Peaks Island, The Umbrella Cover Museum

Do you ever wonder what happened to your umbrella cover? Probably not. But have you ever seen an umbrella cover and wondered how it got there and where is the umbrella it goes with? Maybe.  Well, I have news for you, my sister and I found the Narnia of lost umbrella covers in this little island off the coast of Maine. 

We took a ferry from Portland to Peaks Island. A charming little place full of whimsical looking houses and miles of beaches full of multicolored beach glass. The place really was kind of magical. 

When you get off the ferry at Peaks Island, immediately to your left there is business to rent golf carts. It's really the only way to travel on the island, they have cars; however, this is much easier and a lot more fun. 

If you are just visiting for a day, it is best to just go with the golf cart. You must be over 18 and have a valid driver's license. It was really easy to rent, and it made cruising around the island fun. The houses were gorgeous. Huge, lovely things and they all looked like bed and breakfasts, but more likely were the summer homes of people who live in Maine or on the island full time. 

There was a little grocery store, restaurants, and some other interesting businesses scattered around the island. The Umbrella Cover Museum was what drew our attention to the island. The slogan is "Celebrate the Mundane." I cannot think of a more mundane thing than an umbrella cover. 

The museum is basically one room and a bathroom. It does not charge admission but has a donation box at the entrance and sells magnets. The woman who runs it is an accordion player. Her story was fascinating, and she currently holds the world record for the most umbrella covers, and she has them from all over the world. 

The bathroom is where she puts the "Sexy Umbrella Covers". She ends her tours (and sometimes begins them) with a song from her accordion. 

Overall, I give the museum 10 stars and I would visit the island again. Just a side note: I love her Instagram posts; she shares her experiences and guests with the world. She also has a good point; we should celebrate the mundane. Maybe that's the point of life. 

This is where we went:

The Umbrella Cover Museum

Portland, Maine: Lots of Lobstah

My sister is similar to me in the fact she has an adventurous spirt. This spontaneous (and short) trip was in inspired at church. Our conversation was simple 

Her: You're off work this week?

Me: Yes. 

Her: Where are you going?

Me: Nowhere. 

Her:  You should go somewhere. I want to go somewhere, and I can this week. Let's go somewhere. 

Me: Wanna go to Maine and eat a lobster?  

Her: Sure. I've never been to Maine. 

Then after church I went to her house, and we booked a flight. It all happened pretty fast, but so does life so sometimes you just have to do things.  Even if it costs you more money than you intend on spending. Even if you have things to do in your own house. Sometimes you just have to go. 

So, we went to Maine. We flew into Portland, and it was dark, so we didn't see much. A lot of things close early as well, so there were only a couple of places with food open. In addition to its being late there was a basketball game playing, and everyone was watching so the bars serving food were packed. We did end up getting some really delicious food. It was like extra fancy bar food, curried wings, Brussel sprouts, and fries that had some really amazing seasoning. 

The next day we walked around Portland a little bit. We found a place with Lobster rolls, oh my. Lobster Rolls are basically lobster with sauce on a toasted hot dog bun.   

For dinner we went to Luke's Lobster and had a whole Lobster. They pull them out the ocean that day so they are super fresh. There is instructions on how to crack it. Our server brough it already taken apart. "Lazy Lobster" she called it. We were intending on doing it ourselves, so this was a major disappointment. She said people keep breaking the lobster crackers, which seems odd that they wouldn't have an overabundance of them considering its a lobster place. 

One more thing, the pier can be dangerous, wood is uneven and it's been there a long time. There are some holes and bolts that stick up. BE careful walking around. 

Istanbul: City Sounds Include Music!

My friend Heather has a brother, Michael, and he lives in Istanbul with his wife. He has been there for 7 years. What began as a study abroad has ended in an entire immersion in another culture and a life Michael truly enjoys. He was very helpful as my tour guide during my trip, and he took this job very, very seriously. Michael is a Musician, so he took me on an errand while we were in part of the city, he needed a skin for his drum.

Walking the streets in this particular part of town there were a lot of music shops. Istanbul is full of strange, amazing instruments, many of which I had never seen. Michael was an amazing resource in knowing the names of them and I learned so much from him. I am not a musical person. I love music, but I cannot sing or play any instruments. My disability in this area does not hinder my lust for knowledge of it and wandered up to so many windows saying "What is this?" in the way a child does. Michael knew them all. 

We walked into one shop, I went in to buy guitar picks for my boyfriend, and saw all these amazing instruments hung from the ceiling. The guy behind the counter was playing a Saz and started singing as well. After he finished, we chatted for a bit, but his English wasn't great so he and Michael chatted a bit more in limited Turkish. Every instrument I pointed at he would pick up, tune, then play. It was extraordinary. He and Michael also had an impromptu jam session. It was truly . I could've spontaneous and I could've stayed there for hours, but we were on our way to the tower. 

