Old Head Golf Course, Kinsale, Ireland

Old Head, perched at the edge of the sea


Manicured greens


Some of the cliffs at Old Head
Two old ruins at Old Head

Pictures of the Old Sod

Mary taking pictures in Kinsale


The Kinsale Harbor viewed from high up in the town


Kinsale


Danny, the golf pro, at Old Head

In Search of the Sainted Ancestors

OFF TO THE NORTH

There were two major reasons for ending our trip in Ireland rather than in some other place. The first was that in order to get the bargain price for business class to all these countries you must proceed forward and not backward, i.e., Around The World. The second and most important reason was so that Tom could finally visit the area of Ireland where all four of his great grandparents had lived before emigrating to Prince Edward Island, Canada in the 1840’s. He has been doing the genealogy thing for several years now and has made many contacts both in Canada and in Ireland, but unfortunately very few records were kept in Ireland before about 1860, so, while he had detailed information about the PEI family, there was little or nothing about the Irish forebears except that all four great grandparents were from County Monaghan.

Although I have joked that we were going to Monaghan in order “to stand at the foot of the graves of the sainted ancestors”, neither Tom nor I really thought we would find much in the two days allotted and all he really wanted was to get a sense of the place and then be able to envision what it might have been like before the McQuaids, Kellys, MacMahons and Clerkins moved to PEI.

I must confess also, that, while more than willing to make the trip north, I was expecting it to be much more industrialized and not as pretty as the more traveled and touristed South of Ireland. Tom was expecting the same. In fact, we had discussed it with Mary and Neil and since they clearly had no reason to go in search of our ancestors, we agreed that they would stay outside of Dublin where they could take public transportation into the city and enjoy another quiet country hotel.

Thus it was that we left Ballymaloe early-ish the morning of the 25^th to make a beeline for the north of Ireland (not really Northern Ireland which is a separate country—Monaghan is just below the border, but still north). It took about four and a half hours to reach Mary and Neil’s hotel, we dropped them there and had a small bite, got directions from a chap at the hotel whose parents had lived in the very town were we were headed and began the two or three hour continuation of the drive.

If we were expecting the countryside to be less beautiful we were sorely mistaken. If anything it is more beautiful, with the same green pastures, the gorse punctuating the landscape, and the same sleepy livestock, but with the added attraction of more hills and lakes everywhere. The villages look like movie sets—colorful pubs with names like The Squealing Pig, some with thatched roof cottages, and always a village square with spired church and town hall.

I had made the reservation for two nights months ago at the Hilton Park Hotel in Clones (pronounce Clo-ness). Don’t be fooled—this is NOT a Hilton! I remember choosing it on the internet because it looked nice enough and having a few friendly emails with one Fred Madden who, when told we were searchin’ our roots, had some good suggestions of where to start. Other than that, what with Asia rather dominating my efforts, I didn’t give it much thought. Several days before we wandered into town, I had emailed the Hilton Park to ask if we could extend our stay an extra day because we had decided to forego Dublin and stay around Monaghan (two days clearly not being enough to find the sainteds). My email was promptly answered by one Johnny Madden who said we were welcome to stay the third day but there would be no dinner because the “elusive window washers" had been engaged for that day and he had given the “cook staff” the night off. He said he could suggest some restaurants in the village, but I knew a night off from eating would not be a problem.

When we pulled into Clones, again, like in Kinsale, there was no sign evident directing us to the Hilton Park, and no Hilton Park anywhere to be seen. Beloved, who is normally the epitome of patience and kindliness, can get downright surly when at the end of a long drive, he doesn’t know where to go straightaway. I had neglected to get directions, or if I had, they were long ago lost or forgotten, so we were up the creek. But again, at least it wasn’t dark.

We stopped and asked a gent on the Clones main square in front of the Church if he could direct us to the Hilton Park and he looked blank and said there was no such place about. Well, I panicked, now what, etc., but Tom volunteered “Johnny Madden is the proprietor.” “Oh, Johnny’s Place, why didn’t you say so?” he said brightly. He then directed us quite a distance out of town and said to look for some green gates and that will be it.

We drove for about ten minutes and the road was SO remote and practically uninhabited that we finally decided to go back and ask again. By now Beloved is fairly foaming at the mouth. I ran into a small grocery store and Praise the Lord they knew Johnny’s Place and sure enough we had taken the wrong fork. They pointed us in the right direction where we drove and drove some more and just when we were about to give up again, there in front of us was a set of dilapidated green gates. But NO SIGN! But green gates they were, so we started up a very small country road. We drove for what seemed like forever with sheep pastures on both sides and ewes and baby lambs everywhere, but no hotel. Finally, we came upon two landed gentry types (who had to have been planted there by The Good Lord Himself) and we stopped and asked yet again. One smiled and pointed ahead and there behind a copse of trees was the vague outline of a house. Up we drove and yes it was a HOUSE, not a place, and before we could even park and get out of the car, Johnny Madden Hissownself was coming out the front door to greet us.

