For the cartographically inclined

Approximate daily routing.

Hattiesburg to Tuscaloosa

Due to the previous evening's cruising, we had already picked out the spot for the morning meal: Shipley Do-nuts, which caught our eye due to the appealing, donut-shaped sign. Once inside we ordered coffee and another delicious fried breakfast. We asked how long it had been open as we marveled about the open floor plan which allowed full view of the frying operations. They had been there about 30 years. We sat down to consume our treats as some of the early Sunday morning traffic trickled in.

One gentleman, clearly well-known to the staff, ordered a donut and a carton of milk and sat down near us, all the time speaking loudly and cheerily about various Jesus-related things. He proceeded to cut his donut into 1/6ths with a plastic knife and then eat it with a fork. I guess that's one way to savor your food for a bit longer, but it just seemed wrong.

After eating we took one last pass through town, mainly to see if the Coney Island Cafe had opened up, as they were advertising blueberries for sale on their window. It wasn't, and as we were stopped at a stop light on our way out, a truck full of what looked like construction debris pulled up next to our car and the guy motioned to Jack to roll down his window. He said "I got shit flying off my trailer all over the road, man; I really need a cigarette!" Jack was sad to have to disappoint him. We should probably carry cigarettes around with us at all times so we can spread good will wherever we go. You never know when they'll help you out of a jam.

As luck would have it, we encountered a fruit stand/market not too far out of town. We got some blueberries there as well as some "cane syrup", the purpose of which is unknown to us but it looks like light-colored molasses. Due to my reprehensible diet over the past few days I immediately launch into berry eating when we get back in the car and stain my tongue a deep bluish-purple.

The problem with looking at maps is that you get intrigued by places simply because of their names. It was thus with Hot Coffee, so we detoured off the route to check it out. The town was nothing more than a crossroads with some houses, a shuttered grocery (which, according to the sign, was in "Downtown Hot Coffee", and a general store advertising that they were the welcome center for the town. Obviously the path to Hot Coffee was more well-traveled than I had anticipated, judging by the guest book that showed visitors from as far away as Japan. As Jack took a look at the merchandise I cornered one of the two women working there and asked her about the "hoop cheese". She generously gave us a thin slice to try, and it was mild, cheddar-like and tasty. I would've bought some if I had had any means of keeping it cool. Jack did get a t-shirt and mug, and I got some recipes that included cane syrup as an ingredient, so all was good. And since I know you'll ask, they did look like they were set up to serve free coffee to visitors, but the pot wasn't brewing when we were there.

Up the road a piece we stopped off at Dunn's Falls.
The mill seemed to have a termite issue so it felt a little treacherous walking around in there, perched high on a bluff over the Chunky River. We hiked around a bit in the withering midday heat and I took off my shoes and dipped my toes in the cool water, but it was hot enough that we were looking forward to getting back in the car to take advantage of the AC.


Jack's spotty memory of things he had written down to do on the trip included this intriguing tidbit: that the Queen of the Gypsies was buried in Meridian. It was a good stopping point for lunch anyway, so after we grabbed some Mexican food we cruised around a bit until we found what we thought was the right cemetery. Given that there was no one else around we parked on the main road through the final resting place, and headed off in separate directions to try and find it, shouting back to each other when we encountered something interesting. In the end, though, we couldn't have missed it: it was covered in beads, photos, dead candles and other detritus. In what was a major sacrifice for Jack, he allowed me to take the fruit pie purchased a day earlier in LA to give to the Queen, in hopes that she would make the rest of our trip as interesting as it had been thus far.

A little while later we crossed over into Alabama and through the town of Eutaw, the town square for which contained a massive yet empty turn of the century municipal building. Not too much further along we encountered an abandoned schoolhouse buried in the scrub by the side of the road and decided to check it out. We wandered around among the rotting furniture, broken glass and collapsing roof, enjoying the eerie sensation of a place where something bad must've happened, or they would've salvaged more of the stuff out of it. Anyway, that's how I chose to interpret it. We didn't explore the basement, which I'm sure would've held even more treasures.

We arrived in Tuscaloosa near dusk. We took a couple loops around the city evaluating our motel options and eventually settled on the Masters Inn for a very cheap price. The room was clean and quiet and smelled of a recent chemical bath, all reassuring signs for a place of this price. We drifted off to sleep to the aromas of Pine-Sol and bleach.

NOLA to Hattiesburg

New Orleans was in the grips of a rainless month in June, although the humidity was quite high. All the Spanish moss had shriveled up back onto the branches of the oak trees, resembling the arm hairs of a hirsute 70s porn star. While our room was nicely conditioned, it was a bit of a shock to leave the building early in the morning and find it so hot and sunny. We asked the person at the front desk if he could recommend another coffee and beignet place that was not the madhouse at Cafe du Monde, and he suggested a more low-key competitor. The beignets were hot, fresh, and delicious, and we subbed the normal cafe au lait with the iced version. The one sour note was that, in spite of it being in a courtyard that really only served the restaurant, it still smelled like stale vomit. The French Quarter gets up in my nose when I go there and won't let go till I leave the neighborhood. We walked down to the nearly shadeless waterfront park to say hi to the Miss-sipp, then went to go check out and hit the road to start our epic journey. Shortly in we discovered that our GPS unit didn't work, most likely because there was a blown fuse for the electrical hookup.

Not having a destination except for Burlington in 10 days made it a little tricky to decide when to stop, but we pretty much stopped everywhere that looked interesting. It was too early to get po' boys, but we kept our eyes open for some place that might have them as we drove. (For some reason all the Asian places we passed referred to them as "poor boys".) Our first stop was the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge. There was a little parking lot with some interpretive signs and a boardwalk out over the water. We saw some cool birds and dragonflies and stuff. Back in the car, Jack got a shot of the sign as we started our Route 11 journey a few miles down the road.

A mile or so further on, we passed through Irish Bayou, a community that amounts to a strip of land bordering either side of the road, and water beyond. It was apparently almost entirely destroyed during Katrina, but seemed to be back in operation by the time we drove by. The one thing that was undamaged was the castle house, which looked like it probably ate hurricanes for breakfast. We stopped at a gas station for water, a LA map and a convenience store lemon pie.

