Driving With The Dutch and The TomTom Lady

On Sunday, August 19th, 2012 we woke up in Bayeux, France a day later than planned, having fought and lost the battle the day before to continue onward since we found our current place idyllic.  This day, we did not have the option to remain in Bayeux since we held tickets leaving Zurich in three days, and our itinerary read "Rouen, Strasbourg, Colmar, Bern and Interlaken," while our map said Zurich Airport laid over eight hours to the east...with no sign of moving west any time soon.

Although our initial approach to the summer was heavily structured and organized, by August 19th any sense of order was gone.  We had written into our itinerary, then removed major cities such as Verona, Split, Rome, Dubrovnik, Barcelona, and Paris, (the plan being to visit as many regions which required a car as possible, assuming we could fly back to major cities easily in the future), but three days before our departure, the end of the summer loomed like a funeral, and deep down we feared that we may never make it back, or have this much time together again.

I mentioned before that we didn't hit our "travel groove" until a month into our trip, and after that we fought the urge to stop and stay in any town where we felt at home.  But that Sunday marked exactly two months since we left The States, and it was making less and less sense to leave beautiful places when we assumed we had already seen the best of Europe.  Luckily, there was a lot more beauty to see.

So, against our best judgement, we left our room filled with light, fresh air and the sound of bells tolling periodically from the nearby cathedral, and we walked to our car parked on the main street, trying not to make eye contact with the children who had silently decided that this two month anniversary would mark the official limit to their nomadic spirit.

Child Aside:
Strangely enough, children are not as portable as they appear.  I can't remember if I have mentioned this before, but it was poignant to see how eagerly the children sought friends and attempted to establish roots in most of the places we stopped whether for a day or a few hours.  The girl introduced herself to children easily, even when there was no common language.  She also longed to wear local clothing and buy local toys to more easily fit in and establish a link with each new place.  The boy didn't try to fit in at all, but he did reach out to pet most passing dogs--with and without their owners' approval and appreciation--and we found that his positive feelings toward any location tracked a line parallel to his access to kind animals and tolerant owners.

However, by the second month, the children made fewer and fewer attempts to hold on to the places we visited.  The girl's "Can I buy..." questions, as well as the boy's "That looks like my dog!" declarations became fewer and fewer which saddened their parents even while it made their behavior more tolerable. 

Now, I don't want to go on the record as saying the kids no longer wanted to experience Europe.  The truth is I believe they would have been happy to stay until we ran out of money, but this was the moment where we needed to settle down, find an apartment, and meet the neighbors because, at 8 and 11 years old, the kids were either too old or too young to walk to the car and leave a perfectly good town without resembling an inmate on death row.

Driving to Strasbourg:
From the moment Americans receive our drivers licenses (10 minutes after our 16th birthday) to the moment we die, most travel conversations center around how many hours (or states) we can drive without stopping for gas, food, sleep, or bathroom breaks.  So, most Americans would openly scoff at any complaint of a six hour trip from Bayeux to Strasbourg.  In my defense, in North America I can drive 6-8 hours straight if I don't begin consuming liquids before the gas tank is half empty.  (This is very important since stopping to use the bathroom before the gas tank is under a quarter full is in bad form....especially when driving 14 hours from the East Coast to the Midwest.)  Now, I used to think eight hours was a pretty good record until my coworker declared that Wisconsin is where he stops for gas since it's half way to Colorado....which he can reach before sleeping.  So, luckily, I didn't consider my driving record a competitive one when our friend Rob--who is from Baltimore--told us that his driving record to college--which is in Alaska--is seven days.  Yes, seven days.  We know this because my husband and I yelled versions of "What?" and "Seven days?!" before he replied, "Yeah, I was speeding."

So, my humiliation aside, my personal driving record is still good enough to reach Strasbourg without a bathroom break, however, European roads are not the same as North American ones.  They look the same, but they have force fields and worm holes that zap the energy from its drivers....or maybe it's the foreign language signs, radio broadcasts, and highway paint that do this.  For whatever reason, don't expect to drive longer than five hours without stopping the car, jumping in place, slapping your face, and drinking a Coca-Cola. 

If you're North American, you're probably skeptical, so I'll give you a few fatigue-inducing examples:

1) North Americans identify yellow lines as those separating opposing traffic while white lines separate lanes moving in the same direction.  In much of Europe, white lines denote both types of traffic with periodic signs indicating on which type of road you are traveling.  This system is fine when you are in an urban area with Jersey barriers between opposing traffic, or when you are in a rural area and you're not tired.  However, when you are both tired and traveling in a rural area, and you cannot see the lanes of opposing traffic, you can easily convince yourself that you are in the opposing lane and you must jump to the right before reaching the top of the hill. 

