belgianwaffle

Siblings

Do you know the way to San Jose?


Posted in: Siblings, Travel

My brother is still travelling around the Americas. He sends funny emails. They deserve a wider audience. Also, I’ve got nothing.

Hi folks,
Greetings from Costa Rica…the name of the place means rich coast in case ye were wondering. Having an amazing time landed in San Jose on Oct 31…the town I stayed in first is right beside the airport it’s called Alajuela and is the second city. From Alajuela I met a few people that had a car and we went to the Poas volcano….to see the raw ferocity of nature, unfortunately we could only hear it as the crater of the volcano was covered by dense cloud, in fact the visibility was so bad that I could barely see the picture of the volcano on the board beside the view point.

Next was into San Jose….I have a strange ambition in life to ask stupid questions (an ambition oddly unfulfilled by years of obsessive curiosity) like going into Tiffany’s in New York and asking for breakfast or asking someone how long the Camptown race track is or asking someone does it rain in southern California (although the latter was answered emphatically yes by mother nature during my visit there). So in the taxi to San Jose I was presented with the ideal opportunity to ask the driver ‘do you know the way to San Jose’ …….hoping for a fitting acknowledgement of my great wit instead I got a confused look and a reply ‘of course I know the way to San Jose I’m a local taxi driver’ I said you know the song attempting to back track…..negative…tried to change the subject for a way out but the increasingly uncomfortable situation ended up with me having to produce a rendition of the song which was even worse than the original if you can imagine that. The driver couldn’t produce a false laugh to conclude the episode ……finally I escaped the Irish way by talking about the weather.

Next stop was Montezuma on the Pacific coast….planned only to stay 2 days but ended up there a week, it was that kind of place. I took Spanish lessons for the week and made impressive progress albeit from a low base, so much so that I was able to spot the error in the name of the hotel where I stayed next, Casa tranquilo was the name, I questioned the owner why it wasn’t Casa Tranquila as casa was a feminine noun, it turns out I was right but that the incorrect name would be more catchy for the Gringo tourists. I also went surfing with somewhat less success, did manage to get standing on the board just about but with about as much control as a trainee teacher in a northside school.

I stayed in a really cool place in Montezuma called Luna llena (full moon). It was in the middle of the jungle which was amazing except for the time I woke up in the middle of the night to see a giant cockroach buzzing around, I’m afraid to say I left myself down badly; I was completely unable to retain my strong silent type composure, I eventually managed to kill the bug after a terrifying struggle. The mozzies also seemed to see my legs as an all you can eat buffet. Otherwise everything was brilliant met great people and had an absolute blast. The other big thing there was yoga, in new age speak the whole idea is to become one with el cuerpo and connect with the source, I’m afraid during my attempt at yoga the source remained distant, I listened to my body as instructed but my body answered back what the hell are you doing you muppet, I’m definitely in need of more enlightenment.

Next was inland to Monteverde which is a cloud forest, the big thing here is spotting wildlife in the forest. Day 1, got up at 5am for a bird watching trip, (you are thinking there is something drastically wrong here 5am me and bird watching could never inhabit the same sentence unless as a set up for a punch line or something, but no this is a statement of fact, I really did do this). We got to see some cool stuff including the Toucan from the Guinness commercial, I didn’t get any cool photos, spectacular wildlife shots are typically not captured by a sleep deprived, unskilled photographer with a severely mistreated compact camera. Also did a night hike and got to see a tarantula which was very impressive. At the moment I am in a place which is known for it’s active volcano…going to see the lava fields today, my knowledge of thermal landscapes has not been developed since Inter Cert Geography so there’s going to be some scope to learn something new I’d say……will report back.

Cork


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Siblings, Travel

Last weekend my kind sister and parents minded the children while Mr. Waffle and I skipped off to Kinsale. As a former local, I’ve never really been a tourist in this part of the world before. It’s lovely, I can tell you.

We stayed in a place called the Glebe House [query for Protestants – what’s the difference between a Glebe, a Vicarage, a Rectory and a Manse?] and it was delightful – roaring fires; Victorian furniture; pleasant views; and a charming hostess.

