Thursday, November 30, 2006

Should I Pack Long Underwear

Maybe I'm just getting behind on the technology. You would think that finding the normal tempature ranges would be easy. I'm obviously not using the right terms.

We are having our first real winter weather here in Texas. Expecting a hard freeze tonight, the vegetation is in danger. So, I'm hunkered down in the back room. No good reason to go out.

What will the temperatures by in Ireland & Italy?

I did find the National Tourist Offices for Ireland and Italy. Actually, the links were on the VisitEurope page.

Better results searching on "Average Temperatures." Travel site Gate1 has monthly averages by city, and in Fahrenheit.

Dublin in April 40-54(F), and May 45-58(F). Down the coast to Cork, about the same. [Note to self: hotel needs a hot tub.]

Not as detailed for Italy. Just that Spring and Fall are 55-75(F). This one has a better break down, but essentially the same answer.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Road Markers

Digging further into my genealogical records yields a couple of possible towns to find or visit. One is my relative, slightly off the direct tree. The other two are place names for one of my wife's ancestors.

Dwyer is part of my wife's mother's line. The distant relative is Thomas Dwyer in Davidstown, County Kilkenny (roughly southwest of Dublin). His wife, Margret Dowling hailed from Portnahully, County Waterford (continuing southwest).

My relative is also from my grandmother's line, a couple of lines over. Forrest marries a Higgins, but Higgins had a brother. It is the Higgins line that leads back from my grandmother. My correspondence shows where W. Forrest comes from, Youghal-Balinatree, County Cork.

The second part of the name (Balinatree) doesn't show up when you search Google. This makes me think I've got a (a) Suburb or region and (b) the spelling is phonetic. Youghal is right on the border between County Cork & County Waterford (continuing southwest toward Cork).

So, Dublin to Cork is a probable leg on the journey. A few stops along the way might be interesting.

I need to get a much more detailed map. I can't find enough detail on the atlases in my meager collection.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Where Else To Visit

Beyond using Dublin as the point of entry and getting the "clock" adjusted to a 6 hour difference, I haven't really considered what else to do in Ireland.

I've got about 2 weeks. So, one thing I've thought about is a rail pass. Pick up 4 or 5 travel segments in the pass.

I don't know enough about the Rowen side to know where they came from, other than Ireland.

Both the National Library of Ireland and the National Archives of Ireland are located in Dublin.

One resource seems to be Griffith's Valuation , probably a tax roll of some kind. More important, there is an Index of Surnames at the National Library. The efforts were carried out between 1848-1864. So, the surname index is your portal into the county records.

They have a number of parish records, but they are all on microfilm.

I probably should put Cork and Cobh on the planning list. About 50% of the immigrants left via Cobh (or Queenstown depending on the century). Cobh was a major port. It might be a source of immigration records.

Not as sure about Galway. That requires further study.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Brewers In Dublin

Now for a little equal time for Ireland. The list at RateBeer wasn't as extensive, but I did find the following in Dublin.

Day 7

Technorati Tags:, ,

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Almost Daily Post

Promised myself I would try to get at least one posting in a day. Failed after Thanksgiving.

No good excuse, other than spending the afternoon swapping out software on the machines to accommodate the new ISP. My former provider has discontinued the dial-up access.

I'm a bit of a dinosaur on technology. Still quite happy with dial up, not interested in cable or DSL. May have to get high-speed eventually if all the sites keep going to video and flash animation. Not by choice, just be necessity to get the page to load at all.

To early to tell if I'm going to like the now provider. A lot to learn and new settings to adjust

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Thanksgiving

Went to a friends for Thanksgiving Dinner. Not much time to research breweries. Plenty to be thankful for, however. Good friends, good food, and good weather here in Texas.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Italian Brewpubs and others

Time for further study of the directory at RateBeer.com.

An exhaustive search turned up a few in Rome. The others may be suburb names that I'm not familiar with.

Internet to the rescue. Found yet another large beer listing site, MaxBeer.

