IRELAND - Cobh and Dublin July 7-8

            Cobh (think Cove but with a ‘b’) is the port for Cork in the South of Ireland. The travel lecturer told us never to trust the weather. It could be fine in the morning and storm by after noon – and the vice versa. But we had a beautiful day with warm sunshine (24-25 degrees) and blue skies. Some storm clouds rolled in in the early afternoon and looked threatening, but the locals we were sitting talking to assured us ‘it will not rain today. No. Not today’.  It was a beautiful Irish summer day.  And they told us there are not so many of these.

            The travel lecturer had told us it would be a big day. When the Council (or whoever) of Cobh learned that the Sea Princess was carrying mostly Australian and New Zealand passengers on its Round the World trip, they declared July 7 “Australia Day” in Cobh.

            When we tied up the Sea Princess at the Wharf there were strings of Australian flags everywhere. When we went on shore (again on my electric scooter) there were Australian flags strung across the main street and in every shop window. Stalls along the street and in the park were decked with rows of small Australian flags, and some businesses had large Australian flags outside as banners. There were kangaroos and koalas in some windows. Small and medium Australian flags were for sale on the footpaths, and lots of small kids were hanging onto them. A great effort had been made. It was a Sunday, and even places like Solicitors’ windows were decorated even though the shops were closed.

            Of course, there were strings of Irish flags of orange and green, with the white in between, hanging as well, but there was no doubt we were welcome. The friendly atmosphere  contradicted any who might have thought that only our tourist money was welcome. Music flooded out from Kellys’ Pub across the road where Bruce managed to have his pint of Guinness later.

            In the park next to the ship there was a market with local stalls offering food. Joe’s sausage in a roll for 2 Euros was popular, and we had coffee and homemade farm style biscuits from another. A van on the street outside the park had ‘all day breakfast’ of bacon and egg rolls, and supermarkets were open with ‘Special Offers’.

            We bought a hand-made doll for a baby less than one year (no buttons or ‘hair’ to chew off) from Dolores from West Cork for grand daughter Keisha’s little Zoe. In the middle of the park was a rotunda with a local band of three young fellows belting out songs to the delight of teenagers sitting around the rotunda, and lots of locals and visitors also sitting in the shade there.

            We sat there with our coffee and handmade farmstyle biscuits and chatted to the people sitting near us – two local ladies. After a while the band changed to another group of young people, and in the afternoon the military band of Ireland arrived and played stirring music for an hour.

            While Bruce stayed to chat to the locals and wait to hear the band, I took in the Cobh Heritage Centre beside the wharf where there was an excellent display of ‘The Queenstown Story”. Cobh was rechristened Queenstown after the visit of Queen Victoria in the late 1800s, but later retook its original Cobh name.

This Heritage Centre was built in the old disused railway station where emigrants arrived to take the ships which took them – by the millions – away to new lands.

            There were hand carts of battered emmigrants’ luggage, figures in clothes of the day in scenes displaying the below decks quarters of migrant families in the sailing ships. There were scraps of comments from migrants’ diaries flashing up on the walls, and the sounds of violent storms in the half light.

            Of course all of this meant a lot to me as my great grand parents – Michael and Norah Moran – and their two small children departed from this very place in 1848 during the Years of the Great Famine. They were dirt poor potato farmers from County Clare and signed up with one of the advertising drives to bring labourers and farmers to Australia. I have a great place in my heart for these people as I spent a month in County Clare in 2003 tracing their lifestyle and footsteps in the hope of writing a book about their lives. It is perhaps half written and I hope that one day I will go back to finish it.

            Michael and Norah went from here to England and took ship from there to Sydney, taking five months on an old coal transport sailing boat. Norah had another child in steerage on the way. This one survived and grew up in Maitland, NSW, whereas Norah’s first two babies in Ireland died in the difficult days of potato failures.