Next we crossed Lake Pontchartrain and sang all the songs we knew about it (1), then headed into Slidell and sang all the songs we knew about it (also 1). We cut away from 11 to head towards Abita Springs, thinking it would be cool if we capped both ends of our trip with brewery tours. The brew pub was pretty much the only game in town, judging by the throngs of people inside waiting for a table, but the actual brewery sits far outside of town. Before we headed out there we stopped by the town museum, situated in a former train station, and hit the water park fountain.

Parking was nearly impossible at the brewery, but eventually we scored one of the last spots. Once we had been given wristbands which cleared us for drinking and were issued our plastic cups, we got in line for the freeeee beer from the taps behind the bar. Since we were so late for the tour, we only got a single beer which we drank while watching the introductory movie, but there were people who were pouring themselves a brew and immediately getting to the back of the line, so some must've managed to get down three or more before we went down onto the factory floor. I bet the tour was a regular thing for some locals--cheaper than a drive-thru daiquiri.

The tour was terrible--the woman was speaking through a megaphone and was almost entirely incomprehensible and she was also reading from a piece of paper. It was almost like she wanted to admit that people were on the tour as a courtesy and really wished they could just get back to the free beer. Which, before too long, they did, but not before I noted that they were using some Sharples centrifuges in there. There was a sign over the water fountain that it had pure spring water piped into it, so I filled up my cup and weaved my way through the people who were back in line and headed for the open road again.

Before too long we had crossed the border into Mississippi and were thinking about where to stay.
At Hattiesburg we bought MS and AL maps and went to the very nice train station. It was obviously a large junction point for freight, but at that hour there were only some idled cars with graffiti and a rusting engine. We thought they'd have tourist information, but the station was shut tight, as was the most of the rest of downtown on this Saturday afternoon. We came up with some Plan Bs for places to spend the night and eat and then settled on the Western Motel and Brownstones, respectively. The former was out by the strip malls, but the price was good and the room was quiet. The young woman at the front desk reminded me of the columnist Jean Teasdale from The Onion--I could just see her going home to her apartment cluttered with cats and her wacky earring collection. She was trying to ignore the skinny, nervous guy pacing in the lobby who didn't seem to have anywhere else to go.

We headed out for an okay meal with local beer at Brownstones, and then watched part of a really long train pass by down the street. We returned to the hotel and took a walk in the dark down some quiet residential streets and then got some Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan ale for drinkin'. Although there didn't seem to be much going on in the city since college was not in session, after dark there were a fair number of people cruising in their shiny vehicles, playing loud music and looking at each other.

None of that for us, though. It was time to rest and get refreshed for another day on the road.

DCA to NOLA

If that Myers-Briggsish seminar we took at work recently confirmed one critical component of my personality, it's that I'm not good at planning vacations. I'm content to skim a guidebook and turn down the corners of a couple pages containing the highlights of a given place, which I may or may not get to depending on how interesting wandering the streets is.

Jack had some illness of lethargy which prevented him from conducting his normal amount of research. I was getting over a sickness myself, and was a few days ahead of Jack in terms of recovery. My main goal for the first day of the trip was not to cough so much upon boarding the plane that they kicked me off and stranded me at home. Everything else was a bonus. Jack had prepared a good set of notes on MS and AL, and I wrote down a couple of things about NY. We were bringing a book about TN, too. My major preparation effort was going to the Roadside America site and coming up with a list of every wacky thing within 30 miles of Rte. 11. We decided to forgo purchasing maps, since we could pick them up at welcome centers or tourist information centers.

Up until the minute the cab arrived we were throwing stuff in bags and getting ourselves ready in the most disorganized manner possible. Generally speaking I'm of a mind that as long as one has a credit card (and a passport if one is going overseas) then everything will ultimately be fine. It wasn't long after we got to the airport, however, that we discovered that we (I) had somehow inadvertently left Jack's detailed notes at home. That deflated a bit of our anticipatory excitement, although he did manage to remember some highlights.

We got off the plane, got our rental car, and asked one of the staff where she thought we might get a good breakfast nearby. She suggested driving the non-highway route into New Orleans. The road was peppered with various edge-area sights: box stores, vacant lots, decaying older strip malls. This one had a difference, though; every so often we'd pass a drive-thru daiquiri joint. It was thus dubbed the "Drinkin' and Drivin' Highway".

A pancake house with a good sign beckoned us from the side of the road. We went in and got seated at a booth. Our waitress was very friendly in the Southern manner. I asked her what she suggested off the menu and we finally arrived at a Belgian waffle with pecans. Whoever heard of such a thing?? Jack got pigs in blankets: pancakes wrapped around breakfast sausages. I got the better of the two. Very fresh pecans both in the batter and on top of the waffle. It was excellent.

Knowing we were too early to check into the hotel, we took a bit of a roundabout route to get there. On the way, we happened to see an estate sale sign. It was a Friday, and frequently the best pickings can be found before the weekend hordes descend. We made a snap decision to stop in to see what kinds of things people down south kept. We parked and then Jack was asked to move the car back by an elderly woman who had apparently never street-parked in her life, since you could easily fit a Shriner car in the space between the two vehicles.

The house was an upstairs-downstairs duplex and we wandered the lower floor looking at the years of accumulated stuff which was remarkably similar to the stuff you find in NoVA. The last room had they holy grail: Heywood-Wakefield end tables at a price unheard of up here. We did one of those "I-don't-know-what-to-do" agonizing dances for a minute, and then decided that if they could fit in our rental car we should take them. We announced this to the salesperson and she emphasized what a great deal we were getting. She offered to throw in a couple of books for free, which was a bonus since we had planned on getting books on the road.

They fit in the car, and so we made off with them and then went to the hotel to check in. Our room wasn't ready yet so we left our bags and drove back towards the Garden District for a wander. It was midday and very hot. Fortunately, the shops beckoned with open doors and icily blasting AC, so we got some breaks once in a while. After stopping for drinks at a bar, we made our way back in the direction we came via side streets, which were quiet and still. Katrina's impact was still evident: some houses were marked with the symbols that emergency responders used in the aftermath, some were left to rot, and others were being slowly consumed by vines. It was sad that such a beautiful neighborhood was still so visibly suffering.

Once back at the hotel we got our room and had a siesta before turning our thoughts to dinner. We decided to go back to Herbsaint, where we had gone last time we were in town. I don't know whether it was because there was no large conference town or because of summer torpor or the slow recovery, but we had no problem getting a table during prime time at this award-winning restaurant.

