Wednesday, April 19
Our cab arrived in front of the house at 6:30. Nancy, Allie, and I piled in. There was very little traffic that time of the morning. I made the mistake of asking the driver how the rise in gasoline prices was effecting his business. He told me all about it in no uncertain terms. After a little confusion at the train station, we hooked up with Susann, our guide for the day.
Heuston Station was clean, well-lighted,
and surprisingly free of the smell of diesel. Since we left home
without the benefit of our usual Irish breakfast, Nancy and I ordered the
dining car’s version of it. It was better than your average meal
on wheels. Once out of Dublin, the brilliant green fields and wide
open spaces just rolled right on by. Susann gave us the low down
on what we would be seeing during the day. She even provided us with
some details of her personal life like the fact that she’s a lecturer in
linguistics at Trinity College, she’s an American who moved here with an
Irish husband fifteen years ago, and now she’s divorced. We got pretty
well acquainted with Susann over the course of the day. She turned
out to be not only very helpful, but also a fun tour guide.
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It took about 2 hours and 45 minutes to get to Galway. As soon as we got off the train, we were hustled outside to the waiting Lally tour bus. It was filled with tourists of all nationalities. Sadly we got only a very cursory glimpse of Galway as we sped out of town.
Our bus carved a long, slow, figure-eight
through the scenic Connemara region. The first part of our journey
took us past misty mountains with gorse-covered hillsides, clear lakes,
a lone fjord, and the surprisingly drab bogs. There was nary an Irishman
to be seen in the countryside, just sheep almost everywhere you looked,
often grazing the slopes at impossible angles. Susann said much of
the land in this region was unsuitable for agriculture, hence the very
sparse human population. Ireland doesn’t depend on peat bogs as an
energy source as much now as in the past, but we still saw evidence of
the current extraction process along the way. Our driver, Martin,
did a good job of describing what we saw out our windows. He engaged
in playful banter accompanied by his own spirited singing. During
occasional lulls in the action he piped in traditional Irish music over
the loud speaker, all the while skillfully navigating the narrow, curvy,
rain-slickened backroads.
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We stopped at Kylemore Abbey for lunch. Susann warned us that we really needed to make a choice between eating a hot meal and seeing everything there was to see at the Abbey. We chose exploring over eating. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate at all. In short, it rained like hell. Nancy, Allie, and I walked the few hundred yards from the parking lot to the Abbey in a driving rain that turned our puny umbrellas inside out. Somehow my head stayed more or less dry, but my pants were soaked. Allie was just as wet. For a brief moment we envied the other tourists, most of whom had opted for the sheltered comfort of the cafeteria.
Kylemore is a Benedictine abbey nestled between a picturesque lake and some sharply rising mountains. We wondered whether Mom and Sister Jane Frances had visited the Abbey on their trip to Ireland in the early 90s. After all, Sister Jane has been in the Order of St. Benedict for over 50 years. Later we learned that they hadn’t been able to make it there. However, I did find out that my boss, Barbara Brown, took the same tour as we did a year or so earlier.
We were allowed to visit four or five fully
furnished rooms in the Abbey. The rest of the former castle is reserved
for students in residence. We ventured back out into the rain a couple
more times to see the recently renovated Chapel and later to watch a video
in another building. Just before we got back on the bus, the rain
stopped long enough for me to take several quick pictures of the Abbey
from the bridge. In reality, though, no photograph by an amateur
like me will ever do this breathtaking setting justice.
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One of the most incredible sights on our
trip came during the afternoon ride back to Galway. The three of
us learned the true meaning of Stonewall Country (sorry about the Lexington
inside joke!). As we drove over toward the coast, the ground got
steadily rockier until finally the bus stopped for the ultimate photo shoot.
Running through a small cluster of houses (including one with a thatched
roof) was a network of stone walls as far as the eye could behold.
I’ve never seen anything like it. It puts anything we saw in the
English countryside several years ago to shame.
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Once back in Galway, we had little time for
anything except to go down into the city shopping mall and pick up sandwiches
and drinks to eat on the train. We had a couple of unexpected delays
on the ride back, so there were times when the train seemed to be flying
to make up the lost time. A friendly cabby dropped us off near Colette’s
around 9:30 PM. It was a long day to be sure. We may not have
kissed the Blarney Stone (that happens on the southern rail tour), but
we did get an unforgettable sampling of the beautiful Irish countryside.
back
to Introduction
map of Dublin
City Center
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Created by Nancy and Dave Badertscher
badertn@rockbridge.net
May 7, 2000