Summary of the rest of the trip

For anyone interested, here's what I did, after Portugal, Spain, and the first few days in southern France.

I stayed at my friend Vero's place in French Catalunya for about five days, and then my friend Jean (who was also living there) and I took off on a road trip along the Mediterranean to Marseilles. We stayed there about five days in the apartment of Vero's 32-year-old son. It was a fourth-floor walk-up, and we got plenty of exercise schlepping up and down the stairs.

While we were there, I got to explore Marseille quite a bit (for the first time). The main event there was a huge lamb and couscous feast (called a mechoui, after the North African term) that forms the annual get-to-gether of Marseille go club. That's "go" as in the Japanese game. Most of my friends in France are go players, and Jean is actually the president of the Marseille club, so it was his job to organize the mechoui. It was hosted out in the suburbs of Marseille at one of the player's houses, with a nice swimming pool that was a break from the heat. Jean himself cooked the newly slaughtered lambs on a rotating spit over an open pit.

On the sixth day, we drove back to Vero's place outside Perpignan, and for the next three weeks I basically enjoyed myself and relaxed, doing as little as possible. The only downside was that many of the permanent guests, including Jean himself, slowly trickled away over the coming days, heading to more northern parts of Europe to escape the heat during the summer.

I also learned first hand of the plague of biting insects that descend on southern France during the summer. My legs are still itching from where the blisters swelled up (evidently from the apricot flies).

Towards the end of my stay there, I borrowed Vero's old Citroen and took off for a nice day-long road trip into the Pyrenees. It was a fun break from the heat, to be up in the mountains. I visited the postage stamp nation of Andorra for the first time, where I had a suprisingly difficult time buying postage stamps and postcards (which was my objective there).

On July 3, I said goodbye to my hosts, promising to return as soon as possible, then took the train to Toulouse, where I then flew on Aer Lingus up to Dublin.

I stayed in Dublin a couple days (actually out in the suburbs at a motel), where I explored the city and made a pilgrimmage to the 5000-year-old ruins at Newgrange (a definite highlight of the trip).

Then I took the bus up to Northern Ireland, staying in an ultra-cheap hostel in northern Belfast for a couple nights. On the first night, I mustered up the strength to visit a nearby pub that was surrounded by a cage for a security. I turned out to be a stronghold of the Republicans, even though we were closer to the Loyalist areas (hence the security). After a couple pints of beer, I let forth on my feelings about the British monarchy, and this got me a couple pints free from the other people at the bar.

While I Belfast, I shelled out for a day-long bus tour along the Antrim Coast up to the Giant's Causeway. Scenery-wise, this was probably the highlight of the entire trip. It was a beautiful sunny day to play tourist along the cliffs.

Having tasted Northern Ireland, I took the bus back into the Republic, first to Dublin, then across the island to Galway on the western coast. In Galway I met up with my old Fergus, whom I met in graduate school in Austin, and whom I hadn't seen in over a decade. I stayed in his nice flat along the river in central Galway.

It gave me a chance to explore the city. On my last weekend there, Fergus and his Scottish girlfriend Audrey took me a day-long road trip out to Connemara, into the Gaelic-speaking regions. When we got to the village of Cong in County Mayo, I forced to listen to me while I narrated the tour stops for the movie The Quiet Man (1951), being that I'm a huge John Ford fan. It was the movie that launched my career as a projectionist when I was an undergraduate.

Audrey turns out to have a huge spirit, and she led us into crashing the private hotel at Ashford Castle (a favorite of presidents and Hollywood movie stars), where she even signed the guest register. It was loads of fun, even though we nearly got attacked by falcons.

On Monday I said good-bye to Fergus and Audrey and flew home from Shannon Airport on U.S. Airways, arriving in Philadelphia, where I had a great epiphany about America while walking through the airport, and then up to Boston. A couple train rides later, I was back at my starting point, sort of amazed that it was all over.

My main impression as usual is that I'm damn lucky to know the fine people I know. Damn lucky indeed.

Including the aforementioned Tyson and Drag Me to Hell, I managed to see 11 movies (and a collection of short films) on my trip.