1. This morning Robert embarked on a tour of iconic sites in London.

Robert passed through this gate at Buckingham Palace…

…and got a picture of a member of the Queens Guard in the huge bear skin hat!

He continued on to see Big Ben in the Elizabeth Tower…

…and across the square, Westminster Hall with Victoria Tower.

In between is the Palace of Westminster where the British Houses of Parliament are found.

Along the Thames River Robert saw the “London Eye” Ferris wheel, “Europe’s tallest cantilevered observation wheel”!

Meanwhile, in Dublin…

We embarked on an afternoon Personal Whiskey Tour to celebrate Tommy’s 70th birthday!!! Tommy was truly surprised when introduced to our tour guide.

Our first stop was those shiny pot stills along the road we walked past last evening!

These are the remnants of the last Irish Whiskey Distillery, Powers, operating in Dublin until 1975. Now part of the campus of the National College of Art and Design, they were restored by Powers Distillery recently. In the early 1800’s Irish whiskey dominated the global spirits market, with about 90% of the market. Three main factors led to the century long decline of Irish whiskey. The first was the invention of the column still which allowed continuous distilling, rather than the pot stills that created whiskey in small batches. The second factor was the potato blight of 1845-49 that brought about the Irish Potato Famine which led to the repeal of the Corn Laws that had restricted the import of cheaper foreign grains like corn from the US. Distilling cheaper corn in column stills to create a neutral spirit that could be blended with other whiskeys was adopted by Scotland while Irish distillers refused to ‘adulterate’ their pure pot still whiskeys. The third factor was the Irish War of Independence, the subsequent civil war and trade war with Britain which cut off exports of Irish whiskey to the largest market of England and all Commonwealth nations. The final blow was the adoption, from 1920 to 1933, of Prohibition in the US, the second largest market for Irish whiskey. By the 1930’s Irish whiskey’s share was about 2% of the global market!

Our tour guide then took us to the first distillery of the tour, Teeling Whiskey Distillery, the first new distillery opened in Dublin in 125 years! Opened in 2015 it has an interesting connection to Oregon! The Master Distiller, Alex Chasko, hails from Portland, Oregon! Also, Oregon pine is used to make the wooden fermenters (huge barrels) where the malted grain is mixed with water and fermented with a mix of yeasts creating the high proof ‘beer’ that is then distilled.

The pot stills.

The most important part of the tour! The tasting!

Our next stop was around the corner, The Dublin Liberties Distillery, opened in 2019, one of the newest distillers in what was known as the Golden Triangle of whiskey distillers in 1800’s Dublin.

Our distillery tour guide introduced us to the neighborhood, the Liberties, known as the working class ‘hell’ outside of Dublin proper and free of it’s rules and laws.

Among the mills, fermenters and pot stills is this small brass and glass box with tubes connecting to the stills.

Every distillery had this contraption near the stills. We learned that it is a ‘spirit safe’, used to decant small amounts of the neutral alcohol to test for ABV percents. “The introduction of the safe dates back to 1823 when duty laws were brought in to enforce taxation on distilleries. For this reason spirit safes feature a large elaborate padlock which casts back to a time when only an exciseman, who enforced tax collection, could unlock the safe. The spirit safe stills plays an important role in modern whiskey making.” The ‘revenuers’ have to take their cut, otherwise it’s moonshine or ‘poteen’ (pronounced poo-cheen in Irish)!

Again, the most important part of the tour!

The third and last distillery of our tour was the Pearse Lyons Distillery, started by Mr. Pearse Lyons, born in Dublin but moved to the US where he started the Alltech company, an animal nutrition and spirits company based in Lexington, Kentucky. Experts “in yeast fermentation, solid state fermentation and the science of nutrigenomics, Alltech is a leading producer and processor of yeast additives, organic trace minerals, feed ingredients, premix and feed.” He and his wife bought a derelict 18th century church in the Liberties neighborhood of Dublin and spent 4 years restoring and remodeling it into a distinctive distillery!

The stone spire which had been struck by lightning was replaced with a steel and glass spire dubbed the Liberties Lantern!

The church is reflected in the modern glass main distillery building, alongside the cemetery.

The small cemetery adjacent to the church holds several of Mr. Pearse’s distant relatives. Amazingly there are over 10,000 people buried in the tiny cemetery, they were laid to rest stacked on top of each other over the centuries!

Entering the church you see the melding of the two religions of Ireland! The pot stills replace the alter in this church!

The stained glass windows tell the story of distilling whiskey and honor the craft of coopering (barrel making) that Mr. Pearse’s ancestors honed.

Available here are the whiskeys distilled right here, as well as the beer and bourbon made in the Lexington Brewing and Distilling Co. of Kentucky, also started by Mr. Pearse Lyons in 2008!

We had a wonderful and informative afternoon and soon headed out for dinner and to look for pubs featuring Irish traditional music, which we dubbed ‘Diddly-dee’ music, to round out the evening!

Bright and early we were up and I was packed to head to Dublin, Ireland. Robert will stay near London while I join family in Dublin for a week of meeting Irish relatives and exploring ‘the old country’!

At Heathrow the souvenir shops have all things royal!

The flight from London took only an hour and I was able to wait at the Dublin airport for other family members who’s flight had been delayed by 2 hours! Finally we all connected, collected our rental car and met at our accomodation.

