Alive

Wow. Here I am, alive and well, back to the blog. I never intended to give it up way back in July, but things happened. Life happened. Life and a serious lack of inspiration. But I'm working on it.

Almost two weeks ago now we went to Ireland! It was incredible. Green and lush, historic and picturesque, beer flowing like the gold from a leprechan's pot. Our last night, in Galway, Dan and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary over a spectacular dinner of modernized local fare at the Malt House. It's hard to believe we've been wed for one whole (amazing) year, but we've packed an awful lot into twelve months so it feels right to be at this point now and looking ahead. Mushy alert: I truly have the most loving, devoted, sincere, hilarious, intelligent and handsome husband in the whole wide world. He "gets" me, momentous in and of itself, and loves me unconditionally just the way I am, yet always inspires me want to try harder, to be better and to love bigger.

Okay, obligatory anniversary-inspired gushy love talk out of the way. On to the exposition of travels!

Day One: Dublin

The red-eye flight from Boston arrived into Dublin at 5:30 in the morning. Of course, I hardly slept a wink (I never do on planes) so I felt like a crazed zombie when we landed. Then after some aggravating delays with the rental car, we perilously ventured to our hotel in our the tiny, tin-can of an automobile on the "wrong" side of the road in the pre-dawn hours (the sun doesn't come up until 8am in Dublin this time of year). Thank heavens we'd booked the previous night at the W so that we could check in that morning and have a place to crash. I can't imagine the misery of wandering Dublin in the pouring rain with all our bags for 6 more hours until we could check in at regular time for the following night.

After grabbing some quick, but much-need sleep we re-grouped and headed out into the city, still raining, of course. Dan studied in Dublin for a summer in college and squired me all around Trinity College and his former haunts (replete with lots of "I threw up in that alley over there!"-type stories - charmed, I'm sure). We stopped into numerous pubs for numerous pints of Guinness. I have always been game for the occasional Guinness at home over the years, but its never been my particular fancy (unlike you, Fong, the most Guinness-loving Asian girl I ever did meet). Supposedly, the Guinness on draft in America is "tainted" by travel, pasteurization and being improperly poured by incompetent bartenders. Folks, I am here to tell you that I drank more pints of Guinness in four days than I have fingers and it did. not. taste. any. different. However, during our day in Kilkenny, I met a new beer-love: Smithwick's. I'd had it in the States before but never really noted it. Stacked up against Guinness, it is far preferable to my pallette. AND I had it first in Ireland in the very town its brewed, so it was meant to be. Smithwick's, call me! I'll be in America! Don't forget about our torrid holiday love affair!

At Trinity College


"Enjoying" my first pint of Guinness in Ireland (hey, it felt momentous if not crazy-delicious)


Dan atop the Ha'penny Bridge

That about sums up Dublin: rain, walking hither and thither, beer. Oh, and more rain. Truth be told, Dublin didn't really "wow" me. It's a fine city and I'm glad that we went, how can one go to Ireland and not go to Dublin? But it was basically like a much bigger Beacon Hill and I'm familiar with that, happily so. If I had gone to Ireland from California without living in Boston first, I would have thought more of it because it would have felt more new and different- but its so much like my own Boston (old, cobblestone, bars, restaurants, a river, skads of college kids, need I say more?) that it made only a modest impression on me. I don't mean to sound negative, because I am really glad we went to Dublin. You have to go to Dublin, right? It was a good sight to see but only the beginning ...

