Just prior to taking our first trip to Ireland back in 1967, my mother was expressing anxiety about flying since she had never been in airplane. Her arrival to the U.S. from England in 1953 was on the Queen Mary, a ship that is now retired and parked in Long Beach, California as a tourist attraction.

In an effort to ease my mother’s fear of flying, my father decided to take us to the local airport in Forty Fort, PA and get an introductory flight in a small 4-seat airplane. My mother sat up front, and my sister and I sat in the back. I still have vivid recollections of that flight and know that it influenced me to pursue my own pilot’s license some 20+ years later. My mother’s reaction was quite the opposite. She hated the small airplane that seemed to her like it was bumping along in the air like a cork on the ocean.

The most amazing thing about the flight for me was that I was able to look down from above and see my house and my hometown, and once I’d experience the earth from above, it became the way I began to visualize any place I visit. Experiencing a city from the ground can be confusing because it’s hard to recall how the city is laid out if you don’t always know which way you’re traveling. But in the air, there’s no mistaking it; you can see where everything is located and get a sense of the size and proportion of the area. Now when I visit a new city, I make a point of ‘visiting it from the air’ first, by using Google Earth, which allows you to simulate a flight over any location on Earth.

In a few weeks I’ll be traveling to Suzhou, China. I will land in Shanghai and travel by bus or rented car to Suzhou. Using Google Earth, I have already looked up the locations of the two cities, measured the distances between them and got a sense of the enormous size of the city of Shanghai. Although the cities are only separated by about 50 miles, I found that the airport is 20 miles to the east of Shanghai, and Shuzhou is to the west, so it’s going to take at least a few hours to get to Suzhou after landing. I had some advice from a co-worker today that the drive he had to Suzhou was quite nerve-wracking with the driver using the horn most of the way. I may try to take that trip outside of the normal rush hour.

Similarly, I used Google Earth prior to taking the European trip. I had hoped to retrace the routes to some of the same places we had visited in 1967 and needed to figure out how far apart they all were from each other. I knew we’d be traveling to from Shannon Airport to Nenagh first and then to Tubrid, just outside Kilkenny, and also to Waterford and Tramore. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they are only separated by distances of about 30 to 50 miles (as the crow flies). I knew that the roads between them were not straight highways and so it would take at least twice as long as the ‘mile per minute’ I generally allocate for travel on Interstate highways in the U.S..

Shortly after we arrived at John’s house in Nenagh, he had to meet with his architect, so he took us with him and dropped us off in Nenagh. It gave us a chance to take a self-guided walking tour around town. We visited the ruins of a Franciscan abbey, built in 1212. We also visited the Nenagh Castle, a 12th century structure that was undergoing some restoration work on the inside. Nenagh has a population of around 6,500 and is the largest town in North Tipperary. It’s a bustling little town with many shops lined up along its main street. Afterwards, John took us for a tour of a lot of homes in the area. We ended up back in Nenagh and had dinner at the Abbey Court Hotel. Later we visited one of those out-of-the-way pubs called the Carney Pub, a place frequented by Martin Sheen when he visits Ireland. Sheen’s mother, Mary Anne Phelan, is from a nearby area in Tipperary. The pub was tiny inside, but it had a nice crowd of people all of whom seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves.

The next day, John took us for a tour which included a stop in Dromineer, a beautiful location on the banks of the Shannon River and we stopped briefly at a pub owned by a friend of his called the Whisky Still. There is also a very nice restaurant at the Dromineer Bay Hotel, which is where we’d being having dinner the following night.

On Saturday, John gave us a tour of Tipperary where we saw many beautiful views of the River Shannon, particularly around the overlook near Portroe. We eventually made it to the towns of Ballina and Killaloe, which was across the river in County Clare. Many of the houses that overlooked the Shannon River were spectacular. We were amazed at the number of homes we saw under construction and those that had been built in the last 10 years. Ireland is truly undergoing an economic renaissance.

Later that evening, we had dinner with my cousins at the Dromineer Bay Hotel. Dromineer is a beautiful location that was one of my Aunt Bridie’s favorite places to visit. The hotel’s restaurant has beautiful views of the River Shannon and the food is outstanding. Later, we stopped at a pub in Puckaun which is owned by my cousin, Pat. We had a great time there mingling with the locals listening to the live music.

