Yo Ho Ho

Over the past four months or so I've read three books about pirates. One novel and two histories, if you must know. Those books are now on the bookshelves of our library somewhere near the two other books about pirates that I've hung on to from years ago. Pirates are kind of a thing with me, I guess.

Considering I don't really read that much any more (I'd guess 8-10 books a year maybe...) three books about buccaneers might seem like an obsession or some trip research. Turns out it's the latter. Our first trip of 2020 was a long weekend in the Bahamas last month. And given that the Bahamas (and more specifically the island of New Providence and the town of Nassau) were once essentially a no man's land and safe haven for pirates, it seemed natural to me that I would get some studying in before we landed so I could maximize my pirate experience while in country. Or at least it did to me. 

So what is there to do pirate-wise in The Bahamas, you might ask? Walk the plank? Buy a parrot? Take swashbuckling lessons? Annoy everyone around you by saying "Arrrr!" over and over? Sing songs from The Pirates of Penzance (or Kristy McNichol's The Pirate Movie, if you prefer)? Hang out with Johnny Depp lookalikes and pretend to be Pirates of the Caribbean? Nah, none of that. And yes, I do know The Bahamas are not in the Caribbean Sea. But surely there must have been at least a little grog, right? Just a bit?

Once upon a time there was a Golden Age of Piracy. I don't mean that as a glamorous, glorified abstract notion of the romanticism of a life being a pirate. There was actually a Golden Age of Piracy. Although there's some debate about how far back in history (some say as far as 1650) this goes, most pirate scholars agree that the years 1716 to 1726 or thereabouts were certainly in the mix. Why those years? Because during that time, piracy in the new world was completely out of control. And it was all the fault of the British.

It is difficult for me to instantly recall all the wars over the centuries between England or Britain (England became Britain in 1707 when it merged with Scotland) and France. The Norman invasion of England in 1066, the Anglo-Norman War, the Anglo-French War, the Hundred Years' War, The Second Hundred Years' War, the list can go on and on and on. But one war I hadn't even realized had occurred was the War of Spanish Succession, which involved the British against the French and Spanish over the French monarch's right to control the French and Spanish throne. Or close enough. That's when piracy in the Caribbean (and places nearby like The Bahamas) began.

At some point during War of Spanish Succession (1702 to 1712 if you must know), the British Crown realized they were a little short of manpower and ship power,  particularly in corners of the empire like oh, just south of the present day United States where the French and Spanish also had claimed territory. To overcome this shortage, the Crown issued privateering licenses to ship captains. These charters made it legal in the eyes of the King for ship captains and crews to attack and plunder French and Spanish ships and then keep most of the booty. Privateering licenses became very popular, particularly because they could be issued by not just the King of England but also by local and regional governors, like those in places like Jamaica and in each of the colonies on the American mainland.

Pirate flags usually featured a death head but often also displayed an hourglass.

For many sailors, privateering was a great gig, particularly if they managed to stumble upon a ship or two laden with treasure. And at that time, the Spanish were engaged in taking as much gold out of places like Peru as their pillaging little hearts could stand and then sending those ships back to Spain across the Caribbean. So there were actually literally ships full of treasure out there.

In 1712, the War ended and Britain directed all their privateers to knock off whatever they were doing on behalf of themselves and the Crown on the oceans for the last 10 years. Most of these were young men who had done nothing else to make a living ever and all of a sudden they were told to stop, trade in their lucrative fun job and go back to farming or whatever other difficult and potentially dangerous vocations that might get them a standard of living about equal to extremely poor. 

Or maybe they could go into the Royal Navy or sign on for work on a merchant ship, where ship captains were frequently tyrannical authoritarians who at a minimum bullied and at worst tortured and killed their men. No thanks! Not after spending time on a privateering vessel where captains served at the pleasure of the crew and spoils were divided almost equally (pirates also operated this way; it was astonishingly democratic).

Didn't happen. No way. 

What did happen was privateers at first maybe ignored the news on the pretense that they just hadn't heard yet. I mean, after all, news traveled by ship at that point. Once it became obvious they couldn't say they hadn't heard the news, some privateers adopted different lives. Some didn't; they became pirates. And you better believe that some of those who abandoned the seas for farming of shopkeeping or something reversed course and went back to piracy. And with the Royal Navy recovering from a war and not yet focused on policing the western hemisphere, the Golden Age of Piracy was on!

So what does all this have to do with The Bahamas? As I've already pointed out, those 700 islands aren't even in the Caribbean. Am I just making whatever connection I can to pretend to be a pirate for a weekend? No. I am not.

The Bahamas sit just south and east of the tip of Florida. Collectively, they are sitting right in between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, a prime travel route for ships heading from the new world back to Europe. The hundreds of islands made navigation (like say chasing a ship that had just attacked you) difficult and the shallow drafts just made it worse or impossible for any good-sized vessel to maneuver in unplanned conditions (like say being attacked). It was a perfect environment for small ships manned by small crews to hit larger ships and escape quickly.

And then there was the fact that The Bahamas were pretty much unsettled. Not by design but by circumstance. The town of Nassau was founded by the British in 1670 but during the War of Spanish Succession it was attacked and sacked by the French and Spanish four times which pretty much convinced everyone left to split town. When newly appointed governor Edward Birch arrived there in 1704 he found the place deserted so he left too. Nassau is a natural harbor. So with no government around and rich seas all around to plunder, the pirates moved on to New Providence island. And that's where we went last month and tried to discover what it's like to live the pirate life.

Just like Blackbeard, Charles Vane, Black Sam Bellamy, Benjamin Hornigold, Anne Bonney, Calico Jack Rackham and many many more. They were all in The Bahamas at one point.

Pirates of Nassau

It would seem to me that if you were on a pirates pilgrimage in The Bahamas and there was a pirate museum just a couple of blocks from the hotel where you were staying that the logical place to start your pirate adventure would the museum. We didn't think so. We did it last. Although at least we did it. I'm covering that first in this post because it does make sense to write it this way.

I expected Pirates of Nassau to be a complete sham, sort of a very very very low budget Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. I grimaced as I paid the admission fee. Then we stepped inside.

The first room of the museum is a life size reconstruction of a pirate sloop (the "Revenge" if you must know) docked alongside a row of establishments (imagine bars and brothels I guess). Other than being way cleaner and way less smelly than what such a dock must have looked like in the early 18th century, it was awesome. I couldn't have imagined a better start to any museum like this. The ship looked real, the lighting was fantastic and the figures in the second story windows and slumped on the dock passed out drunk looked about as real as fake humans could look. I loved it!

As we walked down the dock we heard whispers from the end "tavern" which were stopped abruptly with a "Someone's coming! Shh!!!" when we got close. I know it's really easy in this day and age to do this but the first room of this place was simply amazing. Couldn't have been any better. Totally shocked. It was incredible.

The Revenge in dock.

Pirates of Nassau definitely put all their money into the first room because after that, no space was as impressive as the first impression. The rest of the museum was a collection of dioramas, squeaky clean holds of ships (yeah...right!) and less impressive pirate figures, including a super not like real life broadside from Blackbeard himself (shown above). Eventually it deteriorates into a poster gallery of pirate themed movies, which is what I expected the whole thing to be in the first place.

But I'll say this for Pirates of Nassau: the material presented in the museum was completely accurate based on everything I read before I embarked on this trip. They also touched on the lives of many of the most famous pirates operating out of The Bahamas during the Golden Age, including Anne Bonney and Mary Read, the only two women operating as pirates that history has recorded (although I'm guessing there were actually way more).