I know you are going to think I’m making this up, but once again we had died and gone straight through the pearly gates into Heaven itself. I allowed as how the place was a little hard to find and Johnny said didn’t I have the directions from the internet. Well, you’ve already heard that excuse….

He grabbed our two small bags and when I told him we had left quadruple that much back in Dublin (stored at M/N’s hotel), he said Good because I’m the one who has to carry them. He led us through the blue doors into a house that I can’t describe I can only post pictures and hope they do it justice.

Johnny, who is 66-ish, is the eighth generation Madden to own the house and the first to open it up to paying guests. When his father and mother realized they would have to do that or lose the house, they were so dismayed they left, but Johnny and his wife Lucy took the bull by the horns and did what they had to do to keep the place in the family. They have three daughters, one of which lived in Los Angeles with her Welsh screenwriter husband for some years but they have moved back to stay and live on the property—much to Johnny and Lucy’s delight and amazement. The other two daughters are nearby but not part of the operation as yet. They also have a much younger son, the aforementioned Fred, 25, who completed University in London, went to chef’s school as well, and has made the decision to carry on the tradition and run the house after his parents retire. That had to be a really hard decision for a young person to make.

Talk about our new best friend! Johnny was delightful to talk to and as he ushered us up three wide flights of sweeping carpeted stairs to the bedrooms (where he gave us a choice of several), he chatted on and on about how we were the first guests of the season, and sorry we had trouble finding it, but he had taken the sign down some time ago because “odd ones” were coming in and looking in the windows. And he remembered that I had inquired about a bathroom with a shower but they didn’t have showers because the plumbing in the old house wouldn’t support them on the third floor (I haven’t a clue why not), sorry about that, and dinner is at eight, and here is the drawing room and please come in for a cocktail when you’re ready, and the breakfast room is just through that passageway, and we’re delighted you are here.

The room we chose was filled with books and everything in it is antique from the four poster bed (very high off the floor), to the old settee at the foot of the bed, to the framed pictures of Johnny's sainted ancestors on the wall. The only thing modern was the bathroom sink. The view outside our window was of the formal garden and the lake beyond it. I'm going to post some pictures now because it is really impossible to describe the Hilton Park.

A Few Words About the Irish Countryside

When we flew into Cork from London we were struck by how green everything was--each plot of land neatly separated by hedgerows of gorse (also called furze) which is a mustard yellow bush that seems to define the Irish countryside. The ground below was like a patchwork quilt of impossible shades of green separated by yellow stitches of gorse.

From the air and as we were driving toward Kinsale, a more bucolic scene I can't remember. The country lanes are narrow (heart-stoppingly so at times) and never straight, so the sign Bend Ahead is a constant reminder to STAY LEFT. They are lined on both sides by ivy or hedges of various types. Sometimes you can't see what's on the other side of the hedge, but not to worry, the lane itself is a sight with tree limbs dripping down overhead and all manner of vegetation. There is plenty of opportunity to see over or through the hedges, though, and when the view is clear, the green pastures are full of lazy cows, sheep and horses, many of them lying down in contented pleasure. A few small villages with tall spires marking the village church would appear every now and then, but mostly there were just isolated farms or houses to break the expanse of green. It was so quintessentially Irish, that all we could do was say Ohmygod, and snap pictures.

Kinsale is a typical Irish village with a sleepy harbor cradling pleasure boats, fishing boats, small rowboats and some boats to let, all painted in red, blues, yellows and oranges. Many of them had seen better days, but it didn't matter because the colors were so lovely. Unfortunately, Americans don't always use color to its best advantage, because it's amazing how beautiful the shabbiest building or the most ramshackl boat can look if painted in a charming hue. You don't see that so much in America.

The morning after we arrived, Mary and I walked around the harbor snapping pictures and watching the little town come alive. Across the harbor was a row of buildings that looked like ordinary apartments or condos but again each one was painted a different pastel hue and that made them look quaint and charming. Later, before going to Old Head, we all walked through the town, a maze of pastel colored homes, B&B's, shops, pubs, and churches large and small. Right next to the Pier House was a gambling establishment with slot machines, which surprised us, but it turned out that betting is jolly good sport throughout Ireland and there were bookmakers everywhere. We had lunch at a famous place called Fishy Fishy, a blue and white deli and take-out joint that's only open for lunch and is written up in all the guidebooks. We were expecting huge crowds but we and another twosome were the only ones there. It was fine, but nothing to write home about--that's the trouble when a place makes the guidebooks. Still, it was fun to go there and get pictures of it.

