Wes’s Life

As I men­tioned before, I went to Europe for two weeks and had an won­der­fully eye-​opening time. I had wanted to visit Ire­land and it turned out my family had been plot­ting to visit Europe any­ways and that Ire­land was one of the coun­tries. Good I thought, how little I knew. It turned out to be two weeks and four coun­tries and if arith­metic strikes your fancy at all, you’ll notice a 3 and a half day visit per coun­try. Granted our divi­sion wasn’t as even as we took four days in both Ger­many and Ire­land, three days in Paris and then a night, a full day, and a morn­ing in London. The rest of the time was con­sumed by the drone of tur­bine jets, the rattle of metro cars, the whir of a train’s engine, and the rasp of tires to the road.

Ireland

Ire­land held the green­est pas­tures to use a clev­erly devised pun. The coun­try was an emer­ald bounty as our plane descended on the Shan­non air­port. Bleary-​eyed and tired we walked through cus­toms and went to our rental car. A word of rec­om­men­da­tion for anyone vis­it­ing the lovely Emer­ald Isle, the speed limits in Ire­land are of the great­est common denom­i­na­tor style. We went to the Cliffs of Moher and enjoyed a brisk and breezy Irish morn­ing. Then we went to our bed and break­fast to get some much needed slum­ber. A wel­com­ing man, a set of stairs, a skele­ton key and then we slipped between the crisp sheets. Three hours later and recu­per­ated, we went into the town of Dingle. A quaint and loving town like I’ve never seen before. Faint traces of the tourism trade couldn’t even mar the beauty of this town. If you by chance ever find your­self in the area, you must go to John Benny Moriarty’s Pub. To keep it quite simple, we stum­bled upon the best food and ser­vice in all of Ire­land on our first real outing.

After our night in Dingle, we left for Blar­ney; yes, Blar­ney as in the stone. Now before get­ting there, I had some odd idea of what the Blar­ney stone might actu­ally be cooked up in my mind (influ­enced by car­toons I think); how­ever, the stone is not a rock in the ground, its part of the Blar­ney castle. And it’s not in the most acces­si­ble place; you have to lay on your back and hang upside down to kiss the stone. Did I men­tion that you are at least five sto­ries up?

From there, we went to Kilkenny where we saw the Kilkenny castle. The tour, which was prob­a­bly the best part of Kilkenny, was won­der­fully nar­rated by a slight woman with a very pleas­ant accent. She made what could be a very boring tour, into an enter­tain­ing tale of a castle and its inhab­i­tants.

Dublin is the city most people think of when they hear Ire­land, so we couldn’t visit the coun­try with­out it of course. The crown­ing achieve­ment of our visit was a trip to the Guin­ness Store­house. Being my beer of choice, I enjoyed the design of the build­ing and its inte­rior as we took the tour. And at the end, we enjoyed a well deserved pint of Guin­ness after climb­ing all of those sto­ries.

Germany

We landed in Munich and then had the hard­est time get­ting a rental car. The place was pretty far from the air­port to begin with and when we loaded the car they gave us, they then changed their mind and gave us a dif­fer­ent car. Any­ways, we started our drive down to Garmisch and got to our hotel very late. After check­ing in, we thought what better way to start our trip in Ger­many then with a good old-​fashioned tra­di­tional Mex­i­can restau­rant. I kid you not, the clos­est open restau­rant was a Mex­i­can restau­rant, and it was pretty good. I do remem­ber my mother asking the waiter if the com­pli­men­tary shots of mar­garita had alco­hol in them, to which he responded, “Maam, you are in Ger­many now.”

The next day we went up to Zugspitze, the tallest peak in Ger­many. Get­ting up the moun­tain involves an uncom­fort­able cog-​train ride up the moun­tain and a short gon­dola from there. The ride down was a much sim­pler, yet a little more thrilling, gon­dola down. What I found impres­sive, besides the views and the odd weather (we were in shorts and there was snow on the ground), was that you can see four coun­tries from the peak: Ger­many, Aus­tria, Switzer­land, and Italy.

Rothen­berg ob der Tauber is a quaint little town that resem­bles a much older Williams­burg. Period actors roam the streets at all hours and the city is walled. One night we encoun­tered a mock fight in which the actors had to momen­tar­ily set down their beer and fire off some canons (I guess it’s not exactly like Williams­burg). What stood out the most in this town was the restau­rant that we patron­ized both nights Hotel Reichsküchenmeister. The ser­vice as well as the food was excel­lent, and the garden – on the day it wasn’t rain­ing – was won­der­ful.

London

London was a quick jaunt in a huge city. Our first night con­sisted of find­ing the hotel, eating at an Ital­ian restau­rant and then going to bed. The next day was much more inter­est­ing. We took the open top bus tour around the town and saw what sights we could in the absolutely frigid weather. At night, we took a the­atre tea at the Savoy. I thought that I just would not enjoy myself there, but I was wrong. The food was good if not sparse and the teas tasted great. Then to the Palace The­atre to see Monty Python’s Spa­malot! I don’t believe I’ve ever laughed that much at a movie or tele­vi­sion show.

Paris

Paris was not the city we had heard it to be, but better then some of my com­pan­ions would say of it. I’ll just get the food bit out of the way first: for the most part, noth­ing was ter­ri­bly excit­ing except for our last dinner at L’Arcade Cafe. There we had a smart ass of a waiter who man­aged to have good taste and good ser­vice up his sleeve as well. In addi­tion to that we went to the Uly­sees Cafe and had some very good crepes and learned a bit of French as well.

As for the sights, we took another open top bus tour around the town and saw quite a bit. The Senne was prob­a­bly my favorite part as we started from the Notre Dame cathe­dral and walked east perus­ing at the shops setup on the walls. I’d say the biggest dis­ap­point­ment was Mon­temarte; we came expect­ing artists and gar­dens and saw sex shops and dis­count lin­gerie.

When All Is Said And Done

It’s hard to sum­ma­rize two weeks into only a few para­graphs, but there they are. If you had to ask me my favorite coun­try, it would have to be Ire­land – it was friendly, they spoke Eng­lish, the food was great, and the beer was excel­lent. Which coun­tries would I go back to? All of them I guess; albeit, Paris is noth­ing spe­cial I would want to see the coun­try­side.