After spending a few days with John, it was time for him to return to the U.S. and he needed to leave very early in the morning, around 6 a.m. to catch a 9 a.m. flight. We were schedule to travel to Tubrid that day, so we spent a little time washing a few items and visiting with my cousin Tom and his family where we got to see a hurling match on TV. I had seen local Irish boys hurling when I visited Ireland as a child, but had never seen a match on TV. It was quite interesting to watch since the game is fast-paced and requires tremendous skill. It’s a somewhat like a combination of field hockey and lacrosse, but the sticks, called hurleys, are flat and are used to balance the ball as the players run at full speed down the field. The hurleys are also used like a baseball bat to hit the ball through the air great distances so that accounts for the fast pace of the game. The goal is similar to a soccer goal, but it also has uprights similar to American football and you can score a point by hitting the ball through the uprights. Getting the ball under the crossbar and into the net results in 3 points, but it is protected by a goalkeeper so it’s much more challenging. The Irish are quite enthralled with the sport and we heard many references to it during our travels in Ireland. World Cup fever may have been raging through other European countries, but the Irish were fixated on the outcome of the hurling matches. After getting a chance to watch both sports, my vote is for hurling as being the more entertaining of the two.

The last time we visited Tubrid in 2003, we stayed with my cousin Lil Kellaghan, who has a B&B called the Cradog, which means ‘my little place’ in Gaelic. She and her husband Frank raised 6 children, all of whom are grown and living on their own and so they converted the space in their modern farmhouse into a B&B which they’ve been running for the past 10 years. Three of the rooms are ‘ensuite’ which means they have adjoining private bathrooms, and there’s another room with a separate private bathroom. The place is absolutely gorgeous and has b
eautiful views of the countryside in every direction. It also has a sitting room and dining room for the guests. There’s a country pub just a short walk down the lane. I’d highly recommend you stay at the Cradog if your travels in Ireland take you anywhere near Kilkenny.

On this visit we’d be staying a few nights at with my cousin Theresa at Tubrid House which is less than a mile from the Cradog. Tubrid House is where my grandfather, my mother, uncle, aunt and many of my cousins were born and raised. It has been in the Kennedy family for nearly 160 years. We stayed there for a week when we visited in 1967 and although it looks much the same from the outside, my cousin Paddy and his wife Theresa have done much updating to the interior as well as to the surrounding courtyard. It’s located right next to a 600-year-old castle which has been undergoing a restoration. The castle is currently surrounded by scaffolding and the mortar is being replaced to secure it so that it won’t collapse. On our previous visits, we had gone into the castle and did some exploring, but this time it looked like that wouldn’t be possible since the workmen were there each day. Despite it’s proximity to the Kennedy property, a neighbor owns the castle. It’s not apparent what the neighbor’s plans for it will be when the restoration work is complete. There is a similar castle a few miles from Tubrid called the Clomantagh Castle owned by the Irish Landmark Trust, and the interior has been retrofitted with electricity and running water and it is available for rental. We took a tour through it in 2003 and although it gets many points for its uniqueness, the atmosphere inside this castle tends to be somewhat dark and dank despite the copious amount of whitewash that had been applied to its interior walls. It costs around $1000/week to rent and sleeps 10. That’s not too expensive for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rent a 15th-century castle.

My cousin Lil invited us over to have dinner with some guests she was hosting so we’d get see her in action and to swap some stories with fellow Americans. We jumped at the opportunity. The Cradog is affiliated with a local group of B&Bs that can handle bus tours. The guests are split up among 3 or 4 B&Bs within a few miles radius and they get a chance to experience a stay at Irish farm house. This is a rarity on a bus tour since tour companies generally book rooms in city hotels. After spending several weeks traveling around Ireland and Scotland in 2003 by bus, we stayed for a few extra days to visit with Lil at her farm house B&B. I can assure you that the being able to sit and talk with a gracious hostess who grew up in Ireland will be much more memorable than any 4-star hotel you may experience in your travels. Staying at B&Bs is a great way to truly experience the culture and the people of Ireland. After having a chance to meet and talk with the guests who stayed at the Cradog, I found that they felt the same way…

When I first started writing up the trip, I was hoping to keep up the pace of submitting something new each day until I was finished. But that’s starting to become a challenge as I begin to resume the regular day-to-day schedule of my routine. In the week since I returned, there has been a lot of ‘catch-up’ work involved with my day job and some other activities that have conspired to prevent me from finishing the write up. It’s not that I’m on a tight schedule to finish this trip report; I just want to get it committed to writing before I forget the details of the trip. My purpose in writing the report is to have a record of it for the future so that it will be easier to remember. I also wanted to put it in a weblog format to give some others who may stumble across it some incentive to embark on similar adventures.

