Day 6
The plan for the next day was to get up and head out toward the Yeats tower and make our way up to Galway. Once again, for the third day in a row, we awoke to bright blue skies. By this point, we were starting to get sunburned and desperately needed to find suntan lotion!
We headed out on the R476 first to Kilnaboy, where we stopped at an old church, and then made a detour to stop at a ruined tower we had passed before that fascinated us. It was basically chopped in half, with much of the stones buried under grasses now. What's left standing is dramatic to say the least, and is even more so because you can walk right up to it. I stepped into the shadow of that tower and looked up and just felt...something. A presence of sort. It was truly breathtaking. These old ruins always fascinate me...just how DOES something made of stone half collapse like that, what were the people like who lived there when it was whole? So many amazing thoughts go through your head in the presence of things like that tower.
Our next stop was the Kilmacduagh monastic site. We had passed it on our way through to the cottage a few days before, but hadn't had a chance to stop. It is made up of several buildings and churches, plus an intact round tower. Apparently it was built in the 7th century by St. Colman (not Michael!). We spent a fair amount of time wandering around and taking pictures. I'm always fascinated by how near these old ruins, just wandering around, are all sorts of livestock (in this case it was cows). David, Brandon, and Emily headed to one of the far churches while I decided to stick around and soak in the nice air. I got a VERY amusing video of David on his way back that I'll have to share at some point. ;-)
We finally made it over to the Yeats tower after this, and wandered the grounds for awhile. It turned out that the tower was not open yet, but we would be able to get into it on Friday as it opened June 1st. No worries! We got a lot of beautiful pictures from the outside and could wait to get into it.
We headed up into Galway city for the afternoon. Our plan was to get in and get to McDonagh's for fish and chips. We actually worked that out well and arrived at McDonagh's around 2pm (shortly after finding sunscreen -- man were we red by this time!). Fish and chips were as wonderful as last year (and apparently they've been voted the best in Ireland). We also managed to get to the used book store (Charlie Byrne's) and get a pint at Murphy's pub. But, sadly, we discovered that Mulligans (Pat's favourite music shop) had closed! We were so disappointed. That place had some AWESOME CDs. We did manage to find some good stuff at Powell's, but it just wasn't quite the same.
After viewing some of the buskers (some that were REALLY good) and hitting Dunnes stores so Emily could get a rain coat (we discovered that rain coats are cheap - €8, while sunscreen is NOT - €16 for a regular size bottle), we headed back south. We stopped briefly at Dunguaire castle near Kinvarra and then spent a bit more time at the Corcomroe Abbey (yes, we did finally make it there, though we had a few wrong turns as it wasn't marked well!). The Abbey itself was amazing -- the carvings were beautiful. Emily and I got fascinated with this little building (which turned out to be an old infirmary) and she climbed over the wall and into the field where it was. She actually decided to crawl INTO the building, which was totally overgrown (and got a bit of a rash on her hands from the nettles -- oops!). I went around the back and took a couple pictures of the inside, but didn't dare go inside. Of course, only after Emily went around into the field and into the building did we discover that the "cows" in the fields were not just cows, but bulls as well...and there was one REALLY BIG ONE. Oops. Luckily they didn't charge or anything!
Once we were finally done there, we got back to the cottage, and frantically put dinner on (Cornish pasties...yum!). Of course, I was running around quickly trying to do anything that I never noticed the computer cord across the ground and what did I do? Yeah that's right...I ran RIGHT INTO IT. And knocked the laptop on the ground. The laptop was just fine. But the power supply? Yeah...I fucked up the soldering job yet again, so we were only able to run it on battery power. D'oh! An easy fix, but we had to figure out what to do about backing up pictures. Luckily, with David's 80GB hard drive, a fully charged battery on the laptop, and Brandon's 60GB I-pod, we did just fine for the remainder of the trip. And it turned out to be a lot of fun getting to see pictures and videos when we got back in the states.
Day 7
When we woke up the next morning, it was FINALLY looking a bit more like Ireland. A little bit rainy, very dismal. It looked like the end of our streak of nice weather was over. This day promised to be a REALLY long day as we were heading all the way into the north of Mayo -- what should be a 2 1/2 hour trip at the very least (the way we drove, it took more like 4). We got on the road and shot straight up to a little town on the bay called Killala. By the time we got there, we had driven out of the rain and were back under blue skies and puffy white clouds. What luck! In Killala, we found a round tower, which we spent some time exploring, and then wandered over to the beach (which, like so many other times on this trip, was in low tide).
We had lunch in Killala -- more lovely fish and chips (though the cottage pie David had looked REALLY good). And then we were off to Ballycastle.
Ballycastle was our main goal for the day. Mike, one of my coworkers, has done SO much for David and I with fixing our computers, so we felt like it was something we had to do this time. His father came over to America from Ballycastle in 1929 (NOT a good year to come over obviously!) and Mike has never been back. We promised to go and take pictures of the town for him. And take them we did! David and I tromped all over town and took a TON of pictures (no doubt the locals were wondering why people were taking pictures of a town of less than 200!). We even managed to find a grave of someone who was probably a relative. It was interesting seeing the town and it was great knowing we would return with plenty of pictures to share. Overall, it was not exactly a remarkable town, but it was situated in a lovely little valley and so the area was quite picturesque.
Our next stop was the Ceidhe fields just up the road. This is an area of the country where, some time ago, it was discovered there was a whole network of stone walls and enclosures buried under the peat bog. Some of it has been excavated, but much of it has been simply marked off and let be (something we really appreciated). It was interesting seeing those areas they excavated and hearing the history of how it was discovered and what it is believed to be. This network of walls and evidence of people living there extends over several miles of bog. Someday I'm sure more will be discovered if people start to harvest the peat. But for now it's going to be left buried in time.
By the time we were done with the Ceidhe fields, it was starting to rain a bit and was about 5pm, so we decided to sadly forgo Westport and headed back to Kilfenora. After all, we couldn't miss the session we were dying to get to! The one session we really knew we wanted to join in on was at Bofey Quinn's in Corofin. It's well-known for being very friendly and welcoming. And was it ever! We were immediately welcomed in. They made a space for David and once I got my bodhran out, another man gave up his seat for me (wow!). That was really nice as I was sitting on the outskirts and dealing with some obnoxious tourist who kept leaning over me to take pictures and bumping into me while I played. I had a lovely time talking to the flute/guitar player next to me, a man named John. And an older gentleman behind me was a total sweetheart...he asked me if he could have some of my hair because "you see, I have none left." So cute! We just had a grand old time. And it got even better (um...funnier?) when the drunken French farmer showed up on the scene. He was first outside the circle of musicians with a drink in each hand (and he got Brandon and Emily to drink some of his drinks). That was pretty amusing (especially as we found out later he asked for Brandon's name, he told him, and his response was "Fuck the war in Iraq" -- um ok?). But then the piper decided to leave, which left his seat (right in the middle of the group) empty. Drunk French dude moved right in and started dancing. He took the seat and started turning around on it, imitating each musician as he came to them. And then he started joining in on songs! His rendition of the "yippey yippey yi" chorus to "She'll be comin' 'round the mountain" was HILARIOUS. As was his really off-key version of La Marseilles. Really, this is just something you HAVE to see on video. I'm thinking about possibily uploading it to youtube or something so others can share in the experience.
After the session petered off (probably mostly due to drunk French dude), we got to chat with this lovely whistler (who was reading from music -- yay!). She really enjoyed my bodhran playing and wanted me to tell the other bodhran players to play quieter. Most amusing. It was nice being the good bodhran player!
Once again, we braved the roads home late at night and immediately crawled into bed, totally exhausted.
Day 8
We awoke the next day to somewhat cloudly skies. But again, the trip was rather charmed when it came to weather. We decided to head south into Kerry this day. Our first goal was to get to Killimer, Co. Clare, so we could take the car ferry across into Kerry. We made good time to there and hopped on the ferry (we were very glad to find out this one only cost €25 roundtrip for the whole car). That was such an interesting experience. I've never been on a car ferry before, but it worked rather well. We got off of that only about a half hour later and were on our way into Kerry. By the time we got into Kerry, the clouds had cleared off and it was getting brighter again.
Our first stop was Tralee. I'm not entirely sure why David wanted to stop there, but it did work out rather well. We had a very nice lunch at a pub there, stopped at the bank, and moved on to the Dingle peninsula. Wow was I ever glad we went that way! I wasn't sure about it originally, since it was a good distance, but the drive was amazingly gorgeous. The famed Kerry mountains are just breathtakingly beautiful. We stopped a few times on the road to take pictures of the mountains and finally made it to Dingle. Dingle is a really cute picturesque town. We didn't get to do much more than get gas there and drive out past it to take a few more pictures. What we saw really just whetted our appetite for more exploring in Kerry. That very well may be the goal of our next trip.
We headed back in the hopes of making the ferry, though none of us were sure when the last one headed out. Of course, when you're feeling rushed, everything has to slow you down...like the tour bus that drove only about 50k on a 100k road. We made it back to the ferry just about 7pm and found out the ferry would leave at 7:30 -- talk about luck! We hung around there for a bit, enjoyed the nice breeze, and finally got on the ferry.
Our goal for the evening was to go into Kilfenora and see the Ceili dancing at Vaughan's. Unfortunately, the music wasn't provided by the Kilfenora ceili band, but rather by another great group called the Four Courts Ceili Band. Wow did they play fast! Pat (of the Kilfenora Ceili band) says he couldn't play that fast for that long! We were really into watching the dancers as they were fabulous. Brandon especially seemed to be totally into what they were doing. It was a nice relaxing evening of just kicking back, having something to drink, and watching dancing and listening to music. We left there around midnight and went back to the cottage to crash.
Day 9
Friday was yet another beautiful day. By this time we were really thinking the whole trip was just charmed. How else to explain so many days of nice weather? It seemed like the bad weather was heading where ever we were NOT. It went south the day we went north and north the day we went south. Just...odd. But we weren't complaining! ;-)
We decided to have another day on the Burren this day. But first we had to go check out the Kilfenora churches and the famed high cross. It would be very wrong to NOT go see that! We were lucky in that we totally missed the tourists. We got a chance to wander around in complete peace and quiet, get into the churches and see the crosses, without the tourists that showed up just as we were leaving. Brilliant timing! Charmed, I tell you. Charmed!
After Kilfenora, it was off to Yeats tower yet again (our third stop there -- once to see the tower, once to hit the restroom - something that would become a joke - and now to go into the tower). We headed straight in and had to deal with a couple other people, but they were mostly quiet and unassuming (in fact, we saw one of them at the airport the next day -- ironically, she was getting on the same flight). We did a quick wandering through the tower. Since I've been there before, I was glad no one really lingered TOO terribly long at it. It's interesting, but not totally fascinating. And today we had maps and were planning on checking out some harder to find sites on the Burren!
Our map had TONS of sites, but for some reason David and I latched onto two particular ones (Cahercommaun stone fort and the Temple Cronin). In a further ironic twist, they were rather close to each other. We were first searching for the Temple Cronin and having little luck. I had the sense it was further up the road than we had gone, but we kept driving around looking for it anyway. And lo and behold, we found the Cahercommaun stone fort. The walk to it was a 1k walk up some difficult terrain, but everyone was up for it. And it was well worth the climb to get to it. We wandered across more dangerous Burren terrain and made our way to a walkway that had been created to get around the side of the fort. There were some spectacular views up there, though we couldn't get inside the fort to look over the cliff it is situated on. To truly appreciate this fort, check out this arial view. The path takes you all the way around the outer ring (heading to the lower right side of the picture) and up above the inner ring. Just gorgeous!
After climbing back down, we again went in search of the Temple Cronin. Again...no luck. We did find a wedge tomb (marked Leaba Wedge tomb -- apparently also known as the Creevagh wedge tomb) and decided to hop out and explore (how could you pass up a wedge tomb?). We got out to it, again a grueling walk along some of the Burren, and were well rewarded by a lovely wedge tomb just out in the middle of a field. Brandon never joined us and when we got back out to him, we discovered he knew exactly where we were and how to get to the temple. Yay for his compass! So off we went and then we finally found the sign for the temple. Phew. I was happy to have found what David was looking for as well.
Of course, getting to the temple was an interesting experience. We first discovered we were doing nothing more than following the path made by a farmer's tractor. Brandon didn't think the path curved around to the left like that one did, so we ended up getting confused because the only way to go, the way it SHOULD be, was blocked off by an electric fence. But then Brandon realized there was a handle on it to remove a section of the fence so people could get through. I can't imagine many go that way! But go that way we did and we were rewarded with finding a lovely little ancient church complete with burial places of saints that people had pilgrammaged to for years. They were these sort of slab shrines that were set up in a triangular pattern. We found the one easily, but the other one was found again due to Brandon's compass and ability to tromp all over things to find it. It was just outside the stone wall, practically buried in weeds.
When we left, we left with sad hearts, realizing this was our last site for our trip. It was hard to leave that little church. Those last couple sites were lovely simply because they were SO untouched by people. They were overgrown and left to the elements. Those are my favourites sorts of things.
That evening we spent a little time cleaning up the cottage. David and I headed up to settle up with Mary and Pat and found ourselves invited in for a cup of coffee and cakes (plus I got to play with their lovely new Golden retriever, Lily). We talked a lot about music and that was great fun. There's nothing better than hanging with a member of the famed Kilfenora ceili band. He even had a first edition copy of O'Neill's book of tunes. What a neat thing to see! Both Pat and Mary were really wonderful people. Pat offered to pick us up stuff at Custy's if we needed it and ship it to us in the States. We hated to leave them, but we finally did around 9pm and then we headed to Bofey Quinn's for one last meal. By the time we got there, they were just serving pizza, but it was lovely pizza and a great least meal in Ireland. We went back to the cottage and crashed for our last night in Ireland.
Day 10
The next morning was finally looking like typical Irish weather: very rainy, very overcast. We got on the road at a decent hour and headed to Ennis, where we stopped at Custy's for the requisite CDs and books. Brandon bought some stepdancing videos -- he was REALLY into the ceili dancing. Brandon, Emily, and I bought David a Custy's t-shirt as a thank you for driving us all over Ireland. And then we headed to the airport.
For the most part, the airport was fine. The USA people added an extra layer of security which sucked. I made it just fine through the first one, but at the second (which no one was told about), some bastard Yank took my saline solution because it wasn't in the 1 quart bag. I pointed out that it says to specifically separate anything over 3oz and to NOT put it in the bag (which was verified on the website AND by two TSA agents) but he got really nasty and wouldn't let me show him the print out from the website. I'm guessing he just didn't want to look like an idiot. Um hello? TSA? LEARN YOUR OWN FUCKING RULES. I followed them and got burned by some fucking Yank bastard. Welcome back to America, eh? I hate police states.
At any rate, the flight back was uneventful. David and I were lucky enough to have an empty seat next to us, so we had more room to shove our bags underneath the seats and therefore more room to move around. Very nice! We watched a cute movie (Music & Lyrics, with Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant) and just relaxed for the longish flight. His parents picked us up and we had a nice relaxing evening in Vermont before heading home the next day (poor David drove again!).
And so...here we are...back in the states...and ready to get our one-way tickets to Ireland!
View pictures from Days 6-9 here.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Ireland 2007: Days 4-5
Day 4
We were told that Sunday was going to be a total washout, so we went to bed Saturday night with the plan of taking our time Sunday morning and eventually making our way to Ennis. When David and I got up, it was bright sunlight! Once Emily and Brandon woke up, we decided we should get moving and head to the Cliffs of Moher. We figured we'd see as much outside stuff before the rain hit us.