After we left Kinsale for Ballymaloe, we had plotted our route to include a small island in the Bay of Cork called Cobh (pronounced Cove) that you can get to via car ferry. Anne had given us directions and had mentioned to be careful which ferry we drove on to or we could end up in France. And sure enough, as we drove up to the first large ferry we saw, it turned out to be the one bound for France, and only the fact that there was no line of cars made it possible to turn around and go back. But we finally found the right ferry--a rickety, long in the tooth old tub that held about ten cars, took only a few minutes to make the crossing and just goes back and forth all day long. The crusty old tar manning the ferry told us how to get into the town centre and then how to get out of town via a bridge rather than going back on the ferry. His thick accent which I think was a mixture of Gaelic and English was pretty difficult to understand. By the way, Gaelic is much more widely spoken than we had thought it would be--we heard it a lot and all the signs are in Gaelic as well as English. it's a strange language indeed.

The town was packed with people and cars, much to Tom's dismay and the driving was horrendous. The huge cathedral that dominates the island had something going on, even though it was Saturday, not Sunday, and the square in front of it was full of the faithful spilling into and out of the Church. A bunch of young people were dressed in long white robes so maybe it was a confirmation ceremony or something. At any rate, there was a massive traffic jam, no place to park, and I was in a constant panic that we were going to scrape another car or some inanimate object on our left, so eventually we managed to exit the town without getting out of the car at all. It was too bad, because the town looked wonderful and would have been a good place for lunch. As it was, we didn't have lunch which was just as well because the dinner at Ballymaloe was worth waiting for.

On to Ballymaloe

As I mentioned earlier, Tom and I were in Ireland twenty years ago and we weren't that impressed. However, by sheer dumb luck at the time we happened upon a hotel called the Ballymaloe House in a little hamlet called Shanagarry in County Cork. In those days we used to get a car and just drive without hotel reservations and we would check the various guidebooks and call ahead when we found something that sounded nice. I remember finding this place in the book, calling, and their saying yes they had a room but it was Sunday night and they weren't serving their usual 5-7 course dinner, but rather there was a buffet on Sunday night (I could swear they called it a pot-luck but I can't be sure). I was a little disappointed--pot-luck conjures up images of left-overs--but it was getting late and we couldn't risk not finding something else suitable so we booked.

Bottom line, we have never forgotten that hotel, the "pot-luck" turned out to be a vast gourmet array of the finest food we had ever eaten, the room and atmosphere and hospitality were all superb, and we vowed that if we ever came back to Ireland it would be to Ballymaloe. Today we were going to return to Ballymaloe.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that the price has gone up about 600% since we stayed that Sunday night in the 1980's, so I was a little nervous about subjecting Mary and Neil (not to mention ourselves) to a place that could very well have hiked its prices but gone to seed in the interim. But early on Mary and Neil were good sports and said go for it, so we booked several months ago for a two night stay. We even arranged our stay so that we would be there for the Sunday night "buffet."

To increase my nervousness, I talked to another guest at the Pier House who, when hearing we were off to Ballymaloe, sniffed that things were not like they used to be and she hoped we wouldn't be disappointed. So it was with some apprehension, yea even dread, on my part as we made our way over country roads the twenty miles or so from Kinsale to Shanagarry and drove up to the old farmhouse. I shouldn't use the word dread, after all it is a famous place, but you know what they say--that you can never go back, and my big fear was that it wouldn't be as before. Remember what happened with the Bangkok dinner cruise.

Wonder of wonders, it was exactly as before. We had the Blue Room and Mary and Neil had the Yellow Room, both of which had French doors that opened onto a meadow, beyond which was a fenced area with wild turkeys, guinea hens, peacocks and pea-hens, roosters and chickens with babies, ducks and geese, a small lake with an island, and arrayed with the most incredible flowers and vegetation you can imagine.

Ballymaloe is a centuries old country house turned into a hotel in the '60's by one Ivan Allen and his wife Myrtle who single-handedly changed the world's perception of Irish cooking from inedible to gourmet. Myrtle started a "cookery" school on the premises and soon had a branch in Paris. The property itself is still, and has always been, a working farm with sheep, pigs, and all manner of fowl, and gardens where they raise most of the vegetables and fruits consumed. Although Myrtle's beloved Ivan died in 1996, the entire family is still engaged in this enterprise and now that she is 83 the family is extended indeed.

After we got settled into our rooms, we all walked across the meadow and went through the gate (NO DOGS!) to explore the variety of fowl inside. The peacocks and turkeys and all the other feathered creatures were right there close enough to touch and unaffected by our presence. I'm pretty sure they will all show up on the dinner table at some point (well, not the peacocks), but they didn't seem to know that and therefore were oblivious and quite content. All of a sudden Mary and I heard a terrible screeching and clucking and when we looked for the source we saw a chicken who had gotten herself stuck in the lower branches of a tree. The poor creature was truly beside herself wriggling, flapping her wings (to the extent possible), and making strangled high-pitched noises, all the while a prisoner of a tangle of brambly branches. Mary and I were all but ready to lend a hand (never a good idea, I know), when with one super-hen effort she forced herself through the bramble and came tumbling out of the tree with a screech. She literally fell onto the ground, but with a shudder and with great dignity, she picked herself up and waddled off. We were so relieved.