2) Signs such as "Do Not Enter" are not absolute...at least not in France.  For example, you may exit the road only to see what you believe to be a "Do Not Enter" sign (either a red circle with a white horizontal line, or a white circle with a red outline), however, this sign only means you can't enter the road IF the word "Sauf" (except) is not under it or you do not meet the exceptions listed after "Sauf".  So, you'll have to park the car and think hard before you continue.  For example, our hotel in the Loire Valley seemed completely unreachable at the end of lane marked with a "Do Not Enter" sign until we translated "Sauf Riverains" which means "except residents".  Now, we have exceptions to "Do Not Enter" signs in the US too, denoting time of day or day of week, but the reasons are generally obvious and they're always written in English.  By the way, we didn't see any exceptions to German-speaking "Do Not Enter" signs, but one wouldn't expect them.

3) Endless corn fields in Iowa don't compete for your attention in the same way traveling through mountains, or past castles and quaint villages on distant hills do.  In addition, there are areas of France--especially in Brittany and Normandy--where it looks as if the sky is a concave bowl that ends five miles away.  It's a strange perspective and none of our pictures captured it, but I swear it's true...and very distracting.

4) You generally can't listen to the radio in Continental Europe.  Period.  Let me start by saying we had every intention of fully immersing ourselves in the culture of each country by listening to polka in the Alps, Mozart as we entered Salzburg and Vienna, and opera as we drove into Florence.  In between, we imagined listening to each country's top hits list even though Techno didn't die a dignified death there in the 80s like it rightfully should have.  But we found no Mozart on the radio in Austria and no opera in Italy. There was polka in Switzerland, but we also heard painful song mixes like a polka/country English/German version of "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)".  I'm completely serious...and nothing says Swiss Alps like songs about Cajun cooking and Southern Louisiana topography.  But the real reason you can't listen to the radio in Europe is because your kids speak English and there are no edited versions of any English songs anywhere, and even the songs you recognize as completely sweet and innocuous back home have a dark side in Europe which we didn't realize until we heard the boy yell, "Oh, yeah!" from the back seat during a sweet ballad that repeatedly dropped the "f" bomb.

Now, music isn't completely out of reach if your car has a USB connection like ours did, but make sure you like the songs on your IPOD well enough to listen to each one nearly 100 times. This fact would be far less painful if everyone liked the same music...and those who didn't like the music didn't mock the songs they didn't like while the rest of the car yelled for the mocker to be quiet.  So, the girl yelled during Green Day and Eminem while the boy yelled during Adele and Lady Gaga.  The only music everyone could agree on was U2, Weird Al, and the Black Eyed Peas.  Disclaimer: when I say "everyone" I don't include my husband because he only likes the Beatles and Mozart, and he used both to punish bad behavior.

5) The TomTom lady either doesn't know the rules of the road or she doesn't care.  For example, in Austria and Italy, she screamed at us to slow down even though the reduction in speed was required for trucks and RVs only.  You may say that she might not know we were a car and not a truck except that the navigation system was built into the car.  So, someone missed a setting somewhere and the system blinking a camera icon to tell you you just passed a highway speed camera while speeding, and therefore qualify for a ticket, is distracting and annoying.

When you think the TomTom lady couldn't be more annoying, hold on because she doesn't know where the French installed their speed cameras.  So, concentrating on looking for the radar signs  (see http://wirthsummer2012.blogspot.com/2012/09/driving-to-france-and-tollways.html) while making sure you're not in a lane designated for oncoming traffic, and your kids are fighting over music can be taxing. 

Similar to the US, you also have toll plazas, traffic putting on their hazards and stopping suddenly for no apparent reason and sometimes all of the chaos seems a bit much.  However, there is help on the roads and it comes in the form of the Dutch.  Yes, the Dutch. 

If you are in mainland Europe and you're confused about the speed limit, the location of speed cameras, or in which lane to travel, follow a car whose license plate includes an "NL" in the blue area.  Now, we saw very skilled Swiss, Austrian, Slovenian, Croatian, German and French drivers while driving through those coutries, but they were not as consistently smart, yet daring, as the Dutch.  We stayed a couple of car lengths behind any Dutch car going in our direction; we sped when the Dutch did; we slowed when the Dutch did; and we never received a ticket or came close to an accident.  I don't know if safely pushing the envelope is a genetic trait or a product of training, but either way, we need to clone it.

In addition to pointing-out speed traps, the Dutch do their part to translate French culture.  For example, at several French toll plazas we were perplexed by long lines for one or two open toll lanes while the lines for the automated lines were completely empty.  We were afraid there was a problem with the empty lanes, so we stayed with the French until we saw a Dutch car escape the long lines and dart to an empty one.  Soon after, we realized that the French were protesting the removal of manned booths by waiting only in the lines with a human being at the end.  I must say we were moved by the French devotion to the employment of their people, which we noted as we followed the Dutch to the empty credit card pay lanes. 

If you're afraid there won't be a Dutch car in front of you when you travel through Europe, fear not. The Dutch are everywhere! In fact, we are pretty sure there is no one left in the Netherlands between the middle of June and the end of August. 

I don't have any pictures of Dutch drivers to share, but I'm pretty sure we are following a Dutch car below.  We took this picture as a silent protest to our schedule not allowing us to stop as we raced past Paris at 135km per hour.

© 2013 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill 

Bayeux, France and the Pledge of Allegiance

After arriving in Cherbourg safe and sick on the ferry, it was all we could do not to return to the British-run B&B, throw our bags on the bed and declare we'd stay there until our trip ended six days later.  But there was the cemetery at Omaha Beach to see as well as Bayeux, Alsace, Bern and Interlaken. So, with time at a premium, we pushed our sickness down and our car southeast. 

You may wonder why I've already posted entries for the return ferry ride as well as Omaha Beach, but this is because--to my husband's silent chagrin (I can read his mind)--I switch back and forth between a chronological and thematic organization of events. So, it didn't make sense to write about Utah Beach (which we saw before Ireland) without writing about Omaha Beach (which we saw afterwards).  In honor of my husband though, from now on I will stick to chronology. 

As with most of the trip, we drove well into the afternoon before pulling into a wayside to make reservations at a hotel farther along, and to be honest, living the nomadic life was getting a bit old.  But this time we were lucky enough to find lodging in a hotel recommended by our Rick Steves' guide which was within a short walking distance to the main cathedral, the Bayeux Tapestry, and the British WWII Cemetery (also referenced in http://wirthsummer2012.blogspot.com/2012/10/normandy-part-ii-beaches.html). 

If you're rolling your eyes right now because you can't imagine why anyone would stop in the north of France to see a famous rug, you sound exactly like me.  In fact, my husband received no end of abuse in Ireland when I repeatedly asked when we expected to see "the rug." To be completely honest, the abuse was in no small part because the kids and I didn't want to leave Ireland.  In fact, we were upset that divine intervention hadn't provided high enough seas to cancel our return ferry (though it got close).  We even fantasized about changing our return ticket to leave from Dublin Airport, instead of Zurich, and sending the car back to France on the ferry alone or with my husband as its only occupant.

So, we were in a bad mood, and I refused to make the call to Bayeux to book the hotel. I said I was tired of being the family's only French-speaking (though barely) spokesperson, but in retrospect, I was just pouting. Worse than that, my eyes shot daggers at Brian when he did his best to make the arrangements himself.  So, it wasn't a proud moment for me, though I didn't realize it until we arrived at the hotel in the middle of a charming town which displayed signs of welcome in English. There were American and British flags everywhere, and a lovely creek running through the middle.

As I've said in previous posts, the difference between loving and hating a city is often your proximity to its historical center.  This is especially the case when two children and their mother want to lie on a bed and stare at the ceiling until it stops spinning while their father grabs a camera and sees the sites himself.  So, this was the case in Bayeux the first afternoon. But by 10 pm, we had given up pouting, and ventured across the street from the hotel to find the city had come alive with light-painted buildings.



Below:  The Bayeux Cathedral after dark

 

In the summer, beginning at 10:30 PM on certain evenings (if memory serves, it was Tuesdays and Thursdays) the courtyard opposite the Bayeux Cathedral hosts a light show against the canvas of the Hôtel du Doyen.  The narration is in French, but it gives visitors a historical overview of the city using imagery and sound which transcend language.  Here's a video someone else taped:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvPVKU0-eko  and below are still pictures from our visit:

The Tapestry plays an important role in the light show (see above picture) (one of my favorite parts is 9 minutes and 15 seconds into the video [referenced above] when the Beatles play "All You Need Is Love" while the Norman invaders and the English defenders slaughter one another), but no greater than that of WWII (this starts 3 minutes and 7 seconds into the video referenced above) and the soldiers and countries who liberated its residents (see picture below) because this is the town where you will see pictures of American servicemen on buildings and a "Welcome to our Liberators" sign outside the restaurant closest to our hotel.  

You will also see American and British flags inside the Cathedral alongside plaques commemorating Allied soldiers (see below).

One thing I didn't know about the Bayeux Tapestry before we visited was that it's not a square rug on a wall, and it's not really a tapestry at all.  It's a 1.5 foot by 70 yard embroidered cloth which is long enough to wrap around a large portion of the Bayeux Cathedral's nave (pictured below).  It's also not your grandma's embroidery since there are pretty graphic depictions of decapitations, loss of limbs, and arrows through throats, chests and heads.   



  

The Tapestry does a pretty good job of stating the Norman case for invading England--and you'd expect that since it's sitting in Normandy--but it was created in England by--one assumes--either nervous English women or women who hadn't lost their French accents yet. (Spoiler Alert!)  It says that Harold swore allegiance to William the Conqueror during a trip to Normandy, yet Harold usurped the English throne once King Edward the Confessor died. I'd like to take this time to call BS on this story.  

According to the Tapestry (and one or two books), Harold was sent to Normandy with the sole purpose of telling William that the King had chosen him as his successor.  But why King Edward sent Harold to deliver this news instead of someone who didn't have designs on the throne stretches credulity.  After all, I'd like to think I could be trusted with telling my sister that she's my mom's favorite and will, therefore, inherit Great-Grandma's platinum wedding ring, but I might not bank on it.

