This was a full, very full, day in Kinsale on the southwest coast of Ireland not far from Cork. This was the birthplace of my great great grandfather Michael Shannon, who married Bridget Keane and who was the father of my great grandmother Mary Shannon, who was the yadda yadda and so forth. I have no idea how long he may have lived here, as I mostly know he settled in Carrigaholt and/or Kilrush with his wife and near his father-in-law.
We checked into a bed and breakfast called the Sea Gull House which had been recommended by Rick Steves' guidebook to Ireland. This was the first recommendation from that book that we used and I must say the boy is crazy. It wasn't bad but it sure wasn't good. Our hostess Mary had been running it for thirty years. She offered a ten percent discount if you mentioned you heard about her place in the book. The house looked like it had never been changed in all these years—a hodgepodge of decorations of kitty pictures, spooky nun dolls, and ceramic plates. There were those "air fresheners" that intermittently blast a sweet smell of benzene death deployed in every plug. Mary herself was like a grandmother, all greetings, pattings, and "how was your day" questions that she asked with no intention of listening to what you answer before the next routine B & B question —almost an automated hostess. The bathroom floor had not been cleaned of its collection of various DNA samples for quite a while. However, the bed was comfortable (every single bed we encountered was comfortable; my how cheap digs have changed) and I only mention all of this because here we have proof that in the finer details Rick Steves is cutting corners in his books apparently. We stowed our stuff, re-parked our car a block away, and checked out the town.
Kinsale is arrayed in lines of curving streets that retreat uphill from the end of a very extensive bay. It is also at the mouth of the River Bandon. This was the town closest to the bombing and sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 by a German submarine, and the town was commemorating its demise one hundred years later. In honor of the anniversary, store fronts and odd spots had temporary billboards of information about the event. Kinsale harbored survivors and provided the morgue for bodies.
Kinsale is known for its gourmet food focus —which I was kind of excited about. We took another Rick Steves recommendation and ate the first night after Blarney at a place called Fishy Fishy which was overseen by a former commercial fishmonger who has become somewhat of a TV celebrity and book producer. The restaurant was very open, well designed and all the plates were gorgeously presented. The food was so-so. The prices were high. I had gotten my hopes up for a meal on the road of memorable goodness but was in the end unimpressed. There was a tepid vodka lobster bisque that tasted like chewing a stiff drink, our caesar salad had a sweet dressing, (!) Steve ordered a good fish pie, and I had plaice with beets and sweet potatoes, but it also had a sweet-based sauce. I needed to brush my teeth. Note to all the restaurauteurs of the world that are reading this blog right now: Sugar does not automatically make a thing good!
I guess this is the blog entry in which I fall into the American Way of Complaint. About time I squeak as I have been so diligently positive.
Right next to the Sea Gull House is a castle/prison named Desmond Castle that had been converted, in large portion, into an Irish wine museum. Don't laugh yet. Desmond Castle had served as the customs house for much of the wine imported into Ireland from elsewhere. After the English won a few too many battles, especially the Battle of Kinsale, a group of Irish merchants fled to France in the seventeenth century. They were known as Wildgeese, I am not sure why, and now wine historians called them Wine Geese. Many became wine producers in France and the United States and elsewhere. Irish/French wines in existence today include Chateau Lynch-Bages and Chateau McCarthy. Concannon and Kenwood Winery are a couple amongst quite a few current wineries of Irish descent in California. Who knew?
Desmond Castle was also a prison for much of its history. We found a sign and a sad mannequin that described the starving horrors and serious prisoner-killing fire that occurred here. The last paragraph mentioned that Quakers lobbied and protested for the release of maltreated American sailors during the Revolutionary war. Numerous signs we have noted all over Ireland give thanks to Quaker efforts for humanitarian causes and famine relief. Here I apply some direct comfort to an unfortunate statue. If you blow up the picture you can read the sad history yourself.
Another thing Kinsale is famous for is its military history and its enormous star fort called Charles Fort. We walked about two miles along a lovely seaside path to this sprawling ruin overlooking the mouth of the bay.
Charles Fort is impressive, especially from the sea, but the fort fell because they really had not fortified the landward side--um, duh. I retained nothing of the military campaign details so we leave you only with the visuals that we liked in a pacifist artsy way.
This overview is provided courtesy of Rick Steves' website entry about Kinsale
Walk to the fort, very nice, no cars
I love this sign, silly bog
Ramparts we watched
Gallantly leaning toward the bay
Stove in a barracks from the early 19th century English military presence.
As we walked back to our B & B to get our car for a further trip to the very tip of the Kinsale peninsula on the ocean—in order to look for seabirds—we stopped into a brightly colored store called Stone Mad. I had to tell the owner that her window display was great, her color schemes were great and that she was an artist. Jill, the proprietress, is an American, who was born at Kaiser Oakland Hospital a few years before me, had lived in Hawaii, Seattle, France, and now was in Kinsale. She took credit, pretty much, for the notoriety Kinsale has gained for wildly colored shops. Her lilting pseudo Irish accent gave way to Santa Barbara speak as she recounted that the town powers were against her wild painting ideas, but now come to her for consultation. The local paint shop keeps a record now of color combos already spoken for and dissuaded repetition and even sends people to Jill for color consults. She lamented the fact that tourists sniff at her highly visual curated stuff as they only want stuff made in Ireland. "Nobody makes things here, they all just get drunk in pubs!" she declared. She also said the pandering to tourists was over the top in Kinsale and that the shopkeepers had all been told to place red white and blue bunting and American flags up on the fourth of July and try to create a St. Uncle Sam's Day equivalent for visitors.
She did complain more than a native shopkeeper might, I think, and perhaps someday she will move from here too. She wished she had a dime for each of the many articles, publications, and postcards have been sold using her shops's facade.
Jill's shop "Stone mad."
The colors of Kinsale.
We also had received a recommendation from Mary, our grandmotherly B&B proprietor,—who knew we were from the U.S.—to check out a Remembrance Garden built by Kinsale native Kathleen Murphy, who had been a nurse in New York for a couple of decades. She planted a tree for every firefighter who died in the 911 attacks. She completed this tribute and then herself succumbed to cancer after returning to Kinsale upon retirement. We went to this humbly moving garden on about three acres. It lay across the bridge from Kinsale on the peninsula called the Old Head of Kinsale.
Mementos are left on the main monument--shirts, badges etc.
343 trees, conifers and maples and others
Each tree with name and engine number
A close-up of Kathleen's memorial tribute
Kathleen
After visiting this quiet place we went out to the Old Head and, ho-hum, watched enormous masses of seabirds on, ho-hum, soaring cliffs. Then we went to The Pink Elephant restaurant and ran into our Australian friends. Turned out to be the best meal of the whole trip. I had duck confit, perfect, and Steve had pan-roasted pork belly. Both dishes are hard to do right and this place more than exceeded expectations. The owner stepped out afterwards with us as we were leaving, continuing his easy funny chat, and pointed out the full moon and the alignment of Venus and Jupiter in the west. Our binoculars came in handy for this. What a full day in Kinsale! Tomorrow the last GLORY HALLELUJAH day with our rental car as we return it and ourselves to Dublin, hopefully intact.
Old Head of Kinsale beauty
Full Moon at the Pink Elephant
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