One of my favorite Irish tunes is "The Top of the Cork Road", a delightful jig which we play often in our Monday night Celtic sessions here in Traverse City. It was my love of the music that prompted this trip - and the conversation over dinner with some other Realtor® Association managers. It was a magic week of good friends sharing food, drink, concern for each other, and a lot of time on the road - especially the Cork Road!

Our first night was spent in the lovely Adare Manor, complete with formal gardens and gorgeous dining rooms. We had planned the trip so that we had a combination of castles and Bed & Breakfasts, and the Adare Manor could have spoiled us all!

The town of Adare was lovely, too: one of the most historic and picturesque of any. It has a beautiful park and wonderful thatched roof cottages.

Our first dinner together was in the Manor dining hall, lavish and exquisite, and afterwards we shared desserts and collapsed in our beds - tired from our journeys from Texas, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, and Washington DC.

Days 2 and 3 were spent in and around Killarney. . . staying at a bed and breakfast known as the Glena House. The B&B was quite close to dowtown. . .a good thing, because we did quite a lot of driving and sightseeing, and walks were nice. Our second night though, was spent worrying about Clare, our member from Dallas, who got word that her husband had suffered a heart attack. He was well cared for and as well as could be expected, but we were all deeply concerned and spent some time finding ways to get her home immediately. Fortunately, there was a small airport nearby with flights out the next morning - so we settled for a late night Chinese dinner at the only restaurant still open! It was great food, and we departed with a bottle of wine to help us through a late-night planning session for the busy next day.







      

From Killarney we toured the beautiful Ring of Kerry, a day of breathtaking scenery. It was breathtaking in other ways as well: our drivers were quite challenged by the narrow roads and the stone walls which bordered them. We had a lot of side-view mirror alerts, some four-letter "discussions" with tour buses, and failing batteries on our two-way radios. Here are some scenes:

      

Were we tired at the end of the day? You betcha! but not so tired that we couldn't find good pub food, which we found a lot of, and plenty of Guinness. While in Killarney we found a nice place called "The Danny Mann", where we celebrated Jim's birthday dinner with great food and a show by the Irish Weavers, a trio of three fine traditional Irish Musicians.

Another major day's outing while we were in the area was to the Cliffs of Mohr - again a breathtakingly beautiful vista, despite some pretty significant construction that was going on as a new visitor's center was being built. But these were the Cliffs which I had heard so much about. And as I struggled up the long climb, I kept the tune going in my head, pretty much in time to my heavy breathing as I labored higher and higher. People get real crazy when they get up that high, and are that close to the sea as it smashes against the rocks. In America, we'd probably put a chain link fence around the perimeter, but all that separates the sightseers from a flight with the puffins is a low rock wall. I also was happy that we'd chosen April for our visit - the day was beautiful and clear, and there were few pilgrims climbing with us.

A particularly amazing place was the Bunratty Castle and Folk Village. The site on which Bunratty Castle stands was originally a Viking Trading Camp in 970. The present structure is the last of four castles to be built on the site. The adjacent Bunratty Folk Park recreates rural and urban life in 19th century Victorian Ireland. There is an extensive array of vernacular buildings, indicative of all the social strata from the poorest one room dwelling to Bunratty House, a Georgian residence for the gentry. Traditional jobs and crafts are also represented - mililng, the forge, pottery, printing, baking, farming.

   

As I look as these photos, I see that we must have gone here on the first day in Killarney, as Claire left the next day after this excursion. But hey! We saw a LOT of castles! Claire remarked, as she caught a glimpse of some ruin from the car, "Oh, look!" There's a leftover from. . . . . . something." We all laughed, and from then on the castles and ruins were affectionately referred to as "Left-overs".

Of course we visited Blarney Castle too - everyone does. The Blarney Castle one sees today is the third to have been erected on this site. The first building in the tenth century was a wooden structure. Around 1210 A.D. this was replaced by a stone structure which had the entrance some twenty feet above the ground on the north face. This building was demolished for foundations. In 1446 the third castle was built by Dermot McCarthy, King of Munster. . .and my friend Karen McCarthy's father is quite proud to claim relationship to King Dermot. There are a lot of tales about the "Stone of Eloquence" - It was brought back from the Crusades, some say. Another tale was that McCarthy was given the story of the stone by an old woman whom he saved from drowning. This lady turned out to be a witch. As a reward, she told him the secret of a stone in the castle which would give him the gift of eloquence in return for a kiss. Wherever the truth lies, tradition has it that once kissed the stone bestows the gift of eloquence. What our little band of travelers knows is that only one among us hung himself over the parapet to kiss the stone. . . and that one already had more than his share of blarney. (Those of you who know us will guess it was Chuck - and you'll be right!)



Those of you who know me will be wondering how much music life I found . and the answer was, not too much. But that's because it was Easter week, not a big entertainment time of year, and because we were traveling from one town to another, not usually in the right place at the right time. We did happen on the Irish Weavers' stage show on Jim's birthday, and one other sessiun at "The Spaniard" in Kinsale (where Blarney Chuck made lots of friends on the outside deck, as everyone retired there for a smoke, since smoking inside is against the law in Ireland.)

We did not suffer from a lack of excellent food, by the way. Kinsale is known for its excellent restaurants, and both The Spaniard and Man Friday's were wonderful places to dine. Other culinary highlights included the Adare Manor, and several of the inns and pubs along the way.

Toward the end of our week, we visited the Waterford Crystal factory in (of course) Waterford. While I'm not one of the crystal people, some group members came home with lots of investments in the beautiful things which are made here. And we all enjoyed a fantastic tour of the factory where we saw the glass blowers, etchers, cutters, and polishers hard at work. Several of them were able to talk to us as we walked throught the plant, and we asked many questions.

   

Our last night was spent in Kilkea Castle in the County Kildare. Kilkea was built in about 1180, and restored several times, the latest as a castle hotel in 1965. While many of the original treasures are now destroyed, some unusual features remain - and those I took time to explore while my more hardy traveling companions headed for a whirlwind visit to Dublin.The most fascinating is the evil eye stone, a monstrous erotic depiction designed to ward off evil by attracting it to the outside walls of the building.

The castle also contains a ruined graveyard, over-run by vegetation and cluttered with fallen stones. The names are those of the O'Toole's and the Fitzgerald's, the two clans who fought each other for four centuries and are now buried in the same churchyard.

Later that night we met at a local pub for one last meal, and a quick nap before our early morning departure.

At at 5:00 a.m. we met in the courtyard of Kilkea Castle to depart. Even at that early hour, the doorman was unfailingly polite as he helped us into our car and directed us to the Dublin Airport. The only other person to witness our sad goodbyes was a wedding guest still upright with Guinness in hand, and ready for more party, despite the fact that it was now Easter morning. "Aye and have a safe trip to America.", he said, toasting us. "Tis only fitting that your last sight of Ireland should be a Pissed Paddy."

Laughing, we waved good-bye and headed home.