We walked a lot of the grounds that first afternoon and Ballymaloe is truly a haven of tranquility, beautiful landscaping, park benches strategically placed for relaxing here and there, an occasional errant soccer ball on the lawns, a swimming pool (no water yet, too early in the season), croquet on the front lawn, and flowers everywhere. There is even a nine-hole golf course where several gents were knocking around a few balls.

On the far side of the property, there is a vast field of what we recongized as rapeseed, a beautiful yellow plant that is a source of an oil used only industrially, principally to make bio-fuel or ethanol. Tom and I knew it from France where it stretches for miles and blankets the ground with the most brilliant yellow. We found out later that the Allens had just planted the crop last year and have great hopes for its profitability. They have 400 acres after all and may as well use it for something besides croquet and golf. They are clearly very entrepreneurial. One of the grandsons has partnered with a chum and started a catering and packaged food business called Cully and Sully. One of their elegant trucks was parked on the premises and Mary and I thought how cool it would be to have a party catered by them and have one of those teddibly Irish/English looking trucks parked in front of our house.

Next to the rapeseed field sit some of the family homes. We walked over and saw what had to be Rory Allen's home--we could see guitars and other stringed instruments hanging from the wall through the window. Rory is Myrtle's oldest son (I think) and spent his youth tending the farm and the hundreds of sheep and raising his family, but now that he is 50-something he has had time to pursue his first love, music. He plays guitar and all manner of stringed instruments and sings in the drawing room every Saturday or Sunday night and attracts a following of locals including a resident "poet laureate" and a teller of jokes as well as those staying in the hotel like us. His songs are so typically Irish. One tells the story of Jack Doyle, a real live boxer from the old days, who didn't make it to the top because of "the drink." It's called The Contender, maybe a reference to Brando's tragic line from A Streetcar Named Desire, "Blanche, I coulda been a contendah!" Another is called the Fairy Tale of New York City and tells of young Irish emigrating to the New World and all the high hopes they had and how hard it was to adjust and make a living, and then the plaintive line "I love you, baby, there's gonna be good times...when all...our dreams...come true." Note that the title of the song is "A Fairy Tale.." Really beautiful and so sad, makes you understand how the Irish can start sobbing at the first verse of O Danny Boy.

Of course, he sings happy and funny songs as well, like the story of two sisters, Kitty who was remarkably pretty, but I can't say the same for Jane. The father offers to throw in his prize heifer to the lad who will choose Jane the plain one over Kitty the pretty one. The lad in the song telling the tale is so torn with indecision that he waits too long and misses them both. Rory plays some lovely instrumentals as well, some his own compositions. He has two CDs, made without benefit of professional sound studio, which of course we bought and listened to throughout the rest of our Irish drive. We can't wait for our Irish musician sons to hear them.

We were going to tour around the area the next day, but we were so happy just being on the grounds of this lovely place that we stayed there and walked and read and relaxed and repaired after seven weeks of guides and schedules. And that day was Sunday and guess what? The buffet was everything we remembered and more. Beautiful fresh oysters that you can actually trust to eat, mussels, clams, umpteen kinds of fish and meat pates from smooth and silky to country coarse, lobster bites on thin cucumber slices, all manner of meats (which I never even got to) and vegetables and salads, and fine cheeses, all beautifully presented. I can barely remember the dessert trolley, but I know it was awesome. We had asked earlier if we could stay another day and by some miracle we could.

The next day we did venture out and it was the only day of the entire trip that it actually rained! At least the only time when we had to walk in it. We went to Youghall (pronounced Yawl for the benefit of us Texans I guess, and the setting for the movie Moby Dick) and Ardmore, two authentically rugged seaside towns. We ate lunch in a charming place called Aherne's, the surname of Mary's beloved Uncle John who died last year at the age of 93, so that made all of us happy, especially Mary. We lifted our pints in a toast to Uncle John. And we got to use the umbrellas that we had been dragging around for weeks and we didn't mind the rain at all.

Three days after our arrival at Ballymaloe, we left again vowing to return. Mary and Neil vowed to return as well.

The Emerald Isle

Note: I hope this isn't anti-climactic because we are already home. I was not able to post anything the last days in Ireland, but wrote the following when I had the time.

April 26, 2007: We are in County Monaghan, Ireland, in search of the elusive roots:

Tonight is for all practical purposes our last night in Ireland and the last night of our trip around the world. Tomorrow night we will be in a Dublin airport hotel steeling ourselves for the early morning flight to London and then on to Dallas. I have written nothing about Ireland as yet, but hopefully I will be able to finish this chronicle and then post it when I can. The present hotel has no broadband, but if I'm lucky I can post in the airport hotel or during our four-hour layover in London. (That didn't happen, thus I am posting from Big D!)

Leaving Asia seems eons ago, and I don't think we've had time to put it all in perspective. It may take months for that to happen. For the last week or so we have seen much of the Emerald Isle and we are (yet again) flabbergasted by the beauty and the prosperity. Tom and I were in southern Ireland about twenty years ago and found it sad and depressed, the pubs gray and the lads grayer, so much so that we returned to England earlier than planned.