The place also keeps you engaged with a series of True / False questions about pirate history. Does X mark the spot? Did pirates really have parrots on their shoulders? Was walking the plank a thing? I'm not telling. You'll have to go visit and find out for yourself. I'm astonished to be writing this but if you are in The Bahamas, I'd give this place a try. Seriously. Particularly if you know nothing about real pirate history. I came away very impressed.

Rum

If the information communicated to us in the Pirates of Nassau museum is correct, most of a pirate's life was "spent gambling and drinking huge quantities of alcohol". For what it's worth, I totally believe this. It seems to me from everything I've read that the alcoholic beverage of choice here was rum. With an honorable mention to Madeira wine, I suppose. We had to make sure we had some Rum in The Bahamas. After all, it wouldn't be a proper pirate trip without it, right?

Goombay Smash. Bahama Mama. Dark and Stormy. Piña Colada. Rum cake. Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes! We had them all in various quantities and I highly recommend both the Goombay Smash and the rum cake (we may have brought one or two back with us; OK...two). But especially the Goombay Smash.

Most liquor in the world is made from some sort of grain. Rum is not. It's made from sugar cane, the extremely labor intensive crop which drove the abominable slave trade from West Africa across the Atlantic Ocean. All so people in Europe could have sweet things. Pretty disgusting stuff. The distillation of rum comes from molasses and originally was done on the plantation where the stuff was grown. Today, rum is produced in dedicated distilleries and then barrel-aged on site. The longer the aging, the deeper the color. Just like bourbon or scotch.

Fortunately for this vacationing wannabe pirate, Nassau has its own distillery. 

John Watling's Distillery was founded in 2010 on the site of an old sisal plantation built in 1789 named the Buena Vista Estate. The whirlwind tour of the place today lasts all of about 10 minutes and so doesn't add much to the experience, although the shot of frozen piña colada at the beginning was much appreciated. I've been through whiskey distilleries all sorts of places so I know how the distillation process works. I was just there for the tasting which we got to pretty quickly since the tour was less than 15 minutes long.

I've never been much of a rum drinker. The first drink I ever ordered as a legal adult was a piña colada because I didn't know what else to drink and pretty much knew I didn't like beer (oh the irony there...) but the rum drinks have been few and far between since then. Over the last dozen or so years, I've drank a lot of bourbon straight and lately I've dabbled in some excellent Irish whiskey (these trips...) but sipping rum? Never done that. Until last month in The Bahamas.

Watling's makes four different varieties of rum aged from two years to six years. By bourbon standards, this is child's play. Eight years. 12 years. 15 years. 25 years. It's all out there. By some cognac standards, it's dwarfed. There are 50 year and 75 year cognacs out there. But I guess rum in the Caribbean (or close to it) works at six years to the best stuff. Our tour guide, Doyle, told us this also but I'm not sure I followed his logic. I'm also not sure I followed the naming logic for the distillery. John Watling was a pirate who lived on San Salvador in The Bahamas for a while before heading to South America and getting shot in the liver in 1691. Pirate. Liver. Death. Let's name the place after this guy.

Clockwise from bottom left: Pale (2 years), Amber (3 years), Buena Vista (5 years), Single Barrel (6 years).

For my first rum sipping ever, John Watling's was a good experience. The Pale, Amber and Buena Vista rums were all incredibly smooth with a sweetness and no burn when swallowing. As they should, the smoothness and flavor intensity increased with age and honestly, I'd drink both the Amber and Buena Vista neat any day. All three of those varieties are cut (meaning water is added) after leaving the barrel. The result is good and I'd certainly drink any of those in my next Goombay Smash. 

The rum flights at Watling's are available two ways: with the Single Barrel and without. I went all the way to The Bahamas. There's no way I was not getting the Single Barrel. 

I'm not going to say it was a mistake to get the Single Barrel but it was definitely my least favorite. Uncut it is so strong (it's also $112 a bottle!!) and super sweet. It's also got so much alcohol in it that it felt like it was evaporating in my mouth. I'd prefer the Buena Vista any day.

If I was a pirate on a ship, I'd drink any of them though. Even outside of a Goombay Smash.

The east rampart of Fort Montagu. Paradise Island is in the background to the north.

Forts

Onto something more real... What better way to defend your Caribbean (or just outside the Caribbean) island from pirates than building a fort or two? New Providence island went two better than that and had four of them. All were built by the English (or British, depending on the date) to defend the island from the Spanish, not pirates. Heck, only one of the four (Fort Nassau) was even around during the Golden Age of Piracy and that one's long gone (it's now the site of the British Colonial Hilton, our hotel for our long weekend in Nassau).

I thought visiting a fort or two in our time on New Providence might give us an idea of what it might have been like to defend the island from pirates, even if that didn't actually happen. We decided to visit two of the three: Fort Fincastle at the highest point of the island and Fort Montagu at the east end of the natural harbor formed by Paradise Island (or Hog Island as it was called then) just to the north of New Providence. At one time, Fort Montagu and Fort Nassau would have bookended the harbor to the east and west.

Fort Fincastle was almost a complete waste of our time. It was a long walk uphill, we found most of the exhibits missing or unimpressive, and the fort never saw any combat action at all. Fort Montagu was much better.

Fort Montagu is the oldest of the three remaining forts, built from 1741 to 1742. It is also the only one of the three to have seen combat action, although the action they saw was defending the place against American revolutionaries in 1776 who came down to raid the place for supplies. The place is super small, maybe 100 feet maximum length on each of its four sides. There is a maybe 20 foot by 40 foot gatehouse at the west side which serves as a the single point of entry and which constitutes the only enclosed space in the Fort. There's a small courtyard in the center of the Fort and a cannon at each corner, although we were told the only original cannon is the one at the northwest corner.

Fort Montagu from the northeast.

Fort Montagu is gorgeously sited. It's located on a corner of New Providence to the south of the harbor so water flanks the building on two of its four sides. It's this siting that made me want to visit this Fort in the first place as both Fort Fincastle and Fort Charlotte west of Nassau are effectively inland. The walls are not that high so you can get a pretty good sense of how isolated a soldier might feel if the island were under attack. It seems like if you managed to avoid the cannon and land that there would be no realistic way the soldiers inside the Fort could stop an armed force from taking it.

This seems especially true considering the meager quantity of cannons out there, although it didn't seem like there was that much space for too many more considering the room needed to maneuver these things. For clarification here, these cannon are not stationary. They are mounted on an apparatus with tracks that accommodates the distance the cannon recoils after firing. Combine the distance of the tracks with a reasonable arc to reposition the cannon and there's not much space for anything else. Astonishingly the guide at the Fort told us there were a total of 23 cannons at the Fort at one time. That's honestly difficult to believe but I'm taking it at face value. It must have been packed full of cannons in an almost cartoonish way.

Today Fort Montagu is pretty close to a lot of other stuff on New Providence. Because it's near the water there are hotels and villas pretty nearby for tourists to stay at. But back in the mid-1700s this tiny little fort must have been all alone out there. Sure, it was just a little more than two miles from Fort Nassau but in an emergency (meaning being under attack), it must have seemed like a long way away from anything.

There's one other nugget that the guide clued us in on: head upstairs to the north from the gatehouse and hang a left and you'll find a padlocked cell where captured pirates were held prior to trial and being sentenced to hang (Pirates were always hanged). I had a feeling there would be a pirate connection here somehow.

The pirates' holding cell, as seen through the legs of the only original cannon at Fort Montagu.

Buried Treasure

After a museum, plenty of rum drinks and a visit or two to a fort, the only thing that could have made my Bahamas pirate adventure complete would be to go search for some buried treasure. Unfortunately, pirates didn't actually do this. There are many, many myths about pirates; with the possible exception surrounding a single incident with Captain Kidd in the late 1690s, pirates burying treasure is one of them. Pirates didn't bury treasure; they spent it. Fast. We'd have to be creative on this one.

