Sunday, July 18, 2010

UK and Ireland June 2010




Most years, I go to the User Conference in the UK for the software I work with, which is usually held in October/November... This year, they scheduled it in June, one week before Pearl Jam were starting their European tour in Ireland! Just the excuse I needed to go see PJ!

Flew into Manchester for the conference a day early to get over jetlag, and a good friend from Leeds was at the conference. I had met him when we both worked for this software company in The Netherlands for 4 months, and now he works for a customer.

After the conference, I drove up to Scotland, because I love it this time of the year up there... the days are long, staying light until 11pm, and the purple rhododendron are blooming everywhere in the highlands. I stayed 2 nights in Pitlochry, a place I had only passed by, but which was near Loch Tay, the most beautiful area on earth, imo. I even found a couple of roads I had never travelled on, in all my visits to the area.

Pitlochry is a small town which has a dam and fish ladder. It is a great central location from which to explore the highlands, right off the main motorway.









Company selling game meat... :(


Next day, I drove to Queen's View...




and saw some great scenery on the way...






and some hairy coos:


Drove on to the next Loch, Loch Rannoch and drove around it. Gorgeous lake, beautiful day, rare sunshine, lots of beaches, and about 3 houses around it...







Here is a cute video of a mother sheep with 2 babies, one of whom was lost, that I took along the Loch...



From Loch Rannoch, I drove on a local road through the highlands down to Aberfeldy, passing by Glamis Castle...


After indulging in some chips & curry in Aberfeldy, which is a really cute town, I drove on towards Kenmore, and about halfway is my favorite stone circle, the Croft Moraig circle...


On to Kenmore on Loch Tay...





then to Glen Lyon, through Croftgarbh, Invervar, Camusvrachen, Innerwick, to Bridge of Balgie, where I took the one track road across Ben Lawers (the highest mountain in the region)... back over to Loch Tay.






Some kind of burial mound at top of pass...



The heather doesn't bloom until August, but this would be the road to take when it is blooming...


The view coming down over Loch Tay...


These cows got the view...


Drove back to Leeds the next day, and visited my friend, Mark and his family... here he is with his daughter, a lovely old soul, Annabelle...




IRELAND

Then the next day on to Dublin, where I met some friends from Northern California and shared an apartment right downtown. Same price as a hotel, but we got a living room, kitchen, 2 baths...



Sunday morning, had brunch with PJ friends from Dublin, Australia, California, Norway and Argentina...





Monday night, was the Pearl Jam party at a pub in Dublin... there were about 200 Pearl Jam fans there, and they had a surprisingly good cover band, which played acoustic. I probably knew about half the people there, having met them on various tours. There were people from Australia, US, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Croatia, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and of course, the UK and Ireland. And that was just the people I knew or met. Pearl Jam touches many great people around the world.



In the midst of all this, the World Cup was playing and Shannon was a big fan of the sport, so I had my fill of the horns in South Africa filling every corner of my brain with that horrible sound...


The Pearl Jam show was good, but my expectations were low, it being a GA floor, and the side seats (where I sat) were very far from the stage... The setlist was good, but not great like the US shows had been, and the crowd sucked. Ben Harper opened, and while we loved his old band, the Innocent Criminals, the new band elicited this reaction from Shannon and Kathy:


Next day, we drove up to Belfast for the next show. This one was a lot better, with a great crowd, and energy. I had fan club seats which were the first row side stage. Great view from there without getting all squished in GA... I had an extra ticket I wasn't able to sell, and next to me was a man and his 14 year old daughter. I chatted with them, and asked the 14 year old how many PJ shows she'd been to, and she said 28! Then another daughter came down to talk, and so I offered her my other seat. Eventually, the mom came down to hang with them... the whole family was doing the whole European tour!

The 18 year old daughter asked me if I was at the Buffalo show last month; she had remembered me because I had taken a picture of her in the audience! I had been taking a picture of Melissa, but I remember her looking at me and smiling... Here is one of those:



Got a few good pics from there...
















We stayed at some really nice apartments; our group had 3 2 bedroom apartments, and we partied til the wee hours after the show.

The next day, we drove up to the Giant's Causeway, a volcanic formation where the lava hardened into hexagonal columns. Fans of Led Zeppelin will recognize the cover of one of their albums shot there.

















After we got back to Belfast, we took a taxi tour of "the troubles"... the somewhat biased tour (our driver was Catholic), took us to see murals on both sides of the conflict. The Protestants were getting ready for the July 12th festivities, which seemed only to serve to antagonize the Catholics with bonfires, parades, etc. Everywhere, you saw little boys playing around the bonfire sites. A huge apartheid-style fence separated the Protestant neighborhoods from the Catholic ones, but I didn't see the point, as you could drive around the fence...


This was a row of murals showing solidarity with various causes for freedom on the Catholic side:






The Wall...


Little boys with sticks for guns:






And on the Protestant side of the Wall:






July 12th festivities:






Bonfires being prepared:






How would you like your kids growing up in this neighborhood? Note, the gun points at you from any direction...





The plaque on the left reads, "Catholicism is more than a religion, it is a political power. Therefore, I'm led to believe there will be no peace in Northern Ireland until the Catholic Church is crushed... Oliver Cromwell" Nice...