GEORGIA-ARMENIA TRIP - APRIL 13, 2018 TO APRIL 18, 2018

GEORGIA

April 13, 2018 to April 15, 2018

2018-04-12 LONDON TO GEORGIA

‘I don't like to say goodbye’ 

Stupendously charming 21-year old Abdalbaset (Ibrahim Mohammed …and it goes on from there, each name a link to a direct paternal ancestor) hefts his back pack and waves goodbye, but not without a ‘salaam aleichem’, peace be with you. We miss him and his fatigue-shattering laugh immediately.

He has been entertaining us with his open-faced sweet charm and stories of his native Libya since he introduced himself over our seat backs on the bus to the airport three hours ago. Now, way too many hours of travel from London this morning weigh us down here at Istanbul's other airport. Abdal is a natural buoy. 

He unfolds his life for us.

There's his studies (‘my father ordered me be doctor. It is boring. I want to study business.I  want travel like you’), his father (‘he is a little bit dictatorship’), country (‘old, old, old places, before Egypt, and Greek, too, better than Turkey, many deserts, and the places with water in the desert'), food (‘so good, food no other place has). He won't let us pay for our cold water and his coffee (‘I am addict'.)

On an earlier leg of our trip Dennis wakes from his drowse on a comfy Turkish bus. The banks lining the 8-lane inch-worm path of the highway from Istanbul’s Attaturk airport are a linear garden, dropping color mile after mile. Some are wall gardens, vertical designs in great cursive sweeps of color. The flat gardens are the glory. Tulips, native here, briefly the most valuable commodity in the world during the Tulip Craze in besotted 17th century Europe, more so even than gold, spread their rainbow chalices under Istanbul's sky. ‘You must come back to Turkey in April' has been friend Zeki's temptation for years. He is so right.

2019, here we come

This trip, in 2018, we begin in London, leaping times zones and continents. Up at 7. London to Istanbul’s Attaturk Airport. Shuttle bus to Taksim, Istanbul’s ‘happening district. Dinner in Taksim. Shuttle bus across into Asia and Sobiha Gökchen Airport. Plane to Tbilisi, Georgia. Ride into the city at 4 am with George, owner of Parallax Hotel. Two planes, two buses, a car and 24 hours after waking in London at the west end of Europe, we fall into bed in the very eastern most 'European' country, straddling the Caucasus, and technically in Asia. Azerbaijan and Iran are just to the east.

In between there is Abdal, another loop in the gentle string between us and the many good people on Mother Earth. This is why we travel

2018-04-13 GEORGIA DAY 1

The baby cries.

‘No problem’ says Beka. He puts his coffee down on a stone railing picks up, cuddles, and kisses Marsho, chubby, and with startling pale green and silver eyes like her father's, and says ‘I take you’ We nod at the abandoned coffee. He laughs. ‘Later I come back for coffee'.

Beka overheard us trying to figure out how to get to the Opera House, and with Marsho wrapped in his arms leads us down alleys, over torn up streets, and tells a bit of his story. He's an artist. There is no work here. He and his pregnant wife went to Sweden for work. Marsho was born there but that did not get them any special rights to stay (as her birth would in the US, he reminds us). They had to leave. Now they are here again. He speaks Russian, Georgian, English, some Azerbaijani. (‘I don't know how.There are many different people here. I just speak.’). He leads us to a spot with a clear path to Tbilisi‘s main drag. If we need any help, ‘please call me'. We take his number, another connection. You never know. Surprises happen.

Beka’s finger points our route and we free-form it from there. Tbilisi is rebuilding everywhere. Roads dead end in construction sites. This is like navigating Boston’s cow paths-cum-streets, in blinders. There are benefits to blind wandering. Tbilisi has a seductive under-fragrance everywhere: baking bread. Another creeps in and we follow it to a park filled with the wonders of Georgia’s gardens Three foot tall torches of truly long-stemmed roses tower over bins of lilacs spilling huge purple pompoms against walls of tulips, carnations, fresias, anemones.

Georgians seem a dour-faced and unsmiling lot. At first. They just don’t beam in public. Make a connection in a shop, on the street, need help, and they are friendly and helpful, justly famous for hospitality. It's not effusive, but real.

It’s true of George, owner of Parallax Hostel, who picks us up at 4am, Beka and chubby Marsho.and Raju, transplanted from Mumbai, and 24/7 guy in charge at Parallax. The house is a few hundred years old, now 4 guest rooms, and a dormitory. We are comfortable in our room with private bathroom, two single beds and a double. Downstairs is a kitchen, all equipment supplied. Upstairs is a covered balcony overlooking the narrow street. It's where we meet Michael from India, share travels.

We're a short walk, corkscrewing through the deceiving streets, from Carrefour, the best supermarket we have ever seen. It has guys baking fresh bread in a traditional tandoori style oven, and a charming lady who helps us select one of Georgia's famous wines.

Best? We’re a few paces from Restaurant Imeruli.Sakhli. Our first full meal is:

Strips of eggplants seasoned with coriander and wrapped around ground walnuts, pomegranate seeds on top.