On our second day in The Bahamas we took a trip out to Clifton Heritage National Park on the west end of New Providence. And here's where we found our buried treasure. And maybe some sunken wrecks at the same time.

Clifton Heritage National Park was established in 2004 to preserve the memory of the Lucayans (the people on the islands before Columbus got there) and the slaves brought over from Western Africa against their will to work the sugar cane plantations. To that end there are reconstructions of traditional dwellings that each group might have occupied in their time on New Providence island. One of the other features of the Park is an underwater sculpture garden and guided snorkeling out to see what's under the ocean. Here was our buried treasure. 

Buried treasure? Sunken wreck? Both? Neither?

Most snorkeling excursions that I have been on do not follow any specific path. You go where the fish are because that's generally what you are in the water to see. Clifton Heritage Park does it differently because their attractions under the sea don't move. They weigh tons and are laid there deliberately by man. And other than being buried in the shifting sand at the bottom of the ocean, they are always in the same spot. Mask on. Snorkel in. Fins on. Let's go!

A little ways off the shoreline at Clifton Heritage in about 20 feet of water or so there is a white flag on a pole surrounded by a ring of floats. That flag marks the largest of the sculptures in the park, called Ocean Atlas, standing about 17 or 18 feet high or so. That was our first destination after a quick stop to see what is usually a giant native face looking up from the sea floor. When we swam over, it was just a nose. Told you about the sand!

The approach to Ocean Atlas is from behind, and with my poor eyesight (I'm not aware of prescription masks being a thing, although they might be) it literally looks like a pile of rock worn smooth by the ocean's wave action. The detail, including the face looking up at the tremendous but invisible weight supported by the figure's back and right hand, is all on the ocean side of the sculpture. I suppose the idea here is where Atlas in traditional mythology held up the world on his shoulders, Ocean Atlas is supporting the surface of the water. Maybe. It's a little creepy and a little curious and pretty cool to find this kind of thing in the middle of the sea. Good thing there's a flag marking the spot, although I suppose that (and the ring of floats) is to warn off boats traveling in the area.

Ocean Atlas, Clifton Heritage National Park.

While I didn't realize it at the time, there is a path made up of hollow perforated concrete spheres which leads you out to Ocean Atlas. I just headed for the flag! That path forms a ring to guide you to all the other stuff they have under the water. Like a trail of giant breadcrumbs leading you back home. Like the face we passed over on the way out to Ocean Atlas, many of the balls (which also double as hiding spots for some of the smaller fish) are almost completely buried in the sand.

Following the trail that day we came across another humanoid sculpture, this one clinging to a spike driven into the ocean floor and looking longingly up at the atmosphere above the water. This one didn't attract fish the way Ocean Atlas did and so was far less compelling than our first stop. 

We also found the submerged remains of a plane. Not a real one; this once was apparently a prop from Jaws IV: The Revenge. I have to admit I believe I stopped my Jaws watching at Jaws 3-D (which, yes, I did see in the theater with 3-D glasses when 3-D films were making a short-lived comeback) so the wreck at the bottom of the sea west of New Providence didn't hold any special meaning for me.

Ocean Atlas is unquestionably the star of the show here. It's bigger and more detailed than any other attraction on the tour but more importantly you can get really close to it without diving down to have a closer look due to its proximity to the surface. It's a cool tour. I've never been snorkeling to see something other than what's alive below the waves. Plus it checked one last box in our pirate themed quest.

The path around the garden is marked with hollow spheres, seen here with a sergeant major close to the lens.

Clinging on for dear life? Or wishing he could surface?

Towards the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, Britain decided they had to deal with the pirate problem in The Bahamas. With any sort of serious naval conflict being halted for a while, having a piece of their claimed territory being run by a bunch of bloodthirsty outlaws just wasn't going to fly for very long. Plus lacking their crown-issued licenses to legally attack only French and Spanish ships, the pirates started taking whatever ships they pleased, including British ships. Something had to be done!

Actually a few things were done. First in September of 1717, King George I issued a full pardon to all pirates wishing to take it. The Act of Grace as it was called would grant a full and unconditional pardon for all acts of piracy committed prior to January 5, 1718 providing piracy was sworn off forever in the future. Second, with the French and Spanish navies no longer a concern, the Royal Navy went after the pirates hard. During a ten year span from 1716 to 1726, more than 400 pirates were captured and hanged for their crimes by the British crown. There must have been many more killed in the process. All of a sudden, piracy was no longer an unpunished crime. Odds were that if you committed piracy, it would catch up with you sooner rather than later. And you'd be swinging from a rope for it.

In The Bahamas, it took a combination of the pardon and more aggressive punishment along with some direct confrontation not by the British government, but by a private consortium. In exchange for ridding The Bahamas of the resident pirates, the partners in the consortium would receive governorship of the islands as well as all revenue generated by crops and trade for a 21 year period. It was rich enough to convince action to be taken.

The man at the pointy end of the spear on this venture was newly appointed governor of The Bahamas Woodes Rogers, a former privateer and slave ship captain. Rogers was effective in his role as governor, using a combination of the Act of Grace and employing reformed pirates to go chase and capture their former cohorts. Rogers today is immortalized in Nassau by his name gracing the harbor front street. I guess history has forgotten all about that whole slave ship captain thing.

Statue of Woodes Rogers in front of the British Colonial Hilton, Nassau.

There is a romantic notion of piracy that it was somehow a glamorous vocation worthy of celebration. It wasn't. It was a high risk, criminal venture that preyed on hard working honest people. Sure the pirates of the Caribbean stuck it to the rich and powerful in Europe sometimes but they also damaged, tortured and killed a lot of people who had no other choice. And make no mistake, pirates got into it for the money. Plain and simple. All the stuff you'll hear about pirates being democracies is sort of true. But it was all about the money.

If it seems like we structured our entire two and half day trip to The Bahamas around pirates, we didn't. Not really. But it's difficult to avoid them because the history of piracy is so intertwined with the history of the islands. This stuff is literally everywhere. We focused our time on attractions and sites that spoke to the history of The Bahamas and deliberately avoided those that catered to cruise ship passengers looking to tie on one before getting back onto their big boat in time for dinner. To that end, we refused to head to the mega-resorts Baha Mar and Atlantis on New Providence and Paradise Island respectively. No interest in that stuff. We found our little corner of The Bahamas so much more rewarding. 1 island down, 699 to go.

I set one challenge out for myself in my time in The Bahamas and that was to find some flip flops. It's been years since I've owned a pair of these uncomfortable things but I figured I'd give it another shot. After all, it's been years since I've willingly flown to an island and spent time on the beach. I dragged us around to about every souvenir shop I could before finding a pair that I liked and that are super comfortable. I had to get some pirate flip flops. Love the design, the cloth straps and the arch support. Now I'm ready for a return trip.

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How We Did It

Pirates of Nassau is right in downtown Nassau at the corner of King Street and George Street. It's open every day of the week. Check their website for hours. Admission is $13.50. It's worth it for the first room alone and the information in the museum. It's an incredible overview of pirate culture.

Just a bit to the west and south of Pirates of Nassau is John Watling's Distillery. It's about a half mile walk in total although there will be a little bit of a hill. Watling's is also open seven days a week and tours are free but a couple of bucks tip never hurt for the time the guide spends with you and the shot of frozen piña colada. There is tons of rum in bottles available for purchase at the end of the tour or you can buy any number of drinks with rum or without for consumption on the premises.

Whether you are staying in downtown Nassau or coming to New Providence on a cruise ship, both places are very accessible on foot. 