We got out to the cliffs around 11am and after spending a little time in the gift shop headed out to them. It was a bit more packed with tourists this time, but it was still amazing. We first got to stop and listen to a German concertina player who was sitting on a bench near the entrance to the cliffs. She also happened to have her dogs with her -- a cute puppy of some sort and an older dog who looked like some sort of Yorkie on steroids. Then it was up to the Cliffs. We first headed in the direction David and I couldn't go last year -- they were working on something up near O'Brien's tower, so it was all closed off. We got some amazing pictures on our way up to the tower. The day was so clear you could see the changes in colour of the ocean depending on the depth and the striation was amazing. With David's zoom, we were able to see a lot of the craggy parts of the cliffs that we couldn't see with the naked eye or our other cameras. We were also able to zoom in on some people further up the cliffs who looked like they were in a place they shouldn't be. Since we could barely see them, we weren't sure if they were local kids or tourists. When we looked at the photos later, we discovered they were indeed tourists. I was pretty amazed at how many people were willing to break the rules there. And how many people were so reckless -- these people were standing right at the edge of the cliff with a major wind that was capable of knocking you off your feet.
We discovered up on the other side that a lot of people were doing the same thing. There was a sign there that said you weren't allowed past it and yet plenty of tourists were up there wandering around and some were a bit closer to the cliff's edge than they really should be! One guy was standing down a bit on a slanted part and I was pretty sure he was going to fall off. He didn't, but damn was he lucky!
We left the Cliffs and decided that we should stop for tea...and ice cream. And damn was the ice cream good! Mmmmm...
Then we were off to the Burren. We really had no major plans in mind, but we ended up basically following the first day we had over there last year -- only we had much better weather! First we stopped in Lisdoonvarna to take some pictures of the musician statues and also to have lunch (a very nice cheap lunch at a cafe). Pictures were taken of David and I in front of the statues (a bodhran and fiddle player) and we took some great pictures of Brandon and Emily posing like the dancer statues. It was a brief visit, but nice and relaxing.
We stopped and took some pictures of a ruined house along the way and got to listen to some woman complain that she couldn't get up close or even into the house to take pictures. People just don't get that others LIVE HERE. We also took pictures of a lovely ruined church and its graveyard. There was a place to kneel that was terribly uncomfortable, but David managed to look rather pious (though Brandon looked more pained than anything).
And then we were off to my very favourite place in Ireland (so far!): The Poulawack Cairn. I don't know what it is about this place, but I just really connect to it. Last year when we were there it was dark, dismal, and very windy, but so dramatic! This time it was bright and sunny, but no less magical. The nice thing about this particular spot is that tourists just don't come there. We saw two people -- one guy who made it out to the cairn, but didn't stick around and his wife who turned back as soon as she saw how far away it was. I do really get tired of being around a bunch of obnoxious tourist types who have no respect for the history of the place they're at. At any rate, we made it out to the cairn slowly, because that's the only way to do it without twisting an ankle (or at least, without twisting an ankle badly, as I did twist my right one a few times while up there). I took several pictures of the cairn, the outbuildings, and everyone wandering around. It was strange, but I spent most of my time around the cairn by myself, just soaking it in. I really did spend a lot more time with it this year, including climbing up on top of it, and examining the collapsed entranceway. From what I recall reading, the original bodies (4 of them) were buried in the cairn some 3500 years ago, with more buried over the next 1000 years. It was apparently a very important one since very few were buried there over many years. It really is a fascinating place. Near the cairn there is a souterrain (an artificial cave). Last year, David and I took some pictures of it and moved on. This year, we got much more involved in this section. All 4 of us climbed through it to the other side. We ended up calling it the "fairy fort" and we all felt rather spirtually changed after crawling through that cave. It was nice going to the places we had been before and getting to see it through other people's eyes. We never would have thought to crawl into the cave, but we're very glad Emily did!
After visiting the fairy fort, we climbed back down the hill and were on our way to the famous Poulnabrone dolmen. Even if you don't know that name, it's the image you always see for Ireland. It's overrun with tourists as its easily accessible, quite dramatic, and they've now put in a car park next to it. Oh well. It's still quite lovely. We wandered across the Burren floor for awhile and enjoyed just being outside. One of the truly amusing moments of the trip came when we were done at the Dolmen. For some reason, Brandon said we should take a picture of David as he came out of the portapotty. And we did. Which was followed by a picture of Brandon coming out of it. Silly pics, but such fun!
From the dolmen, we decided to head north up the Burren toward Ballyvaughan. We stopped a handful of times to take pictures of the limestone hills (a rather dramatic site!) and managed to find the Burren Centre for the Arts, a place that Emily had thought about applying to at one point. We've ended up dubbing the place "Emily's Centre for Mortally Wounded Dreams." The centre is made up of some new buildings, but the centerpiece is a refurbished castle (the Newtown castle, I believe). It's a gorgeous place, certainly perfect for visual artists! We also managed to head out onto the pier near Ballyvaughan and nearly got blown away. The wind was really strong!
At this point, we decided to head over to Corcomroe Abbey, which was not far from Ballyvaughan. Well, we got a bit off the path sheerly by accident. We were supposed to continue on the N67 to get to the abbey, but took a wrong turn and ended up driving up along the coast to Black head point and Fanore. It took us awhile to realize we were heading in the wrong direction, but all of a sudden we noticed that the bay should have been on our left side, but was on the right. Oops. It turned out to be a FANTASTIC mistake. The view was great and we got a lot of beautiful pictures.
We headed back via Lisdoonvarna, found one of the ruined castles we took pictures of last time we were in Ireland. and got some more pictures from different angles. One of the nice things was that this time around, we found out the name of it: Ballinalacken castle.
We rolled into our cottage quite late that evening and had a nice dinner at home of hamburgers, mashed potatoes, brown bread, and salad. Yum!
It was a REALLY long day but we saw so many amazing things. Bed that night was well-deserved!
Day 5
I awoke the next morning to blue skies yet again. We hadn't made many plans for what we were going to do that day, but I decided that it was the perfect day to head out to the Aran Islands. The only problem was that we didn't have a rain coat for Emily (as she left hers in Dublin). With swapping around coats, we managed to get her to use my coat and I used Brandon's fleece. It all worked out well!
We got down to Doolin in decent time, spent way too much to get on the boat to Inishmore (€40 a person!), and then waited around for awhile for the boat to finally arrive. The seas were REALLY choppy (good thing none of us has seasickness!), but we made good time nonetheless. The view on the way over was just beautiful. We headed up, where Emily got into a conversation with a lovely man named Jack. He invited us out to the Doolin pubs that night, told us to come down with our instruments and play some tunes...he'd be floating between the three pubs and hopefully see us there. We REALLY adored Jack. He was so much fun, and just so sweet. We decided immediately to head down to the pubs that night for our first Irish session experience.
We arrived at Inishmore around 12:30pm and were trying to decide what to do. No one wanted to take a bus originally, but then when this one guy started talking to us about getting on his bus tour, we realized there was no good way to see things on the island without a vehicle of some sort. So on the bus tour we went (luckily it only cost €10). We first stopped for some lunch and to see Dún Aengus, an amazing fort up on a cliff. Unlike the Cliffs of Moher, you can go right up to the cliff here, and look over. Talk about vertigo! Eek. David, Brandon and I all hung off it to take pictures, but I wasn't about to stand too close to the edge. Brandon actually jumped down to this tiny ledge below...crazy boy! Of course, this place was overrun with tourists, so we had to deal with annoying people, like the woman who complained that they should put a warning on the place about the climb up to it. Um...have you looked around the landscape? It's just like the Burren. And it's high on a cliff. Did you EXPECT it to be easy walking? Yeesh.
After Dún Aengus, we headed back to the bus for the rest of the tour. We got out in a few places -- one at the ocean where I could stick my hands in it, another at the Seven Churches (where we had to listen to some obnoxious tourist going on and on, saying things like "Hey did you hear that? That thing there is a privately owned roundhouse!" -- he was really fascinated by some ugly modern thing). We got to see the two remaining churches and also the graves of some saints.
We wrapped up our tour of Inishmore with a pint at local bar and hostel, and then headed back on the boat. I spent most of the trip back working on keeping my balance with the rocking of the boat. It was fun, but tiring on the legs. By the end of it, I was able to stand in place without holding onto the railing even when the water was rough.
We had a lovely dinner at home that evening, made especially more lovely after Mary and Pat Lynch (who own the cottage) stopped by to greet us and to provide us with a very lovely homemade apple tart. They were really sweet people and we enjoyed meeting them. After dinner, we headed out to Doolin to find some music. The first pub we ducked our heads into had a band performing (a very good one I might add), so we opted to not go there. The second one had a session in it and so we decided to go in and play with them. Well, it turned out that the banjo player was a very famous Irish tenor banjo player named Kevin Griffin, one of David's idols. *gulp* He was a bit nervous and I felt it too, since I'm all too aware of who he is! We managed quite well though, and realized we were doing well when he offered to get us drinks (free of course, but still!). He was a nice guy and so was the piper from Switzerland, who we got talking with for a little while after the session.
We braved the dark roads home, which wasn't too bad since we left around 1am, and fell into bed exhausted but very happy.
See pictures from Days 4 and 5 here.
We were told that Sunday was going to be a total washout, so we went to bed Saturday night with the plan of taking our time Sunday morning and eventually making our way to Ennis. When David and I got up, it was bright sunlight! Once Emily and Brandon woke up, we decided we should get moving and head to the Cliffs of Moher. We figured we'd see as much outside stuff before the rain hit us.
We got out to the cliffs around 11am and after spending a little time in the gift shop headed out to them. It was a bit more packed with tourists this time, but it was still amazing. We first got to stop and listen to a German concertina player who was sitting on a bench near the entrance to the cliffs. She also happened to have her dogs with her -- a cute puppy of some sort and an older dog who looked like some sort of Yorkie on steroids. Then it was up to the Cliffs. We first headed in the direction David and I couldn't go last year -- they were working on something up near O'Brien's tower, so it was all closed off. We got some amazing pictures on our way up to the tower. The day was so clear you could see the changes in colour of the ocean depending on the depth and the striation was amazing. With David's zoom, we were able to see a lot of the craggy parts of the cliffs that we couldn't see with the naked eye or our other cameras. We were also able to zoom in on some people further up the cliffs who looked like they were in a place they shouldn't be. Since we could barely see them, we weren't sure if they were local kids or tourists. When we looked at the photos later, we discovered they were indeed tourists. I was pretty amazed at how many people were willing to break the rules there. And how many people were so reckless -- these people were standing right at the edge of the cliff with a major wind that was capable of knocking you off your feet.
We discovered up on the other side that a lot of people were doing the same thing. There was a sign there that said you weren't allowed past it and yet plenty of tourists were up there wandering around and some were a bit closer to the cliff's edge than they really should be! One guy was standing down a bit on a slanted part and I was pretty sure he was going to fall off. He didn't, but damn was he lucky!
We left the Cliffs and decided that we should stop for tea...and ice cream. And damn was the ice cream good! Mmmmm...
Then we were off to the Burren. We really had no major plans in mind, but we ended up basically following the first day we had over there last year -- only we had much better weather! First we stopped in Lisdoonvarna to take some pictures of the musician statues and also to have lunch (a very nice cheap lunch at a cafe). Pictures were taken of David and I in front of the statues (a bodhran and fiddle player) and we took some great pictures of Brandon and Emily posing like the dancer statues. It was a brief visit, but nice and relaxing.
We stopped and took some pictures of a ruined house along the way and got to listen to some woman complain that she couldn't get up close or even into the house to take pictures. People just don't get that others LIVE HERE. We also took pictures of a lovely ruined church and its graveyard. There was a place to kneel that was terribly uncomfortable, but David managed to look rather pious (though Brandon looked more pained than anything).
And then we were off to my very favourite place in Ireland (so far!): The Poulawack Cairn. I don't know what it is about this place, but I just really connect to it. Last year when we were there it was dark, dismal, and very windy, but so dramatic! This time it was bright and sunny, but no less magical. The nice thing about this particular spot is that tourists just don't come there. We saw two people -- one guy who made it out to the cairn, but didn't stick around and his wife who turned back as soon as she saw how far away it was. I do really get tired of being around a bunch of obnoxious tourist types who have no respect for the history of the place they're at. At any rate, we made it out to the cairn slowly, because that's the only way to do it without twisting an ankle (or at least, without twisting an ankle badly, as I did twist my right one a few times while up there). I took several pictures of the cairn, the outbuildings, and everyone wandering around. It was strange, but I spent most of my time around the cairn by myself, just soaking it in. I really did spend a lot more time with it this year, including climbing up on top of it, and examining the collapsed entranceway. From what I recall reading, the original bodies (4 of them) were buried in the cairn some 3500 years ago, with more buried over the next 1000 years. It was apparently a very important one since very few were buried there over many years. It really is a fascinating place. Near the cairn there is a souterrain (an artificial cave). Last year, David and I took some pictures of it and moved on. This year, we got much more involved in this section. All 4 of us climbed through it to the other side. We ended up calling it the "fairy fort" and we all felt rather spirtually changed after crawling through that cave. It was nice going to the places we had been before and getting to see it through other people's eyes. We never would have thought to crawl into the cave, but we're very glad Emily did!
After visiting the fairy fort, we climbed back down the hill and were on our way to the famous Poulnabrone dolmen. Even if you don't know that name, it's the image you always see for Ireland. It's overrun with tourists as its easily accessible, quite dramatic, and they've now put in a car park next to it. Oh well. It's still quite lovely. We wandered across the Burren floor for awhile and enjoyed just being outside. One of the truly amusing moments of the trip came when we were done at the Dolmen. For some reason, Brandon said we should take a picture of David as he came out of the portapotty. And we did. Which was followed by a picture of Brandon coming out of it. Silly pics, but such fun!
From the dolmen, we decided to head north up the Burren toward Ballyvaughan. We stopped a handful of times to take pictures of the limestone hills (a rather dramatic site!) and managed to find the Burren Centre for the Arts, a place that Emily had thought about applying to at one point. We've ended up dubbing the place "Emily's Centre for Mortally Wounded Dreams." The centre is made up of some new buildings, but the centerpiece is a refurbished castle (the Newtown castle, I believe). It's a gorgeous place, certainly perfect for visual artists! We also managed to head out onto the pier near Ballyvaughan and nearly got blown away. The wind was really strong!
At this point, we decided to head over to Corcomroe Abbey, which was not far from Ballyvaughan. Well, we got a bit off the path sheerly by accident. We were supposed to continue on the N67 to get to the abbey, but took a wrong turn and ended up driving up along the coast to Black head point and Fanore. It took us awhile to realize we were heading in the wrong direction, but all of a sudden we noticed that the bay should have been on our left side, but was on the right. Oops. It turned out to be a FANTASTIC mistake. The view was great and we got a lot of beautiful pictures.
We headed back via Lisdoonvarna, found one of the ruined castles we took pictures of last time we were in Ireland. and got some more pictures from different angles. One of the nice things was that this time around, we found out the name of it: Ballinalacken castle.
We rolled into our cottage quite late that evening and had a nice dinner at home of hamburgers, mashed potatoes, brown bread, and salad. Yum!
It was a REALLY long day but we saw so many amazing things. Bed that night was well-deserved!
