A word of advice to you all—don’t take the flight from the States that leaves in the early evening and arrives at 5:00 am Irish (or any) time. It’s a 6 hour flight—not long enough to fit in supper and any actual sleep, and then it’s a new day and you have to get places (you can’t really just stay in the airport for the next 16 or so hours, sleeping, after all). So then you have to accomplish a day (driving on the left side of the road, figuring out confusing road signs or a public transit system, spending a few hours in a car, perhaps seeing some sights, and finding food) for the next 14 or so hours, after having had no sleep. Perhaps this is easier on 20-year olds, but it’s not on 50-year olds.
At any rate, we spent our first day driving south from Dublin’s airport to County Waterford, south of New Ross (a port for famine immigrants in the 1800s and listed in the Canadian vital records as the birth town of the first Bretts; Don’s mother’s father’s family) and west of Dungarven. It alternately drizzled, rained, and poured. The clouds were sometimes low and sometimes higher. The highway turned into a two-lane road south of Dublin. We stopped in a town that was having a Farmers’ Market, and we bought local cheeses, breads, strawberries, raspberries, and vegetables, as well as a home-made quiche. We went shopping for basics at a discount grocery store in Dungarven. Thank goodness the dollar is strong against the euro, finally, and so something that costs 1 euro costs us only slightly more than $1 (much better than the $2 it would have cost us the last time we were in Europe).
Then we proceeded to get quite lost on the Irish back roads, which wander in unpredictable ways and end up going a completely different direction than the one they began in. The back roads are also horribly—or not all all—signed, so it was impossible to know what to do at a crossroads. We finally saw a man, who was getting off work at a local quarry and was closing the gate to the quarry, and we asked him how to get where we were going. He not only said he would take us near to the cottage, but, being Irish, he led us all the way to our driveway. We attempted to get his name, but he was too busy being sheepishly apologetic (as is everyone) about the rain and wind, as if it’s the fault of the Irish people. Since the rain makes the land so green and lush, we’re not complaining. Besides, having left 90 degree weather, 55 and rainy was a welcome relief.
I am falling asleep over the computer. It is 7:50 pm here (I am missing the World Cup game between Germany and Uruguay for 3rd and 4th place; Don went to the local pub to watch it, but I didn’t want to fall asleep there with people who might think I was bored with the game. I AM going out tomorrow night to watch the final game between Spain and the Netherlands. Such a nice outcome, having the final game be between two countries that have never won a World Cup before, despite having great players. It will be nice no matter who wins), and therefore 2:50 pm on the East Coast, so I have been up for over 30 hours. For tonight I am getting in my pajamas, brushing my teeth, and going to bed, with a prayer for Uruguay. This World Cup has been a great wake-up to the world, to the fact that soccer is now a truly global game, and that those nations that have assumed that they will always be the greatest in the world (France, Italy, Brazil, Germany, England) will from now on be given a “run for their money” by nations that have never even made it into the tournament or never made it far (Uruguay, South Korea, the U.S.,…). Go Uruguay! Let’s make all 3 final teams ones that have never been there before!
Woohoo!! Hope you are recovered! Gooooo Spain!
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