We both got cocktails, Jack a sazerac and me a Pimms cup. Jack got a dish of gumbo and a plate of pan-fried gnocci with ham and asparagus, and I got a tomato and burrata salad and pork belly with creamed corn. The waiter "didn't take [me] for a pork belly type." I wonder what he would've picked out for me? It was all very satisfying, but Jack won this round.

After that we took a stroll around the French Quarter. I realize why the French Quarter exists, and that people like it, but it is just not my thing. There were fewer people there as well, which meant fewer bands playing music. We stopped into the TI for a map of LA but they didn't have one, although they did have ghost tours aplenty. We walked over to the Faubourg Marigny and nothing of interest caught our ear, so we headed back towards the hotel. We stopped in Jackson Square for a bit, took in the sight of the punk teens and the palm readers, and then called it a night.

God bless America.

"I love your Americana decor, and the wagonwheel table just screams 'western euthanasia'!"



Who can we blame for this typo? The loss of good copyeditors at newspapers? Poor spellers who rely too heavily on spell checkers who also don't notice when their second letter is obviously incorrect? Bill Gates? All of the above?

Points south

Five p.m. on Friday we were informed that a guest house was available on Saturday. We had been wanting to get out of town and all the parks' cabins were full or far away, so we jumped at the opportunity to spend the night in Spottsylvania County.

Saturday morning we got up, made coffee and egg and brie sandwiches on rye, packed up, then started heading south. The drive on 95 was a dream--no one seemed to be up yet, or something, because we encountered no slow-downs. Our first stop was the Fredericksburg Tourist Information office to pick up some maps and pamphlets. We wandered towards the river, where there were masses of boxelder bugs hanging out on all the structures. They looked harmless enough, but I think opening up my screen door one fine spring morning and discovering the wall on either side coated with these things would still give me the heebie-jeebies.

10 a.m. on a Saturday in a college town is a great thing. Students are busy working off the previous night's drunk, and the streets are relatively free from their element. We walked back up to the shopping drag, which contained antique shops and not much else. Jack was hoping to buy a magazine, but we didn't encounter any normal stores that would carry such an item. We did manage to acquire a piece of a chocolate-covered digestive biscuit, though.

As the town began to retreat from its somnolence, we headed south and sought out the Blue and Gray Brewing Company, which was in an industrial park that upon entry was an exact replica of the one where Old Dominion did its thing, with the exception of one of the facilities having a Mary statue in front of it. The older part was where the brewery was actually located, however, and that section looked like it had been there for a good while.

It was a fairly warm morning, causing me to regret at intervals having worn a long-sleeve shirt when a breeze wasn't going, but the temperature dropped 15-20 degrees when we entered the dank, cavernous red-brick historic warehouse space where the brewery set up shop. There was a small bar for tastings and we got to try all of their standard beers plus an oak-barrel pale ale, which had an intense buttery-caramel-y aroma. We then took a tour that went around the inner perimeter where all the tanks were located and got a couple more samples right out of the tanks. We were bummed that we were going to miss the St. Patrick's Day parade that the brewers put on every year in the industrial park the following week...can't imagine who all would come out for that.

On the way out of the park, which was crisscrossed by train tracks, we saw some people in an open boxcar doing something with model trains. I, being me, pulled over and asked if we could take a look. Perhaps a mistake, given that it took us nearly a half hour to get back out again due to an enthusiastic soliloquist from the Rappahannock Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society (Current Chapter priority #1: to get an address from the county!). They too were getting ready for the biggest event of their year--next week's parade at the brewery, at which they'd put out a whole slew of model trains and open up some of the other train cars to the public, as well as have small trains to ride on. ("Do you know any kids? They might want to come!") Jack got in the only non-train-related question, which was if they knew what industry formerly occupied the site. It was a manufacturer of cellophane, we were informed, which closed in the 70s. Then it was more train talk, about themes of models and the speed of setting them up and how they're operated ("We stand back here and work the buttons!"). By this point we were famished and all full o' train information, and started backing towards the boxcar steps to escape. It was tough, but we managed to extricate ourselves. It was all I could do not to peel out of the lot.

Lunch found us in Spotsylvania Courthouse, the county seat and not much more than a crossroads road surrounded by outsized justice-related buildings. We had lunch at the Courthouse Cafe, which was uncrowded except for a couple winding up their meal over coffee and smokes and a young man unrequitedly hitting on the teen-age waitress. We both had a tasty patty melt as we perused sections of the Free Lance-Star and as the waitresses hung tacky St. Patrick's Day decorations around.

We then crossed the street and went to the Spotsylvania County Museum, housed in a gothic revival church. It contained a motley collection of gewgaws from county residents, including some dumbbells manufactured in the 21st century in a case next to some artifacts from area Indian tribes and the last cellophane manufactured at the aforementioned factory. Anything goes, apparently. The museum minder sat behind her desk and scolded her daughter repeatedly while we were there: "Serenity, get out of there!" while her son Autumn sat on her lap. We thanked her for staying open for us and picked up some pamphlets of area attractions, then walked back across the street to check out the old jail, with its three-foot thick walls, next to the new detention center. We failed to find the old Confederate graveyard due to the map being not to scale, but I'm sure we looked suspicious to all the justices of the peace and whatever in all the many buildings as we slowly walked around the campus.

Heading west, we crossed Lake Anna and then crossed it again on our way to our destination. When we got there, not having received any specific instructions from our host, we parked at the Big House where our hosts lived and went to the back door, which appeared to be the main point of entry. We ascended to the screened-in porch and rang the bell and waited. After a minute or so, the owners, a couple with widely disparate ages, came around the side of the house to meet us--apparently they had been waiting for us at the cottage. Oops! We drove back over to our driveway and re-parked. The husband told us about the 18th century homestead we were staying in and took us on a quick tour of the tiny upstairs, which was normally roped off. The house had been disassembled in Louisa County, moved to this location, and reassembled on the spot of a previous dwelling. The wife, quiet throughout the tour, pointed out the possessions that were owned by her family, who had lived on the property generations ago. This reed-thin woman, swimming in the sport coat she was wearing and dwarfing her husband by a good six inches or more (not including her Fundamentalist-Mormon-chic hairstyle which added another 2 or 3), seemed supremely uncomfortable around us, not really the welcoming hostess one expects at a B&B. But we were just happy to be there to soak up the fresh country air and sunshine, so her aloofness didn't affect us.