Day 5
I awoke the next morning to blue skies yet again. We hadn't made many plans for what we were going to do that day, but I decided that it was the perfect day to head out to the Aran Islands. The only problem was that we didn't have a rain coat for Emily (as she left hers in Dublin). With swapping around coats, we managed to get her to use my coat and I used Brandon's fleece. It all worked out well!
We got down to Doolin in decent time, spent way too much to get on the boat to Inishmore (€40 a person!), and then waited around for awhile for the boat to finally arrive. The seas were REALLY choppy (good thing none of us has seasickness!), but we made good time nonetheless. The view on the way over was just beautiful. We headed up, where Emily got into a conversation with a lovely man named Jack. He invited us out to the Doolin pubs that night, told us to come down with our instruments and play some tunes...he'd be floating between the three pubs and hopefully see us there. We REALLY adored Jack. He was so much fun, and just so sweet. We decided immediately to head down to the pubs that night for our first Irish session experience.
We arrived at Inishmore around 12:30pm and were trying to decide what to do. No one wanted to take a bus originally, but then when this one guy started talking to us about getting on his bus tour, we realized there was no good way to see things on the island without a vehicle of some sort. So on the bus tour we went (luckily it only cost €10). We first stopped for some lunch and to see Dún Aengus, an amazing fort up on a cliff. Unlike the Cliffs of Moher, you can go right up to the cliff here, and look over. Talk about vertigo! Eek. David, Brandon and I all hung off it to take pictures, but I wasn't about to stand too close to the edge. Brandon actually jumped down to this tiny ledge below...crazy boy! Of course, this place was overrun with tourists, so we had to deal with annoying people, like the woman who complained that they should put a warning on the place about the climb up to it. Um...have you looked around the landscape? It's just like the Burren. And it's high on a cliff. Did you EXPECT it to be easy walking? Yeesh.
After Dún Aengus, we headed back to the bus for the rest of the tour. We got out in a few places -- one at the ocean where I could stick my hands in it, another at the Seven Churches (where we had to listen to some obnoxious tourist going on and on, saying things like "Hey did you hear that? That thing there is a privately owned roundhouse!" -- he was really fascinated by some ugly modern thing). We got to see the two remaining churches and also the graves of some saints.
We wrapped up our tour of Inishmore with a pint at local bar and hostel, and then headed back on the boat. I spent most of the trip back working on keeping my balance with the rocking of the boat. It was fun, but tiring on the legs. By the end of it, I was able to stand in place without holding onto the railing even when the water was rough.
We had a lovely dinner at home that evening, made especially more lovely after Mary and Pat Lynch (who own the cottage) stopped by to greet us and to provide us with a very lovely homemade apple tart. They were really sweet people and we enjoyed meeting them. After dinner, we headed out to Doolin to find some music. The first pub we ducked our heads into had a band performing (a very good one I might add), so we opted to not go there. The second one had a session in it and so we decided to go in and play with them. Well, it turned out that the banjo player was a very famous Irish tenor banjo player named Kevin Griffin, one of David's idols. *gulp* He was a bit nervous and I felt it too, since I'm all too aware of who he is! We managed quite well though, and realized we were doing well when he offered to get us drinks (free of course, but still!). He was a nice guy and so was the piper from Switzerland, who we got talking with for a little while after the session.
We braved the dark roads home, which wasn't too bad since we left around 1am, and fell into bed exhausted but very happy.
See pictures from Days 4 and 5 here.
Ireland 2007: Days 1-3
Note: These three days were written at the end of each day.
Day 1
The flight over was amazingly uneventful. We arrived at Boston in good time, got through checking in our luggage fine (though we had to wait for them to get this one garment bag that was caught underneath the luggage mover...oops!), and amazingly enough security wasn't a real issue. We had to wait in line forever and it was a bit like herding cattle, but we went through without any sort of problem. I even got to take the evil saline solution on the plane! Ooooooo...
The flight itself was long and fairly boring. We got stuck behind an annoying couple who kept throwing their seats back and then forward and shifting around a lot. They made it hard to sleep, though I did manage a little. I'm pretty sure I got more sleep than I did last year!
We got off and through customs slowly, but still in decent time. Everything was going REALLY well. So you knew something had to go wrong. Well, two things did:
1. I went to get money out of the bank and it kept saying my pin was invalid! I have no idea why. As I found out in Nenagh later, there's nothing my bank can do about it and I had to get a cash advance on my card just to have money. Bye bye Solvay Bank -- I can't deal with that kind of screw-up!
2. Our original plan of skirting around Limerick and then heading north into the middle part of the country was BAD. We ended up in the middle of Limerick, during rush hour, when all the kids are heading to school. It was slow-going and incredibly stressful, especially considering we had just gotten there, were rather tired, and were trying to get re-used to driving in Ireland.
These both left David and I a little tense, me peraps more so than him, but we got through it ok. We took some wrong turns, mostly due to a road that was blocked because of construction, and got a little more stressed, but we finally found the N7 and headed north. From there on out it got much easier.
Our first stop was Craggaunowen, a spot with a castle (mostly fixed up) and several re-creations of different time period's living arrangements. It was interesting and I got some lovely photos, but I'm mostly interested in the unspoiled, untouched, natural ruins...not some fixed up castle and its fake stuff. Oh well. I do understand the need for tourism, but what the hell is so wrong with leaving things in their natural state? We still had a good time walking around, seeing things, and taking pictures.
We stopped in Nenagh next, where we had a lovely lunch of homemade burgers, potatoes, and veggies. So...good. Burgers topped in pepper sauce are just amazing! We stopped by an old monastery there, took some pictures, and I attempted to clear up my bank mess (see point #2 above).
From there it was off north again, this time to Clonmcnoise. We booked a B&B there with some lovely people, John and Kate of the Kajon House. We dropped off our stuff, and then headed to Clonmcnoise (which I always heard as "Clown McNoise" because I'm weird like that). We first went and watched the audio/visual presentation. Well, I should say David watched it. I dozed on and off during it, just like I did last year at the Ring fort. We then wandered around and saw the crosses they had removed from the outside to protect them (so sad! again with that tourism thing). They were just beautiful. We then wandered the grounds and made sure we avoided the large German tourist group. There were a couple lovely round towers there and the ruins of a castle that have been left untouched and wow were they amazing! They were up on this hill and the whole thing had kind of collapsed in on itself in such a way that I was amazed it still stood! Unfortunately we couldn't get near it, but we did get some decent pictures. After we were done there, we finally headed back to our B&B. And lo and behold, what do I discover upon returning? They have doggies! We were met by a beautiful golden retriever who brought us his tug toy. After much petting and belly rubbing, and rolling over, we finally went inside to have tea and scones and then finally fresh salmon for dinner. Yum!
It was a nice leisurely dinner and we got to talk some with Kate, who is a huge dog lover, meet their other dog (a 12-year-old collie mix named Dinjo -- the Golden was named something like Ciaran or Ciara), as well as a couple from England who were seeing the central part of Ireland on bike (one of those two-people bikes, too, which was interesting).
We finally headed off to bed around 10pm, much later than I ever thought we would get to bed! The bed here had to be one of the most comfortable I have EVER slept on. It was one of those foam mattresses and they had an electric blanket. I sank into that with a sigh and was asleep before David even joined me.
Day 2
We awoke the next morning to discover the weather was GORGEOUS. Blue skies and all. After slowly getting ready, we made our way to the dining room for breakfast. We packed up and headed out, but first we had to take some pictures of the scenery in bright sunlight.
This is when disaster #2 struck. It seems I cannot travel without bad things happening to me! I took a couple pictures and noticed they were foggy. Why? Because there was moisture on the INSIDE OF MY LENS. WTF??? I was so upset and then David was upset that I was upset and he got REALLY unhappy for a bit -- even said he wanted to be back in Syracuse. *sigh* We tried some things to clear it up, but it only got worse. Finally I opted to give up on it in the hopes of it either clearing up on its own or finding a camera repair shop later on.
We headed to the West Offaly railroad, which is a tour of the local bog (more interesting than it sounds!). We hopped on the train and discovered it was just the two of us and our tour guide. That made it really nice. She sat up in front with us and told us how they gather the peat to use for fuel at the local power plant. We got out and saw how they mined the peat in the old days and also got a chance to try it ourselves. David did a great job, but I was rather bad at it. I guess I wasn't meant to be a peat farmer!
When we got back on the train, I opened up my camera to check on it, and amazingly, the lens had totally cleared up. Phew! What a relief that was. I took a few pictures to test it and it worked just as good as it did before the moisture problem. I've learned my lesson -- next time I need to clean the lens, I'm not spraying stuff on it to do it!
Feeling much relieved, David and I hopped in the car to high tail it to his relative's place near Roosky. The trip up was pretty uneventful. We made it there in pretty good time, arriving around 2:10pm. We were immediately greeted by Susan, a very sweet older lady, and their dogs Ranger (a black lab) and Lucy (some sort of little mutt). We spent the first part talking with Susan and playing with Ranger. Eventually others started trickling in. By the end of the evening, there were several people there, including David's closest relative (Ollie), who looks a LOT like his father, Mark, Richard and Ann (who put us up last year and again this year), William and Eileen, and Jim (his wife, Pauline, was off at some sort of set-dancing thing). We had a nice long time to chat with everyone and stuff ourselves silly. Like last year, Susan just kept bringing out tea, cakes, and sandwiches, and we ate and drank far too much! It was lovely though (or "grand" as Susan would say). We all stayed until about midnight. They were so nice to both David and I, even posing for pictures. And they insisted we get our instruments out and play some tunes for them. They were impressed with both of us, and even liked my whistle playing. Mark said we could make a lot of money playing that up his way (he and Ollie live in the south of Northern Ireland). They even had to pass up a gig for 300 pounds...that's nearly $600! -- just playing in a coffee shop for 2 hours...they said if we could have come up that way on Sunday they would have told the guy about us...oh well! I was glad they were so easy-going. It's funny though -- we're used to Geordy and his pro-Sinn Fein, pro-IRA (former foot soldier for them even), singing A Nation Once Again, etc. and these folks are on the total opposite side. I mentioned Geordy in passing (as the one who introduced me to the bodhran), but I would never say anything about his politics to them!!
After saying our good-byes we followed Richard back to their house (always an interesting trip, since it's dark, the roads are teeny, and Richard drives a bit fast in his zippy little sports car!). We spent a little time with them, David getting to sample the potcheen, and I getting to check my e-mail since they now have broadband. Then we finally crawled into bed.
Outside of the morning camera fiasco it was a lovely day! I do hope nothing bad happens for the rest of the trip. I'm so OVER these little disasters!
Day 3
I woke up rather early Saturday morning. About 6:30am, I just couldn't go back to sleep. I suppose it was just complete excitement about getting on our way and seeing whatever we could see. I managed to spend a little time on the internet, as Ann and Richard got broadband sometime between last year's visit and this year's one. It was nice to catch up and see what was going on in the world outside of Ireland. Imagine my surprise when I found out one of my coworkers (the one we've dubbed the "Mississippi Slut") was fired and another coworker () and his wife had their baby (I hope all is still well there!).
Once David got up, we had a nice breakfast with Ann and listened to their daughter, Daphne, play some piano (a little bit of boogie woogie), and then their dog Andy finally showed. I know...I'm pathetic. But I was glad to get to play with him for a little while before we headed out. After a few pictures, we were off.
Our major plan for the day was to get to Kilfenora to get our cottage and then pick up Brandon and Emily. But we needed to do it via Gurteen as we had to pay homage to St. Michael (Coleman that is ;-) ). We got slightly sidetracked and ended up going up to Ballymote, home to another great fiddler, James Morrison. It was a small town and we didn't see any memorials like we did to Fred Finn and Michael Coleman. But we did get a chance to see a bit of Kesh and Kesh Mountain, including the caves. We hope to get back there on one of our trips. We stopped by the Michael Coleman memorial and took a few pictures (alas, no ghost dogs), and then were off once again.
As we got closer to Kilfenora, we realized we were going to be late. It was taking so long to get there that we started getting stressed. We were both tired and worried about being late. We drove around damned near forever trying to find the cottage. The problem was that the directions were crappy: get to X point and then follow this map. Well, there was no information on the scale of the map, nor the amount of information it contained. After a few wild guesses, we made it up the hill to the Fuchsia cottage. And NO ONE WAS THERE. WTF? I was told the cottage would be open (it wasn't) and that someone would see us arrive and come to meet us (no one was). After wandering around for a little bit and waiting, we decided we had to leave to meet them at the train station.
This was, unfortunately, another stresser and by the time we finally found it, we were so stressed out we could barely read the signs. But find them we did, and it turned out that they had arrived late as well (due to someone getting sick on the train, they missed a connection and they got them a cab, which was nice of the company!). I made a quick call to the Lynch home and someone there agreed to meet us at the cottage.
The rest of the evening was a bit more relaxing. The guy did meet us at the cottage (a little late) and we chilled out for a bit. Then we headed off to get some groceries (unfortunately closed, but we found a few things elsewhere) and then had dinner at Vaughan's Pub. The guy who helped us out there was really nice. They had just closed the kitchen, but he offered toasted sandwiches and then came back and said he could get us lasagna too. The lasagna was great and we even got chips with it! The whole dinner with 2 pints of Guinness and soda cost us only 50 Euro for the 4 of us. Not bad at all!
We went back to the cottage (much easier to find this time around!) where David and I played some music and then we finally collapsed into bed.
See pictures from Days 1-3 here.
Day 1
The flight over was amazingly uneventful. We arrived at Boston in good time, got through checking in our luggage fine (though we had to wait for them to get this one garment bag that was caught underneath the luggage mover...oops!), and amazingly enough security wasn't a real issue. We had to wait in line forever and it was a bit like herding cattle, but we went through without any sort of problem. I even got to take the evil saline solution on the plane! Ooooooo...
The flight itself was long and fairly boring. We got stuck behind an annoying couple who kept throwing their seats back and then forward and shifting around a lot. They made it hard to sleep, though I did manage a little. I'm pretty sure I got more sleep than I did last year!
We got off and through customs slowly, but still in decent time. Everything was going REALLY well. So you knew something had to go wrong. Well, two things did:
1. I went to get money out of the bank and it kept saying my pin was invalid! I have no idea why. As I found out in Nenagh later, there's nothing my bank can do about it and I had to get a cash advance on my card just to have money. Bye bye Solvay Bank -- I can't deal with that kind of screw-up!
2. Our original plan of skirting around Limerick and then heading north into the middle part of the country was BAD. We ended up in the middle of Limerick, during rush hour, when all the kids are heading to school. It was slow-going and incredibly stressful, especially considering we had just gotten there, were rather tired, and were trying to get re-used to driving in Ireland.
These both left David and I a little tense, me peraps more so than him, but we got through it ok. We took some wrong turns, mostly due to a road that was blocked because of construction, and got a little more stressed, but we finally found the N7 and headed north. From there on out it got much easier.
Our first stop was Craggaunowen, a spot with a castle (mostly fixed up) and several re-creations of different time period's living arrangements. It was interesting and I got some lovely photos, but I'm mostly interested in the unspoiled, untouched, natural ruins...not some fixed up castle and its fake stuff. Oh well. I do understand the need for tourism, but what the hell is so wrong with leaving things in their natural state? We still had a good time walking around, seeing things, and taking pictures.
We stopped in Nenagh next, where we had a lovely lunch of homemade burgers, potatoes, and veggies. So...good. Burgers topped in pepper sauce are just amazing! We stopped by an old monastery there, took some pictures, and I attempted to clear up my bank mess (see point #2 above).
