Vacation Day Four-Bantry House, Killarney, and R2D2 and C3PO Weren't Lovers

Spoiler alert: this is too long and its definitely self-indulgent. So skip to the middle for the actual trip description.

This morning was supposed to begin with me bursting out of bed early like a rocket to the moon, full of youthful vim and vigor, so I could attack a vigorous three mile run, and get in an excellent breakfast and a walk on campus before leaving for Bantry House and Killarney National Park at a sensible time in the mid-morning.

Here’s what really happened.

Prying myself out of bed at 8:30 like a rusty nail out of a warped stud, I bagged the run. I figured that since I felt like I was recovering from anesthetic after kidney surgery, the run probably wasn’t the best idea. Plus they stop serving breakfast at 10 a.m. so I’d be pushing it to try for a run. After thinking about it for like five seconds, I decided to do a load of wash while I was at breakfast. I forgot, of course, that you don’t just wash the clothes. You dry them too. Extra time. No wonder I always lose my keys. Sharp thinking. After trudging down to breakfast, which took forever, I did my zombie packing impression as my clothes were drying. Then I thought it would be a good idea to take a 15 minute walk on campus. No more than 15 minutes. Because, you know, vacation is all about rules and boundaries. 15 minutes turned into 45 once I stopped off for provisions as the local Quickie-Mart. Though the campus is very small and quite lovely; most of the walk was past a tranquil little stream running between campus proper and busy Washington Street. It has a weird, insulating effect though, kind of like how at Rice University, next to the Houston Medical Center (one of the busiest medical centers in the world), you can’t hear anything “behind the hedges.” Its like your own little world. Same with Cork State, or whatever the hell its name is. I forgot already. The campus is made up of about 1/3 church looking buildings, another 1/3 Soviet-era “build a thousand flats in 12 days” architecture, and the other 1/3 is more modern architecture (some of which is quite attractive). This being County Kerry, there were all kinds of signs and plaques in Gaelic, and more commemorating the heroes of the glorious 1916-1923 uprising. More on that later.

Back to breakfast, because I have some vital information relate concerning my breakfast.

Uh, I just thought about what that sentence means. I desperately need more friends. Or, even one friend will do.

Anyway, for road food, it was magnificent. The same deadly scone selection from yesterday evening, along with other amazing goodies—fruits, juices, nuts, seeds, cereals, etc. The hot breakfast menu was equally dazzling (more like truck stop chicken fried steak dazzling, instead of Xanadu roller dance dazzling, of course). I ordered a florentine omelet, consisting of eggs, fresh cheddar, spinach, very fresh tomatoes, and pesto. Easily it was the best meal of the trip.

Now for the side issues.

First off, I’m not sure whether I was the only one who noticed the unending cold draft playing peek-a-boo with my legs. OK, I was wearing shorts during the Irish autumn, so shame on me, but I was inside, after all. Also, was I the only one who noticed the five or six flies buzzing non-stop under the otherwise tasteful chandelier? Don’t get me wrong, it was delightful. Normally you have to find a Tex-Mex buffet place in the south side of San Antonio for such elegance, so this was a little touch of home. Respect, guys, really. So check it…at least ¾ of the staff appeared to be from some Eastern European country. Pottsylvania or some such great place to leave I imagine. The thing is, they all worked really hard and spoke better English than most of the native English speakers back home who usually wait on me. Those tricky Poles. First they get us to like them what with that plucky Solidarity up and rising against Chernenko or Andropov or whatever walking dead General Secretary was running Moscow at the end of the 1970s. Hey unsuccessful Tienanmen Square protesters, you got served by a bunch of Poles (though I have great respect for you). How does that taste? So the Euros, feeling a tinge of guilt about how they never once lifted a finger to stop the Soviets from doing anything, decide to let them and all the other former Iron Curtain countries into the European Union. Only to find out, horror of horrors, they’re conservative and they like George W. Bush. Eek gads! And someone showed one of them the internet or the library or something, and they figured out that EU-area residents could work in other EU states very easily. So they all hop on the Graf Zeppelin, or whatever they ride around in, and bring their balalaikas and their babushkas over to Polite Society, and ruin the place. The whole thing is a scandal that has the Dublin cab drivers all a flutter. But they can serve up a mean breakfast. Are they our Mexicans? Or does that even matter anymore? What with our economy, its not going to be long before Americans start sneaking across the Mexican border looking for jobs. Like with the Zeta drug cartel. I could be their consigliere, or whatever its called in Spanish.

