wasn’t going to earn an Oscar, I began to contemplate the importance of being dry. In a small, protected cove, I took refuge in the gent’s room and again took stock of my situation. It was still five miles to my destination (a beach resort called Whitesands, from which I had planned to take a bus back to St. David’s). The rain wasn’t letting up; my pants were soaked, so reluctantly I decided to turn back. As it turned out, it was probably for the best. Since the accident, my energy has flagged, and I arrived back at the BB well nigh exhausted.

(Evening) I went back to the cathedral for evensong: a boys’ choir this time, half a dozen strong—nicely done. Tomorrow I’m off for Bath to see my daughter and her family; the weather isn’t improving, and I’m ready for some familiar places and faces. Regrettably, I’ll be missing a performance of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion Saturday night in the cathedral; the sound is pretty incredible in the old church.

On to Bath

No rain this morning, but no sunshine either: really, I can’t complain; yesterday was the first time one of my major activities was curtailed by the weather—for the British Isles that may be some sort of record. I don’t know if it rains in Wales as much as they say; but when a strange, yellow orb made a fleeting appearance in the sky, I overheard Welsh parents explaining its function to their smaller children. I took a bus to Haverfordwest where I boarded the train direct to Bath: “direct” meaning that I don’t have to get off, but that we stop at every town, village, hamlet, city, pub, crossroad, and various points in between.

I need to say a few words about Welsh spelling. I think I could bring the internet to a crashing halt by simply writing down some of the place names. The Welsh have fallen in love with the letter “y”; “y,” I don’t know. They stick it in the front and middle of many words and often double it as the mood strikes. Their consonants have run completely amok, but they suffer bouts of amnesia when it comes to inserting vowels—and they don’t pronounce half their letters. I suspect that the Welsh themselves don’t really understand the language, but they’re too embarrassed to admit it. For instance, checking my map at random, I find “Llanymawddwy”and “Yllethr;” both pronounced, even by native speakers, as “Huh?”

There’s really not a lot to see in this part of Wales, at least from the train. The towns are getting bigger and more industrialized: tenement housing, a patina of grime, a touch of smog. It’s a bit depressing after all the magnificent scenery I’ve passed through. Thank goodness Bath is in contrast to all this; it’s an industry-free zone. Speaking of the place, it’s just down the tracks; and I’m more than ready to settle down for a few days. Thanks for joining me in these ravings and ramblings.

Until next time…

The Lonesome Traveler

P.S. A news item that caught my eye this morning made me feel a bit sheepish. It seems a band of renegade sheep here in England have found a way across the metal road grids designed to stop them. They simply lie down and roll right on over…I will tell you right now they are not doing this on their own; they are channeling something smarter than themselves—say a cabbage or a rutabaga.

TLT

ROME
By the Lonesome Traveler

Day One and Two – Arriving and Romeing ‘Til I’m All Poped Out

Tuesday: The interminable journey finally ended in the Eternal City. After the inferno of the flight, the purgatory of passing time in airports, and the limbo of lost hours, my first impression of a rapidly darkening but full moonlit Rome was a cross between the heavenly and the not so—with the latter, perhaps, predominating. Was it the Eternal or the Infernal City?

The place bustled, even at 8:00 p.m. when I arrived. The streets appeared to be the venue of an endless modern chariot race with at least twenty scooters leading the charge from every stoplight. Their insistent buzzing made me feel as if I had entered a hive of perpetually angry bees. The taxi finally disgorged me at my four-star, six-night home, the Starhotel Michelangelo; just a block from the Vatican walls. It was as well appointed as any Motel 6, except that the shower stall was designed for someone far more anorexic than I. But later, as I stepped into the street, the dome of St Peter’s filled the sky, and all familiar impressions vanished. I ate at a small local diner, spaghetti, of course, and collapsed—but only after I got back to the hotel.

Wednesday: Ten hours of sleep and a cool, bright blue sky levitated the heavenly side of the picture. Even the scooters took on the aura of whining poodles rather than snarling wolves. About a fourth of the riders are females, most wearing dresses or skirts for the workplace. Speaking of females, many of the pedestrian ones are short and stocky--and not all of them are nuns. Ordinarily, I don’t look down on women, but here I can’t help it—and I’m only 5’ 6.” They appear to be either willowy or rectangular, nothing in between.