Red beans stewed with sprigs of cilantro and a hint of chili peppers.

Thick dumplings filled with broth, ground meat, spices.

2 big beers

The bill Is 14.7 Gel. That's $5.86.

Yes, we're happy with Parallax Hostel and with Tbilisi.

2018-04-14 GEORGIA DAY 2

She dies, of course.

But first we turn our legs into stubble walking through Tbilisi to its Old Town. Old it is, founded 1600 years ago. Worn walls, not quite rubble, and narrow twisting streets, tell of an embattled and dangerous past. Churches tell another story. Perhaps. Candles release the gold of icons, luminous eyes forward, concentration upwards into the dark vaults, then to heaven. Outside a man covers himself in expansive, generous signs of the cross. A woman kisses the door jam. Christianity came here, early formed, has lasted, an intense part of life for some, even after decades under the Soviets.

Lifted through the air way above Tbilisi and its river by wires, pulleys, and magic, we grab terra firma, the stones of an ancient fort, a true aerie. I offer to rescue a gaggle of traveling buddies from selfie-dom defeated by the view. My reward is a half dozen genuinely delighted smiles. They are from Iran, perambulating Persians, all smiles, again, as we commiserate about our governments.

It's 6:30 when we join the crowding before the red and white striped Moorish style opera house. Three hours later the curtain rings down to roars, stomping, waving arms, and Puccini’s Chinese fantasy opera, Turandot, has enslaved another audience.

Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theater is a gilded 19^th century confection, layered in tiny box stalls up to a massive crystal chandelier, icy topping. It's an appropriate setting for this brilliant piece, tour de force for any opera company, and especially for the two leads, singing stratospherically over Puccini's largest and lushest orchestrations They do it. And then some. The super-nova, even in this star- glutted performance, is the conductor. He leads, possessed by the music, explosive, demonic in drive and intensity. We are lifted off our seats by the sound. At the end, the two lovers, united by their self- absorbed maniacal purpose, do recognize briefly the sacrifice of the slave girl who died, love unrequited, barely acknowledged, to save the tenor. Turandot is about privilege as it attaches to the powerful, deadly. But we applaud wildly.

5 years ago I was a mandarin in a dozen performances of this opera. I’m counting on a repeat in early 2019. Maybe without the Fu Manchu mustache. It itched.

2018-04-15 GEORGIA DAY 3

‘I was born here.’

We're standing in the narrow street in front of our hotel deep in a baby fest. Chubby Marsho bounces, beaming, arms outstretched, from hug to hug, a journey stamped with kisses…from daddy Beka, to beaming young and clearly besotted godfather, to George, young, ambitious owner of the hotel. He is related to everyone in this neighborhood in some way. Our hotel, 3 large rooms, a dormitory, kitchen, spread up a winding staircase to a rooftop ‘party room' and covered balcony is his family’s wooden house, has been for generations. After 9 years as Parallax Hotel, it's still just another door on Vakhtang Orbeliani, barely announced, its new life not intrusive. George, and we, like it that way.

So do 3 young computer guys, long-time buddies, up from neighboring Armenia for the weekend. They have stayed here before, and, like us, hang out on the balcony. Cheerful, always smiling Vache, efficient David, and serious faced Razmik warm to English, and ply us with a universal ice-breaker---chocolate (‘Armenian and very good'). They're bright and articulate about their country, now in the midst of a polarizing election. They sum it up succinctly: “He is Armenian Trump”.

They leave us with a taste of Armenia's fabled hospitality. Numbers tap-tapped into multiple mobiles they make us promise to call them when go south to Yerevan tomorrow. Done deal!

At night we sit and sip with George, and kind Raju, resident Indian house manager. The wine is good, gets George's nod of approval. He makes his own, of course, pretty much a standard past time in Georgia, perhaps the origin of grape wine. George spins magic out of a map of his country. Its beauty is sorcery.

A nod passes between us. Next year, again, in Spring.

ARMENIA

April 16, 2018 to April 18, 2018

2018-04-16 GEORGIA TO ARMENIA

Brad Pitt slides into the shot gun seat. Well, not THE Brad Pitt, but his twinnish younger brother. And even better looking. To quote Harvey Fierstein in Torch Song Trilogy ,’If he has an IQ over 30 there is no God.’ Time may tell if the universe is godless.

We are seven for the 9 am departure in the comfy marshrutka (minibus) for the 6-hour, $15 passage southward out of Georgia to Yerevan, Armenia.

To my left is Grandma, in black, and in charge. Good smells come from her bag. Behind are soft and disembodied voices, two. Our driver has a face carrying the DNA of Central Asia, angular, high cheeked, well beaked. He helps grandma in and out of our van, solicitous and attentive to us, too.

An hour of smooth roads lined by red poppies, yellow-green whatchmacallits, and fruit trees in high blossom, white and fluffy, and we are at the border.