I have a book entitled Trout Fishing written by Charley Dickey and Fred Moses and the preface has the best reasoning I’ve ever read to engage in one’s hobbies, interests, and traveling adventures. It centers around the concept of a Memory Bank.

“…everyone should open a Memory Bank account. As quickly as you open the account, you should begin making deposits. Every hunting or fishing trip is a deposit. The more trips you make, if only for an hour or two, the richer you become.

Of course, there’s a catch, No one can make deposits for you. No rich uncle can leave them to you. No one else can transfer his memory account to you. All of the deposits must be made by you. There will always be urgent family or job affairs trying to prevent you from making deposits. Many obstacles will spring up to block you, but if you make the effort you can become as rich as you want.”

Now, I’ll get back to the trip. We awoke on Friday after a pleasant night’s sleep with the hope that we’d get a call that our luggage had arrived. After calling the lost baggage counter, we found that no planes had made it into Shannon that morning due to bad weather the previous evening on the east coast of the U.S. So we went to breakfast and stopped by the front desk to ask for a late checkout. If our luggage didn’t make it that day, the lost baggage counter assured us they could deliver it to Nenagh the next day. But no sooner did we finish breakfast that we got a call letting us know that our luggage was at the airport and we could come out to get it. That was quite a relief.

After picking up the luggage, we made arrangements to meet with my cousin, John Hayes, at whose house we’d be staying the first few days.

Ten of my first cousins on my mom’s side of the family were born in Ireland and six of them decided to emigrate to the U.S. to seek their fortunes. John was among the first of them to emigrate. Since he was the eldest son in his family, he could have stayed in Ireland and inherited the farm, but farm work didn’t appeal to him and so he decided to come to the U.S. and find work that was more to his liking. He ended up in Alaska working on the pipeline. He’s been quite successful and he has places now in both New York and Ireland and lives between both countries. He wasn’t scheduled to be in Ireland when we arrived but had generously offered to let us to stay at his house. In the meantime he’d embarked on a new project to build and even grander house there and so had many associated errands that required meeting with the builder, architect, engineer, and various contractors. Thus he needed to make an impromptu visit to Ireland that overlapped with ours.

To say John is obsessed with houses and construction would be an understatement. He’s so passionate about it that it rubs off on you after talking to him for just a short while. So it was quite fortunate that our schedules overlapped, because John took the time to give us the grand tour of County Tipperary, something I’d later refer to as ‘John’s Parade of Homes’, which was simply amazing. Houses are being built all over the place, many of them large and expensive, and John was able to provide details about nearly all of them.

John seems to know everyone. Despite being away from Ireland for most of the past 40 years, John was continually greeted by friends on the street, in the stores, and even at stoplights as we traveled around. All the while he was lamenting about how he barely knew anyone in Nenagh anymore. Yet I’d be hard pressed to find anyone better connected than John.

In addition to visiting with John, we got to spend time with his brothers, Tom and Pat and their families who live close by. We saw the original Hayes family farm and other housing projects underway by family members and relatives. We even visited some authentic Irish pubs in out-of-the way places and had a great time experiencing the Irish culture and catching up with everyone. As a special bonus for us, my cousin Kathleen, John’s sister, who lives in Seattle, had also made last minute plans to visit to Ireland while accompanying her husband on a trip to the UK and Sicily. Thus, we’d later be able to spend a pleasant afternoon with her and a few other relatives when she caught up with us in Kilkenny.

It’s hard to pinpoint the source of economic prosperity that has swept through Ireland in the past 20 years. For more than 100 years, the primary export from Ireland was its people, some of whom were so desperate to escape that they took jobs as domestics and low wage laborers in other countries. My mother was one of them. Then, about 20 years ago, I started hearing stories how that had all changed and the economy was booming with so much work available that it was no longer necessary to emigrate to seek one’s fortune. For the first time in history, people were actually returning to Ireland after living abroad. I’d asked lots of people while I was there about their opinions of the cause of this new-found prosperity, but have yet to get a consistent answer. Much of it appears to stem from the housing construction industry, yet housing construction seems like it’s an effect, not a primary cause, of prosperity. Some say it’s the inclusion in the EU which, due to an educated but underemployed work force, has allowed Ireland to take jobs from other European nations. A few mentioned something the government did with the tax laws to attract multinational corporations, all whom now seem to be represented in and around Dublin.

