I thought I'd wait until another week was over to write, but stories are piling up. Some people write postcards; we never did. There's always an element in travel postcards of "We're here, you're not!" I'm actually finding it cathartic to express some of the things we're doing to people who might be interested. This is the kind of travel we had done for four decades, up to the 1990's. Anyway, I find I write it in my head while I'm driving, and set it down later. First some retrospectives.

Irrepressible   You can't get ahead of Julia Child. On two different occasions, the interviewer lost out. At one point, after mentioning André Soltner having owned Lutèce, he asked Julia what her favorite restaurant was. She would have nothing of it. Finally, after being pressed, she said that when she would drive from Boston to Maine, it was five hours and they would have to stop for something to eat halfway. In her nasal sing-song she said, "Really, Burrrrrger King is verrrry good." Then the wine expert on the panel added, "Yes, but their wine list leaves something to be desired."

On another occasion he pressed to find out what her favorite dish was. Finally, she said "Mashed potatoes--with plenty of butterrrrr."

Pubs   Speaking of mashed potatoes, it was suggested we try some pub food, so we did. One of the things I kept my eye out for was Bangers and Mash--sausages and mashed potatoes, in this case served with an onion gravy. Good.

Singing   We've done a lot of singing over the years, starting with the German sing-alongs back in Middlebury. Bev and I have extended that so that whenever we've arrived at a place where a song was appropriate, we'd sing as much of it as we knew. When crossing the appropriate state lines, we'd belt out "Oklahoma", or "California Here I Come", or "Carolina in the Morning". Well, on the ferry across the Irish Sea from Wales, what was more appropriate than "Did you ever go across the sea... to Ireland"? Of course I only knew the first line, but we did that on two different occasions on the boat. When we were driving off from the pub in Dublin (see below) we did bits and pieces of "Molly Malone (Cockles and Mussels)", the first line being "In Dublin's fair city...". And this afternoon when we drove through the town of Tipperary--well, that's a no-brainer. Right after Tipperary we drove through Limerick, thought about "Angela's Ashes", and I recited my favourite limerick out loud.

Guinness   We spent Sunday in Dublin, doing this and that. Almost as an afterthought, I found in my trusty Michelin about the Guinness factory tour. It was a nice end to the afternoon. Actually, Guinness hasn't used the in-town brewery since 1988, and they've made it into a museum. They show you the 9,000-year (!!!) lease that Arthur Guinness signed on the land. The exhibits they've put in are not my style--all multi-media lights flashing: Hops! Yeast! Water! But it was interesting, and as you work your way up the building, you end up on the circular glass-walled pub above the roof of the former brewery with a 360-degree view of Dublin. Included in the price is a pint of Guinness. The pub was all glass and steel--again, I would have preferred something more traditional with the view--but the pub atmosphere still reigned. I got to talking with a man from Litchfield County, Connecticut, and we talked about New Milford, where my mother was born, and I said she was born on Bank Street and how upscale it had become, and he said the big local story recently was that Adam Sandler had filmed a remake of "Mr Deeds Goes to Town", a lot on Bank Street. Small world.

Step Dancing   I never thought this would happen. After Guinness, I thought it would be nice to have dinner in town in Dublin, especially in Temple Bar, which is the medieval neighborhood right on the embankment of the Liffey that is rapidly becoming Dublin's Greenwich Village. It's getting theatres, cultural centres, restaurants, hotels, and everything. As I was checking out a few places, I saw through a window some entertainment going on. I checked, and they said there would be a break, but the entertainment would continue at 8:30. So we had dinner in the attached restaurant (Irish stew!) and got back into the pub part of the building in time. It was a large pub with maybe a couple of hundred people, mostly standing around. There were very few tables, and a small stage, maybe 2' high with a railing. The music started, and then a table became free ringside. I ordered Bailey's Irish Cream (among other things, Irish Mist was also available--remember, we go local) and we stayed a couple of hours. It was a four-piece band--guitar, flute, violin, and accordeon, and they played the traditional music. You know, the repetitious, droning quality of it. I can see how it developed into some of the American country music, such as reels and the like.

But then about every third selection included the dancers. There were four women in black short skirts doing step dancing. It was great. At first individually, then all four at once. We and our Bailey's were maybe four feet from the women pounding on the (sagging) plywood stage, doing high kicks, unsmiling, as is the style. I was surprised to see that there was some toe-dancing involved. In between numbers, one of the dancers stood on both toes, and then I noticed that every once in a (rare) while, they were up en pointe. But it went so fast. If a cartoonist were drawing their feet, he'd show clouds of dust.

The Irish Tiger   I learned on 60 Minutes how upscale and international Ireland had become and it's true. It's not the poor country people used to know. There are signs for Citigroup and familiar American products. The most frequent supermarket is, of all things, Super Valu, so familiar in the midwest. Britain went metric, but most road signs are still in miles. Every road sign in Ireland is now in kilometres. Both Britain and Ireland sell gas in litres, and do the temperature in Celsius. And the US just sits there, metrically speaking, becoming a dinosaur.