Gentry that we now were, we took a tour of the grounds to visit our small stand of grape vines, the headless fake owl that guards the corner of the property, the cows across the pasture, and the lawn tennis court. Back at the cottage, we reviewed the many magazines and pamphlets at our disposal. There was a louvered closet door in our room that was locked, and it seemed that occasionally a small ticking noise would emanate from inside. This added to the weirdness factor of the hosts, and made me imagine we were being spied on. Sunset came and went, and at twilight Jack looked out the window at the Big House. He noted that the only lights that were on over there were in the basement, and just then, lights started flashing on and off upstairs, as if someone had heard us and was trying to show that they were doing things other than paying attention to our every move. Yikes!

We decided to head back towards the lake for a casual dinner. This restaurant was also gearing up for St. Patrick's Day, counting down the days on a dry-erase board. Nothing special food-wise, though, and the lake was invisible in the darkness beyond the plate-glass windows. Back at the house, the mystery about our hosts deepened when Jack found the old guest book in a drawer. The woman's name in this book was not the name of the current hostess. In 2006 there was a gap of a few months in which people addressed their comments only to him, then the new wife's name appeared. I had assumed that since her relations had lived on the property she had had some ongoing connection with the place, but apparently she somehow just got in good with the current owner and was able to return to her ancestral home.

We began a game of Scrabble and opened our Belgian Ale, which resembled a coarse lambic more than anything else due to its unrefined sour bite. Not a favorite. I got oodles of vowels and Jack got an overdose of consonants, such that he was suggesting that I put down some Hawaiian words, and I recommended that he try for "Mxyzptlk" (the rule against proper names notwithstanding). It was a long and thoughtful game. I eventually won only because Jack still had a Q in his pew when I went out.

The next morning dawned warm again, with a thin scrim of clouds moderating the intensity of the sun on our winter-pale skin. I made us some tea while we waited for our breakfast to be carried over from the Big House. We brought the Washington Post Sunday supplement with us, so I read the magazine while Jack did the sudoko. The hosts brought us breakfast consisting of orange juice, coffee, fruit salad, Betty Crocker blueberry muffins and biscuits stuffed with seriously salty ham. It wasn't a very exciting meal, but we were glad for some sustenance before we headed out into the world.

Our next stop was at Montpelier, the former home of members of the du Pont family. And before that, it was owned by some president. The guided tour of the virtually empty house was pretty interesting, but I think it would've been better with at least one room up with a full complement of furnishings, which Jack informs me is indeed the plan. After the tour we visited the ice house/temple, the wood (which included historically-accurate junked cars), the graveyards of the Madisons and the slaves they owned, and the formal du Pont-installed garden, which was still mostly in its winter hibernation mode. The large boxwoods around were wonderfully aromatic, though.

Finally, it was getting on towards mid-afternoon-starvation time so we started off in the direction of home. We had a pleasant lunch on the front porch of a restaurant in Culpeper, enjoying the passing pedestrian traffic and the sounds of people cranking up their car stereo systems with open windows for the first time this year. Jack got a tasty Starr Hill beer from Charlottesville to go with his tasty bison. We took 28 up to Manassas and saw a silo painted as a giant ear of corn on the way.

Crazy is as crazy does

As I wait for the bus home from work, I often think of my Morning Friend and Afternoon Friend from when I last used to take that route. My Morning Friend has moved to Fairfax and, while my Afternoon Friend has the same job as before, I now take a later bus than she does so we rarely see one another.

My Morning Friend came from a conservative culture and had many problems with her husband, most of which could have been solved if it wasn't her duty to be subservient to him. Things were sort of working out when Jack and I moved to Brussels, as she had started a job (against his wishes) that would supplement the family income and allow them to be more stable financially. She was disappointed that I was moving to Belgium, because France was so much more cosmopolitan.

My Afternoon Friend was...different. She was an African-American acrophobic lesbian who seemed to have been raised in a culture that didn't tolerate differences very well. She had an unusual world view that included neither George Washington or Native Americans. She was being courted by the Jehovah's Witnesses but seemed to be playing them for the attention and free food it afforded. She would get agitated when the bus wouldn't come in a timely manner and begin cursing. She was, it must be said, a little bit out there. Crazy would not be too far a stretch.

I was thinking about them the other evening while waiting for my bus. It was dark, and there were three others waiting with me, all wrapped up in themselves, one using her cell phone, one smoking. I found the scrap of paper I had used to take down JW's phone number in the morning in my pants pocket, and so I eased past the woman on her phone to put it in the recycling can. She scooted half a foot to the right to accommodate me and then returned to her original spot. A minute or so later I put my hands in my coat pocket and discovered an empty seltzer water can that I had been sipping on at a meeting and kept with me because I didn't know where the recycling containers were in the building. I walked over to the recycling again and put the can in, again forcing the woman to move out of my way. I then decided to discover if there was anything else I could throw away. I came up with a receipt from the post office, which was on that thermal fax-like paper, so I went back to the trash can to throw it out (NB: apparently this may actually be recyclable). By this point the cell phone talker had vacated the immediate vicinity so I had no problems. I felt around some more and came up with a shopping list from the previous week on a Post-it and chucked it in the recycling.

At this point I realize I've just been pacing back and forth between my spot and the recycling/trash four times over five to six minutes. I begin thinking how bizarre, how CRAZY, that must look to the three other people, and then. Then I start giggling uncontrollably. I turn my back to the others so that they won't see that I am laughing. And can't stop. It was funny to think other people might think that I was crazy. And then I thought to myself, maybe this is what all crazy people think: the hilarity of others' interpretations of their actions, which to them are totally rational. Could it be that I'm going down that slippery slope? How wonderfully freeing it would be.

Here are some photos that I am reliably informed amply demonstrate my crazitude.

Jack makes the grade

His Flickr photo of a church facade detail in Federal Hill was included in this on-line guide to Baltimore.

Our time in the Eastern Hemisphere was running short. There was so much left to do and see, and we had squandered our days doing mundane things like visiting the police station and going to the movies. The weather was just starting to get nice, so we alternated between states of denial and panic as we tried to simultaneously take advantage of our remaining time and get done all the things we needed to do before we left.