I’m sure it’s a combination of all of these effects, but perhaps it’s also related to the attitude of the Irish people who are open and welcoming to others from around the world. This attitude helps to attract corporations and jobs where some historically better-positioned countries have engaged in behaviors that favor their own citizens and local companies at the expense of ideas, people, and companies from the ‘outside’…

So after what felt like an eternity, the man at the check-in handed me back the passports and told me everything was OK. I ran back through the gangway to make sure I got on the plane before it departed. After I got reseated, they continued to wait for other connecting flights so that they could fill the plane’s seats and thus depart with a completely full aircraft. I hoped that it would allow more time for our luggage to catch up with us.

Pretty soon, we taxied out on to the runway and were underway to the Emerald Isle. I was still tired despite having slept through most of the previous legs of the trip, I don’t remember much the flight over the ocean. As I mentioned on a previous entry, the last time I made the flight from the U.S. to Shannon was nearly 40 years ago, in 1967, and I recall having to wear a sport coat and tie, since everyone dressed up to fly in those days. I also remember conducting an experiment on that flight. I had some conversations with some of my friends where we speculated that if you jumped up on a flight that was moving at approximately 500 mph, you’d end up moving back in the aisle a few feet, maybe even more. One of them speculated that you’d get slammed up against the back wall of the plane. I performed this experiment and was surprised to find that I landed precisely where I jumped up. That was my first recollection of consciously performing a physics experiment. I didn’t understand it at the time, but later when I learned of Newton’s first law of motion, it immediately made sense. That is, “A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.” Even though I was moving at 500 mph, so was the plane, so jumping up had no effect since both the plane an my body were moving at the same speed.

Our plan was to land in Shannon in the morning and spend the check into the Bunratty Shramrock Hotel, right next to the Bunratty Castle and Folk Park. We thought we might also a visit Limerick which was only about 15 km away. When we visited in 1967, we were met at the airport by my Aunt Bridie and were taken to the Bunratty castle which is very near the Shannon airport. I was totally fascinated. There was a REAL castle with suits of armour, swords, and all the accouterments necessary to give me the impression that I’d just been transported back to medieval times. I couldn’t believe my eyes at what I was witnessing. And I had only been in the country for less than 30 minutes! So the Bunratty Castle was the first stop on our list of places to visit on this trip.

Unfortunately, we found that the luggage didn’t make it so we there with just the clothes on our backs. We hadn’t even packed a toothbrush in our carry-on bags. We hoped for they’d have some items we needed at the hotel which was only about 10 km away and that our luggage would arrive the next morning. We went to the Budget car rental location looking forward to having a car for the week for only € 160, but instead we got the ‘shakedown’ from Budget. They said that unless we paid and extra € 35 a day, essentially tripling the rental charges, they’d have to have a hold put on our credit card of € 4000 and strongly advised us that we needed this insurance. My credit card could endure the € 4000 hold, but then I remembered I was driving a stick shift car (with my left hand) on the left side of the road and thought maybe it was worth the extra cost for the peace of mind. I had to waive several other insurance charges that could have easily quadrupled the rental bill. So here’s your warning: When you rent in Europe, ask about hidden insurance charges and how you might avoid them. I learned that if I had carried a Gold Mastercard or Diner’s Club card, I could have avoided these usurious insurance charges.

It was still pretty early in the day when we arrived at the hotel and they told us it would be about an hour before our room would be available. We decided to wander over to the local convenience store to pick up a few items and then stopped at a pub called Durty Nelly’s to get something to eat.

After eating some fish and chips, I was in great spirits, eager to re-explore the Bunratty castle that had so mesmerized me as a youth. I found that instead of just a castle, there had been a whole village added called a ‘folk park’ that showed what Ireland was like perhaps 100 years ago. It was complete with cottages, mechant buildings, a schoolhouse, a pub, etc. When I come to think of it, the folk park may have represented several hundred years of Irish history since the country had not changed significantly for several centuries. When I visited in 1967, there were many places that still had no indoor plumbing, which to the American way of thinking was quite unusual, although they all had electricity by then. Many of the houses were built with stone and had thatched roofs. A lot has happened in 40 years and I was amazed to find that the houses were now better built and as modern as anything you’ll find in the U.S., as well as much more expensive. Ireland has gone from subsistence farming, skipped the industrial age, and right to a high tech bustling economy.

After exploring the folk park and castle, Terri was exhausted and we were ready to take a nap back at the hotel. We awoke early in the evening and headed over to a nearby restaurant to get some dinner. However, we weren’t hungry enough for a big meal, so we decided to go back to Durty Nelly’s and have some pub food with apple pie and ice cream for dessert that was outstanding. Despite the name and appearance of being a pub, the food at Durty Nelly’s is excellent.

