Europe Tour 2018

I notice that many people are wearing Rolling Stones tee shirts. They just played Dublin in May. The Stones playing in historic Croke Park. The home of the All Ireland Final. It’s mind boggling. The Craic must have been grand!  Heavy Metal riffs echoed in the narrow streets of Temple Bar. Irish music is great, especially when you’re in Ireland, but after a couple of nights I was craving a bit of the old Heavy Mental. I followed the echoes of amplified music. It’s an AC/DC song! Live Wire! A power trio was set up outside of the Mercantile Hotel.   There was a small drum kit. A guy with long hair played lead guitar and a guy with a Mohawk was on bass. They did rowdy covers of familiar Rock classics. They played a Hendrix song. That was a gutsy move. The guitar player did a more than passable Hendrix. They were rocking! They did “Free Bird” and they weren’t joking!  There were four pubs on this corner. Dubliners were having a few at the end of the work week. They ...

The Celtic Boyne Valley Tour. Friday. September 7.    This morning would be the first big tour of the trip. The ten hour tour was run by Travelbound. We’ll go through “the Royal County, where the ancient High Kings of Ireland ruled.” This tour will go to sites that are “undiscovered gems.” They are quieter than Newgrange or Knowth. We’ll see passage tombs from the Neolithic Age. “Built five hundred years before the first pyramids!”  We met at the Molly Malone statue near St. Andrew’s Church at 7:50 a.m. I know the spot. This is were the Literary Pub Crawl had started in 1999. It was a good place for tour groups to meet. Everyone knows where the Molly Malone statue is. There were several tour groups meeting here. There was some confusion as the various tours were sorted out. People wandered around with vouchers in their hand, looking for their contact. A young guy gathered the Boyne Valley Tour people together. We walked a short distance and boarded a bus. There w...