This time, since the Irish economic boom, everything is different. The first innkeeper told us that it has all happened in the last ten years. We have seen literally no poverty (although we haven't been to any big cities), but rather lovely houses, tidy farms on rolling hills dotted with cows and sheep, and once again, happy, smiling people. And oh so friendly. The Irish live up to their reputation in that department. It's hard to fathom how much grief is going on in so many parts of the world when we have seen so much that is completely the opposite. I guess it means there is hope after all.

Ah, lads and lassies, I could write a book about this beautiful country. Sure there has been "the trouble" between the North and the South that has gone on for decades, but some of the Irish that we've talked to have expressed optimism that the current peace will hold in spite of continuing antagonism. But this is not the place for that discussion. On with the travelog.

We flew from Beijing to London to Cork, in the south central part of Ireland about 7 or 8 days ago, and after more than fifteen hours in the air, we picked up the car--the largest we could get to accommodate our prodigious amount of luggage--loaded it up, and drove the twenty miles or so to Kinsale, a lovely seaside town on the "Irish Riviera." Luckily, even though it was about 8 PM by then, (much later by our inner clocks), it was still light. Tom did yeoman's duty driving in spite of the fact that he hadn't driven the "English " way in years. Driver's seat on the right, stick shift maneuvered with left hand, and most fear-inducing, driving on the left side of the road. I assumed my usual position as navigator with map in lap and interspersed my directions with terrified gasps of STAY LEFT, STAY LEFT, NOT THAT FAR LEFT!

--as he would over-compensate and practically run into the ditch or rip off the side mirror on a street pole. Mary and Neil sat stoically in the back wedged in by suitcases. But after some getting used to and no major calamities, we pulled into Kinsale just at dusk.

That we might have difficulty finding the hotel hadn't occurred to me, but in spite of the intimate nature of the town there were no signposts and the Pier House didn't jump out at us. By now it was dark and Tom was getting frazzled, so I jumped out of the car and ran into a pub to ask directions. I told the young barman that we were lost Americans just into town trying to cope with driving on the left and couldn't find our hotel. He turned out to be Polish and said it had taken him a long time to get used to the driving too, but he hadn't heard of the hotel. I'm thinking how can that be? The town is small! And the hotel was on the internet! But then an Irish lass stepped in, looked it up in the phone book and called. It turned out to be a small B&B just down the street well concealed from the road and barely marked from the street. Anne Hegarty, the proprietor, was waiting for us at the gate and she helped us schlep the bare minimum (still a lot) of our stuff into her house and up two flights of stairs. That meant leaving a few large bags in the car and of course Tom and Neil were convinced that robbers were going to break into the car and steal our dirty laundry and Asian souvenirs. Anne looked with amazement at the suggestion that we couldn't leave our stuff in the car unprotected and simply shrugged and said, "Everything will be fine." And it was. We were also parked in a No Parking zone, but Anne said not to worry, the authorities had gone home for the evening and as long as we moved the car by 10:30, no problem. Welcome to small town Ireland.

The rooms were simple but homey, they had great internet connections so I was able to post the last of the Asian info, and Anne's breakfast was fabulous, served in a lovely sun-dappled morning room with chintz curtains and and an antique breakfront. We usually stay away from Bed and Breakfasts but we loved the Pier House and we extended our stay an extra night. This solved the problem of free-lancing one night with no reservation.

The next day we had a tour of the Old Head Golf Course which was built and is owned by the brothers Patrick and John O'Connor. Patrick is a great friend of our friend Avery who lives in Cannes, France. We've actually had dinner at Patrick and Julie's fabulous home on the French Riviera and so we were delighted to be able to take him up on his offer to visit the course if we were ever in the neighborhood. Neither Patrick nor Julie was in town but their daughter Lara had been told we were coming and she greeted us when we arrived. (Thanks, Avery, for arranging that!)

Old Head is a jewel among golf courses, set right on a rugged point at the southernmost tip of Ireland, surrounded by water and ancient boulders and highly coveted as a destination by golfers all over the world. As a fledgling golfer, I can't really relate, but it was definitely gorgeous and all I could think was I wonder how many golf balls have been lobbed into the sea. The course is under major renovation at the moment as they add fifteen suites to the clubhouse and re-do the other buildings and some of the greens. Not that it needed it to our way of thinking, but apparently it never had a hotel or anyplace for the golfers to stay on the grounds until now.

After meeting Lara, she arranged for us to be squired about by Danny, the Director of Golf, i.e., the head pro, who is a darling young Irishman who clearly loves this place with all his heart. He reminded Tom and me of our Eric. He drove a four-wheeler and then we walked practically every hold while he pointed out the difficulties and vagaries of each. Neil, the only real golfer among us, was salivating with desire to play the famous Old Head, but alas it was not yet open for the season. Driving and walking around was enough for me, just listening to the story of Old Head. One interesting fact I picked up was that they "hand wash" the greens because otherwise the salt spray would ruin them. Not blade by blade, of course, but with hand held hoses--a daunting prospect indeed when you see the size of it. But just one of many expenses in maintaining such a special place, I suppose.