About 8:45 I made my way through St. Peter’s Square (actually, it’s more a circle) on my way to the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel. A large crowd had gathered, and I learned that the Pope was expected to pour forth his blessing around 10:30. I debated momentarily, but the Chapel won out. The entrance is about a half mile away; and since signs were few, I asked directions of guards and police several times. I arrived at the Museum to find it and the Chapel closed. I found it a little strange that not one of those officials knew (or didn’t bother to say) that perhaps the number one tourist attraction in Rome wasn’t open. Several hundred other visitors were just as confused, as they were milling around like ants whose crumbs have been swept away. I’m getting inklings that there are vast differences between American “know how” and “know when” and Italian “so what.” I suspect I’m going to have to do some attitude adjustments.

I made my way back to St. Peters where a few thousand chairs were set up and found an empty one near the back. Three fourths of the square was still open with a few thousand tourists and pilgrims scattered around. This huge square reminded me somewhat of a drain as it slopes toward the center. Sitting there, I had a vision of a mighty earthquake and us tumbling in our thousands toward the middle and screaming down into the bottomless pit—no doubt a residual echo from my fundamentalist Protestant upbringing reminding me of the once-taught belief that only a thin shell separates the Papacy from the fires of hell.

While waiting, I examined the four-inch square stones that pave the area. In the grooves between them, little tufts of grass were growing, only a few fractions tall, of course, as passing feet constantly pruned them. The poor things were pushing their way through cigarette butts and other tourist detritus, and I was thinking there must be some lesson here—life and death, sacred and profane, artificial and real—but both you and I will be spared all that, as just then the Pope showed up in a Humvee. At least it looked like one—a large, open jeep-like vehicle, which, much to my disappointment, the Pope wasn’t driving. It made a circuit between the barriers, so that most of the crowd got a rather good close up. There seemed to be very little security, a few people with him in the vehicle and a couple trotting alongside. He passed about forty feet away from me, and most of the crowd rushed the barrier—in my dignity I merely climbed my chair. All this time the whole spectacle was being shown on four large portable screens. Cheers, hat waving, people looking stoned out in ecstasy, the Pope’s hand lifting in blessing: I’m not a believer, of course, but still, could I be in his position and take myself seriously? I suppose, to live with myself, I would have to. I didn’t stay for the whole ceremony: long readings and welcomes, mostly in Italian but some in English. Many groups were recognized, especially schools; but about halfway through a delayed but acute case of jet lag hit, and I made my way back to the hotel.

After a long siesta I returned to the Square in the late afternoon and entered the church. In sheer size it is quite stunning; however, it is not an intimate experience. Everything seems to be designed to cut the mere mortal down to size. Outsized statues of popes and saints line the walls, most rather stilted and formalized, a hand usually outstretched in blessing. There is, however, one remarkable exception. In a corner sits one of the world’s treasures, Michelangelo’s early Pieta. Dwarfed by the architecture and the other statues, it nevertheless towers over everything else. With the delicate, beautiful face of an angel and the shoulders of a linebacker, an impossibly young Mary cradles the lifeless but expressive body of Jesus. Somehow, sorrow and loss exude from stone. I found it difficult to tear myself away and went back several times—and will, I’m sure, do so again. How stone can be worked to call forth such beauty and feeling is a mystery for which I can only be grateful. Michelangelo, by the way, excused Mary’s youthful appearance by her sexual purity; he equated virginity with long life and health. He lived to be eighty-nine at a time when such a long life was a rarity, and there is no evidence that he ever had a sexual union—so, who knows?

I took an elevator to the dome and listened for a while to a mass conducted down on the floor with an adult and a children’s choir. I had the dome walkway almost to myself, and I felt like an angel, albeit a dubious one, listening in from on high. St. Peters is magnificent, but on the roof, up close, a certain shabbiness becomes apparent. Away from the pomp and gild of the interior, there is an aura of age and decay. The building seems impossibly old, and perhaps a little tired and out of touch—or maybe that was just me.

A last look at the Pieta, an undistinguished supper at the hotel, then a short walk to a café for a decaf nightcap, a stroll around the Vatican walls, and I was off to bed. Tomorrow, it’s the Chapel, finally.

