08-02-2023, 02:32 PM
May 10th Limerick
I skipped the morning walk and headed out to Quin Friary instead. Quin Friary, which the Lynch family has called Quin Abbey for at least forty years until someone actually read the sign, is the Lynch go to tourist destination when we are in the area. I don’t know why but my father introduced it to me. When visitors would show up, we would take them there. When I started going to Ireland, I would take the Queen. Although our first trip was a bit of a disappointment because we could only see Quin Friary from the road as all the fields were closed due to Hoof and Mouth disease in the country in 2001. It helps Quin Friary is one of the best preserved monasteries in Ireland and not many people no about the place. Quin lies out in the country far from the main roads which probably helps with it’s anonymity. The place is still the same as when I came out in 1980. My main disappointment is that they have started closing off parts of the Friary. There used to stairs that enabled you to climb up to the roof edges and look down. But they have been walled off. Sure, the view was dangerous, but worth it. You used to be able to go into the upper section of the garderobe but that area was fenced off. On this trip, they finally closed access to the upper floor all together. I guess the stone floors can no longer support the weight of humans on them. Much like Ross Errily Friary, there are a lot of Lynch grave markers. I especially like one near the front entrance that was made of black granite. Still looks fresh after all these years. Another fun feature of the friary is that it was built on top of old castle. If you walk around the outside, who wouldn’t, you can still see the rounded bases of the towers.
There are two ways to get out to the town of Quin and the Friary. The quick way takes you out the motorway where you get to see lovely cars speeding along. Or you get off the N18 at Cratloe and head through Sixmilebridge. I’ve taken the motorway once. I always drive through the hedgerows and countryside to Quin. Especially because I get to drive under the worst train bridge ever. The bridge is fine. It’s the turn you have to make going under the bridge. It’s ninety degrees. A long tour bus could never make the turn. One time driving under the bridge, I met a Lorry coming the other way. There was much backing up to allow the truck through. Country driving!
Rain fell while I did the circuit around Quin Friary. I didn’t take a lot of pictures because I have enough grey rainy pictures of Quin Friary. I didn’t get out the drone, either, because I have drone photos in the rain, too. I did take the selfie.
I have two main reason for stopping in the town of Sixmilebridge and yes the name of the town is Sixmilebridge. The bridge in town is six miles from Limerick. The first reason to stop is the duck hotel that sits in a little pool in the river that runs under the Sixmilebridge. The duck hotel has gone through many iterations from a thatch roof to steel in the years I’ve been taking photographs. I also stop there to reminisce about my father. He claimed that the best bathroom in all of Ireland was in the back of the pub next to the duck hotel. The bathroom wasn’t the best because of any amenities but because if you stood at the men’s stalls you could look at the small waterfall that you could see through the windows out the back of the toilet. I’m usually passing through Sixmilebridge at too early of an hour when the pub has yet to open, so I still have yet to verify my father’s assertion.
My next stop for the morning was Bunratty Castle. Actually, it would be more accurate to say Durty Nelly’s which is the 400 year old pub next to Bunratty. To be even more accurate, my destination was the stone parapet on the bridge just next to Durty Nelly’s. I took a picture on the stone parapet during a bike ride out to Quin Abbey from Limerick in 1993. Yes, I used to be in much better shape and the thought of a 36 mile bike ride was something to enjoy not feared. When I first arrived in Ireland, the road used to go right in front of Durty Nelly’s. By the time I returned in 1993, they had a much better bridge and avoided the stone bridge. In 2001, they finally had the dual carriage way completely bypassing Durty Nelly’s. If you wonder how places in Ireland get there name, I can tell you that bun means below. And the castle sits right next to the Ratty river.
In 1993, I took the selfie by placing the camera on the parapet and pressing the self timer. By 2023, I had a tripod and a holder for my cell phone camera. I did have have to move a board out of the way to actually be able to sit on the parapet to match the 1993 picture. I think the boards were in place to keep people from doing what I was doing. Not the picture part, the sitting part. In my defense, the nail holding the board on the parapet was loose and moved out of the way quite easily. Damn Americans and their pushy.
I had breakfast again in the River Restaurant in my customary place by the window. I love that spot. Then I headed back to the hospital to see what was happening. I was getting really used to parking in the underground lot under the main wing of the hospital. I was even kind of figuring out the maze to get to the Queen Mum’s ward. But not really. I constantly missed the turn and would end up in the lobby. The Queen Mum looked fine when I arrived in the ward. Although, the women in the area next to ours got the delightful news that she’d been have a series of micro strokes and they wouldn’t be letting her out any time soon. The woman across from the Queen Mum had done a lot of screaming in the night according to The Queen. It was well passed time to spring the Queen Mum.
