Ireland with Pam, driving on the wrong side of the road! -- October 24, 2010

Finally I am telling about Ireland, and I apologize that it seems to be taking so long. No excuses, except that I’d rather be traveling than recovering from a trip. Ireland was wonderful! My friends were unbelievably kind and fun, and I love my traveling companion Pam. We always have a great time together. Thank you, thank you. I treasure all these memories.

We decided to head north from Dublin to meet my online friend Paul and his family in Belfast, so that's how this will start. But Paul commented last week that it seemed I had enjoyed Denmark more than Sweden in my last journal entries, so I will say that it was the method of travel that was different, because both countries and the people I met were wonderful. In Denmark I traveled alone, and stayed with wonderful local Rotarians, so that was perfect for my rather independent but curious personality. In Sweden I also stayed with local people and they were great, I enjoyed them thoroughly and loved being part of their families. But during the daytimes I was part of a group as we toured the sights, ate together, attended meetings, wore our name tags and shook hands with host club members. I guess independent travel just suits me better.

Every time I travel, I learn something new. This time I had already bought two round-trip tickets before I finished planning this trip, to Frankfurt and then to Copenhagen. I had an extra week to wander before going to Germany to visit my grandchildren in Munich. So I found a great ticket to Dublin, Pam from London agreed to meet me there, and everything seemed fine. It never dawned on me that I screwed up until I was waiting for my flight out of Copenhagen, and noticed an SAS plane leaving for Dublin within the hour! I felt like an idiot because I would be waiting for hours at two airports before finally getting there. Pam arrived early so had to wait hours for me! Of course it didn’t matter to our trip and travelers are used to waiting, but I could have traveled faster and easier, and not spent more money if I had just bought one part at a time. Anyway there she was as I came out from customs! I hadn’t seen Pam for more than a year, and we were both excited to be adventuring together again!

I can't decide which photos to include in this entry, so I'm going to stick in a bunch of them, especially for those friends with slow internet connections who can't go visit the photo albums online:
Ireland the North -- http://picasaweb.google.com/kristinalaska/Europe2010Ireland1TheNorth#
Ireland the Republic -- http://picasaweb.google.com/kristinalaska/Europe2010Ireland2TheRepublic#

I had reserved a good deal on a small car and we had no problem picking it up… unsurprisingly it was very small indeed. Good thing, because several times we had to park in an itsy-bitsy spot or squeeze through some little spaces. Of course as an American, I am used to driving on the right, with the steering wheel on the left. As a proper Englishwoman, Pam is used to driving on the left. I was the driver on this trip, and I can’t count the number of times she had to gently remind me that I was on the wrong side of the road. In fact, she never got flustered at all (I love that woman!), even when two or three times we bumped the left curb, or the times I jerked the car back into the correct lane. No worries, no close calls, but the one-way signs are tiny in Ireland! Or there aren’t any at all. Once a kind woman even guided us out into the busy traffic as we exited from our wrong way drive. In fact, they must not spend a lot of money on highway signage in that country. Many times if we saw one sign, we had to have faith in it, because there might not be another sign down the road.

They had assured us on the phone that our destination was only twenty minutes from the Dublin airport and would be easy to find. So we squeezed our two small bags into the teeny trunk and got on the Motorway headed north, in the dark, in a strange weensy car, standard shift not automatic, using the rental agency map and following directions printed from the guesthouse’s website. We did find the town, and even located the right street. Then we cruised down the street, looking for the numbers, and back around the block, and up the street, and around several more blocks, until we finally met a woman walking along after her evening toddy, and she helped us. She knew exactly where we were headed and after giving us confusing directions, she squeezed herself into the back seat to guide us there. We had passed the place several times, but the numbers on one side of the street didn’t match those on the other side, and although our guesthouse had a red door we didn’t see a sign. Our new friend said she would go and find the owner for us. But she couldn’t get out of the car! Pam had to push while I pulled, and finally the poor woman popped out of the back seat, which obviously was not meant for an adult! After ringing several times and slipping into a shadowy back door, sure enough she found our man, whom my customs agent at the airport had praised to the skies, saying he would take good care of us. The customs guy also said a wonderful pub would be just a few doors down. Right now I will admit that in our absolutely fabulous, wonderful, memorable, and perfect visit to Ireland, not even once did Pam and I enter a pub. I know people will find that unbelievable and even bordering on stupid, but chalk it up to our age. Instead of going out at night we just went to sleep!

