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.
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