Coincidentally, I have this Wonderful Wonderful friend in Dublin who, during my visit last December, casually mentioned having a family holiday home in County Kerry, which would potentially be able to host my family should my family ever find themselves inside it. As there were already plans in the works for my parents to be in that general part of the world in the spring for a choral adventure, I looked into how to turn this dreamy thing into a reality. As it turned out, all it took was a lot of planning, an airport house key tradeoff, and someone courageous enough to drive across the country on the wrong side of the road, sitting on the wrong side in the car, shifting gears with the wrong hand (Dad, your brain/hand-eye coordination is genius genius). Okay, not "wrong" this and that, but certainly strange and unknown for those of us accustomed to doing such things the "right" way. (And this is coming from someone from one of the few countries in the world that sillily doesn't do metric, so I'm not complaining, Ireland.)
It takes a little under two hours to fly directly from HAM to DUB, and, once I made it through the NON-EU PASSPORTS line with a shocking number of other Americans (was totally not expecting to be surrounded by so much America immediately upon arriving in a country that is not America), I was delighted DELIGHTED to be met by not one, but TWO welcoming parties. One of which being MORE Americans (but the same-DNA/changed-my-diapers-and-stuff kind of Americans), and the other being a Wonderful Wonderful friend. There have been so many times when I've arrived in airports and walked through the arrivals gate to a crowd of people staring at me expectantly with the hope that I will be their friend/family/lover/casual acquaintance/business partner, etc. and I casually walk through the exit gate with a distanced, determined "No, no one's waiting for me and I'll just get on my way now, whatev's"-kind of expression, even though I am a little sad that no one is there, because big reunions at the arrivals gate is what Margarets like best. But to continue where I meant to take the story, this was much better than that.
After aeroport hugs and a holiday kick-off scone, we scurried through the holiday kick-off drizzle, packed into the automobile and headed west, destined for one of the many little Irish towns with "castle" in the name.
We drove through sun and rain, the clouds doing creative things above endless fields growing ever greener. About halfway through the journey, we pulled off at an old cemetery for the driver to do a little dozing. The rest of us wandered around the gravestones and old ruins. A colorful array of courageous flowers were climbing their way out of crannies in the old stone walls -- a sight that became common after the first day or two in this part of the world. The multitude of graves for babies and small children was disconcerting, as were the many "Margaret"s engraved onto the tombstones.
The road continued through many more fields and little towns. Roofless stone ruins of homes, churches, castles were surprisingly common, most of them overgrown and abandoned.
The sky cleared up as we neared the west coast and the evening sun made an appearance over the water, draping the huge, barren hills in gold. The road narrowed more and more until we eventually reached our destination. Thrilled with our accommodations, we went to have a look around and came across many brightly colored homes, a courtyard hopping with lambs, and a gorgeous lake bordered on one side by mountains. A huge moon was rising white in the falling blue, matching a family of swans gathering in the distance. It was wonderfully still there, except for the mosquitoes that quickly drove us back home, annoyed but excited for the next week of exploring in this beautiful place.
This post gave me so much heimweh! I'm very interested to know what "castle" town you were in. The first that comes to mind is Castletownbere, but that's technically in Cork, even though it's not that far from where I lived in Kerry.
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