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Trip Report - Ireland
As
we were returning to Hawaii from Bali at the end of January '03 I asked Mayumi where she'd
like to go next.
She said Ireland so I began researching home exchanges on the web as soon
as we got home. We
arrived in Ireland on July 3rd and things went according to plan.
Considering that we really had no plan, that's not bad.
From July 3rd until the 28th we stayed in Tullamore in the Irish midlands
in a very nice, large four bedroom home with tennis court, horse paddock for two
horses, and had the use of a brand new Volvo S40.
We traveled throughout most of the south of Ireland and I've seen about
all the castles and ancient churches I can assimilate for a while.
We were very fortunate with the weather in that it has been warmer and
sunnier than we had any right to expect.
Locals say it was the nicest summer in living memory. We
made side trips of one to three days to Waterford, Cork, Kilarney, Kashel, The
Ring of Kerry, the Dingle Peninsula, Kells, the Hill of Tara, Tralee, Limerick
and lots of intermediate points from our base in Tullamore.
While in Cork we went to the Old Head of Kinsale from which the sinking
of the Lusitania was witnessed in 1916.
This was the culminating event that brought the US into World War One. On
July 28th we moved to Strandhill, a very small resort community about five miles
outside Sligo, the largest town in the Irish northwest (Pop: 19,500).
There we were in a two bedroom condominium right next to a golf course
and a three minute walk from the beach ("strand" to people in this
part of the world).
When we arrived in Strandhill it remained light until after 10:00 P.M.
and we could see people playing golf almost until we were ready for bed.
The only place to shop in Strandhill is something like a little 7-11
store about 70 yards away, and there's a very nice pub about 200 yards the other
direction.
I discovered I have a bit of a fondness for Stella Artois beer.
Strandhill is something of a surfer hang-out.
They're all nuts!
I wouldn't get in that cold water on a bet. When we first arrived in Strandhill we hit the major tourist attractions in the immediate area including a beautiful 50' waterfall, a very nicely restored castle, a really old abbey and a "graveyard" with at least one burial cairn that is 7,400 years old. Sligo was the home of the poet Wm. Butler Yeats and you never get a chance to forget that. We've made several long, aimless drives in the country. One Saturday we went to a regatta/festival in Carrick-on-Shannon. The following day we spent the entire day and most of the night in tiny Riverstown with a population of about 200 people at a music festival. Musicians from the local area came with their fiddles, button accordions, tin whistles, banjoes, etc. The centerpiece of the festival was a concert in a hall that seated just about the entire population of the town, but most of the action was on the one street and in the two pubs where musicians came and left playing with the group in a pretty ad hoc way. There were also workshops for traditional Irish dancing, button accordion, fiddle, and flute and tin whistle. We sat in on some of these sessions. The
following day we went to Donegal for the day.
After a day of doing nothing we went to Galway and then the absolutely
gorgeous countryside of Connemara.
We just returned from that three-day excursion in time for me to have a
three-day bout with a virus.
Then we made another three-day trip to the northern tip of the Republic
at Malin Head, a short visit into Derry (Northern Ireland) and a ramble through
the rest of County Donegal. Surprisingly
to me, Mayumi enjoyed staying in the bed and breakfast places.
They cost us between $60 and $80 per night and include a very substantial
breakfast.
The atmosphere in each is different.
One we visited was filled with bric-a-brac and antiques and the hostess
and her son were exceptionally outgoing.
Some have been less ornate and sometimes the hosts have been more
reserved.
On two occasions the first B&B we tried was filled.
At the first of these the hostess recommended a nearby B&B which did
have room for us.
At the second the host called and found a place for us about a mile away.
At the last B&B we visited the owners' daughters are members of the
cast of Riverdance and one of them served our breakfast. The
next Saturday we went to a tiny town called Kiltyclogher about 45 minutes from
Sligo where they had their annual festival.
The main event was a feis or dance contest.
Dance instruction is done by grades just like piano: beginner, first
grade, second grade, etc.
So the competition is within grade.
There was a single judge, an accordion player, a couple of people keeping
track of registration and announcing, lots of kids, lots of moms, only a few
dads, and us.
We sat next to the judge who does this for a living and travels all over
the world at it.
