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JULY 5, 2007, Clonakilty, Co. Cork.
It has been so windy out today. We arrived in Clonakilty yesterday evening. The hotel and the room are very nice and the restaurant/bar downstairs serves great food. We have a view from our window of an old Presbyterian church that is now the post office. Yesterday we drove from Co. Wexford onto and through Co. Waterford . We stopped at Tintern Abbey. That was such an amazing place. It gave me chills to be walking in ruins from circa 1200! I guess it was turned into a residence sometime in the 1700s. We took some cool pictures of the inside of this gigantic place and of the grounds. There is also the ruins of an old church and an old cemetery further back on the property. I was going around trying to take pictures of as many Celtic crosses as I could for my brother (who has thought about getting a tattoo of a Celtic cross) and wants to see what the designs look like. We also stopped at the Waterford Factory. We got a couple of beautiful vases. They are shipping it to Oregon (afternote: It took those vases at least 2 months to finally get to us! ) and I hope it all arrives in one piece (literally)! We turned on the radio yesterday and found a station around here that plays nothing but Irish music and only Gaelic is spoken over the air. We are hearing lots of Gaelic being spoken around here (esp. in pubs) and it is such a beautiful language. I would love to learn it!
Today we drove down to Skibbereen. Skibbereen was one of the hardest hit areas in all of Ireland in terms of the Great Famine (1845-1850). At least 1 million died in all of Ireland. We went to the Heritage Center where there is a display on the famine. It was very interesting and extremely sad and somber. Then we drove a little further down the road and found the graveyard where there are mass graves and burial pits from the Famine. Approximately 9,000 bodies were put into these mass graves. It was disturbing to walk around that cemetery. It made me want to cry. It was also a very grey and rainy day.
We also drove to Kinsale and went to Desmond Castle, which wasn’t anything very special, in my opinion. It was built around 1500. Kinsale was originally a wine port. Surprisingly, wine is sort of a big thing in Ireland. Anyways, the castle in the 1600s was a customs house and then was a jail at some point when the Spanish invaded. There was also a display on Irish influence on wine.
Larry drives us all around these narrow (and sometimes extremely curvy) roads for most of the day. I sometimes feel like we are going to crash and I am going to die..it can be a little scary!! We then end up coming back in time for dinner in whatever town we are staying in. We are both pretty tired, but still in awe of this amazing place! We are going to Co. Kerry tomorrow. We are staying in Anascaul (Dingle Peninsula) for 2 nights. Clonakilty sort of seems like a hippie town. Lots of organic stuff and holistic medicine practitioners, etc, which is pretty cool. Oh yea, we also went to an old stone circle (Drombeg Stone Circle) On the Winter Solstice, the moon (or is it the sun? I’m confused) casts a shadow on the two tallest upright stones/spheres.
July 9, 2007, Inisheer/Co. Galway:
We are waiting in a pub on the Island of Inisheer (One of the Aran Islands) for the 3 o’clock ferry to take us to Inishmaan, where we are staying for 3 nights. Inishmaan is the least populated of the three islands. The weather sucks right now (Gee..in Ireland? No way! It’s like being in Oregon for 9 months of the year!) Rainy, cold, windy…It’s weird, though, because the past several days have been sunny and blue. It seems appropriate to spend time on a rugged, sparsely populated island in the Atlantic with this sort of weather. Larry and I will have to cozy up to one another The ferry ride from Doolin to here was interesting. I found out that I don’t get seasick (neither does Larry) and the boat was REALLY moving all around. Unfortunately, about 1 out of every 3 people on the ferry with us were puking into plastic bags (provided by the ferry, of course!) I felt sorry for them and was glad not to be one of them!! We just took a little tour of this island in a horse-driven cart. Our tour guide was a young guy named Ron. Ron didn’t have much to say. The tour highlights were two schools and a cargo ship that ran ashore in the 1960s, plus tons of ANCIENT stone walls.
I need to back up a few days: We left Clonakilty and drove to Co. Kerry, which turned out to be very, very beautiful (despite the teeth-grinding done in the car because of the treacherous roads)..Larry really has been such a great driver. I’ve been a neurotic, tense passenger at points but I am trying to relax. Co. Kerry was full of water and we drove up into the Shehy Mountains (I think that is what they were called)…Stunning views from up there. We arrived in Anascaul and checked into our B&B was run by Moira Spillane. She was very nice (I even took her picture)…We ate both nights at a good restaurant (actually, it was really the ONLY real restaurant in Anascaul) called the “Old Anchor”…then we ended up at a pub and participated in a pub quiz. The people on our team were really friendly. I talked to this one dude about music, etc. A lot of the questions were about Irish history or current Irish affairs so Larry and I couldn’t provide much help! At the end of the night was a raffle. Larry bought some tickets and then the person in charge at one point asked me to draw the final raffle ticket of the night and read it out loud. Lo and Behold, I actually picked out LARRY’s ticket!! We won a bottle of white wine (which we gave to Moira) and a bag of crisps. So, we’ve been driving through lots of beautiful countryside. I’ve been in charge of the map and I think I’ve done a good job of getting us to our next destination. Last night we stayed in Ballyvaughan, which was a cute little town but not very memorable. I remember that Larry bought a pair of nice cufflinks in a shop and I bought a pretty shirt. I also remember the bacon and cabbage I had for dinner. Yum! I think I fell asleep before 10 o’clock (I’d had a couple of drinks..ha ha!) I had nightmarish sort of dreams for some reason. Larry and I both have claddagh rings now, which is sweet. I bought his for him and he bought mine for me. I’m currently full of hot chocolate and a toastie (ham and cheese grilled sandwich with tomato) and feel like napping. Instead I will continue to read Maura Murphy’s “Don’t Wake Me At Doyle’s” which is a great memoir. Oh, we visited the Cliffs of Moher yesterday. They were very pretty but it was VERY crowded and a little underwhelming, I thought.
