My Big Irish Update

So far, so good, people. This place is greener, the Guinness fresher, and Steve more nauseatingly perfect for me than I could possibly have hoped for.

For the first ten days of my trip, Steve took off work, so we puttered around together and had the first trial of our previously Skype-based relationship: could we stand each other 24-7 or would I be paying an unscheduled visit to my London friends to get the hell out of here? I am delighted to report we’ve been getting along famously. For some reason, it feel like we’ve been together for a very long time, and we are so easy and comfortable with each other. I could bust out my New York hard-core makeup and clothes, but he seems to like me just fine with splotchy skin, old jeans, and curly air-dried hair.

Steve lives not far from Lough Erne, which is this giant massive lake with a crap ton of fish in it. Steve, his friend John, and John’s son James have taken me fishing twice, and both times I’ve caught brown trout!

Let me be the first to tell you, the actual catching of the fish requires no skill at all. The tying of the hooks on the rods, and driving the boat around to where the fish are, and sitting on a wooden seat in chilly misty rain for hours on end is where the skill set comes in. The hauling in of a hapless fish is this crazy adrenaline rush. The second time we were out, this 1.5 pound monster managed to hook itself on my line, and reeling it in was like hauling in a bloody bus. One dispatches the fish by thwacking its head on the side of the boat’s seats, and so far, I have left this delicate duty to Steve. I can catch the things, sure, but clubbing them to their death is something else entirely. The first fish I caught was a Terminator Fish, and refused to die. When it finally did, after repeated beatings by Steve and young James (who got his chocolate Easter egg snack covered in droplets of fish blood in the process) I had to grip its sad little corpse in my hands while Steve took a picture of it (note James’s ‘hark at the stupid American’ smirk in the background.) Fishing is not for the squeamish.

Steve lives in Ballinamallard, which is right on the border of Northern Ireland and the South. As soon as you cross over, all the signs are in Gaelic, and the currency switches from the pound to the Euro. My wallet is now filled with equally pointless money, and I’ve handed shopkeepers the wrong weird coin too many times to count. They just kind of roll their eyes, acknowledge my accent, and move on.

We drove down to the South near Kilkenny for a few days to visit Steve’s uncle Robin and his girlfriend Avril who are fixing up a house to be a B & B. Avril and her kids are horsey people, so Avril arranged for us to go on a ride. Steve is decidedly not a horsey person, and I haven’t ridden in years, but I got to do some jumping, and Steve gained about a million points in my book for being a great sport about the whole thing.

Things I have driven, the speed at which they were driven, and why it matters: A horse, at a canter, because I love horses and riding and it was a special treat. Steve’s speedboat, at 40 miles per hour, because I was scared shitless of driving into a rock or something but it was really fun, and because the boy has way more faith in me than he should. Steve’s car, at 15 miles per hour in a parking lot, because driving a diesel stick shift is totally different than driving an unleaded one, and because having the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car is a lovely spatial challenge for a girl who nearly failed Geometry.

Wrong side of the road driving and roundabouts are certainly something to think about. A friend of Steve’s has lent me her bike, so I’ve been venturing out on little excursions. I need to keep telling myself which side of the road I need to be on, and when I hit a roundabout, to take deep breaths, not panic, and hope to god no one hits me as I noodle my way through it.

Enniskillen, the largest nearby town, is about 7 miles away. I was a little freaked out when we first hit Ballinamallard, Steve’s town, since it’s one main street with a post office, a grocery, two bars, and mostly just farmland after that. But Enniskillen is pretty cosmopolitan, with good shopping, cute little shops and boutiques, and apparent stuff to do. It’s not exactly Times Square on a Friday night, but I’m not in Summerteethville either.

So, that’s it from here, for now. I have to go make sure Terminator Fish has defrosted, as I’m making him for dinner.

Bahamavention

According to our cab driver, the original name for Paradise Island in the Bahamas is Boar Island . It was renamed when it was developed as a tourist destination, but in my opinion, it is still chock-full of boars. Only the spelling has changed; it’s now full of boors, and/or bores.

