An Irish road trip

Old pal Sarah and I met up in Dublin a week ago for a road trip over to the west coast of Ireland. We sort of made up our itinerary as we went along. It's easier to cross from one side of the country to the other than to navigate some of the smaller roads where there's not much (or confusing) signposting, but we managed to stay basically on course. There's an old Irish joke about someone asking for directions and being told, "Oh, you can't get there from here..." It makes perfect sense when you're going around a roundabout for the second or third time and still can't see which exit to take... Ireland is also liberally garnished with castles and abbeys, but we managed to see only one or two.

Sligo and Galway were points of departure for many of the famine ships that left Ireland in the mid-1800s. The towns are pretty, with lots of flower baskets and colourful buildings. I had three runs: from Sligo out along the river in an unsuccessful attempt to reach the Isle of Innisfree (which we later spent over an hour trying to find in the car); and, in Galway, along the seafront at Salthill and beside the canal path in the centre of town.

Benbulben is a very beautiful mountain that dominates the skyline near Sligo. It must be stunning when frosted with snow. We checked out some megalithic tombs that predate the Egyptian pyramids by a thousand years, but were unable to appreciate them in any real way. It's difficult to imagine them as anything other than a few mounds of rocks in a green field. Sligo is Yeats country; we visited his grave, which he shares with his wife, George.

One day we drove around the Connemara peninsula, which is bleak and stony. It's quite beautiful.

I would like to spend some time out on the Aran Islands one day...

We couldn't be within cooee of Tipperary and not go there. We had lunch in a bit of a dive of a pub on the main street (all the cafes were closed down) before heading back towards Dublin to spend the night with old friends of Sarah's in their rambling country cottage that has its own 500-year-old castle ruin and two gorgeous dogs, Shadow and Holly.

Thanks, Ireland. It's a grand place, as the locals say...

It's a long way 'til you can stop when you run a rock 'n' roll half marathon...

A half marathon is always 21.1 kilometres, but some of them seem longer than others. The inaugural Dublin Rock 'n' Roll half marathon, held yesterday around Dublin city and Phoenix Park, was one of my better races in recent years. The event was also the Irish National Half Marathon Championships, so  I was running against some of the best in the country in my age group. I placed seventh out of about 23 with a time of 1:53:56. (The first four place-getters all had times under 1:50.) This race and the Reykjavik half marathon of last August (1:53:38) are my best efforts since the Brooklyn half in May 2009, when I ran 1:50:09. It was terrific to run the race with my mate Marc, who had only ever run around 10K. He finished in an excellent time of just under 1:56, which had been our goal time. Marc and I met in Santiago, Chile, in 2011 and caught up in Limerick last November and again this year. After the race we went out for brunch at the very funky Foam and then to see "Only God Forgives" at my favourite cinema in Dublin, the Irish Film Institute.

On Saturday morning I ran a 5K race up at Malahide, a half-hour train ride north of Dublin, in the grounds of a castle. The race was across fields and through woods, all on paved paths, and I was pleased with my 26:26 finish and first place (out of five) in my AG.

My challenge now will be to do enough training to retain the fitness I've built up over the past two months in New York.

In Dublin I'm staying in the apartment on the Liffey, right by Ha'penny Bridge, where I stayed last year. I like the location, if not the noisy crowds that hang about at night on the street below my windows. But I'm just across the river from Temple Bar, the nightlife area, so what do I expect?

I've been tying up some work loose ends before I head off for a bit of a holiday with my old friend Sarah, who arrives in Dublin tomorrow. We last caught up in May 2012, when I visited her in Canada and ran the Vancouver half marathon.

Readers of this blog will find me very predictable: in my spare time I've been seeing films at IFI ("Breathe In", with Guy Pearce; and "Paradise: Hope") and eating gelato. It's true...

I also went to see the musical "Hairspray", which was fantastic. Tonight I'm taking the culture up a notch and going to the Gate Theatre to see "A Streetcar Named Desire".

I like Dublin a lot. It was nice to run through parts of the city and Phoenix Park where I hadn't been before. I need more free days so that I can explore it more widely, but that will have to wait for another visit.

Summer in the city

For the past couple of weeks I've been following Maria's marathon training program. I have one of my own, but I haven't looked at it...! I really value the social aspects of running and training, and improved fitness is a by-product of that. Having said that, I'm quite competitive! Hopefully, I'm fit enough to run reasonably well in a couple of races later this week in Ireland. I'm flying out tonight. The only reason I'm not throwing a huge tantrum about leaving New York is that I'm planning to be back at the start of October for another ten weeks.

