Ireland Redux, Part I

Above are images from my first visit to Ireland in 2005 that I've briefly mentioned in a previous post or two.  It was a significant trip for me because it was one of those rare projects that I had started and followed through to the end.  For eighteen months I saved, and studied, and kept the fire burning.  I booked the flight on my birthday then waited an agonizing five months more before I boarded the plane.  I went alone which, I suppose, took courage that I never believe I possess.  It was a dream come true, a moment that I set aside from all of the others in my life to pick up and revisit and re-dream.  (My first such experience was the Horde Festival in the late 90s when I saw my then favorite band Blues Traveler in concert.  I remember feeling how profound it was this dream realized.  Then again, everything felt like a big deal when I was a teenager.)  Why, then, wouldn't I want to go back?


Five years ago I went to the West.  I flew in to Shannon and traveled for two weeks by bus to counties Clare, Galway, Limerick, and Kerry.  Here are more images from that trip:

This set of photos was taken at Muckross Abbey, which I had found by accident.  I had walked miles from Killarney to Muckross House and Traditional Farms then cut through the trees afterward to find the exit from the park, and there it was.  It stands beside a lake, and compels one to simply explore in silence.  Other than two men working among the headstones of the small cemetery nearby, no one else was present.  I remember feeling anxious, a tightness in my chest, and not alone.  It was eerie, and something I wanted to recapture the second time around.


This time I went to the East, to Dublin and its surrounding counties of Meath and Wicklow.  It was a trip planned in six brief weeks that almost got curtailed by an annoying Icelandic volcanic ash cloud.  I went with my younger sister, at my dad's urging.  It didn't matter to him that I went alone last time and that I was five years older and supposedly wiser; to him, the world in 2010 was far different and more dangerous than that in 2005.  So my sister and I imagined all of the pints we'd drink, the people we'd meet, the castles and sheep we would see.  No doubt, this would be the best sisters holiday ever planned.


Um, well...