On Saturday morning we took the Scilly walk out to Charles Fort.

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I had, to my intense chagrin, left my heritage card in the car but the nice woman from the OPW looked in her book and found the entry showing where my sister had bought the card [a present] and let us in free. €8 saved – hurrah [insert your own cliché about the recession here]. Charles Fort has been tarted up enormously since I last visited – probably about 20 years ago – and it looked very cared for. The OPW staff gave an interesting tour and were very knowledgeable about the site. The sun was shining; the weather was beautiful could it get any better?

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Oh yes, it could. A local collective was having a sale of crafty things; including expensive, but very delicate and beautiful batik pictures. I bought Christmas tree ornaments and soap from the lady who makes it. She was cutting her own ribbons while I was talking to her – the handmade clearly covers all angles. And then we went for late lunch in here; a restaurant I have been curious about for some time. It was nice and very, very busy – still heaving at 4 when we left but not as spectacular as local opinion had led me to believe. Then we went our separate ways for a bit. I got to go around the town which is pretty, though familiar, and particularly rich in what Mr. Waffle disparagingly calls “upmarket tourist tat”. In a sweet shop, there was a young man leaning on the counter speaking to the young woman who was serving in a strong local rural accent. “I was up fixing your father’s rooter last night,” he said. “What kind of agricultural implement is that?” I wondered to myself. Then the young man added, “He’s delighted with the new netbook, isn’t he?” Ah, that kind of router. My favourite shop is Kinsale Silver where I almost always find something but there are lots of great, small, appealing shops and, if only I were a little more organised, my Christmas shopping would now be complete.

On Sunday before being reunited with our children we went for a walk on Garretstown beach and it was so warm that we had to take off our coats. I think we must have got one of the best weekends of the year. As we hopped into the car, I called my sister to tell her that we were on our way, “Will you be glad to see us?” I asked the babysitter in chief. She considered for a moment, “I’ll be glad to see you leave,” she offered. It’s a good job that we had such a wonderful time because I can’t see our babysitter in chief being ready to take on another weekend of sunshine and laughter with small children immediately.

Tales from America


Posted in: Siblings, Travel

Regular readers will recall that my brother is taunting us from his extended holiday in the US. Despite myself, I must concede he is funny. Consider this email:

Report on the trip around the S. West. I set out from San Diego in a gigantic gas guzzling SUV, got up sold in the car rental place very easily; how Mum and I are related I’ll never know. First stop was Joshua tree NP in the dessert. The ‘town’ I was staying in was Yucca Valley, like a lot of rural places in America it was basically just a strip of fast food joints, motels and stores on the highway…..no character but tell me where in Ireland could you get a Burrito at 01.30am (and 7am too probably)?

Next morning I went to the rangers station. Even with my So Cal bronzed skin I suppose it’s fair to say I don’t look like a species that’s ideally adapted to life in the dessert, however, the ranger gave me a concerned look like I was a black guy going to a Ku Klux Klan meeting. I was warned of the dangers of dehydration and hiking in a remote area. Suitably apprehensive, setting out I nearly cleared a gas station of their entire stock of bottled water. On into the park…vast haunting open spaces…it was a strange landscape. The Joshua trees were named by Mormon settlers after the biblical character, there was some reason for this I didn’t altogether understand.

It was hot but I did only short hikes. On the first hike, with the warnings ringing in my ears I loaded up on water, I was in more danger of a broken back carrying the water than I was of dehydration. The U2 album the Joshua tree was inspired by this landscape, no wonder they were obsessed by nuclear devastation. I was hoping to find the tree from the album cover, but it was take your pick from millions of them.

Next morning it was off to the Mojave desert , it made Joshua Tree look like a metropolis, there was a place with two broken down sheds that got a mention in the map (Cima check it on Google maps, seemingly the 2nd city of the Mojave). The main place in the park was Kelso, a renovated railway station, which served as a visitors centre. It was pretty cool saw a Union Pacific train passing very slowly, there must have literally been hundreds of freight containers (no passenger trains use this route any more). I enquired about hiking routes and got more concerned looks from the ranger but at this stage I was more confident of my dessert survival skills.