The Italian trip will include at least 3 major cities: Rome, Naples, and Florence. The goal would be to find at least three "Birreria Artigianale." So that means we need to look at each listing for the address.


Day 6 of adventures in planning


Technorati Tags:,

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Birreria Artigianale

Small change of continents today. Looking for microbreweries in Italy, specifically Florence. And the author has tagged & mapped his cafes.

This site of restaurant/cafe observations includes a microbrewery. It's full name is "Birreria Artigianale Il Bovaro." Which makes me wonder if Birreria is Italian for Brewery (A useful thing to know!)

Babel Fish translates it as "Handicraft Birreria The Bovaro."

And, searching on "Birreria Artigianale" yields a jackpot. A site for rating beers, with an extensive index by country. There are quite a few in Italy. (Surprising, the Ireland list is shorter than Italy's.)

Now I need to cull the selections and figure out what cities they are in.

Day 5 of the project.

Technorati Tags:,

Monday, November 20, 2006

Pub Crawl Generator

This has nothing to do with Ireland, but ran across this site. In among the reviews and pictures is a "pub crawl" generator. The theory being that if you pick a word, it will try to spell out the word with the first letter from each pub's name.

This has to result in some odd destinations.

The site is UK oriented. Was hoping it would also have Ireland.

Searching using pubcrawl & Ireland turned up plenty of travel sites. Did find one called Irelandseye that has a listing of attractions. Part of that listing was a list of pubs, probably large, well known, such as the The Brazen Head pub.

This is planning day 4

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Microbrews

A little surfing brought out the European Beer Guide, with pages for Ireland.

It looks like Ireland had the same experience that England did. Most of the local operations were eventually bought out by the major houses. This was at the roots of the CAMRA movement.

The two main "micro" houses are Porterhouse and Messr. Mcguire. Looks like Porterhouse has a number of outlets. At least 3 in the Dublin area. The photos on the Porterhouse site make it look like a pretty large restaurant operation. Not exactly your corner pub.

So, yet another project. Develop a simple checklist of what is good/poor in a "pub." Then use it as a scorecard when we visit.

Day 3

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Best Pubs

I've started my planning with what's the most important part, BEER. I'm looking for a directory on Irish Pubs.

When we went to England, about 10 years ago, Joanne used the museum guides and I used the CAMRA guide to Real Ale.

I've found one listing, a self proclaimed International Guide to Irish Pubs. This is a directory but includes reader ratings.

So, one possible project would be to visit these pubs and add to the reader ratings. All in the interest of research, of course.

It isn't just the pubs but the local brews. Need to add to my list, like we did in Austrailia and New Zeland.

Day 2.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Semi-Clean Page

The travel plans are pretty open. Now that we have specific flights, we can plan around the various dates.

My priority for Ireland is to find some guidance for the pubs and brews. We had a lot of fun in England checking out the local "Real Ales." It is hard to know if a similar organization exists in Ireland.

The only must see in Italy is the whole reason for the trip. Joanne wants to see Pompeii. So that is on the agenda but not nailed down yet. Other than that the plans are wide open.

A New Direction

It has been more than 6 months since I posted on this blog. I've been slightly, very slightly, more active on the PiqueroBlog. But that blog is more business oriented. I'd let this one languish and thought about deleting it.

But I still like the 9EdgeDown graphics in the background!

So, I'm going to redirect the discussion with myself.

My wife and I are planning a trip to Europe next Spring. I finally stopped procrastinating and reserved the flights, using mileage from both our accounts.

I'd planned to do AUS->ROM->DUB->AUS. The direct from ORD to ROM is fully booked (business class) even though the trip isn't until April. So we are going to reverse the sequence.

The plan is to do Austin to Dublin. Spend a few weeks in Ireland. Go over to Rome. Spend a few weeks in Italy. And then return to Austin.

We haven't been to either country before, though we spent a month in England.

I'm going to use this blog to record the planning and discoveries. Right now it is figuring out what we want to do and see.

My goal is to make some progress each day.

This is day 1.