Then mom drove us to this Drombeg Circle. Apparently it is some ancient druid circle and all mystical and what not. The drive was down the narrowest road possible. I am relatively sure that both mirrors of our micro-micra were brushing the brush and driving on the left side of the road no longer mattered as it wasn't wide enough to have a side. There was a dirt path near the gravel car park that wound back along the hedges to the circle. When it appeared it was magical.... Movie magic, that it is. There was a full film crew waiting on the rain to pass. I don't know what they were filming for, but we were the only outsiders in sight, so we headed back to the car. Definitely not what we were expecting.
When we rented the car we also rented a TomTom. You know, to keep from getting lost. Well Tom has a sense of redundant humor. So he decided to take us winding through the middle of the country, down only unnamed roads, until we were so hopelessly disoriented we had no choice but to keep following what he said. For the next 7 hours. Ireland's not even that big! It takes 2 hours to drive from one coast to the other. Let me also say those country roads are not a good place to have a car with subpar breaks, rain showers, and my mother trying to figure out what is left and what is right. She wasn't really sure where the left boundary of the car was so she told me to let her know if she was too close on my side. Well with the roads as narrow as they are you are always a bit too close. But when we were within an inch of stonewalls, drop-offs, trees, etc I would panic and whimper "too close". I definitely had to utilize breathing techniques not to have a full blown panic attack as we ran over curbs, brush, and our side mirror collided with a parked car. I was thankful for the herd of cows blocking the road as they provided a much needed break from the instinctual-rapid-intake-of-air-finger-nails-in-palms-'I-wish-I-had-studied-meditation' feeling of the drive. It was a tense trip but mom got us to some beautiful views and to the Loch Lein Country House safely though heavy rain, never ending curves, traffic circles, steep hills, and tight spaces.
The "country house" was kind of the baby of a B&B and hotel. It was surrounded by farms and mountains and sat on the shore of lake Lein. We liked the place so much we decided to cancel our friday night reservation in Limerick and stay anther night in Killarney.
After breakfast we started the Ring of Kerry. After much persuading, mom let me try driving (the rental company has a policy against drivers under 25). I loved it. It was fun to make yourself think of everything as a mirror image of what you are used to. I thought I was doing a pretty good job until... well I'll get back to that. Our first stop on the ring was the Kell Bay Gardens. In all honesty we didn't know what we were doing only that the "Ring of Kerry" was supposed to be a nice thing to do. So when we were desperate for the loo we saw that the gardens had a tea room and it seemed like a safe choice. The road was steep and windy and narrow. And worth it. A thousand shades of green tunneled the road with trees, ferns, moss and the like. The recent rain made everything glitter and when we turned in the drive for the garden a waterfall was the first thing we saw. The tea room was in a green house and the man behind the counter said if we take a huge risk and explored the garden, he didn't think we'd be disappointed. There was a wall of shrubs and an iron gate leading into the garden. It was hard to tell what had been planted and what was natural because the garden was more of a forest with tiny touches added to enhance what was already there. The path we took was mostly a cleared patch of forest floor that twisted through the trees for two kilometers. There were streams and ferns and boulders and lilies and views of the lake and valley and dinosaurs. And I was all like "mom, this is my jam!" I'm not built to stay in a city so long, I forget what I'm missing.
Anyway we moved along stopping to take pictures along the way. We were finally seeing the Ireland I had dreamed about. Green and stone cliffs, farms that make patchwork of the hills, wild flowers, and the rocky coast. And sheep. There were plenty of small town around the ring and we pick our stops based on the lack of tour buses. We ate lunch at a pub called The Blind Fiddler. When we asked the nearest ATM was three towns back inside a grocery store. A beautiful blue eyed girl waited on us and told us about the time she went to Texas, she was in Austin and one other city but she couldn't remember where. We had a revelation that aubergines, "a large purple vegetable kind of like a squash," was a eggplant. So we ordered goat cheese and roasted veggie stuffed eggplant and drinks. As she was getting our order she exclaimed "Fort Worth!" The other city she'd been to. It was another tasty meal. An eccentric looking man came in paused at our table and stared us down longer than what is socially normal, then moved on, sat down and began to write in a small book. I wonder if we made it into whatever he was writing. Another man was carefully searching the floor for something, and rather than making some bad joke about looking for his marbles I asked if I could help. He was looking for the screw for his glasses. But as I stood up to help I must have brushed my pint glass, and it fell off the table and shattered. So now his small screw was lost among glass and beer and promptly swept away by the staff. Very counter productive party foul.