Stamp, exit, ride across the back line on map, ‘been to Azerbaijan?’, stamp, and enter, welcomed, unsullied by a previous trip to enemy Azerbaijan.

Armenia looks different, the roads more sinuous as we climb into a range of the southern Caucasus. The slopes are fuzzy green with new growth, soft flannel backdrop for the sharp lines of stone villages and helmeted churches. 4 hours into the trip we reach 6223 feet, pass it, drop down off the pass. Above us wide patches of snow speckle the mountains, no longer green, dark, mammoth negative Dalmatians nuzzling the bright sky. Grandma taps me, points left out her window. Lake Sevan is immensely blue and immensely big, dazzling.

Brad speaks. Perfect English, only slightly accented.

‘Be prepared. There are demonstrations in Yerevan. It’s safe,but be prepared for adrenalin and adventure’. Don’t worry. You will be safe.’ (Note: The powerless President wants to become Prime Minister, a more powerful position. He's not popular. The people, especially the young people, are speaking.)

Brad arranges for the driver to drop us off near our AirBnB, and also the info that he speaks Armenian, Russian, and Polish, too. He smiles.

Yes, the universe is godless.

But not without its saints.

First to descend is the waiter who brings our cold draft beers at the sidewalk café a short walk from our drop off. Our AirBnB host, Chaga, is in Paris, but her cousins have stepped in, are at 13 Sayat-Nova, 3^rd Floor, to show us around her spacious digs, two bedrooms, kitchen, balcony, reams of sunlight through acres of window, washing machine, now ours, $76 for 3 nights.

It's home within 5 minutes.

2018-04-17 YEREVAN DAY 1

SIze does matter.

At least it did to the kings of ancient Armenia in 700bc or thereabouts. One ordered bulbous pottery jugs and metal cauldrons---capacity clearly marked---dedicated to wine. The biggest holds 1200 liters, about 320 gallons. It inhabits one end of the many rooms in Yerevan’s superb History of Armenia Museum.

My eyes usually glaze over after about an hour of dusty cases, fuzzy descriptions in museum-eze, intelligible only to the in-crowd, and pieces of cracked pots. Not so here. 500,000 year old stone tools invade and stay in my imagination. They were made by our 25,000 times great-grandmother.

We walk upwards through the history of this rich region. In 2000bc, great-granny wore a delicate gold necklace, filagree and carnelian ancestor to art deco, 4000 years ahead of its time. Sometime about 1200bc an astronomer fashioned a metal model of the heavens showing Earth, sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. It carries a hint that he knew the planets---earth included--- were spheres.

We wear out by 300AD, when Christianity arrives, retreat back through history, down the stairs and out into Armenia's present. Republic Square and its famous singing fountains (mute until summer nights) are brilliant under clear skies. Yerevan gets a bad rap for air pollution. Not from us, and not today. It's glorious, the sun gentle.

As is what we see of the demonstrations against the unpopular President. There are crowds here in Republic Square, Center City, Yerevan. Some streets are blocked by young people sitting on benches. One is napping. Passers-by, slow down, or stop, or keep on with their early afternoon business. Uniformed official types look bored. Our news feeds, if they mention Armenia at all, spew the usual news-as-hyperbolic-entertainment hysteria: ‘Yerevan crippled by violence’, etcetera and so forth.

We stroll homeward, the warming sun filtered through Yerevan’s urban forest, and end the afternoon sipping cold draft beers outside the restaurant that served our taste buds so memorably last night. With food this good, people would flock. Maybe that king 2700 years ago put all that wine to good use, dallying with elegant ladies in their gold, under skies singing with the harmony of the spheres.

I hope so.

2018-04-18 YEREVAN DAY 2

‘It was a sound bomb, nobody was killed’.

Articulate Razmik, of the kind eyes, shrugs. ‘The leader of the demonstrations wants a soft demonstration. No guns, no violence.’ Will it make a difference, I ask. Shoulders rise, fall. ‘But, we have to do something.’

Armenians know something about oppression. A million were killed during the Turkish led genocide of the early 20^th century. The guys ask us to see the film ‘Promise’, about the genocide.

Raznik, Vache, and David, our balcony friends from Georgia, collect us this morning and lead us up sleek escalators that climb the slope of Yerevan’s spectacular Cafesjian Center for the Arts, contemporary art showplace, partner to the History Museum. At the top we are high above the city but way below the showpiece of this landscape, 17,000 foot Mt Ararat, perfect volcanic cone brilliant white against blue. It is sacred in Armenian tradition as the place where they emerged after Noah's flood, defining them. And it is now in Turkey, stolen along with the million lives of the genocide. It is Mother Earth's eternal reminder of the cost of hate and violence.

‘I hear Istanbul is beautiful. We don’t like Turkey, but there are good people everywhere.’ Razmik and the others lead us away.

We head into the hills. Stream beds become ravines then deep gorges. We climb to the 1^st century temple of Garni then to the 12^th century Monastery of Geghard, crossing from Sun Cult to Son Cult. Armenia makes a successful case for a return visit. The guys vote YES.

