Category: Travel

Today I played Carne Golf Links in Bellmullet, on the extreme northwest coast of Ireland. It was about a three-hour drive from Galway, but well worth it. What a course! This is now my favorite Irish course. I was hitting the ball quite well, but I can’t even bear to repeat my score, because this course is brutally hard! The greens are rock-hard and fast and often funnel off onto hills, so even a careful chip or pitch can end up rolling into oblivion. Many approach shots are blind over huge grass-covered dunes, and the wind was blowing about 30 miles per hour. But it was a blast. Here are some pictures:

Yes — those dunes are as big as they look, and crowd the fairway.

My bag was serving as a tripod — the pullcart handle framed the picture well.

With the wind blowing hard behind me, I smacked my drive well over 350 yards right down the middle on this Par 4 — and it ended up in a bunker!

Greetings from the Emerald Isle! I’ve had a fun and busy time with my family visiting in Belgium and Ireland.

Here I am in the market square in Brussels:

We took a day trip to Paris — only 2 hours by train from Brussels — and had a blast. Here I am at Notre Dame:

In Ireland, we drove up the coast road and visited the Cliffs of Moher. Here I am on the lovely, windy coast:

The family is now back in the States (as, unfortunately, is the U.S. World Cup team) and I’m on my own for the remainder of the course. Tomorrow I head out to this fabulous golf course. Life is good!

I have been in the beautiful university town of Leuven, Belgium for the past week. This photo is looking down “restaurant row” in Leuven. I’m administering and teaching a course in comparative intellectual property law for U.S. law students. This is the same course I taught last year. This weekend, we head for Ireland. It feels like a little more work than last year, partly because of my administrative responsibilities and partly because I’m teaching some new material. But it’s still fun to visit someplace different.