Our Wee Trip to Ireland

 

From Strange Lands, a poem by Billy Collins

 

The photographs of the summer trip are spread

across the table now like little mirrors

reflecting our place in European history.

 

They are the booty of travel, bordered and colorful,

split seconds that we pass to friends after dinner

one by one to make them believe we really found

some sweet elsewhere, away from here.

 

 

Our Wee Trip to Ireland, Fall 2024

 

October 29^th and 30^th, Tuesday and Wednesday

We boarded  our American Airlines flight mid-day at XNA, connecting in Charlotte, NC for another AA flight to London-Heathrow, flying through the night to catch a morning British Airways flight to Dublin, arriving about noon Dublin-time.

We got enough sleep on the plane to carry on for a time in Dublin. Turns out that sleeping as much as possible on that flight over really does help to adjust to local time in Ireland and minimize jet lag because they are six hours earlier. Otherwise, you will want to go to bed for the night while it is still daytime. (The principle is: you try to sleep when the people at your destination are sleeping.) We picked up our rental car at the airport, checked into our airport-area hotel (The Clayton Airport Hotel) and drove to the Howth Peninsula where Dublin meets the coast of the Irish Sea. This is Bob’s introduction into driving on the left side of the road. Baptism by fire, so to speak, after some brief coaching by the rental agency staff. At least Howth is not as crazy with traffic as the city center of Dublin.

Our friend, Richy McCusker, had recommended the area and a good seafood restaurant. But first, a wee pint at O’Connell’s Pub in Howth. Then to Octopussy, Richy’s favorite, right along the pier where they bring in fish for the restaurants daily (there is a seafood market right next door), and you look out over the sea of masts from the boats in the harbor. Wonderful people and food at Octopussy—seafood chowder, fish and chips, shrimp and mussels, etc.

 

October 31^st, Thursday

After a night’s sleep at the Clayton Airport Hotel, we are up and cruising out the north bypass of Dublin headed southwest towards Dingle in County Kerry in the west of Ireland, as they say. For much
of the way, the roads are equivalent to our interstate system, which gives me time to adjust my brain to driving on the left.

As we reached County Kerry, we decided to take the scenic route over Conor Pass and see the Conor Pass Waterfall. Well, the waterfall was not that impressive (small), but the road was a trip! Very narrow and winding. When a car came from the other direction, you had to hope to find a place with a side spot to pull over to get out of the way. It was a one-lane road with no shoulder, bordered by boulders, with only an occasional wide spot in the road to get out of the way. Fortunately, the most perilous part only lasted a few kilometers. Very exciting …

We came down from the mountains of the Dingle Peninsula into Dingle itself and checked into a wonderful B&B called Dingle Marina Lodge, right across from the harbor overlooking Dingle Bay.

After walking around town a bit, we ate some appetizers at a fancy-pants place called Solas. It was an upscale wine place that served elegant and tasty pastries with meat and herbs. Very good, but very expensive with kind of a snooty atmosphere. So, we called that good for dinner and headed out to find a pub. We walked all the way up to Neligan’s because it was on Richy’s list for good sessions. There was one older guy sitting in the corner with some uillean pipes, which got me quite excited, but no other musicians appeared. After we finished our drinks, I went over and asked him if there would be a session tonight. He said they’d had a dozen musicians the night before and he was hoping for another session tonight, but you just never know. We finally gave up and headed back towards our B&B to find another pub on the way.

Bob Griffin’s Bar did not disappoint. The pub was crowded, and the music was coming from a tiny

room just to the right as you entered the front door. We squeezed in to have a listen to a very good

fiddler,  Jeremy Spencer (not of Fleetwood Mac fame), with lots of rosin dust collected over the top of his fiddle. He was accompanied by Matt Griffin playing a nylon string guitar. The accompaniment was vigorous with lots of fast changes using alternative chords, but did not seem to be DADGAD or other open tuning. The only tune all night that I thought I recognized was “The Sailor’s Bonnet”. I afterwards asked if that was the name of it and the fiddler looked up, surprised, and said, “ah, there’s the man!”

To our left was a man, his wife, and daughter sitting around a small table in the corner of the small room. He invited Julie, and then me, to join them for a seat. We had a wonderful conversation for the rest of the night with them as the musicians pounded out the Irish fiddle tunes. Sean was his name, with his wife, Joanne, and teenage daughter, Amy, from Co. Tipperary. Joanne is a schoolteacher. Amy goes in the summer to the west of Ireland--like Americans go to summer camp--but Irish kids go to learn to speak Irish.

