RTW Honeymoon #1: Ghosts, Guinness and Oliver Cromwell - Ireland

A great gigantic greeting to you all from Ireland, where the sheep are plentiful, the Guinness is like milk and the U.S. should have won the soccer match last night against Ireland...but we get ahead of ourselves.

Today finds the two of us in Ennis, County Clare, Ireland; a lovely cosmopolitan (as cosmo as the countryside gets) village in the west of Ireland. The stress and craziness of the wedding is finally fading into the tranquil Irish surroundings. We flew into Dublin last week, "hired" a car and headed straight for the Dingle peninsula in Ireland's Southwest. It was just what the doctor ordered: ruined castles, sweeping green hills with stone fences, quaint cobblestone streets with intimate pubs, sheep blocking traffic, Kim terrorizing helpless baby lambs ("They're so cuuuutee!! C'mere..."), me terrorizing Irish drivers ("Oh yeah, LEFT side of the road!" *insert sound of Irish delivery van plunging off seaside cliff* "Sorry about that!") and, incredibly, beautiful sunny weather; Ireland was doing its best impersonation of California in spring, and we were most grateful for the lovely weather.

We stayed in a stone mansion in Dingle that was supposedly haunted (sorry, we didn't see any ghosts) and spent our days tramping happily about the hills and cliffs exploring ruins and taking far too many photographs. Reluctantly, we headed out of Dingle after a few days to experience the stunning western coast of Ireland.

Avoiding major roads we found ourselves near Abbeydorney, the town where Donal, Kim's old roommate, is from. Turns out everyone within 20 miles of Abbeydorney knows who Donal is. The funny thing is, no one outside of that 20 mile radius is even aware of Abbeydorney's existence. This is probably due to the fact that Abbeydorney has only one pub. I think, to register on an Irish map, a town needs at least fifteen pubs lined up door-to-door on a main thoroughfare, as that seems to be the design of most other villages we passed through.

So, a dozen small towns later we found our way out to the Cliffs of Moher where it looks like a dragon took a huge bite out of the coast - gulls wheel and cry thousands of feet below and the ocean crashes ineffectually against the base of the cliffs far below even that. We drove through the Burren in Connacht (Cromwellian edict "To hell or Connacht!" echoing in our heads), a veritable wasteland where earth clings like a failing virus to the stone ground and the thought of families attempting to make a living on what could be grown in this environment sends a chill down your spine.

Finally, we find ourselves in Ennis, staying at a hostel on the river across the street from a 13^th century stone friary ("Get thee to a friary! ...wait a minute..."). We headed out to a local pub last night to catch the Ireland vs U.S. soccer match and make a general nuisance of ourselves as the only Yanks in the bar (" U - S - A!! U - S - A!!"). Soon we'll be off to Galway and Connemara before cutting back across to Dublin to see our family. We have about a week left here and we'll be sad to go - but St. Petersburg, Russia looms promisingly on the horizon!