patrick.net

Blurtman says

Don't forget your MAGA hat and loud Bermuda shorts.

I would LOVE to hear honest feedback from Europeans about Trump and the state of US politics. Please wear your MAGA hat in a pub and make some friends/frenemies.

Don't forget the Alps. You can take a train to Grindlewald and hike numerous trails from there. And they have hotels with restaurants that serve alcohol as well as food up in the Alps in the most unexpected places so you can reward yourself with a nice beer and decent food at the end of a long hike.

Have a safe and fun trip Patrick.

Finally arrived in Ireland. Pouring rain. I like it.

From last night's bar :

APOCALYPSEFUCK_is_ADORABLE says

BLOND! BUSH! BEAVER! SHOTS! please!

rando says

Thanks, it's my fifth trip to Éire. Big fan of Guiness. No other dark beers are even half as good.

You my friend, have not been to Belgium, think Trappist.

Ceffer says

The Swedish Bikini Team now has a camel in a thong on their team.

The only part of a camel that would be acceptable is the toe. :-)

How the fuck did you get a whole month off of work?

By quitting.

rando says

By quitting.

Bwahahahahaha.

rando says

By quitting.

Send your ex employer a postcard from Ireland and tell them how much you miss your old job.

Bring me back some REAL beer!...Enjoy your trip to my beginnings also.

Checked out the Cliffs of Moher yesterday. Just as beautiful as the photos, and twice as dangerous. Strong winds and a narrow path on top of a high cliff.

We're planning to stay in the Bay Area for now, since our rent is reasonable for the area, and my wife has a job she likes. I plan to get a job when I get back from this trip.

It does sound like fun to live somewhere really different while we're young enough though. Good suggestion. That will now percolate in my brain.

Congrats, Pat, for taking the step and enjoying yourself. Memories you just can't pay for later if you don't do it now.

anonymous says

We got 4 weeks after 20 years and 5 after 25 years and I didn't think long vacations were in the perk packages for IT types in the Bay Area so now I understand.

Good thing you don't live in one of those awful socialist countries with 6-8 weeks off a year.

Ah, being in-between jobs makes for the best vacations doesn't it?

rando says

Going to spend some of the money I saved by renting all this time and take a month long trip to Europe.

rando says

Now THIS is living.

Patrick, post some interesting food photos, please.

Patrick, if driving a rental car, post pictures of it too.

Blurtman says

Patrick, post some interesting food photos, please.

"This is Cabbage a la Potato."

I have no car here, which is fine. I'm now in my Irish Gaelic class on Inis Oírr, a little island off the west coast. Don't need a car here anyway.

Have to say the food in Ireland is excellent in its raw state (great milk, butter, fish, etc) but they don't generally prepare things all that well.

There's a joke that Irish food is just like English food, but not so spicy.

BayArea says

Ah, being in-between jobs makes for the best vacations doesn't it?

Yes, I just don't care or think about work at all at the moment.

What started out as peasant food can be well regarded. Not sure about Ireland. Good bacon? Any decent local cheese? I want to eat my way through Eastern Europe.

I've had the "full Irish" breakfast several times, and can't say the ham or bacon was any different. Didn't run across local cheese yet.

The one very well-reviewed restaurant I tried to go to was closed, no explanation, in contradiction of the stated opening days and hours.

Did have one excellent culinary experience: the seafood chowder at the place I'm staying on Inis Oírr was amazing. Maybe best I ever had. But then it was cream and seafood, stuff from right here.

I had already read that the police can be called in via boat (half hour from the mainland) to force the bars to close, but I didn't realize that it was the locals keeping them open and not the tourists!

So who turns them in? Turns out that it's a favorite hobby of the old ladies in town to call the police to force the bars to close at 1am, to make their families come home, or just to be contrary if they don't have families. Police have to get a boat and come all the way out, lol.

Hey Patrick, did you kiss the blarney stone? FYI, the locals pee on it.

rando says

I have no car here, which is fine. I'm now in my Irish Gaelic class on Inis Oírr, a little island off the west coast. Don't need a car here anyway.

Yeah, my idea of a vacation doesn't include driving much or at all. That's why I like going places like Atlantic City, where you don't need a car.

www.youtube.com/embed/4xVOw_FRPlo

Had a wonderful tour of Inis Meán today with my class, and could understand almost all of what the tour guide was saying in Irish. I know she was speaking slowly and simply for us, but still, it's a great feeling to start to get the hang of this very weird old language.

Photo I took there today:

Are you going to see the island from the Star Wars movie? The first Jedi temple I believe.

No, not this time. Sounds interesting, but it's pretty far south, and I'm planning on going north.

If you go to Dublin, I'd be curious what locals think about FB exposing the identities of 40 employees to Islamic terrorists, and about Islam generally.

Those are the edges of the fields on the island. The place is so rocky that it was necessary to move stones to the edges and build walls out of them to have anywhere at all to raise cattle. The whole island is pretty much just composed of those walled enclosures. Supposedly there are 3,000 miles of walls on the one small island of Inis Meán. I'll post a photo below.

Even worse, after moving out all the stones and building the walls, there was still not enough soil to grow anything, so the locals hauled up seaweed, dried it, and burned it, over and over for millennia (literally thousands of years) to make enough soil to grow grass to feed cows.

There's not enough grass in any one of them to support a cow, so they moved the cows around from enclosure to enclosure to eat the grass there was.

We will let you enjoy you time off & give you hell when you return.
Gird your loins!

Had an excellent lunch of local lobster, brown bread, and salad for 30 Euros with two of the guys from my class:

rando says

It does sound like fun to live somewhere really different while we're young enough though.

@Patrick - if you don't mind me asking, how old are you? You can give an approximation and not your actual age if you don't feel comfortable doing so.

https://www.irishcentral.com/news/irishvoice/the-tragic-reality-of-deaths-at-the-cliffs-of-moher

Arrived in Belfast. This should be interesting. Going to check out Shankill and Falls Roads.

There is evidence of division all over, like Sinn Fein posters in Irish, or British flags and murals.

I happened to end up at a clearly Irish hotel, where being named Patrick is a good thing.