Back at the B&B, Anne wanted a blow by blow of our visit and allowed as how it was a good thing they were putting in the suites because Old Head sometimes had trouble attracting the super rich since Kinsale has no five-stars. I said but they could stay with you and she just rolled her eyes.

The Warriors

Just to give you a sense of the size of the site

A good view of what you see when you first come in.

The reconstruction area

Another view

Xian and the Terra Cotta Army

Our last stop in China was Xian, home of the famous terra cotta soldiers. In 1974, four farmers were digging in their field when one of them struck something strange with his hoe. He dug up a pottery shard and immediately knew he had found something very wonderful. This was the beginning of the excavation of a vast army of life-sized terra cotta soldiers who had been buried underground for more than 2,000 years.

In the year 206 BC (or thereabouts), the Emperor Qin, in preparation for his eventual death, had thousands of craftsmen construct out of clay an army of soldiers who would be buried with him in his tomb to protect him in the after-life against enemies and marauders. It is said that 700,000 workers lost their lives building the tomb with all of its accompanying treasures and the clay army. Then, several years after the emperor died and he and the soldiers had been buried, an insurgent group of disgruntled peasant farmers broke into the tomb, unearthed the soldiers, set fire to them and broke into pieces as many as they could. The tomb was never re-built and the Qin dynasty ended.

Fast forward 2,000 years and imagine the excitement of such a discovery. Archaeologists came from all over the world to examine the dig and to date about 7,000 soldiers have been unearthed and re-constructed. We were told that only one soldier, an archer, was discovered intact; the rest were all broken to a greater or lesser degree. But when you think that they had already been decimated by the peasant insurgency in 200-something BC and that they then had to endure the ravages of two millennia underground—it is incredible how well preserved they are. The soldiers are gray in color but when they were discovered they still had vestiges of their original paint. The paint disappeared when air hit it, before the very eyes of the excavators.

We knew this was going to be a highlight and we were in high anticipation when we finally reached the museum. Our new guide, Minnie, probably the best of the lot in terms of her ability to speak English, was very knowledgeable and gave us quite an education about the various emperors and especially the Emperor Qin. At the risk of getting my facts wrong, I won’t elaborate too much here, but this is another fascinating tale that would be well worth looking up if you are interested.

When you approach the museum, you immediately notice the scale of everything. Just like in Beijing, the buildings are huge and the walk from the parking lot to the front of the principal building is long and impressive. We all had seen pictures of the soldiers on the internet, but at the risk but being tiresomely repetitive I must say that once more we were not prepared for the reality of the spectacle in the “flesh.” When we finally entered the first building—Pit 1 they call it—we were all struck by how beautifully displayed the soldiers are and how easy it is to see them.

The building is a large dome-shaped edifice with walkways all around the perimeter, skylights in the ceiling, and lots of windows for natural light. The soldiers are literally in a “pit” lined up in military formation just as they would have been when they were buried with Mr. Qin. Of course, they all had to be painstakingly reconstructed from the shattered states they were in, and one can only wonder what a delicate and time-consuming process that was.

The soldiers are life-size--bigger actually, some as large as 6’5” which would have been larger than life-size at that time. They supposedly are all from the same mold, but all different in terms of facial expressions, hands and feet, poses and other distinguishing features. There are cavalry soldiers, infantry soldiers, officers and archers, plus magnificent horses who were pulling wooden chariots. The chariots of wood did not survive the 2,000 year entombment but the archaeologists have figured out what they looked like and in a few places there are impressions of chariot wheels in the excavated dirt.

We had told Minnie that we were very excited about seeing this particular wonder and she nodded and said yes, she had had one woman who, upon first sight of the soldiers, was overcome with emotion and burst into tears.

I wasn’t driven to tears, but I must say it is one of the most impressive things I’ve seen in my life. The dignity, the grandeur, the sheer number, even the mono-chromatic gray color all conspire to produce a definite visceral reaction. It’s an ohmygod of the first order.

We spent quite a while just walking the perimeter, reading the explanatory plaques and looking at the soldiers. About two-thirds of the pit is comprised of about 6,000 soldiers lined up as they would have been when buried, but the last one-third is the “reconstruction” area. This part shows how the soldiers are pieced together and has areas that show what the pit looked like when it was first unearthed and the soldiers were in fragments.

The next building is a museum which showcases individual soldiers that survived in the best condition, including the archer who was discovered intact. Although behind glass, here you could really get up close and personal and examine the soldiers from all sides. There was also a display of weaponry and precious artifacts that were found at the site along with the soldiers.