Fort Montagu is located on the east end of Nassau Harbor. We took a taxi out there and our driver seemed incredulous that we were actually taking a cab specifically to visit the Fort. We're nerds, what can I say? It is definitely walkable from Nassau because we walked back. However, it's a long walk. Like 2-1/2 miles or so. If you go, you won't need long there. We spent as much time as we could reasonably spend in and around the Fort and managed just half an hour. It's really small. Admission as of January 2020 was a whole $2! I highly recommend a trip, even if our cab driver had never been asked to take anyone there before. Since there's not a whole lot to see between downtown and the Fort, I'd suggest taking a taxi one way and walking the other. Or just cabbing both ways.

Clifton Heritage National Park is very definitely not walkable in a reasonable amount of time. It's about a 15 to 16 mile trip one way. Driving is a must. When we first started researching how to get to Clifton Heritage National Park, the Park had a website. Their website offered pricing information and advertised rides from Nassau to the Park. Then about two weeks before our trip, the site went down and despite chatting on Facebook, emailing and calling, we could not get any information as to how to get there.

So we switched gears and found Marvelous Tours who got us to the Park on their Land and Sea tour. It didn't have quite the itinerary as what I remember on the Park's website and the cost may have been a bit more but as a tour on what for us was basically a two and a half day vacation, the four hours or so we spent with Jeremy from Marvelous Tours was perfect. When we booked with them there was an offer on their website for a 10% discount if we signed up for their email notifications. We did and they haven't emailed me since but the discount was appreciated. I definitely have nothing bad to say about this company. They did right by us, plus the group size was super small at four total.

And the flip flops: Rip Curl at Bay Street and Charlotte Street. They have many more Bahamas themed designs.

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New Year's Resolutions

For the past few years, we've tried to make New Year's Resolutions related to living our lives more sustainably. In 2018, we resolved to stop using the plastic bags that the grocery and other stores have on hand; we instead transitioned to the use of reusable bags. Two years into that resolution, we have a series of cloth or coated fabric bags squirreled away everywhere we can think of for emergency use: there are at least one in each of our cars; in work laptop bags; in jackets sometimes; in addition to the two Foodland reusable bags we are still using since picking them up in Hawaii in February of 2016. Those things are workhorses!

That 2018 resolution had some relevance to our travel, specifically our second ever trip to sub-Saharan Africa we completed early that year. The previous August, Kenya banned the use of plastic bags in their country with what, to some, seem like over the top punishments for violation of the law. Producing, selling or even carrying a plastic bag can carry penalties of four years in prison or the equivalent of $40,000 in fines. 

Think that's too much? I might agree, but let's be serious about this saving the planet stuff if we are going to do it. I can tell you there was no way I was bringing anything into Kenya in February 2018 in a plastic bag. I've read that penalties since the law was enacted have been handed out in far lower amounts than permitted. I've also read that it's affected some small merchants disproportionately. The effects on local merchants are regrettable but, again, if you want to enact change like this I guess you have to be serious about it.

Coral reef. Clifton Heritage National Park, New Providence, Bahamas.

This year, our New Year's Resolution is to change our sunscreen use habits. Don't get me wrong, we still plan to use it. God knows with my super pasty complexion I can't afford to live without it and still see the light of day on a sunny holiday. But it's what makes up the sunscreen that's caused me to throw away all those little bottles of sunscreen I had in reserve.

Last year, the U.S. Virgin Islands passed a law banning the sale, importation or possession of sunscreen containing the ingredients oxybenzone, octocrylene or octinoxate. Why these three compounds? Well, in addition to oxybenzone being a known hormone disruptor in humans and octinoxate potentially mutating genes in laboratory mice, all three have been suspected of causing damage to coral reefs. Oxybenzone appears to be the worst of the three, causing coral bleaching, a process whereby coral expels algae from its tissues, which typically leads to the coral's death.

The Virgin Islands weren't the first location to ban chemicals found in sunscreen. Hawaii, Key West and Palau all appear to have beaten the USVI to the punch. But if they weren't the first to ban these chemicals (and it looks to me like they are the only place to ban octocrylene so far) then they are certainly backing their law with some hefty fines: $1,000 for the first violation and $2,000 for each subsequent one.

I know what you may be thinking: what's the big deal about coral? The answer is it's a huge deal! Coral reefs are critical environments for breeding and protection of many, many marine fish and other life, permitting safe spaces from predators to allow survival of species. No coral = no small fish = nothing for medium-sized fish to feed on = no large fish = no fish for humans. 25% of the ocean's species might start out in coral reefs. 25%!!!!

Corals are also vital to ocean cleaning, particularly balancing levels of nitrogen and carbon in our oceans, as well as providing protection from damaging wave action and erosion for shorelines. If there's no coral, some things are going to start going a little more haywire than they already are in our seas. We need to make sure we protect this stuff.

One of the two Foodland reusable grocery bags we picked up four years ago in Hawaii. Still going strong!

Now, of course, there are some skeptics out there. Some folks have debated the findings of studies released to these chemicals' effects on coral. Some have cast doubt based on the fact that the data obtained comes from observations in laboratories, not in actual coral reefs in oceans. My take here is why not just err on the side of caution. If the studies are wrong, they have caused me to throw away about $15 of sunscreen. If they are right, I'm doing the right thing. Either way, I'm still protected from harmful UV rays.

We just got back from a long weekend in The Bahamas. Those islands have not yet banned oxybenzone, octocrylene or octinoxate but before we went I made sure to buy some new sunscreen without these potentially harmful chemicals. If it truly is dangerous to coral reefs, then it's a good thing I switched because we swam over some on our second day in country.

I'm sure if I'm the only one giving up sunscreen with environmentally damaging ingredients, then my actions alone isn't saving the world. Nothing we do as individuals will unless others participate along with us. But we have to start somewhere. Two years ago, it was plastic bags. This year it's sunscreen. I went, I saw, I switched sunscreen and came back un-burned from The Bahamas. And yes, contrary to the picture below, I did not always stay in the shade, although that certainly helps sunscreen do its job.

On the beach in the shade at the British Colonial Hilton, Nassau. Shade plus sunscreen for this beach session!

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How We Did It

For a while now, I've turned to Neutrogena for my sunscreen needs. I know, it's made by a big corporation but it's worked for me. Being brand loyal over here, my quest for sunscreen without oxybenzone, octocrylene or octinoxate got me some Neutrogena Pure & Free Baby Sunscreen. It's SPF 50 and tear free, which is important to me because who wants their eyes to start tearing up when sunscreen gets sweated into your eyes? Not me! 

It also comes in 3 oz. bottles which is important since I never want to check a bag ever and 3 oz. passes through security checkpoints with no problem.

The directions on the bottle say to apply it 15 minutes before exposure to sun and to reapply every two hours or after 80 minutes of swimming. I may not have done quite as the bottle directed but I was still OK. Unless they stop making this sunscreen or something tells me this stuff is bad for the planet, this is what I'm going with for the foreseeable future.

There is other evidence, by the way, that warming oceans is much, much more of a threat to the survival of corals than anything else. I'm sticking by my resolution to change my sunscreen use habits anyway. 

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Invisible Sun

This is the last post about my trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland. It's been the most difficult and most personal to write. And it's long. Apologies in advance.

Growing up in England in the 1970s I hated the Irish. Or at least that's how I probably would have explained it to someone who asked how I felt back then, as if a boy of 10 or less could even express what it was like to really hate. I thought Irish people killed English people. I thought they were scary. And stupid. All the "stupid people" jokes we told back then as kids had an Irishman in the punchline, just like after we moved to the United States we found people told "stupid people" jokes about Polish people.