Homonyms aside, fat American tourists on vacation are depressing. I can’t imagine why you’d go to the trouble of traveling to another country to do all the things you could do at home. In the case of my hefty countrymen, that thing is apparently eating.

A lot.

All the time.

With the eating comes the waddling, and the misappropriation of Spandex garments, and more of the eating. These people represent the worst of our culture. They have no curiosity about the country they’re visiting, the people who actually live there, the food they eat, their music, any of it.

No, they seem to want a tropical America with all-you-can-eat buffet, Starbucks, and McDonald’s in a one block radius so as to minimize any unwelcome walking from cruise ship or mega resort to bland and familiar dining establishment. They were all over the monstrosity of a hotel we stayed in, and all over Paradise Island in general, and all over only the main drag in Nassau. Presumably the rest of Nassau had a bit too much ‘native culture’ to make my fellow Americans comfortable.

Fortunately, I was with Reba and Anne, both of whom are great to travel with and go to new places to experience them, not to sit poolside and feed.

We left the morning after my birthday. I had gone out to celebrate, and didn’t get home ‘til about 12:30 AM. I dutifully set my alarm for 5:07, but apparently forgot to actually turn it on, so when Reba called at 5:20 to make sure I was up and moving, I was neither up nor moving.

We dragged in to the airport for our 8 AM flight to Charlotte, where we connected to our Bahamas flight. When we finally got to Nassau, we were delighted to discover a Bacardi stand handing out free Bahama Mamas. We were less delighted to discover the luggage for 50% of the people on our plane had gone missing, including all of our bags.

The Bahamian lifestyle seems to exclude both expeditious thought or action, so we fretted around for over an hour until the palette containing our luggage was finally located and leisurely unloaded on the floor of baggage claim.

The trend continued at the hotel, where we arrived to discover our reservation in no way meant we actually had a room waiting for us. 45 more minutes of us and our American getitdonerightnowforchrist’ssake vs. the Bahamian it’ll get done when it gets done at some point probably today.

A room was finally located for us, and we wearily dropped our bags and flopped down on the rather creepy private beach for a few drinks. By 9:30, we were all dead asleep.

The next day was significantly better. We were up early, grabbed breakfast, then headed out on rented bikes to explore the east side of the island, where we were told there would be fewer tourists. We’d only gone a few miles when we heard loud music coming from a park, so we turned in to investigate. We discovered an amazing local festival/regatta, and we appeared to be the only non-locals there.
Anne spotted some jet-skis, and after some haggling with the owner, the three of us were tearing around on the bay, whooping and hollering and jumping each others’ wakes. For once in my life, I was like, “Hell yes, fossil fuel!”

While we waited for the alleged regatta to start (we were there 4 hours and never saw one damn boat), we met Donnie, a guy selling conch salad that he made with live conch that squirmed as he cut it. To make conch salad, you take one conch, dice it, add onions and tomatoes, two kinds of Bahamian peppers (finger and goat), and lemon, lime and orange juice. It’s like the best ceviche in the universe. Totally fresh, totally healthy, and insanely delicious. Reba bought a big plate of meat from some people who were grilling nearby, which we shared with Donnie and his crowd, including a guy who had pot leaf bling, a pot leaf t-shirt. and jeans with little embroidered pot leaves all over them, which I found hilarious in its total lack of subtlety.

Washed down with a few cans of Kalik, the ubiquitous Bahamian beer, while sitting in bright sun, and smoking a Cuban cigar of dubious provenance, I can safely say that is an ideal way to spend an afternoon.

Cultural reference point: in Bahamian culture, the conch’s ‘jelly tube,’ or penis, is supposed to impart strength and virility to one who ingests it. After the urging of our new friends, I went and ate conch penis. This is the face you make immediately after eating conch penis:

We gave up on the bikes, which had three gears and coaster breaks, after my bike decided it didn’t feel like staying in gear, which means the brakes failed totally. Stopping a moving bike wearing flip flops sucks, in case you had any questions about that. The skin on your toes does serve a purpose, and you miss it when it's gone.