From there it was off north again, this time to Clonmcnoise. We booked a B&B there with some lovely people, John and Kate of the Kajon House. We dropped off our stuff, and then headed to Clonmcnoise (which I always heard as "Clown McNoise" because I'm weird like that). We first went and watched the audio/visual presentation. Well, I should say David watched it. I dozed on and off during it, just like I did last year at the Ring fort. We then wandered around and saw the crosses they had removed from the outside to protect them (so sad! again with that tourism thing). They were just beautiful. We then wandered the grounds and made sure we avoided the large German tourist group. There were a couple lovely round towers there and the ruins of a castle that have been left untouched and wow were they amazing! They were up on this hill and the whole thing had kind of collapsed in on itself in such a way that I was amazed it still stood! Unfortunately we couldn't get near it, but we did get some decent pictures. After we were done there, we finally headed back to our B&B. And lo and behold, what do I discover upon returning? They have doggies! We were met by a beautiful golden retriever who brought us his tug toy. After much petting and belly rubbing, and rolling over, we finally went inside to have tea and scones and then finally fresh salmon for dinner. Yum!
It was a nice leisurely dinner and we got to talk some with Kate, who is a huge dog lover, meet their other dog (a 12-year-old collie mix named Dinjo -- the Golden was named something like Ciaran or Ciara), as well as a couple from England who were seeing the central part of Ireland on bike (one of those two-people bikes, too, which was interesting).
We finally headed off to bed around 10pm, much later than I ever thought we would get to bed! The bed here had to be one of the most comfortable I have EVER slept on. It was one of those foam mattresses and they had an electric blanket. I sank into that with a sigh and was asleep before David even joined me.
Day 2
We awoke the next morning to discover the weather was GORGEOUS. Blue skies and all. After slowly getting ready, we made our way to the dining room for breakfast. We packed up and headed out, but first we had to take some pictures of the scenery in bright sunlight.
This is when disaster #2 struck. It seems I cannot travel without bad things happening to me! I took a couple pictures and noticed they were foggy. Why? Because there was moisture on the INSIDE OF MY LENS. WTF??? I was so upset and then David was upset that I was upset and he got REALLY unhappy for a bit -- even said he wanted to be back in Syracuse. *sigh* We tried some things to clear it up, but it only got worse. Finally I opted to give up on it in the hopes of it either clearing up on its own or finding a camera repair shop later on.
We headed to the West Offaly railroad, which is a tour of the local bog (more interesting than it sounds!). We hopped on the train and discovered it was just the two of us and our tour guide. That made it really nice. She sat up in front with us and told us how they gather the peat to use for fuel at the local power plant. We got out and saw how they mined the peat in the old days and also got a chance to try it ourselves. David did a great job, but I was rather bad at it. I guess I wasn't meant to be a peat farmer!
When we got back on the train, I opened up my camera to check on it, and amazingly, the lens had totally cleared up. Phew! What a relief that was. I took a few pictures to test it and it worked just as good as it did before the moisture problem. I've learned my lesson -- next time I need to clean the lens, I'm not spraying stuff on it to do it!
Feeling much relieved, David and I hopped in the car to high tail it to his relative's place near Roosky. The trip up was pretty uneventful. We made it there in pretty good time, arriving around 2:10pm. We were immediately greeted by Susan, a very sweet older lady, and their dogs Ranger (a black lab) and Lucy (some sort of little mutt). We spent the first part talking with Susan and playing with Ranger. Eventually others started trickling in. By the end of the evening, there were several people there, including David's closest relative (Ollie), who looks a LOT like his father, Mark, Richard and Ann (who put us up last year and again this year), William and Eileen, and Jim (his wife, Pauline, was off at some sort of set-dancing thing). We had a nice long time to chat with everyone and stuff ourselves silly. Like last year, Susan just kept bringing out tea, cakes, and sandwiches, and we ate and drank far too much! It was lovely though (or "grand" as Susan would say). We all stayed until about midnight. They were so nice to both David and I, even posing for pictures. And they insisted we get our instruments out and play some tunes for them. They were impressed with both of us, and even liked my whistle playing. Mark said we could make a lot of money playing that up his way (he and Ollie live in the south of Northern Ireland). They even had to pass up a gig for 300 pounds...that's nearly $600! -- just playing in a coffee shop for 2 hours...they said if we could have come up that way on Sunday they would have told the guy about us...oh well! I was glad they were so easy-going. It's funny though -- we're used to Geordy and his pro-Sinn Fein, pro-IRA (former foot soldier for them even), singing A Nation Once Again, etc. and these folks are on the total opposite side. I mentioned Geordy in passing (as the one who introduced me to the bodhran), but I would never say anything about his politics to them!!
After saying our good-byes we followed Richard back to their house (always an interesting trip, since it's dark, the roads are teeny, and Richard drives a bit fast in his zippy little sports car!). We spent a little time with them, David getting to sample the potcheen, and I getting to check my e-mail since they now have broadband. Then we finally crawled into bed.
Outside of the morning camera fiasco it was a lovely day! I do hope nothing bad happens for the rest of the trip. I'm so OVER these little disasters!
Day 3
I woke up rather early Saturday morning. About 6:30am, I just couldn't go back to sleep. I suppose it was just complete excitement about getting on our way and seeing whatever we could see. I managed to spend a little time on the internet, as Ann and Richard got broadband sometime between last year's visit and this year's one. It was nice to catch up and see what was going on in the world outside of Ireland. Imagine my surprise when I found out one of my coworkers (the one we've dubbed the "Mississippi Slut") was fired and another coworker (
Once David got up, we had a nice breakfast with Ann and listened to their daughter, Daphne, play some piano (a little bit of boogie woogie), and then their dog Andy finally showed. I know...I'm pathetic. But I was glad to get to play with him for a little while before we headed out. After a few pictures, we were off.
Our major plan for the day was to get to Kilfenora to get our cottage and then pick up Brandon and Emily. But we needed to do it via Gurteen as we had to pay homage to St. Michael (Coleman that is ;-) ). We got slightly sidetracked and ended up going up to Ballymote, home to another great fiddler, James Morrison. It was a small town and we didn't see any memorials like we did to Fred Finn and Michael Coleman. But we did get a chance to see a bit of Kesh and Kesh Mountain, including the caves. We hope to get back there on one of our trips. We stopped by the Michael Coleman memorial and took a few pictures (alas, no ghost dogs), and then were off once again.
As we got closer to Kilfenora, we realized we were going to be late. It was taking so long to get there that we started getting stressed. We were both tired and worried about being late. We drove around damned near forever trying to find the cottage. The problem was that the directions were crappy: get to X point and then follow this map. Well, there was no information on the scale of the map, nor the amount of information it contained. After a few wild guesses, we made it up the hill to the Fuchsia cottage. And NO ONE WAS THERE. WTF? I was told the cottage would be open (it wasn't) and that someone would see us arrive and come to meet us (no one was). After wandering around for a little bit and waiting, we decided we had to leave to meet them at the train station.
This was, unfortunately, another stresser and by the time we finally found it, we were so stressed out we could barely read the signs. But find them we did, and it turned out that they had arrived late as well (due to someone getting sick on the train, they missed a connection and they got them a cab, which was nice of the company!). I made a quick call to the Lynch home and someone there agreed to meet us at the cottage.
The rest of the evening was a bit more relaxing. The guy did meet us at the cottage (a little late) and we chilled out for a bit. Then we headed off to get some groceries (unfortunately closed, but we found a few things elsewhere) and then had dinner at Vaughan's Pub. The guy who helped us out there was really nice. They had just closed the kitchen, but he offered toasted sandwiches and then came back and said he could get us lasagna too. The lasagna was great and we even got chips with it! The whole dinner with 2 pints of Guinness and soda cost us only 50 Euro for the 4 of us. Not bad at all!
We went back to the cottage (much easier to find this time around!) where David and I played some music and then we finally collapsed into bed.
See pictures from Days 1-3 here.
Monday, June 26, 2006
Ireland: Part III
Sunday: Leaving Falmore and Meeting David's relatives
Sunday morning we had a liesurely breakfast with Geordy, Diane, and Diane's other sister, Lori. And then David and I were off to drive all the way to Leitrim to meet some of his distant relatives. His parents have met up with them several times at this point, so they opened the door for David and I to meet them as well.
On the way out of town, we stopped and took some pictures of the tower that was down a bit from our cottage, as well as some pictures of the road up to the cottage. I need to include a couple of them here. Because you have to see what the road to our cottage really looked like! Check it out:
Ok ok...so not really. But each one of us who came up the way saw this dirt and rock road heading off to the left and thought "no way -- is THAT the place we're supposed to veer left to get to the cottage" and freaked out a bit. Geordy's reaction was "oh no...no way...I'm going back NOW." Jacqui's was "oh come ON, this can't be right!" Luckily, David and I were spared the freak out because Jacqui had met us on the road and we followed her.
Anyway, we headed off and hauled it all the way to Leitrim. We stopped briefly in Donegal town again and had a quick lunch at the coffee house. The trip down took a bit longer than we had estimated and we were unable to find a B&B before meeting his family.
We found them easily enough and they were warm, wonderful, welcoming people. Plus they had a beautiful black lab named Ranger. Susan, who is the matriarch of the family (at 82) was a spritely little woman with a heart of gold. Tom, the bachelor of the family (at a few years older than David) was an absolute sweetheart. They drove us around the area and showed us where David's relatives were from, including his direct descendents (his great grandfather and grandmother), Harry Deacon and Mary Coyle. Apparently Mary was the daughter of the constable and she fell in love with Harry, who was their gardener -- totally inappropriate for the time. They eloped and left for America. Interesting story and rather romantic! We also got to see where another relative of David's, Jenny Deacon, had lived. She apparently was never married. She was engaged, but he broke it off, and she never ever was with anyone else. Sad story.
We also made it over to Mohill, where Carolan was from, and saw the memorial statue that was put up not too long ago. Unfortunately, we didn't have our cameras with us for all of this, so we never got pictures.
After being shown around, we retired to Susan's place again, where she plied us with tea and cakes until we were stuffed and could have no more! Then a few other of his relatives showed up (a lovely couple -- Richard, who is a distant relative, and his wife Ann). We chatted for awhile and around 10pm, David decided we needed to head out to find a place to stay (unfortunately, at this hour, our only hope was the hotel in town). Well, Richard and Ann would have none of THAT. They offered us a room at their place, which we couldn't say no to. We headed off with them to their place and dropped our stuff off. I got to meet their dog Andy (who had gotten into a fight with some other dogs and tried to escape, only to run into a huge metal spike -- he had to have stitches...poor thing!).
They took us out to a local pub and there was this older guy with a schmancy keyboard singing all sorts of songs with a cheesy beat to them -- from old Irish songs to country songs. It was crazy fun. We chilled out and watched him and the people dancing for awhile. And then I stepped out to go to the restroom and when I return, David's on stage singing! I missed the fun and surprise. Bah. Richard and Ann gave a note to the guy apparently and he invited David up to sing. He chose Long Black Veil, because it seemed appropriate to the venue...and once the guy settled in and figured out the chords, it sounded great!
We ended the evening shortly thereafter and David and I had a lovely rest in their guestroom.
View pictures from Day 7.
Monday: Longford, Boyle, and Michael Coleman
We woke up at a decent hour and Richard and Ann served us a nice traditional Irish breakfast -- damn were we eating good on this trip!! After that, we headed off to Longford to tromp around for a bit. Our main goal in going there was to stop at Johnny Keenan's widow's shop. It was supposed to open at 11am, so we went there at 11am, then wandered around because it wasn't open, then back around 11:30am, still not open, and finally took one last drive by it around noon. She never opened. Oh well. In the meantime, David found a great tunebook and I bought a couple silly coasters (one with a banjo and one with a whistle).
We parted ways from Ann and Richard shortly after we got back to the house. And then we were on our way to Ennis.
But first...before Ennis...we had to head up to Gorteen to see the Michael Coleman Centre. It was a pilgrimmage of sorts (for those who don't know who Michael Coleman is, he was a great Sligo fiddler who left for Ireland, landed in NY, and made a lot of recordings in the middle part of this century).
On the way there, we passed by the Boyle Abbey and decided we needed to stop and check it out. Absolutely lovely place. We took some gorgeous pictures of the Abbey, felt sad that such a place of beauty had been disbanded and then turned into a military barracks, and then we were on our way.
We tromped around the Centre for a little while. I bought a few more CDs, as did David (and he also bought another tune book). We were still disappointed though that they didn't have the Breathnach tune book he was looking for (volume 5 in the series -- he already has 1-4). But we did get a lot of great stuff!
We also visited the monument they had put up in Coleman's honour. And while I was there taking pictures of it, David suddenly said "We have friends." The "friends" were two beautiful and super friendly white dogs who fell all over themselves to get attention from us. The smaller one was prone to rolling over to get belly rubs, the bigger one was prone to jumping on you to get attention. They were adorable and SO sweet. They ended up following us to the car and so we had to distract them in order to get out of there and not hurt them. I did manage to take a couple pictures of them and it turns out that David took a few pictures of me playing with them. Oops. I don't want to see those pictures!
From there, we stopped by the replica of the cottage he would have lived in, took some pictures even though we knew it wasn't the REAL cottage. The guy that was there who was working on the visitor's center, said that the real one was down the road and off to the right. We think we saw it, but it was too hidden to take any pictures. Oh well. We did see some signs to Killavil (a couple famous tunes are named for Killavil) and so we decided to just drive through there since it was only 1k away. And what did we find? A memorial to Fred Finn, another great fiddler. How strange that we should stumble upon that!
And then, finally, it was time to head off to Ennis, our last stop on the journey (*sniff sniff*). The drive there was fairly easy since we were on major roads all the way through. It only got a bit hairy when we arrived in Ennis and headed to town centre. But we survived that easy enough. After driving around a bit, we found a lovely bed and breakfast (which we drove past and then David insisted we should turn around because that place was our "destiny"), and headed into town for dinner. We ended up at the Old Ground Hotel, which the woman had recommended, and had a lovely dinner of fried plaice and salmon. David got his last couple beers in Ireland and then we headed off to wander the town a bit. We did FINALLY manage to find a session going on, but of course, our instruments were in the B&B, so we didn't go back to get them. Sadness. But on the good side, we found Custy's shop, so we knew where to return to the next morning!
We headed back to the B&B around 10pm and crashed for the evening. Our last night in Ireland. It was very sad. But David and I got very mushy and sweet and chatted for a bit about how wonderful the entire trip was.
View pictures from Day 8.
Tuesday: Ennis and the trip home
Ah...our last morning in Ireland! *sniffs* We woke up, well-rested, and had our very last traditional Irish breakfast out in the dining room. The food was fantastic and we got chatting with a nice couple from Australia who seemed to feel a little too sorry for Bush.
We packed up everything, cleaned up the inside the car, and then headed back into Ennis. Our first stop was Custy's shop, where I bought a couple more CDs and David finally found the Breathnach book he was looking for. We eyed some lovely instruments -- a beautiful deep-shelled bodhran and some lovely banjos. And then were on our way wishing we had a lot more money than we do!
We ended up at the Ennis Friary and took a lot of beautiful photos. And then, sadly, we had to leave Ennis to head to the aiport. *sigh*
The drive down was easy and we marvelled at how different we felt coming INTO the airport than we did going out just 8 days earlier. We dropped our car and bid it a sad farewell.
And then we took our last breath of Irish air and were into the airport.