My suspicion (with very little evidence except what I know of human nature) is that Harold was visiting only to secure the release of his brother or his nephew (there are conflicting accounts) who was held captive by William at the time.  What's not in question is that Harold was captured upon hitting Norman shores (not a very nice welcome if his only mission was to say, "You've won a kindgom!") and was made to swear allegiance to William before going home. After the ceremony, the trunk on which Harold held his hand was revealed to contain a Bible and a relic which would've caused no end of cursing by Harold if he didn't have his heart in his pledge of allegiance.  In any event, William was so sure that Harold would honor his oath that he did some cursing of his own when news of Harold's ascension to the English throne found him. (Again, I have no evidence, but I know people.)

Once the boats were made and the wind was right, William and his entourage headed across the English Channel and Harold didn't see the year 1067. 

So, whether or not you buy the details of the story (Don't! It's ridiculous!), you have to appreciate the artistry and work involved in the Tapestry's creation, and the pure dumb luck involved in keeping nearly 1,000-year-old fabric in pretty amazing condition. 

We couldn't take our own pictures of the Tapestry, but here's a picture taken by the French Tourist Bureau:

So, if I had my way, we would've skipped Bayeux and gone to Paris instead, but that would've been a huge mistake because the Tapestry wasn't just a rug and we liked the town well enough to extend our stay by two nights, leaving only three nights to visit Alsace and Bern, and make it to Zurich Airport in time for our flight.  That said, we have no regrets.  As Brian says, we came to Bayeux for the tapestry, but we stayed for the town.

 © 2013 Nicole Wirth

Author of:  Letters to Salthill 

Ireland vs. Disney World

We learned five things while visiting Ireland this summer:
1) In August, you can get a sunburn after 4pm (see picture below of people getting sunburned on a beach in Cork [you'll have to trust me on this one]) so don't laugh at your friends when they suggest you put on sun block late into the afternoon.

2) Professional photographers don't really earn their pay in Ireland since it's not that hard to find a lovely cow in a lush green pasture with a humble white cottage in the distance...

.....or a misty sailboat-filled harbor....



....or a lonely boat inside that harbor.

  

3) There's no reason for signs like the below, because everyone knows that death is always just a few feet away....





....which the kids proved in Baltimore, County Cork....

.....but my husband didn't (see risky picture he took below):



4) Ireland was a net exporter of food during the Famine (rich land owners apparently didn't feel a desire to share their crop with the starving people outside their gates).  So, living in the halls of Kilmainham Prison (below) was a viable alternative for the famished....until prison administrators decided that the problem was the hungry and the solution was a reduction in rations.  So, it is no wonder that the first half of the 19th Century saw over two million Irish leave their country--1.2 million of which landed in the US. 



5) EU austerity measures have both strangled the Irish economy and created a general nation-wide malaise.

So, given the large number of Americans of Irish ancestry and the historical and current examples of Europe not actually helping Ireland, I believe now might be the time for the United States to woo Ireland away from the EU.  Designating them as the 51st state would be nice, but that's probably too possessive. "Commonwealth" seems cold and isn't much better.  Establishing a "North Atlantic Union" might be nice--although the acronym would be "NAU", making the vote on its adoption confusing.  However, if we do vote "NAU" instead of "NAY", we should probably invite the Canadians to come aboard so they can stop paying an extra dollar for the same book, and we can stop jamming US vending machines with their coins.  I'd also say Mexico deserves an invitation except they provide us with too many drugs and we provide them with too many weapons to be a healthy union.....it's more like a Hollywood marriage, in fact...kind of like Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston. 

You might be wondering how NAU can help the Irish and this is what I have so far:

1. Free Vanity Plates
2. Cheap name brand clothing
3. Great St. Patty's Day parades (no offense, but theirs aren't so great).
4. A strip of land in Florida to thaw out during the winter.
5. They don't have to run back to Ireland when their visa runs out.

What's in it for us:

1. Everyone can wear "Kiss Me I'm Irish" shirts on St. Patrick's Day without lying.
2. Access to a highly educated, highly mobile populace.
3. Someone always has your back in a bar fight.
4. Zero percent tax if you win the lottery, or buy a book (we're more likely to do one than the other).
5. You can honestly call W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift and Bono your countrymen.
6. We don't have to run back to the US when our visas run out.

If you're thinking that I have Irish blood and this is the reason behind my enthusiasm, you may be right, I don't know.  The only way to know for sure is to take that blood test I've been avoiding.   See, my great grandmother's first husband was a Native American and her second was an Irishman. Two of her children looked Native, and one looked Irish (my grandfather) and although everyone claimed my grandpa was the youngest child and the product of the second marriage, I learned in high school that he was actually a middle child.  So, clearly something scandalous was going on in Duck County, Tennessee in 1914 or maybe it was 1915. Truth was, Grandpa didn't know what year he was born which either points to his lying to join the Army or to a grandmother who was a tart.