We definitely needed to test more chocolates. I went out to Uccle and picked up a brand that we hadn't tried before called Galler. The shopkeeper was very nice and even gave me an extra free piece (for a total of two) after we bonded over the fact that we both weren't keen on lapsang souchong (which was one of their flavors). It was very good stuff. My other motivation for going there was to get a photo of a sign we had seen that amused us greatly what with our juvenile senses of humor. It being on the door to a school I felt a bit strange trying to get a shot of the "Retards" ("late ones") sign, but no one seemed to notice or care.

We needed to visit more of the parks encircling the city. This one had a pond, benches and grassy areas, really hairy cows, and an area cut up into tiny plots for either a garden or livestock. We took the long way back, dipping into the Flemish region for a few blocks, checking out a couple of cemeteries (one with a free bathroom, almost unheard of in this country), an old church of Roman origin, and some sheep grazing in an otherwise empty city block surrounded by buildings on all sides.

And of course we needed to eat at all the restaurants we had seen in the neighborhood and said "we should go there sometime" and then never did. This was complicated by the fact that people were also wanting to feed us as a goodbye gesture AND we were trying to use up what food we could in the time remaining. We did manage to do some good eating, though. I was happy with both Notos, a high-end modern Greek restaurant that we visited with friends, and Chumadia, a Slavic place.

Since we had tried to get into on a weekend one time in the past and it was full, we went to Chumadia on a weekday this time but they were still unable to seat us right away, so we got cocktails and retired to the back garden/storage space and hung out with the resident cat. Once we finally got in, though, we figured out what all the hubbub was about: massive portions of grilled meats for rock-bottom prices. If I recall correctly I made the mistake of getting an appetizer as well, having never seen platters of that size served in Belgium. It was all very tasty, and I was sad to see some chevapchichi left on my plate when I could finally eat no more. Jack tried to order the horse, but without success. Although it's on the standing menu, they apparently only get it in occasionally.

We had a party to get rid of food items and to guilt our guests into taking pantry and household items home with them, which was sadly only marginally successful, forcing us to force bags filled with half-used sacks of salt and lentils and so on on people when they were in no position to refuse. At the last minute, Jack's new Australian coworker was able to come to an arrangement with our landlord where she would rent the apartment and be able to keep all of our furniture in spite of the fact that he wanted to put down parquet flooring between tenants. I'm not sure how that all worked out, but it was a relief to not have to worry about it anymore.

I was having some issues with my caga tio, who seemed to be harboring a pest that was making ticking sounds that I could only hear when the house was totally silent. Not wanting to be the person who brought an insect to the US that decimated the oak population, I researched methods of eliminating it. (I initially decided that it was a death watch beetle, but after a while I realized that the light in my eyes wasn't slowly dimming, so I researched other insects.) The standard means is to heat the wood to a certain temperature for a certain time. I didn't want to damage the little guy, though, so I removed his cheery hat and smile before baking him. He looked so naked and pathetic in there, like he couldn't understand why he was being subjected to this torture. This stopped the ticking long enough for it to be shipped to the US without customs destroying it, and then it started back up again. I then went for the irradiating power of the microwave, which proved to be a more permanent solution after the second attempt.

We moved into a B&B for three nights after we gave our bed away. It was a single room in a house-behind-a-house one block over from our place. The woman renting it was a doctor of some sort who would put on her leather bomber jacket and drive off on her scooter in the mornings. She would set out breads and cheeses and fruit and yogurt and juice for us in the morning and we'd consume it at the dining table in the front house as the tenants made their way off to work on the other side of the frosted glass doors. After seeing innumerable Nespresso commercials at the movie theaters featuring George Clooney as an idiot who assumes these hot women are talking about him but really they're discussing their beverage, we had an opportunity to try it at the B&B. I guess it's okay for pod coffee, but it creates an annoying amount of waste.

We went to the commune to de-register. Surprisingly, we learned that the de-registration is done in a different building a half a mile from the registration place. As chaotic as that place always was, the new one seemed worse because the windows handled a bizarre array of issues and everyone seemed to be in a great hurry. Since there was once again no line or numbers, you had to keep an eye on everyone else to keep them honest. We paid them something like €20 each to legally leave the country, and then went to the post office and forked over a similar amount of cash to have our mail forwarded to Jack's office (entirely a waste of money since it seemed to be ineffective).

Finally, at long last, came moving day. I called my contact at the moving company in the US on Thursday and Friday to find out what time we could expect the movers on Monday, but heard nothing back. So we arrived at the house on Monday morning not knowing what to expect and discovered the painters were trying to get in, but no movers. We called the local firm and they had no record of a move scheduled for us. Panic set in at this point, yet we couldn't really do anything until the workday started in the US at 2 p.m. Brussels time. It was a very frustrating few hours. Fortunately, the local company was willing to tentatively schedule a move for the next day pending confirmation of our contract with the US company. So in the end we ended up needing that extra day of cushion that we had built in, but it all worked out. I was even able to rustle up some takeout coffee for the first time ever for the movers when they showed up on Tuesday, although carrying it over the bumpy cobblestones was no easy task.

Since we had accomplished all our administrative tasks, we had Tuesday afternoon free. We went on a tour of the Hotel de Ville in Brussels, something we had always wanted to do but the English tour was usually full up on weekends. We managed to get advance tickets due to the fact that I had to go to the bathroom, so they allowed us to purchase the tickets in advance which gained me admission to the facilities. We went over to Martyr's Square and sat in the brilliant sunshine and had our last beer and croque monsieurs at a cafe there.

Looked around for the last time, a bit wistfully, and then went home.

RoI end

Our last day of our last European trip dawned dry and breezy. We had breakfast, made our picnic lunch, and returned the key to our hostess and said our farewells. The woman advised us that it'd take us about the same amount of time to get back to Dublin whether we took the highway or not.