We talked politics. They are very keen on American politics, and can’t stand Donald Trump, so they were keen to talk to us since it was only five days before the election. We felt as though we had made some new friends. Julie and Joanne bonded over teaching. Amy told us some about her student life. At one point a guy behind me who had overheard our political discussion, announced that he had dual citizenship and had early voted for Donald Trump. This was something like a public challenge to me, I felt. As I turned to try a diplomatic response, I noticed a look on his face that did not quite fit the challenging statement. His wife was cringing beside him. It turns out that he was pulling my leg in that Irish humor sort of way, and we soon were getting to know he and his wife as well. Just part of the pub craic.

 

November 1^st, Friday

We woke up to a lovely homemade breakfast downstairs at Dingle Marina Lodge. Scrambled eggs and bacon, boxty (traditional Irish potato fritters/pancakes), fresh smoked salmon (tasty, but cold and a little mushy), etc. We loved everything about the Dingle Marina Lodge. Orla, the lady behind the help desk, was friendly and helpful.

We took a brief shopping tour along the main drag in Dingle. I stopped into a place that Richy had mentioned called Foxy John’s Bar & Hardware while the pub was quite dead—three old guys sipping on Guiness together at the bar and the owner. No music, not even recorded music playing. He asked me if he could help me. I said, “No, I’m just stepping in to see the place because my Irish friend in America recommended it. Perhaps I’ll be back later.” The three old guys looked at me curiously and one said, “I think maybe your friend was just winding you up.”

We started out in the car for a self-tour of the Dingle Peninsula on a remote road called Slea Head Drive. Robyn had Rick Steve’s Ireland book in hand, calling out the upcoming sites with our odometer synced to Rick’s odometer readings. That worked out well and we saw not only beautiful scenery, but some incredible ancient ruins—such as Cathair ui Mhurchu Cashel Murphy, a settlement of five rock

“beehive” huts, the whole surrounded by a rock wall. Some of the beehive huts, or clochans (named for their shape), are still totally intact after thousands of years due to the intricate rock placement, despite the complete absence of any kind of mortar. Several features are aligned with the sun at the Equinox and date back 5,200 years from present. Many of these types of relics sit on private farmland.  
This site was behind the corral where a farmer was gathering his sheep. Five shepherd dogs made sure we did not step towards their beloved sheep.

Another ruin was the Reask Monastic Site in the north-central part of the Dingle Peninsula. These are ruins of a community of Christian monks from the 500’s AD, not that long after St. Patrick himself (late 400’s AD).

The entire Dingle Peninsula was scenically spectacular and well worth the time—amazing views of Dingle Bay, offshore islands, rugged coast, and the Atlantic Ocean. Not to mention skinny roads, farms, and brightly painted sheep (each farmer paints his sheep with his own bright colors and patterns. Apparently, the paint can be washed off at shearing time.

That night, after some lovely stew, we got a table at John Benny Moriarty’s Pub to hear again the fiddling of Jeremy Spencer, this time with Gerry O’Beirn playing the 12-string guitar (in open G tuning with a drop C bass) on the fiddle tunes and six-string guitar (in standard tuning) on the songs. He reminded me, both in his playing and in his songs, of the American songwriter, Michael Peter Smith, from Chicago. I mentioned this during a break, and he said he was not familiar with Michael Smith’s music, but he had been told that by others. The third one in the trio that night was a lady, Eilis Kennedy, who sang, in both English and Irish Gaelic, and played pennywhistle and Irish flute. We bought CDs from each of them. Although it was a fairly intimate setting, they were amplified—the only amplified music we heard the entire trip.

November 2^nd, Saturday

After another wonderful breakfast, we said goodbye to our hosts at Dingle Marina Lodge and did one

more quick shopping trip walking the streets of Dingle. We then hit the road north for Doolin in County Clare. As we drove along Shannon Bay in northern Co. Kerry, we came across an old castle, five stories high, called Carrigafoyle Castle, that looks out at Carrig Island in the estuary where the River Shannon meets the Atlantic Ocean. Built in the 1400’s AD by a local Irish chief, Conor Liath O’Connor. He would have his men to intercept ships sailing up-river to deliver goods to Limerick and Shannon and demand a percentage of the value of the cargo.( I think we call that extortion.) It has been abandoned since 1580 when the rebel Earl of Desmond, supported by Irish and Spanish troops, was defeated by the British under Queen Elizabeth I. This is one of many historical sites out in the countryside that are not staffed or restored. There is not so much as a port-a-potty on site (so I had to pee behind one of the outer walls).

