Bonny Ireland

At last, photos from our trip are available!

We took a red-eye flight to New York, and then, since we had 14 hours till our flight to the Emerald Isle, we decided to jet up to Burlington VT for a few hours so Doc could visit his former colleagues and students.

My darlin' friend C picked us up at the airport, and took us to one of Doc's favorite restaurants on Church Street where we had brunch. Then we dropped him off at UVM where he used to teach medical students, and C and I went shopping for her wedding dress. Glory Hallelujah, she's getting married in 2 months, and I'm excited to be going to the much-anticipated event! More on that in May.

All too soon our time was up. Three hours can really fly...though my kids would disagree with you every Sunday morning from 9-12. We headed back to the airport only to discover that there was a ground-stop in NYC on air traffic due to fog (!) Our flight was now supposed to be delayed for three hours!

This was not good news. If there had been even the slightest hint of that being a possibility, we'd never have flown up to Burlington in the first place. If we missed our flight to Ireland night, it would skew our entire trip (rental car, hostel reservations etc), essentially force us to cancel. I assure you there were some fervent prayers offered up, coupled with a lot of imagining the fog lifting in NYC. Because of this, I almost wasn't surprised when they suddenly announced that we'd been cleared to go. We boarded quickly, and made it onto our connecting flight without problem.

The flight was grand, and we landed in Shannon, Ireland at dawn. It was misty, windy and chilly, but we hit the ground running. No rest for the weary! After renting our cute little car, we set off to see the wild western-Ireland countryside: This trip completely altered our perception of what Ireland must be like. First, I'm here to tell you that the whole shamrock thing is a big crock. Every time we were near a patch of green, I looked for them. I asked people about them. And I searched high and low for them. Not One Single Shamrock was seen the entire time we were there! Now, of course I realize that a shamrock is just what we call clover over here...a common enough occurrence. But I really wanted to find an Irish shamrock to press between the pages of a book. No dice.

On the other hand, there were so many rainbows during our visit that tis nobody's fault but our own that we didn't return home with multiple pots of gold. Gator asked about it, and I had to explain that the Leprechauns are very very crafty about keeping those pots to themselves. Every time we got close to one, BAM! It would simply vanish. On Friday I decided to just count rainbows as we drove along...and I saw eleven of them that afternoon. There were undoubtedly more, but I didn't look out the back window for the ones behind us.We had a whirlwind 3 days during which we visited The Cliffs of Moher (which are featured on my spring blog banner ), The Burren (which is an other-worldly 100 sq. kilometer area of western Ireland that most closely reminded me of the lava fields in Hawaii), Conemara (National Park), the coastline, Galway City, several castles, lots of ruins, countless sheep and lots of cows.

We ate at 2 restaurants during our trip and I have to say, Ireland is ripe for reinvention culinarily-speaking. So if you're the type whose been searching, pondering and meditating on what the next hit reality tv show might be, there's a tip for ya. The rest of the time we consumed the simple food we'd brought with us or the items we picked up at the grocery store. The one exceptional dietary highlight was the nutty, seedy Irish bread we found. Good stuff!

To hear traditional Irish music, you must go to a pub at 10pm. That's when the music starts. As this was one of the stated goals for our trip, we went to pubs two of the nights. Our second day there was Good Friday, hence there was no liquor being sold in the entire country, and all pubs were closed. Everyone from our flight attendants, to our car rental agent, to our hostel proprietor warned us in advance to "stock up on alcohol" in advance of Good Friday, because it was illegal to sell alcohol that day. It was almost epidemic...like they couldn't make it 24 hours without a being poured a fresh pint of Guinnes. Ahh the Irish! They certainly love to drink. It seemed like the focal point of daily life. And they're especially fond of Guinnes. I've heard that among beers, it's one of the best, so good for them.

I've uploaded the rest of our pictures to my Flickr account for anyone who wants to take a look at them. Click here to see them.

I loved Ireland. I'm glad I've finally gotten there and hope I get to return again someday. My great-great grandparents immigrated from there in the 1800s, and though they hailed from Northern Ireland, I'm proud of my Irish heritage.