Back to Ireland:  My husband says his next wife will be Italian, and if we're allowed to make requests, I'd like to put in for a husband from Killarney.  We didn't visit Killarney this time, but we visit Ireland pretty often and Killarney accents haven't left my head since 2001.  Now, I know throwing out previous trips to Ireland sounds pretty snobby, but visiting Ireland is really no more expensive than taking your family to Disney World--no matter what the commercials say--because at the end of the day, the only thing magical about the Magic Kingdom is that someone coerced you to spend far too much money to wait in far too many long lines for rides that are far too short to justify either the airfare, hotel, $75 tickets, $15 parking fee, or the fighting when no one can agree in which long line to stand.

Also, let's be honest and admit that half the reason anyone goes anywhere is for bragging rights (people who blog about their travels are especially tiresome) and there are 87% more bragging rights for an American who visits Ireland than an American who visits Disney World.  It's a scientific fact.  So, the next time that perfectly-put-together mom of the school's most annoying kid sings, "Well, hello there!  How nice you let your son dress so casually.  My son hates that I make him wear his nice clothes to school events," you can say, "Yeah, I haven't been able to wrestle those jeans from him since we returned from Ireland."  Then, for the first time, you can look at her with feigned sympathy as you push past with an, "Excuse me."  This has actually never happened to me, but I imagine it could if I took an interest in my children's education. 

In any event, here's the off-the-top-of-my-head breakdown of what you can expect to spend for a week in Ireland:
You can frequently buy a ticket from the East Coast to Dublin for $650, and you can stay in a B&B for between 35 and 120 Euro a day, depending on the location. 

Camping Aside:
Although we camped a lot in Europe, camping in Ireland is a bad idea unless you want to see your tent fly like ours did in the Alps (http://www.wirthsummer2012.blogspot.com/2012/06/insomnia-and-flying-tents.html), and/or you don't mind feeling damp and cold before you go to sleep; dreaming about being damp and cold; then, waking up to a cloud of visible breath and no desire to shower or brush your teeth because you're too damp and cold.

It costs $120/week to rent a car (brush up on your manual transmission skills or you'll pay about double for an automatic) and $175/week to rent a minivan.

The only thing that really costs money in Ireland is eating/drinking out, but when you compare it to the cost of the bottled water and hamburger you bought the last time you were at Universal Studios, Ireland is cheaper.  Now, my Dublin friends say nothing is free in Ireland, but you're not going to spend $75/ticket for anything you see (even the Guiness factory costs about $60 for a family ticket), and the best parts of the country are the walks along cliffs and the seaside which are absolutely free....as long as you don't slip.  If you're worried your kids will be bored, I promise they won't.  After all, who needs a roller coaster when you can back down a narrow cliffside road looking into the grill of a tour bus while your kids yell, "watch out for the sheep!"....Well, that was a previous trip when we saw the Ring of Kerry and I was the one yelling about the sheep because we didn't have kids yet. I did, however, have a husband hanging outside the passenger-side window taking pictures of the sheep with child-like enthusiasm while we left the dangerous driving to our Irish friends.

So, in summary, Ireland beats Disney World hands down and I say this with full expectation of either being sued or killed by DW thugs.  Additionally, Ireland holds just as many "wows" as any other country we visited this summer and adds a dash of  "holy cow!" (see pictures below of Mizen Head Signal Station in County Cork).  In fact, the boy declared Ireland to be his favorite part of the summer, and just for the record, after two trips to Orlando, he has never said anything positive about Disney World.  Ever.



View from Mizen Head Signal Station, County Cork

© 2013 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill 

Passenger Swapping in Ireland

Although our little silver Renault was among the first cars driven onto the ferry and--predictably--the last off, our close proximity to the ramp teased us into believing we'd move as soon as the ramp lowered onto the third deck.  However, 15 minutes after the ramp descended with two cars and four nervous people, we still sat breathing car exhaust, watching everyone and their motorcycle-riding, leather-wearing, Austrian brother drive down the ramp and off the boat before us.  I've heard sailors describe "harbor fever" before--the impatience one feels when the ship enters the harbor, and awaits the harbor pilot to steer the ship to port--but I never really felt it before that day. See, worse than wanting to step onto Irish soil was the desire to hug our friends who waited at the first roundabout outside Rosslare Port.

Irish Friend Aside:
Rachelle and I have been friends since the fall of 1989, when her first letter coincidentally arrived at my home in Wisconsin some time during my first trip to Ireland.  I was 17 then and I had worked two jobs to save my money to see my other pen pal.. the one whose mother kicked me out of his Galway home three days after my arrival.. But that's a story for another blog.  

Rachelle is from Dublin and her family would never throw me out of their house. So, aside from adoring her and her family, we root for Dublin's Gaelic Football team over every other... especially Galway.  Now, I'm not saying I don't deserve to get kicked out of a house on occasion and I'm not saying my first pen pal's mother didn't have cause to kick me out in 1989, but if she wants to woo you to her side of the argument, she can write her own blog.  On this blog, I'm the wronged party and she was completely unreasonable!