In all reality, I understood very little of the conflict going on between some Irish people and the UK government. All I thought I knew was Irish people were mailing letter bombs to British people and exploding cars and dustbins in cities every now and then and that was scary. We knew all this because it was on the television and the people reading the news seemed to be talking about it all the time. Either that or that was one of the few news stories I could comprehend back then.

As if it weren't bad enough to hear all this stuff on the news, sometimes we got mail from Ireland and I feared the worst. Every time we got an envelope with an Irish stamp on it I thought it had to be a letter bomb. After all, weren't all things Irish dangerous? Back then I didn't really understand that a bomb couldn't realistically fit inside a standard envelope. 

We never ever received a letter bomb that I know of. I mean, why would we? 

Murals are everywhere in Northern Ireland. These from the catholic neighborhood in Derry.

America made my feelings about the Irish worse. When we moved to New England we found a general hatred of the English, something held on to by kids and teachers from two wars both about 200 years old in a time and a political environment that was very different from the late 20th century. It made no sense. 

That enmity towards Britain that we found when moving to this country seemed to translate to the conflict going on in Northern Ireland. We found pretty much everyone living around us identified as having some Irish ancestry (which also made no sense and still doesn't) and their take on the British government vs. the Irish Republican Army (or IRA) was that everyone living in Ireland and Northern Ireland was Catholic, didn't want to be governed by Protestants and that Britain should just give Ireland back to the Irish. I at least understood enough to know that the conflict wasn't that simple. And I was only 11.

I figured a trip to Northern Ireland might be an opportunity to understand a little bit more about the conflict that I lived through as a child, albeit really just as a spectator through our television set. From my perspective growing up in the midlands of England, the IRA was an organization that had formed in the 1970s and started trying to get Northern Ireland wrested from the clutches of the British. Of course, it wasn't. It was formed decades earlier and the conflict had been going on way longer than I understood as a child and way way before the IRA was involved. And what they were fighting for was not a simple thing at all. Most conflicts like this aren't. 

Oh, and of course, Irish people are not stupid, just like Polish people aren't stupid. The only thing that's really stupid are the biases we carry around with us. Sometimes when we are kids we can't help it that much. As adults we can't continue to do that to ourselves and others, particularly our children. 

Belfast. William of Orange mural on the left. The FTA appears unrelated to the Troubles.

Before I set foot in Northern Ireland (or Ireland for that matter), I thought I better get a little smarter on the history of this whole conflict, which to me decades removed from my English childhood now seems to be all about power and less about Protestants vs. Catholics. I'm not saying the fighting isn't or wasn't happening between Protestants and Catholics; I'm just not sure that's what it was really about. It seems to me that the poor (meaning not wealthy) Protestants have way more in common with the poor Catholics than they do with the Protestants in power. Although I will say that those who have the power seem to do an awfully good job of pitting the people they are governing or ruling or whatever you want to call it against each other along religious lines. Better keep us in power or the Catholics will be in charge!

Call me ignorant here but I assumed that the split between Ireland and Northern Ireland had been in place for a long, long time. It hasn't. Try since December of 1921. For many Irish people, that agreement was a long time coming. For some, it came way too soon. The event that precipitated that split was the Easter Rising of 1916, although really it had real tangible roots a couple of years prior, just before the outbreak of World War I.

In 1914, the British Parliament approved the idea of home rule for Ireland, all of which at that time was under control of Great Britain. Home rule isn't independence; it means that the country would be legislated by a separate governing body (a separate Parliament) located in the country itself, rather than being legislated from London. Scotland and Northern Ireland have this same arrangement today. Then war broke out and the enactment of home rule was forgotten in favor of stopping Germany from taking over all of Europe. Priorities, right?

The 1916 Proclamation. One of 2,500 original copies in the Kilmainham Gaol Museum.

Of course, the postponement of home rule didn't sit well with some of the Irish, and on Easter weekend of 1916, revolution was declared. Seven men signed a proclamation setting up a provisional government of the Irish Republic which was read aloud on the streets of Dublin right before bullets between their supporters and the British government started to fly. It didn't last long. The rebellion was crushed and the leaders, including all seven men whose names were at the bottom of the proclamation, were executed, just like Britain had done to end uprisings throughout the empire for decades or centuries. Want to crush a movement for independence? Cut off its head. Execute those responsible.

The executions didn't work. Instead of making people afraid, they seem to have steeled their resolve. Some Members of Parliament elected in Ireland after the Rising refused to sit in London. Instead they set up their own Parliament in Dublin and authorized mobilization of guerrilla-style warfare against Great Britain. The group carrying out the war was the Irish Republican Army, formed from a number of different militant groups and re-branded with a new name. Less than six years later, they had won. And Ireland became an independent country.

Mostly, that is. Not the whole island. Six of the thirty-two counties in the north of Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland. The Republic of Ireland (initially the Irish Free State) had been created, just not as everyone wanted. But instead of carrying on the fight to get those last six counties, the newly created Irish Parliament devolved into bickering between themselves about whether they should or should not have agreed to the 26 in the first place. Eventually they moved on.

Northern Ireland didn't.

The wall painted to announce the entrance to Free Derry.

By the 1960s, the Ulster Unionist Party had controlled Northern Ireland's Parliament since it was formed following the split of Ireland in 1921. They had done this behind a population that was about 60% Protestant, but they also had their thumb significantly pressed down on the scale. 

Unlike in the rest of the United Kingdom, the right to vote in Northern Ireland resided with property owners only. Property ownership was in part granted through Government-directed housing allocations, which favored Protestant applications over Catholic applications. How did they do this? Simple. Most of the government employees were Protestant. By design, not by accident. And if there was any other assistance needed, voting districts were carefully gerrymandered to ensure that the votes of the Catholic population were marginalized to the greatest extent possible. In the city of Derry, for example, the Catholics outnumbered the Protestants by about two to one, yet the Ulster Unionist Party was in charge.

Don't like that if you're Catholic? What can you do about it? If you can even vote, you have no real representation in the government of the country where you live. Want to march or protest? Go ahead. You'll have to deal with the police or the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), which was typically 90% Protestant and convinced by their own government that Catholics needed to be kept in line.

Things might have been just fine in the Republic of Ireland by the time we got to the late 1960s. They were anything but in Northern Ireland.

Driving around Belfast in a black cab. Story chasing.

In the late 1960s, a series of non-violent protests inspired by the Civil Rights Movement in the United States were staged in Northern Ireland. The protesters and marchers were often students and they were met with violent resistance, either by the RUC or first by a paramilitary Protestant organization like the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) or the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV) and then the RUC. In some cases, it appeared that the RUC deliberately waited until the UVF or UPV had a shot at the marchers first before moving in.

I know what you are thinking: why are there paramilitary organizations attacking and beating non-violent student protesters? There just are. And they probably exist to this day along with caches of weapons ready for any sign that it's time to remobilize and start killing the other side.

The British Government's response to all of this was to sit and wait until it got really bad, which it did in August of 1969 in Derry. For three days, rioting and conflict between the RUC and residents of the Catholic bogside neighborhood raged, with residents setting up barriers and obstacles to maintain what they referred to as Free Derry. After that, the British government sent in troops. In response, the IRA, which had been dormant but certainly not extinct, remobilized. The Troubles had started. And that's pretty much where my childhood picks up.

We picked three places to engage with the struggle for Irish independence and The Troubles: Dublin, Belfast and Derry. We planned to visit Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, site of the executions following the Easter Rising of 1916, but that didn't work out for reasons I will expand on later. We did see an original copy of the 1916 Proclamation in the museum (we saw another at Trinity College's Old Library) but did not visit the spots where events following the rebellion actually took place. 

But Belfast and Derry gave us a lot to think about.

The Museum of Free Derry. One of the best museums I've visited recently.