‘This place has energy.’

 ‘Smell the animal smell. It is so good. Better than the city.’

‘I love lasagne’

The five of us ride over rough roads through the white fluff of bursting apricot orchards, dropping morsels of our personalities. These guys are childhood friends. Vache just taught newly licensed David how to drive. David and Raz are helping Vach in his new computer career. They welcome and absorb us, seal the deal over home-made wine, fresh peach and cherry juice, cheese, REAL tomatoes, thick yoghurt, warm bread, and a two-foot platter of barbecued beef, pork, lamb, kebabs, sausage. Clearly size still matters in Armenia.

We drop Raz off near his home outside Yerevan with a bag of baked goodies for his wife and almost 4-month old Tigran. David and Vach walk with us until we convince them we know our way. The hugs and cheek rubs are real and deep.

 Armenia is no longer a shape on a map. It is the faces of these 3 guys who did not have to do what they did, but did it because ‘there are good people everywhere.’

LIVERPOOL-BATH-DUBLIN-BELFAST TRIP MARCH 31, 2018 TO APRIL 11, 2018

LIVERPOOL  BATH

March 31, 2018 to April 5, 2018

2018-03-31 LIVERPOOL DAY 1

‘I can’t believe it’.

And Hossein, all 6 foot 4 of him, gathers us in his endless arms, welcome refuge from the dreary cold of Liverpool airport parking lot. Last seen waving us goodbye at o dark early in Iran’s Tehran airport three years ago, he has been a firmly anchored friend,…no, family … since. We can't believe we're together again, either…in Liverpool. We telescope the 3 years into a few laughing hours over Kurdish braised chicken, lamb shanks, eggplant/onion stew. Persian Boy Meets Liverpudlians has enough episodes for a BBC series.

We bed down in his room, two of us comfy in the bed, Hossein on the floor, claiming comfort, head pillowed on his rucksack. The pajama party continues into the night.

2018-04-01 LIVERPOOL DAY 2

‘Sawat dee krap’…

…trills Hossein’s Thai flatmate, Simon, and follows with an enthusiastic salad of mismatched pseudo-English syllables cemented by intent if not syntax, but musical. He's in Liverpool to study English and this morning whirls off to charm and confuse the Parisians for a week. This leaves the three of us alone in Number 29. Tonight 4 couch cushions from the lounge will join the pajama party as Hussein’s bed.

Tanked up on delicious breakfast omelets with mushrooms à la Hossein, leftover Spanish cheese à la Us, and tea, we walk through town with the Easter crowds to The Docks, the eye-challenging Tate Museum of Contemporary Art, the holiday hurrah of the seaside. Liverpool bristles. It's not the down and out relic I expected. The Beatles brought Liverpool to the world…and maybe the reverse.

And, yes, Liverpudlians do speak English... to us. To one another they stream vowels and gutterals, not without rhythm, and expressive. They are a pale and friendly lot. Two women welcome us and direct us up to the second floor of a two story bus, red, and anchored on the dock, and dispensing fried things. Our crispy chicken is delicious in the low ceilinged refuge from the grey chill.

At night, Hossein pulls his stringed setar (relative of Indian sitar) from the top of his wardrobe and plays his music. And so the day that began with the music of Simon's almost English, and continued with the blunt lilts of the Liverpudlians ends with the pure wailing music of Hossein's homeland. It carries the wind of the desert in its poetry and us into the night.

2018-04-02 MELKSHAM DAY 1

‘April showers bring May flowers. May flowers bring…Pilgrims’.

So sayeth Dennis.

Late morning we set off westward, pilgrims, to the tiny village of Austerfield and The Manor House, home of William Bradford, Dennis’ 15 times great-grandfather, before he sailed on the Mayflower and washed up in Plymouth as its first Governor.

It snows. The countryside is hilly, the road winding. We make a video of us rounding slushy Spring snow into balls for Abel, who has never experienced snow. Daffodils, sunny optimists, color the white. A sign welcomes us to the village, touts great grandpa Bradford.

The current owner of The Manor House, old and a bit into dementia, is not a Bradford, but friendly, says local historian Susan Allen via phone. We don’t bother him, pose in the slush, feel the pressure of 400 years. The house is one small one among the few dozen opening onto the narrow road, a slender ribbon tying the hundred residents to slightly bigger hamlets fore and aft. Only a few more crowded onto the Mayflower.

Beef pie, crisp chips (aka steak fries) and crunchy early Spring peas in The Mayflower Inn belie the bad reputation of British cookery. The meal holds us deep into the dark and southeastward towards Bath, Stonehenge, and Melksham and our friends Janet and Brian Relfe. Eight hours after leaving Liverpool we see two figures waving in the narrow village road ahead. Janet and Brian (met in Peru, dined in Florida, travel story swapped in emails) sweep us past yet more daffodils into their rambling stone house. Wine and stories flow until midnight.

Tomorrow there may be wisps of Romans in Bath or of Druids at Stonehenge.