We decided to save some driving by crossing the Shannon on a ferry from Tarbert, Co. Kerry to Killimer, Co. Clare. Then it was on past Kilrush and Donald Trump’s golf club at Doonbeg to the lovely little town of Milltown Malbay, home of the famous uilleann piper, Willie Clancy (1918-1973). Since 1973, they have held here, in early July, the annual Willie Clancy Summer School and Music Festival in his honor, with teaching workshops for all instruments used in Irish music, plus dance.

We stopped at Cogan’s Restaurant to meet the proprietor, Tony Cogan. Robyn worked with Tony’s cousin, Mick, for many years at BNSF Railroad in Ft. Worth, TX. Once Robyn introduced herself, Tony became very animated and wanted pictures and insisted we sit down for a drink and some food.  

He served us a pint and some delicious root-vegetable chowder with brown soda bread that was equally wonderful. At no charge. When Robyn protested, Tony said, “I’ll put it on Mick’s bill next time he is in.” Tony was one of so many delightful Irish people that we met over the course of our visit who were

so keyed-in to American politics. This was three days before the election. I mentioned to him that we voted early and not for the owner of the golf course just 16 kilometers south down the road at Doonbeg. I asked Tony if he ever played golf there. He said, “I wouldn’t walk through the front door.”

Tony asked, “There are 334 million people in America. Is Donald Trump the best you could come up with?” Then he mentioned the two assassination attempts on Trump and asked, “You had two perfectly good opportunities to do away with him; is that the best you Americans can do?” To which I asked, “So do you think an Irishman would have got him the first time?” To which Tony replied, “A drunk Irishman . . . with one eye closed.”

We made our way northward to our B&B for the next two nights, Glasha Meadows, in the countryside between Doolin and Lisdoonvarna (yes, yes, on The Road to Lisdoonvarna). The B&B is in a very rural setting across the road from a working farm, 3 kilometers from Doolin (less than 2 miles; 1.6 km/mile) and 6 kilometers from Lisdoonvarna.

We made our way to the far side of Doolin on Fisher St. to Gus O’Conner’s Pub. There were three fellows playing tunes on button accordion, tenor/plectrum banjo, and Irish flute. After a time, they called an older gentleman up to sing a song with them. That is when we first laid eyes on Harry.

Harry Hurst of Doolin, Co. Clare, formerly of upper Co. Kildare just to the west of Dublin, is a 75-year

old retired contractor that built houses for most of his career.  He was now part of the local color of Doolin.  A lover of music and craic. A singer. A songwriter. A pub dweller. A lovely human being as far as I can tell. A devotee of Pete Seeger. He also sings songs of Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, and the Clancy Brothers. But Pete Seeger taught him that Harry, too, can write songs about his own life and times. And it is not necessary to compose new melodies every time. Pete learned that from Woody Guthrie. So, Harry composed his song about Donald Trump on the model of an old folk song called, “I Was Born Ten Thousand Years Ago”, that I first heard from Doc Watson’s first album. Harry always ends one of his unaccompanied songs by raising his glass in the air.

 Harry indicates that he has spent a lot of time in the pubs over the years. He said that, in his younger years, he could easily knock down ten or more pints in an evening. And if he started in the afternoon on a weekend, he was known to demolish 20 pints in one day. But then he realized he was not demolishing the pints; the pints were demolishing him. Nowadays, Harry will first order a pint of water, then drink it down to half. Then he will order a glass of wine and pour it into his half-pint of water and sip on it slowly. He calls it “turning water into wine”. It is a matter of his survival--he already is running along with the help of a pacemaker. The wine trick allows him to join the pub craic without destroying himself.

Harry sang—unaccompanied—whenever there was a break in the action, all from memory, all without missing a beat, all on pitch, and with a nice, strong voice. The entire pub quieted down as he sang his songs (which they did not do while the instruments played). He sang his own songs, like “The World’s Biggest Liar” and “Oh, To Be In Doolin”. He sang American folk songs like Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”, songs from Bob Dylan and Michael Peter Smith, even the anti-war song “No More Waltzing Matilda For Me”. He also did more traditional songs, like “Come By the Hills”. It demonstrated that a singer who is not an instrument player can pull off practically any song as an unaccompanied ballad if done well, even in a rowdy pub.