We spent our four nights in Belfast in the city centre, close to pubs and restaurants and all manner of Game of Thrones sights. We wanted to see the parts of Belfast where the roots of The Troubles were buried deep into the subconscious of the population, but that was definitely not the city centre. It was also probably (in our mostly-uneducated-but-right opinion) not a place to just roam around by ourselves. So we took a taxi. Not just any taxi. A black cab set up specifically to take us to some spots in the city where the impact of The Troubles could be felt. And driven by a guy who had lived through the whole thing. 

A couple of hours after we checked in to our hotel, Robert showed up and piled the three of us into his cab.

For the next 90 minutes or so, we were driven around mostly residential neighborhoods and were told tales of how things worked back in the 1970s and 1980s and how they work today. I say work today because it was clear from listening to Robert that there are people all over Belfast in Catholic and Protestant communities who haven't accepted that The Troubles are really and truly over. 

In that hour and a half, we saw lots of walls and fences. We passed through gate after gate after gate to move between neighborhoods. We saw murals boasting of victories over neighbors and advertising violence against fellow citizens. We drove past propaganda and graffiti. We talked about segregated schools based on what particular brand of Christianity your parents practiced. We heard stories that made no sense but which we didn't doubt were true and tried to make a some sense of it all. It was difficult because honestly, it makes little sense whatsoever.

We spent time with Robert in Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods. We got out of the car and stood and walked and listened and looked. We listened to Robert but we also listened to and saw nothing. No activity whatsoever. Maybe it was because it was a Friday afternoon and kids were at school and adults were at work, but there was nobody around except for us. And no sound. It was eerie. It was like everyone that lived there was waiting for us to go away.

On the Protestant side of the city, we gazed at giant murals covering the ends of buildings paying tribute to fallen servicemen or celebrating William of Orange's victory at the Battle of the Boyne. We did this while Robert told us about likely arms stashes and what could happen if you strayed from where you were supposed to be and how the gunmen would get away. Yeah, the silence didn't make that talk any better. I was waiting for a gunshot to ring out, despite the fact that it's been about 20 years since this war had stopped.

We also passed more Union Jacks on that drive than I have ever seen in a single location. They seemed to serve no purpose other than to mark territory. It's overkill and intimidation. I've never felt a flag be so menacing. Oh...and that Battle of the Boyne victory. 1690. Not a typo. Not supposed to be 1960. Sixteen. Ninety. Let it go. Protestants still wave it in the face of the Catholics every July when they have a parade in celebration. Like it's even relevant any more.

On the Catholic side of town we saw more murals and monuments immortalizing fallen martyrs killed in the cause. The portraits and names on the walls were offset from a neighborhood named Bombay Street in a small court. The mood here was somber considering the entire housing development had been set alight one night by Protestant mobs hell bent on taking revenge over the riots happening in Derry. Riots going on in another city two hours away seems like no good reason to me to burn a neighborhood less than a mile from where you live. But that's what happened. Senseless.

To get to the Catholic neighborhood we had to drive around one of the Peace Walls, barriers erected to keep the two sides away from each other. There are 50 or more of these things. located all around Belfast. They were initially built in a few locations in the 1920s and 1930s but they were erected in force in 1969 after the start of The Troubles. They were literally put in place to keep people from fighting and killing one another because they happened to believe in religion (the same religion by the way) a little bit differently. 

The photograph above seems to show a concrete section of wall about maybe 12 or 15 feet high topped by a metal section maybe another 10 tall above that and then finally a maybe 15 to 20 foot high open metal fence. It seems to show that because that's exactly what it is. The concrete portion is the first wall. But people wanted to fight so badly that the height wasn't sufficient. So the government extended it. And it still wasn't high enough to stop people from throwing or slingshotting (or catapulting in Ireland) stones and other projectiles over the top.

This is all crazy, right? Right on the other side of the Peace Wall are the homes on Bombay Street. And the wall isn't enough. The houses right next to the wall have metal fencing over their windows because despite the 45 or so foot high fence, there are people on the other side determined enough to chuck stuff over the giant wall.

The other side of the Peace Wall. Note the extra protection for the houses in the back.

So here's what we've discovered so far. There are two sets of people who share the same religion but differ on the precise interpretation of that religion. Same God. Definitely same God. They are both likely working-class peoples yet they are investing significant time, effort and likely money figuring out how to bomb, shoot, burn, maim or just plain kill someone who looks like them but just believes in a Pope (or doesn't...depending on which side you are coming from). It can't be that we are still invested in the 1690 Battle of the Boyne, can it? That seems a little farfetched.

It's messed up, right? Like really messed up. It would be easy to dismiss the insanity of all this and tell both sides to forgive and forget if it weren't for people like our driver, Robert. For him, the consequences of this war / disagreement / whatever you want to call it are super real. His father? Killed by the IRA. Brother-in-law who was a member of the RUC? Killed by the IRA. Robert himself? Three attempts by the IRA to kill him. It seems easy for someone like me, who has no real skin in the game, to take the position that what they are doing to their neighbors is ridiculous. Not so easy if you have had family killed over being the wrong religion. Or whatever it is they are really warring about.

So how the heck did it get this way in the first place? I mean I understand the conflict was divided along religious lines but I don't really still believe it's about religion. The answer may lie in the Museum of Free Derry. If we didn't read every word in that museum, we came pretty close. There were a few sentences on the walls that hit home pretty hard.

"Unionist leaders ran the north on the basis that to give something to the Catholics was to take it away from the Protestants. Working-class Protestants were urged to see equality for Catholics as a threat to their position."

"In August 1963, 200,000 civil rights supporters gathered in Washington to hear Martin Luther King proclaim "I Have a Dream," and Bob Dylan unveil "Only a Pawn in Their Game," highlighting the manipulation of the white poor by racist politicians." 

Look, I know only one of those quotes was specifically about Northern Ireland but it seems pretty clear to me that the reason working-class Protestants wanted to keep the Catholics oppressed was because the people who were running the country (the Ulster Unionist Party) were telling them to do it so the Party could remain in charge. And they fell for it. Essentially they got the poor Protestants to side with the rich in power against people who likely had way more in common with them than the government did. Kind of sounds familiar in the 2019 version of the United States to me.

The Bloody Sunday Obelisk Memorial, Derry.

If there's a more effective museum in delivering a message than the Museum of Free Derry, I don't know where that museum is. This place was phenomenal! The entire building is devoted to telling the story of what happened in Derry on Sunday, January 30, 1972, including the events leading up that day and the aftermath. That day is otherwise known as Bloody Sunday, and to many of us it was made famous by the U2 song of the same name on their 1983 War album.

Bloody Sunday started as a peaceful protest march on the streets of Derry under the close watch of British troops. Eventually, some of those troops opened fire on the crowds of people. In all, 28 people were shot and 14 died either that day or later as a result of their injuries. The soldiers claimed the protesters had guns and bombs and that they were under attack. Oddly enough, no soldiers were killed or injured in any significant way.

The British government investigated immediately and cleared all troops of any wrongdoing, believing their stories wholeheartedly with little dispute. The investigation lasted 10 weeks and included paraffin testing to identify lead residue on clothing of 11 of the deceased. 10 of the 11 tests were negative. There was also clear evidence that some of those killed were shot in the back. The names of all the victims on that day are on the Bloody Sunday Obelisk Memorial in Derry. Seven of the 14 were aged 19 or younger.

In 1998, the British government took another pass at the investigation. It lasted 12 years and produced very different results. Even with decades-old (rather than really recent) evidence, the investigation concluded the shots fired by the troops that day represented nothing but cold blooded murder. Prime Minister David Cameron in commenting upon the report called the actions of British troops that day "unjustified" and "unjustifiable". The Museum of Free Derry ends with a video of the story of the end of the second inquiry. It provides incredible closure to the story.