I was revelling in the vastness and solitude when suddenly the decision to rent the gas guzzler came back to bite me in the ass. Having passed up an option to get gas before I entered the park on the basis it was too expensive (although still half the price of Ireland) I found myself in the middle of nowhere when the display suddenly jumped from 100 miles to empty to 40 miles to empty. Night was falling (why did I ever watch that movie Deliverance) and the nearest gas station was 40 miles away. Driving style went from all action 4 wheel driving to Driving Miss Daisy. After a long and stressful hour, (no radio just in case…I didn’t want to get stranded in the desert due to listening to Country and Western music), hoping that Sat Nav was correct in its identification of a gas station, and that it would also be open, eventually just as the message on the dash came up saying ‘you’re rightly fucked now’ out of the vastness came the magnificent sight of a Neon sign with a yellow shell. Phew!!! I pulled up to the pump and fed my thirsty chariot. As soon as the relief of not dying alone in the desert had faded I was mightily miffed at the price of the gas (…5 dollars a gallon, I suppose I’m related to Mum after all) and as well in my panic I filled up much more than I actually needed to get to Las Vegas where the tour was starting from.

I proceeded from there to Vegas without further incident. No roulette table for me though, early night was needed as I was up at the crack dawn to kick off my tour……to be continued, my hopeless editing skills have meant that my email about the tour has gone over the max before I even started talking about the tour……

Take it easy,

PS Before all the pedants get back I freely admit I’m not sure if spelling of desert is correct it could either be a harsh dry landscape or something sweet to be consumed after dinner (but rarely found in the parents’ house), it should be clear from the context which is intended.

Finding the Old Homestead


Posted in: Family, Siblings

My brother is on an extended holiday in the US [because he can] and he sends us the odd update [because he believes we should suffer].

Not a lot of people know this but as a child, my father lived in Southern California. His parents came back to Cork in the 30s and people used to ask him to talk – “Let’s hear the little yank”. He remembers the ice man, and seeing a film being made at night but that’s pretty much all we’ve ever heard of his sojourn in America. My father is not a great man for nostalgia.

Latest missive from my brother includes the following:

Hey folks how,s the form…..whoever sang that song it never rains in southern California has seriously misrepresented the reality. It,s been raining here solidly all day, it,s like the west of Ireland with Palm Trees thrown in. I,m in the apple store in Pasadena near Los Angeles, trying to use the iPad 2, have to admit it,s well cool though ridiculously overpriced. It is pretty cool despite the fact I can,t find the apostrophe on the key pad. It,s also the childhood home of [our father], the directions I was given to the actual house from the man himself was that there was a machine that sold nickel sweets on the street corner sometime in the 1930s. With these pinpoint directions I have only my ineptitude and terrible sense of direction to blame for failing to find the landmark building.

Weekend Round-up


Posted in: Ireland, Siblings, Travel, Twins, Youngest Child

Yes, I know it’s Wednesday, but I’ve been busy.

Last Thursday, I went to Leiden to visit my sister who is working there for a couple of months. I left the children with my kind husband and snuck off. My sister met me at the airport and we took the train to Leiden. Within 5 minutes of arriving we had hired a bike for me as my sister deemed it impossible for me to survive without. I have never seen as many bikes as I did in Leiden. The potent combination of students and a small Dutch city made for bicycle heaven: everyone of all ages cycling in their normal clothes [no fluorescent jackets], young kids in front and behind on all the parents’ bikes, excellent cycle lanes, very flat [though windy]. Behold the bike parking at Leiden centraal. My sister says that they always know the tourists because they’re snapping the bike racks so I didn’t myself; I regret that now.

So we cycled back to her house and then back into town where we went on the obligatory boat tour. After cycling, boating seems to be the preferred way to get about in Leiden and later when we cycled through the suburbs, we saw boats tied up at the end of almost every garden. Leiden has more canals than any city in the Netherlands except Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a lot bigger than Leiden. Leiden is essentially entirely canal.
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We went to the cinema that evening, expecting confidently that X-Men, First Class would be in English subtitled in Dutch. Well, it was subtitled in Dutch but you would be surprised how much of that film is in Russian, French and German. Listening to Kevin Bacon speaking Russian while trying to interpet Dutch subtitles is a surprising and unsatisfactory experience.

The next day we saw all the shops I hadn’t seen since we lived in Brussels: Hema, mon amour; Dille & Kamille; stop laughing at me. Then we went to the Mauritshuis in the Hague which I have wanted to visit for years. It’s really well worth a visit. It’s a small museum with a lot of very famous pictures so you wander from room to room saying, “Oh look, look, look!” This may be mildly tedious for other visitors.

On Friday evening we went to dinner to Mr. Waffle’s friend the Dutch Mama [confusingly, she’s Irish, it’s her husband and children who are Dutch] and her family whom my side of the family have now appropriated as our friend [this is what you get for being hospitable, this was my sister’s third dinner at their house]. We had a really lovely evening. We spent much time discussing the Dutch psyche. The Dutch Mama feels that they are all very anxious that everyone should stay part of the group and to be ahead is just as bad as to be behind. I suppose this might be very useful, if your country might sink, should anyone step out of line. I always feel that the Dutch are smug; my views possibly influenced by having lived with a very annoying Dutch girl for a while about 20 years ago. But, I must say, after my trip to lovely Leiden, I do feel that they have quite a bit to be smug about.

On Saturday we cycled to the North Sea. The beach was heaving with people and I ventured in for a swim which was pleasant though industrial [plane overhead, tanker in the distance]. And then we cycled back. And then I thought that maybe I was starting to fall out of love with my bike a little bit. My sister is fit as a fiddle from her Leiden cycling regime and I found myself panting along in her wake on the 14 km round trip to the beach. All in all, I wasn’t entirely sad to say goodbye to the bicycle that evening. Sorry to say goodbye to my sister though.

So, on Sunday, I was back in Ireland and feeling that Mr. Waffle had done Trojan duty, I took the children to see Kung Fu Panda II [not as good a Kung Fu Panda I, you will be unsurprised to hear]. For the duration, Michael sat on my lap, weeping and trembling with terror. On the way out from the cinema to the car park, there is a games arcade where, weakly, I allow the children to play whenever we go to the cinema. I don’t give them any money though as I am too mean. Michael ran straight for a zombie game where he hoisted a gun on his shoulder and pretended to shoot disgusting zombies who exploded all over the screen. He was delighted with himself. He said that the exploding zombies were not scary. “And Shen, the peacock is?” “Oh yes!” The power of narrative, I suppose.

On Monday, which was a bank holiday, we woke to glorious sunshine and I told the children to throw on their shorts and sandals, packed a picnic and we all drove to Trim castle. I really plugged the castle to the children. And they were quite excited when they got there. Except the weather had turned overcast and they were freezing. We had to wait 15 minutes for the guided tour.

Once we got in, I knew we were doomed. Firstly, there was no way in or out except with the tour guide; secondly, the tour guide was slightly gloomy; thirdly, the tour was scheduled to last 45 minutes; fourthly, the tour was aimed squarely at adults and there was really very little to see except stones and spiral staircases and finally, and not insignificantly, the castle was slightly colder inside than out. The children dragged themselves around whining [quietly, mercifully] and we prayed for the tour to end which it did, eventually. Then we ran out and had our picnic in the car. Not content with this failure, we went in search of St. Patrick’s where the “Rough Guide” promised us an echo and an interesting tomb. Even had these things been available, they might not have been sufficient to hold the troops’ interest. In the event the church was closed. We had a look around the graveyard where we considered the grave of Sir Hercules Langrishe who died in the late 90s. We wondered how he got on in the local primary school. Hercules is such a difficult name to carry off. [Apparently, it’s a family name. Mr. Waffle tells me that the first baronet was a pal of James Burke and an open letter to him (on Catholic emancipation) is mildly important though long.]

Michael got bored and started walking around with his eyes closed and walked into a pole giving himself a very nasty bruise on his cheek. We went home. All in all, not a triumph.

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