            We came back to the ship for a 4.30 concert by the dancers of The Attridge Academy of Irish Dance in the Princess Theatre which was packed for their performance. Five junior girls and six senior dancers (that is, high school) including one boy put on a skillful exhibition of Irish dancing for about 45 minutes.

            Then it was time for passengers to get ready for ‘Sail Away’ on one of the decks overlooking the wharf, unless you were lucky enough to have a Port Side balcony cabin. Ours is Starboard. We lined up two or three deep at the rails on Decks 7 and 12 to look down on a crowded wharf. Many of the locals were there – some in period costume from the Heritage Centre – families with children still waving their flags, men and women and a few dogs on leads.

            The local band was playing. Not the Military Band. A group of less professional locals. They serenaded us with jigs, dances and even ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down’. Several hundred voices on the decks joined in singing the words. Someone shouted “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!” and the decks answered: “OI! OI! OI!”  The ship’s big fog horn eventually sounded its deep throated farewell and we moved out from the wharf to the band playing ‘Anchors Away’.

            There could not have been a greater contrast to the farewell Michael and Norah had when they left Ireland forever. Their ship waited for the tide. Maybe it was a chill 2 or 3 am when they cast off on February winter day. I guess the wharf was empty. No family waving goodbye or band to serenade them on their lonely farewell. I thought all these thoughts and found myself with a sense of sympathy and sadness for them. 

And for the millions of Irish Emmigrants – free or convict - who set sail from this port of Cobh in the 1800s to early 1900s.  Most of them never came home again to The Green Isle.

*  *  *  *

DUBLIN was very different day.

            We sailed in very slowly a bit later than usual as we had to wait till the tide was right, and the Liffey banks were lined with docks, cranes and cargo boats. There were piles of containers on wharves. Somehow I had never thought of Dublin as such a big port. I don’t know why as it is the capital of a modern nation with all the imports and exports that go with it.

            Shortly after we docked and passengers were cleared for landing, we were met by a young man called Tom – our escort from the Viator day Bruce had booked on the internet in Sydney. Off we set in a comfortable Mercedes car. This time we were the only ones so this was a private tour.

            We started in the city proper and drove along the North side of the Liffey, and around the South side.  Tom pointed out all the significant buildings, and also the empty ones marked for redevelopment. The collapse of the economy a few years ago meant that none of this had been completed – or sometimes begun. Sites that had been bought for astronomical millions of Euros, had been resold for peanuts, or just stood there untouched. All a bit sad.

            We saw the well kept Georgian parts of the city, and the not so salubrious.

We saw the General Post Office building where they say there are still bullet marks on the walls from the 1917 Uprising, where the rebels made their last stand.

            Then he took us to great park that Dublin boasts. Huge areas with people out for a Sunday picnic on the grass, or just lying there to sunbake. There were lots of men strolling around this area shirtless in the sun. One part was fenced off in preparation for a ‘Big Day Out’ style festival with crowds and bands the next week. 

            It turned out Tom had lived in Melbourne and had brought back an Australian partner to Dublin, so we had a lot to compare.

            There were two highlights of the day. The first was St Patrick’s Cathedral supposedly built on the spot where St Patrick made his first Irish Converts in the Fifth Century. The Cathedral building was commenced in 1190, and though it has been renovated there were small sections of the very old original stone walls where the stones were fretted and the mortar worn away.

            I was fascinated that there was an entrance fee of €6.50 each person into a Catholic Church in Ireland. I had presumed that if it was ‘St Patrick’s’ it was Catholic. AH! How I was wrong. It is Protestant. Anglican. Like so many things in Ireland that were Catholic it had been appropriated by the English conquerors and turned to Anglican. It was a magnificent Cathedral: lovely Gothic arches, beautiful stained glass windows each telling a story in installments, tombs in the walls with figures of knights or kings on top. In one of the transepts the banners of past military Irish Regiments from wars long gone hung moldering on the walls.