Gaelic Football Aside:
If your friend gives you a lovely navy blue O'Neills GAA Dublin rain jacket, you should know that wearing it in Wexford, Wicklow, Cork, Tipperary or really anywhere outside of Dublin is equivalent to wearing a Packers jersey in Chicago, or a Red Socks hat in New York. If you think the markings on your jacket are discreet and people can't see the small light blue stripes on the shoulder or the subtle "Átha Cliath" embroidery on the upper left breast, you're wrong.  They won't treat you as badly as Philadelphia fans do when the Eagles are losing--they're not animals, after all--but you may get a few looks you wouldn't expect from an Irishwoman... outside of Galway that is.

So, after every other vehicle left the ship, the only Irish person employed by Irish Ferries motioned us to drive completely around the deck before descending the ramp onto the third deck. We determined that he was just messing with us because we had French plates, but we obeyed him since we were 47% sure he would eventually let us leave... which he did... and after a pleasantly brief encounter with the Garda Síochána (Irish Police), we were on our way to the roundabout.

Driving Aside:
If you're an American driving a French car in Ireland and you have access to an Irish friend, I suggest you take her in your car even if you have to trade your husband to another car to do it.  (For good measure, you should trade your son too.)  This way, you have someone who knows the roads (or at least the language); her husband has a greater incentive in you following his car (one assumes); and--although your husband can see you in the Irish car's side mirrors--he can't hear you complain about him. (Note:  It takes a while to coordinate complaining while wearing a smile on your face.)

Another benefit to swapping passengers is that your friend will yell at you immediately if you forget to stay in the left lane (a husband may avoid your wrath), and her hands and legs will tell you what she's too stunned to say when a truck comes barreling around a well-hedged corner and you're crowding the center line. I admit that this last example makes traveling with an Irish person especially rewarding.  Since two-way rural roads often look like the first picture below, and may look like the second if your GPS has a sense of humor, I was reduced to hysterics at the sight of my friend grabbing for a nonexistent passenger-side steering wheel and slamming down the nonexistent clutch. Laughs were also had when the Irish car scraped a hedge or hit a pot hole full of water with your son's head hanging out the rear window.  To say that Ireland is a more perfect version of home is an understatement!

One last point about driving in Ireland is that after a few days, driving on the left begins to feel strangely normal which makes it feel wrong.  So, the only way to keep things straight in your head is to say "left, left, left" every time you turn a corner which makes singing in the car impossible, and parking lots pretty dangerous since the lack of any real order forces you to jump to the left, then the right when that feels wrong.  In short, expect to annoy a few people on and off the highway, and in and outside of your car.

A few minutes after leaving the Rosslare roundabout, we found a lovely, warm, dark-paneled restaurant... or maybe it was a pub.  In any event, they served food, and everyone spoke English, and it was only a few minutes later that I spied the kids talking enthusiastically across the table with their Irish "cousins" while the boy appeared completely at ease, and really and truly happy.

Here are a couple of landscape pictures in case you're feeling impatient:

I'll talk more about the beauty of Ireland in my next post, but be forewarned that the landscape competes with the people for your time and attention, and the people generally win.  

English Language Aside:

Although the British are unsurpassed at using English as a weapon (it doesn't take long to assess their effectiveness while watching Question Time with Members of Parliament), and most Americans use English as a purely utilitarian device (switching common organizations and phrases into acronyms as often as possible and not bothering to correct each others grammar because if you understood what they said it doesn't matter how they said it), the Irish use English as a play thing, like an intriguing toy that washed up on the beach.  So, bring a notebook with you to write down some of their funnier phrases and insults.  Here are some I jotted down:

"She's got brains to burn." (Apparently she's too smart for her own good.) 

"Paper never rejects ink." (An explanation for inaccurate news.) 

"She's so ugly, the tide wouldn't take her out." (The meaning seems pretty clear.)

Question:  "Did you miss me?"
Answer:  "I wasn't aiming for you."

Now, although the Irish are well known for their ability to spin a yarn, their ability to make shocking words completely acceptable is a testament to their charm. Two sentences of a story that stand out for me are, "So, he said if the lad went near him again, he'd beat the PISS outta him!" He swallowed. "So, that was grand…"

When we finally pushed back from the table and put our notebook away, we found some signs that made us laugh nearly as much as the conversation.  The first picture is from Skibbereen in County Cork.

An unfortunate name for a business situated next to a funeral home.

Alarming, but helpful.

Good advice for any occasion.

Ending aside:

So, I know I promised I would finish this blog before Thanksgiving and I'm clearly not a person of my word because I still need to finish Ireland, the rest of France, and a few spots in Switzerland.  I'm not sure why I'm so slow, but somehow it took a lot less time to write while we were traveling.  In any event, I will definitely be done by Easter!

© 2013 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill 

Normandy B&Bs and Irish Ferries

After leaving Mont Saint Michel, we returned to a British-run B&B well after midnight which was really too bad since we missed seeing our hosts on our last night there and we needed to get up early the next day to make our way to the Irish Ferry in Cherbourg....but I'm getting ahead of myself.