I left to go check off some more sights in my visiting Limerick Checklist. I went by my old house up in Castletroy on Kilbane Street. The house was just barely finished being built when we moved in in the summer of 1979. There were a bunch of home still under construction when we did and the road had yet to be paved. My father made a lot of friends with the builders by telling them they were building things wrongs and having them redo things. I always wonder what the current home owners think if they spot me taking pictures of their house. It’s been the same family for quite awhile because the car in the front yard hasn’t changed in ten years. The one thing the owners did do was rip out the lawn and pave over the front yard.
I was quite surprised to learn there was a Jewish cemetery in Limerick. My narrow understanding had no Jews in Ireland and yet here in Castletroy, somewhere, was there cemetery. Don’t get me wrong. The Jews were treated as poorly here as anywhere, but at least they had one plot of land to call their own. I finally found the location of the cemetery some years ago, it was near the Hurler’s Pub. I just had to go to it. There were no signs for the cemetery and the place was surrounded by a high stone wall. You had to climb through a notch to enter the grounds. I only counted about six graves with markers. Some of the markers were so worn down you couldn’t determine what they said. Other’s referred to the fact the occupant of the grave was unknown. I was surprised that people had been buried in the cemetery within the last ten years.
After the cemetery, I headed back to the University of Limerick to buy a sweatshirt. My long obsession with buying obscure college jerseys continues. Yes, I could probably stop with just buying clothing from Tufts in Massachusetts, but I also felt it was time to branch out. They had a nice hoodie for me which will come in handy back in California where I won’t need to wear a hoody for another six months.
I had been texting with the Queen over at the University Hospital for updates. The hospital didn’t want to do the CT scan until tomorrow. I don’t know if foul language was used, but the Queen told the hospital the Queen Mum was checking out today, test or no test. That statement seemed to grab their attention. The hospital scheduled the CT for the afternoon. According to the Queen Mum who had done this procedure before, the test should take about forty five minutes. The test took fifteen. The Queen Mum had been at the hospital for forty eight hours with an option for twenty four more for a fifteen minute test. The longest part of the whole process was getting the porters to take the Queen Mum back to her room. The porters may or may not have been on lunch break when she needed to be moved. Yes, the hospital did give her a lot of antibiotics to heal her but it seemed like most of the hospital time was wasted.
Since I wasn’t needed at the hospital just yet, I opted to walk in to town from the Strand Hotel for some lunch at Spitjack on Bedford Row. The Spitjack used to be a job in the kitchen. The spitjack turned the spit over the fire where the meats cooked. All I know is when I ordered my Italian Rotisserie Porchetta, the waitress told me “Excellent Choice”. Well, if you are going to a restaurant called Spitjack, you might might as well have something cooked on a spit. The Porchetta was really good.
After my meal, with a promise to be at the hospital by 3 to take the Queen Mum to the hotel, I headed for another walk around the City Center. Specifically, I wanted a shot at going up to the top floor of the just opened International Rugby Experience on O’Connell street. I had been seeing ads on instagram for this for about six months and was excited to learn the Experience would be opened when we were in Limerick. Only, all the tickets were sold out. I went by anyway to check to see if they had an opening. I didn’t really care about the Experience to be honest. What I wanted was to get to the top floor observation deck of the building. From what I could see from the pictures and from walking around the building, the entire sixth floor had huge floor to ceiling windows. And the Rugby Experience was taller than any building around it. My hopes were dashed at the ticket kiosk where I was told that the crowd of well dressed people around me in the lobby would be ascending to the floor I wanted to be on. I was not invited.
At 3 o’clock I headed back to the Hospital for hopefully the last time. I had gotten texts from the Queen that she really needed to get away from the woman screaming at the nurses. Of course, the extraction wouldn’t be easy. When I arrived, the two parking lots next to the hospital were full. I had to go across the street to the overflow lot. When I got to the barrier to enter, a small LCD panel on the screen told me the lot was full. I started to back up to leave when a man exiting said I just needed to wait for someone to leave and then I would be let into the lot. There was only one slight catch to this solution. There was already one car driving around inside the lot looking for an open spot that didn’t exist. When the sensor thought the lot had one space, it would already be full. Two cars would race for the one empty spot. Plus people were putting their cars were they could blocking other cars. The math finally worked in my favor and I got a spot.
I went up to the ward and waited. They just wanted an okay from the doctor before she was released. The scan showed the post to just be more infection, not a clot. While waiting I was able to hear through the curtain the woman in the next bed being given the news that she had a series of microstrokes. They weren’t letting her out of the hospital any time soon.