Day Two: Kilkenny

It's tough to say what my favorite part of the trip was, but our day in Kilkenny certainly had some highlights and favorite "moments". We walked the cute main streets, toured the old castle and a few churches, but nothing beat our impromptu cheese and baguette picnic next to the river and in the shadow of the castle. We'd been walking and walking and stopping here and there for coffee and pints and sight-seeing but when we passed a bakery sign that said "fresh, handmade cheese" I stopped dead in my tracks, headed inside and came out with a wedge of cheese made straight from the utters of Kilkenny goats! It has to be my most local cheese-eating experience ever. And it was soooo delicious. I would say it tasted similar to the "Drunken Goat Cheese" sold at Whole Foods - only creamier and richer and better. Just fresher. Its hard to pin-point exactly what that means, but you know it when you taste it. It was so divine. The only thing that could have made the scenario completely perfect was a glass of wine - and its too bad we didn't think of that before settling into our feast becasue Ireland doesn't have open container laws so we totally could have done it. Oh well, we did enough drinking as it was.

Gazing at Kilkenny Castle.

In front of Dan's favorite pub of the whole trip

My love affair with Smithwick's begins - O'Riada in Kilkenny watching some hurlying on the telee.

Total JOY!

Nom, nom, nom, nom....

Another great thing in Kilkenny, oddly enough? Indian food! I have always loathed it, vehemently so. But, I guess, in the name of vacation adventure, I was surpisingly up for trying it again that night. Am I ever glad I did, because it our dinner was fantastic! I vow to be more open-minded about Indian food from now on because maybe I just didn't know what to order or my palate as changed. Growing up, I was an incredibly picky eater, and still sort of am, but its amazing how many things that I would have eschewed in the past are now the very same foods I adore. Guess Indian food is now among them, or at least the opennes to it has returned. It's strange to say I went to Ireland and came back with an appreciation for Indian food, but there you go. It was a small, romantic place but not at all stuffy and we drank (terrible, but who's keeping score) wine and had great conversation. Dan and I spend a lot of time together in general, and were in tight quarters pretty much 24-7 on the trip, so we talk a lot but there are certain conversations that manage to stick out among all the mundanity. That night was one of them. Yep, I loved Kilkenny. Almost everything about it, except for our grungy Bed & Breakfast, which I will not even get started on: except to say, it had a bed, a toilet and a lock on the door. And that was about it. Yeeeah, moving on.

Day Three: Doolin (County Claire)

From Kilkenny we drove due West to County Claire- home of Dan's ancestors (at least some of them). First stop was in the tiny little coastal town Miltown-Malbay. Dan had been there before with his family on a trip, but he became giddy as a school boy driving into the town. We found traditional Irish twinkly music on the radio and blasted it while driving down a tiny country road while Dan sang old Irish drinking songs at the top of his lungs, it was hilarious and perfect. Once there we found "Queally's Pub", which is Dan's mother's family name (minus one of the L's). Strangely enough, that Queally is not the same as his mom's family and the pub is now shut down, but the tiny old lady who owned the place still lives next door (Mrs. Queally) and came out to talk to us. She was familiar with "Dan's people", as she called them, and knew not only the Quealy line of Dan's mother's father, but also her father's mother, the Meads who also lived up the road. In the most amazing turn of events, she invited us inside because she said she had something for us. After digging around in an old chest in her living room (which was old and classic, smelled of burning peet, full of doilies and black and white pictures of dogs, just imagine it), she held out a yellowed and tattered letter. It was from a direct cousin's of Dan's from several generations back who had written to them after moving to America and it contained a song he wrote about moving to America but longing for his homeland in Miltown-Malbay. Dan and old Mrs. Queally read the song aloud together, and we all got the chills, it was the most incredible moment that I will never forget. She let us take the letter with us and we brought it back to Dan's family and are going to have it framed. I knew we were planning to stop in Dan's old family town but neither of us, in a million years, thought we'd get to meet an old woman who actually knew his family way back then, let alone bring back a relative's momento complete with an original song of pining for the motherland. You obviously don not have to ask Dan what the highlight of the trip was for him. It came close for me, as well, but you know, its really hard to compete with cheese.

