The PENguin Blog

We spent the day on our typical itinerary when up in the Mendocino area: from the Little River Inn to Fort Bragg for two galleries, the Roundman's Smokehouse, Cowlicks Ice Cream. Then to Mendocino for a visit to the toy store, the bookshop and a walk on the headlands. Dinner and the sunset from our balcony. Sharon promised house sitter Amy a shot of Death and the Maiden  atop one of Mendocino's churches  Mendocino The town from the headlands Ten years ago I'd have been all over those tide pools 

Friday, July 6 th 2018 marks the start of this year’s annual Shakespeare Pilgrimmage, which over the years has taken an established format, carrying us up the Calfornia and Oregon Coasts, to Portland to see friends and attend the Portland Pen Round-Up, and from there to Ashland for a week in which we will meet up with friends and family and take in no fewer than eight shows at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Today, Friday, saw us cover a leisurely 200-odd miles up to Little River Inn, just south of Mendocino, one of our regular stopovers. Since we drive this road so regularly, this year I tried to diverge from the usual seascapes, with only partial success. Our room with a view

We began our last full day in Ireland with a visit to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a number of people had recommended it. They were right. It manages to be both a national shrine and a vital community center. The cover of St. Patrick's well from which he baptized folk. The well is said to have been near here In many ways the cathedral is a monument to Dean Swift, who saved it from ruin. A modern sculpture of St Patrick. They ask you not to photograph the other two. Sir Richard Guinness, sitting on the grounds, restored the cathedral in the 1860s. After that, Sharon decided to go back to the hotel, still suffering from what now had become bronchitis, and I decided to wander the town one last time, making my way, circuitously, from the cathedral through several neighborhoods to the shopping precinct around Grafton Street, which I remember wandering happily through the last time we were here. I spent no money, sigh, but had a nice look-se...

Kinnitty Castle After our land and sea assault on the Cliffs of Moher we drove just a few kilometers to our last hotel before returning to Dublin, The Kinnitty Castle Hotel.  On the way we stopped for a couple of hours at Yeats' Thoor Ballylee where he lived and wrote for several years. Yeats' writing room recreated in the tower. We were curious about the quill, but it was a bit of curatorial license. Like the rest of us Yeats wrote with a fountain pen. Knees or no knees I was ready to climb the stairs all the way up, Sharon wisely demurred In recent years Kinnitty castle has gone through several owners and it kind of shows. It reminds me of the old Empire Hotel in Manhattan back in the 1970s, shabby elegance. Still it was fun to stay there and roam the halls just a bit. Our room, it was way up in what Sharon figures must have been the servants' quarters She was ready to take home the bench From the...

What can you say about the Cliffs of Moher? They are awe inspiring and Ireland’s most visited natural site. Like the Grand Canyon in the US, people come from all over the world. They are spectacular and we got ourselves a double dose, by land and by sea, walking a mile or soon the trail and then going out on one of the many excursion boats departing from Doolin Pier. The 19th century O'Brien Tower actually gives perspective among tower, people, and cliffs A different perspective, from the sea The previous couple of days we had stayed at a couple of disappointing B&Bs, so we were due for a change and we got it at Ballinalacken Castle Hotel. The hotel is not really in the 15 th century castle, rather it is in the 1840 home that the O’Brien family built next to the castle. In 1938 the grandparents of Denis O’Callaghan bought it from the O’Briens and the family has run the hotel since. The O’Callaghans are the soul of thi...