Afterwards, of course there is the obligatory “gift” shop, and I must say it is next to impossible to come away without buying a terra cotta reproduction. They had them in all sizes—full size (about $3,000 including shipping), half size, coffee table size, all the way down to small figurines. Mary and I both bought repros of the archer, hers a little bigger than mine, but mine was all I felt I could cram into my already overstuffed luggage.

But the best part was yet to come. Minnie had told us that of the four original discoverers, two have died and two are in their eighties and sometimes one or the other of them will show up at the gift shop to sign books. Well, this may have been a put-up job, but sho ‘nuf, there he was smoking a pipe, looking quite sullen and unfriendly, and with a big sign NO PHOTOS on his desk, signing books. Lurking on the periphery of the crowd was a Big Nose woman surreptitiously trying to take his picture; he saw her and this made him even more angry looking. He covered his face with his hat. But in spite of his rotten attitude, it was impossible to resist, and so Mary and I took the bait, bought a book each and after the old fart signed mine he practically threw it at me, with a scowl that was frightening to behold! Still, it’ll be a fun conversation piece and the signature is bona fide Chinese.

A Few Random Pictures

This little lake was right outside our hotel in Yangshou. One morning, Mary and I came out to hit the shopping street and caught this cormorant fisherman unaware that we were taking his picture. We had seen him the day before on solid ground with two of his birds, charging people to have their pictures taken with him. We were on a small bridge looking down at him so he either didn't know or didn't care that we were getting freebies.

After we left Yangshou we had a couple of hours to spare before our plane to Xian so we went to a zoo in Guilin that houses 1,300 (yes, that's right) tigers and 6oo bears as well as other animals. I have about a million pictures of tigers and bears.

Now here is one relaxed bear. Note the tongue.

This man approached our guide in Xian and asked if he could have his picture taken with Mary. What am I? Chopped liver? Only kidding, it was really cute and afterwards we all smiled and bowed and shook hands.

More of Yangshou

The view from the restaurant where we had lunch after the rafting trip.

Before our cooking class, we went to the local market to buy the ingredients. This woman was picking out a chicken for her family's dinner. Talk about fresh!

Kelly, the chef, looks with approval at her appreciative students.

Now that is a perfect dumpling! Made by Chef Sara

Hill dropped us at the hotel after the rafting trip and Mary and I made a beeline for the shopping street, while Tom and Neil scouted for a restaurant for lunch. We met at the appointed hour and went to the restaurant they had picked which overlooked the river and according to the guys, was frequented only by Chinese and no Big Noses.

The food was excellent. We had Chinese eggplant with pork, one of my favorites and the best I’ve ever had, and local shrimp that were so tiny you could eat them shell and all. We also had more of the beer fish which is an elaborate fish dish cooked in beer and served in a beautiful skillet surrounded by vegetables and covered with a divine sauce. We were congratulating the guys on their fine choice when about mid-way through the meal, in walks a whole busload of American tourists. It was so funny, because if they had been there to start with we would have turned up our noses and refused to eat there. They were actually the only Americans we saw in Yangshou.

Hill was going to pick us up again at 3:30 for our scheduled cooking class, so we had to hurry. If you remember, we had a class with Miss Vy in Hoi An, Vietnam—a wonderfully classy affair with white linens and carefully arranged platters of raw ingredients and the beautiful Miss Vy to explain and illustrate the techniques.

This cooking class was no Miss Vy. It was a little rough around the edges, but still worthwhile if only for the cultural experience. First, we went to the local market with “Kelly,” our hostess/chef, to buy some of the food—a trip to the market seems to be part of every cooking class but it really is just to show us the market and to be able to point out some of the strange foods. We all love markets and roaming them has been a highlight of the various countries we have visited. This one, though, was a little too authentic even for my tastes. There were live animals in cages—chickens, rabbits, all varieties of fowl, snakes, frogs, wriggling baby eels, and some creatures unidentifiable. And the locals were shopping earnestly, picking up pheasants and chickens and hares to check for plumpness. Some of the things that were available I don’t even want to put in the blog because of innocent eyes. Suffice to say our worst fears about the eating habits of the Chinese were realized. Kelly just shrugged at our shock and talked about the Yin and Yang of eating.

After the market we went back to Cloud Nine, the restaurant that Kelly claimed had been featured on the Yan Can Cook TV show several months ago. I’ll have to check that. The actual class was an open air affair on the roof of the restaurant, where Kelly demonstrated the techniques while we dutifully copied her. We made eggplant with pork (we had it for lunch!), Szechuan chicken, and some really delicious dumplings that are now going to be a permanent part of my repertoire. I definitely had a knack with the dumplings!

I thought it was kind of fun, but Mary and Neil and Tom to some extent hated it and pronounced the food greasy. The alert among you will have noted that we had two big meals within about four hours. Not to worry, we are now world class, Olympic quality, championship eaters.

More of the Raft Trip

Truly beautiful scenes

We stopped to sample a fish from a streamside fish fry. That's Hill on the right.

