I'm taking this from my journal, which I tried to write on every day.
April 29, 2016
So
the first flight to Ireland (from Phoenix to Philly) I sat next to a man and his wife and he almost never
even looked at me, let alone say anything. Boring. I hoped for an
interesting person to sit next to going out of Philly and lucked out.
He was a very nice married man named Eamon who was going to Philly to
his wife. They commute back and forth from Ireland. Anywho, he gave
me some great helpful hints and even a free book. We talked about
Ireland and movies and he told me places to see and eat in Dublin, (several of which we availed ourselves).
I
was pretty thrashed so I fell asleep halfway through the Mr. Whicher
movie I saw, and only saw half of Tomorrowland. There was a not bad
dinner and some not bad snacks as well, and all the movies were free.
We could have our pick of probably 200 movies, but it took a LONG
time to get to the right one. Sitting next to the window wouldn't
have helped me in the least since we were always above a dense cloud
cover the whole time. I sat in the center of the central section.
May 1,
2016
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| Murt and Mum (actually he has my gift of $5 in pennies at the end of the trip. |
We
arrived in the morning at Dublin and met our little Trip Troll, Murt
O'Shea (that's a tongue-in-cheek moniker, by the way). He was bald as a bowling ball and quite salty—maybe because
he'd had to shepherd loony Americans around for 33 years, enduring
their Leprechaun quips and stupid questions. I ended up asking a few
of my own stupid questions and really getting slammed for it in a
sort of half playful way.
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| The Harp Bridge in Dublin |
Anywho,
we drove all over Dublin while he rattled off names of bridges and
who they were named after and why. I sure learned a lot more about
the 1916 uprising and the IRA and Ireland's struggles to get England
to let them go.
Apparently
they had the centennial of getting their government back the day
before we got there. So the Poblacht na H eirrian (spelling might bite) or Declaration
of Independence was all over the place.
We ended up
at the Guinness factory/museum. I personally couldn't have cared less
about the place. We didn't actually see people making the stuff. It
was a huge Drink-Our-Beer push. But I did promise my friend Dave Liddell that
I'd buy someone a drink. We got a free drink token, though, so I went
up to some stranger and gave him mine.
I did take
some nice pictures of the skyline from up there.
What I
really wanted to do was go see Christchurch, where Strongbow's tomb
lay, along with lots of Viking artifacts. Unfortunately I couldn't
get anyone else to go. However, right next to our hotel Meyrick was
the National Irish Museum. Turns out just me and Mom went at first. I
took a bazillion pictures in there. There were whole rooms of ancient
coins, costumes, cottage furniture, silver, jewelry, suits of shogun
armor, and a whole arm for the 1916 uprising. It was cool we found
that place. Everybody else went to go get drunk or sleep. My sisters
went to find a phone store to buy new cards for their phones. They
came later, though, and I took them back through, seeing more of the
stuff I missed before. Very cool. Wah. I want my pictures.
 |
| Their Declaration of Independence |
That night we Kleinmans (K's) and several of the other ladies ate in a pub near the
hotel. It was the first place in Ireland I played my tin whistle. I,
the intrepid (or maybe foolishly lucky) one, tried the seafood tray. It wasn't my
favorite, but it was okay and filling.
Afterwards
everybody else went to bed. I went out on the town with Cathy and
Frank, both really dingy people...:o) We meshed well. At this writing, I don't know their
last names. Anyway we walked around and took bridge pictures but didn't find
a good place to listen to music.
May 2,
2016
We
hopped aboard Murt's Ark and he took us down to Connamara. On the way
he talked about how he doesn't believe in fairies, but he does
believe in Whitethorn trees. Apparently when people lost a baby,
they'd bury the little one beneath a whitethorn because the thorns
would keep the wolves away. And fairies were supposed to take care of
the baby. So the whitethorn tree is sacred to Ireland. In fact, when
they were building one of the major motorways, they refused to cut
down the tree and eventually built the road AROUND the tree.
 |
| Some of the lovely wares at Connamara Marbleworks |
First
we went to the Connamara marbleworks, and then to Kylemore, an abbey
and erstwhile exclusive girl's school. It was beautiful and had
lovely grounds. I snuck up the stairs in the bothy (despite the sign)
and saw the place where the rest of the under gardeners slept. Now
it's storage for extra pots.
 |
| The little chapel at Kylemore |
I
spent most of the time on my own. I don't know how I kept losing
everyone, but I did. Maybe it's because I wanted to see things they
didn't care about and vice versa.
 |
| Gardens at Kylemore with the bothy in the back. |
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| Green velvet everywhere! |
On
the way to Galway (our next stopping place) we were going up Galway
bay. Lots of peat bogs and hippity hop lambs dotting the verdant
grassland. Apparently every foot of grazing land had to be reclaimed
from the rocks and bogs by digging out the rocks and using them to
build fences, and by draining and adding seaweed to the sandy soil.
Back-breaking toil.
 |
| I forget where this was taken |
We
learned that there were a couple of towns, whose names escape me. The
road between them is called The Road of Tears. Apparently, during The
Hunger, (Potato Famines) one of the towns was starving to death. The
people heard that a shipment of wheat had come to the other town from
America, so they started walking. They walked and walked, many of
them dying along the way, of starvation and exposure. Unfortunately,
when they arrived at the other town, the people there told them that
the word of food had been only a rumor. So all they could do was go
back to the first town. On the way all of them died. Only a few who
had not gone walking survived.
 |
| Road of Tears |
So
apparently the American Indians from the Trail of Tears heard about their
plight, and since they shared so many tears, they sent food to the
survivors. Thus that tribe is beloved of Ireland. In fact they love
America for all the help they did during that time and later,
standing by them.
 |
| Tying a rag on the rag tree |
Also
on the way we saw a Rag Tree, which is a whitethorn full of rags of
clothing taken from sick people to hopefully heal them.
One
of the biggest pains of the trip was that the bus swayed so much that
I was always desperately fighting sleep. And I really wanted to hear
everything that Murt was saying and see everything going past. I
tried to take a picture of every tor and ruin. Many of them became
"Dangit" pics because they went past way too fast to make a decent
picture.
 |
| The red and white one is Blake's |
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| I don't know the band but they only played two Irish songs--the rest American |
Mom and Janelle went back to go to bed, so Lisa, Ju, and I went on. The place across the street was playing great music, but the girls wouldn't stay. I think they were the Chieftains, just having a jamb. I could be wrong, but they sure looked like them. It would have been cool to play with them.
Anywho,
we went back and to bed.
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