Search Results for: serendipity

Serendipity

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in the village of Adare

Our last day in County Limerick and the sun was glorious. The most beautiful spot in Limerick to be outdoors on such a fine day? The village of Adare, hands down.

Adare, acknowledged by many as the prettiest village in Ireland, was directly on our path from our last Airbnb on the Dingle Peninsula to the one we’re in now, outside of Limerick. I had intended to stop in transit and spend the day. I have vague memories as we drove through of people sitting outside at sidewalk cafes having lots more fun than I was having hunkered down in the passenger seat of the car clutching my barf bag. “Do you want to stop?” Marcus asked. “Mmph,” I replied. We drove on.

St. Nicholas Church

Remember that blog about backtracking if you can? [Backtracking in the Wicklow Mountains] So, four days later, back we went.

Do you ever have those serendipitous moments when everything just seems to align? Well, our return to Adare was one of those. The main street was quite congested when we arrived, and we had to circle through town twice before the perfect parking space appeared right before our eyes. As I got out of the car, I looked up to see a wee craft shop with some children’s toys out front. The chance of it offering anything I would want to buy was slim, but there was something about the way my car door opened right onto the path to the shop and the crumbling, white-washed wall beside it with little purple flowers growing out of its crevices….

The shop was a cooperative run by the artists whose wares were featured. I love that! Let’s just say I found a few things I wanted to buy, but I also had the most captivating conversation with Keri, the artist on duty that day. She is a potter who makes little bottles used to collect water from holy wells. [Irelands Sacred Water]

We’ve seen signs for these holy wells all over Ireland—hundreds of them—natural springs that were discovered in pre-Christian days and used as sites for pagan rituals. St. Patrick, who brought Christianity to Ireland, was smart to incorporate them into the new religion. Rather than condemning them as pagan clap-trap, he ordained them as holy wells, thereby engaging more pagan converts.

For centuries travelers have sought out holy wells for healing purposes. Not only do they drink and collect the waters, but many soak a piece of cloth in them and tie the cloth on an inflicted part of their body. Before leaving the well, they tie the cloth to an overhanging tree branch. As the rag decomposes in the elements, the infliction ostensibly dissipates. 

I love the folklore, and I love that the Irish can make room in their hearts for their ancient past while respecting their current religious foundations. They have an incredible heritage. Perhaps this is the reason I was brought here today.

  • walk along the River Maigue
  • Desmond Castle ruins
  • a true milestone

Serendipity

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The main reason for planning a three-month trip to Great Britain was to be able to have time to explore the history, absorb the culture, and get to know some of the people. What better opportunity to get to know the locals than when traveling in an English-speaking country?

While making my B&B reservations last spring, I imagined chatting over a cup of tea with our hosts – exchanging insights into our countries and cultures, exploring and appreciating both the differences and the similarities. We wouldn’t solve the world’s problems, but perhaps we would resolve the curiosities we each had about “those people on the other side of the pond.” It would all be tempered with laughter, of course, and that razor-sharp, self-deprecating British wit that I love.

What we got instead were a string of B&B hosts who seemed exhausted from a busy tourist season, served us breakfast with the briefest of inquiries into how we were getting on, and then retreated to the kitchen to get on with their own lives. What had I been thinking? Of course, these people are running a business – and often the B&B was a supplement to their primary job. They are looking for clients to help them make ends meet, not their next BFF. And so I resigned myself to continue my exploration using only my own observations and assumptions, minus the native commentary.

And then we stayed in a beautiful home in a delightfully remote village in southern Wales. Our hosts, Andrew and Anne, not only cooked breakfast, but also sat and shared the meal with us. We lingered a bit over the meal discussing our respective worlds – nothing terribly significant or noteworthy, but always satisfying and enriching. And then we’d part ways – us, to explore a corner of the world they were so happy to share with us, and them, to return to the daily lives they gladly set aside for a short time to sit and have a chat. We felt like welcomed guests.

The B&B’s I reserved were chosen for their access to the sights I wanted to see. I wasn’t always able to find rooms or flats exactly where I’d hoped, and often had to pick locations I’d never heard of or never would have sought out for themselves because it was the closest I could find. I tend to be an über-planner, and sometimes have difficulty yielding to chance. But I find, as I learn to relax and go with that elusive flow, that more often than not the consequence of serendipity is a brilliant discovery. I need to do it more often.

The Burren

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the Burren

We were driving from the Cliffs of Moher through typically Irish, rolling, green pastureland on our way to our next stay in Galway when we came across this. Are we still in Ireland? What sort of geological mash-up is this?

the Burren, up close

This is the Burren (in Irish, Boireann or “great rock”) Great rock, indeed. Weird rock, as well. The limestone “pavement” has been eroded into large rectangles, or clints, with long, narrow fissures, called grikes, between them where the softer rock has eroded away. So weird that the rock eroded along gridlines!

clints (blocks) and grikes (grooves)

Today we hiked in Burren National Park, our third of six national parks in the Republic of Ireland. I had to get out in it and see it up close. We chose a short loop-walk to the monastic site of St. Cronan. And guess what I discovered there. My first holy well!  St. Cronan’s Well. Who knew?

