Irish weekend

We spent the weekend in Ireland - be sure to see the post below about Skellig Michael. This is a view of Small Skellig taken from Michael Skellig. All the white is a combination of gannets (a bird) and their droppings. We saw a couple of seals, too.
We did a little hiking in the Gap of Dunloe in County Kerry. It was a nice break from the city!
I don't know about you, but when I think Ireland I don't think beaches. This is Inch - a sand spit into Dingle Bay with an incredibly wide sand beach (at least at low tide!). We saw surfers and kite flyers and we hiked in the sand dunes.
Staigue Fort, dating from the 3rd or 4th century. Inside it's empty, but at one time probably had homes and shops.
A really cool snail poking out. We found tons of snails at Inch. Abby especially wanted this picture on the blog!

Ireland - Skellig Michael

These pictures are from our trip to Skellig Michael, off the coast of County Kerry in Ireland. Skellig Michael is a UNESCO world heritage site monastery built from stone (dry-stacked), probably in the 6th century A.D. Scholars believe a small community of monks (probably usually numbering around 12) lived there for 600-700 years. We were there on a nice day, but it is difficult to imagine living there in winter! Skellig Michael was definitely the highlight of our trip to Ireland. It is one of the most amazing places we have ever been.This first picture is of the island, taken from the boat. At the very top, you may be able to see a stone wall and small, conical structures - this is the monastery itself. (It may help to click on the picture to see a larger version.) Below you can see those "beehives" close up - where the monks likely lived.

Here is a rare family picture - just behind us is the cross and you can see Small Skellig in the background.This is a view of Small Skellig from the window of what was likely the chapel. Just outside the window is the cemetery.

This last picture is to give you an idea of how one reaches the monastery! The stairs were built by the monks and still work fine today, though they are not for the faint of heart or the faint of legs!

Historic preservation circa 1689

Hampton Court Palace was a Tudor palace (1st picture). When William and Mary became co-monarchs in 1689, they commissioned Christopher Wren to rebuild the Palace. Then, as now, public works projects are underfunded, so he was only able to rebuild part of the palace. What is most interesting is how the Wren-designed baroque portion is tacked on to the much older Tudor portion (2nd & 3rd pictures). Not much concern for compatibility! The fourth picture is of one of the Wren facades and the last picture is of some of the Tudor chimneys, just because I like them.

Wren is, of course, most known for building St. Paul's Cathedral in London. This was built after the great fire of London (1666), which destroyed the medieval version of the cathedral. Wren had proposed before the fire that the old cathedral be torn down so that he could design a new and improved version.

Life in the Big City - The Dark Side

Thursday was a different kind of getting to know London - the getting to know the police side of London. I went on line to do some banking on Thursday and discovered that some enterprising soul had recreated our ATM card and cleaned out our checking account. Not a happy discovery. Neither of us has misplaced our cards even for a few minutes - we put them in our room safe if they're not physically on us. In reporting the crime to the police, though, I learned that a fairly common trick here is to put a scanning device inside a legitimate ATM machine along with a small camera aimed at capturing PIN numbers. We think that's what happened. I asked the police officer what to look for and he said that they are so sophisticated you wouldn't be able to detect it even if you were looking.



So here's what we've learned:

1. Only use ATM machines inside banks. The one where our information was stolen is on a street corner, which makes it very easy for someone to install this stuff undetected.

2. Check your bank accounts on line at least every couple of days. I went six days without checking and that was way too long.

3. Don't keep all your eggs in one basket. Here's where we went right - while we lost way more money than I even want to think about, our savings is in accounts not linked to an ATM card.



We now have mountains of paperwork to fill out with our bank disputing the withdrawals and we are hoping for the best. The police officer was friendly and sympathetic, but said that the amount was too small to attract any serious attention. He said normally with crimes of this size it's the bank that investigates to try to recover the funds. I then heard quite a bit about his opinions of the criminal justice system in the U.K. and how much he admires the 3 strikes laws in the U.S.

Thames Festival - Night Carnival

Sunday night, there was a huge nighttime parade, followed by the most spectacular fireworks I have ever seen. The parade was a British version of Carnival (only with pastier skin on some of the dancers!), very multiethnic and very entertaining!

Thames Festival - Saturday

Also this weekend, we went to the Thames Festival, the annual end-of-summer festival in London. It was fun, and huge. Saturday evening we went to "Feast on the Bridge," where Southwark Bridge is transformed into a series of restaurants with themed areas, so the Indian place set up a Bollywood film set, the smoothie vendor (pictured) set up a beach, etc. There were tons of street performers, including a terrific juggler, skateboarders, and musicians, and, naturally, lots of shopping. The festival stretches all along the south bank of the Thames. Saturday night we saw a performance by Transe Express called "Maudits Sonnants" or "Celestial Carillon". It is an 8 piece percussion band accompanied by 3 trapeze artists, all suspended on a sort of chandelier by a crane. http://www.lefourneau.com/artistes/transe_express/en/maudits.htm. Very strange, but also beautiful and lots of fun to watch.

Open House London - House of St. Barnabas-in-Soho

This Georgian townhouse is on the southwest corner of Soho Square and was built in 1746 as a private residence, though it was not finished and occupied until 1754. Since 1863, it has been home to the charity of St. Barnabas-in-Soho, and a chapel was built at about that time. It was a homeless shelter for women from 1946-2006, and is now becoming a service center for the homeless.

The house has beautiful Roccoco plasterwork commissioned by its first occupant.

For more information, go to http://atthehouse.org.uk/ourhistory/historyhouse.htm.