The H-Block Memorial, Derry. In memory of those IRA volunteers held as criminals, not prisoners of war.

When studying the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, it is easy to take sides. The story there is of an historically and institutionally oppressed minority of the population protesting peacefully and facing violent response from both local and state law enforcement and armed civilian groups that could literally get away with murder time and again. On the face of it, the struggle for equality for Catholics in Northern Ireland is remarkably similar: the Catholic population was deliberately denied rights and suffered violence and oppression at the hands of the RUC, British troops and local armed paramilitary groups like the UVF and the UPC.

But The Troubles were different from the Civil Rights Movement for one reason: the Irish Republican Army, the same group that made me terrified of Irish people as a child.

From the very beginning of the Easter Rising of 1916, the war between armed groups on both sides of the conflict in Ireland and Northern Ireland was brutal. The IRA's tactics in targeting civilians just simply working for the British government and their methods employed like kneecapping (being shot in each knee and sometimes the elbows and ankles as well) to inspire terror in anyone not actively collaborating with their cause are legendary. 

I'm not saying the ferocity and cruelty the IRA brought to the fight was not matched by the other side because it was. To combat the Easter Rising, the Royal Irish Constabulary (the predecessor organization to the RUC) established a Special Reserve made up entirely of World War I veterans so affected by the trench warfare in Europe that they welcomed any opportunity to be as violent as they could be. This unit, named the Black and Tans after the color of their uniforms, was deliberately established to face violence with more violence.

I'm also not necessarily faulting the IRA for targeting innocent civilians in their fight and I can't believe I just wrote that. After all, the RUC and the British government, particularly by allowing private paramilitary organizations to operate without any real punishment, did the exact same thing. There may be shades of grey here but there is no real high ground to be claimed on either side. The real losers of The Troubles were the people not involved in the fight that were killed or the regular people and families living in the center of the conflict whose lives were ruined or hijacked just because they happened to live in Belfast or Derry or wherever. The IRA's participation, though, puts blood on the hands of both sides. 

Considering my childhood and what we were taught as kids about the IRA, I have to say it was jarring to see "IRA" graffiti out in the open in Derry. This is an organization that killed people just to terrify other people. By that definition, they are a terrorist organization. Plain and simple. Hold that thought just for a few paragraphs.

Our last stop on our Black Taxi Tour was at the Sinn Fein headquarters, which was the political arm of the IRA, or maybe the other way around. On the side of that building is a mural showing Bobby Sands, an IRA volunteer who starved himself to death over a 66 day period in 1981 to protest his incarceration as a common criminal and not a prisoner of war.

Hunger strikes were a brutal and (at least in the 1970s) very public way to make a point. They involve fighting against the urge and need for food and having your own body cannibalize the fat and then muscle off your frame to keep your brain alive as long as possible. It causes bodily function failure, tooth loss, blindness and ultimately death which was the fate of Sands and three other IRA hunger strikers that year.

But while Sands was starving himself to death, the IRA was still out there being the IRA. The most senseless act of violence perpetrated during the strike was the murder of Joanne Mathers, a 29 year old mother of one working as a census worker in Derry. She was shot simply because she was collecting census forms from houses and the census represented in the eyes of the IRA a system of British government oppression.

I said a few paragraphs ago that seeing "IRA" graffiti was jarring. I was no less shaken by murals painted on the sides of buildings showing men in gas masks with bombs proclaiming that the Ulster Volunteer Force will defend their homes if anyone threatens them. This is current, not a remnant of the past that hasn't been painted over. There were (and are, if Robert is to be believed) terrorists on both sides of this conflict. My labeling the IRA as a terrorist organization doesn't mean that I support the other side. I could easily argue that civilian based terrorist organizations that are tacitly supported (or at least allowed to operate) by the government are even worse.

Bobby Sands. Hero or no? To me, it's a no.

Sometimes travel makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes that's good. It builds character and makes us better able to deal with new situations. Chasing The Troubles made me a different kind of uncomfortable but it was worthwhile just the same. 

Some of this came from my own bias as a kid growing up English. I was really not thrilled about being inside the Sinn Fein headquarters and I really didn't want to take the postcard of Bobby Sands that the woman in the store offered us. She did it with the best intentions. I just didn't want to deal. Throughout our black taxi tour there was a palpable sense of danger and conflict, although I'm sure it was imagined on my part. I felt similarly in Derry, although I'm sure it's because I felt like I had a sign on my back saying I was born in England. My own imagination, I'm sure.

I walk away from this experience unnerved by what both sides of this conflict did to each other and to people who had no involvement whatsoever. I'm embarrassed by what my home country did in the name of keeping all their territory intact and under control on their terms. But more than anything else considering that neither side really got what it wanted, I'm thinking how senseless it all was and how all the old feelings are still there. It's been more than 20 years since the Good Friday Agreement essentially ended the conflict but I think Robert's right that there are people on both sides ready to start killing each other again. It's clearly going to take more than a generation to kill this thing completely.

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How We Did It

Kilmainham Gaol was active as a prison from 1796 to 1924. It fell into ruin and then was restored throughout the 1960s before opening as a museum in 1971. It's located about 3.5 kilometers west of the city centre of Dublin. Take the Luas (Dublin's light rail) to the Suir Road stop; it's about a 15 minute or so walk from there. Opening hours vary by season. Check the website for the latest information. 

The property features a guided tour of the Gaol and a separate museum. The website advises you to book in advance for the guided tours and I can attest that they are right. We got there in the afternoon about 90 minutes before closing and found the tours sold out for the day. The museum does not require advance purchase and admission is free. Silver lining, I guess.

There are a number of black taxi tours that will take you and educate you about The Troubles in Belfast. We chose Black Taxi Tours Belfast and they were terrific. Robert was just a fantastic tour guide. This is definitely an experience you have to book in advance. The great thing about Black Taxi Tours Belfast was that they picked us up and dropped us off at our hotel. These kinds of experiences are only going to last so long in the way we experienced it. Once all the people who lived through The Troubles are gone, the experience won't be the same. I can't recommend these guys enough.

If you head to Derry, I'd strongly recommend a visit to the Museum of Free Derry. It's located outside the city walls down the hill to the north in the Bogside area of town (so named because the River Foyle used to flow in the area before it turned into a bog). Just start heading downhill and follow the signs. Along the way you'll pass a series of murals. Keep going past the Museum and you'll find many more.

We did not stay in Derry but took a bus day trip from Belfast. Buses leave from the Europa Buscentre right behind the Europa Hotel in the city centre. It takes about two hours each way on the bus and it's an easy trip. We took the 10 am bus and were back in Belfast before five. You won't need long in Derry if you are just going to see the Museum. 

The Europa Hotel, by the way, is the most bombed hotel in the world. 

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Limerick

We didn't visit the town of Limerick on our trip to Ireland. But we did pass a bunch of signs for the place on the way to the Cliffs of Moher. So I thought I'd take an opportunity to use that as an excuse to take a shot at writing a limerick about this blog. Why not, right? It's just one.

I'm sure most people know what a limerick is but just in case...it's a five line poem with seven to ten syllables in the first, second and fifth lines (all of which rhyme with each other) and five to seven in the third and fourth lines (which also rhyme with each other). The meter of the first, second and fifth lines is supposed to be similar as is the meter in the third and fourth lines. 

And it's most often humorous and rude. I'm unlikely to be rude, so I'm going for self-deprecating instead in a nod to my...shall we say...parsimonious tendencies.

There once was a man who was thrifty

Who thought it could be kinda nifty

To put aside all his fears

And see the world in Five Years

And hope he's not broke when he's 50

Of course, I didn't stop when I was fifty years old like I planned to. Hey, I still had a couple of bucks left in the bank, I guess.