A model of the building where we stayed in the 2 story apartment above ‘Lowes Pub’ in Dublin. Quite by accident the Fallon siblings met in Dublin and stayed above the pub with the name of our maternal family moniker!

Despite the flight delay and the interminable wait for the car rental we had time to walk from our apartment into Dublin proper for dinner at The Brazen Head Pub, touted as Dublin’s oldest Pub!

On the way to dinner we passed 2 symbols of Ireland’s ‘religions’; whiskey distillery pot stills, and a church spire!

We strolled along the Liffey river as the sun set…

…and heard the clip-clop of horses pulling carriages on the cobblestone streets!

From Above! We spent the day traveling! A very early bus ride took us to Oslo airport where we caught our flight east to Helsinki, Finland. We flew on Finnair, so we had to go through their hub in Helsinki.

Leaving Oslo, we flew over the dark green Norwegian woods, checkered with fields of ripe golden grains.

We had a 3 hour layover in Helsinki which we were able to spend in the Finnair lounge, snacking from their food and beverage buffet.

We didn’t have much of a view outside at the airport.

Leaving Helsinki, we had long views over fields interspersed with industrial sites, and the boreal forest stretching into the distance.

We had a 4 hour flight from Helsinki back west to London.

As we approached London we were between 2 layers of clouds and we could see the Thames river snaking across the landscape below.

As we flew over London, descending towards Heathrow airport, the clouds dispersed revealing a fantastic view of the city! How many landmarks can you spot?

One final mode of transport, a city bus, took us to our Airbnb in Slough (pronounced sl’how’) with plenty of daylight to do some food shopping. Our host drove us the few blocks to the closest store where we got some staples and we walked back in the uncharacteristically hot and sunny weather!

All around us I see references to ‘Ullensaker’, I thought we were in Jessheim! It turns out that Ullensaker is like a county, Jessheim is the town. Ullensaker (translates as ‘woolen items’) predates the town by many years, in fact the train station here predates the town! The station was built in 1854 on the train line from Oslo going north to Eidsvoll, at the south end of Mjøsa Lake. The town built up around the station and became the center for commerce and regional services. Predating all of the present infrastructure is an ancient mound, just a 30 minute walk from our apartment!

Rakni’s Mound “is the largest free-standing prehistoric monument in Norway and is one of the largest barrows (burial mounds) in Northern Europe.” We started out on the city streets heading for the site.

We came upon this symbol on a post as we started down a paved path paralleling a busy road.

This is the marker for the St. Olav Ways, a pilgrimage route from Oslo to Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, burial place of St. Olav.

The pathway turned to gravel and passed several old farmhouses and this large farm.

Part of the farm buildings have become a hostel for hikers on the pilgrimage path. This farm is prehistoric! It predates written history, way back in Viking times!

The path narrowed and entered a wooded area.

This pathway was a medieval roadway, perhaps even older, following the contours of the land, connecting small communities and scattered farms.

We soon came to the mound.

The mound seemed rather small for being “…the largest free-standing prehistoric monument in Norway… “, but the reader board describes the excavations done here. Radiocarbon dating put the mounds construction between 533 and 551 (pre-Viking times!) and was built by layering 75,000 stacked logs and 80,000 cubic meters of dirt. The excavations revealed …”A layer of coal with animal bones and cremated human skull fragments from an individual between 20 and 35 years old were found at the base of the mound.” Quite a lot of work for a burial of a supposed “petty chieftain”.

Behind the mound is a nice picnic area being used by these sheep!

And in front of the mound is this small pond. I waded out to the raft and enjoyed a few minutes of peace and relaxation!

We had a late morning, not needing to get to the train station until after 11. We walked through town, past the unassuming entrance to Fjellhallen, behind construction fences.

Hard to believe this is the entrance to the largest subterranean auditorium in the world!

We took our last train ride on our Eurail Pass today. We traveled 2 hours from Gjøvik south to Oslo, then caught a train for a 36 minute ride back north to Jessheim. The trip was through beautiful country, lush green Norwegian woods, following rushing rivers, past glacial lakes, but the scenery was rushing by so fast, and the train windows were dirty. Pictures would not do justice to the beauty. It must be a winter wonderland covered in snow! It got me thinking about the statue we saw in Lillehammer.

Outside the library in Lillehammer is this statue. Is it a Viking ‘berserker’ kidnapping a child? Is it a Norse God delivering a baby?

Translating the information provided, it is a ‘Birkebeiner’ known for transporting “the one-year-old Haakon Haakonsson, an heir to the Norwegian throne, safely from Lillehammer to Østerdalen to Trondheim, a long and perilous journey through treacherous mountains and forests” to save him from the opposing contender to the throne.

The Birkebeiners were a rebellious political party during the 110 year long civil war era in Norway, from  to 1130 to 1240. The name has its origins in propaganda from the established party that the rebels were so poor that they made their shoes of birch bark, ‘birkebeiner’ translating to ‘birch bones’. Although originally derogatory, the opposition adopted the Birkebeiner name for themselves, and continued using it after they came to power in 1184. The rescue of the infant Prince is commemorated now in cross country ski races around the country, and even in the US, occurring in Wisconsin, home to many Norwegian immigrants and their descendants! The American Birkebeiner is held in February in Hayward, WI.