He was quite chatty between sets. One
object of the competition was for the kids to advance to the next grade level.
Some of them were really great seeming to defy gravity with their leaps
and high kicks. At
the end I asked the judge if he'd found the next Jean Butler, erstwhile female
lead of Riverdance.
He replied that some of the girls competing here had won more contests
than Jean Butler.
I told him the about staying in a B&B in Ardara, Co. Donegal, where
two of the daughters were in Riverdance.
He knows them and said one of the daughters is ranked #4 in the world
while Butler's highest ranking was #17. I
also asked the judge what had happened to Michael Flatley after he left
Riverdance.
Flatley now owns Lord of the Dance which has multiple troupes and is
currently in Monte Carlo doing a command performance for Prince Ranier.
We saw Lord of the Dance in Honolulu last winter. One
Sunday Mayumi went on the local diocesan pilgrimage to Knock.
She took a bus from Sligo.
After leaving her at the bus departure point (St. Ann's church) I drove
up to Ballyshannon to see an agricultural show.
I'll bet the ratio of horses to people is higher in Ireland than in any
other country. Beautiful animals and lots of them! Although the
weather had been gorgeous for the preceding three weeks, it had turned
"Irish" on us the night before and I left the show after only an hour
and a half, just in time to miss a drenching.
Ireland
really is a beautiful place.
The old movie The Quiet Man with John Wayne was shot in Connemara and the
countryside still looks the same. If someone could only spend one day in Ireland
I’d recommend a drive around Connemara.
Hands down it’s the most beautiful of many beautiful places in the
country.
For
our final excursion we drove from Sligo by a roundabout route to Tullamore where
we visited the family in whose home we had stayed there.
Thursday morning we drove to Limerick and then up into County Clare to
the Bunratty Castle and Folk Park.
As far as admission prices are concerned that's probably the best
value-for-money we've gotten, not to deride other places we've been by any
means.
Then we drove to the Cliffs of Moher and had some real atmosphere there -
pea soup fog.
But the cliffs were darned impressive even though they weren't at their
best visibility wise.
We
spent the night in a very nice guesthouse a few miles away at the town of Doolin
which is famous for the traditional music.
We went to a bar to eat and listen to the music, but the crowd and the
smoke was so thick we left after eating.
We drove through The Burren on the way to Galway.
The Burren looks like the mountains had been covered with a coating of
rock about eight inches thick and then the rock was shattered into pieces about
8" X 10".
Another way to think of it is the appearance of the shell of a boiled egg
after you've cracked it all around as much as you can and before removing it. In
Galway we looked around the shops for a couple of hours and bought the sweaters
I wanted for my grandkids. They're
hand knitted Aran wool sweaters and we bought them at O'Máille's.
That's the tailor shop and clothing store where most of the costumes for
The Quiet Man were made.
The various patterns knitted into the sweaters have significance and you
can log onto www.omaille.com to see what
they are. Next
we drove to Cong to see the replica of the Quiet Man house.
I wasn't very enthusiastic about that detour but it was well worthwhile.
The house doesn't amount to much but the town of Cong is very attractive
with a beautiful river, abbey ruins and the castle that was most recently owned
by the founder of Guiness beer and is now a very upscale hotel. We flew from Strandhill to Dublin three days before leaving Ireland and spent the remaining time loafing around Dublin. It’s a small enough capitol that you can see the major attractions easily in a couple of days. The most impressive place I saw there was Trinity College, and we also saw the Book of Kells there. We returned home on the evening of August 27th and have been spending the time since then getting our normal lives reorganized. (3SEP03)
Our photos of the trip have been posted on
www.shutterfly.com. You may view a
slide show of them by going to that web site and signing in using my e-mail
address, spengelm001@hawaii.rr.com
and a password of "hocuspocus" (without the quotes). On the following page
click on "Ireland Trip 2003." On the next page select "all" and "View as
Slideshow." Surprises Beauty First
off, although we’d read and been told repeatedly of the beauty of the country
we were awed by the reality.
If beautiful landscapes and really attractive little homes don’t appeal
to you, stay home.
If the smell of the product for which cows are 2nd most famous is a real
turn-off you might also consider other destinations. Expense Ireland
is the 2nd most expensive country in the European Union after Finland.