2018-04-03 STONEHENGE - Melksham Day 2

Alas, the Druids are long gone. Even to them, 2 ,000 years ago, Stonehenge was a mystery clouded by the passage of 3,000 years. They probably stared as we do, to wonder why, and how, and who.

We can’t walk among the stones, roped off from graffiti prone predators. No matter. The stones suck our imaginations into the circle. I don’t care what story we want the stones to tell. There’s something elemental here, deeper than any story, deeper than language.

We walk away, ride the bus, seep back 4500 years, and remember we're hungry. The Cheese Ploughman (aka hefty cheddar sandwich with greens and red cabbage) at Polly’s Tea Room does us just fine. Janet is a superb guide to the ‘hereabouts’ and to the bumpy road between British and American English food words. Their chips are our steak fries. Our potato chips are their crisps. Their scones look like our biscuits. Their biscuits are our crackers. Pudding is any kind of dessert, mushy, solid, hard, or soft. (We pass on Polly's.) Tea is tea. (We do not pass.)

Avebury is Stonehenge' slightly younger, and much larger, sister. 350 meters across it dwarfs the circle at Stonehenge and any other on the planet. Far fewer people wander among its unprotected stones. The megaliths stand, or lean, or lie, huge, rough, in concentric circles across the fields, We touch them. They feel warmer than they should under the cold grey skies. Even without the iconic tight circle and improbable capstones of Stonehenge, Avebury seduces our imaginations back 4500 years, a time machine.

Thoroughly stoned, the four of us join Brian for wine and stories strewn across the beautiful rooms of the house. We start in the huge kitchen, then herd into the dining room for Janet's fish pie (we would call it a casserole). It is a perfection of salmon, smoked fish, shrimp, simmered under leeks, and topped with mashed potatoes, and delicious whatever we choose to call it.

Moving again across the patinaed wooden floors into the lounge we sink into deep couches.

Imaginations pulled back 5000 years, we spin stories, stitching friendships. As did the Druids, and the people of Stonehenge and Avebury around their fires. I doubt they ate as well.

2018-04-04 BATH and Melksham Day 3

‘Stella doesn’t give Jack Shit what you call her…

Says the bloke petting the piebald, wiggly mutt about to lick us to death. Stella is a one of a kind ‘breed' designed by free-ranging canine accident, opportunity and optimism, with a fuzzy hint of Jack Russell Terrier and Shitzu in her recent family tree. Thus the Jack and Shit. She's adorable and she welcomes us to Bath.

There's nothing accidental or hybrid about the glorious Georgian architecture of this city. Georgian proportions are pure, simple, perfect. Interpreted in the soft pale beige of Bath stone, the genius of the Georgian eye created blocks, circles, crescents, rows, of buildings that massage our contemporary eyes still, two to three centuries after their cornerstones were placed on the hills of Somerset.

These glories are icing on the real cake of Bath: the two thousand year old Roman ruins created around Britain's only hot spring. The hundred degree waters still steam into the cold air as they did two millennia ago, offering some solace to Roman troops and matrons, banished here to ancient Britain far, far from the warmth of their Mediterranean homeland.

The barrel roof over the central pool was the tallest structure in ancient Britain. Rubble for centuries, rediscovered in the seventeen hundreds, built over by Georgian sybarites who came to ‘take the waters’, primp, and wrinkle in great style, the Roman bath complex is now a wonder of subterranean passages. We wander, tight-packed in the holiday crowd, through Roman caldaria (saunas), frigidaria (quite the opposite), plunge pools, evidence of Roman hydraulic engineering genius flowing around and below us.

The Romans loved their gods and goddesses. They brought Minerva here, merged her with a local goddess of the spring, and created a temple for the soul as well as the body. Think of it as a sort of Vatican Club Med.

Our own Goddess, Janet, actually a Weather Witch, does her magic on the clouds. It only rains when we are inside. We leave the damp and dark depths to lunch. As the afternoon wanes, we walk in the sun along the River Avon (yes, that River Avon), here a rumbling torrent, to Pulteney Bridge. Shops line the bridge as they do in Florence and Venice, but uniquely for Britain, here in Bath also. The Bath stone softens in the light. There are daffodils.

For two thousand years people of taste have gathered here.

No wonder.

2018-04-05  Melksham Day 4

Melksham sends us off in glory.

Beautiful, and sad, our last day with Janet and Brian unfolds under brilliant blue skies, the sunlight of the great floes of daffodils flooding upward, lighting the landscape. 56 years ago I had 10 days in a row of such perfect days. Today, we thank our own Weather Witch for this one.

The market in nearby Devizes fills our bags, pockets, hands with fresh vegetables and fruit. Five British pounds buys us three heavy cheeses, fresh from France, still cheap…until Brexit. We have ingredients for yet another of Janet's great meals.

Brian leads us on an expedition through the charity shops, source of the many sly touches in their glorious house. He has a great eye and clever hands, and a gift of story-telling.