Highlights of the past few weeks include walking and talking the length of Fifth Avenue with Jonathan, a friend from Brisbane; seeing "The Trip to Bountiful" (Cicely Tyson, Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Vanessa Williams) on Broadway with Diane; catching up again with Dominic (from Tokyo), Joe (from Babylon, NY and Bali), Selena (we both spoke at a school careers day in Brooklyn last spring) and Tavia (my teammate from the 2009 Green Mountain Relay in Vermont); attending a runners party at Joanne's home in Pelham, NY; and regular meetups with other friends who live in my neighbourhood. More films: "Terms and Conditions May Apply"; "Fruitvale Station"; "Museum Hours" (set in Vienna, which I hope to visit in September); "Blue Jasmine"; "First Comes Love" and "Nicky's Family" (about the rescue of Jewish children from Prague by Nicky Walton in the months leading up to the start of the Second World War, and the ripple effect his actions have had).

To blog or not to blog...

I'm behind in updating this blog, but I don't really have much to say! I'm settled into my New York routine of training in the morning, eating well, trying to stay hydrated, working, seeing films, running races, catching up with friends, and trying to roll with life's punches.

I scored a first place in my age group in the Hope and Possibility 5-mile race last Sunday. It wasn't a deserved win (I was eighth in my AG in the Pride Run, also 5 miles, the day before with a slightly faster time), but hey, I'll take it!

Pal Diane and I went to see Bette Midler channel agent-to-the-stars Sue Mengers on Broadway in "I'll Eat You Last". It was a hoot. She was a motormouth for 90 minutes while chain-smoking...

Films: "20 Feet from Stardom" with Oz pal (and total star) Glace Chase; "Far Out Isn't Far Enough" (documentary about the illustrator Tom Ungerer); "How to Make Money Selling Drugs"; Pedro Almodovar's new film, "I'm So Excited!", with Susan (we weren't at all excited); "A Hijacking" (an excellent Danish drama); and "Absence" (thriller about foetal abduction which spooked me enough that I had to move to the last row of seats, where I had a wall behind me).

I had an encounter with Dead Runner Tony Bell, who has been Dead even longer than I have. We walked around the reservoir in Central Park and then went for gelato on the Upper East Side. I was amazed that I've met nearly every Dead Runner he mentioned!

Ubud pal Joe came into town from Long Island for dinner and a catchup midtown a week or so ago. Meals in my neighbourhood (Broadway, Amsterdam Avenue, Columbus Avenue and Harlem) with friends Sung (horsewoman extraordinaire, dog lover, philanthropist, former marathon training partner...), Gene (psychotherapist), Pat (filmmaker, and my one degree of separation from Andy Warhol), and Dead Runners Mary and Susan just before Mary and Michael headed to Italy.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by one of my neighbours, Ellen (who lives with my favourite New York dog, Max), to spend the day at her family's home on Lake Kampfe, in Bloomingdale, New Jersey. It was a stunning day. Another neighbour, Terry, a flight attendant, was along for the ride with his sweet Westie, Daisy. Ellen wasn't well, but we had a lovely lunch and a walk around the lake, a swim, and lots of easy chat.

Terry with Max and Daisy

Another first for me this visit was attending a wedding at the Manhattan Marriage Registry. Julia, a writer whom I've known for a couple of years, married her soulmate John last week. It was very moving, despite the crowds of people queuing to tie the knot, and they had a great celebrant. I spent some time talking with Diane, who used to play bass guitar with a punk band in New York in the late 1980s. Lots of young people were getting married, plus two guys with identical moustaches and colour-coordinated shorts who said they have been together for 40 years.

OK, it seems I lied and that I did have enough news for a blog update. I'll now return to pointless barking.

I still call Manhattan home

Whenever I return to New York now, I don’t feel that I’m on a visit, even a long one: I feel that I’m coming home. This is my fifth year of putting out feelers and putting down roots here. In total, by the end of my stay this year, I will have spent over two years in New York since 2009. I know a lot of people now.

In the past two weeks I’ve run three races in Central Park. In this week’s 5-mile Portugal Day race, I placed second (out of 41) in my age group with 44:32 (8:55 minute miles). I felt like I was in the zone for the last two miles, which I think reflects the past fortnight’s regular training. I’ve really missed the 5:30 a.m. crew, who meet on Fifth Avenue on weekday mornings for a run and a chat, so it’s wonderful to be back into that routine and to have their support as we all prepare for marathons in the autumn.