            At the West end of the nave there was an alcove where Jonathon Swift of ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ fame is buried. He was Dean of St Patrick’s from 1713 to 1745 so he was not only a writer.

            The Church was a busy place. Tourists everywhere. Volunteers offered commentary. Someone was busy cleaning the brass of the lectern. Others manned the Entrance Desk to sell tickets, or the counter of the shop at the back selling Irish items. A notice told us that this Church received no money in Government support, and depended on entrance fees and donations for its upkeep. That made sense of the €6.50 entrance fee and the shop.  So I helped out by buying a few items!

The other highlight of the day was the two hours we spent in Grafton Street Mall. Tom dropped us off after 2pm and we set out to find lunch. We couldn’t find the Irish Coffee Shop he recommended but eventually had a toasted sandwich in Marks and Spencers – just because it was there and it was time. Nothing Irish about that.

We wandered along the street and stopped to listen to the singers and other music makers. A group of three young African men were taking it in turns to  do rap dancing performances to recorded music for a big crowd.

There was a big Centre at the top of Grafton Street called something ‘Green’, and we went into that mainly to get out of the hot day.  The ship had told us to expect 18° but it must have been in the top 20°s and sunny all day. We found a place to get a new battery for my watch that had stopped and sat to watch all the people. When we went back to other end of Grafton St we just went people watching. There  were the throngs of people and lots of  buses until it was time to meet up with Tom and the Mercedes again.

When he took us back to the ship we agreed we had had a very enjoyable day exploring Dublin, and we set out for Scotland without the benefit of an Irish band to see us off.

LISBON Thu. July 4

            Fourth of July – American Independence Day – so soon after reflecting on Columbus setting sail from Andalusia with funding from Isabella and Ferdinand from Seville.

            Lisbon on the Tagus river also recalls glorious days of discoverers and discoveries. Like the other old cities Lisbon counts its history from very early settlement as a trading port, but the huge Monument to the Discoveries recalls the great names. Vasco  de Gama, Ferdinand Magellan and Henry The Navigator  have life  like statues among a heap of others there and recall to my mind fifth and sixth class history books from my primary school.

            These are great names from a great past. In the 15^th- and 16^th Centuries Portugal was a great discovery and colonizing power. I was surprised to see statues of several ‘Viceroys of India’. I had thought these were all British!

            There were statues everywhere of kings and princes of a past history and culture the Portuguese are obviously very proud of.

            The ship docked near the Alfama Quarter of old narrow buildings and labyrinthine streets winding up the hills. As Maria – the guide on our coach – told us these small houses date from a time when people wanted to live within the protection of the city walls: so ‘small’ was in. The port area was pretty rundown and under reconstruction with factories and warehouses being replaced with dwellings. The area had more than its share of graffiti  on old buildings and along the main roads. Again, this suggests ‘what do the young people have to do in these times of economic downturn?’

            All this suggests an old city but these areas largely date from the devastating earthquake of 1754. This earthquake is estimated to have been in the range of 8.4 on the modern scale and was followed by a tsunami and fires. It was a surprise then to drive into the very modern city further inland and to the North, with its modern shopping areas and wide tree lined boulevards. There were tall Office Buildings, modern attractive looking hotels, and lots of parks and gardens.

            One tall statue dominating a large intersection overlooking the city was of the Civil Servant (Prime Minister? Mayor?) largely responsible for the replanning and rebuilding of the city after the earthquake. These people really like their history.

            The bridge across the river is modern and reminds me of the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. That is because it was made by the same architect to the same design on request of Lisbon. It is  long and stretches across the wide Tagus River with lots of cars, trucks and buses crossing. Before the bridge people from the other side came across in ferries to get to the city for work or whatever. Now many of them use the bridge and this has made a difference to port activity, and settlement on the North Shore of the city.

            This seems such a weak effort to introduce Lisbon with such a history of discovery, trade and spices. I’m afraid it will have to do as the ship and we move on.

CARDIZ WED. JULY 3

            “1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue”.

That echoes from way back. 1492 was when Christopher Columbus obtained the backing of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand in Seville to set out across the Atlantic to look for new worlds.

            So the region of Andalusia in Spain – especially Seville – was forever tied to the discovery of America.  There is a monument in the Cathedral in Seville to honour Columbus though he’s not buried there as it was claimed. He seems to have been buried in a couple of places.

            We were not in Seville today, though many of the ship’s tours were to Seville and the Seville area. We were in Cardiz, facing across the Atlantic Ocean to America. During the night we went through the Straits of Gilbraltar and slipped from the Mediterranean out into the Atlantic Ocean.

            Today we had another adventure. We took the electric scooter off the ship, down the gangway (with some help from crew) and into town. Town was very close and soon we were in a maze of narrow (very narrow) little streets lined with old buildings four or five stories high, with cute little balconies. Some little balconies had flowers and plants, and some were completely enclosed with glass though they were very narrow – only about two feet wide (in the old maths). This wouldn’t have added much to the room inside but may have let in more sun and space for a winter garden?

            There didn’t seem to be any lifts so all buildings were ‘walk up’. The four or five floors were manageable. Some buildings had a wide entranceway with an iron locked gate into a central courtyard with greenery visible. I could also see  spiral steps going up around the courtyard walls.

            Buildings are narrow even where they were shops. Small windows displayed goods: bread, vegies, dresses, stationery. Many shops were deep and lined with shelves of goods. One place was called “Imaginarium” so I explored and found all sorts of brightly coloured children’s toys and books. On one corner there was an ‘Apple’ shop which was larger. It was more square by taking ‘shops’ on each street, and had the usual sort of layout of tables with Apple Macs, iPads and iPhones laid out for hands-on experience.

            There were postcards outside a newsagent’s and I stopped to look at them. The newsagent came out to stand in the sun and chat to a customer leaving. He then spoke to me – in Spanish, of course. I looked vague and said something in English and there ensued a conversation in sign language. He showed me 5 fingers to say postcards were 50c, and two would be “uno Euro” which I understood. Money changed hands. I could tell one Euro, but not 50cents as I mistook 2c for 20 cents and 1 cent for ten cents. That’s what happens when you have a hand full of small unknown coins.

            The man then asked “English?” and when I said “No – Australia” he got very animated. ‘Australia!’ and began to hop like a kangaroo. We had lots of smiles and he told me “TV – Australia!” - smiled, nodded and conveyed he liked what he saw of Australia on TV very much. It was an enjoyable exchange without much common language and ended when he gave me a small 2013 calendar attached to a card that said ‘Cardiz – 3,000 years’ and made a sign for ‘No money. Gift.’

            Bruce was waiting patiently further along the street. That’s how the morning went. Me stopping to look in shop windows and Bruce waiting somewhere ahead. We stopped for coffee at a few tables outside “Chamara Restaurante”. I remembered from somewhere “caffe con leche” meant ‘coffee with milk’ and Bruce went in to order. When he tried “caffe con leche” the man looked at him and said  ‘Black or white?’ He understood that much English better than Bruce’s attempt at Spanish.

            The coffee arrived with two little sweets and we sat there watching the passing parade and enjoying the mild sunshine of just over 20 degrees. As the streets were so narrow and tall there was shade on one side, and pleasant sunshine on the other.  There were lots of older people wandering along and sitting on seats down the centre of the main shopping street, which was traffic free. I was surprise to see several well dressed young women (office types with briefcases) and one young man scooting along through the people on small electric scooters a bit like mine: a very efficient quick way around the city when the streets were so narrow.

            Cardiz has a history lost in antiquity as a trading port. Phoenicians, Catharginians, Romans, Vandals and Visigoths all left signs of their occupation, but the greatest were left by the Moorish invasion in the Sixth Century AD. The Moors left a lasting cultural and physical heritage of their 800 years rule of the area.

            1492 marked the end of Moorish rule when Isabella and Ferdinand captured the citadel of Grenada and established their rule over the area. This was also the year Columbus set out to discover America, and the Jews were expelled from the region.

BARCELONA Mon. July 1

            What a beautiful city! Wide clean streets, all lined with trees in their full summer greenery. Attractive, modern apartments buildings – five or six storeys high - right through the city.  Very little high rise. So the city presents a lovely homogeneous streetscape. So you could easily live right in the centre of the city. 

            There is a medieval section of the city – the Gothic Quarter – with a maze of fascinating courtyards, narrow streets and old churches.  Eventually the medieval city walls were pulled down so the modern city could evolve with its parks, spacious squares and wide boulevards.

            Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia – a would-be independent country, with its own language and history. Our guide was most emphatic that the Catalone language is not a dialect of Spanish, but a separate ancient language of its own. He told us of another small country – Andorra  – to the North near the French border, and some parts of Southern France  – which also have this ancient language.

            Catalonia – a semi independent Province in the North East of Spain – cherishes its character, and I can remember hearing over the years of some unrest as it struggled for its independence from Spain. In lots of places in the city, like the Olympic Stadium on Montjuic and on residential balconies – the Catalone flag appeared. Four red vertical bars on a yellow background with a red star in the triangle above. Our guide – an older man, who is very proud of his city and its Catalonian heritage – assured us that although many people still hope for an independent nation some day, Spain will never let this happen He reckoned the Spanish soldiers would arrive at the first whiff of a surge towards independence.

            La Sagrada Familia Church is quite something else. Barcelona has famous architects and many special buildings. Their favourite architect son seems to be Antoni Gaudi, who trained at the University in Barcelona, and is responsible for the world famous ‘Holy Family Church’. The building was started as a small local church by someone else, but when Gaudi took over it became a very large project indeed.

            We visited the only section of it to be almost finished, and I wish I could put in here photos of it. It is the section devoted to the Nativity of Christ. There are small spires everywhere, and Nativity scenes like Christmas Cribs built among these spires. Large modern cranes hang in the sky all over the place.

            Gaudi spent 43 years on this Church, though there are smaller projects of his all over the city. The Church has been under construction since 1882, and is expected to be finished by 2026, with the use of modern construction methods. When Gaudi was asked when he thought the Church would be finished, his famous answer was “My client is in no hurry.” Meaning God is immortal.   

As Gaudi grew older he became more focused on spirituality, and spent much time in meditation. He took less care of himself and his appearance, and wandered about looking like a poor old man. He was eventually hit by a tram and died of his injuries. Gaudi is remembered not just  for his architectural skill but also his spirituality. So much so, he has been accepted into the first stage of Sainthood by the Catholic Church.

Barcelona’s history is shrouded in the mists of time. Some think it was founded by Hanibal’s father in the 3^rd Century BC, or even before the birth of Rome. It is the fourth richest city in Europe, and looks magnificent even in a one day coach tour from the ship. The Sea Princess notes on Barcelona told me “The Catalan people – with their struggles to keep alive their culture and heritage” give “home to revolution, poetry and regional pride.”

Barcelona proudly hosted the Olympic Games in 1992, and built their Olympic Stadium high above the city on Montjuic, with its magnificent views.

Also on Montjuic is the sculpture of people dancing the ‘Savanna’ – a dance tradition of the local people and only seen in the streets.  The Flamenco dancers who put on  show for us in a crowded Princess Theatre on the ship at 4.30pm were really great. Flamenco is also a Catalonian tradition, but from further South than Barcelona.

            Thank goodness Barcelona is followed by a ‘Sea Day’ so we can have a rest and recovery time from the overload of so many different countries and cultures in so few days from Egypt to Spain.