Day Two -- Ralph and Mike

I slept poorly: too tired, too much coffee, and too long a siesta. Still I was up fairly early, across St. Peter’s and in line for the Sistine Chapel by 8:15, a half hour before the opening. Luckily I was there that early as only a million people were ahead of me rather than a billion. Remarkably, once the line started moving, it took only about twenty minutes to squirt us, like a river of motley-colored mustard, into the Vatican Museum. The Museum is, well, a museum; that is to say it is mostly filled with junk—though I would be happy to own some of the pieces. The star of this trove is the Laocoon, an ancient Greek sculpture dug up in Michelangelo’s time, and which impressed even him. It is quite a piece—agony in stone.

Getting to the Sistine Chapel itself can be a tease as it is necessary to negotiate innumerable rooms, and enough up and down staircases to confuse and ultimately frustrate at least this visitor. Just before the Chapel itself, the way passes through several rooms that were frescoed by Raphael at the same time that Michelangelo was doing the ceiling. Ralph was quite the charmer and a notorious ladies’ man who was liked by everybody but Mike (or Mick). Of course, Mike didn’t seem to care for hardly anybody that much. Ralph died at just thirty-seven—remember Mike’s theory on sexual abstinence and long life? Maybe it only seemed as if he lived to be eighty-nine.

On to the chapel: it would be impossible to be disappointed by it, of course. Well, maybe not: a subsequent pope felt the treatment of the subject matter was more suitable to a bathhouse than to a chapel. Fortunately, he died after only eighteen months in office and before he could do anything rash. I simply could not take it all in. It needs hours of contemplation, preferably spread over a period of days. And I couldn’t shut out the people. I’m always a trifle uneasy in a crowd, and standing (or sitting on benches along the walls) shoulder to shoulder with a constantly shifting mass of bodies brought me perilously close to anxiety. Here is my dream for next time: clear everybody out, give me a motorized recliner, and let me maneuver around to my heart’s content—with an occasional nap not out of the question—or is that too much to ask?

I won’t bore you with any kind of description, but here are a couple of finger facts you may not get any place else. One of the more obscure figures on the ceiling is giving “the fig,” the Roman equivalent of “the finger.” I looked but couldn’t find it; perhaps, binoculars would help. Michelangelo was probably just making a statement, telling the Pope what he thought of the assignment. In our day, God reaching out to touch Adam’s finger has become the icon by which the whole ceiling is recognized. Ironically, Adam’s finger is no longer Michelangelo’s work; a large crack appeared, and a later artist had to replaster and repaint the digit.

After my now usual siesta, I walked down to the Castel Sant’Angelo, a fortress that was the last refuge of popes in trouble. Like most castles it was gloomy and drafty, but from the top there was a magnificent view of most of Rome. After another brief visit to St. Peter’s (there was a crowd around the Pieta, so I left in a sulk), I had dinner and returned to the hotel and turned on the television. The juxtaposition of these two things, ancient Rome and the current news, is beginning to turn me slightly schizophrenic. All day I immerse myself in the past, but when I return to my room and turn on the TV, the here and now suddenly and rudely asserts itself. Having no one to bounce any of this off of, I’m beginning to lose track of when and where I am—and maybe the “who” is slipping a little, too. Even my dreams are becoming a strange mixture of the old and the new.

Day Three -- Panting for the Pantheon

I bought a shuttle ticket today that would allow me to get off and on at a dozen or so of the more popular tourist stops, but a large anti-government demonstration botched that plan, as the buses couldn’t get through. Instead I substituted a guided walking tour through classical Rome, but peeled off after a couple of lectures at Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon. I’m just not cut out for trotting along after someone with an umbrella or a ribbon on a stick who is dispensing misinformation by at least the cupful. For instance, this guide talked about how Ralph and Mick were such good friends when Mick clearly stated in his letters that he though Ralph was out to get his commissions. Of course, Michelangelo thought most people were out to get him. How remarkable is it that such an ugly, ill-tempered, whining, paranoid little runt (I’m exaggerating—some) created more artistic beauty than any other man—it gives one hope. Perhaps if he had occasionally indulged in a little Raphaeling, he would have been a nicer person—but maybe less of an artist.