My friend Joanne from Melbourne was here for a few days at the start of the month. (We joke that she’s my surrogate daughter.) She has been at the finish line at a number of my races now, including in Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur, and now the Celebrate Israel 4-mile race in New York. She and a friend drove a truck across the US. It’s one way to arrive for a first visit!

Another friend visiting from out of town was Ingrid, from Chile, whom I met in Santiago 18 months ago. We caught up for a long chat a few days after I arrived.

Dominic, a good friend since 1983, was in town from Tokyo. We had a lovely long lunch. It’s always a lot of fun to see him. The last time was in New York in 2009, and before that in Melbourne in 2008, when we ran 15 km along the Yarra River together to celebrate our then 25-year friendship.

I had a day out on Long Island last week on a spectacularly beautiful day with Joe, a new mate from my stay in Bali earlier this year. We had lunch at a seafood joint, then walked for a couple of hours along a beach on Fire Island before topping off the day with ice cream.

I also ran into a guy in my neighbourhood whom I met in Reykjavik last August.  TR works in the film business, and there were a few films being made in Iceland at that time.

It’s becoming a very small world!

Two running friends in New York have had babies: Heather and Joe had Michael about three months ago. He is already a fixture (with Joe) at Engineer’s Gate during races when Heather is running. She and I ran the Mini 10K together last week. And Natalie and Nils had “Baby” last weekend. He’s bound to be a runner, too, as he has long feet! He just needs a name…

I’m loving being back in film-going mode: “Frances Ha” (terrific); “Triumph of the Wall” (documentary about the building of a dry-stone wall in Canada); “Before Midnight” (following on from “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset”, with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy); “What Maisie Knew” (with the wonderful Onata Aprile); a documentary about photographer Bert Stern, “The Original Mad Man”; “Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorffs” (about Bergdorf Goodman’s in New York); “Man of Steel” (with Maria and Lissy, to check out the new Superman); “Trashed” (Jeremy Irons’ documentary about waste disposal); and “Girl Rising” (documentary about nine young girls who break through the cultural and other barriers that restrict their educational opportunities). My actor and musician friend Diane and I saw a play, “Fix Number Six”, down near the Bowery last week. A lot of hard work went into it, but neither of us enjoyed it much.

My work has been slow over the past month, which has given me an opportunity to spend time doing other things without stressing about deadlines. But I now have a big job in my in-tray, so it’s business as unusual. 

A Tale of Two Cities: Barcelona and Paris

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” ― Charles Dickens

Barcelona Cathedral

I love Barcelona! My three-day visit was a last-minute add-on because I couldn’t get a reasonably priced flight direct from Florence to Paris. Anything that didn’t cost nearly 500 euros was routed via Barcelona, with a long transit but not really long enough to go into the city. Luckily, I took this as a sign that I should schedule a proper visit there.

Before heading for Spain I took the train north from Florence to spend a night up in the foothills of the Alps near Turin with friends Giorgio and Amy, daughter Olivia, dogs Honey and Beauregard, and the cats. I had spent some time with them in 2010, just a few months after I started my new life. It doesn’t feel like all that long ago… We had a fun evening and a two-hour walk with the dogs in the morning before Giorgio took me to Turin to catch my plane.

The Barcelona trip turned into a scouting visit for a longer stay later in the year. I love the place. It’s just the right size, easy to walk around, and there’s so much to see. The food is fabulous, with much more variety than I found in Italy. I could have spent all day grazing in the central food market, La Boqueria, on La Rambla, where the fruit, vegetables, dried and preserved foods, olives, charcuterie, fish and seafood, cheeses, chocolates, marzipan fruits are displayed like still lifes.

Although I didn’t have a run while I was there, there is a meetup group that gets together for runs each week; and there are some good places to run, including along the seafront. The Barcelona marathon is held mid-March, so I’m pencilling that in for 2015.

Plus, of course, there’s the amazing architecture, art, museums, film, history.… The weather was also perfect while I was there.

I got a crick in my neck from walking around looking up at rooflines and facades of buildings. I visited a number of churches, including the beautiful Barcelona Cathedral, which has a garden that is home to a gaggle of geese. I like the Museum of Contemporary Art, which has a stark white interior and is easy to navigate through. The Museum of Modern European Art is in a beautiful old building crammed with figurative sculpture. The Museum of Contemporary Culture is a large industrial-looking place that puts on events and film, but there was nothing much happening during my stay. They have special programs for people with Alzheimer’s. I heard recently about another gallery that’s doing something similar, but I can’t remember where that was (hahaha). The Museum of the City of Barcelona doesn’t attempt to present even an overview of the city’s history, but the building is interesting and on the lowest level there are important and extensive excavations of a walled Roman settlement here that dates back 2000 years to when the city was called Barcino.

