Saturday, June 1, 2019

heading home, and some final thoughts

Not much to write today in terms of recap.

We packed up the bus, drove to the Shannon Airport in the morning, said our goodbyes, and sadly headed our separate ways.

some final thoughts

• I keep talking to people who have traveled to Ireland but never really went outside of Dublin. I enjoyed Dublin a lot as a city full of culture, and would happily recommend it, but there’s so much more! It was rural Ireland that really made me fall in love with the country.

• Relatedly, don’t miss Northern Ireland if you find yourself in this part of the world. Belfast has such a unique character, and the scenery on the Causeway Coastal Route is really something worth seeing, whether or not you’re a Game of Thrones fan. And I know I just saw a tiny part of it.

• Random, but entire herds of cows and sheep spend a lot of time sitting down. As a city girl I’m not going to pretend to know anything about livestock, but I could swear in my driving through rural Florida over the years, the cows were always standing up and grazing during the day. I did a double take the first time I saw this, but it’s consistent throughout the whole country. I mean, I get it and don’t blame them – Ireland is chill.

• We happened to be there in baby lamb season, and man were they adorable bouncing around in the fields! Also, they grow so fast. Those lambs were definitely bigger when I left than when I got there.

• Vegetable soup is always a puree. Shrimp scampi is fried shrimp. You can get a ham-and-cheese-something pretty much anywhere. Brown soda bread is served with everything!

• I’m sure this is going to sound wildly ignorant, but I genuinely had no idea that Irish/Gaelic is a living language, let alone the first language on every sign in Ireland. There are whole regions of the country, many that we visited, that are “Gaeltacht”: areas where Gaelic is the primary language. They even did the announcements in Irish first on the Aer Lingus flight out of Shannon. I stand so very corrected!! Since the trip I’ve been listening to some Irish singing (courtesy of Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh) and trying to sing along, and it’s been a trip trying to wrap my head around matching the spelling of the lyrics to what seems like a totally different pronunciation.

• What a pleasure to go on a music-themed sojourn with a bunch of like-minded, down-to-earth people who clearly appreciated the same stuff I did, despite being from totally different walks of life. Ireland was great, but getting to experience it with this fantastic group of people is surely what pushed it over the edge. The whole thing was very organized from start to finish (thank you Barb and Paddy!), and I’d recommend Inishfree wholeheartedly to anyone who appreciates music.

• On that note, I can’t say enough good things about our tour leaders Harmonious Wail, three head-scratchingly talented musicians who also happen to be wonderful humans. I unquestionably learned from each of them (about whiskey but also life), and they’ve created a lifelong fan in me… I’m sure no surprise to the number of people who came on our trip specifically as Wail fans. Follow them on Facebook/their website, and if you’re around Wisconsin, it’s definitely worth checking to see if they’re playing!

It’s funny… before the trip, I came to learn that there are a number of people who have done multiple Inishfree trips to Ireland. And I struggled to understand that. Given this wide, wide world and all there is to see in it, what would make someone do the same vacation again?

And I totally get it now. Really from the minute I stepped onto that shamrock-emblazoned plane back to New York, I missed the serenity, the kindness of the people, the magnitude of the cultural and archaeological history, and certainly the heartfelt music.

I don’t know when, but I’ll be back.