We stayed and sang along with Harry until they kicked us out of Gus O’Conner’s at closing time.

 

November 3^rd, Sunday

After a nice breakfast (not as good as Dingle Marina Lodge), we headed over to see the Cliffs of Moher,

only a ten-minute drive from Doolin  (11 km from our B&B). The drive over was quite scenic itself. The day was breezy and partly sunny, not at all unpleasant. In fact, it had not really rained, so far, the entire trip. We saw yet another castle rising up out of the countryside on the road over to the Cliffs. The Cliffs themselves were spectacular. I’m not sure I would bother with them during the height of the tourist season and fight the throngs to see them. But we were glad to experience them in the offseason.

Afterwards, we headed back towards our B&B on the other side of Doolin and then decided to make a quick trip to Lisdoonvarna. “The Road to Lisdoonvarna” was perhaps the first Irish fiddle tune I ever learned, back around 1980 or so, from a recording of a live concert of The Chieftains. Now, 45 years later, we play it at every session in Fayetteville and every show of The McCloud’s Ceili Band at Crisis Brewing. I had no choice. We hit the road to Lisdoonvarna for a little lunch; it was only a few minutes away from our B&B.

We ate at the Irish Arms Pub in Lisdoonvarna. The menu was typical of the pubs and restaurants we visited throughout Ireland. Usually, a root vegetable soup/chowder (actually, more of a bisque) and usually, a “roast of the day”—one day, roast beef, another roast lamb, another roast pork, another duck, etc. The meal was quite good. Julie had an Irish coffee with hers. The owner or manager was friendly and talkative once we got him engaged. Being two days before the US election, that is where the conversation went as soon as he heard our accent. He asked what part of America we hailed from. As soon as we said, “Arkansas/Oklahoma”, he replied like nearly everyone else, “Arkansas? Ah . . . Bill Clinton!” They all know about Bill Clinton because he brokered the Good Friday Peace Accords that brought an end to The Troubles--a forty-year violent struggle between Catholics and Protestants, especially in Northern Ireland. All of Ireland, it seems, is watching the US election to be held two days from now. Here is the local news broadcast (in Gaelic) from our B&B:

After a nice return trip down tiny backroads (most of the roads seem like backroads), we re-grouped atour B&B, then headed to McGann’s Pub in Doolin where our new friend, Harry, promised to meet us. The featured musician at McGann’s was Blackie O’Connell, a renowned uillean pipes player local to Doolin, but who has toured around the globe, including Broadway and Carnegie Hall (according to my internet search). You can find lots of clips of Blackie on YouTube. The uillean pipes look like an armload of plumbing with two bags attached and have an otherworldly sound to them that I cannot describe; they can only be experienced. They are quintessentially Irish but are not common in most bands or sessions because they are so damn hard to play and take so many years to master.

 

Blackie had with him an Irish harp player and another lady who played bodhrán and sang vocals on a few songs. The two ladies had never played together before but blended quite well. Of course, they invited Harry up to sing a song or two, and another of their friends in the audience sang an unaccompanied song from her table in the pub. We also met Harry’s good friend, Pascal, and Pascal’s wife, Helen. Pascal and Helen retired to Doolin after a lifetime in Dublin where Pascal worked in an ice cream factory (maybe Murphy’s, we saw their shops several times). I mentioned that I already had Harry’s song being shared on FaceBook. And that, perhaps, I could help Harry publish his Trump song (I suggested the title, “The World’s Biggest Liar”) and help make him famous. With a twinkle in his eye and slight smile on his lips, Pascal said, “It’s true that I am retired, but I still am looking for some work. I’m Harry’s agent you know--don’t forget about me.”

After the band finished up, we sat and visited with our new Irish friends as well as some who were visiting from various points of the globe. One was a musician and studio producer who was coming off a band tour of Australia. He asked Robyn to dance with him earlier in the evening. We talked with he and his wife, both from the States. Another was a European businessman there on holiday.