I feel like Turkey was full of interesting, wonderful people and this was not an isolated incident. It was just amazing that we had a common language to communicate in, music. 

Here's a video: 

https://youtu.be/rTCBHUohXfk

Driving on the left side of the road......

Now that the dust has settled and my credit card bills have all come in (BTW, I should've saved more money for this trip) I would like share with you the experience of renting a car in Ireland. First of all, they do not accept any kind of American insurance. You have to buy your own insurance, or as in my case, I put down a deposit. It was a $3,000 deposit. This was to protect me against any damage. When I got the car I didn't inspect it like I should have, that was my fault. You should always inspect your vehicle. And take pictures. Lots and lots of pictures.

Anyway, the car rental was 447.00 plus the $3,000 deposit for possible damage. I also did not read through the agreement thoroughly. Also, my fault.

When we arrived in the airport it was 6am and dark. I had slept on the plane, but I work 3rd shift, so my body was completely and totally wrecked. Luckily, my friend Sherry is very calm and helpful. We checked the car out, with this fantastic Irish Hertz rental person, who gave us a "Free" upgrade, (more on this later, you can see the picture of the receipt). We walked down through the airport to get the car on level 0- it was a tan BMW. We loaded up the bags and prepared to drive to our hotel. We didn't even leave the parking structure without getting lost. The navigation system was confusing. So, we had to stop and check in with another, fantastic Hertz employee (who, like the first one, flirted with me and seemed overly helpful).


Me, being American, I am used to driving on the right side of the road. I am also not used to a steering wheel on the right side of the car. Once we got on the road it was a little bit easier. We had to take the highway to get into Dublin. We went though tolls, which was awkward because I'm not used to being on that side of the car, or having to pay the toll on that side either. When we reached the first one we realized we hadn't gotten any Euros so we had no way to pay the toll. This seemed like a total disaster. The toll booth operator, an older, very friendly man, like our first two encounters, flirted with me and was overly friendly, made a bunch of jokes and then took my credit card as payment. It seemed the Irish are just really, really friendly.

We drove around Dublin for close to an hour looking for our hotel. The navigation system kept taking us around the block of our hotel and we could not find it. Going up and down one way streets was terrifying. Especially in the dark and with no traffic to follow. It was good practice.

We finally called the hotel and they had us back up the one way street and told us to go into a parking garage. We did and we parked, with great difficulty. (Probably because I was so tired.) 

When we got into the hotel they checked us in early (super nice people at the Spencer, the man at the desk didn't flirt at all, he was just really, really great).  Then we also got to have breakfast because we were starving from the plane ride, the hotel people were just the kindest people I've ever met. I set up my phone to take a time lapse of the sunrise, it was just coming up, and then we took a nap before setting off the explore Dublin.

The next day we drove the car to Schull, Ireland to look for Sherry's dead relatives, which was neat. We found a Stonehenge thing, which was super cool, but the country roads are super narrow and only one car can get through, which is a bit scary. We drove through Cork, Waterford, and we stopped at a gas station and talked to the most charming gas station attendant. She was adorable, she said she's lived there since she "was a little baby". This was when I decided that Irish people are the friendliest, nicest people on earth.

Anyway, back to the car. We drove all over Ireland, then parked the car in a parking garage at our hotel for two days. We went on a tour of Northern Ireland (by bus) and did some other stuff. When it came time to take the car back to the airport and leave we found out we had been parked in fire lane in the parking garage (I've never heard of such a thing and I feel like it was not very well labeled, but then again I'm American and our warnings on things are very loud and well marked to prevent lawsuits). We did not get any tickets, or a boot, but we did have a bunch of stickers on the car and the windshield, they were difficult to peel off, but I think that's the point of them.

When we returned the car we had a very different experience from picking the car up. The woman who took it back saw scratches on the passenger side, which according the photos I was sent, looked like they were already there and there was a spot on the front of the car with blue paint, that I did not recognize at all. She said it wasn't in the pictures, but they didn't even have their own pictures, just the ones from my email that I showed her. So we filled out a paper and she said I may get part of my deposit back or I might not. It ended up charging my card $2,402.10 in damages. The car had some scratches on it before I got it and lets be honest, they don't always fix those things anyway, they keep the money. I have the email pictures of the scratches, but I may have added to them, I really don't know, but in any case it was a very expensive lesson and in my opinion, totally worth it.

So, my advice to you, if you are renting a car in Ireland:
1) Take lots of pictures of the vehicle before you drive it.
2) Don't let flirty cute Irish people trick you into "Free" upgrades and if they do offer it, look at the bill before signing.
3) Know the exchange rates, because if they charge you in Euros you may not have a fee on it. I was charged in US dollars, which they then had to convert into Euros. It was not very well explained by the handsome Hertz rental employee who in the end, lets be honest, kinda ripped me off, but hey, that's his job and I should have been paying closer attention.