After forty eight hours in town, I was finally able to take the Queen Mum to her hotel room. Her room was much better than the University of Limerick Hospital. My first task was to run across the Sarsfield bridge to the nearest pharmacy and fill the Queen Mum’s prescriptions. We worried that there wouldn’t be a pharmacy open until the next day because of the lateness of the hour. Fortunately for us, there was a pharmacy for us that was open until 11pm.
When we showed up in town on Monday, we were all supposed to go out to dinner with a friend of mine who I went to the Crescent with back in 1980s. Mike McMahon played on the Rugby team and hung out in the library when the rest of our fellow students were taking Irish language classes. I bumped into him by the most happenstance of coincidences again in 1993. I was in line at Pizza Gino’s on Ellen Street, a since defunct pizza place when somebody behind me said “Didn’t you use to be Greg Lynch?”. I turned and asked the man if he didn’t use to be Mike McMahon. We kind of stayed in touch since then. In other coincidence news, his then girlfriend now wife, Helen, also lived at 66 Kilbane St. Mike was confused when he drove to Helen’s house for the first time and realized he had been to the house before when I had lived there. I usually try and have at least one meal with him when I’m in town. Usually, I head out to his house in Nenagh but this time he offered to come into town.
We met Mike at the Locke Bar on George’s Quay right near Matthew Bridge. I have a little PTSD from the Locke Bar to go along with my fondness for the place. The first time I was in the bar back in the 1993 trip, a waitress was kind enough to drop an entire tray of drinks into my lap. But I fought through it. Now, Mike was supposed to have brought Helen with him for this adventure but when he walked into the pub, he was by himself. Turns out Mr. McMahon had a bit of a tiff with Mrs. McMahon and she had opted out of the festivities. As clear as I can gather Mike had told some privileged that he wasn’t supposed to tell. Mike also told us that he got to to stay at the Ashford Castle. The same one in Cong where I couldn’t even walk on the grounds. He had helped a woman from New Jersey connect with her roots and by way of thanks they all went to Ashford on her dime.
After a pleasant evening, I drove the Queen and Queen Mum back to the Limerick Strand. I was dropping them off at the front door so they wouldn’t have to make the hike through the parking garage to the elevator.
I skipped the morning walk and headed out to Quin Friary instead. Quin Friary, which the Lynch family has called Quin Abbey for at least forty years until someone actually read the sign, is the Lynch go to tourist destination when we are in the area. I don’t know why but my father introduced it to me. When visitors would show up, we would take them there. When I started going to Ireland, I would take the Queen. Although our first trip was a bit of a disappointment because we could only see Quin Friary from the road as all the fields were closed due to Hoof and Mouth disease in the country in 2001. It helps Quin Friary is one of the best preserved monasteries in Ireland and not many people no about the place. Quin lies out in the country far from the main roads which probably helps with it’s anonymity. The place is still the same as when I came out in 1980. My main disappointment is that they have started closing off parts of the Friary. There used to stairs that enabled you to climb up to the roof edges and look down. But they have been walled off. Sure, the view was dangerous, but worth it. You used to be able to go into the upper section of the garderobe but that area was fenced off. On this trip, they finally closed access to the upper floor all together. I guess the stone floors can no longer support the weight of humans on them. Much like Ross Errily Friary, there are a lot of Lynch grave markers. I especially like one near the front entrance that was made of black granite. Still looks fresh after all these years. Another fun feature of the friary is that it was built on top of old castle. If you walk around the outside, who wouldn’t, you can still see the rounded bases of the towers.
There are two ways to get out to the town of Quin and the Friary. The quick way takes you out the motorway where you get to see lovely cars speeding along. Or you get off the N18 at Cratloe and head through Sixmilebridge. I’ve taken the motorway once. I always drive through the hedgerows and countryside to Quin. Especially because I get to drive under the worst train bridge ever. The bridge is fine. It’s the turn you have to make going under the bridge. It’s ninety degrees. A long tour bus could never make the turn. One time driving under the bridge, I met a Lorry coming the other way. There was much backing up to allow the truck through. Country driving!
Rain fell while I did the circuit around Quin Friary. I didn’t take a lot of pictures because I have enough grey rainy pictures of Quin Friary. I didn’t get out the drone, either, because I have drone photos in the rain, too. I did take the selfie.