We got on the road to seek out a cave and a holy well in town. The first, the Poll a Wee cave, was on an unnamed back road on the edge of town. Having no map with us, we had to rely on instinct and the memory of having passed such a road in the vicinity the previous day. The directions on the map we had researched the previous day said you could reach it by crossing a stile and entering someone's field, which we assumed would be okay since they told us how to get there. We drove down the road till it ended in a muddy rut by a farm, and turned around. There was no sign of a gap in a wall for pedestrian access, so we had to give up on it. The well was a bit easier to find, since it was on the main road just past the castle. It was overgrown and under-visited, just a cross sticking out of a patch of ivy surrounded by high grass, but it was our last chance for such holiness so we took it. I felt compelled to at least attempt to cut the grass with a conveniently-located mower.

Then we got on our way in earnest, passing the shores of Lough Rea and any number of small towns, and stopping briefly in Bullaun to see the rather disappointing Turoe Stone, which was practically invisible inside its unlit plywood shack. Fortunately, Turoe Farm and Leisure Park, which shares space with the stone, wasn't open for the season yet, or I would've felt strange tramping around their property looking for a large stone phallic symbol.

We got on the highway for a while, then got off again once it ended (the east-west thoroughfare is still under construction). After a fashion we found ourselves in the town of Kilbeggan (Ireland has more great town names per square mile than even one of them crazy southern states, I reckon). We passed another distillery and, having time to kill, decided to check it out. We paid our entrance fee for the self-guided tour of Locke's whiskey distillery. They don't actually produce any whiskey there, but when the place closed in the 1950s they left everything in place, as if just going on vacation for a few weeks. So everything is ancient and grime-covered and just waiting for it all to be resurrected. The self-guided tour was actually quite entertaining, as it went into the day-to-day conditions of the plant, down to the fact that workers apparently devised a lot of ways to secretly steal alcohol from the place. It was the main livelihood that supported the town, and when things would break the citizens would band together to pay for repairs so they could keep collecting a paycheck. They are currently storing and maturing whiskeys there, so we got to taste a sample given to us by a woman who clearly wanted to get back to chatting with the woman at the front desk. I got one question in before she abandoned us. Probably we should've gone around to the other side of the bar and helped ourselves to additional drinks to spite her.

Helpfully, there was an attached cafe which allowed us to ignore our picnic lunch. It was after the midday rush of tourists and there were just a few straggling locals at that point. The food was fairly standard and we didn't linger too long, having places to be. Back on the road to Dublin we picked up another section of actual highway, and listened to the afternoon shock jocks convincing one of their coworkers to go into an office building across the street from theirs, get past the lax security and make herself a cup of coffee. Titillating! Then it was two times 'round the airport to get to the gas station they clearly don't want you to use to fill up your car before returning it, as the place can only be entered while exiting the airport grounds. We checked in in plenty of time, had our last Irish Guinnesses, hopped on the plane and went home. For dinner: picnic sandwiches.

They Call Me Baby Driver

The next day started out with a pleasant breakfast of eggs, brown bread toast with Irish butter, orange slices, and Irish breakfast tea. Not quite as artery-clogging as the previous days, but one can't eat that way all the time. We researched the day's activities, which mostly consisted of driving around the Burren area and looking at ruined abbeys and the like.

I was thinking of putting together a route map to more accurately depict our day's travels. We did so much circling around and back-tracking and dithering that I can't remember all of it, although if I had it would've looked pretty spectacularly random. Suffice it to say that we spent a lot of time on the back roads of a relatively small area of the country, as we lost our way and corrected our route and stopped places and just drove around. I DO know that we saw the following:

+ Corcomroe Abbey (in ruins)
+ Poulnabrone megalithic tomb (which had fallen down recently but they found another slab rock to prop it up with)
+ Hillsides of the Burren free from any vegetation more than a couple inches high, thanks to cattle grazing that keeps the area tidy
+ Gravestones written in Gaelic
+ A Sheela na Gig near the town of Killinaboy
+ High cross of Kilfenora
+ Lots of ill-proportioned religious scenes carved in stone

We were denied having lunch in the Ailwee Cave because we felt it was wrong that they made you pay to park. After driving through the three roads of Ballyvaughan several times in an effort to find a place to eat, we took the back way round to Lisdoonvarna and traveled all three of THEIR roads, squeezing on such narrow thoroughfares that at one point I clipped the mirror of a parked car with my own. Fortunately in other countries the mirrors readily fold in for just such a reason, so no damage was done. We found ourselves at the Roadside Tavern, which specialized in smoked fish dishes. Having had quite a demanding morning, we grabbed a table next to the cheery coal fire and each ordered a Guinness.

A table of Australians across the way from us were just finishing their meal. For some reason they felt the need to complain about the fact that grocery stores are open on Sundays there. I had to resist the urge to go over and shake them by the shoulders and tell them that they didn't know how good they had it. I just sighed resignedly and ordered a smoked salmon dish. Jack got the smoked fish plate, which contained a variety of species. Both were very good, just the thing to ready us for the afternoon of more driving around. We lingered a bit after the meal, enjoying the quiet coziness of the place. At one point the proprietor came around and tsked himself for letting the fire dwindle, but he had a new pail of coal to toss on at the ready and it soon resumed its former strength.

Eventually we headed in the direction of the park containing the Cliffs of Moher, one of those things you have to see if you're in the area. We drove to the cliff's edge outside of the park and then looped back around on the Liscannor Bay side to come at it from the other direction. On the way, we happened by St. Bridget's Well, a cemetery and spring-fed pond featuring a life-sized statue of the saint encased in glass. A tunnel covered from floor to ceiling with rosaries, pictures, notes and statues led to a man-made pool where people go to get healed or whatever they do at places with supposedly mystical properties. All that needy hopefulness was kind of creepy. How many dreams were dashed after a visit here?

After that, we were ready for some unbridled scenery so we hit the cliffs. After an extensive, award-winning renovation, the cliffs are now essentially walled off and completely lacking in danger, giving this formerly wild place the air of a tourist-trappy attraction. It's a very pretty wall, for sure, but still I found it to be a real let-down. You could take photos of yourself and email them to your friends, but a gaggle of teens were using it so we didn't partake. The only exciting thing about it was the high winds, which forced us to walk at an angle at times. It was like being in a hurricane, except there was only a little spitting rain. We had a warm-up tea in the welcome center/museum/gift shop and then hit the road again, but not before the guy at the parking lot cashier's booth told us that the winds were quite normal, not anywhere near the extremes they sometimes see.