Harry sang several unaccompanied songs, including some we knew, like "The Dutchman"  (I later figured out that Liam Clancy of the Clancy Brothers had recorded it), and some we didn’t. One of my favorites  was a traditional song, “Come By the Hills” which includes a recitation of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”, a poem by William Butler Yeats, an Irish hero of the arts. Harry also sang a song that he put to music from a poem about Doolin. Before the night was over, we had experienced firsthand the song he sang:

Oh, to be in Doolin on any given day

               a stranger can become a friend in that special Doolin way

You can go down to McDermott’s as the evening it descends

               And you get that special feeling when you sit down with your friend

(Note: when you read or sing the lyrics to any Irish song, make sure you leave out the “h” anytime it is written “th”; so “with” is “wit” and “thoughts” is “toughts”.)

By the end of the night, the manager and crew of McGann’s were trying to close and only reluctantly agreed to one last round at Harry’s coaxing. (I suspect they tolerate Harry because he is good for business during the tourist season.) Finally, they shooed us out the door: Julie, Robyn, and I, Harry, Pascal and Helen, and a young American couple that had joined us near the end. Harry continued with his songs out on the sidewalk in front of the pub. Of course, he reprised his “The World’s Biggest Liar” for the American couple.  Then Harry pointed out that we had the rare treat of new friends gathered under a clear sky sparkling with stars. He had us all join hands in a circle as we sang one last song together (I can’t remember which one). But it was a lovely ending to a lovely evening, and only later back home, when I typed out the words to his song, “Oh, To Be In Doolin”, did I realize that we had literally lived out the words of his song:

Oh, to be in Doolin on a balmy, starlit night

               When your heart beats a crescendo and your soul has taken flight

You could sing a song beneath those stars where your thoughts can freely roam

               Once more embrace that special place, my home away from home

 

November 4^th, Monday

After a simple breakfast at Glasha Meadows B&B, we headed north towards Galway, crossing the edge of The Burren in route. (Note: Glasha Meadows was an okay place to stay but not as special as the B&B in Dingle).

A word now about the roads. It wasn’t nearly as challenging as I envisioned it to be to drive on the left side of the road. I worried about this for weeks before our trip. After the first day of driving on the left side, I was fairly confident about it, though I had to stay consistently focused on what I was doing, more than I normally would in the States. The biggest challenge was the rural roads. There are three size classes of roads in Ireland: the big “interstates” are the M roads—the M4 goes across the middle of the country from Dublin to Galway and is equivalent to driving I-40 or I-35 in the US. Some of these are toll roads, but by paying extra at the car leasing place, you can get a payment device put on the windshield. You only slow down at the toll gates, but don’t have to transact business.

The next level down are the N roads, like the N67 we took from Lisdoonvarna to Galway on this day. These would be equivalent to our two-lane state highways--plenty of room to drive, but without any shoulders. The R roads are the rural roads, like R478 that goes from Doolin to Lisdoonvarna (there it is again, The Road to Lisdoonvarna is R478). These roads vary considerably--usually about one and a half lanes wide, maybe with a grassy edge on either side, to sometimes one lane wide with hedgerows on

either side. The hedgerows are often populated with thorny shrubs and vines, like hawthorn or blackberry, which can easily scratch the rented car. Car agencies check immediately for this when you return the car. Sometimes, under the mangle of plants, the hedgerow is actually stacked rocks which can do even more damage to your rented car. Sometimes, the road is only wide enough for one small car with no room to spare (we had a VW). Fortunately, we avoided the tourist crowds by coming in November. I would think it to be a nightmare to travel on these R roads with ten times the amount of traffic on them, maybe even tour buses.

The trip to Galway took about an hour and a half, through parts of The Burren, an almost otherworldly landscape of bare rock, scraped clean by the receding glaciers 15,000 years ago. Southeast of Galway, you pass by Oranmore, famous to me by the fiddle tune we play back home, “The Bucks of Oranmore”. Of course, there is also Steve Earle’s song, “The Galway Girl”, that was the darling of the Temple Bar pubs in Dublin when I was there in 2015.

We had lunch in the City Centre area of Galway in a wonderful seafood diner called McDonagh’s. I 

had to have at least one more fish & chips. You could choose between cod, salmon, whiting, mackerel, smoked fish, hake, or sting ray for your fish portion. It was awesome. We had to navigate the downtown parking garage, which is an urban version of the R roads, the parking spots are tiny! You are parking almost mirror-to-mirror with other cars, and even the entrance/exits are extremely narrow. When the travel guides advise you to rent the smallest car that will accommodate your passengers and gear, believe them!