After my desertion I returned to the Pantheon and the Fountain. Of all the buildings so far, I’m most taken by the Pantheon. Partly it’s the dome and that opening, but mostly it’s a sense of harmony that pervades the place. The Trevi Fountain is beautiful, but I forgot to throw in my coins. I ate pizza at the Navona Piazza (or was it piazza at the Navona Pizza?), and then took a taxi to the hotel and my siesta.

Late evening, and I took a long walk back to my afternoon’s haunts. I got harmonized again at the Pantheon (put the Pieta in there, and I would set up camp), forgot to throw coins in the Fountain for the third time, then set out for the Spanish Steps. These Steps seem to be a happening place where nothing much happens. Among others, Byron and Shelley hung out there, and it is quite the place for romance—at least, so they say: Mick and I wouldn’t know. I was reading about a church in the area where a certain lady saint’s body is buried; which is fine, but the next part got to me: her head is buried in another church about 60 miles away in Siena. I don’t know about you or the topless lady, but that doesn’t seem quite right to me: the heart; a lung or two, maybe; the liver perhaps; or even a big toe—but come on, let me keep my head; I lost it enough in life.
As an aside, the place is called the Spanish Steps because the Spanish embassy used to be there.

Day Four -- Forum or Againstum

Today I saw so many ruins I’m beginning to feel like one, especially my legs. I took in—or made a valiant effort to—the Coliseum, the Palatine Hill, and the Forum. One thing that strikes me about these kinds of sites is the contrast between the ancient ruins and the incredibly cheap (in the most pejorative sense of the word) wares sold in the souvenir stands. Certainly they are no worse than the ones at, say Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco; but to me they strike a much more jarring note. It seems that there should be some things that aren’t part of the general circus—maximus or not. On the other hand, I suppose that everybody needs to make a euro.

The Coliseum is about as familiar a landmark as there is. What most pictures don’t show are the throngs of people and the location in downtown Rome with its constant traffic. The façade of this amazing building is about as imposing as it gets, but I was somewhat surprised at the size of the interior. While not exactly intimate, it does seem a bit cramped. Possibly it’s those towering walls, or maybe our modern gargantuan stadiums have spoiled us. By the way, my guidebook tells me that no Christians were likely thrown to the lions at this venue—the Circus Maximus crowd was more into that kind of thing.

The Palatine Hill is a vast, almost completely ruined palace complex. While there are a few walls, a large sunken garden or amphitheater, and a few restorations, it’s very hard to get a handle on what it all must have looked like. I wouldn’t skip it, but it might be good to lower one’s expectations, at least in terms of grandeur.

Ah, but the Forum! What a magnificent jumble of arches, columns, walls, temples, and assorted other ruins: standing, broken, fallen, leaning—and located in a sloping little valley in the middle of downtown Rome. The only thing that might be said against it is that, perhaps, it looks too much like the set for a Raiders of the Lost Ark type of movie. If it weren’t so real, it would look faux. However, I was in my element; I love ruins, the more so as I get older and come to resemble one. Give me four roofless walls and a dirt or grass floor over almost any intact edifice—the Pantheon excepted.

Later, back at the hotel, I made arrangements for a trip to Naples and Pompeii on Sunday—my last day.

Day Five -- Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down

I wanted to see something of Italy besides Rome and thought that the one hundred and fifty mile trip to Naples and Pompeii would provide a nice day trip. I certainly hadn’t “done” Rome, but I had made a start; and I had a hankering to see the countryside and another town. Because of transportation logistics and time, I broke down and took a guided tour. We left Rome around 7:30 a.m. Outside the city the terrain at times reminded me of northern California, treeless, rolling hills turning green with springtime. In other places it was more of an eastern U.S. motif with deciduous trees just beginning to leaf out. At other times it was just itself, slightly foreign, but not exotically so.

About halfway to Naples, we passed the Full Monty Casino, Italy’s most notorious gambling establishment where for entertainment strippers disrobe to the accompaniment of detonating bombs—wait, wait; I’m confusing that with Montecassino, the bombed-out Benedictine monastery where robed monks chant and pray—a natural mistake. This large, white complex of buildings is quite a sight on quite a site, sitting on a fortress-like rugged hill with snow-covered mountains in the background. It has been completely rebuilt as it was held by the Germans in WWII and bombed to smithereens by the Allies.