We returned to Kinvara to regroup for dinner. On the way back we bought some gas at a station on the other side of town. I went inside to pay. "Just the gas." "What kind?" "Oh, I don't know, whatever it was on that pump over there." [Gestures towards the car.] "Oh, I thought you said 'cigars'!"

Weatherwise it was another intermittently rainy, blustery day, and not really much fun being out. As the day drew to a close I walked to the grocery in town to forage for food for the next day. I thought we'd picnic on our way back to Dublin to save some time and money, rather than going to a restaurant. I got some tomatoes, cheese, a tube of English mustard, and some pastries for breakfast the next day. I also bought a bottle of Bulmers hard cider that we had seen advertised around but hadn't tried yet. The store wasn't very busy, and the cashier asked me where I was from (Washington) and whether they got snow there this winter (yyyyesss). I didn't want to get into the whole Belgian thing. Sometimes it's just too much for people to handle.

As night came on and the rain and wind picked up, it became clear that we were in no mood to venture out again. We made a meal of what we had on hand and drank the cider, which was good. Our host had this crazy hand-drawn map of the town showing all the ruins and various other items of note in minute detail. The map was printed in the 80s and falling apart, and we wished we could take it around with us because it had every street, alley and footpath noted on it, along with the locations of ruins, cemeteries, holy wells, caves, and other items of interest. But we made a mental note of a couple key features and hoped we might come across them in the morning on our way out of town.

Side note

You hear a lot about Irish people saying "how's the craic" as the starting point to a conversation about the latest news or gossip or whatnot. This phrase not being one that naturally rolls off the tongue, we gave our NI hosts a laugh by saying "what's the craic" or various other permutations as we tried to perfect our nonchalance. We never actually heard the phrase uttered, though, and were beginning to think that it was some kind of legend, until we were walking down the streets of Donegal, and a teenage girl uttered the phrase as a form of greeting instead of "hi" when she encountered some friends on the sidewalk. I was, frankly, astonished that people would adopt something so much more complicated when a simple one-syllable sound would suffice.

Donegal breaks the Brigadoon curse

After another poor night's sleep (although nothing could compete with the previous one) and another enormous breakfast, we got back in the car for the ride to County Galway. We mostly stuck to the larger roads, since it takes longer to get from place to place than you think it will on this island. This was compounded by the fact that we stopped a lot--to look at crumbling ruins, to step into charmed prehistoric circles of standing stones while sheep watched warily from the next field over, and to visit the town of Donegal, which is much more attractive than its namesake in PA.

Donegal was our lunch destination. We strolled past the obligatory castle, around the market square, which was bustling with the buying and selling of cheap food and merchandise, and then walked right out of town in an effort to get some hunger going. The town was small enough that this wasn't particularly difficult. We saw another graveyard on the grounds of a ruined abbey and stopped in to survey the inhabitants. There was a good range of headstone styles and ages, which made for some interesting looking. Some overlooked the water, a pleasant place for a final repose if there ever was one (although decaying bodies may negatively impact water quality when placed in a location with so little buffer).

The lunch places recommended in the book were all closed, so we selected a big barn of a place nearby that seemed popular with the locals. We got sandwiches in the pub part, opting not to sit in the wee snug for fear of being overlooked by the wait staff. (Turns out that they know to look in there--go figure.) The food was pretty standard, but the scene was lively, with a bustle not unlike the typical American after-church meal.

With our appetites satisfied, we navigated the narrow roads out of town and continued heading southwest. We passed Ballyshannon, Sligo, and the outskirts of Galway. Listening to the radio is one of our pastimes of driving vacations, and Ireland's stations were a mixed bag of dreck and entertainment. Some stations were in Gaelic, and at first I thought we were picking up a signal from the Netherlands, as the guttural sound of some letters tricked me. Given that we were driving in and out of An Ghaeltacht, as the Gaelic-speaking regions of Ireland are called, it should have come as no surprise. (What was surprising was the fact that, in spite of the warnings in guidebooks that one might have problems with signage in this area, everything was in both Gaelic and English so it was fine.) As afternoon wore on, the announcer on a station playing traditional music came on to recite the obituaries. This went on for about 10 minutes and covered several recently-departed individuals. We eventually switched to another station and discovered that they, too, were reading the obits. While passing through Galway around rush hour, we listened to a broadcast were the young DJ had an old man on the phone, clearly trying to get a rise out of him with an eye towards getting him to say something non-P.C. The old guy had that throaty Irish chuckle you hear Lucky the Leprechaun do on sugared cereal commercials. After staring at each other in disbelief that people actually did that here, we couldn't help but laugh ourselves.

We arrived in Kinvara about 6 p.m., parking our car in the small gravel lot by the house and converted barn owned by our host. She came out to greet us and took us into her place to get the keys, where she was knitting a spectacularly colorful array of baby clothes. She asked us if we had heard about her place on NPR, as one of their reporters comes there every summer and did a piece on it. She also said that John Prine summered in town with his family, sometimes jamming at the musical evenings that crop up so frequently around there. She then showed us to the barn where we'd be sleeping. It was thatched, with uneven whitewashed walls a foot or more thick, and filled with books and art. I thought to myself, I'll have no problems sleeping HERE, even though the barn is practically sitting in the road. Although the barn was supposed to be self-catering, she had stocked the fridge with breakfast supplies, earning our eternal gratitude.

After puttering around a bit in our cozy space, we made our way out to explore the Dunguaire castle across the street. This place has tours and medieval-style banquets in the more temperate months, so we just skirted around the outside on a slim, muddy track that gave way to the bay below. After a fashion it was time to decide about dinner, so we walked into the town proper and scoped things out. Let's see, should we go to the one nice restaurant with pricey food that was recommended? Or the self-dubbed "best food and music in town"? Or the other best food in town place, with free music nightly? It was awful difficult to discern between one place and the next there, and all of them seemed pretty quiet at that hour. We ended up at Keogh's, which had some stickers of various travel publications on the door, and sat in the pub area. Another so-so meal passed, as we listened to two very authentic looking old guys chatting at the bar and drinking endless cups of coffee. There was an acoustic guitar case propped up against the bar, a good sign, and a guy who would alternate between checking on it and having a shouted conversation with another person in the restaurant area. Eventually he left with his possessions, and after dawdling as much as we thought humanly possible, we exited as well and took another slow cruise around town, listening carefully for any distant strains of a violin or crooning, but all was still. We entered another bar, this one nearly barren of ornament and seemingly populated exclusively by locals. I got a couple beers at the bar and we had a sit at one of the tables, ignored by the rather boisterous group of varying ages (although women were heavily outnumbered). We sipped our way through the beers, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did so we went back to our place. We researched the next day's activities and called it a night.

