Saturday - 10 July: First Day in Ireland
Our group of nine arrive at Shannon airport at 7:45am, Saturday - after about 8-1/2 hours in the air. Betty arrived on a separate flight, just 15 minutes after us. All of our bags showed up within minutes and we breezed through 'customs' - "Those with nothing to declare, go through the green door." We waltzed through the green door
There was a cafeteria upstairs at the airport so we headed there for some breakfast
- our first Irish food. Johnny had an essentially all-meat breakfast. Most of
us had something a bit lighter, porridge of some sort for John - and a pot of
coffee each. Then, down to the car rental agency where we picked up the cellphones
and were directed to shuttle that would take us to the budget lot.
When leaving the car rental desk, Sheila asked the clerk: "Can I leave
a message with you for my sister."
Clerk: "I think what you mean to ask is - 'Will I give a message to your sister."
Sheila: "Well, yes. But if I leave the message with you, I'll have done my job."
The Irish banter had begun.
We waited a long time for the car even though we were almost at the front of
the line. Theresa and I got our car first - the total was nearly twice what
we had expected - despite turning down a request for an upgrade to a larger
vehicle. AND - being customer number one million! Or some such magical number.
Sheila & John got theirs next and got an upgrade to a larger vehicle because
they didn't have the right one. The upgrade was free and theirs cost about half
ours!
Pat & Patty were arriving later so we headed out around half nine for Ballenskellig.
(I'd call it 0945 when we left but I'm trying to get into the less precise Irish
timekeeping mode. "Half-nine" is approximately 0930.)
Theresa drove the first stretch in our car - with me, Molly, Kate and Joe. We all gripped the door handles as our brains tried to deal with driving on the left side of the road with the driver sitting on the 'wrong side' of the car. Theresa did great even when we got a bit lost in Limerick. I found it rather terrifying to sit in the left front seat but have no steering wheel or pedals to control the vehicle.
John was driving the other car (with Sheila, Johnnie, and Betty) and discovered after an hour or so that it had no reverse gear (at least none that he could find.)
The most Irish of all though but half
John quickly became chief of staff
Tho we thought it a curse
That he could not find reverse
Going forward he led us to laugh.
No problem, Joe and Johnny would jump out whenever needed and push the car backwards. John also became quite adept at manuevering the car so that he didn't need to use reverse. (We'd later discover that this car had a secret technique - unknown to any of we U.S. drivers - for putting the car in reverse. I suggested not telling Johnny and Joe for a few days so they might get some additional exercise but wiser heads prevailed.)
I (Gerry) took over driving from Theresa after Limerick and my armpits burned
(from the stress) as I made the mental switch to driving on the other side of
the road. (As Joe often mentioned during the trip, the rest of the world describes
our driving rules which prescribe staying on the 'right' side of the road -
as the 'RIGHT' way.) The roads got progressively narrower and twistier the closer
we got to Ballenskellig. But we safely reached Ballenskellig around 3pm and
checked into our houses. Here's downtown Ballenskellig:
We had two houses in the village: the bigger house, Ait Ciu In, which means - Quiet Place - would be home for the week for Sheila, John, Johnny, Kate, Joe, Sarah, Theresa and Molly.
Betty, Patty, Patrick and Gerry would be in the smaller cottage about 1/4 mile away.
After stowing our bags, we walked down the road a mile or so to the beach, trying to stay awake. There were a couple ruins - an ancient monstary (Ballinskelligs Abbey) and castle (Ballinskelligs Castle) along the water - but we were stumbling around by this time with insufficient energy to explore ruings. So we walked over to the nearby pub - Maines (we had a hard time figuring out the name of this pub, but it was definitely inside of the Ballenskelligs Inn) - where we sat out back overlooking the bay. And had our first Guinness! It was good.
For Kin and Country!!!
Meanwhile, Joe and Johnny had a chance to run about on the Irish turf between us and the water and stretch their legs.
Remarkably, it was during this late lunch that we spontaneously came up with our Divide-By-Twelve plan. It was wonderful in its simplicity and fairness.
After our first Guinness and a snack, we took the rather long walk back to
our houses - along the very narrow roads. There was not much traffic but we
felt a constant need to herd the children back onto the shoulder of the road.
All the cars seemed to be coming from the wrong direction. And at a high rate
of speed.
We weren't back long before Patrick and Patty showed up - I was driving the short distance over to the smaller house when I passed them going the other way on the single street that ran through Ballenskellig.
I flagged them down and redirected them to the cottage a wee bit down the path where Betty, Patty, Patrick and I would stay:
Rosie's was a lovely quiet pub with a half dozen men sitting at the bar talking in Gaelic. And of course, there was Rosie herself (and her son here beside her):
The more we visited it during the week, the better we liked it. But this night, we were all quite jet-lagged. We had a round of Guinness and were done. Finally, exhausted, we all went to bed at around 11pm. It was still quite light out here at this far northern latitude! (Let's see - that would be something like ... I give up. I don't know what time it was in California by then. Just that I had been up far too long.)