We only got one fish for the four of us. Big mistake. It was the BEST!

Songs of he done me wrong and ain't it a shame and where is that drinkin' cheatin' so-and-so

Rafting on the Li River

This is the type of raft we rode up the tributary of the Li.

Just one of many boatloads of happy Chinese waving and shouting Hello! How are you!

A cormarant fisherman. The birds were tethered to the boat, the man would slap the water with an oar and one of the birds would dive in and instantly pull out a big fish (one to two feet long!). The bird couldn't swallow the fish because he has a metal ring around his neck. The fisherman gently (or not so gently) eases the fish out of the bird's gullet and puts it in the basket. Then the whole process starts again.

A scene on this beautiful river.

The next morning we were scheduled to take a raft trip up a tributary of the Li. This too was a surprise. I knew the river would be beautiful, and it was, and I hoped it wouldn’t be too touristy, but it was—in a good way! The river was full of happy Chinese doing exactly what we were doing—enjoying a beautiful morning drinking in the scenery and having fun. Every boat we passed would wave and cry Hello! Many if not all of the rafts had, in addition to the boatman, a lady singer dressed in local costume singing traditional river folksongs in their eerie high-pitched voices. Of course, we couldn’t understand the words but one can imagine that the words must be tearful accounts of unrequited love and sad tales of loss and unfulfilled dreams. Just like country and western, I would think.

Guilin to Yangshou

The underground lake in Reed Flute Cave, Guilin. It's hard to see but it looked like the skyline of a large city at dark.

A typical scene of the karsts as taken from the car.


The main shopping and dining street in Yangshou. It reminded us of a Chinese Bourbon Street before the hurricane.


A typical souvenir shop, as you can see, something for everybody.

After we drove the two hour drive back to Guilin from Ping An and did a little local sightseeing, we proceeded on to Yangshou, where we would spend the next two nights. We had pictured Yangshou as another sleepy village plopped into the middle of the karsts and the rice paddies. If I didn’t mention it, Hill, our guide, while sweet enough, was fairly clueless and couldn’t explain very well what was coming next, so we had a few surprises on this leg of the journey, Ping An being the first of these. Hill, which is the translation of his Chinese name, is 25, his English was pretty poor and his pronunciation almost unintelligible. This was unusual because all of our previous guides spoke good to excellent English.

But sometimes it’s better not to know what’s in store because then your pre-conceived ideas can take over and color your attitude pro or con. It was kind of nice to just relax and take what comes.

When we drove into Yangshou we were surprised to find that it was not a quiet little village, but a booming resort town where mostly Chinese come from all over China for a little R and R. Our hotel, the Paradeso, was at the top of the main tourist street which teemed with people shopping, eating, drinking, and socializing. There were some Big Noses, but not many. Yangshou sits on the Li River, a beautiful meandering waterway surrounded on both sides by the legendary karsts, so the scenery alone would be a reason for its popularity. But there is more there than the scenery.

We arrived late afternoon and Mary and I couldn’t wait to investigate what looked like the best shopping opportunity we had had in some time and maybe the last of the trip. We were not disappointed. When evening came the four of us started to explore the street and look for a restaurant, but the shops were most tempting and it was hard to think about food. Eventually, though, husbands prevailed and we found a sidewalk cafe that wasn’t too crowded and ate some local food (beerfish) and drank some local beer and enjoyed some of the best people watching of the trip. The shopping would have to wait.

The Lian Lodge and the Long Haired Ladies

This is the entrance to the hotel. The hanging things are real bamboo roots.

Our room, the Celadon, with windows on both sides and spectacular views.

One of the antique wood carvings in the hotel. The artwork was amazing and I wish I had taken more pictures.

This is as close as we got to pictures of the long-haired ladies. The real long hairs had their hair wrapped and pinned up but you could see how much hair it was. They looked top-heavy. I don't get it myself, why anyone would want that much hair...

Ping An Continued

I might be overdoing it on the pictures of our trip up the mountainside, but I'm so fascinated by the whole process. This is at the beginning when we are still unaware of what lies ahead. At first, the guys said Ok you ladies can get your luggage toted, but we will carry our own and walk. Why spend money on such indulgence? Mary and I thought it was silly to scrimp on such a small thing and we won. Believe me, this was the best money we ever spent! If you are curious, it was about $16 each for the sedan chair ride and about $3 each way for the luggage toters. A major bargain if you ask me.

Two of the sedan chair "drivers." Don't they look like they are thinking, "Wait a minute, we need to charge by the kilo instead of by the person!" They did stop to rest two or three times on the way up.

This was my luggage lady. She was very protective of my precious stuff and the next morning she immediately grabbed the same suitcase and computer case and took off down the hill.

Look how easy they make it look! We told Rosely that we felt guilty letting them carry us because it seemed so unfair, but she said they do it every day and it is their choice. I wonder.... By the way, I hope it's clear that we walked down the next day under our own power. Aren't you proud?