Naples, according to my limited observation, consists entirely of apartment buildings and traffic. Apparently there’s a city ordinance that requires the citizens to have at least one piece of laundry hanging from their balconies at all times—or maybe it’s their flag. The setting is magnificent: Vesuvius looms in the background, and the Mediterranean, encasing the Isle of Capri, sparkles in the foreground. There are steep hills; the city is somewhat like Sausalito, a Californian hillside, bayside town, on steroids. Vesuvius, while a hulking, slightly malevolent presence, is actually a rather ordinary pile of dirt. It resembles a giant carbuncle more than anything else, scabbed over but still unhealed.

We finally rolled into Pompeii around 12:30 and had lunch at a no star restaurant. If this establishment could make it into a guidebook, it would have to be represented by a black hole. I sat with two delightful Japanese ladies, a mother and daughter. They spoke barely passable English, and my Japanese consists of sayonara, but we somehow managed to exchange views on the state of the world, our cultural differences, education, travel, and grandchildren.

Pompeii is a definite “don’t miss it if you’re in the neighborhood, or even if you’re not” kind of place. Six miles from the volcano, it was a trading center of some 20,000 souls. Some two thousand of them were re-souled when Vesuvius blew its cool in August of A.D. 79. Much of the city has been excavated, and the ruins (my kind of town) are well preserved; at least the streets and first floors. Twenty-five feet of ash collapsed the roofs and second stories. If our guide’s site selections were any indication, every other building was either a brothel or a bakery. By the way, how old were you when you learned that a brothel isn’t an establishment that serves light soups to ill people? Luckily, I found out a few weeks before I left; otherwise it might have gotten embarrassing: “Excuse me, Mr. Guide, why did the Pompeiians eat so much bread and zuppa?”

By far the most poignant remains were the plaster casts made from people who were found in the positions where the ash felled them. Some lie in a fetal position, others are sprawled out as if caught running. For me, the most affecting was a small boy huddled, as if in a doorway, head down and arms hugging drawn up knees—resigned, it seems, to his fate and a future of millions of strangers contemplating his last moments. Don’t miss Pompeii: it’s haunted, but in a good way by ordinary people who were going about their daily lives.

Back in Rome after thirteen and a half hours, on an impulse, I hopped off the bus (actually, I disembarked with as much dignity as my stiff legs would allow) at Navona Square and took a farewell walk to the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain—where I finally threw in my coin and made a wish. Back at the hotel I packed for my 3:30 a.m. wake up call and my Roman goodbye.

Home Again

The flight back seemed to take at least a month longer than the one out, but I’m home. Here are a few impressions: The whole trip was a joy, but two things stand out in particular—I’m sure you’ve guessed both. The Pieta, of course: its evocation of sorrow, divine and human, is unsurpassed. Then there is the Pantheon, almost ugly, certainly undistinguished, on the outside, but with an interior possessing a serenity that no other man made structure ever has—at least for me. It borders on the mystical. I can’t analyze it; it started out as a pagan temple and is now a Catholic church. But, once inside, even with the crowds, peace pervades.

So, there you have it. What more could any trip, symbolic or otherwise, hope to provide than some sort of balance between serenity, joy, and sorrow? And to those two places I would add a third: Pompeii. On any kind of journey, it never hurts (too much) to be reminded of our mortality.

The Lonesome Traveler

ROMAN REDUX
By the Lonesome Traveler

SFO Airport

What is this strange mixture of anticipation and trepidation that I always feel at the start of every trip? Perhaps it’s not so odd after all, as every journey, even to the familiar, is also a launch into the unknown. Part of the feeling has to do with the suddenness with which all my trips seem to commence. No matter for how long I’ve planned and how well I’m prepared, the actual moment of leaving always takes me by surprise: how and when did this happen? All of this is by way of introduction to say that I’m on the move once more—Romeing again, to be exact. Now you know what my wish was when I finally threw my coin into the Trevi Fountain in March—but I never thought it would happen so soon. Simply, I didn’t get enough of Rome then, so I’m heading back to scratch the itch, for nine nights this time. This visit, I hope, will be more of a soaking in than my usual go, go, go type of vacation. At least that’s the plan; we’ll see if I can stick to it. So welcome aboard; the nice thing is you can disembark at any time—I’m here for the long haul.
London, Heathrow