My hotel was very near La Rambla and the Raval barrio. I would happily stay anywhere in the central city, from Raval on the western side across to Born (near the Picasso Museum, the seafront and the park) on the eastern side. There is excellent public transport, but I walked everywhere.

I had a perve at the Erotica Museum on La Rambla. There is a big collection of early photography, and some home movies dating from the 1920s that were in the collection of a king whose name I forget. There is erotic art from all over the world.

The highlight of my visit to Barcelona was seeing the interior of Gaudi’s still unfinished La Sagrada Familia. I knew the exterior from photographs, but if I’d ever seen pictures of the interior it didn’t make an impression. It’s absolutely stunning. All the religious iconography that you expect to see inside a cathedral is on the outside. The interior is still busy, but with very clean lines. The columns and walls are a beautiful muted grey; all the colour comes from light filtered through stained glass in simple abstract designs. It must be wonderful to attend a musical event there.

La Sagrada Familia

Whereas I found Barcelona very welcoming, Paris was the opposite. I thought I would make good use of my week there, on what was my fourth visit. (I visited Paris in 2001, 2011 and just last month.) Instead, I felt constantly thwarted and became increasingly frustrated, as if I were moving in ever-decreasing circles. The apartment I’d lined up in Montmartre just didn’t work for me.  One problem was I couldn’t get and stay online. I decided the next morning to bail and walked the streets looking for a hotel. I finally found somewhere on the edge of Montmartre, in a rather seedy area. However, I could only book for three of my remaining seven nights. Paris, it turned out, was booked to the gills for the French Open tennis. 

With the help of Monique, a friend from Bali, I got a couple of nights in a decent hotel near her (but again with unreliable internet) in the Bastille area. That still left me with two bed-less nights. After spending a very frustrating night and morning looking at all the options, I gave up on Paris altogether. My friends at Albury Travel in Oz got me on to a flight to Dublin the next morning, two days before I was meant to transit through Ireland en route to New York, and I found a good hotel for two nights. Finally, the day before I left, after a VERY frustrating week, I could go and visit some museums and take a long walk with Monique around some areas I hadn’t seen on previous visits. Rue Mouffetard, in the Latin Quarter, is gorgeous.

I had hoped to enjoy not being under work pressure, but I just ended up in a week-long funk. My bad mood affected everything, so that nothing flowed smoothly or easily. I take responsibility for this, but I just couldn’t get out of the loop.

I did achieve two things, though. I ran two races back-to-back: a 10K women’s event on the Saturday, and a 20K race from the Bois de Boulogne out to St Germain en Laye on the Sunday. This was fairly ambitious, given that I could count the number of runs I’d had in the last two months on the fingers of one hand: a morning run beneath the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur at the end of March; and, in April, a half marathon in Florence, Min’s and my Paris landmarks run, and one solo run in Florence along the Arno. I hadn’t run at all in May. I managed the distances without any trouble, though my times were slow: 59:33 minutes for the 10K and 2:12:32 for the 20K. I wasn’t bothered; I just wanted to get out there and clear my head. Monique trekked out to St Germain en Laye for the second race to meet me at the finish line, and made us a lovely lunch afterwards back in Paris. Unusually for a race with 3,000-odd competitors, there were no loos at the start (and only about six at the finish). We all had to dash off into the bushes of the Bois de Boulogne to relieve ourselves!

On Tuesday morning, after six nights in Paris, I checked out of my hotel and got a cab to the airport, having left it too late to get a shuttle bus. I ended up with an insane taxi driver. When, amazingly, we arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport in one piece, I shouted at the driver: “I thought I was going to DIE!!!” I threw 80 euros at her. “You’re a f@*king terrible driver!!!”

Of course, to top things off, on checking in I was charged for excess baggage. It was that sort of week…

I’ve spent the last two days calming down in Dublin, going to the cinema (“Mud”) and the theatre (the amazing Paul Reid in “Man of Valour”), having my hair done, walking and reading. This was my first stop after I left New York seven months ago, so it seems fitting that I’ve had this chance to regroup here before returning to my New York life today. 