Dan giddily driving into Miltown-Malbay

Posing with the family letter/song in front of Queally's Pub in Miltown-Malbay

Tiny, adorable Doolin

Full of music, beer and good cheer in Doolin

Goodbye, Doolin, perhaps we'll meet again

After our fascinating journey into Dan's heritage, we drove on to the Cliffs of Moher. They were really cool to look at and I loved the view of the Aran Islands off the coast (which we didn't have time to visit ourselves this time) but it was the kind of thing that after about ten minutes or so, it was kind of like "whelp, okay then, saw the Cliffs of Moher- next!". Our final leg of the day was a bit further up the West coast in yet another tiny town, Doolin.

When I say Doolin is tiny, I mean tiny. Just one strip of a couple shops, a handful of pubs and some B&Bs scattered here and there. Otherwise nothing but fields and coastline. Very serene. That is, until the sun went down. Because the "secret" (its not really) of Doolin is that its the unofficial "traditional Irish music capital" in Ireland. Irish musicians travel from all over the country to play in one of the three pubs (but especially in McGann's) every single night of the week. It was the reason we wanted to stop there and we were not disapppointed. That was by far our most rip-roaring night. We drank a lot, sang a lot, and there was lots of, uh, "air accordian" played and new friends-for-a-night cemented in memory. It was tough to drag ourselves out of bed in time to have breakfast and check-out of our inn, but worth every Tylenol we had to take that morning. I was sad to leave Doolin, there wasn't a whole lot more to do or see there but something about it just stuck with me. I loved the juxtaposition of the quiet, serene coastal country afternoons followed by the rather wild, baudy music-filled night life. Highly recommended for a good old fashioned Irish time.

Day Four: Galway

Not going to lie, Galway is a bit of a blur. Lingering hang-overs aside, neither of us were sleeping well on the trip, tossing and turning uncomfortably almost all night, every night with very little actual sleep so by the fourth and final day of our trip we were wiped out. Galway was also the only place where our B&B wasn't right downtown, so we had to drive into the city that afternoon and deal with parking at a meter and we just felt generally rushed. I liked what I saw of Galway, however, and am glad we went there. As mentioned as the start of this epic blog, we had a really phenomenal dinner at the Malt House - I'm so pleased we found it and thanks goes to the Chowhound boards for the recommendation. The dinner capped off our Galway experience on a high note, and the whole trip as well. I'm sorry to say that we took almost no pictures in Galway, I was worried about our camera battery dying and just sort of out of it all day. We did ask someone on the street to take our picture after dinner so we'd have one on our anniversary, but unfortunately it came out really badly. Makes me rather sad, but pictures don't take away memories. We had taken a cab to dinner from the B&B and were a little worried about getting one home, plus we had to get up early to head off to airport in Shannon the next morning and we'd had a late night the night prior, so we weren't out late at all - no rowdiness in Galway. We're still young, but getting older it seems. Or just wiser.

There is so much more I could say, but it would either be trivial and boring or just take too long and this is already quite long enough. It was only a five day, four night trip - on the one hand, it felt too short and there were so many things we didn't do and places we couldn't go. But, to be honest, by the time we were leaving I felt relieved because I had been exhausted the whole trip. I don't know if it was just garden-variety jet-lag or the constant movement and changing locations every night but I couldn't take much more. We packed a lot into a little bit of time and I feel really satisfied with the whole experience. Of course, I am already plotting our next trip in my mind, but with the exchange rate and airfare what they are its an awfully expensive time to travel. In the meantime, I will save up and keep dreaming of the next adventure.

My parting thought is a bit of advice to anyone thinking of traveling to Ireland: for the love of Jehoshophat, do yourself a huge favor and fly in and out of Shannon not Dublin. We had kind of a nightmarish experience in and around the Dublin airport (surely exacerbated by our 5am arrival and lack of sleep, but still) and the Shannon airport could not have been easier to navigate, more calm and just generally pleasant (as much as an airport can be). Ireland isn't a huge place, if you want to do things on the East side (the Dublin side) you can easily fly into Shannon and get to the other end of the country in a handful of hours. Little tip from me to you.

Oh and one last picture ...

... just because he's so darn handsome.