I had three days notice I was going to Ireland. My aunt called me on Wednesday evening, July 24, and asked if I would meet her in Dublin on Sunday. Lucy had been traveling in England with a friend who had to return to the states suddenly because her husband was very ill. The next leg of their journey was Ireland; they'd already paid for their accommodations and couldn't get their money back nor did Lucy want to go alone. It took me about three seconds to decide. I hadn't been to Europe since 1992 when I traveled to France as a high school student. International travel, especially to Europe, has become a fantasy for me in recent years. Maybe my interest in Europe is related to food, but I also feel a connection to various countries because of ancestry, language study, and overall I feel like my life has been lacking in two major areas: adventure and love. In my mind, I think I've developed the romantic notion that Europe is where it could all happen. This time I would be going to Ireland and unlike my last trip to France, I wouldn't be wearing a fanny pack and tinted glasses.
Thankfully, I already had a passport. I'd renewed mine in 2010, but hadn't had a reason to use it since. So, of course, after tearing my desk apart looking for it and quickly searching the date of expiration, I nearly broke down in tears. At first glance, I thought the small print stated it had expired in 2010. No, not so, next line down: expiration of 2020. Deep breaths. Early Sunday morning I left Minneapolis, flew to Chicago and boarded an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin.
You'll know when you start walking the streets of Dublin that you're in the presence of literary ghosts. Walking into the setting for many a writer's tale always gives me that spine tingle. Dublin is colorful, alive, modern yet ancient, artistic, and there is food and drink to complement it all. Coming from a family of book lovers, my aunt and I both wanted to visit Trinity College to see the Book of Kells and the Old Library. Being in the presence of such books in their ancient stacks aroused deep feelings of scholarly passion. I wanted everyone in that library to clear out so I could be alone with the books, pouring over them, fingering their covers, and researching with total abandon. However, you could only look, not touch. Walking through St. Stephen's Green afterward helped cool me down and gave us a preview of the greens that were to come later, in the western half of Ireland. More than once we stood with our map open, wondering which direction to head, when Dubliners kindly stopped and asked us if we needed help. It doesn't take long to start falling in love with Ireland and its people.
The food of Dublin is varied, like in any big city where traditional dishes mix with the worldly. Our first night, we ate fish and chips at Leo Burdock, the oldest chipper in Dublin. The hot fish is handed to you wrapped in news print. When you find a spot to squat and and unwrap your present, the fish flakes apart in your fingers and melts in your mouth. Our upscale Dublin dinner the next night was at Dylan McGrath's Fade St. Social which has both a gastro pub and a restaurant. Dylan McGrath is a celebrity chef in Ireland and performs as one of the judges on Ireland's version of Masterchef. We weren't seeking his restaurant on purpose, but stumbled upon Fade Street Social by chance and liked what we read on the menu. An order of tapas from the gastro pub and we were clapping excitedly to ourselves in celebration over our choice. We were spooning dishes of shrimp tempura, sauteed spring cabbage, wild Irish mushrooms, and pumpkin macaroni. It was delicious.
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| Dublin Pubs |
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| "When I die Dublin will be written in my heart." -James Joyce |
The only cloud over my head was the anxiety I felt about the next leg of our journey which was going to be by car. My aunt would be driving and I would be navigating because I don't know how to drive stick (most cars in Ireland are manual for fuel efficiency). I have auto anxiety even in the states, so the thought of our taking to the road in a country where everything is the mirror opposite and round-a-bouting is constant, with my seniorish aunt at the wheel, was already heightening the need for Maalox and muscle relaxers, neither of which I had. A few wrong turns in Dublin, but we did it. I figured out the maps and Lucy shifted gear effortlessly while keeping us in the right "left" lane. Setting off, we were actually feeling pretty confident, maybe overly so, after our two days of navigating Dublin by foot, our mostly painless drive out of the city, and the great rapport we felt with everyone we met. Little did we know what was to come.
Our next destination was the city of Cork, but we decided to include a sojourn that morning to the ruins of Monasterboice, an early monastic community. The ruins include a round tower and the best preserved celtic crosses in Ireland. The site is nestled in rolling green hills, on a one-lane road in the countryside near the town of Drogheda. Monasterboice had at one time been captured by invading Vikings, and as we walked in the drizzling rain amongst the ruins and grave sites in this peaceful place, we were oblivious to the fact that our own belongings were being pillaged and captured at that very moment.
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| "Your Charity Pray For The Souls Of..." -grave marker at Monasterboice |
When we returned to the car, nearly everything was gone. My aunt's larger suitcase remained, but her bags containing her valuables & passport were gone. I had my passport & valuables on me, but all my clothes and incidentals were taken. Panic stricken, we were soon helped by the four older gentlemen who were working in the tourist booth at the cemetery. They called the local garda for us, and two officers were dispatched to take a report and provide assistance. In the end, my aunt's backpack was recovered by a garbage collector who found it tossed on the side of the road; it still had her passport and credit cards inside, which was great luck.
We received wonderful help that day from all the people around us, including the garda. Luckily, one of the officers working our case was a woman who kindly advised me on where I could at least get a new toothbrush and some underwear. After we finished giving reports and collecting Lucy's found backpack, we got back in the car for the long, rainy drive to Cork. It was a difficult drive, both of us having to concentrate that much harder as our minds kept wandering to the theft. Evening was settling in as we came into Cork, the most challenging city to navigate on our entire journey. We didn't have any maps that showed the street our hotel was on and the city itself was made up of a labyrinth of one-way streets, some of which were labeled and some which weren't. In the end, the only thing that saved us from never finding the hotel, was stopping to ask a person for directions. It took a few tries to find someone who was actually from Cork and knew where to go, but we made it. After checking in, we went right to the pub for Jameson, straight and chips. As we reflected on the day, I realized a tiny part of me might have been just a little bit thrilled something exciting had happened. That's not to say I wasn't mourning the loss of my best bras and journals or feeling sad for my aunt's more expensive losses, but it was in fact an adventure.
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