Arrividerci, Italia

I first visited Italy in 2007, when I entered the country on foot through a mountain pass during a two-week trek around Mont Blanc. My second entry was by cable car, over the Alps near Courmayeur, during the same trek.  My third and fourth entries were by plane into Venice from England, and into Rome from Malta, also in 2007. In 2010 I did some walking in the Piedmont area with my runner mate, Giorgio. Last year, I lived in Florence for all of September, and I’m now near the end of a visit of two months, again using Florence as my base. The chances are good that I’ll return to Italy.

Since my return from Venice I’ve been winding up a big workload and squeezing in excursions and day trips where possible. Lucca was a fun place to spend a morning. It’s only an hour by train from Florence and has some interesting buildings and a lively centre, but I was attracted by the old city walls that are intact and form a sort of square. The walls were intended to defend the citizens of Lucca from their enemies, the Florentines, but the planners had the foresight to make them wide enough for recreational use. Today they are used by runners, walkers, cyclists and dog walkers. I ran twice around them and then walked down to a central piazza for breakfast.

Another day I took the train (and the bus back from) Prato, which is a big place (190,000 or so people) only 30 minutes from Florence by rail. There are two overseas universities (Monash from Melbourne and an American college) with campuses here. It was early afternoon and most of the shops were shut and very few people were about. It’s probably really bustling in the early evening. At the textile museum I saw an exhibition called “Vintage”, about how fashions and garments are recycled. There is an important museum of contemporary art that is undergoing redevelopment, so nothing from their permanent collection was on show. The conceptual art in the two current exhibitions showing in a temporary space did nothing for me, and I like conceptual art. I think it has to work on some level without needing to be explained, though, and these didn’t do that for me. The gallery is in a very bland location out by the highway, though the building itself will be impressive. Cities (like my hometown Albury) that have a cultural precinct are very fortunate. I doubt that many of the students based for a few months in Prato would bother to make the trek out to the suburbs to see this museum.

My main excursion was to Lake Como for three nights last week. I’ve heard a lot about this area and tried to visit it last year when friends Sue and Neil were there from Oz. It was grey and drizzly on Friday when my train pulled into Como from Milan, but then it cleared up and the next three days were beautifully sunny and warm. I stayed in Bellagio, which is halfway up the lake and on the tip of the promontory that separates the two lower arms of the lake. From here there is just one arm that extends north towards Switzerland. There were a lot of German speakers around, so I guess many of them were Swiss from around Zurich.

I was surprised by how many villages and towns there are along the lake. There is also a pretty extensive road system linking the towns. It would be fun to spend a couple of weeks walking here, so long as you could stay mainly off the roads. I got lost on some of the walks I took and ended up hugging some rock faces while cars whizzed by at my back. That got the adrenaline pumping!

One walk I took around Bellagio visited a number of “suburbs” (they have their own churches), accessed via steep cobbled paths. Lots of flower boxes were out, so it all looked gorgeous. I had dinner in Varenna one evening (I took the car ferry across) and breakfast on my last morning in Menaggio. The gardens of the Villa Melzi are worth a visit. Azaleas are out everywhere at the moment and look gorgeous.

On the Sunday I took the hydrofoil back to Como (past George Clooney’s villa at Laglio) because I wanted to take the funicular railway up to Brunate. The track is very steep and the views over the lake and the town are pretty awesome. I walked back to the lake on the path that winds mostly off-road down the mountainside, then had a gelato and made a quick visit to Como’s very beautiful Duomo before taking the slow ferry back to Bellagio. There was a half marathon held in Como earlier that morning but I hadn’t been able to get entry and wasn’t motivated enough to jump in and run it as a bandit as I did in Florence last month.

My friend Lisa from New York City (and upstate New York – I visited her in Woodstock last summer) has arrived in Florence. Yesterday we saw a Steven Soderbergh film, the psychological thriller Side Effects, at the Odeon and found the fabulous NapoLeone (in Piazza del Carmine), which instantly became my favourite restaurant in Florence. Earlier we had visited a craft fair in the Corsini Gardens, where I bought a necklace from a glass artist.

So much that is beautiful in Italy is to be found behind the beautiful big wooden doors that line the streets; beyond the high stone walls that contain private gardens, behind the painted wooden shutters, or further up the covered cobbled or stepped lanes that locals use to get from place to place. Italy is very compact, but there is a lot going on that is mostly out of sight of visitors like myself. Florence is so rich in architectural treasures it took me more than a month even to notice a church around the corner that has been dated to the year 910 or thereabouts. It’s a privilege to be able to call Florence home for any length of time. I'm very grateful to have had these two months.

Grazie mille.