Stuff stowed in four-wheeled Henry, we wander in Lacock, every Yank's fantasy of an English village. It's the source of those fantasies: Judy Dench, and friends strode its streets in BBC series Cranford, Pride and Prejudice, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, architectural glory exported.

Hossein stayed home to work on his thesis proposal (something to do with heat exchanger technology and ship engines, and a significant idea according to yachtsman Brian), but is ready for cheeses, home-made preserves, seed bread, fruit juice…a typical Janet spread. Recipes for her fish pie, savory pancakes (ricotta + eggplant, and avocado + chives), and seed bread come home with us.

Fueled by hugs and promises to visit again both ways across ‘the pond', we launch northward in Fred II. By 10 pm we pull into quiet Liverpool and in front of the just locked doors of the Kurdish restaurant. Stomach---if not taste bud--- yearnings, are assuaged by the wrap of grilled chicken and some thing vaguely faunal at the Turkish place next door.

The pajama party lasts ten seconds after we get horizontal.

DUBLIN    BELFAST NORTHERN IRELAND

April 8, 2018 to April 11, 2018

2018-04-06  DUBLIN DAY 1

“I’ll get so pissed!”

The guys are loud, burstingly overweight, unattractive, sloppily dressed. Only the accent and vocabulary tell me Ryanair Flight xxx has not taken a detour to Spring Break in the USA. They’re good natured, though, just oblivious to the people around them trapped in this noise coccoon. One girl, as lovely as the guys are not, sprouts a wedding veil atop her long, glossy hair…and a white garter way up a shapely spandexed thigh. Clearly this gene pool practices sex discrimination.

Moans and faked digestive sounds, the main acoustic contributions of Boys on Booze, greet the announcement that whisky is unavailable on the flight. Good move, Ryanair, thinks I. Whoops and hoots greet the apologetic amendment offering gin. The flying time is 30 minutes. What can happen, thinks I. Large bearded bloke, cyclone thighs raging out of smudgy grey gym shorts, belly flopping below exploding tee shirt, sets me straight: “I’ll get so pissed”---as in drunk, bombed, blind---and wildly waves the Ryanair flight attendant into barkeepdom.

My attention goes elsewhere.

We left Hossein in the dreary grey of Liverpool. We hugged, separated, needed more, and hugged again. He's a fine man, a valued friend, a terrific travel companion. He and his Iranian passport face a tough road finding a school and financial assistance. I'm pissed at that, without booze. He has a lot to offer the world, more, I think, than the decibels, burps and fake farts of the Boys on Booze. I suspect the lovely colleens will think so, too.

We promise to visit wherever he winds up for his PhD studies, even Australia. He is family.

2018-04-07  DUBLIN DAY 2

“They're here only a few minutes and already called me a racist!”

“I'm surprised it took them so long.”

“Woof”

Big, blustery John is a self-made man, Protestant in Catholic Ireland, bright, informed, and under siege. He lives in a world of conspiracies. He is pro-Brexit, pro-Trump, pro-Putin, anti-Brit, anti-Yank. He slips into and out of a brogue so thick we get maybe half of what he says. We suspect it, like his oracular political pronouncements, is a wee bit of a put on for the pair of Yanks sipping tea at his kitchen table.

Caroline, sweet, Catholic married to this Protestant, retired nurse, and volunteer at a palliative care hospice, has John's measure, gives as well as she gets.

JD, Australian Shepherd, agnostic, concentrates on important doggy things: finding new hands to scratch behind his ears and to toss his tennis ball.

Suitably welcomed yesterday, set straight about how the world really works, then well slept, and sorted out, as John puts it, over breakfast, today we chug a half hour down and back along the Irish Sea to Gravestones, joining the Easter holiday crowds in the dribbly, chilling mist. Tacky Tourist Towns all bristle with the same bins of aesthetically challenged Chinese-made ‘local products', but they have the scruffy energy of people determined to have a good time. All we need is a Ploughmans lunch, and a beer, and we're on the train back into Dublin.

Dublin is a jumble of styles, an exuberant example of the hodge-podge aesthetic of all the great city-scapes. It has one of my favorite city ingredients: a river runs through it. O'Connell Street begins above the quays lining the river and peters out near a greyed, undistinguished church. Midway is the Spike, a 400 foot metallic needle of no great interest, but stunning reflective impact. The crowds swirl around It, washing up in eddys on the wide sidewalks.

Dublin’s mix is mostly happy, sometimes odd. My eyes blink at the logo of the Apache Pizza chain, Native American bearing a pan of pizza. Italian restaurants offer ‘Real beef lasagne with chips and Cole slaw’. My taste bids curl and demand sanctuary.

The city has great charm and life and is eminently walkable. It's a bit like Boston, but more reckless. It could do with another visit, but is a lot more expensive than our usual haunts, so we'll probably pass. We will get future doses of the lilt of the talk, and the easy friendliness wandering in other parts of Ireland.

When we get old.

2018-04-08  DUBLIN TO BELFAST DAY 1

“You come to Florida, bring the dog, leave HIM at home.”