We made it around to Kenmare and went in search of another stone circle mom read about in the guide book. I made a series of disorienting turns, the saw one of the brown landmark signs the read "ring of mara". Oh that's what it's called right? I'll go that way. Well it was a pretty road, but it was also pretty much one lane. A large camper sped by and ran my left side into the brush. After a time we realized that the ring of mara was the name of the drive and not a stone circle, so we did a 180 and headed back. Be drove by a few chunks of some vehicle on the road and shortly saw a slightly beat up suv and the camper that almost ran me off the road. The driver of the camper was standing on the shoulder (there hardly was a shoulder) yelling at the other driver. I was glad it wasn't me. Well then a huge tractor pulled out into the middle of the road coming towards me and I had to swerve to avoid him. This would have been okay except I swerved it to the bushes, which also would have been okay if they weren't hiding large rocks. Mom squeals "too close!" but we are relieved to have made it. Until I hear the rough sound of driving on the rim and realize we have a flat. I instantly remember all the arguments that mom made as to why I shouldn't drive the rental because I am a bad driver. Proved her right. So I pull into the next service station to assess the damage. Good thing we have full coverage insurance on the rental... except for the tires. I got out the spare donut, the jack, the lug wrench, etcetera, and set to work. But after I set up the jack I realize not only is the lug wrench a skimpy piece of metal only about 7 inches long, but the piece that fits over the lug nuts was completely stripped from over use. We were obviously not the first renters to have this same tire issue. The guy running the service station kept trying to help us but he was the only one working the counter so he had to keep running in to help costumers. An older man with messy white hair hollered at us out of his car window "can you manage?" I embarrassed, said "we're fine, thank you" but mom muttered "no we're not". He came over anyway and we explained the problem with the lug wrench. "'We're fine'" he mimicked in an excessively high voice, "we'll just wait here until the tire falls off. You'll be here two weeks from now saying 'we're fine'". Mom told him I was embarrassed to ask for help (not helping with the embarrassing factor), and he said that I was obviously not Irish then because all the Irish girls are "always saying 'save me! save me!" We'll I don't know how true that was but he had a great set of tools and helped us out in no time. I appreciated his help and that the ordeal was resolved, even if I had to sallow a dose of damsel(*cough-bs-cough*) in distress. All the tyre shops were closed at 6 so we grabbed a bite in town. Then we bought a bottle of wine, and went back the our "country house" to sit by the lake, watch the sunset, and drink the wine.
The next day we bought a new tire and had it changed at the shop, all in under 10 minutes. Nice. We found our way to Ross castle and hired a jaunty cart (horse drawn cart) to take us through the Killarney National Park. Our driver was named Jon. His horse was Rosey. He had just retired form his life long profession of butchering. He was a 6th generation butcher and his 5 brothers were also butchers. He complained about the convenience of supermarkets ruining the business and how you pay 20euro for a steak at a restaurant that costs them 4. He told us about when he went to NY and how he and his friends were kicked out of TGIFridays for no good reason, except maybe they didn't like their singing. He also told us about the park, how 3 different estates had been donated and the park was made of those estates and 3 lakes. The largest lake was Loch Lien which contain several islands. The smallest island was nicknamed honey-moon island because there is only room for two.
After the jaunty ride we got in a small wooden boat to see "the meeting of the waters" where the 3 lakes met. Our captain had a small fluffy dog that rode in his lap. He showed us the sites. He explained that the lake is very well know for predicting the weather. So well know that people will always come down from the town to ask the people at the lake the forecast. The key is the mountains. If you can see the mountains- it's going to rain. If you can't see the mountains- it's raining. We finished off the day with dinner at a pub and a traditional music session we stumbled upon.
Monday I finally got to go horseback riding. I convinced mom that it was a good idea an the two of us and a guide led us through another side of the National Park. Mom's horse's name was Pepsi and mine was Aladdin. Pepsi was slow and kept snaking, but was steady and didn't scare mom. We saw Irish red deer, Japanese Sitka deer, rabbits and a cat getting rained on.
We got rid of the car after a stop at Bunratty Castle (very cramped staircases sums it up) and were on to Galway. I really wanted to see the cliffs of more, so we took a tour bus. A very bumpy, rough, lots of tight turns, tour bus. Motion sick central. But the cliffs were incredible. We had a picnic on the precipice and then walk along the trail that followed the edge. We didn't have much time in Galway itself and I was disappointed to realize we miss the Galway Races by a day.
Anyway next we took a train for my last day in Dublin. I took mom back to the Old Jameson distillery, where we had ample samples. I was picked for the tasting along with several others. (One of the other tasters was a hyperbole of a hipster with a overly groomed curled mustache, and over confident, under informed complaints about the way the complementary tasting was run.) By the end we were just inspired enough to buy a couple tasty souvenirs. We stayed at the Shelborne. If it's nice enough for Michelle Obama it's nice enough for us. Probably too nice for us. We don't have any clothes nearly nice enough to go in the fine dining Saddle Room. I did have a lovely side car from the bar though. Leaving the hotel we had a very friendly cab driver who asked all about my time in Dublin and internship. He apparently lives on the north side of Dublin near a brain injury hospital if I understood him. This lead into all sorts of stories about there being less than 6 degrees of separation in Dublin. As we unloaded our bags he warned us about the marching in Belfast. Told us to avoid areas with loads of British flags.
Another train to Belfast. I had to switch to sterling, which stinks. One pound is not 16 ounces but a hefty $1.52 a piece. It adds up. There are British flags everywhere that is not walled off.
I'm trying to detail the stories I don't want to forget. The ordinary and extraordinary people we meet. But so much happens from moment to moment I can't hang on to it all.
No comments:
Post a Comment