After a stroll around the City Centre, and a little shopping, we drove to the west side of Galway to Salthill Promenade, a lovely sidewalk stroll along Galway Bay, an inlet of the Wild Atlantic. We had to say we did it since it was in the song (even the couple in the song didn’t make it there because “the rain came down”. We saw a few people mucking around in the mudflats at the edge of the bay—real life “mudlarks”.

It is only a little over a 2-hour drive across Ireland on the M4 from Galway to the car rental place near the airport in Dublin. We turned in our car—no sweat—and got a ride on the rental shuttle to the airport terminal, then a city bus to the City Centre of Dublin. That took quite a long time. After figuring out which stop to get off, we dragged our suitcases down the streets to our hotel, The Temple Bar Inn—the same place that son-in-law, Josh, and I stayed back in 2015.

That first night, we stayed in the Temple Bar district, named not for the myriad of drinking establishments, but for the Temple Bar in London. Historically, a “bar” was a city gate erected across a thoroughfare that extended beyond the original city wall of London, functioning to control entry and exit without building another actual wall. British nobility built large, fancy houses with large, fancy gardens along the River Liffey in the 1600’s and named the area, and several of the streets, after their beloved Temple Bar area of London. Apparently, they didn’t stay long, because Dublin’s Temple Bar area became a center of prostitution in the 1700’s and suffered urban decay over the next 200 years.

The rents became cheap enough that small shop owners and pub owners began to move in. In the 1970’s, real estate developers proposed to bulldoze the entire district and build shopping centers, car parks, and a huge bus terminal. After major protests from residents and shop owners, the Irish government cancelled the project, set up a not-for-profit company, and redeveloped Temple Bar into a cultural district. That’s how democracy is supposed to work.

We ate that first night in Dublin at the Oliver St. John Gogarty Bar & Restaurant, a noisy tourist mecca with over-priced food, crowded even in November.

 

November 5^th, Tuesday

I’m sure the restaurant in the Temple Bar Inn has a good breakfast—in fact, I had one there nine years ago—but is too pricey for our blood on this trip. We struck out instead over to the O’Connell Street Bridge and over the River Liffey, to catch the Hop-On, Hop-Off tour bus we had got tickets for. This was a worthy investment as we got a good history tour of Dublin from a double-decker bus with an open-air top level. Somewhere around St. Stephen’s Green we hopped off and toured by foot for a while.

We had a nice lunch at O’Donoghue’s Bar and Lounge near the park—the pub that was home base for The Dubliner’s, a world-famous Irish band from the 1970’s. There is a statue in nearby St. Stephen’s Green park of Patrick Kavanagh, a beloved Irish poet who wrote the poem/song, “On Ragland Road”, a street nearby to both the park and O’Donoghue’s pub. Kavanagh the poet met Luke Kelly of the Dubliner’s in another local pub and taught him the song he had adapted with his poem for lyrics. The Dubliner’s turned it into a classic. Ragland Road itself is now a string of high-end fashion stores and tourist shops. We all agreed Ragland Road was not up our alley for this trip.

One thing I noticed walking around Dublin was the nearly complete absence of homeless people on the streets. During all our travels around Ireland, I saw one apparently homeless person asking for money in Dublin and one in Galway. You would see that many at any busy street corner in Fayetteville, Arkansas or Oklahoma City. Dublin is a city of 1.5 million people and Galway is about the size of Fayetteville. Even after some internet searching, I still can’t understand the difference between here and there. It must be something about the differing social safety nets systems.

We walked to the beautiful Irish Museum of Archeology and saw Irish artifacts 5,000 years old and more. We visited a private Museum of Dublin History operated by a professor of history, Eamon somebody. He gave us a great presentation with lots of pictures on the walls and artifacts of Dublin history. He was also quite humorous.

“What is the difference between God and Bono? . . . God doesn’t think he is Bono.”  This is a great example of Irish humor and could easily be repurposed, we all agreed, for describing Donald Trump. On the back of Eamon’s business card is a quote from Oscar Wilde that is equally apropos for Donald Trump:  “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

We got back on the bus and saw more sites from the open-air upper deck, including the original Guinness brewery, established in 1759. The bus swung through Phoenix Park in NW Dublin then back east towards the center of town along the north side of the River Liffey. We hopped off in the Smithfield area and walked towards ground zero of trad music in Dublin: The Cobblestone Pub.