I have two main reason for stopping in the town of Sixmilebridge and yes the name of the town is Sixmilebridge. The bridge in town is six miles from Limerick. The first reason to stop is the duck hotel that sits in a little pool in the river that runs under the Sixmilebridge. The duck hotel has gone through many iterations from a thatch roof to steel in the years I’ve been taking photographs. I also stop there to reminisce about my father. He claimed that the best bathroom in all of Ireland was in the back of the pub next to the duck hotel. The bathroom wasn’t the best because of any amenities but because if you stood at the men’s stalls you could look at the small waterfall that you could see through the windows out the back of the toilet. I’m usually passing through Sixmilebridge at too early of an hour when the pub has yet to open, so I still have yet to verify my father’s assertion.
My next stop for the morning was Bunratty Castle. Actually, it would be more accurate to say Durty Nelly’s which is the 400 year old pub next to Bunratty. To be even more accurate, my destination was the stone parapet on the bridge just next to Durty Nelly’s. I took a picture on the stone parapet during a bike ride out to Quin Abbey from Limerick in 1993. Yes, I used to be in much better shape and the thought of a 36 mile bike ride was something to enjoy not feared. When I first arrived in Ireland, the road used to go right in front of Durty Nelly’s. By the time I returned in 1993, they had a much better bridge and avoided the stone bridge. In 2001, they finally had the dual carriage way completely bypassing Durty Nelly’s. If you wonder how places in Ireland get there name, I can tell you that bun means below. And the castle sits right next to the Ratty river.
In 1993, I took the selfie by placing the camera on the parapet and pressing the self timer. By 2023, I had a tripod and a holder for my cell phone camera. I did have have to move a board out of the way to actually be able to sit on the parapet to match the 1993 picture. I think the boards were in place to keep people from doing what I was doing. Not the picture part, the sitting part. In my defense, the nail holding the board on the parapet was loose and moved out of the way quite easily. Damn Americans and their pushy.
I had breakfast again in the River Restaurant in my customary place by the window. I love that spot. Then I headed back to the hospital to see what was happening. I was getting really used to parking in the underground lot under the main wing of the hospital. I was even kind of figuring out the maze to get to the Queen Mum’s ward. But not really. I constantly missed the turn and would end up in the lobby. The Queen Mum looked fine when I arrived in the ward. Although, the women in the area next to ours got the delightful news that she’d been have a series of micro strokes and they wouldn’t be letting her out any time soon. The woman across from the Queen Mum had done a lot of screaming in the night according to The Queen. It was well passed time to spring the Queen Mum.
I left to go check off some more sights in my visiting Limerick Checklist. I went by my old house up in Castletroy on Kilbane Street. The house was just barely finished being built when we moved in in the summer of 1979. There were a bunch of home still under construction when we did and the road had yet to be paved. My father made a lot of friends with the builders by telling them they were building things wrongs and having them redo things. I always wonder what the current home owners think if they spot me taking pictures of their house. It’s been the same family for quite awhile because the car in the front yard hasn’t changed in ten years. The one thing the owners did do was rip out the lawn and pave over the front yard.
I was quite surprised to learn there was a Jewish cemetery in Limerick. My narrow understanding had no Jews in Ireland and yet here in Castletroy, somewhere, was there cemetery. Don’t get me wrong. The Jews were treated as poorly here as anywhere, but at least they had one plot of land to call their own. I finally found the location of the cemetery some years ago, it was near the Hurler’s Pub. I just had to go to it. There were no signs for the cemetery and the place was surrounded by a high stone wall. You had to climb through a notch to enter the grounds. I only counted about six graves with markers. Some of the markers were so worn down you couldn’t determine what they said. Other’s referred to the fact the occupant of the grave was unknown. I was surprised that people had been buried in the cemetery within the last ten years.
After the cemetery, I headed back to the University of Limerick to buy a sweatshirt. My long obsession with buying obscure college jerseys continues. Yes, I could probably stop with just buying clothing from Tufts in Massachusetts, but I also felt it was time to branch out. They had a nice hoodie for me which will come in handy back in California where I won’t need to wear a hoody for another six months.
I had been texting with the Queen over at the University Hospital for updates. The hospital didn’t want to do the CT scan until tomorrow. I don’t know if foul language was used, but the Queen told the hospital the Queen Mum was checking out today, test or no test. That statement seemed to grab their attention. The hospital scheduled the CT for the afternoon. According to the Queen Mum who had done this procedure before, the test should take about forty five minutes. The test took fifteen. The Queen Mum had been at the hospital for forty eight hours with an option for twenty four more for a fifteen minute test. The longest part of the whole process was getting the porters to take the Queen Mum back to her room. The porters may or may not have been on lunch break when she needed to be moved. Yes, the hospital did give her a lot of antibiotics to heal her but it seemed like most of the hospital time was wasted.