The lines were a bit long and we felt a bit rushed, but we managed to get onto the plane in good time. The trip felt REALLY long this time, but it wasn't a bad flight overall. We listened to some music, edited some photos, and were generally terribly mushy (no doubt to the annoyance of those around us).
We landed at 4:30pm and were greeted by David's parents who were nice enough to come pick us up. And then we were back to Vermont, where we had a nice light dinner and went to bed very very tired and rather sad to be home.
The next day we went on a fruitless search for a CD and then drove back to Syracuse. We spent part of the evening with my parents -- the presents were a big hit, then went out to dinner at Kitty's (of course!), and spent some time with my roommate before collapsing into bed.
I have to admit the one thing that amazed me both coming and going was that the jet lag just never affected me. I changed times easily, so now I know I won't have a problem the next time we go...which might be next year. ;-)
View pictures from Day 9.
Thanks everyone for reading all of this if you did! It was a truly magical trip and one David and I won't ever forget.
Sunday morning we had a liesurely breakfast with Geordy, Diane, and Diane's other sister, Lori. And then David and I were off to drive all the way to Leitrim to meet some of his distant relatives. His parents have met up with them several times at this point, so they opened the door for David and I to meet them as well.
On the way out of town, we stopped and took some pictures of the tower that was down a bit from our cottage, as well as some pictures of the road up to the cottage. I need to include a couple of them here. Because you have to see what the road to our cottage really looked like! Check it out:
Ok ok...so not really. But each one of us who came up the way saw this dirt and rock road heading off to the left and thought "no way -- is THAT the place we're supposed to veer left to get to the cottage" and freaked out a bit. Geordy's reaction was "oh no...no way...I'm going back NOW." Jacqui's was "oh come ON, this can't be right!" Luckily, David and I were spared the freak out because Jacqui had met us on the road and we followed her.
Anyway, we headed off and hauled it all the way to Leitrim. We stopped briefly in Donegal town again and had a quick lunch at the coffee house. The trip down took a bit longer than we had estimated and we were unable to find a B&B before meeting his family.
We found them easily enough and they were warm, wonderful, welcoming people. Plus they had a beautiful black lab named Ranger. Susan, who is the matriarch of the family (at 82) was a spritely little woman with a heart of gold. Tom, the bachelor of the family (at a few years older than David) was an absolute sweetheart. They drove us around the area and showed us where David's relatives were from, including his direct descendents (his great grandfather and grandmother), Harry Deacon and Mary Coyle. Apparently Mary was the daughter of the constable and she fell in love with Harry, who was their gardener -- totally inappropriate for the time. They eloped and left for America. Interesting story and rather romantic! We also got to see where another relative of David's, Jenny Deacon, had lived. She apparently was never married. She was engaged, but he broke it off, and she never ever was with anyone else. Sad story.
We also made it over to Mohill, where Carolan was from, and saw the memorial statue that was put up not too long ago. Unfortunately, we didn't have our cameras with us for all of this, so we never got pictures.
After being shown around, we retired to Susan's place again, where she plied us with tea and cakes until we were stuffed and could have no more! Then a few other of his relatives showed up (a lovely couple -- Richard, who is a distant relative, and his wife Ann). We chatted for awhile and around 10pm, David decided we needed to head out to find a place to stay (unfortunately, at this hour, our only hope was the hotel in town). Well, Richard and Ann would have none of THAT. They offered us a room at their place, which we couldn't say no to. We headed off with them to their place and dropped our stuff off. I got to meet their dog Andy (who had gotten into a fight with some other dogs and tried to escape, only to run into a huge metal spike -- he had to have stitches...poor thing!).
They took us out to a local pub and there was this older guy with a schmancy keyboard singing all sorts of songs with a cheesy beat to them -- from old Irish songs to country songs. It was crazy fun. We chilled out and watched him and the people dancing for awhile. And then I stepped out to go to the restroom and when I return, David's on stage singing! I missed the fun and surprise. Bah. Richard and Ann gave a note to the guy apparently and he invited David up to sing. He chose Long Black Veil, because it seemed appropriate to the venue...and once the guy settled in and figured out the chords, it sounded great!
We ended the evening shortly thereafter and David and I had a lovely rest in their guestroom.
View pictures from Day 7.
Monday: Longford, Boyle, and Michael Coleman
We woke up at a decent hour and Richard and Ann served us a nice traditional Irish breakfast -- damn were we eating good on this trip!! After that, we headed off to Longford to tromp around for a bit. Our main goal in going there was to stop at Johnny Keenan's widow's shop. It was supposed to open at 11am, so we went there at 11am, then wandered around because it wasn't open, then back around 11:30am, still not open, and finally took one last drive by it around noon. She never opened. Oh well. In the meantime, David found a great tunebook and I bought a couple silly coasters (one with a banjo and one with a whistle).
We parted ways from Ann and Richard shortly after we got back to the house. And then we were on our way to Ennis.
But first...before Ennis...we had to head up to Gorteen to see the Michael Coleman Centre. It was a pilgrimmage of sorts (for those who don't know who Michael Coleman is, he was a great Sligo fiddler who left for Ireland, landed in NY, and made a lot of recordings in the middle part of this century).
On the way there, we passed by the Boyle Abbey and decided we needed to stop and check it out. Absolutely lovely place. We took some gorgeous pictures of the Abbey, felt sad that such a place of beauty had been disbanded and then turned into a military barracks, and then we were on our way.
We tromped around the Centre for a little while. I bought a few more CDs, as did David (and he also bought another tune book). We were still disappointed though that they didn't have the Breathnach tune book he was looking for (volume 5 in the series -- he already has 1-4). But we did get a lot of great stuff!
We also visited the monument they had put up in Coleman's honour. And while I was there taking pictures of it, David suddenly said "We have friends." The "friends" were two beautiful and super friendly white dogs who fell all over themselves to get attention from us. The smaller one was prone to rolling over to get belly rubs, the bigger one was prone to jumping on you to get attention. They were adorable and SO sweet. They ended up following us to the car and so we had to distract them in order to get out of there and not hurt them. I did manage to take a couple pictures of them and it turns out that David took a few pictures of me playing with them. Oops. I don't want to see those pictures!
From there, we stopped by the replica of the cottage he would have lived in, took some pictures even though we knew it wasn't the REAL cottage. The guy that was there who was working on the visitor's center, said that the real one was down the road and off to the right. We think we saw it, but it was too hidden to take any pictures. Oh well. We did see some signs to Killavil (a couple famous tunes are named for Killavil) and so we decided to just drive through there since it was only 1k away. And what did we find? A memorial to Fred Finn, another great fiddler. How strange that we should stumble upon that!
And then, finally, it was time to head off to Ennis, our last stop on the journey (*sniff sniff*). The drive there was fairly easy since we were on major roads all the way through. It only got a bit hairy when we arrived in Ennis and headed to town centre. But we survived that easy enough. After driving around a bit, we found a lovely bed and breakfast (which we drove past and then David insisted we should turn around because that place was our "destiny"), and headed into town for dinner. We ended up at the Old Ground Hotel, which the woman had recommended, and had a lovely dinner of fried plaice and salmon. David got his last couple beers in Ireland and then we headed off to wander the town a bit. We did FINALLY manage to find a session going on, but of course, our instruments were in the B&B, so we didn't go back to get them. Sadness. But on the good side, we found Custy's shop, so we knew where to return to the next morning!
We headed back to the B&B around 10pm and crashed for the evening. Our last night in Ireland. It was very sad. But David and I got very mushy and sweet and chatted for a bit about how wonderful the entire trip was.
View pictures from Day 8.
Tuesday: Ennis and the trip home
Ah...our last morning in Ireland! *sniffs* We woke up, well-rested, and had our very last traditional Irish breakfast out in the dining room. The food was fantastic and we got chatting with a nice couple from Australia who seemed to feel a little too sorry for Bush.
We packed up everything, cleaned up the inside the car, and then headed back into Ennis. Our first stop was Custy's shop, where I bought a couple more CDs and David finally found the Breathnach book he was looking for. We eyed some lovely instruments -- a beautiful deep-shelled bodhran and some lovely banjos. And then were on our way wishing we had a lot more money than we do!
We ended up at the Ennis Friary and took a lot of beautiful photos. And then, sadly, we had to leave Ennis to head to the aiport. *sigh*
The drive down was easy and we marvelled at how different we felt coming INTO the airport than we did going out just 8 days earlier. We dropped our car and bid it a sad farewell.
And then we took our last breath of Irish air and were into the airport.
The lines were a bit long and we felt a bit rushed, but we managed to get onto the plane in good time. The trip felt REALLY long this time, but it wasn't a bad flight overall. We listened to some music, edited some photos, and were generally terribly mushy (no doubt to the annoyance of those around us).
We landed at 4:30pm and were greeted by David's parents who were nice enough to come pick us up. And then we were back to Vermont, where we had a nice light dinner and went to bed very very tired and rather sad to be home.
The next day we went on a fruitless search for a CD and then drove back to Syracuse. We spent part of the evening with my parents -- the presents were a big hit, then went out to dinner at Kitty's (of course!), and spent some time with my roommate before collapsing into bed.
I have to admit the one thing that amazed me both coming and going was that the jet lag just never affected me. I changed times easily, so now I know I won't have a problem the next time we go...which might be next year. ;-)
View pictures from Day 9.
Thanks everyone for reading all of this if you did! It was a truly magical trip and one David and I won't ever forget.
Ireland: Part II
Thursday: Poison Glen, Glenveagh, and Colmcille
The day started off well -- a lovely Irish breakfast made by Diane, some good conversation, and then the group of us were off to town for a little bit. Jacqui went shopping at the 2nd hand store and found some nice sweaters, David and I mailed off some postcards, and then we all picked up some fish for the evening's meal. Luckily, Jack was also in town and he directed me right into a store that sold luggage. I found a large wheeled duffel bag for only 22 Euros. So that was a good amount of weight off my shoulders. Then we saw a bank and I thought I'd try my card yet again -- no luck. I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but past the Shannon airport, I haven't been able to get any money out. It was a huge stress on me -- I feel very poor. And I'm borrowing money off David for everything. He doesn't mind, but I do -- I hate having to do that. Geordy ended up taking me into the bank, where the woman eventually offered to essentially use my card as a credit card and give me a few hundred Euro. Unfortunately, it was declined. We began to get worried that they had frozen my account due to "suspicious activity" (read: I'd never been to Ireland before). I was really upset, though David kept telling me he'd take care of me.
At any rate, after town, we headed off to Glenveagh -- a lovely place with a beautiful lake, a large herd of deer (which we didn't get to see), and a more modern castle. On the way, we stopped to take some pictures of the Poison glen (apparently named because the Irish word for poison is close to the word for another word like shaded or something and it was mistranslated). We then wandered around the garden at Glenveagh, which ultimately didn't interest me much (David ended up telling me he wasn't as interested in the sculptured garden as the beauty of natural foliage -- me neither!), then took the tour of the castle (in which Geordy asked way too many questions and teased the poor tour guide a bit too much). It was an interesting place, but a bit modern as it was given over to the government in the 80's. We did discover the tour guide was a fiddler of sorts and tried to talk her into coming to Dungloe to play some tunes with us, but she seemed rather hesitant. I don't think she'll be showing. Ah well.
From Glenveagh, we went to see Colmcille's monastery and his birthplace. Lovely places. We visited the Holy Well, where you're supposed to be healed of your ailments (unfortunately, it seems that didn't work). It's so fascinating seeing all the old graves and crosses, treading ground where so many have gone before. While I don't feel such a connection to the old christian relics, I still find them absolutely amazing. I can almost hear the old chants when walking through them.
We headed through a little town called Churchill, named not because of Winston, but likely because it's a hill with a big church on it. We managed to stop there for me to make my phone call and because Jacqui needed to hit a restroom. I finally got Solvay Bank on the phone and found out they had deposited my money into the wrong account, so I had very little in my checking. Gah! They transferred over money on the phone, which was sweet of them, so I should be able to get money out now. With that stress gone, I was able to enjoy the rest of the afternoon.
We drove through the country roads to get back to Dungloe, rather than hitting the N56. What was amazing about this was that we actually drove through some of the most phenomenol scenery I've ever seen. And it was entirely abandoned. Not a soul there, not even a bird or sheep or cow. Just...nothing but stripped mountains. And old abandoned cottages. I really cannot describe the sadness inherent in this place. These people left their homes, tore down the roofs, burned things, and all went away to America during the Famine. Entire villages of people. It was haunted. I wished we could have gotten out to walk to the cottages and pay homage to these people. How many made it to America? How many didn't? It boggles the mind to imagine how hard life must have been for these people to leave in such a way...in droves. All going one by one until the village was dead. And no one else settled here. The cottages have been left as a tribute to people long gone. Someday, perhaps, some of their relatives will return to see where their distant relatives once lived, loved, worked.
We did get a chance to stop and take pictures of some of the scenery, so I'm glad to have that at least, but still...I wish we could go back up that road and take pictures of these sad, old villages. But really -- it's something you'd have to see live to imagine. If you're ever up in the north, go to Churchill and take the road to Dungloe. You'll never be the same.
We did run into a little bit of a problem when we stopped -- Jacqui and Patrick were in a fight, which meant there was a lot of tension going on.
We finally arrived back at Dungloe around 7pm, got a few supplies at the supermarket, and then headed back to have dinner. Jacqui disappeared and things were still rather tense. Definitely not the happiest moments of the trip. At any rate, dinner was finally together and WOW was it great! Diane cooked up the cod we had picked up with a little flour and it had a nice, light, fresh taste. She also made champ, which is so delicious. Wonderful food, great company.
We retired to the living room to sit around the peet fire and talk. Finally, around 11:30pm people crawled off to bed. David and I ended up having a very intense conversation about how I'd been feeling with all the stress. He was worried about things and felt like I wasn't having a good time and he needed to make sure I still loved him as much. The conversation did end well and things were resolved, but he was worried. Traveling can be such a terrible stress on people!
Ultimately, I think the tension between Jacqui and Pat really got to people. Everyone was a bit miserable and uptight that night. We all felt on edge. This was definitely the low point of the trip.
View pictures from Day 4.
Friday: Around the cottage and music at the Corner pub
Friday began ok to some degree. We were doing well until Jacqui got up and joined us. Poor Jacqui. We're really not sure what to do about her. She was still in tears that morning and she and Patrick decided to get going that day instead of sticking around until Sunday. Everything was still so tense with her it was unbelievable. And then she said entirely the unthinkable -- she said that the night before she felt completely left out of the conversation, like she was being ignored, and then went on to say she felt like that at session! That everyone played above her level and didn't pay any attention to her. So not only did she insult Geordy's wonderful hospitality, she also insulted all of us from session who have tried to help her along all the time, who ask her for a song, who offer to help her out with chords and guitar and banjo and bodhran. I have to admit, I was offended, and a bit angered for Geordy. He went so far out of his way to make us all feel comfortable there, to provide a warm place in a beautiful country, and feed us the entire time. It was lovely. And she was horrible about it.
At any rate, they finally left, and we could all breathe a sigh of relief. Geordy, David, and I headed to town for a short bit. David finally got his Donegal tweed cap and we managed to briefly be able to check e-mail, When we got back, we discovered we were having some problems with water, so David and I were off to the spring (that no one knew where it was) to try to get some fresh water for tea. Of course, we got a bit sidetracked and headed all the way down toward the ocean across fields of stone and grass. It was a hard but lovely walk down to the coast. We took a lot of beautiful pictures of the area. On the way back up, we ended up lost a bit, though heading in the right direction. We crossed over right by this thatched-roof cottage that a Scotman had bought and was redoing. What a lovely home!