I begin this trip with something of a handicap—I am a bit of a traveling freak show. For the previous couple of weeks, I’ve been experiencing some not-so-hot flashes in an eye I injured a few months back. The hole in the retina that was repaired is holding up well, but the eye doc discovered two more. I had laser surgery two days before I left, and my left eye is, quite literally, a bloody socket. If you saw the first Terminator, you may remember the scene where Arnold repairs his eye; that will give you the idea. A livid bruise which now embraces the whole eye further compounds the problem: the doc says it should all clear up in a decade or two. To combat the ugly American look, I wear sunglasses everywhere, which in dark places tends to make me grope. The shades have to fit over my rather large regular glasses, so I have the goggled look of a WWI aviator.
Rome

My hotel is just a few blocks from the Via Veneto where many of the five star hotels are located—it is, however, not one of them. It belongs to that class which is usually called tourist—which can also be spelled c-h-e-a-p. My room is not that bad; it has four walls, a floor, and a ceiling—if it had a door, it would be perfect. Actually, it has AC (which keeps the temp in the low nineties), a TV, a bath with a bidet, a toilet, and a hand held shower in the tub. It is quite small; though there is one place where I can turn around if I’m careful. It’s the only closet I’ve ever seen with its own closet. Well, it’s 11 p.m., nine hours ahead of many of you. I’ve been up about thirty-two hours and traveling for about twenty-four, so I’m going to try for some real sleep instead of the dozes.
Hunger Strike

A slow day as I was getting acclimated: I was up at 7:30 and took a couple of long walks, one in the morn and another in the eve. The immediate area around my hotel is flat, but sooner or later every direction tends downward; maybe I’m on one of Rome’s seven. It’s hard to tell though, as by California standards some of Rome’s hills are more like mounds—or speed bumps.

My a.m. walk was to familiar haunts: the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and Navona Square; they’re still there, left over from March, so maybe Rome is the Eternal City. I taxied back to the hotel and took a nap, which somehow turned into a five-hour siesta—I guess things finally caught up with me.

The evening walk was into new haunts for me around Popolo Square, an upscale shopping area punctuated by churches; which, if they’re open, I always go into. None were spectacular, but they’re all unique and usually have something of interest. About 7:30 sudden exhaustion hit, and I found I had done it again—forgotten to eat that is. I had had a croissant and a bottle of juice in the morning, but nothing after that. I don’t know what it is about travel, but often I don’t get hungry. Without a regular routine to remind me, I either put mealtimes off or just plain forget. For me constant travel would probably be the perfect diet.

Speaking of food, it has occurred to me that the last time around I barely sampled the famous Italian cuisine. I thought that this time I should indulge a little. I made a stab at it Saturday night at a sidewalk café just down the street from my hotel. I had brochette (paper thin beef and parmesan with some kind of vegetable, maybe spinach, all marinated in oil and vinegar). Eaten with dry Italian bread, it is quite good. For the main course I had pasta with salmon—well, the flavor of the sauce was salmon; the fish itself had mostly gone missing. Apparently it just swam through the sauce without unduly lingering. Perhaps I’m being uncharitable; maybe the poor thing was on its way to spawn and couldn’t spare the time. The pasta itself was al dente (in which I’m a firm believer); however, I’m not so sure that it should shatter like glass when impacted by a fork. I usually drink bottled water, which like the meal comes with or without gas; but, at least, you get to choose. Will I eat there again? Probably, it wasn’t that bad.

Tonight, in the middle of my inadvertent hunger strike, I was hustled by a street-corner tout who led me down an alley to another sidewalk café. It turned out to be a serendipitous choice as the food was excellent—a salad, grilled filet mignon, and ice cream and strawberries to die for—which I almost did when I got the bill: forty euros including tip. The euro has moved ahead of the dollar, and European Union countries are certainly no bargain for U.S. tourists. At the end of the meal, the tout tried to entice me to an around-the-corner piano bar; when I refused, I thought he was going to cry—I guess the Italians are an emotional people.