We were hoping that our luggage would arrive the next morning so we wouldn’t have to meet up with our relatives in Nenagh with the unkempt appearance one acquires when wearing the same clothes for three days…

It should come as no surprise to those of you who have used frequent flyer miles that the number of seats allocated for frequent flyer programs on each flight is very limited. So trying to get 2 seats from Denver to Ireland isn’t as easy as it is when booking regular tickets where there’s some money involved. The number of frequent flyer miles for two round-trip tickets to Europe is substantial. It took 100,000 miles for a pair of tickets and I had earned most of those miles the hard way, by flying to Taiwan on 5 separate occasions last year, which is a grueling way to accumulate miles. Those trips included 10 separate 12+ hour legs of travel, all in economy class.

The flight from Denver left at 6:00 a.m. and stopped in Chicago…for 6 hours…and then continued to Philadelphia before heading out to Shannon Airport in Ireland. This is not an itinerary that would be offered to a paying customer, but for frequent flyer miles, they assured us it was the best they could do.

United suggests being at the airport at least 2 hours before your flight leaves and since it takes about 1.5 hours to drive to the airport, park the car and get the shuttle to the airport, it means we’d have to leave our house about 2:30 a.m., which means we’d need to get up around 2:00 a.m. That’s not the most auspicious way to start a vacation, but we weren’t in a good bargaining position. Terri figured we should get a hotel in Chicago just to catch up on sleep because we knew we’d only be getting about 3 hours of sleep the night before we left. It reminded me of the ‘mandatory rest period’ that is mentioned on the show The Amazing Race, the show that inspired us to structure the trip the way we did.

Whether you book a hotel for an hour or a day, the rate is the same. However, it’s hard to put a price for the pain and suffering for a cranky spouse but it can exceed that of a night’s stay in a hotel near the airport, so it was an easy decision…and I won’t mention who might have been the cranky spouse. Thus, a “mandatory rest period” was scheduled in the windy city. We hoped that we wouldn’t oversleep.

We managed to get to the airport on time despite the early hours, caught the flight to Chicago and even slept at a hotel for a few hours after we got there. The hotel relied on a taxi service to take guests to and from the airport and despite having scheduled it for our return, a taxi was not available. Fortunately, one of the hotel’s desk clerks came to the rescue and took us back to the Chicago airport. Once we arrived at our gate, they announced that our flight was going to be delayed. We had only a two hour layover in Philadelphia so having any more than an hour delay was going to be a problem. Around the time our flight was scheduled to depart, they called us to the desk and told us that because the plane had not yet arrived, we needed to go get our luggage at the baggage claim. I asked them what we should do after that and they said we’d have to check in again and get an alternate routing. It felt we’d been issued an infamous “road block” on The Amazing Race where another team issues you a setback and you are forced to wait while others can go on their way.

So we went down the baggage claim area, found our bags, and searched for a line at the US Air counter. The line was very long and slow with only a few counter people there and lots of angry-looking travelers, one who became so loud and rude that a counter person threatened to call the police. Since our connection was International, we got into a shorter line, but each customer was taking an eternity to get re-routed and we feared we were not going to make it on a plane to Ireland that night. By the time we got to the counter, they couldn’t find a single flight that day to Ireland and were offering routing us through Paris, Dublin, and then to Shannon. That didn’t sound like much fun so we inquired about our original flight. The counter person said that the plane had arrived and was ready for boarding. If we were to run, we could make it back on our original flight and possibly make our connection in Philadelphia. Our bags were already tagged for that flight, so we put them on the conveyor and ran for the gate. Of course, we had to go through security yet again, but made it to the gate on time. The plane hadn’t started boarding and we felt that we might just make it to Ireland as we had planned. We only hoped that our luggage would make it too.

By the time we got to Philadelphia, we had only about 15 minutes to get to the gate since our connecting flight was already boarding. So we ran again and made it to the plane and heaved a sigh of relief as we sat down in our seats. But the adventure wasn’t quite over yet because a man came on the plane and asked me to follow him with our passports. I figured that I’d just need to go to the front of the plane where someone would check the passports and that would be it. However, when he got off the plane and asked me to follow him, the flight attendant objected, telling him the plane would be leaving in a few minutes. He assured her it was OK and that it wouldn’t take much time. I followed him to the check-in area and he proceeded to swipe our passports through the scanner again and again and with a disapproving look like he couldn’t quite figure out the problem. Then he began entering things manually with the keyboard. He was assisted by a few others as I waited nervously at the gate, hoping they didn’t seal up the aircraft with Terri (now without her passport) already on board…