That's all I got for this post. Back to our regularly scheduled programming soon.

The Cliffths Of Insthanity

The big debate for me in planning our trip to Ireland this year was do we visit the Cliffs of Moher or do we not? When I first started sketching out agendas for eight nights in country, I had us in Dublin and Belfast for three nights each and Galway for two. The idea was that two nights in Galway would get us to some spots over on the west coast of the country and allow us ample time to visit the Cliffs.

Ultimately, our wish list in both Ireland and Northern Ireland and the logistics of moving from one place to the next combined with a desire to not move hotels that much (just did too much of that on other trips earlier this year) ruled out a night or two in Galway. The debate remained: Cliffs of Moher or no?

The Cliffs are undoubtedly one of Ireland's top tourist attractions, drawing well more than one million visitors per year. They are located on the Atlantic (west) coast of the country facing the open ocean and are an imposing five mile long wall of rock, emerging straight out of the sea and topping out anywhere between 500 and 750 feet in height and pretty much purely straight up vertical. On a clear day from the top of the Cliffs you can see clear across the Aran Islands to the West, way up to Galway in the north (maybe about 20 miles away) and even the all the way to the Dingle peninsula to the south, about three times the distance to Galway.

In the summer months, the Cliffs are teeming with sea birds and the beaches and ocean below host many different species of land and marine mammals. Approximately 30,000 pairs of puffins, razorbills, guillemots, fulmars and kittiwakes nest on the sheer sandstone and shale walls of this spot. In the Atlantic, you can spot minke whales, dolphins and seals and on the beaches foxes, badgers and feral goats.

O'Brien's Tower, the highest point at the Cliffs of Moher.

Despite all that hype, I still questioned if we should go. I was concerned that I would not be impressed by some cliffs. How special could these things be? I mean they are just cliffs, right? And they are not even that high. We decided a day trip from Dublin was probably worth taking a chance on it. We could spend a couple of hours at the tops of the Cliffs, head up to Doolin to hop on a boat ride to see them from the bottom and then hit Galway on the way back for some fish and chips.

Sometimes, we don't get what we want when we travel. This is especially true of sights that involve nature or that are heavily weather dependent. I have used language like "in the summer months" and "on a clear day" in this post so far. The day we visited the Cliffs was anything but clear and the summer months for the birds doesn't include September.

I grew up in England. As a kid, I always thought that the natural side of my home country was pretty vanilla. England can be beautiful, scenic, quaint, very very green and vegetables and flowers can grow gloriously based on the soil and the frequent waterings from the heavens. But when it comes to superlatives, it falls a little flat. I loved animals when I was growing up and the best mammals we could find in England in the wild were probably badgers and hedgehogs. Yawn! Add that to the fact that there are no mountains to speak of (the Pennines which top out at less than 3,000 feet do NOT count), no grand waterfalls, no great rivers and trees and forests that were just sort of normal and I wanted to get out of England to see nature.

That is how I felt about the Cliffs of Moher on a rainy day on the first day of September of 2019. It might be unfair but that's how I felt.

The Cliffs as seen from O'Brien's Tower. The best spot to see most of the Cliffs.

I tried to be impressed. I swear. We walked along the Cliffs' edge to get views from multiple points. We climbed to the top of O'Brien's Tower to get what was supposed to be the best view of the rock walls (it pretty much was, by the way). We got on a boat and motored to the base of the Cliffs rooted to the top deck of the ship the whole way so we could take everything in as much as we possibly could. It didn't work. It just wasn't happening that day for me.

I will say that the boat ride was fun. Sure, it was so rough that day that we had to be told to sit down rather than stand on the top deck for our own safety and that was probably good advice, although it was difficult to actually just put butt in seat because of the way the boat was rocking. There may have been a few sore spots from the rail we were sitting back against and holding on to (mostly) with two hands. I can attest that we were definitely more comfortable than some other passengers on the boat.

Because of the seas, it was difficult to truly appreciate what we were looking at as we cruised at the bottom of the Cliffs. We didn't even have time to take in the fact that we were looking at the Princess Bride's actual Cliffs of Insanity. Yep, these very same Cliffs were the one that Fezzik hoisted himself, Vizzini, Inigo and Buttercup to escape (momentarily) the man in black. Couldn't even bathe in the glory of that fact.

Now as we turned to head back to Doolin, we did get a sense of how awesome these cliffs could possibly be. There's a spur of land down below where O'Brien's Tower is located called Goat Island. It's a thin slice of rock topped by grass used by puffins as a nesting ground. Adjacent to Goat Island there's a shard of rock sticking straight out of the sea. The sense of mass and the vertical striations visible in the cliff face were impressive against the daintiness of those two pieces of land. We could also see a couple of stray seabirds circling around, a remnant of the thousands that had already moved on. This experience did provide some manner of salvation for our day at the Cliffs.

View of the Cliffs from our boat, the Jack B. Wet, rough and grey.

View of Goat Island and O'Brien's Tower from the south.

As the dock at Doolin came into view, the sky brightened just a bit. It was the brightest our day would get from a weather perspective. If it had only been like that all day or just for the duration of our 60 minute or so long boat ride, I'm sure our experience at the Cliffs would have been changed for the better. I'm also supremely confident that if we had been there two months earlier, sunny or not, during prime seabird nesting season, that the Cliffs would have been amazing. Missed opportunity. You can't always get what you want.

I debated whether I should write this post or not. As a rule, I've generally not written about days traveling that were not amazing. Well, other than our continual quest for our first real mass of flamingos (or is it a flamboyance?) which is still unfinished. I don't like to be negative in life but I decided to go ahead and write this anyway because there are places in this world that can be incredible one day and a complete let down the next. For me, the Cliffs of Moher were almost a complete disappointment on the day we were there. If I were doing the whole thing over again, I'd make sure I was there in July when the place is beset with puffins and all manner of other ocean birds. I bet it's totally different. That's all I got on this one.

Our ride to the Cliffs. No complaints here.

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How We Did It

Making a day trip out of the Cliffs of Moher from Dublin is a long day, especially if you choose to do everything we did in this post in addition to stopping by Poulnabrone Dolmen (totally worth it by the way) and Galway. I'd say it was a good 13 or 14 hours of total time out. There are all manner of bus tours which run to the Cliffs every day from Dublin and some even stop at Galway. We decided to do it at our own pace and rent a car which I think (just like going to the Giant's Causeway) was the right call. I did not want to be rushed on someone else's schedule on this day.

The opening hours for the Cliffs vary with the seasons. In winter, they are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; in summer, they are open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Check their website for opening hours. Apparently they start getting crowded around 11 a.m. although we didn't find them any more full of people when we left than when we got there. There is a separate admission to O'Brien's Tower. I thought it was worth getting a little history of the property and what is truly the best view of the cliffs but it's just a 30 minute experience.

I would suggest you head to the town of Doolin to catch a boat ride to the base of the Cliffs. I could see this kind of trip being awe inspiring if it's not raining and the sea isn't choppy. We chose to sail (or more accurately motor) with Doolin2Aran Ferries who in addition to running tours to the Cliffs also ferry folks to (you guessed it...) the nearby Aran Islands. There is a schedule of departures listed on their website. We found this schedule in no way corresponded to the actual departure times, much like we found live music at pubs was not guaranteed if a pub advertised music every night on line. Don't believe Irish websites with schedules. I'd suggest you just show up and get the next boat. There are other companies right in the same spot that run similar tours. 

I know the weather was terrible when we went but I truly believe that this place would be way more interesting during seabird nesting season. I also truly believe it would have been way more crowded. I still wish it had been nesting season.

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