I got back to the hotel at 10:00 p.m., and I’m off to bed to see what my decadent nap did to my already naughty sleeping habits. I’ve developed an extremely sore spot on my right heel, so will see what the morrow brings. I must remember not to step out too boldly into the street, as after a relatively quiet Sunday, Roman traffic will once again be humming.
Foot Joins the Eye Curse

Well, the foot is not doing much better; no blister, but it is quite sore. I did around five or six miles Sunday, which I thought was reasonable, but apparently my feet were of a different opinion. About 8 a.m. I limped down to a Pharmacia and bought some heel pads. Sitting on the curb, I bandaged up, then gimped back to the hotel and a long siesta. I could get used to this routine—very civilized. I understand there is some recent research recommending a daily nap. It would certainly stretch out the work and school day…but would anybody in America take advantage of it?

In the late evening I strolled around my neighborhood, which has the odd shop here and there but is mostly made up of restaurants (does nobody in Rome eat at home?) and banks. I have never seen so many banks, not just in my neighborhood, but everywhere. Take away the churches and banks and Rome would shrink by half. Maybe the city does represent the world and what it aspires to: a complete union of the church and mammon. Depending on your proclivities, there is no lack of places in which to worship.
Baths, Roads, and Such

The following morning the foot was still sore, but time was wasting and I set off around 9:00 a.m. My first stop was at the Baths of Diocletian, by far the most extensive of Rome’s many baths. They covered twenty-seven acres and accommodated 3000 bathers at a time—which, depending on your personality, may be about 2,999 too many. Of course, the baths were also fitness clubs, shopping malls, eating establishments, and social and business centers. According to the cinema I’ve seen, if any Roman plots were hatching, they always started in a steamy atmosphere.

There’s really very little left of this once mighty complex, a few walls and some rooms. A Michelangelo designed church sits where the main bathhouse used to be. The interior is quite vast and grand, retaining, so the guidebook says, much of the flavor of the original. Eight huge pillars (also original) help hold up the center nave. It’s no St. Peters (what is, the Grand Canyon, maybe?), but it is still quite impressive. Down the street is a well-preserved section including the Octagonal Room; it contains a dozen or more statues. One, a nude Aphrodite, teeters between the erotic and the comedic. A little more than life size, she is headless but holds in both hands at shoulder height large tresses of her hair—for all the world as if she were thinking: “Now where in the world am I going to put these darn things?”

In the middle of the room the restorers left a circular glass-covered hole, which is designed to show that the original floor was twenty-eight feet lower than the present one. With typical Italian efficiency the lighting has been arranged so that from any angle the visitor sees only a reflection of the ceiling. The barbarians cut off the aqueducts in the 500’s, and the A.D.’s turned to the B.O.’s. Actually, the ancient Romans never did discover soap (although their emperors were constant living soap operas); they used sticks instead, which seems a little weird to me.

On down the road (by this time you might think that I would be getting to know my way around Rome a bit, but no; outside my Navona Square/Trevi Fountain route—and that gets problematical any time I vary it slightly—I still depend on the map and the kindness of strangers. There are only six streets in all of Rome that run in the same direction as any other; plus there is a law that every street has to change its name within three blocks. Trevi Fountain, which is named for three converging roads—tre vi—actually has five exits and entrances)…now where was I? Oh, heading for the church of Santa Maria Maggorie. The church is old (5th century) but extremely well preserved. It’s as ornate as any—a gold encrusted ceiling among other bric-a-brac—but it has a simple, open feel. The thing that brought me here is the altar, under which is a glass case containing some fragments of Christ’s crib. I’m fascinated, not by these relics themselves, but by the faith—or the complete suspension of reason—that it takes to believe in them. One has only to observe for a few minutes to see that there are people who do believe. Bernini, the “if it ain’t Baroque, then fix it” sculptor, is buried here—more on him tomorrow.

Next, I strolled to the Coliseum but decided to skip another tour of that vast, overcrowded place. I did wander through one of my favorite places, the Forum, then struggled up the Capitoline Hill, sat in the shade, and finally taxied back to the hotel for my now customary siesta.

One of the things that has curtailed my peregrinations somewhat has been the heat. It has hovered around 90 plus degrees each day, plus it’s quite muggy; even at night it only cools down to 70 or so. Tomorrow I’m off to the Villa Borghese and a Bernini fest.