All these eastern Europeans are personal service workers, which means they have to speak English. I guess that accounts for all the language schools I’ve seen in foreign countries. And the US. They all want to speak English so they can get those jobs (instead of lugging around a jack hammer on a construction site I guess). Like R2D2 in Star Wars, who was a “Protocol Droid” and could speak about eight billion languages, but was utterly useless for anything (including protocol, ironically) that would be helpful in overthrowing the Empire. Did he ever actually use his Protocol skills, ever? All we ever saw him do was boss around little C3PO and bitch about how tough he had it. By the way, was R2D2 actually in charge of C3PO? I don’t remember anyone saying there was some sort of droid career ladder and where those two were on it. All I know is C3PO did all the actual work, like shutting down all the garbage smashers on the detention level of the Death Star with only a moment’s notice, while R2D2 just pissed and moaned at him, and was the only one who called Luke “Master.” R2D2 hung around and got in everyone’s way, while C3PO had to go on the run to blow up the Death Star and to tough it out in Dagobah while Luke was in Jedi training. And the one time R2D2 actually was in a position to, you know, help, he wouldn’t do it. He could have talked to the Ewoks and persuaded them not to nibble them all to death, but he refused because it wouldn’t be right, or some such nonsense. R2D2 just bossed around C3PO, who did all the hard work, while R2D2 took credit for it. In short, he was perfect middle management. And no, R2D2 and C3PO weren’t gay lovers. Bert and Ernie, well, yeah, I thought everyone knew that. But not R2D2 and C3PO.

Another thing we need to discuss is the other spectacle I observed at breakfast. A somewhat older couple was sitting by the window, an older man (by which I mean around 55-60), and his manatee-looking wife. A mother and her cute young college age daughter were then seated next to them. Not 10 minutes passed before the old guy starts talking to the young woman. Not the mom, and not to the manatee. The girl. With absolutely no apparent concern that his wife is sitting right there watching this whole deal play out. He’s asking all these first date questions like “what’s your major” (no, literally, he asked her what she’s studying. I thought at any second he was going to ask her if anyone ever told her that she has enchanting eyes). Now I get the wife not saying anything. She was either too mortified to think or she decided just to kill him later, or she was so used to it that it was like another day at the office. But the mom? What’s your excuse honey? Moms are supposed to protect their daughters from this kind of stuff. Remember in Gone With the Wind, when Mammy was shepherding Scarlett down the streets of post-war Atlanta after Rhett wouldn't give her the money to pay the taxes on Tara. Mammy was smacking men away who were talking to Scarlett. “Get away trash, get on!” THAT’s what Moms are supposed to do. Not sit there while some icky married old guy goes fishing right in front of her. Moms are supposed to be the ultimate CB. And while we’re at it, Hugh Hefner, why don’t you ease up on the girl? There’s three and only three valid reasons for a man to talk to a woman 30 years younger than him to whom he’s not related: (1) they have a professional relationship (and not an Eliot Spitzer-Ashley Dupre) relationship; (2) he’s exchanging contact information after a car accident or helping her change a flat tire; or (3) your boss is introducing you to his daughter, whom you suspect you may have slept with the night before at your adult fraternity party (so the polite thing is to at least talk to her). Otherwise, it’s a negative Ghost Rider, the pattern is full. Dude, you married that manatee, you need to swim with her.

OK, after all that, I took that walk, did my wash, finished packing, and at the crack of 11 a.m. headed off for magnificent Italianate Bantry House on the southwest coast. This was built in the 1700s by some rich old white man, who apparently single handedly managed to stop a mid-size French invasion fleet from sailing up the Bantry Bay to invade Ireland and kick out the English. Exactly how he did it was kind of lost on me. The magnificent house and estate has a premier view of Bantry Bay before it reaches the town of Bantry, and there’s some cannons at the front. I guess since they were French, they were basically looking for any reason to turn around and go back home instead of fight, so once some crazy rich old bastard started firing his cannons, that was something they could take back to Louis. “Sacre bleu! Zee anglish. Zey hass zee boom guns oui? No guerre!” They probably couldn’t pull that white flag out fast enough once that old guy started popping off his guns. For that, the King was quite grateful and granted the old man a title and an estate (a bigger one, I guess, complete with serfs and everything). Basically the house got passed down through the generations to today. Around the time of the second or third Earl of Bantry, the owner got bored and went on some sort of Charles Foster Kane collection spree throughout Europe, bringing back everything that wasn’t nailed down. The place was full of incredible antique furniture, paintings, tapestries, and so forth. Example, it has two, not one, but two, fireplaces and some tapestries from Le Petit Trianon at Versailles. You know, Marie Antoinette’s little house? That’s when you know you have more money than you need. Sadly, the place has kind of a southern Gothic air to it now. Peeling paint, faded curtains, water stained wall coverings. The family who owns it must struggle to keep it up. The grounds were in better shape. They’ve been restoring the elegant gardens and there’s several walks around the estate that are quite nice. Ideally, some corporation would come in and restore the place, because the house is really incredible. With the rugged Irish coastal weather, its going to be hard to keep it from falling into further disrepair.