Sure enough, there was a shrine to St. Cronan next to the well and faded strips of cloth hanging from tree branches overhead. [Serendipity] I felt like I had just won a scavenger hunt I hadn’t realized I was playing. Now I understand one reason people go in search of the wells; they’re spiritual geocaches. The thrill of the hunt may be what gets people out there, but it’s even more fun finding something you didn’t know was out there to find!

  • an easy hike to St. Cronan’s monastic site
  • well, maybe not such an easy hike after all
  • cow playgroup
  • “grass growing in turfs of earth…that lie between the rocks”
  • crossing the wall “in stile”
  • St. Cronan’s church
  • St. Cronan’s well!
  • a standing stone at the well
  • look carefully for strips of cloth hanging in the tree branches

In the 17th century, English Parliamentarian Edmund Ludlow, who served under Oliver Cromwell in Ireland, observed that the Burren “is a country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him…… and yet their cattle are very fat; for the grass growing in turfs of earth, of two or three foot square, that lie between the rocks, which are of limestone, is very sweet and nourishing.”

in the grike

He is absolutely right. Rainfall disappears quickly into the grikes between the clints and makes its way into the limestone aquifers below. There is essentially no soil on the limestone pavement for living organisms to establish themselves. What grass and trees there are grow in small plots of soil between the clints, yet the grikes themselves are a haven for all manner of tiny plants from Mediterranean to alpine to arctic in habitat, all living side-by-side. They are miniature, terrarium-like ravines in a network of barren rock; I could explore them all day. 

Very interesting terrain. Not at all what I expected. This, my friends, is exactly the reason I travel.

From the Vanderbilt estate

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view of the Hudson River from the Vanderbilt estate

As with most trips we take, we ran out of time to see everything we wanted to see in Hyde Park. My intention with extended travel is to see an area so thoroughly that I can happily cross it off my bucket list, satisfied that I have seen it all, and focus future travel on other adventures. In actuality, we rarely see a place as thoroughly as we’d like. I make an exhaustive list, we prioritize as we go, but you never know just how it’s going to flow. And sometimes we want to return to a place we’ve explored because we’ve seen enough to have fallen in love with it. So the plan may not work the way I intended, but there’s a certain serendipity to it that we’ve come to love.

the Catskill Mountains in the distance

My deepest regret in Hyde Park is not giving Eleanor her due. Little was said about her on our guided tour of Springwood, Franklin’s home. And even though her papers and other memorabilia are stored in the Presidential Library, you really have to search to find her in the museum exhibits. 

The day we hiked to her cottage, Val-Kill, on the Eleanor Roosevelt National Heritage Site, we didn’t stay for the tour. For one thing, we were focused on completing our hike up to the top of the hill, to Top Cottage, and back down again before the day grew too warm. But also, there was an administrative meeting of all tour guides for the Roosevelt properties that morning and a backlog of tourists waiting to tour both Val-Kill and Top Cottages. Somehow I thought that we would catch up with Eleanor later, but sadly our time in Hyde Park evaporated.

The same goes with the Vanderbilt estate, which is located just south of the B&B where we stayed. It was so close, we thought we could stop in any time. We barely managed a drive-through of the property at dusk on our last day in town. While we rarely tour houses just to ogle at the opulence, the mansion does look architecturely stunning from several vantage points along the river. I was intrigued, and I’m sure we could have learned something about the prolific Vanderbilt family.

So we will bid adieu to Hyde Park and continue on our journey up the Hudson. Maybe one day we’ll return and pay Eleanor a nice, long visit. I believe her story is worth hearing.

Das erste Mal

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Cordula & Gernot

I was just lamenting that it’s been a long time since we’ve experienced serendipity on this trip. Segovia. León. Santiago. They were weeks ago. And then it happened again. Málaga. It was as simple as lending a pen to someone in a café. I didn’t even notice the couple had sat down two tables away until Marcus was handing over his pen. Kismet.

Gernot returned the pen, and we began talking. This and that. We are retired Americans traveling in Spain for three months. They are Austrians, just a bit older than our children, in Málaga for a weekend away from jobs and children. We so enjoyed talking with them. We discussed Austria and the EU. We discussed American politics and next year’s presidential election. We discussed immigration – an important topic for both countries. We talked and we talked.

Cordula told us about a flamenco performance they chanced upon earlier in the day at a nondescript bar. She said the woman would perform again at 8:00 or so. We should join them. They couldn’t remember the name of bar. It was next to Casa Diego. Calle Santa María, Gernot said. We continued to talk. We missed the Picasso Museum. We didn’t care.

We met them later at flamenco bar Rincón de Chinitas, a hole-in-the-wall that took three inquiries in the neighboring shops to find. My kind of place – discreet and not for the easily discouraged!

We had a wonderful evening – worth a blog in itself.

Cordula emailed me today, something that brought tears to my eyes. “In Austria we say ‘Man sieht sich immer zwei Mal im Leben’ – which means that people always meet twice. So let’s hope that this saying comes true and we meet again one day.” What a beautiful thought. What a beautiful couple. I also hope it comes true.