Journal Pages - Ireland

The purple color on the right is from crushing one of the blackberries I picked in Dingle onto a piece of paper. 

Ticket from the Penn State football game in Dublin covered with a drawing of the stadium you can lift up.

Half page drawing of the remnants of the ancestral home in Clifden, Ireland.

Clover from the ancestral homeland plot, Clifden.

Flowers from around the Dingle Peninsula, along with the coastline.

Woven tram tickets and map pieces from Dublin.

Feathers found on Malahide Beach, Dublin.

Malahide Beach

When thinking of Ireland, beaches are one thing that never really come to mind. Foggy cliffs and dark green hills, sure. Maaaybe a freezing stone beach. But soft sandy beaches?? I'd never have guessed. I suppose this was silly, considering Ireland is surrounded by water.

It turns out that Ireland has a number of warm sunny beaches. I never actually tried swimming, but others were. 

There was one such beach just a few minutes away from the Malahide Cricket Ground in Dublin. On our second day there I took a few hours off to wander down.

Or starts as an estuary, the sand mixed with fine sticky mud, wandering out to sea.

I love walking the beach in search of creatures, or at least evidence of them. I was surprised by how many I found, considering how little animal life I have actually witnessed here.

On one beach I found a bone (pic below) and took to twitter, asking the Grant Museum of Zoology in London, which I visited there, if they had any guesses to what it belonged to. They responded they thought it was the carpometacarpus (fused wrist bone making the end of the wing) of a large gull. Three cheers for the internet!

I found another bone on Malahide beach, this one much larger. The one end looks cut fairly straight across, so I'm guessing it is a man-made one. Maybe it is some pig bone or something left over from dinner??  The other joint end is shown here.

I also found jellyfish washed up, which surprised me.

And some neat shells.

It seemed like a nice place to come for the day or have lunch. There were some people with young kids, including one who took his clothes off and ran up and down the sand, refusing to put them back on. 

Eventually I turned and went back to the cricket match, feeling sun-happy and refreshed. The whole rest of the day I could feel the sand scritching about in my shoes.

Tomorrow we take the ferry out of Dublin and then the train from Wales back to Lpdon. I've really enjoyed our time in Ireland, and will surely miss it. But the road calls! On to the next.

Ireland!

We had a lovely time with my parents in Ireland! It was so nice to see them and explore a totally new place together. It's also where our ancestors are from, and we were able to see one of the areas where they lived many years ago.

In the Clifden area there is an old homestead--is this what they call them in Ireland?--that is still standing. Originally there was a stone house built on the top of the hill, but apparently it was extremely cold with the wind and open fields. After a time they ended up moving all of the stones of the house down to the valley below and reconstructing it there. Amazingly, those stones still exist, still holding shape after all the intervening years.

We spent the night nearby and then headed south for the Dingle Penninsula. My parents had found a house there for rent and we spent the week overlooking the rocky beach, quiet ocean, and green hills.

My dad takes amazing photographs, and here are some of the ones he took from the house over the week:

Every now and then we went into the town of Dingle itself, which was cheery and colorful and overcrowded. The sidewalks could barely hold the tourists, but it looked out on the bay and the food was delicious.

There were blackberry bushes all over bursting with fruit. I picked a bunch and made scones. I think I felt closer to my heritage while picking berries than any other time on the trip.

We had a wonderful time together. We drove around the area to see some of the historical sites. All these ancient castles scattered over the countryside! How strange, to live surrounded by so much history.

On Monday, sadly, we had to head back to Dublin and split up, my parents to the airport, and Subash and I to a cricket match.

Tonight we are back in Dublin staying with a friend we met when we were here earlier this month. I think this makes the 10th bed I've stayed in? I'm not sure.

Many thanks to my wonderful parents for coming all the way to see us! I miss you guys.

Ireland

We have moved on to Ireland--first to Dublin, and then away to the outer edges where green hills meet the gray sea. Everything is beautiful here, both in and out of the city. The fuzzy sheep dotting the fields, the meandering stone walls blooming from the mossy earth, the colorful front doors standing out bright in the rain. 

We've had pretty great weather so far, and were able to explore Dublin and its many many many pubs for a bit before meeting up with my parents and heading west.

We went to the American football Penn State game being played in Dublin, and I actually didn't hate it. I realized later that it is actually the first time I have really watched a football game all the way through. I only had to go a few thousand miles to do it. 

We actually went to the game with a woman we met at Subash's naturalization ceremony. He was assigned a seat next to her and they got talking and found out she was from Ireland. We mentioned we were going and found out she would be there at the same time. We made plans then, way back in May, to meet in a pub in Dublin. A few months later, we did just that.

We've been drinking a huge amount of beer. Not necessarily even to excess, it just seems to go along with every meal or social event, and I swear there is a pub every 3 feet.

Now we are hanging out with my parents at a rented house in Dingle, where everything looks like a postcard.

So far we've been driving around the scenery, climbing around the rocks, staring out the window, and eating delicious food. Subash and I have taken up scrabble, left behind in the rented house.

I have another post in mind about Ireland that I will write next, but I wanted to at least do an update! In a weird way this has almost been like a vacation from our trip, which is probably the most spoiled sentence anyone has ever written.

For now, though, I am off to the little town nearby! It is about as quaint as you can imagine, with colorful shops and an ocean view. More soon, my friends!