And so, we say goodbye to Dublin, sweet Caroline, furry JD (and his sloppy tennis balls), and big, blustery John of the granitic opinions and great charm, leaving him to stir the pot with future guests.

Local bus into Dublin City Center, a sit in the sun on the quay watching ripples on the River Liffy, express bus across the transparent border from Ireland to Northern Ireland, (Euros switched to Pounds in our wallets), then to Belfast, and by 2pm we're in Yvonne and Jean Dumas’ red Audi, hugs accomplished. It has been almost a year since our last shared gig as ushers at Sarasota Opera, and their move back to Yvonne’s native city. There are travel stories to tell.

And meals to share. The first is baked cod at Daft Eddy, out on a spit of coast[RF1]  overlooking the Irish Sea. Here, over half pints of Guinness3, we plan our two days, decide to skip the city and drive the sinuous coast.

We also skip the Titanic Exhibition, housed in an abstract metal evocation of a ship's pointed hull, silvery, and sailing ghostlike over the docks. The Titanic slid out of dry dock from Belfast in April, 1912, bound for New York. “She was fine when she left us” is what they say here. Jean and Yvonne suggest the exhibit focuses more on the Belfast beginning than the North Atlantic end of that voyage. The wild Irish coast has more appeal.

Later by the fire, our feet cushy on plush Moroccan rugs, Jean leads us through a tasting of triple-distilled Irish whiskeys, both smooth, both equally effective.

2018-04-09  BELFAST DAY 2

‘You can almost see Scotland.’

Almost.

J and Y apologize for the rain-tainted day, wishing us to see the view, clear over blue water to Scotland. Under a mottled grey sky, the coast is wild, craggy, unfinished. It slips into and out of view, dissolved by the Irish Sea below and mists above. We wind out onto long peninsulas, rocky fingers scratching at the sea, then back. The Irish coast does not disappoint us.

Castles and abbeys rose and fell here almost a millennium ago, temporary geometric rearrangements of the haphazard cobbles strewn by retreating glaciers. Most are now ruins of history, returning to rubble. We wander among the hints of naves, arches, cells, to touch stones, wonder about the stories and lives hidden in their smooth patina. We hear no voices, but get the message: your end is inevitable so fill your brief now with meaning.

We cross over the top of Ireland, leave the Irish Sea behind. The water is as grey here but a fit to its name: the North Sea. Here also is The Giant's Causeway, a stretch of strictly geometric stones that disappear here on the Irish coast and reappear out of the sea in Scotland. How? Aliens? Giants? Alas…volcanos. These ‘causeways' creep up in many places across Mother Earth where the right volcanic input occurs.

I like the giant story myself.

The Irish giant and the Scottish giant railed at one another in the gale winds between their islands. They each began building the causeway to reach the other. The Irish giant was faster and sneaked up on the Scottish guy, who was so big that the Irish giant turned tail and ran back across the causeway to Ireland. The Scottish fellow did not see the Irish bloke. He ran across the causeway to the other giant's house demanding to fight him. Mrs. Irish Giant had it all under control. She swaddled her hubby in a huge blanket and had him lie in their bed, apologized that her hubby was not ‘in’, and invited the Scottish guy in to see her ‘baby’. Scottish guy took one look at the not so ‘wee bairn’, imagined how big his ‘da’ must be and high tailed it back across the causeway tearing it up as he went. As stories go, it's neat, clean, and a triumph of brains over brawn.

We may be among the few Americans who have not seen Game of Thrones on TV, but we now see where it is filmed, here in the mists, where myths are spawned.

The place names rumble in the throat then roll off the tongue: Carnfunnock, Lough Neagh, Bonamargy…

We stop at the place Yvonne and Jean met at a peace and reconciliation center three children and many countries ago. In a tiny café on the rocks strong tea washes down Irish beef stew, then warm rhubarb cobbler, Yvonne’s traditional Irish fare for lunch, delectable, and but a tasty preamble for Jean’s traditional Swiss raclette for dinner. Melt tangy cheese onto boiled potatoes, add salt, pepper, paprika. Wash down with wine. Done.

These are wonderful people and essential friends.

2018-04-10  BELFAST DAY 3

‘Go NOW!

Yvonne is right. Irish weather is a jumble of possibilities, many wet, most damp, some gloriously bright. We grab a less grey slot mid-morning and head eastward, sprinting between the dodgy (and wetter) spots. Ireland may tout itself as The Emerald Isle, and green it is, but the fields are just emerald baguettes, settings for the bright yellow of the hedges of prickly gorse, and the white of shaggy sheep. It's lambing season and this year's crop are puffs set in green, tiny chips next to their woolly cabuchon parents. Everywhere long chains of golden and platinum daffodils dangle across the landscape.

Fish and chips, plus Guinness are preamble to a bakery foray. Everything on display is of the ‘take a pound of butter' approach to baking. We escape unscathed for now, but prepped for tomorrow with a ‘bap', round hybrid of loaf and roll, raw material for take along sandwiches for our trip to London.