Villa Borghese

There are, if I may say so, some ferociously ugly cars in Europe, none more so than a moving violation of good taste called the Smart—I simply will not comment on the name. Visualize a typical minivan, downsize it by about forty-five per cent, move the rear wheels forward, and then abruptly chop the body off right behind the front side windows. One could get the same effect by enclosing two wheelchairs side-by-side. And yet, they’re everywhere, as ubiquitous as Honda Civics in California; and driven, as far as I can tell, without shame or remorse. Returning to my hotel last night, I got my comeuppance from one. A dirty gray version was parked (well, “situated”; cars in Rome are not parked; they are situated wherever there is some figment of an open space) in the general vicinity of the curb. On the side in large letters, I read my name: _____ _____. There were other words I couldn’t translate—probably a foot and eye curse.

Speaking of my eye, it’s about the same, still as bruised and bloodshot as ever. I tend to forget about it until I see people staring, and then averting their gaze when I make eye contact. This must be the way lepers used to feel. It makes me wish I had a glass eye: I would love to take it out, toss it in the air, catch in my mouth, and pretend to swallow. I prefer the direct approach of the waiter who looked at me, giggled, pointed, and said, “Your wife?” I smiled and gently replied, “No, yours; after I broke off our affair.” No, no, of course, I didn’t say that—I don’t know enough Italian.

As long as I’m harping, let’s get into one of everybody’s favorite subjects: menus. In Rome they can be somewhat approximate. Finding something that is actually being served is more a matter of elimination than of selection. I am waiting to discover a restaurant in which nothing on the menu is actually on the premises—I would pay to eat there.

The foregoing is—don’t ask me how—an introduction to my Borghese Gallery visit. I walked there around 10 a.m.; it’s situated (though not like the cars) in a large park about a half-mile from my hotel. The park is a welcome spot of green in a mostly concrete and stone city. I was expecting to have to make reservations for a day or two ahead; but, much to my surprise, they had an opening in fifteen minutes. Every two hours they let in 360 visitors for a strictly regulated two hour visit. It’s an art museum in the original villa the Borgheses built to house their extensive and expensive collection, so it’s all of a piece. The villa, with its large gardens, is itself a work of art.

The first floor has some paintings but is mostly devoted to sculpture from the ancient Greeks to the early 1800’s. The first thing that really caught my eye was Pauline, Napoleon’s sister who married a Borghese. Half nude (this is her statue, you understand) she half reclines on a divan; and while I can’t claim she’s smirking, she is totally unembarrassed. Canova was the sculptor. When the statue was first made public, it caused something of a scandal. Asked how she could pose is such a way, Pauline replied, “Easy, the room wasn’t cold.” Good answer. This is a work of art that cries out to be touched—no, no, wipe that smirk off your face and elevate your mind: it’s the mattress—no way it’s marble. It’s indented by her body, wrinkled from her weight, and even has a stain at the foot—though I’m not sure that’s intentional. The urge to touch the mattress to see if it’s real is almost irresistible.

Bernini is the real star of the Gallery. He lived throughout most of the 1600’s and redid much of Rome in the Baroque, an ornate style which, depending on your taste, borders on excess. Like Michelangelo and Leonardo he was an all-a-rounder who sculpted, painted, designed, and engineered. Among other projects in Rome and around the world, he designed St. Peter’s Square. Three of his large sculptures were on display in the Gallery: David in the act of slinging the stone at Goliath—you tend to flinch when you first walk in the room and face him; Apollo and Daphne just as he grabs her and just as she starts to turn into a tree (you’ve gotta read the legend); and the Rape of Proserpine, as Pluto carries her off accompanied by his three headed dog Cerberus.

All of these are realistic studies in action, and rather violent action at that; these statues almost move. They’re beautiful and volatile. Still I prefer the restraint that Michelangelo shows; there’s not much character development in these Bernini’s. I had never appreciated the possibilities of stone though, until I examined the works of these two sculptors—the very stones can cry out.

Upstairs it’s mostly paintings: Rubens, Botticelli, Caravaggio, Raphael, and Titian to drop a few names I know, and there is a host of others I don’t know. My argument with painting in general is that while I could probably tell a Titian from a Turner, I doubt I could tell a Titian from a Raphael unless I already knew the painting—and there’s usually too many of the dang things. I’m thinking that museums should probably insist that anyone but art experts look at two or three paintings for an hour or so each and then go home—maybe then people would have some idea of what they had seen.
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Tomorrow I plan to say “hello” to Moses.

(continued)