For many years Pam has run a charity for Romanian children, so the next day as we drove along the coast to Dundalk, she wanted to find a friend who runs another Romanian charity. When we saw a sign to Blackrock, she said “that rings a bell”, so we turned to the lovely seaside town. Somehow we did manage to find her friend Conor Hughes of Cross Cause. This man is the epitome of community service, doing amazing work both in his own town and in the Romanian village of Continesti. It was an honor to meet him and was great fun to see these old friends together again. Both of them are examples to all of us of what good people can do. (http://www.crosscause.ie/)

By the time we crossed into Northern Ireland it was rush hour, but we finally made it to Paul and Pat’s house in time for dinner. These friends have been writing to me for years, and I couldn’t wait to see them. Along with their friend Bernice, they hosted us for several incredible days. One day I made a presentation to a class at the school where Pat works, and was delighted that the children were so interested and had so many questions about Alaska.

Paul showed us all around Belfast and was a fabulous guide, I got many good photos of the Peace Wall and the city, as we heard stories about The Troubles. I admit that much of it was new to me. Another day he drove us all around Northern Ireland on a whirlwind tour along the windy coastal road. We went to castles, the hanging bridge, the tiniest church, the Bush Mills distillery, the Giant’s Causeway, we saw everything! And all day Paul was singing beautiful Irish ballads, what a gorgeous voice he has! (Hey, please! …record a cd for me!) We stayed in Bernice’s lovely guest room and managed to learn to navigate around our new neighborhood. These people are such dear friends, they opened their homes and their hearts to us, eager to share the history and culture of their world. I hope that someday they can come to visit me and I can do the same for them. Maybe they’ll also go see Pam in London, it’s much closer. I love it when my friends meet each other and enlarge our warm circle.

Eventually we had to move on if we wanted to see more of Ireland during our short week. We drove west to Derry (formerly Londonderry), to Donegal, and then south to Sligo. It was a lovely drive, so we stopped now and then to take pictures, to have a relaxing lunch, walk around a bit and generally act like tourists. We thought we could easily find a bed and breakfast for the night at some likely place along the way. It wasn’t that easy, and we had to try half a dozen before we found a nice one that we could afford. I guess those days of seat of the pants travel and relying on serendipity might gradually be fading for us. Fortunately our lovely room did have internet so I could make better reservations for the next nights! Our host even brought us a hot pot for coffee in the morning and red wine for our evening pleasure. We were very happy that we found this place!

We contacted my friend Mary who lives just south of Galway, and agreed to go there for dinner with her the next day, and then continue to the far west where we would overnight on the south coast of Connemara. I’ve known Mary since she was a young girl in Alaska, so it was lovely to finally see her and her daughter Lily in Ireland. It was especially fun that another guest for dinner was a man from Romania! (sorry he's not here, but he took the picture!)

We understood that our B&B would be about one hour west of Galway, but we had no idea that the area was so remote. Once we turned off the main road we were getting nervous when the lane got narrower and less maintained, very few houses around, and as usual there were few signs. But when we eventually found our destination, we couldn’t have been happier! For anyone who wants to get away from the crowds, to see the rugged Ireland of old story tales, to get to the country of lakes, mountains, and windy coastlines… well, this is it. We loved it all, the peat fires, the walks, the lovely hosts and their adorable children, the cozy house with comfy guest lounge, and the other interesting visitors. This is certainly a destination where we would like to return.

The next day we made the cross-country drive back to Dublin, and parked the car north of the city so we could take the public bus downtown and walk around. Pam had been here before, so we just walked around the streets, crossed a couple of bridges and browsed in shops along the way. Neither of us is crazy about cities, so we were happy to get back to our car and head back to Skerries on the east coast to end our week at the same place where we started it, at the guesthouse with the red door. This is the Red Bank Guesthouse, and the restaurant really is in a converted bank. The vault holds the wine cellar, the back office is a lovely private lounge with fireplace where we could have a before-dinner drink, and the exclusive gourmet meals are prepared by our host Terry Cowan, who turns out to be quite a famous chef. It was a lovely way to end our trip, walking along the seashore before we took our little car back to the airport.

Pam would go home to London while I continued to Munich to see my son Peter and his kids Miriam, Zarah, and Janek.
Next stop: Germany.