The currency is the Euro which is trading a good bit higher relative to
the dollar than was the case a year ago. Supermarkets It
is unlawful for shops to give away plastic bags as a measure to reduce littler.
Flimsy plastic bags cost about $0.20 while a fairly sturdy one with
handles runs about $0.50.
At that rate you make sure to take some with you to the supermarket.
Also, you bag your own purchases in supermarkets.
After living in countries that are awash with orphaned plastic bags such
as Egypt and Indonesia I’m not unsympathetic to the idea behind the charges
for bags. Prices Everything
costs a bit more in Ireland than in the U.S. including food.
Ireland is the 2nd most expensive country in the European Union while
Finland is 1st.
Gasoline costs as much as $4.20/gallon. Driving The width, surface quality, and linearity of a road can change dramatically and abruptly. This applies to main highways as well as to country lanes. I’d
guess there’s less than 100 miles of four-lane highway in the country.
Roads 1½ lanes wide are somewhat common and single lane roads in the
backcountry are also quite common.
Drivers are very polite about yielding the right-of-way in these narrow
roads.
In fact, they’re pretty polite in general, allowing you to enter busy
lines of traffic quite cheerfully.
While not a free-for-all like traffic in Indonesia, the norms of driving
are a little more liberal than in the U.S. – Parking on the “wrong” side
of the street is legal, people don’t become as upset when you do something
stupid, U-turns seem to be legal or at least accepted anywhere you can make
them, etc. It seems that most farmers don’t own trucks so it’s quite common to encounter farm tractors on the highways. They’re licensed and equipped for highway driving but unable to maintain speed with the flow of traffic. If you’re clipping along with the flow of traffic at 60 mph and round a curve on a 1 ½ lane road to find yourself confronted with the back of a tractor and the front of a big truck that can be a shock. Add a bicycle into the mix and you have a busy few nanoseconds indeed. Teenagers
aren't ashamed to walk someplace. It's quite common to encounter people
walking along the roads. We also saw many local folks of all ages riding
bicycles. In
the west of the country sheep on and along the roadways are very common.
It’s not unusual for attendants at gas stations to pump your gas. The
signage on the roads is in general excellent, even in the rural areas.
Lots of directional signs for towns, sites of interest, bed and breakfast
establishments, and even a few other types of commercial activities, all of
standard sizes and colors put up by the government.
There’s a chuckle here, though.
Sometime you’ll see a sign saying something like Limerick 25 km.
One kilometer later another sign will say Limerick 25 km.
Oddly, distances are posted in kilometers while speed limits are in miles
per hour. An
exception to the excellence of the signage can be found in the west in those
areas where the first language is Irish…the signs are in Irish as well and are
indecipherable. There
are very few automobiles with automatic transmissions.
And the excise taxes on autos can double the cost of a passenger car. Homes In
general people take much more pride in and care of the appearance of their homes
both in the towns and in the rural areas than is found in the US or other
countries I've visited.
Nicer homes have exceptionally large and numerous windows in view of the
climate. Mammy I
had always assumed the term “Mammy” originated in the American south.
Some Irish use it where Americans would say “Mom” or “Mommy” and
I guess it must have originated in that part of the world. Farming While
we saw (and smelled) lots of cattle and sheep, we didn’t see one pig and only
a very few chickens.
I was told pigs are being raised hygienically and I guess the same is
true of chickens. I
was surprised at what a relatively small percentage of the land has been put to
the plow as opposed to being used for pasturage. Flowers The
profusion of flowers is almost overwhelming.
For example, fuchsias which we look upon as something rather exotic grow
wild and form hedgerows six to seven feet high.
Crocosmia, a plant with a very high density of brilliant orange blossoms
grows in almost equal abundance.
I couldn’t even find out what most of the wildflowers are that we saw,
but there were more than a hundred varieties.
Heather is prominent and has a slightly tart aroma reminiscent of dill
weed.
Floral decoration of homes and pubs is the norm.
Lots of hanging baskets as well as plantings, and the most brilliant of
these are roses and dahlias. Pubs The
atmosphere in pubs is quite distinct from that in bars in the U.S.
They are family gathering places with kids running in and out and a very
friendly atmosphere toward all. |