We did finally find the well, though it turned out that behind the house we were near there was a spigot and we should have used THAT, and retrieved some water for the house. Of course, by the time we got back, they were already making tea from water from the bathroom faucet (which was apparently ok). Oops.
Tea was nice and relaxing, but everyone was ready to head off for another walk. This time we headed up the road to the top of the hill and then over a bit. It was a tough walk, very steep at times, but absolutely breathtaking. The highlight was seeing another famine cottage and this time actually getting to be up close to it. We spent a lot of time being contemplative there, walking around within it, touching the walls, and wondering who the people were and if they made it out of Ireland ok. There was a lot of sadness in that old burned out cottage.
The walk back down was much easier than getting up there and I spent much of the walk back chatting with Diane while Geordy and David hung back and chatted. Just a wonderful time!
By the way, in some of the pictures we took, you'll see a small island off in the middle -- that's Roan Inish, for those of you who have seen the movie.
After a lovely dinner, we headed down into Dungloe to hit the pub that Jack and lined up us playing at. WHAT A TIME. We first walked in and there was a bunch of people in the front room watching the World Cup game. I was rather nervous that we would be interrupting their game, so we headed back into the lounge and the pub owner (a lovely woman named Ann) said we were welcome to play there if that was what we were comfortable with. The game was on back in there too, but an interesting and very funny young man named John insisted on turning it off for the musicians.
We took up playing some tunes and things started off slowly. But then once we got really into things, and started singing some songs, people came out of the woodwork to listen and join in. Many of the locals started songs or made requests. And once Jack got there things just went crazy. With he and Geordy, it was like a competitions of songs that David and I just happened to accompany.
The pub owner was SO generous and brought as much as we could drink and she wouldn't take a cent for it. The locals had a blast and we only packed it in after the garde came around to close the pub down. Oops!
And of course, it was such a wonderful night that Jack and Martin invited us up to their place for tea and toast. We stayed there until shortly before 3am and then finally crawled off to bed. This night David and I actually had our very own bed and it was LOVELY sleeping in that room!
View pictures from Day 5.
Saturday: Rossbeg and Ardara
Saturday was a nice and relaxing day. After a late breakfast with Geordy and Diane, we were off to do a little bit of driving in the area. David wanted to hit Ardara and we decided to try to find another dolman out in that direction. And find it we did! The Kilclooney Dolman was situated out in the middle of a field. We saw a path leading out toward it and so stopped. Except the path ended in a very boggy field. We got back in the car and drove around...and around...and around, thinking there HAD to be another way to it. Unfortunately, we were never able to find one and so instead we ended up out at Rossbeg and got a chance to take some pictures of a very pretty beach. And I finally got to go stick my hand in the ocean! :-)
And then we made it down to Ardara. And the trip got even weirder. We walked into this little store that sold a lot of knitted goods -- wool and other materials. The owner, this crazy man named Hugh, who had already spent a fair amount of time in the pubs, came out and told us to not mind the prices because he just "makes them up." I ended up deciding to buy a scarf for my roommate and sweaters for my mother and I (the sweater for my mother was actually picked out by David). As we were coming up to the front, we got chatting with Hugh, who seemed to have a bit of a hankering for David, I must say. He kept touching him and grabbing him by the shoulder, and then saying things about how I was trying to drag him off (typical woman and all that). He ended up charging us only 80 Euro for the whole thing (the sweaters were 60 and 40 and the scarf was 18)...but then remarked the sweaters at 200 and filled out the VAT form so I was getting back 82! I not only got them for free, I got paid an extra 2 Euro for them! Great man and it really made our afternoon.
We headed back after that, picked up some cod for dinner, and then had a really nice relaxing night at home with Geordy, Diane, and Diane's sisters (one of which got totally clocked that night and was SO funny). David ended up doing his "girlfriend" thing because of our run-in with Hugh. We laughed, joked around, chatted, and the tenseness from whole Jacqui thing was long gone, though she was still the subject of some conversation.
David and I made up a bed on the floor again and had a lovely night spent there by the peet fire.
View pictures from Day 6.
The day started off well -- a lovely Irish breakfast made by Diane, some good conversation, and then the group of us were off to town for a little bit. Jacqui went shopping at the 2nd hand store and found some nice sweaters, David and I mailed off some postcards, and then we all picked up some fish for the evening's meal. Luckily, Jack was also in town and he directed me right into a store that sold luggage. I found a large wheeled duffel bag for only 22 Euros. So that was a good amount of weight off my shoulders. Then we saw a bank and I thought I'd try my card yet again -- no luck. I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but past the Shannon airport, I haven't been able to get any money out. It was a huge stress on me -- I feel very poor. And I'm borrowing money off David for everything. He doesn't mind, but I do -- I hate having to do that. Geordy ended up taking me into the bank, where the woman eventually offered to essentially use my card as a credit card and give me a few hundred Euro. Unfortunately, it was declined. We began to get worried that they had frozen my account due to "suspicious activity" (read: I'd never been to Ireland before). I was really upset, though David kept telling me he'd take care of me.
At any rate, after town, we headed off to Glenveagh -- a lovely place with a beautiful lake, a large herd of deer (which we didn't get to see), and a more modern castle. On the way, we stopped to take some pictures of the Poison glen (apparently named because the Irish word for poison is close to the word for another word like shaded or something and it was mistranslated). We then wandered around the garden at Glenveagh, which ultimately didn't interest me much (David ended up telling me he wasn't as interested in the sculptured garden as the beauty of natural foliage -- me neither!), then took the tour of the castle (in which Geordy asked way too many questions and teased the poor tour guide a bit too much). It was an interesting place, but a bit modern as it was given over to the government in the 80's. We did discover the tour guide was a fiddler of sorts and tried to talk her into coming to Dungloe to play some tunes with us, but she seemed rather hesitant. I don't think she'll be showing. Ah well.
From Glenveagh, we went to see Colmcille's monastery and his birthplace. Lovely places. We visited the Holy Well, where you're supposed to be healed of your ailments (unfortunately, it seems that didn't work). It's so fascinating seeing all the old graves and crosses, treading ground where so many have gone before. While I don't feel such a connection to the old christian relics, I still find them absolutely amazing. I can almost hear the old chants when walking through them.
We headed through a little town called Churchill, named not because of Winston, but likely because it's a hill with a big church on it. We managed to stop there for me to make my phone call and because Jacqui needed to hit a restroom. I finally got Solvay Bank on the phone and found out they had deposited my money into the wrong account, so I had very little in my checking. Gah! They transferred over money on the phone, which was sweet of them, so I should be able to get money out now. With that stress gone, I was able to enjoy the rest of the afternoon.
We drove through the country roads to get back to Dungloe, rather than hitting the N56. What was amazing about this was that we actually drove through some of the most phenomenol scenery I've ever seen. And it was entirely abandoned. Not a soul there, not even a bird or sheep or cow. Just...nothing but stripped mountains. And old abandoned cottages. I really cannot describe the sadness inherent in this place. These people left their homes, tore down the roofs, burned things, and all went away to America during the Famine. Entire villages of people. It was haunted. I wished we could have gotten out to walk to the cottages and pay homage to these people. How many made it to America? How many didn't? It boggles the mind to imagine how hard life must have been for these people to leave in such a way...in droves. All going one by one until the village was dead. And no one else settled here. The cottages have been left as a tribute to people long gone. Someday, perhaps, some of their relatives will return to see where their distant relatives once lived, loved, worked.
We did get a chance to stop and take pictures of some of the scenery, so I'm glad to have that at least, but still...I wish we could go back up that road and take pictures of these sad, old villages. But really -- it's something you'd have to see live to imagine. If you're ever up in the north, go to Churchill and take the road to Dungloe. You'll never be the same.
We did run into a little bit of a problem when we stopped -- Jacqui and Patrick were in a fight, which meant there was a lot of tension going on.
We finally arrived back at Dungloe around 7pm, got a few supplies at the supermarket, and then headed back to have dinner. Jacqui disappeared and things were still rather tense. Definitely not the happiest moments of the trip. At any rate, dinner was finally together and WOW was it great! Diane cooked up the cod we had picked up with a little flour and it had a nice, light, fresh taste. She also made champ, which is so delicious. Wonderful food, great company.
We retired to the living room to sit around the peet fire and talk. Finally, around 11:30pm people crawled off to bed. David and I ended up having a very intense conversation about how I'd been feeling with all the stress. He was worried about things and felt like I wasn't having a good time and he needed to make sure I still loved him as much. The conversation did end well and things were resolved, but he was worried. Traveling can be such a terrible stress on people!
Ultimately, I think the tension between Jacqui and Pat really got to people. Everyone was a bit miserable and uptight that night. We all felt on edge. This was definitely the low point of the trip.
View pictures from Day 4.
Friday: Around the cottage and music at the Corner pub
Friday began ok to some degree. We were doing well until Jacqui got up and joined us. Poor Jacqui. We're really not sure what to do about her. She was still in tears that morning and she and Patrick decided to get going that day instead of sticking around until Sunday. Everything was still so tense with her it was unbelievable. And then she said entirely the unthinkable -- she said that the night before she felt completely left out of the conversation, like she was being ignored, and then went on to say she felt like that at session! That everyone played above her level and didn't pay any attention to her. So not only did she insult Geordy's wonderful hospitality, she also insulted all of us from session who have tried to help her along all the time, who ask her for a song, who offer to help her out with chords and guitar and banjo and bodhran. I have to admit, I was offended, and a bit angered for Geordy. He went so far out of his way to make us all feel comfortable there, to provide a warm place in a beautiful country, and feed us the entire time. It was lovely. And she was horrible about it.
At any rate, they finally left, and we could all breathe a sigh of relief. Geordy, David, and I headed to town for a short bit. David finally got his Donegal tweed cap and we managed to briefly be able to check e-mail, When we got back, we discovered we were having some problems with water, so David and I were off to the spring (that no one knew where it was) to try to get some fresh water for tea. Of course, we got a bit sidetracked and headed all the way down toward the ocean across fields of stone and grass. It was a hard but lovely walk down to the coast. We took a lot of beautiful pictures of the area. On the way back up, we ended up lost a bit, though heading in the right direction. We crossed over right by this thatched-roof cottage that a Scotman had bought and was redoing. What a lovely home!
We did finally find the well, though it turned out that behind the house we were near there was a spigot and we should have used THAT, and retrieved some water for the house. Of course, by the time we got back, they were already making tea from water from the bathroom faucet (which was apparently ok). Oops.
Tea was nice and relaxing, but everyone was ready to head off for another walk. This time we headed up the road to the top of the hill and then over a bit. It was a tough walk, very steep at times, but absolutely breathtaking. The highlight was seeing another famine cottage and this time actually getting to be up close to it. We spent a lot of time being contemplative there, walking around within it, touching the walls, and wondering who the people were and if they made it out of Ireland ok. There was a lot of sadness in that old burned out cottage.
The walk back down was much easier than getting up there and I spent much of the walk back chatting with Diane while Geordy and David hung back and chatted. Just a wonderful time!
By the way, in some of the pictures we took, you'll see a small island off in the middle -- that's Roan Inish, for those of you who have seen the movie.
After a lovely dinner, we headed down into Dungloe to hit the pub that Jack and lined up us playing at. WHAT A TIME. We first walked in and there was a bunch of people in the front room watching the World Cup game. I was rather nervous that we would be interrupting their game, so we headed back into the lounge and the pub owner (a lovely woman named Ann) said we were welcome to play there if that was what we were comfortable with. The game was on back in there too, but an interesting and very funny young man named John insisted on turning it off for the musicians.
We took up playing some tunes and things started off slowly. But then once we got really into things, and started singing some songs, people came out of the woodwork to listen and join in. Many of the locals started songs or made requests. And once Jack got there things just went crazy. With he and Geordy, it was like a competitions of songs that David and I just happened to accompany.
The pub owner was SO generous and brought as much as we could drink and she wouldn't take a cent for it. The locals had a blast and we only packed it in after the garde came around to close the pub down. Oops!
And of course, it was such a wonderful night that Jack and Martin invited us up to their place for tea and toast. We stayed there until shortly before 3am and then finally crawled off to bed. This night David and I actually had our very own bed and it was LOVELY sleeping in that room!
View pictures from Day 5.
Saturday: Rossbeg and Ardara
Saturday was a nice and relaxing day. After a late breakfast with Geordy and Diane, we were off to do a little bit of driving in the area. David wanted to hit Ardara and we decided to try to find another dolman out in that direction. And find it we did! The Kilclooney Dolman was situated out in the middle of a field. We saw a path leading out toward it and so stopped. Except the path ended in a very boggy field. We got back in the car and drove around...and around...and around, thinking there HAD to be another way to it. Unfortunately, we were never able to find one and so instead we ended up out at Rossbeg and got a chance to take some pictures of a very pretty beach. And I finally got to go stick my hand in the ocean! :-)
And then we made it down to Ardara. And the trip got even weirder. We walked into this little store that sold a lot of knitted goods -- wool and other materials. The owner, this crazy man named Hugh, who had already spent a fair amount of time in the pubs, came out and told us to not mind the prices because he just "makes them up." I ended up deciding to buy a scarf for my roommate and sweaters for my mother and I (the sweater for my mother was actually picked out by David). As we were coming up to the front, we got chatting with Hugh, who seemed to have a bit of a hankering for David, I must say. He kept touching him and grabbing him by the shoulder, and then saying things about how I was trying to drag him off (typical woman and all that). He ended up charging us only 80 Euro for the whole thing (the sweaters were 60 and 40 and the scarf was 18)...but then remarked the sweaters at 200 and filled out the VAT form so I was getting back 82! I not only got them for free, I got paid an extra 2 Euro for them! Great man and it really made our afternoon.
We headed back after that, picked up some cod for dinner, and then had a really nice relaxing night at home with Geordy, Diane, and Diane's sisters (one of which got totally clocked that night and was SO funny). David ended up doing his "girlfriend" thing because of our run-in with Hugh. We laughed, joked around, chatted, and the tenseness from whole Jacqui thing was long gone, though she was still the subject of some conversation.
David and I made up a bed on the floor again and had a lovely night spent there by the peet fire.
View pictures from Day 6.
Ireland: Part I
Sunday: Getting there
We arrived at the airport around 4:30pm and in my frantic rush to get to a restroom (damn diet coke!), I almost left my purse behind. Eek! Read: no passport, no money, no ATM card. Luckily, I got back right before David's parents were taking off and we rescued it. Phew. Seriously close call. Getting through security, as always, was a bundle of joy. *sarcasm* I got a little peeved with David because he's so overly cautious. I was horrified that these people actually took those special crutches (the type people with polio often use I think?) away from a handicapped man and made him walk of his own volition through the security point. They didn't even offer him a hand! David got freaked out that somehow this would mark me as a terrorist -- or something. Yeesh. We got through fine, but my sugar was low from stress and I was a bit pissed off. I hate security in the airport. I really do. It does nothing to prevent "terrorism" and all it does is make normal law-aviding people feel like criminals and bugs. The people are just total assholes. So why should I be nice to them? I certainly wasn't. But oh well. We made it through just fine.
The flight over was uneventful. I discovered that, despite many people's claims to the contrary, airline food is pretty good. They even had a light cheesecake for dessert.