We went out snorkeling on a windy day, so the ocean was wave-tossed and silty. Outbound, I was fine. The divemasters invited Reba, Anne and me to sit up with them in the wheel house, which was fantastic. Once we were at anchor, though, I started to regret eating, anything, ever. I know I get seasick, and had even taken preventative Dramamine, but that was no match for the escape route my breakfast wanted to take. I was sick in the water, sick in the scary marine toilet, sick off the side of the boat, sick in my hand, sick in my hair. I spent the last part of the trip clutching the side of the boat, gazing at the horizon, hoping for death, and cursing the people still in the water for not getting back on the bloody boat so we could go back to shore.

Lots of Bahamian food is fried, which I can’t say I love, but those people know their seafood, and we had a great deal of it. My favorite was still Donnie’s conch salad, but Reba had some damn fine grouper, I had the kick-ass smudder fish, and we all ate really well at Traveller’s Rest, a fantastic restaurant Reba had found and added to her incredibly thorough and well-organized Bahamas travel folder. If I ever have to plan the invasion of a country, I want Reba with me.

All in all, I don’t think I’m a tropical island kind of girl, but it was great to get out of Dodge for a while, and better yet to escape my hideous countrymen. I’m also pretty fired up to have tan lines in March, and even though they’re fading fast, my memories of conch penis and projectile vomit are mine forever.

When in Charleston . . .

Do not actually do the Charleston. I was tempted to on several occasions, but realized it’d just be gay.

Actually, Charleston is an awesome old town, and best seen in the company of some of your closest friends from college. Last weekend, Adam and I flew down to visit Alyson and check out her new digs. We were saddened only by the fact that Kelda, the fourth corner of our troublesome foursome, had told us she would not be coming.

Adam and I had a hellish airport experience thanks to the fine bastard people at Delta, where our first flight was delayed, our second flight was canceled (but the cancellation was not announced) and the third flight finally limped into South Carolina (by way of unmotivated Atlanta) 6 hours late. Grrrrr.

But Alyson came swinging around to collect us in her elderly Mercedes, and then, who comes rising up like a phoenix from the passenger seat but Kelda, having hatched a diabolical plan to surprise us!

So began our semi-regular reunion.

When not selling real estate, Alyson flies C-17s for a living. These are, by any standard, some big-ass mofo planes. Like ‘holy crap that bitch is not getting off the ground’ big ass. Really. Look –

See my weeny friends? See the plane? That’s a big ass mofo!




I got to pretend to be a love pilot.

There’s something truly empowering sitting behind the controls of a $300,000,000 aircraft and then looking out the window and seeing a whole bunch more of them. Like, “America, fuck yeah!”


Alyson is totally blasé about the whole flight line experience, but Adam, Kelda and I were goggling around wide-eyed, while Alyson barked at us to stay with her. We were, after all, in a place where deadly-force is A-OK.

In Charleston, the food is awesome, and cheap! I had some of the best carrot cake ever at a sweet little French cafeteria-like joint that also had sick Croques Monsieurs.


Mmmmm…cake.

We had a fancy dining night, where I was the designated driver (yeah, I know, I couldn’t believe it either). I totally ran out of steam early, but the gang wanted to keep going, so I trailed along. The last stop of the night was the Pantheon, an ‘alternative establishment.’ ‘Alternative establishment’ = gay club = hilarious. In New York, all you need is a rainbow flag and people pretty much know what’s going on in there. In Charleston, apparently, you need a sign on the door explaining this club is not like all other clubs. Kelda worked her wiles to try to get us in, but despite her radiant hotness, the doorman wouldn’t let us in for free, so that was the end of that.

We spent a lot of time strolling along Charleston’s main drag, King Street, and were spiritually cleansed when Adam and I joined Kelda for a Unitarian church service on Sunday morning.

My favorite day was when we went to the beach. We had a kite that attacked Kevin, Alyson's fiance, but would not fly,

and there was lots of jumping involved.



Love my lovely friends, love Charleston, and look forward to our next grand adventure together. Madison ’08, bitches?