In conclusion, it's all very expensive, even if you return the car in pristine condition your credit card will have that huge charge on it for at least ten days until they take it off, but it's really worth it. I thought it was a fun and interesting experience driving on that side of the road and it was neat to explore the countryside which I would not have seen on a bus tour. However my wallet says, "Hertz, Don't it?".

Trinity college and the Book of Kells

In Dublin, Ireland there is this book, it is housed in one of the oldest universities in the world, "The Book Of Kells".  It was written a long time ago, maybe 800 AD, before printing press, by monks. These monks spent hours writing down the Bible in Latin and creating illustrations to go with them.

The Book of Kells contains the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Basically, its a really old book written in Latin about parts of the Bible. Boring. Right? Not so much. The artwork in the book is very, very intricate. The detail in the pictures and the amazing colors are enough to mesmerize even the least studious person. The pictures are illuminated with a variety of colors and some are made from various toxic substances, which made the creation of this book very dangerous.

The paper the book is written on is called Velum, and it is made of calf skin. This is what books were made of before paper. When writing on it they had to push in really hard to get the dye into it, similar to a tattoo artist. As stated they also used many toxic substances, like lead, to get the colors to stay in the book. This book was almost burned so many times, during the middle ages. The beautiful artwork of the pages was considered to be of the devils' work and also it was stolen during a Viking raid where the original jeweled cover was ripped off.

Each decorated word is different, which suggests several different people worked on the text. Many scholars believed it was just four scribes (one for each gospel) and it took a year to 18 months to complete. My tour guide gave us the suggestion that maybe it was four teams of people. Each team worked a particular way, after all the toxic substances they were using some people may not have lived to see the completion of the book.

The artistry is amazing and it really is a work of art. You can see in the text where mistakes were scratched out and painted over. These could be possible misspellings or places where the ink was blotched.

When we entered we could take pictures in the museum,  but in the room with the book, you can not. This is to preserve this very delicate text. There is a place on the web at Trinity College where you can view all it's pages online, the link is attached at the bottom. It was beautiful to look at and when I saw it the book was opened to a very ornate page. The book is always open to two pages, one of illustration and one of the Latin text.

Upstairs is home to some of the oldest books in the world. This is the Trinity College Library.  If it looks familiar,  it is the library from Harry Potter. At least parts of it are... the library has very important texts and there is even a part where scholars have to wear masks and gloves in a room with a constant vacuum going in order to keep the delicate books preserved.

The ladders up and down each of the sections of books were very narrow. I could not imagine climbing up and down one of those, nor would I want to. I'm not sure those ladders are still in use today. I would hope not, you would probably have to weigh less than 100 pounds to keep it from collapsing on you.

The tour continued on into the rest of the campus and it ended at the Dublin Castle.  We came upon a building on the campus which used to be used as an exam room for the students. The tour guide kind of lost it when he saw it was open. He said the building has only been opened about four times in the last five years he's been doing campus tours, so we took a detour. It was only open because of a used book sale. At that moment I knew I was right where God intended me to be and had no question of my purpose on Earth. When we finished the tour Sherry and I came directly back to campus and the book sale.

The tour was interesting because we not only went through the Book Of Kells, the Trinity College Library, a small campus tour, and Dublin Castle Gardens, the tour guide explained Bram Stoker's life and influences in writing Dracula, which I knew nothing about. Overall, it was an interesting tour.

Libraries have always been a place of safety and comfort for me, but they haven't always been like that in history. Whenever there has been an uprising or a change in authority, books are burned, texts destroyed, museums trashed, and history is erased. It makes me wonder about the future of the internet and the simple action of the delete button. What will generations in the future look at for our "Book of Kells'? Where will vast stores of knowledge be held and retained? Only time will tell.



Here is where we went:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_College_Library

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells

https://www.tcd.ie/visitors/book-of-kells/

https://www.tcd.ie/library/manuscripts/book-of-kells.php

Chinese New Year in Fountain Hills, AZ

A god of wealth 

This year while I was visiting Fountain Hills, Arizona I was able to see their first annual Chinese Festival. I don't understand all the cultural significance of the New Year other than the 11 animal signs and this year is the year of the horse. There were lots of dragons and lots of red. As I understand it red is a big color for the Chinese New Year. It's a lucky color.

This festival had the beautiful fountain hills fountain behind it. There were several really wonderful performances that ran throughout the day as well. We listened to Chinese Opera singing, we watched Tai Chi, and we also heard classical Chinese music played on instruments. 

The way the silky sculptures were lit up at night were amazing. They were beautiful and many of them moved. 