If you're in Normandy and you yearn for a conversation which is more complicated than, "With ice, please," you are well served to stay in a British run B&B.  We found a lovely B&B on a farm near Hambye through the Holiday Lettings website for $85 Euro/night and since it was conveniently located half way between the Normandy Beaches and Mont Saint Michel (a little over an hour in both directions) we were able to sleep in the same bed for three nights in a row.  It was also located only 1 1/2 hours due south of Cherbourg which was convenient since we booked passage on the Irish Ferries line from Cherbourg to County Wexford. 

You might think that the farm's location was the main attraction of a B&B like this, but it was really the conversation and the farm itself.  When we first arrived, the proprietors invited us inside for tea and we had such a good time talking--and the children had such a great time running around the farm--that we didn't ignore the children's pleas to visit Mont Saint Michel on a different day.

The kids quickly made friends with the farm's ponies, dogs, and turtles, and picked plums from the trees steps away from the door.  The girl also ran to the duck/chicken coup first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and nearly hourly in-between to find fresh eggs which tasted like butter when fried up.

One night, we stayed up until 1:00am chatting with a lovely family from Holland about WWII, European travel, and how Snooki is ruining America's image abroad.  Speaking of which, did you know that many Europeans think the Jersey Shore and Housewives depict the average American?  I swear it's true.  The Dutch family seemed sincerely surprised when we showed the smallest interest in their culture, history, and in putting together complete sentences.  They also thought most Americans were likely to pretend acquaintances were their best friends and end each conversation with the words  " I love you."  I would reiterate my "call to travel" to all Americans whose children are better behaved than mine, but I have great potential to sound tiresome quickly.

Let me just say that the American trophy wife who called the B&B to cancel her reservation because she discovered that the farm was too far from her husband's meeting in Paris AND that Normandy Beaches were NOT in fact in the northern suburbs of Paris didn't help the cause any.  Now, you may be thinking that this is a judgmental statement from the woman who didn't know (until college) that the National Mall was a grassy area with no stores, but I know well enough not to call Europeans and publicize my stupidity.  So, my real problem with the trophy wife isn't so much that she didn't know her geography, as much as she decided to share her discovery with non-Americans.  After all, would it have killed the woman to just pretend her trip was cancelled?

So, as you can see, we spent a lot of time explaining that phony, under-educated Americans were the exception and not the rule, and much of the night was spent explaining to the Dutch family that the lack of American tourists in rural Europe is in no way a sign of disinterest, but a product of short vacation times and a mobile populace.  After all, if you have 2 to 3 weeks of vacation a year and you live 1,000 miles from your extended family, much of your vacation time will be spent traveling to see that family at the expense of international travel.  I think we made some in-roads here, but someone has got to keep trophy wives away from international phone lines, and American reality TV away from the Europeans!

The Irish Ferry:
There are two ports in Northern France which run ferries to Ireland--Rosscoff and Cherbourg.  If you're visiting D-Day landing beaches, Cherbourg is your port which happened to be both the second to last scheduled stop by Titanic, and the tip of the peninsula isolated by the D-Day Allied troops.  The port was destroyed by the Germans before they gave it up, but it will be in good condition when you visit.

You have several choices for ferries from France to Ireland:  Celtic Link Ferries, Brittany Ferries, A Ferries, and Irish Ferries.  Each have a different schedule and cost, but we chose Irish Ferries because they traveled during the night, the sail days fit our schedule best, and we wanted to support the Irish economy.  However, if you expect Irish citizens to greet you once aboard the ship, you will be disappointed.  If you think they must be French then, you're wrong again.  The truth is that Irish Ferries employs--by and large--Eastern Europeans which in theory is not a problem, but if you expect to be embraced by Irish warmth and witticism, you'll need to wait until the ferry docks in Rosslare.  On the positive side, the staff cleans up the product of sea sickness with efficiency and little or no emotion.

Now, the ferry is no bargain.  We paid about 900 Euro for the car, two adults, two children and a four bed stateroom with a private bathroom.  This is roughly double the cost of flying RyanAir from a suburb of Paris to Dublin even after you add all of RyanAir's fees, but if you add the cost of airport parking, renting a car in Ireland, and a hotel room for two nights (the ferry is underway one night there, and one night back), you may decide that 200 additional Euros for the experience of sailing the English Channel and Irish Sea is a good deal.  This, of course, assumes the seas are calm and you do not suffer from sea sickness--which was the case for us in only one direction.

