Fifty-six degrees outside, non-stop rain, wind gusts up to 20 mph. Day Two of sitting out the rain.
No fire today. We almost depleted our host’s supply of coal yesterday.
I’m getting antsy. Time to get out of the house. We need one thing at the store. We plan our day around it.
We drive to the store. Buy what we need. Nothing new on the shelves since yesterday….
We check out the weekly farmers’ market even though we don’t need fruit or veg.
We discover a 2€ store (like our dollar stores) on the corner. We walk up and down the aisles looking at everything. We buy a pack of ginger snaps.
Back outside in the rain. We ask a vendor at the farmers’ market if he can recommend a good pub in town. The Shamrock Inn. Great. Thanks. Cheers!
People in Donegal are very friendly, much more so than anywhere else we’ve been. Every local who strays into the pub greets us. We see a guy get off a bus outside the pub and come in. This guy—let’s call him Paddy—is obviously a regular. Everyone in the pub knows him, and he has his regular seat at the bar. (The guy who had been sitting there got up and moved as soon as he saw Paddy come in the door. Maybe we should call him Norm.) Paddy tells Marcus that he lives in Dunfanahy, a slightly larger village ten kilometers away. Apparently their pubs don’t open until 3:00, so he takes the bus over to avail himself of a pub that opens at noon. Every day? We don’t ask, but I’m guessing the answer is yes.
Paddy informs the pub that today is Clint Eastwood’s 89th birthday. Marcus proposes a toast to Clint. Toasting all around.
After about an hour of chit-chat, Paddy gets up. Time to catch the bus back to Dunfanahy. He walks over to our table and presents us with a bag of Tayto crisps (potato chips). He tells us they are the best in Ireland, and he wants to give us a gift from Ireland. I almost cry, it’s so genuine and sweet. I sniffle into my Tayto bag and think of my great-grandmother who lived just 40 miles from where I sit but emigrated in 1851 during the Great Potato Famine. What would she make of Taytos?
We go home and fold a load of laundry. Immediately the walls of the cottage start to press in.
But! Today is Friday, and the pizza restaurant opens at 5:00. I check email, again. Play a couple of games of solitaire. At 5:00 we’re standing at the door with raincoats on.
There’s a parking spot right outside the restaurant, welcoming us. A sign at the curb: Trad Music tonight 6:00. Traditional Irish folk music. This is a really big deal, and not just for tourists. The Irish love their trad music. We walk in and score the last empty table in the place. Marcus orders pizza and beers while the pub fills up with locals. SRO. We settle in for some good ol’ Irish craic (fun). Things are looking up!
When Marcus and I were researching our trip to Ireland, we watched the film version of Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt’s account of his impoverished childhood in Limerick. One thing that was readily apparent from the movie: It rains a lot in Limerick, like all the time. Frank and his brother, Malachy, were always running through Limerick’s streets and alleyways in the driving (horizontal) rain. At one point the rain was so heavy that their family had to abandon the first floor of their home, which they had to wade across to get to the stairs, and live on the upper level. For us, this trip is all about the outdoors. I only booked four nights in the Limerick area.
King John’s 13th-century castle
True to form, the weather was pretty cold, overcast, and wet while we were in the area, which suited my recovery from food poisoning. Apparently I ate something that didn’t agree with my cast-iron stomach in a pub on the beach on the Dingle Peninsula, which made for an interesting (not) transition to our new home-from-home in the Slieve Felim Mountains about ten miles east of Limerick. But every cloud has a silver lining, and this one was a beautiful, light, airy remodeled stable/cottage on property owned by a warm and welcoming Irish couple—a nurse and her husband. It doesn’t get much better than that! My best friends for the next four days were a fleece blanket, a wood stove, and The Bodyguard on Netflix.
one of two gatehouse towers
But eventually I was able to muster the energy to leave our bucolic surroundings and venture into the city. We spent a couple of hours in King John’s Castle experiencing a fascinating interactive exhibit on the role of Limerick’s castle in the incessant Anglo-Irish conflict and having lunch in a wee snug pub on the river. The return to food in general, and pubs in particular, was challenging psychologically, but it’s hard to go wrong with a good, hearty Irish stew on a cold and rainy day. Things are looking up. Who knows? Perhaps the sun will come out tomorrow.