We dozed on and off for a couple hours, maybe got a few 20 minute catnaps in the middle there. Let's just say, we essentially skipped an entire night of sleep. We landed around 6:30am (read: 1:30am EST) and got through customs (easy!) and got our luggage. This was where a bit of trouble started. I opened my bag to check and see how the bodhran fared. And then the zipper broke. My bag was wide open and we had no way of closing it. *sigh* That made things a bit more of an adventure than we would have liked.
Monday: The Burren
Getting the car was simple. Driving -- not so much. But we managed to do it fairly calmly. We ended up with a Nissan Micra (think Geo Metro and then go a bit smaller!). Tiny car, but enough room for us. The drive out of the airport was a bit nervewracking, but we made it around several roundabouts and onto the main highway without too much difficulty. Amazingly, except for a few moments, I was fairly calm and David did brilliantly!
Our first plan was to head off to the Burren and see what was there, then perhaps find a place to stay, crash for a couple hours, wander around whatever town we were in, and then crash for the night.
This first got waylaid when we missed the turn for R480 and continued on R476 toward the Cliffs. We passed RIGHT by them and decided, what the hell, let's go to the cliffs. We had heard they were way too touristy right now, but since we arrived there around 9am, we were practically the only ones there. Well, us and the bus of German tourists who pulled in right after us. After warming up a bit inside and getting bundled up (it was cold, dismal, and misty -- just as Ireland should be!), we headed up the long trail to the cliffs. They were AMAZING. I can't even describe the beauty of them. I have pictures -- but they're just something you have to see (I discovered this about most of the things we saw this day). As we were coming down to part of them, I thought there was a dead animal laying nearby. Some kids kind of reached out and touched it and it didn't move. I was very sad -- until suddenly a beautiful doggie sat up. Very strange dog though -- it just huddled there and curled into a ball. We weren't sure if it just wanted attention, wanted to be left alone, or was sad and miserable. People petted it, but there wasn't much response. Very odd. I did take a couple pictures of it though!
We got up to the far part of the cliffs and sadly, weren't supposed to go any further. Like so much of America, they're paring back on allowing people free reign at dangerous places. Oh well. We snapped a few more pictures on our way back and then headed into the gift shop for tea (and hot cocoa) and a snack.
Then it was time to head off again.
Our first stop was Doolin, which was a really tiny town that we did no more than drive through. And then we turned around and drove BACK through on our way to Lisdoonvarna (and I sang the tune on the way there -- David was amused and yet said "ok have you gotten that out of your system now?"). We stopped briefly there and took some pictures of the musician statues (a fiddler and a bodhran player) and a very lovely old church.
And then we were off to Kilfenora (of Kilfenora Ceili Band fame). This was, besides the cliffs, our first main stop. Absolutely lovely town! We wandered around a bit, saw the visitor's center (read: boring), and then wandered around a 6th century church and monastery there. We took some fanastic pictures and got to see the famous Kilfenora crosses there. Unfortunately, again, we were not alone here. A couple buses of tourists (some from the southern USA) were there. Ugh. They get in the way all the time and don't seem to have any real appreciation for the place. Just walking through some of the ancient grave sites and touching the stones is amazing. The pictures are more for posterity, so I can relive it later. They just wanted to take pictures and get in the way of everything. Ah well.
We wandered around trying to decide where to have lunch. We figured they would all head to Vaughan's, since it's a big place for tourists. So we had lunch at a lovely little pub called Linnane's (which also had big signs saying "Kitty's Corner," which made it too good to resist). It turned out to essentially be the home of the Kilfenora Ceili Band. Who knew? We saw a lot of pictures of the group around, and many of which prominently featured Tommy Peoples (one of its former members and a very amazing Donegal fiddler). Lunch was lovely -- David had a nice ham sandwich (and his very first glass of Guinness in Ireland!) and I had some soup and brown bread. Amazing little pub that was. Those were all they offered for lunch there and it was just perfect! As we were leaving, we got chatting with the owner and happened to say something about Tommy Peoples. He says "You know Tommy Peoples?" and we explained that we love his fiddle style and his music, but we've yet to see him in performance nor meet him. It turned out that the owner was Tommy Peoples's brother-in-law! Go figure. Nice man and it was neat to hear about how Tommy sat right in the very seats we sat and played in that dark little corner for 10 years there. What an amazing moment! I almost didn't want to leave Kilfenora. But alas, it was time to head out of there. We bid the owner farewell and were on our way.
After a bit of confusion, we managed to find the R480 that took us into the Burren. Our first stop directed us quite a bit off the beaten path (perfect!). We saw signs for the Poulawack Cairn, and since my main interest in being there was the ancient sites, we headed up to see it. This was the most amazing place we visited this day. Part of the reason was that the tourists weren't there. You had to climb up this hill littered with limestones (they were everywhere -- it's a site you just cannot imagine until you see it). We first saw a small cairn there, took a bunch of pictures, but left it alone as I felt we should. We traipsed across all these stones to get out to the main part of it -- the mound. It was quite a journey to get all the way back there, but I felt we had to. Two other hardy souls were there and they left as we approached. We had the place to ourselves for awhile. We explored it a bit, took some fantastic pictures, and then left as a couple others were approaching. We chatted with them for a bit -- found out they were kindred souls from Australia, and then left them to the cairn.
(I found some more information on the Cairn on this page.)
After climbing down (a whole other adventure), we were on our way again. The next stop was an interesting stone fort. The only problem is that it was a tourist spot and therefore totally overdone. In a way, they ruined it a bit, but it was interesting to read about what the place had been many centuries ago. And we also found out that the mound we had visited was somewhere around 3500 years old. Pretty amazing stuff.
We did get a chance to see the megalithic tombs as our last hurrah for the day. Amusingly, I thought it would be MUCH bigger (like Stonehenge sized) from the pictures we had seen. I turned out to be much smaller, yet still amazing.
On our way up to our final resting place for the day, we took some pictures of the limestone mountains (amazing structures) and I took a silly one out the front window of the car, and then we finally arrived in Kinvarra. This is a lovely little town situated in the very south of Galway right in a little nook on the coast of Galway Bay. We found a nice B&B to stay at and then had dinner at a local pub (great food and lovely atmosphere -- they even had a jig drawn on the wall), and then we finally came back and collapsed for the night. We slept WELL. It was nice waking up the next morning finally feeling rested!
I'm still amazed at how much we did the first day. We were going from 6:30am when we landed right up until about 9pm when we got back from dinner and headed to bed. What a first day!
View pictures from Day 1.
Tuesday: Galway, Mayo, and Sligo
I think this was on Tuesday. How easily I've lost track of time and days. *sigh* It's Wednesday morning as I write this and two days of this lovely trip are already gone. Wow.
We woke up to a lovely breakfast in Kinvarra -- you're typical Irish breakfast: sausage, eggs, bacon, and beans, plus some delicious brown bread, OJ, and tea. It was filling and the perfect thing to start off another long adventurous day.
Our first goal was to get to see Yeats' tower and Lady Gregory's estate. On the way there, across yet another tiny country road, we came across other places that warranted stopping. The first was a lovely ruined castle out in the middle of a field of sheep. The second was an old church near Kiltartan. Since the cemetary there was still active, we were able to get onto the grounds to explore a bit more and take some nice photos of it. These old churchs and ruined castles, farmhouses, and cottages are simply everywhere out there. It's amazing. We passed by many more throughout the morning, but were unable to stop anywhere near them to take pictures.
We finally got to Kiltartan and found the museum, but opted at that point to first head to Yeat's tower. What a fascinating place! And this one we got to actually go into. After the (somewhat boring) audio-visual presentation, we were set free inside the tower. We climbed around, took several pictures, went up the crazy narrow winding staircase (if you read Yeats', and I've read very little at this point, you can see some of his inspiration in this tower), went through the living area, their bedroom, and a few other rooms. We ended up on the battlements looking out over the scenery of Kiltartan. Just amazing! It would be such an inspiration as an artist to live there, to see that, to have ACCESS to see such a scene. It was very easy to see why Yeats fell in love with the place. The only problem with it was that it was damp -- very damp. Which meant there were a few too many arachnids around. So much for David's theory that there aren't that many in Ireland! *shudders*
Next on our list was Coole Park, the home of Lady Gregory's estate. Lady Gregory was, according to David, a folklorist and a friend of Yeats. Yeats visited there often. David did his undergraduate thesis on Lady Gregory and Yeats, so it's been a dream of his for a long time to see the estate and Yeats' tower. With one down, we were off to explore the other. The park was absolutely lovely -- forested, which much of Ireland isn't (apparently Lady Gregory planted the forest there). we took a long walk in the woods that took us right down to Coole Lake. It was utterly beautiful -- rocks littered the beach, which isn't a site you see too often. And I don't mean little rocks. I mean boulders. We were only just a bit out of Co. Clare and the Burren, so there were still many limestone boulders to be seen at this point. Not quite as many as in the Burren, but they were still prominent. We sat by the lake for a little while, just enjoying the peace and quiet, and did manage to see a swan (i.e. the Wild Swans of Coole, which is a well-known Irish tune). We went in search of the autograph tree (a large tree signed by Lady Gregory and many of her friends), but didn't find it at that point.
The walk back was tiring, but felt great. I relaxed for a bit, while David explored the nearby horse pump. And then we went over to the old foundation of Lady Gregory's house (long since torn down) and the garden.
The garden was amazingly huge. When I think of gardens, I think of small spaces with lots of plants or flowers crammed into one space. This was a spatious place with plenty of grass and the trees, flowers, and bushes spaced far apart. We did manage to get to see the autograph tree at this point (we were wrong on where it was) and took a few pictures. We ended our time at Coole with drinks and snacks.
Then it was off to Galway. The drive there was nice and easy (the N17 is so much easier to drive on than the country roads). We hit Galway around 1:15pm, found a car park and headed out to the town. Unfortunately, we had to take a couple runs back -- once because I forgot the list Pat had given us and the second time because David thought his wallet was stolen! Luckily, it turned out that he had tossed it in a bag and forgotten that. Phew!
We perused the shops, had lovely fish and chips and McDonagh's (Pat's suggestion), got a pint at Murphy's (another suggestion), picked up a total of 10 CDs at Mulligan's and perused the used books at Charlie Byrne's. Lovely town and we enjoyed wandering around greatly!
We left around 6:30pm to head north into Sligo. Our plan was to stay around Sligo but we ended up north in Drumcliffe. No complaints there! We enjoyed a lovely dinner at the Yeats Tavern and found a B&B at the Yeats Lodge, a lovely place with a view of Benbulben and even some horses! After another long, successful day, we collapsed into bed and had a lovely long sleep.
View pictures from Day 2.
Wednesday: Yeats grave and on up to Dungloe
Wednesday dawned cold, misty, and rainy. What a disappointment! Instead of waking up to a lovely view of Benbulben, which we had fallen asleep to, we awoke to grey skies and no sign of the mountain. No pictures for us, so instead we began the day with an attempt to head into Sligo town in search of a new suitcase for me. Wow was THAT one a mistake. Besides the fact that it was clearly rush hour, Sligo was a complete mess with construction. In the end, we found our way back to the N15 and headed north. We stopped at what was supposed to be our last major spot on the trip up -- Yeats grave and the round tower.
The church was a lovely church from the 19th century, perhaps the latest building we had taken any pictures of. We found Yeats' grave easily enough and spent a little time contemplating the epithat. We also got a chance to get close up to the round tower (from the 10th or 11th century) and took some lovely photos of it. It's so fascinating to see these ancient ruins. They're just there -- on the side of the road. And they're everywhere. The entire time we've travelled so far, we've seen these things all over but haven't always been able to stop.
We did finally get a chance to take some pictures of Benbulben and took a nice walk down by the river. It was just a gorgeous area.
After a stop at the tea room (where David and I each bought another album), we headed off. We were going to head right up to Dungloe at that point, but David saw a sign to Glencar waterfall. People had been talking about it at breakfast and we decided we should head over to it. I'm so glad we did! The area was quiet, peaceful, and the landscape dramatic. We stopped at the side of the lake before we headed to the falls. This was just an amazing place. It's really hard to describe these places without just BEING there. It was so far away from civilization, so peaceful, perhaps one of the quietest places I've been, the only sound was from the man in the lake casting his fishing line.
We headed over to the falls after that -- another lovely place. We truly lucked out here as well. There were people around, but none of them were up at the falls when we were. The whole trip has been charmed in a way.
Then finally, after the falls, we headed off to Dungloe. The trip up was fairly easy. We started playing Donegal fiddle music once we hit Donegal. And then stopped in Donegal town for lunch. I discovered that, despite claims to the contrary, my ATM card is NOT working anywhere here. It worked great in Shannon and everywhere I've stopped since they've been telling me I've selected an invalid account. *sigh* So I have no real Euros on me and now I owe David money. Very frustrating. It's become a huge stress for me unfortunately.
After a lovely lunch at the Abbey Hotel of fish and chips (and so sorry Pat -- we didn't finish the chips...spud abuse, I know!), we made the final leg of the journey into Dungloe.
Unfortunately, when we got there, David and I were so stressed from the condition of the roads (very bumpy, narrow, and winding) that we got into a little tiff when I panicked over a car coming at us. *sigh* It meant when we arrived in Falmore (where we're really staying), I wasn't doing too well. We ran into Jacqui on the road. She and Pat were heading out to town and saw us coming up the way and they slowed down so Jacqui could jump out of the car (something that caused Pat to be mad at HER -- oops!). They led us up to the cottage which was WAY out of the way on a little winding one-way road. It was a crazy trip up and I'm not sure I want to go back DOWN! lol
After a nap, and some good talks with David, I felt much better. I took a shower and then joined in on the festivities. Perhaps the best part of this trip so far was that evening. Geordy and Diane had met the guys who live in the cottage a bit over from ours (I'd say next, but nothing is next over here). They were such an amazing joy. Jack and Martin -- a gay couple. Jack was in theatre and has since retired, but wow is the theatre still in him. He got into singing songs and he knows SO many -- from traditional Irish and Scottish to Stephen Foster and old American ballads. We spent the evening playing traditional tunes and all joining in the songs. Jack was amazingly funny and an absolute joy. We hope he'll come to the States sometime and he said he'd love to come out and stay with Geordy and Diane, but only after Shrub is out of office. They REALLY hate him over here -- it's nice to be among so many people who hate him as much as I do!
Jack finally indicated it was time for he and Martin to take off by singing the Parting Glass. Once they had kissed everyone on the cheek and left, we set up a bed on the ground in the living room and collapsed. It wasn't the most comfortable lodgings, but it was the best we could do. Unfortunately, a woman from the Westcott Center decided Geordy's tossed off invitation was meant for her and told him she was flying out here...for two weeks. Geordy's REALLY not happy with her being here. She's in poor health (heart problems) and has a hard time getting around. And he's just not sure what to do with her. Ultimately, the decision has been to just let her be and let her figure out what she can do.
Day 3 ended in a wonderful way. It was lovely to spend the evening with friends from home here in this little cottage far out in the wilds of Ireland.
View pictures from Day 3.
We arrived at the airport around 4:30pm and in my frantic rush to get to a restroom (damn diet coke!), I almost left my purse behind. Eek! Read: no passport, no money, no ATM card. Luckily, I got back right before David's parents were taking off and we rescued it. Phew. Seriously close call. Getting through security, as always, was a bundle of joy. *sarcasm* I got a little peeved with David because he's so overly cautious. I was horrified that these people actually took those special crutches (the type people with polio often use I think?) away from a handicapped man and made him walk of his own volition through the security point. They didn't even offer him a hand! David got freaked out that somehow this would mark me as a terrorist -- or something. Yeesh. We got through fine, but my sugar was low from stress and I was a bit pissed off. I hate security in the airport. I really do. It does nothing to prevent "terrorism" and all it does is make normal law-aviding people feel like criminals and bugs. The people are just total assholes. So why should I be nice to them? I certainly wasn't. But oh well. We made it through just fine.