Irish beef is dinner, tender steaks, not a hint of hormones, or altered genes. Our last evening is decanted friendship, rich. These are wonderful people.

We are so lucky.

2018-04-11 BELFAST TO LONDON

Wrapped cheese sandwiches on slices of yesterday's bap, hugs, and promises of more visits launch us onto the 2-hour bus ride, non -top to Dublin airport. Once again, we slip through the transparent border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. And once again Ryanair staff sacrifices the budget airline's draconian luggage policies to convenience, and waive us on, bags unmeasured and unweighed. Apparently it's a crapshoot, but maybe we've loaded it in our favor. Our backpack stuff weighs in at about 8 kilos (18 pounds), their limit. True, our multi-pocket vests carry about 3 kilos of Kindle, guides, chargers, batteries, and round out our silhouettes. Ryanair minions take no notice. All Americans are, uh, ‘full-figured'.

Blessed hotel points, ancient relics from my working days, but still breathing, buy us a night right at London’s Gatwick Airport, and a free breakfast. Next stop is familiar Istanbul, briefly to change planes, and then Georgia, terra incognita.

We are so ready!

---

 [RF1]

BARCELONA TRIP - MARCH 28, 2018 TO MARCH 30, 2018

BARCELONA

March 28, 2018 to March 30, 2018

2018-03-28 BARCELONA DAY 1

‘This was the first place I ate when I got home from Thailand’.

Kenneth Moya, our AirBnB host is a diver (thus, Thailand) and serious eater (thus, the enthusiastic salivations out of his wiry, zero body fat elfin frame). His smile, English, and recommendation are perfect. Behind us are eight hours of window and middle seat, no meal, no drinks, no-frillness on Norwegian Air Dreamliner flight DY7050 and we are sooo ready to unfold, and stretch our legs and taste buds.

We walk down the Rambla de Catalunya under the huge trees, just Spring-ing into green down, branches airy fingers into the blue sky. Clams in garlic, grilled prawns, crisp fried sweet green peppers slide past taste buds unparched by deeply chilled beer, ready for the adventure of Spanish tapas, and thoroughly satisfied.

We've soft landed in Barcelona.

2018-03-29 BARCELONA DAY 2

Felix the tortoise stretches his Mitch McConnel neck and face in the sun. He shares the terrace with Couscous and Thomasina, languid stretches of feline blackness, and me, truly knackered hammock dweller.

Fueled by xocolate y churros (thick hot chocolate and donuts) today we walk the streets of Barcelona's Gothic Quarter, narrow streets and monuments time-sandwiched between Roman columns and baroque churches. We ramble there and back through the architectural perfection of this most beautiful city. Grilled balconies ripple the sublime dignity of block after block of 19^th century façades. The city reaches only 5 or 6 stories above the cobbles, human-scaled. Down below we join Barcelenos to watch passers-by from the benches under the trees.

“it's bitter orange, but good” she says and her homemade marmalade joins a round of manchego quartered across 4 flavors, rosemary, paprika, and 2 others, unknown, indescribable. The market fills the small square, adding another layer to this place, already rich with stony patina. We add two small loaves of bread.

Tomorrow’s breakfast is in hand.

 

2018-03-30 BARCELONA DAY

‘53 cents.’

Victor’s nimble fingers hopskotch across the keyboard at the computer bodega, press the button that prints out our boarding passes and rescue us from Ryanair Surcharge Hell. Turn up without a printed boarding pass and we pay 44 Euros---each--- to get one printed. That's the cost of Kenneth's AirBnB and twice the price of our 22 Euro one way tickets from Barcelona to Liverpool. We happily hand Victor the 53 cents for the printout and 2 Pounds for 15 minutes of the computer's labor.

Successful navigation of the fine print policy byways of Europe's most far flung no frills budget airline requires Sherlockian diligence and an electron microscope. The rewards are ridiculously cheap fares, the punishments, wallet emptying surcharges.

Barcelona holds only rewards.

First, cold beers, then random rambling towards the must-sees.. The droopy-loopy façades of two of Gaudi’s architectural confections are straight-line chewing, angle-defiant contrasts to the stately dignity of the buildings that frame them. These are frosted eye-candy, dripping mortared marzipan.

Eyes surfeited we service our taste buds street side at a place Dennis noticed pre-Gaudi. There's confine print on the handwritten ‘menu del dial’ (aka.today's special ): thick egg and potato ‘Spanish tortilla’ (aka crustless thick quiche ), tomato and squash ‘crema' (aka thick soup), and :’scrambled eggs’ (aka scrambled eggs). All come with small sides of fresh greens and a full order of smiles from the young, peppy, and startlingly charming waiter. The wine is red. The sky is blue. Gabriel, the chef, quizzes us with his eye brows from the next table. Our thumbs respond. Gabriel ups the ante: ‘Next time I make you something special’ and seals the deal: we have found ‘our restaurant’ in Barcelona. We'll be back in 6 weeks, the fine print of Ryanair willing.