The town of Bantry was quite nice. Again, it features a thriving central commercial district with a diverse group of local merchants. I had lunch at a modest place called Tractors, which served me some really good vegetable soup, and a pork cutlet with vegetables. As I have begun to discover, if you order “vegetables” around here, you will always get the following: broccoli, mashed potatoes (or boiled), and carrots. Restaurants observe this rule without fail. They must have put it in the statute books or something.

Leaving Bantry later than I hoped, I raced toward Killarney, hoping to make it before darkness fell. The trip takes you over narrow two-lane roads through very rugged country. I passed through several tunnels dug into hillsides. While in Bantry it was warming and the clouds were lifting, within half an hour it resumed raining. Then the clouds would lift some and the sun would come out and it would be brilliant green everywhere. Then more clouds and rain, then sun, etc. All the while I’m trying to drive my car on the left hand side of the road, threading the needle of this too narrow roadway as oncoming cars are scaring the hell out of me whizzing by, and I’m trying to sneak little peaks of the spectacular hills and valleys. Its like the Jerry Seinfeld theory about looking at cleavage-you can only look for just a little bit then you must look away. Looking for more than a couple of seconds is a good way to get turned into a little squashed bug on some Irish country road. At one point along the way, I got stopped at a police checkpoint by what turned out to be a really hot female cop. I think it was a routine stop; she must have noticed it was a rental car and I guess just wanted to make sure I didn’t have blood all over me or have 5 kilos of cocaine in the back seat or something. She asked me how I was and if I was here on holiday. Sadly, despite that kind of set up, this situation did not turn into the beginning of a porno movie. Disappointed, I drove off toward Killarney.

Now, Killarney is sort of the biggest town in the region. If you’re some fisherman or farmer, you probably have to go to Killarney to do your shopping or get a loan from the bank. There’s all kinds of things to do around here—fishing, golfing (golfing is big, everyone in my hotel is playing golf around here every day), hiking, touring, shopping, etc. There’s several commercial streets with an active night life. Lots of bars and restaurants.

I got to Killarney a lot faster than I thought I would. Even though the driving had me beat (all that worrying about instant death on the road really had me white knuckling it like a trucker on greenies with a shipment of fruit that’s going to spoil if he doesn’t get it to Albuquerque by Tuesday), I just had to get in a run. So as twilight descended, I ran past a really nice stream in the Killarney National Park, as far as Ross Castle. I’ll write about that a couple of days from now, but its another 15th century castle built by the local mamba-jahamba, much of which remains intact. One part of the trail ran past the lake by which it sat, so I got a view from a distance that made it look like the Castle Aaaarrrgggghhhh from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (sorry to repeat mention that movie, but with all these old castles, I’ve been thinking about that movie a lot). Again I was amazed that you can just walk right up to it, as I did, and there’s no guards or security or John Candy Wallyworld attendants watching you. There’s no graffiti, no newspapers or bags or beer cans. The Irish obviously care for their history. I think that’s kind of the ethic all over Europe. In Texas, “history” starts in about the 1820s or so (although San Antonio dates back to the mid-1700s or so, I think?). “History” here goes back to the Romans. So, they appreciate all the stuff that they didn’t blow up in their wars or revolutions. Guess I left that part out. Signed, The Bastille’s Not There Anymore. Unfortunately, I got turned around on the trails and got lost. But with help from a couple of bypassers I did eventually make it back to the town, but not before my ambitious 45 minute run became a 60 minute death march.

Dinner at the hotel (the Killeen House Hotel), though kind of expensive, was really excellent. Seafood cassoulet, goat cheese salad (that makes about five), and crab and ham stuffed salmon. With, yep, broccoli, mashed potatoes, and carrots. The staff here, particularly the owners, are really good. They go beyond the extra mile to provide excellent service, answer all questions, provide suggestions. I’m very pleased.

And incredibly tired. Night all.

Next-the Ring of Kerry. Which has nothing to do with the egomaniacal, French-looking, “Vietnam Veteran” who lost to George W. Bush.