The flight over was uneventful. I discovered that, despite many people's claims to the contrary, airline food is pretty good. They even had a light cheesecake for dessert.
We dozed on and off for a couple hours, maybe got a few 20 minute catnaps in the middle there. Let's just say, we essentially skipped an entire night of sleep. We landed around 6:30am (read: 1:30am EST) and got through customs (easy!) and got our luggage. This was where a bit of trouble started. I opened my bag to check and see how the bodhran fared. And then the zipper broke. My bag was wide open and we had no way of closing it. *sigh* That made things a bit more of an adventure than we would have liked.
Monday: The Burren
Getting the car was simple. Driving -- not so much. But we managed to do it fairly calmly. We ended up with a Nissan Micra (think Geo Metro and then go a bit smaller!). Tiny car, but enough room for us. The drive out of the airport was a bit nervewracking, but we made it around several roundabouts and onto the main highway without too much difficulty. Amazingly, except for a few moments, I was fairly calm and David did brilliantly!
Our first plan was to head off to the Burren and see what was there, then perhaps find a place to stay, crash for a couple hours, wander around whatever town we were in, and then crash for the night.
This first got waylaid when we missed the turn for R480 and continued on R476 toward the Cliffs. We passed RIGHT by them and decided, what the hell, let's go to the cliffs. We had heard they were way too touristy right now, but since we arrived there around 9am, we were practically the only ones there. Well, us and the bus of German tourists who pulled in right after us. After warming up a bit inside and getting bundled up (it was cold, dismal, and misty -- just as Ireland should be!), we headed up the long trail to the cliffs. They were AMAZING. I can't even describe the beauty of them. I have pictures -- but they're just something you have to see (I discovered this about most of the things we saw this day). As we were coming down to part of them, I thought there was a dead animal laying nearby. Some kids kind of reached out and touched it and it didn't move. I was very sad -- until suddenly a beautiful doggie sat up. Very strange dog though -- it just huddled there and curled into a ball. We weren't sure if it just wanted attention, wanted to be left alone, or was sad and miserable. People petted it, but there wasn't much response. Very odd. I did take a couple pictures of it though!
We got up to the far part of the cliffs and sadly, weren't supposed to go any further. Like so much of America, they're paring back on allowing people free reign at dangerous places. Oh well. We snapped a few more pictures on our way back and then headed into the gift shop for tea (and hot cocoa) and a snack.
Then it was time to head off again.
Our first stop was Doolin, which was a really tiny town that we did no more than drive through. And then we turned around and drove BACK through on our way to Lisdoonvarna (and I sang the tune on the way there -- David was amused and yet said "ok have you gotten that out of your system now?"). We stopped briefly there and took some pictures of the musician statues (a fiddler and a bodhran player) and a very lovely old church.
And then we were off to Kilfenora (of Kilfenora Ceili Band fame). This was, besides the cliffs, our first main stop. Absolutely lovely town! We wandered around a bit, saw the visitor's center (read: boring), and then wandered around a 6th century church and monastery there. We took some fanastic pictures and got to see the famous Kilfenora crosses there. Unfortunately, again, we were not alone here. A couple buses of tourists (some from the southern USA) were there. Ugh. They get in the way all the time and don't seem to have any real appreciation for the place. Just walking through some of the ancient grave sites and touching the stones is amazing. The pictures are more for posterity, so I can relive it later. They just wanted to take pictures and get in the way of everything. Ah well.
We wandered around trying to decide where to have lunch. We figured they would all head to Vaughan's, since it's a big place for tourists. So we had lunch at a lovely little pub called Linnane's (which also had big signs saying "Kitty's Corner," which made it too good to resist). It turned out to essentially be the home of the Kilfenora Ceili Band. Who knew? We saw a lot of pictures of the group around, and many of which prominently featured Tommy Peoples (one of its former members and a very amazing Donegal fiddler). Lunch was lovely -- David had a nice ham sandwich (and his very first glass of Guinness in Ireland!) and I had some soup and brown bread. Amazing little pub that was. Those were all they offered for lunch there and it was just perfect! As we were leaving, we got chatting with the owner and happened to say something about Tommy Peoples. He says "You know Tommy Peoples?" and we explained that we love his fiddle style and his music, but we've yet to see him in performance nor meet him. It turned out that the owner was Tommy Peoples's brother-in-law! Go figure. Nice man and it was neat to hear about how Tommy sat right in the very seats we sat and played in that dark little corner for 10 years there. What an amazing moment! I almost didn't want to leave Kilfenora. But alas, it was time to head out of there. We bid the owner farewell and were on our way.
After a bit of confusion, we managed to find the R480 that took us into the Burren. Our first stop directed us quite a bit off the beaten path (perfect!). We saw signs for the Poulawack Cairn, and since my main interest in being there was the ancient sites, we headed up to see it. This was the most amazing place we visited this day. Part of the reason was that the tourists weren't there. You had to climb up this hill littered with limestones (they were everywhere -- it's a site you just cannot imagine until you see it). We first saw a small cairn there, took a bunch of pictures, but left it alone as I felt we should. We traipsed across all these stones to get out to the main part of it -- the mound. It was quite a journey to get all the way back there, but I felt we had to. Two other hardy souls were there and they left as we approached. We had the place to ourselves for awhile. We explored it a bit, took some fantastic pictures, and then left as a couple others were approaching. We chatted with them for a bit -- found out they were kindred souls from Australia, and then left them to the cairn.
(I found some more information on the Cairn on this page.)
After climbing down (a whole other adventure), we were on our way again. The next stop was an interesting stone fort. The only problem is that it was a tourist spot and therefore totally overdone. In a way, they ruined it a bit, but it was interesting to read about what the place had been many centuries ago. And we also found out that the mound we had visited was somewhere around 3500 years old. Pretty amazing stuff.
We did get a chance to see the megalithic tombs as our last hurrah for the day. Amusingly, I thought it would be MUCH bigger (like Stonehenge sized) from the pictures we had seen. I turned out to be much smaller, yet still amazing.
On our way up to our final resting place for the day, we took some pictures of the limestone mountains (amazing structures) and I took a silly one out the front window of the car, and then we finally arrived in Kinvarra. This is a lovely little town situated in the very south of Galway right in a little nook on the coast of Galway Bay. We found a nice B&B to stay at and then had dinner at a local pub (great food and lovely atmosphere -- they even had a jig drawn on the wall), and then we finally came back and collapsed for the night. We slept WELL. It was nice waking up the next morning finally feeling rested!
I'm still amazed at how much we did the first day. We were going from 6:30am when we landed right up until about 9pm when we got back from dinner and headed to bed. What a first day!
View pictures from Day 1.
Tuesday: Galway, Mayo, and Sligo
I think this was on Tuesday. How easily I've lost track of time and days. *sigh* It's Wednesday morning as I write this and two days of this lovely trip are already gone. Wow.
We woke up to a lovely breakfast in Kinvarra -- you're typical Irish breakfast: sausage, eggs, bacon, and beans, plus some delicious brown bread, OJ, and tea. It was filling and the perfect thing to start off another long adventurous day.
Our first goal was to get to see Yeats' tower and Lady Gregory's estate. On the way there, across yet another tiny country road, we came across other places that warranted stopping. The first was a lovely ruined castle out in the middle of a field of sheep. The second was an old church near Kiltartan. Since the cemetary there was still active, we were able to get onto the grounds to explore a bit more and take some nice photos of it. These old churchs and ruined castles, farmhouses, and cottages are simply everywhere out there. It's amazing. We passed by many more throughout the morning, but were unable to stop anywhere near them to take pictures.
We finally got to Kiltartan and found the museum, but opted at that point to first head to Yeat's tower. What a fascinating place! And this one we got to actually go into. After the (somewhat boring) audio-visual presentation, we were set free inside the tower. We climbed around, took several pictures, went up the crazy narrow winding staircase (if you read Yeats', and I've read very little at this point, you can see some of his inspiration in this tower), went through the living area, their bedroom, and a few other rooms. We ended up on the battlements looking out over the scenery of Kiltartan. Just amazing! It would be such an inspiration as an artist to live there, to see that, to have ACCESS to see such a scene. It was very easy to see why Yeats fell in love with the place. The only problem with it was that it was damp -- very damp. Which meant there were a few too many arachnids around. So much for David's theory that there aren't that many in Ireland! *shudders*
Next on our list was Coole Park, the home of Lady Gregory's estate. Lady Gregory was, according to David, a folklorist and a friend of Yeats. Yeats visited there often. David did his undergraduate thesis on Lady Gregory and Yeats, so it's been a dream of his for a long time to see the estate and Yeats' tower. With one down, we were off to explore the other. The park was absolutely lovely -- forested, which much of Ireland isn't (apparently Lady Gregory planted the forest there). we took a long walk in the woods that took us right down to Coole Lake. It was utterly beautiful -- rocks littered the beach, which isn't a site you see too often. And I don't mean little rocks. I mean boulders. We were only just a bit out of Co. Clare and the Burren, so there were still many limestone boulders to be seen at this point. Not quite as many as in the Burren, but they were still prominent. We sat by the lake for a little while, just enjoying the peace and quiet, and did manage to see a swan (i.e. the Wild Swans of Coole, which is a well-known Irish tune). We went in search of the autograph tree (a large tree signed by Lady Gregory and many of her friends), but didn't find it at that point.
The walk back was tiring, but felt great. I relaxed for a bit, while David explored the nearby horse pump. And then we went over to the old foundation of Lady Gregory's house (long since torn down) and the garden.
The garden was amazingly huge. When I think of gardens, I think of small spaces with lots of plants or flowers crammed into one space. This was a spatious place with plenty of grass and the trees, flowers, and bushes spaced far apart. We did manage to get to see the autograph tree at this point (we were wrong on where it was) and took a few pictures. We ended our time at Coole with drinks and snacks.
Then it was off to Galway. The drive there was nice and easy (the N17 is so much easier to drive on than the country roads). We hit Galway around 1:15pm, found a car park and headed out to the town. Unfortunately, we had to take a couple runs back -- once because I forgot the list Pat had given us and the second time because David thought his wallet was stolen! Luckily, it turned out that he had tossed it in a bag and forgotten that. Phew!
We perused the shops, had lovely fish and chips and McDonagh's (Pat's suggestion), got a pint at Murphy's (another suggestion), picked up a total of 10 CDs at Mulligan's and perused the used books at Charlie Byrne's. Lovely town and we enjoyed wandering around greatly!
We left around 6:30pm to head north into Sligo. Our plan was to stay around Sligo but we ended up north in Drumcliffe. No complaints there! We enjoyed a lovely dinner at the Yeats Tavern and found a B&B at the Yeats Lodge, a lovely place with a view of Benbulben and even some horses! After another long, successful day, we collapsed into bed and had a lovely long sleep.
View pictures from Day 2.
Wednesday: Yeats grave and on up to Dungloe
Wednesday dawned cold, misty, and rainy. What a disappointment! Instead of waking up to a lovely view of Benbulben, which we had fallen asleep to, we awoke to grey skies and no sign of the mountain. No pictures for us, so instead we began the day with an attempt to head into Sligo town in search of a new suitcase for me. Wow was THAT one a mistake. Besides the fact that it was clearly rush hour, Sligo was a complete mess with construction. In the end, we found our way back to the N15 and headed north. We stopped at what was supposed to be our last major spot on the trip up -- Yeats grave and the round tower.
The church was a lovely church from the 19th century, perhaps the latest building we had taken any pictures of. We found Yeats' grave easily enough and spent a little time contemplating the epithat. We also got a chance to get close up to the round tower (from the 10th or 11th century) and took some lovely photos of it. It's so fascinating to see these ancient ruins. They're just there -- on the side of the road. And they're everywhere. The entire time we've travelled so far, we've seen these things all over but haven't always been able to stop.
We did finally get a chance to take some pictures of Benbulben and took a nice walk down by the river. It was just a gorgeous area.
After a stop at the tea room (where David and I each bought another album), we headed off. We were going to head right up to Dungloe at that point, but David saw a sign to Glencar waterfall. People had been talking about it at breakfast and we decided we should head over to it. I'm so glad we did! The area was quiet, peaceful, and the landscape dramatic. We stopped at the side of the lake before we headed to the falls. This was just an amazing place. It's really hard to describe these places without just BEING there. It was so far away from civilization, so peaceful, perhaps one of the quietest places I've been, the only sound was from the man in the lake casting his fishing line.
We headed over to the falls after that -- another lovely place. We truly lucked out here as well. There were people around, but none of them were up at the falls when we were. The whole trip has been charmed in a way.
Then finally, after the falls, we headed off to Dungloe. The trip up was fairly easy. We started playing Donegal fiddle music once we hit Donegal. And then stopped in Donegal town for lunch. I discovered that, despite claims to the contrary, my ATM card is NOT working anywhere here. It worked great in Shannon and everywhere I've stopped since they've been telling me I've selected an invalid account. *sigh* So I have no real Euros on me and now I owe David money. Very frustrating. It's become a huge stress for me unfortunately.
After a lovely lunch at the Abbey Hotel of fish and chips (and so sorry Pat -- we didn't finish the chips...spud abuse, I know!), we made the final leg of the journey into Dungloe.
Unfortunately, when we got there, David and I were so stressed from the condition of the roads (very bumpy, narrow, and winding) that we got into a little tiff when I panicked over a car coming at us. *sigh* It meant when we arrived in Falmore (where we're really staying), I wasn't doing too well. We ran into Jacqui on the road. She and Pat were heading out to town and saw us coming up the way and they slowed down so Jacqui could jump out of the car (something that caused Pat to be mad at HER -- oops!). They led us up to the cottage which was WAY out of the way on a little winding one-way road. It was a crazy trip up and I'm not sure I want to go back DOWN! lol
After a nap, and some good talks with David, I felt much better. I took a shower and then joined in on the festivities. Perhaps the best part of this trip so far was that evening. Geordy and Diane had met the guys who live in the cottage a bit over from ours (I'd say next, but nothing is next over here). They were such an amazing joy. Jack and Martin -- a gay couple. Jack was in theatre and has since retired, but wow is the theatre still in him. He got into singing songs and he knows SO many -- from traditional Irish and Scottish to Stephen Foster and old American ballads. We spent the evening playing traditional tunes and all joining in the songs. Jack was amazingly funny and an absolute joy. We hope he'll come to the States sometime and he said he'd love to come out and stay with Geordy and Diane, but only after Shrub is out of office. They REALLY hate him over here -- it's nice to be among so many people who hate him as much as I do!
Jack finally indicated it was time for he and Martin to take off by singing the Parting Glass. Once they had kissed everyone on the cheek and left, we set up a bed on the ground in the living room and collapsed. It wasn't the most comfortable lodgings, but it was the best we could do. Unfortunately, a woman from the Westcott Center decided Geordy's tossed off invitation was meant for her and told him she was flying out here...for two weeks. Geordy's REALLY not happy with her being here. She's in poor health (heart problems) and has a hard time getting around. And he's just not sure what to do with her. Ultimately, the decision has been to just let her be and let her figure out what she can do.
Day 3 ended in a wonderful way. It was lovely to spend the evening with friends from home here in this little cottage far out in the wilds of Ireland.
View pictures from Day 3.
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