(The title of the post references the fact that I fervently believe that stopping in Donegal somehow created the karmic connection that allowed us to find the elusive Maggie's on the Pike in Donegal, PA, last time we drove the PA turnpike. I've wanted to go there for years, and we actually tried one time but failed to find it. I referred to the place as the Brigadoon of Donegal, appearing every so often out of the mists so that mortals can visit it and sup on its vegetarian cuisine, and then disappearing again without a trace. Now the curse is broken. But given the fact that it's a ways off the turnpike and that it was a bit pricey, I doubt we'll be dropping in with any regularity.)

NI, day 2

Time and a decent breakfast make up for most, if not all, injustices perpetrated in the night, so after some grumbling and in-room tea, we descended the stairs for the morning's repast. The cheery husband served as waiter, and seemed befuddled when we came down, as he had apparently not been informed by the missus that we'd be dining at that hour. The buffet consisted of the usual B&B stuff (cereal, OJ, yogurt (including rhubarb!), caffeinated beverages), and then the guy brought out the Ulster fry: fried soda bread, fried eggs, bacon, really good sausage, fried tomato, and fried potato bread. Every bit of it delicious, and not a bit of it going to waste in spite of its immense proportions. Wikipedia informs me that it is traditionally all fried in lard. Loverly.

With that under our belts we hit the road back to Portstewart, having already told our hosts the day before what we would like to see. We all crammed into their Continental style van that they rented in France (with the steering wheel on the wrong wrong side) and made our way to the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, a tourist attraction that connects some scenic cliffs with a tiny island. It was mighty windy on the narrow trail leading to the bridge, which was protected from the cliff's edge by a thick, thorny hedge of vigorously blooming whin (gorse). Once we started out it began to rain lightly. H. managed to make it across the scarily-jouncy bridge in spite of her fear of heights. The views were beautiful and the sea a lovely deep greeny-blue, but it was not an ideal day for hanging out. We lingered on the island a bit and then made our way back to the car, once again damp.

Our next stop was the Bushmill's distillery for the whiskey tour, paying a dear price for the privilege. We waited about a half hour for the tour to start, discovering in the meantime that the bathrooms had won an annual prize for nicest facilities in NI (although our hosts told us that nearly everyone has won it). We then had to trudge through the rain again to get to a connecting building. It was not all that interesting of a tour, primarily because there wasn't much to see aside from the giant copper distilling vessels and oak maturing barrels. And the bottling facility wasn't operating because it was a weekend, so we got shown a video instead. But our tour guide was nice and endlessly patient while answering all the questions she had answered a million times before, such as the fact that the water they use comes directly out of the stream outside the complex, but the triple-distillation process removes all the impurities and then the high-proof liquor is diluted to the proper strength with tap water. She informed us that Bushmill's had created a new whiskey for the distillery's 400th anniversary that was made with crystallized malts, giving it a distinctly different flavor than the others in their line. Once the tour was over we received one sample each of the whiskey of our choosing, although the new whiskey wasn't among the choices. The tour guide came around and chatted us up and I asked her about it, and she said she could give us a wee dram due to our specialness. I wasn't crazy about my first sample, but this one was very pleasant. I resolved to ask strangers more questions from then on, thinking that at least some of the time it would result in interesting things happening. That lasted about a week before I annoyed myself out of it.

When we concluded the tour after a look around the gift shop, the sun was peeking out and we ate lunch vagabond-style in the back of the van. We were well-provisioned with cheeses, crackers, strawberries, watermelon, and other delights. I had some special ANZAC biscuits that I had made at home and was carrying around in the unlikely event that I needed a snack, so I shared those as well. It was a nice light meal after such a heavy breakfast. Our next stop on the grand tour was to the Giant's Causeway, an unusual geologic formation made up of hexagonally-shaped stone columns rising out of the water. At £5 per car, it was a relative bargain when compared with Bushmill's. It is a UNESCO world heritage site, and in contrast to the reverential air of most such places, people were scrambling all over the rocks and having a good ol' time. Young couples were testing their bravery by getting their pictures taken while the water sprayed up behind them after hitting the rocks. Once we got our fill, we took the long way back past an organ pipe rock formation and up the hillside, gamely crawling under the "trail closed" barrier and scrambling over the not-at-all dangerous miniature landslide blocking the path, to enjoy the scenic views from on high.

Later we stopped off in the town of Bushmills for a pint while we waited for the dinner hour to arrive. We learned that the room we were in, which had space for about 8 people, was too big to be considered a "snug". We learned that we were pronouncing "Smithwick's" properly. We learned that C. was well on his way to becoming Irishified, with all his talk of "sweets" (candy) and "football pitches" (soccer fields) and "chips" (fries) and "crisps" (chips).

After a reasonable amount of time, we headed over to Portrush, Portstewart's tourist-trappy next-door neighbor. The arcades and rides gave it an Ocean City vibe, but this was March, when all the OC stuff would still be shuttered. In Ireland, though, the first day of spring is on February 1, so they were well into the season by the time we showed up. In spite of the hokiness, they did have some decent dining options there, and on this day everyone and their mother was trying to get into the Harbour Bistro, just like us. We put our names in the queue and then went to wait upstairs in their ample lounge. An hour later they called our names and we went down.

The system was similar to the one we encountered in London, where you peruse the menu at the table and then order up front. I got a nice piece of salmon with caramelized fennel and cep (porcini) foam. Jack got an amazing dish of mac & cheese with a side of garlic fries. Everything was well worth the wait, and if you forgot to convert the currency it even seemed to be reasonably priced.

Knowing we'd have a drive ahead of us the next day and given the previous night's lack of quality sleep, we headed back to the B&B after taking in Portstewart's nightlife of people eating ice cream in their cars, taxis waiting outside of the nightclub, and teens who wanted to be hooligans but weren't brave enough to act out in front of the cops cruising slowly down the strip. (All the police stations in NI look like prisons--high chain-link fences topped with barbed wire.) We were sad to have to leave after such a short visit, but it was time to head south.