Since I wasn’t needed at the hospital just yet, I opted to walk in to town from the Strand Hotel for some lunch at Spitjack on Bedford Row. The Spitjack used to be a job in the kitchen. The spitjack turned the spit over the fire where the meats cooked. All I know is when I ordered my Italian Rotisserie Porchetta, the waitress told me “Excellent Choice”. Well, if you are going to a restaurant called Spitjack, you might might as well have something cooked on a spit. The Porchetta was really good.
After my meal, with a promise to be at the hospital by 3 to take the Queen Mum to the hotel, I headed for another walk around the City Center. Specifically, I wanted a shot at going up to the top floor of the just opened International Rugby Experience on O’Connell street. I had been seeing ads on instagram for this for about six months and was excited to learn the Experience would be opened when we were in Limerick. Only, all the tickets were sold out. I went by anyway to check to see if they had an opening. I didn’t really care about the Experience to be honest. What I wanted was to get to the top floor observation deck of the building. From what I could see from the pictures and from walking around the building, the entire sixth floor had huge floor to ceiling windows. And the Rugby Experience was taller than any building around it. My hopes were dashed at the ticket kiosk where I was told that the crowd of well dressed people around me in the lobby would be ascending to the floor I wanted to be on. I was not invited.
At 3 o’clock I headed back to the Hospital for hopefully the last time. I had gotten texts from the Queen that she really needed to get away from the woman screaming at the nurses. Of course, the extraction wouldn’t be easy. When I arrived, the two parking lots next to the hospital were full. I had to go across the street to the overflow lot. When I got to the barrier to enter, a small LCD panel on the screen told me the lot was full. I started to back up to leave when a man exiting said I just needed to wait for someone to leave and then I would be let into the lot. There was only one slight catch to this solution. There was already one car driving around inside the lot looking for an open spot that didn’t exist. When the sensor thought the lot had one space, it would already be full. Two cars would race for the one empty spot. Plus people were putting their cars were they could blocking other cars. The math finally worked in my favor and I got a spot.
I went up to the ward and waited. They just wanted an okay from the doctor before she was released. The scan showed the post to just be more infection, not a clot. While waiting I was able to hear through the curtain the woman in the next bed being given the news that she had a series of microstrokes. They weren’t letting her out of the hospital any time soon.
After forty eight hours in town, I was finally able to take the Queen Mum to her hotel room. Her room was much better than the University of Limerick Hospital. My first task was to run across the Sarsfield bridge to the nearest pharmacy and fill the Queen Mum’s prescriptions. We worried that there wouldn’t be a pharmacy open until the next day because of the lateness of the hour. Fortunately for us, there was a pharmacy for us that was open until 11pm.
When we showed up in town on Monday, we were all supposed to go out to dinner with a friend of mine who I went to the Crescent with back in 1980s. Mike McMahon played on the Rugby team and hung out in the library when the rest of our fellow students were taking Irish language classes. I bumped into him by the most happenstance of coincidences again in 1993. I was in line at Pizza Gino’s on Ellen Street, a since defunct pizza place when somebody behind me said “Didn’t you use to be Greg Lynch?”. I turned and asked the man if he didn’t use to be Mike McMahon. We kind of stayed in touch since then. In other coincidence news, his then girlfriend now wife, Helen, also lived at 66 Kilbane St. Mike was confused when he drove to Helen’s house for the first time and realized he had been to the house before when I had lived there. I usually try and have at least one meal with him when I’m in town. Usually, I head out to his house in Nenagh but this time he offered to come into town.
We met Mike at the Locke Bar on George’s Quay right near Matthew Bridge. I have a little PTSD from the Locke Bar to go along with my fondness for the place. The first time I was in the bar back in the 1993 trip, a waitress was kind enough to drop an entire tray of drinks into my lap. But I fought through it. Now, Mike was supposed to have brought Helen with him for this adventure but when he walked into the pub, he was by himself. Turns out Mr. McMahon had a bit of a tiff with Mrs. McMahon and she had opted out of the festivities. As clear as I can gather Mike had told some privileged that he wasn’t supposed to tell. Mike also told us that he got to to stay at the Ashford Castle. The same one in Cong where I couldn’t even walk on the grounds. He had helped a woman from New Jersey connect with her roots and by way of thanks they all went to Ashford on her dime.
After a pleasant evening, I drove the Queen and Queen Mum back to the Limerick Strand. I was dropping them off at the front door so they wouldn’t have to make the hike through the parking garage to the elevator.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm