I found my pot of gold on St. Anne Street at Sheridan Cheesemongers. Having a partner who likes to putter in the hotel room gives me the chance to explore local foodstuffs. This place is heaven.
Walk in the front door and you are in an ambrosial room of cheese.
My eyes dilated at the selection of meats and cheeses.
I went right for the raw milk.
Came home with a small round of the Drumlin and a wedge of Derg Raw Milk cheddar.
I’ll make another stop Monday before we depart Dublin and not to worry, they have locations in Meath, Galway, and Wexford.
So, how to start the morning? Climb aboard a big green bus with a bunch of strangers and ride in the open air and sunshine of a special Dublin day.
Here’s the route, click to enlarge (if you are patient and really want to see it), there is no better way to get a sense of the city and the relation of streets, alleys, parks, and the history that binds.
We took the ride completely around the loop and then before starting on our second roundtrip disembarked at Dawson St. for a bite to eat. Sat street side and let the sites and sounds of the street accompany lunch.
I took a jaunt around the sidewalk corner and found this treasure.
Across the street a school of songs hundreds of years old.
And up the street, their library.
On the walk between the two churches we explored some housing.
This obviously was for the workers.
This one for the more artistic.
And what of the Working Girls?
An Irish lace curtain caught in the wind.
And a very old door still opens to the air.
Then we wound around the alleys and roads amid the 70-acre Guinness Storehouse where they ferment 3.5 billion “pints” each year. Embedded in the first floor entrance floor is the 9,000 year lease signed by Arthur Guinness in 1795.
Calatrava’s fingerprints seem worldwide.
And we’ve all heard about the tech boom in Ireland. Here’s what a tiny 12.5% corporate tax rate will do for your city. All cranes, glass and steel claiming the dockside for business.
Meanwhile, we made it back to the ranch with a good dose of sun -kissed vitamin D warming our foreheads.
After the overnight flight from Chicago, we headed into Dublin benefitting from a taxi driver who seemed to double as a tour guide. We had to wait to check in to the hotel so strolled through the streets to keep ourselves moving.
as always, click to enlarge
It’s almost as if they expected Americans to leave their sense of direction back in the States.
I’ve worked in healthcare for over three decades. I’ve always respected the professional boundaries between providers and patients. There are plentiful reasons for their necessity. But so are patient and provider relationships. As in all relationships, provider patient ones change, evolve, are fluid. The patient needs of today will be different tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day. Every healthcare organization I have worked for or with has some element in their mission statement testifying that there existence is to “meet the healthcare needs of the community”. Yes, sometimes those needs are beyond the capabilities of an organization or individual and have to be met by someone else but if the mission is fully realized the patient will be the leader. They will lead the organization, the doctor, the nurse, the CEO, the development officer, and if you invite the dialogue they will tell their needs of today and be more likely to tell you again tomorrow. One guarantee – listening will not settle you, it will challenge you out of your comfort zone.
Each year we gather with a group of friends for an Easter Festival Feast. For the past few years it has been my responsibility to handle the “cake”. Call it baking with sarcasm. Previous years were mostly themed around a “sacrificial lamb” concept but thanks to the creativity of my partner this year’s cake has become a treatise of thorns. For those with a culinary background, it’s a white chocolate angel food, batter streaked with raspberry sauce, boiled frosting, with thorn decoration and raspberry sauce accents.
Houses painted in colors washed with my blood; fragments of heart under the icy sun of mid day.
Charles Carrere
Little did we know that yesterday was one of four Curacao holidays, “Carnival Monday”. Streets were empty and everything, everything was closed. So this morning we hightailed over to the Kura Hulanda Slave Trade museum.
From the origin of man to West African empires…..
…… Through the middle passage to the Americas
Museum Kurá Hulanda is an anthropological museum that focuses on the predominant cultures of Curacao. It offers a world-class chronicle of the Origin of Man, the African slave trade, West African Empires, Pre-Colombian gold, Mesopotamian relics and Antillean art.
What a shocking experience. My exposure to the horrors of slavery are through the lens of an American experience. What happened on our soil. I was un-informed about slave trade which the Dutch used to profit from 500,000 human beings.
Bruha (witches) hut used to take care of whipped and sick slaves
As we were departing, we were stopped by one of the employees, Yflen Florentina, she asked if we had seen certain items, some of which we had not. She grabbed us and took us on a whirlwind walk, talking all the time and providing incredible narrative that brought pieces of the collection into stark and vivid reality.
Here she holds a brand used to identify a human being as the property of a “master”.
”. . . Mr. Ebbers was indeed peculiarly tyrannical, tormenting a boy of about fourteen, called Cadety, . . . by alternately flogging him for one month, then keeping him laid down flat on his back with his feet in the stocks for another than making him wear a pot-hook around his neck, to prevent him from escaping or sleeping . .”
According to Yflen, the Catholic church derived profit from the trade as well by insisting owners pay the church to grant priesthood to one slave who would then baptize the “savages” into the church. Here the robes of a slave priest.
These manacles were used to chain one arm to the opposite foot. Inscription reads –
“I come from the niggeryard of yesterday leaping from the oppressor’s hate and the scorn of myself.”
After a long morning sipping coffee, we headed out to walk Willemstad. First a stroll through our neighborhood, Otrabanda, and the many blocks of restored Dutch Colonial homes. Otrabanda, the harbor, and, Punda the neighborhood across the harbor, are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Here are some restored Otrabanda homes. As always, click on pics to enlarge.
A Pair in Gray and Ink Blue
Italian Influence, Once a Composers Home
Some in the Midst of Revival
Or Keeping Out an Eagle Eye
Full of Filigree
Coral, Ink Blue, Goldenrod
Then others, the result of an Art Project, “Rasta Car Wash”
From Otrabanda we cross the harbor on the Queen Emma pontoon bridge to Punda. The bridge swings open and closed on a hinge positioned on the Otrabanda shore, powered from a motor on the Punda side. The bridge house flys a blue flag for a “full open” of the bridge which takes 30 minutes and allows tankers and large ships to enter, and orange, a “half open”, for small pilot boats. Here is the flag pole next to the captain’s bridge house. Blue up, orange down and vice-versa.
Here is a view from Punda of a “full open” bridge awaiting passage of a container ship.
After the ship slips through, the bridge slowly pivots back.
Once in place, the flexible but firm locking mechanism is testament to Dutch engineering.
Punda is home to the famed line of Dutch buildings, a picture on every Curacao website.
Even the Dutch architectural appendage to move furniture in and out of buildings is present in Curacao.
Punda is lined with small streets, home to mostly junky shops and the occasional high-end diamond store.
There are also small surprises like this clock with exposed bells.
Closer to shore, government buildings line the streets. Here the Politie, just an extra “I” from being “Polite”. And the multi-party Parliament building.
We found a great seaside spot for lunch and watched this tanker make its way into harbor.
An after lunch walk through Punda with vivid Curacao fabrics.
We wound down our day hoping to see the Mikve Israel Synagogue, the oldest operating in the Western Hemisphere. Unfortunately, vacation mode made us lose track of days and we didn’t realize it was Saturday and they were closed. It’s on the list for Monday.
If we practice finding beauty today, we’ll find twice as much beauty tomorrow. If we work on forgiveness today, tomorrow we may be free of resentments.
I am working on forgiving the rooster who stopped by very early, announced his presence, and then strutted off, the cock of the walk.
Welcome to Willemstad, that is if you can locate your accommodations. Equipped with Google Maps and the best of intention, we still ended up at a structure bearing the word demencia in its name. I quickly understood their services when I asked for directions and had to be buzzed through a locked entrance. Willemstad is old, very old. Our neighborhood, Otrabanda is considered the “newer” section having been established in 1707, filled with winding streets many no more than a one-way alley. Living quarters are small, with decaying exteriors but still bearing color washes of the Caribbean. Everyone lives behind a wall.
Narrow streets filled with Afro-Dutch locals give way to crumbling buildings sidled next to restored structures.
I took a walk to the local market to pick up coffee and happened upon the Queen Emma pontoon bridge swinging open.
Our quarters are deep in the hood with an enclosed courtyard sporting some lush tropical flora and fauna.
We have a few days here and will share our explorations of the World Heritage sights.
This post is a day late but hopefully not a dollar short. We were without electricity for a good portion of the morning and afternoon yesterday. The internet link went down but never came back on even though the electric found its way to our home. Ying/Yang of being in a beautiful, remote location.
Yesterday, the major activity was a walk on terra firma to the dive shop for a snorkeling excursion terra mare.
The dive shop was your typical, thatched roof sandy hut with a few license plates posted for good measure.
The kind helpful folks on duty provided the goggles and fins and demonstrated that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Then after the ever so important “roll-call” (done at the end of each dive to ensure no one left behind), we were off to the boat..
The two-hour excursion took us to three different dive sites. One, the Blue Room accessible only by diving under the cliff edge and into a domed cave carved out of the bluff.
The next stop was a shipwreck with its propeller still in place, quickly being homesteaded by brain coral.
The last stop was in a shallow bay, home to several fishing boats. After their morning catch, the fisherman clean their bounty in the bay and toss the resulting chum overboard gladly eaten by a group (family?) of sea turtles. By nature, the turtles are vegetarian and do not act as predators but when a meal is prepared and served up like delivery from GrubHub, they happily partake. Two of them seemed to befriend me and we floated together synching in rhythm, up and down, surfacing for a turtle gulp of air. We swam together for about 15 minutes, just turtles and me. At one point their backs were close enough to touch, so close I could see detail of their exquisite shell markings. My emotions swirled as we swam, effortless and buoyant, so grateful they agreed to share their habitat with humans. I think it must be the same feeling one has seeing the lion or elephant on the Serengeti – but in the Mare, the sea turtle.
To top all of this, we had a friend fly in proving that a bird in the kitchen may have a better snack than the bird in the hand.