The rest of this blog is just pictures. It was really interesting. The festival goes on for another week through February 6th if you live in the Phoenix area. 

Desert Botanical Gardens: Chihuly

 

Today I was lucky enough to explore the botanical gardens in Phoenix Arizona. The Desert Botanical Gardens are full of interesting cacti and desert plants. Some of the thoughts which are conjured up when one thinks of the desert are sand, maybe a cactus, or a scorpion, but this is not the case. The desert is alive and there are a lot of things to see. It is as much alive as any tropical forest, swamp, or lake. It's ecosystem never ceases to amaze me. Each time I look a the desert I see something new or learn new forms of life I learn they not just live in these harsh conditions, but they thrive.



The plants were not the only spectacular thing I got to see on this trip. The event that is currently running in the botanical gardens is "Chihuly in the Gardens". This is a lot of blown glass sculptures throughout the gardens. These glass pieces are mixed in with the plants and they look amazing.  Some look like science fiction and remind me of shows like Dr. Who where alien creatures blend in completely unnoticed. These are defiantly noticed, but they look like they belong and were placed by someone with an incredible sense of design and good taste. The forms are mostly very obvious and some use color that is not found naturally in the desert.

Several pieces of the glass match with the gardens that are surrounding them. Some of them were just by themselves, like the wooden boat full of glass. It was tucked away in a pond with the reeds. It was a beautiful piece of art, with bright red, yellow, and green glass sticking out like octopus arms. I was relaxing to watch it in the water while the blue cubes behind it drifted aimlessly, bumping the reeds gently. It was a little bit windy than normal today as well, so the art moved with it.




There are many different types of cactus, I will not bore you by naming a bunch of them. I will just tell you that there are too many to name and they have families just like any other plant. They survive on very little water and a lot of heat. Surprisingly cactus are pretty sensitive despite their harsh conditions they live in and their tough exterior. The prickly pear are my favorite. Small and mighty. They have a lot of needles and they are small. It would be very easy to just step into them if you were not paying attention. They also have a couple of different colors and sizes.




A lot of the cactus have fruit that grow off of them and they can be used for various things. This is where Ethnobotany comes in. Ethnobotany is the study of how people interact with plants. The way people interact with desert plants have a very long history.  Some has been used as medicine, some as food, some as fuel for fire. Cactus with all it's prickly dangers has been very useful to people that live in the desert. They supply a lot of resources in a harsh environment.

Fairy Duster

There are other plants in the desert that attract bees, butterflies, and birds throughout the desert. There are even plants that bloom specially at night to attract bats and this is the way the plant is pollinated to reproduce. Most of the night blooming plants are white and pale yellow. One desert flower which was my favorite to see was the Fairy Duster. It was such a cool looking flower on a bush.






The desert plants already look like beautiful sculptures made by nature. The glass with them is the perfect contrast of color and light. They blend almost seamlessly in some places and don't

Where I went: www.dbg.org 

Here is some more pictures. If you live in the area this tour is well worth it. The place is bigger than it looks. 

Glass sculptures in the Garden

Agave

Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve- Fort Myers, Florida

Today we went for a walk in a nature preserve. It was a lot of fun. There were birds, gators, and wild pigs. This particular place has elevated walkways and they go into the preserve for a mile or so. The walk was extremely pleasant. We got there too late for the guided tour, they end at 1:30 during this season, but we did have a paper guide that matched up with numbers through out the trail. The numbers gave explanations to the things we saw through out the persevere. The park is open from dawn until dusk.

The one thing I really wish is I would have brought some binoculars, but I did use my phone to zoom in and see interesting things. The path is great for walking, but there are several spots to just stop and listen to the forest and several benches throughout.

It's a very unusual kind of forest, especially for people that are used to seeing northern forests full of pine trees and maples. I found it strange to see palm trees mixed in with the cypress, but that's probably because I'm not used to seeing them. There were also bright pink spots on some of the trees. It looked unnatural, but it's not, it's actually part of the bark, it's a lichen that lives off the tree.


There was a lot of wild life to see. We saw wild pigs, a gator, and tons of birds. In fact because we got there before dusk we saw the birds fly into the island to roost. There were a ton of white birds that hang out in the trees.  On any given day you can see all sorts of animals in their native place, sometimes there are river otters, bob cats, deer, or even bear.  Due to the fact that it is a nature preserve, and a little like taking a walk in the woods, you get what you get. The animals don't just show up like a zoo.

                                                                                                                                 It's kind of nice viewing wild life like this, because you never really know what you get to see. We heard the pigs before we saw them. We could hear them breaking sticks, snorting, and the splash of their hooves in the puddles. The gator was getting some last minute sun in by the edge of the lake, he or she was sitting peacefully half way in the water.  The animals enjoy this preserve and so did I.

This is where we went:

http://www.leeparks.org/sixmile/