Gross aside:  There are two things you don't want to forget when you visit Europe--a Phillips head screw driver (I'll explore this in future posts.  It has nothing to do with this one) and Dramamine (this drug has everything to do with this post!)  If you think you can buy Dramamine onboard an Irish Ferry, think again.  Our ferry only sold sea sickness wrist bands which we purchased for everyone except my husband (who is maddeningly immune from sea sickness--doing nothing to further my claim of genetic superiority),  however, the wrist bands were no match for a ferry diving through gale-force-wind-fueled seas.  If you've never been aboard a ship that comes to a dead stop when confronted by a wave that explodes off the bow and sprays the windows up to the eighth deck, completely obscuring the horizon, riding an Irish Ferry--whose captain is a madman (and surprisingly Irish)--is your chance.   However, you can only stay in the common areas of the eighth deck for about an hour before the smell and sight of sea sickness brings forward a bout of your own, causing you to abandon your work via Wifi and use your personal shower for a purpose for which it was never intended.  As a further aside, if you think your husband can't hear you in the bathroom, you're wrong.  He won't comment on the inhuman sounds you make, nor the unexpected use of the shower, but your son will as soon as you come out.

Speaking of coming out, I can't post this without mentioning once again the inappropriate humor of my son.  See, the name of our ferry was "The Oscar Wilde" and a few years ago we saw an Irish Candid Camera-type comedian tell tourists in front of the Oscar Wilde monument in Dublin that he had to warn them that Oscar Wilde was gay.  The tourists were predictably annoyed that this was an issue, but ever since then, we can't mention the name "Oscar Wilde" without saying, "I have to warn you that Oscar Wilde was gay."  So, my son was enormously amused when we booked aboard the Oscar Wilde which happens to have a public area named the Gaiety Lounge (he snapped the picture below).  He also snapped the picture of the menu from the Gaiety Lounge which is blurry (also below), but legible.  Before you ask, yes, we know we have failed as parents.

© 2012 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill 

Mont Saint Michel - Tides, Drunks & General Custer

If you're planning to visit France's most popular tourist site during the summer, there are a few things you should know:

First, you need to have a backup plan when the line to the new parking lot (which is about a mile away from the island's land bridge) extends down the highway at least two miles.

Second, if your backup plan takes you to the lovely Brittany towns nearby, then back to Mont San Michel just before sunset, you should know that that is just about the time the tide comes in "like a galloping horse", flooding the mud flats and the entrance you raced through just before the water.  Now, you can say the tide will recede from the stone arched entrance before it's time to go, but we stayed until 11pm and the tide was still lapping through the main entrance like a thirsty dog.

The word "main" above is telling and you should assume there is at least one backup exit, so don't let the piles of garbage dissuade you from exploring service alleys which may lead to a door which may lead to the land bridge back to the parking lot.  Also, just because a drunk was escorted to the flooded entrance by security (in the form of a well-dressed elderly man) five minutes after he fell out of a restaurant doorway into a menu board which crashed in front of you and your children, doesn't mean security expected him to use this exit.

As you stare at the flooded exit--dark water surging toward you like a scene from Titanic--the same drunk may brush against you, drooling, "I know another way out" --which doesn't sound any classier in drunken tones of French.  Even though the man's nose is still bloody from the fall and his eye is winking at you like he thinks you're still available, doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's talking about.  However, be prepared for your husband to declare that everyone will follow him through the exit and into the water as soon as sees the drunk invading your personal space.  The fact that your husband can't swim, nor that he can't possibly know how deep the water is beyond the archway will fall on deaf ears because he knows all about General Custer and he will say so.

Now, if you're wondering what General Custer has to do with a family stranded with a friendly drunk on the wrong side of a flooded entrance to a medieval French city, so did we.  Apparently, General Custer--annoyed by lengthy deliberations by his fellow soldiers during the Civil War regarding the depth of the river in front of them--rode into the middle of the stream and declared, "It's about this deep." 

So, here we were, the only four people in a crowd of over a dozen who were silly enough to roll up our pants and wade through shin deep water in search of the flooded boardwalk connecting the main entrance to the land bridge.  As an aside, I discovered that jumping through water makes one 50% less dry than just walking normally. 

I have to admit the drunk man looked sad as we left him on the lit side of the wall, but as luck would have it, we saw him less than 10 minutes later when he emerged from the service entrance door leading directly to the land bridge--shoes and pant legs dry and himself smelling like alcohol instead of the dead fish smell coming from our shoes and socks. 

I won't go into the sound of the eight squishy sneakers running for the parking lot shuttle bus which was farther away than its red lights appeared.  I also won't go into how dark or windy the land bridge was, nor how the cold eventually worked its way from the wet to the dry area of our jeans as we waited for the next shuttle bus. The beauty of the city distracted us every few minutes from the discomfort and the kids' new nickname for their father--Custer--caused new waves of laughter each time it was mentioned.  Additionally, the darkness of the causeway allowed the boy to test the importance of peeing downwind and our shuttle doors closed just before the drunk made his way on board.  So, all in all, luck was on our side. 

Before you think I've given short shrift to France's most spectacular medieval city, look at the below pictures.  They should really do the talking.

(Below): The pre-flooded boardwalk to the main entrace.

(Below): The streets of Le Mont San Michel

 (Below): Joan of Arc in Le Mont San Michel

(Below): The tide coming in.

(Above and Below): The tide racing in.

© 2012 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill