Sorry, it’s been awhile since my last postcard. I have been preoccupied with a few things. My DSLR camera that has been with me for a long time, broke. Then there was the terrorism.
Visiting Derry
Our first stop in Northern Ireland is Derry. Or Londonderry. It goes by both names. Depending upon your politics. I have alluded that the unrest in Northern Ireland is just below the surface, and raw to the citizens. So much so, it is hard to understand because no one is an objective observer. The tenuous peace is threatened right now because of Brexit. Closing the UK borders will close the border between the Republic or Ireland and Northern Ireland. The first night we landed in Derry we walked around town. Derry is a walled city from centuries ago, and the walls are still completely intact. You can walk around the entire old town on its walls. We did
Car Bomb
Later that night, we were awoken by a bomb-like boom. Turned out it was not bomb-like, it was an actual bomb. A block or two from our hotel and exactly where we stood a couple hours prior. A dissident group known as the New IRA took credit. No one was injured. The burned up car was cordoned off for a few days and that ended the ability to circumnavigate the city by its walls for a time.
Purchasing by Internet as a Tourist is a Foley
The broken camera bummed me out for a few days. I looked into buying a new one here – expensive. Buying one in the states and having it shipped – expensive. Then I settled on buying one over the Internet to save over a hundred pounds. Surprisingly it came from the US. Since we are a moving target – where should I have it delivered? We were in Galway for 5 more days, then Derry for 4, then Belfast for 6. Picked a place at the long end of the delivery window: Belfast. But it shipped quick. Got there and no one could accept it (long story). I gave Fed X two choices: hold it until we got there and deliver again, or they could send it to Derry. The said they tried again in Belfast, and delivered it. But to whom? It was lost for a week. FedX still has no idea where the camera is. They say they delivered it to an apartment in Belfast, but they did not, or some stranger on the street signed for it and stole it. I got to lamenting to a gal that worked in the hotel in Derry, told her the story. We left that day. The next day, we got a random call. It was her. She said she was talking to a colleague about me, told the story of the camera, and her colleague said, odd, a camera was delivered here. The hotel room in Mark’s name, and package in mine, so the hotel did not figure out it was mine. So we had to go all the way back to Derry to collect my new camera. So a few more opportunities to learn lessons. But everything worked out in the end.
One thing we can say about the US, we are lucky consumers. We have choices upon choices of stuff. Shopping is weird here. All the stores seem to have the exact same stuff. Weirdly, exactly the same. And variety is not…various. Clothing quality is lacking. And for electronics they have these weird stores that when you walk in, there is nothing but catalogs. You order and return to pick up your item. Sort of like Amazon, but without the convenience.
Brilliant Substitute for Hotel Refrigerator
So remember I mentioned that hotels never have refrigerators here. And that we have been working around that by putting our food out on window sills. And we had the incident of the smart sea gull that stole our apple slices the minute we left the room. Well I have another funny story on the topic. Our room in Galway was nice, floor to ceiling windows overlooking the ocean. There was a ledge almost like a balcony between the window and a short wall, A piece of the window about hip high opened about a foot, enough that we could reach out and set our food down on the ledge, and hopefully grab it again. Worked fine for white wine. Then we stored some bags of salad greens, that worked too. Until there was a storm. When we wanted our salad, it had blown down a few rooms. We thought about going out onto the ledge, but we were afraid that we may not be able to get back in the window (we were on the 5th floor). So we watched for a few days as our bag of salad blew from one end of the building to the other. It amused us. Then we noticed that other guests were taking our idea and storing their wine and cold food out there too.
That is all I am going to say tonight.
I want to tell you about the struggles in Ireland, but it is complicated and I still don’t have it synthesized in my head.