We arrived just at 5:00 as it was starting to get dark, good timing for a spot near the music session which is always just to your left as you enter from the front door. The sessions begin between 2:00 and 4:30, depending on the day of the week, and run until closing time, usually somewhere around midnight—EVERYDAY!

These are top-notch musicians--both locals and others from all around Ireland who find themselves in Dublin. I chatted with a red-haired uillean piper near me who said he was from St. Louis. There are one or two musicians who lead the sessions, each of which lasts about two and a half hours. Then new leaders come in, many but not all the musicians give up their seats to other musicians, and they continue almost unnoticed.

One of the leaders of the first group playing when we arrived was a dark-haired young lady playing the concertina and sitting in the corner of the room with her back to the front window. I remembered a dark-haired girl in that very same spot back in 2015 when I first came to The Cobblestone. The owner, Tom Mulligan, had been sitting right next to her playing the Irish flute. He later mentioned to me the concertina girl was his teenage daughter.

Now, nine years later in 2024, the young lady gets up to take a break and, as she is passing us, I stop here and ask, “Is your father Tom Mulligan?” Surprised, she responds, “Why, yes!”

I told her my story of remembering her sitting in the same spot back in 2015 playing the concertina. Julie, Robyn, and I introduced ourselves. Her name is Méabh (pronounced “Maeve”). She said she was a high school senior in 2015. She is now a schoolteacher teaching Irish Gaelic to children in Dublin. She seemed so glad to meet us all and hoped her dad would be in soon to lead the next session. Tom Mulligan got held up and never made it, but Méabh gave us a Cobblestone cloth tote bag with four Cobblestone t-shirts and three stocking hats.

Méabh then introduced us to a big, hairy guy that just walked in the door, her brother, Tomás Mulligan. Tomás is a touring musician and told us he has played in Little Rock. We bought one of his cd’s and invited his band, Ispíní nah Éireann (The Sausages of Ireland) to stay with us the next time he tours the US.

We stayed at The Cobblestone for much of the evening, then grabbed some dinner at a restaurant off nearby Smithfield Square before walking down the north side of the River Liffey, amongst the sparkling lights of the water and bridges, back to Temple Bar. We crossed over on the Ha’ Penny Bridge and back to our hotel—a really full day in Dublin.

November 6^h, Wednesday

One last day in Dublin for a brief walking tour. The old flower and vegetable market I remember in the working-class neighborhood around Smithfield was closed for renovations. We bought some trinkets in the stores at the old Jameson Whiskey Distillery, then just wandered around to see what we might see—my favorite way of touring. We ended up at noon at The Brazen Head, advertised as Ireland’s oldest pub, established in 1198. This would have been right after Richard “Strongbow” de Clare, the Anglo-Norman leader seized Dublin and Waterford in the name of the English. Old Strongbow is entombed just a few

blocks over at Christ Church Cathedral.

The pub is very much updated and active for music, good food, and Guinness. After lunch, as we left the pub, a young red-haired lady followed us out and said, “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice your accents as I walked by. If it’s not too much, I would love to know your thoughts about yesterday’s election.”

Her name was Allana. She was intelligent and very informed about US politics. She said that people in Ireland watch American political news like others might watch Survivor or The Biggest Loser. That is, for entertainment. Secondarily, however, it is a

fact that what happens in America also affects them in Ireland. Plus, many in Ireland have family living in the States. Concerning her own country’s politics, she replied, “ours is deliciously boring”.

After a little more touring on foot, we went back to the Temple Bar Inn to check out, lugged our bags to the train station a few blocks away, and rode the metro train to the end of the line at Howth to eat dinner one last time at Octopussy by the docks. The food was great, the waitress was very personable and able, and stored our suitcases for us while we ate some fabulous seafood and had a toast to a wonderful trip to Ireland.

November 7^h, Thursday

We checked out of the Hotel Clayton (close to the airport with a shuttle service, but otherwise nothing much to recommend it), and made it through the lines at Dublin Airport. Went by way of London and Chicago on the way home (Charlotte on the way over). Next time, we want to skip the London stop, which is an extra hassle, and fly from the US straight to Dublin or maybe Shannon.

We made it home without incident—and without any illness--at about midnight.

I think we all agreed that our wee trip to Ireland was a resounding success. Even magical. The landscape. The friendly people. The food. The history and old ruins. The music. We want to return. Travel is good for the soul.

  

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on those accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”   -- Mark Twain