I like sheep. They’re not smart or cuddly or friendly, but they do look pretty good in a grassy field or on the slope of a steep hill, especially when there are a lot of them dotting the landscape. The brightly colored splotches on their fuzzy bodies are brands; with the open grazing system that characterizes some parts of the country, sheep from different owners may mingle and will need to be sorted eventually.

I can’t offer too many guarantees for our tour of Ireland, but I can guarantee that you will see sheep, and plenty of them. To quote The Irish Times, “there were 4.7 million sheep in Ireland in 2010, distributed among 32,100 farms, with an average flock of 148.” I would guess that today’s number is not that different. That’s about one sheep for every person in the Republic of Ireland. Once the birthrate for sheep exceeds that for Irish people, there’s going to be trouble.

I’m a knitter and love wool, tweed, weaving, and all of that stuff, so that’s one reason why I like sheep. Sadly though, for those of you interested in buying yarn in Ireland, I must tell you that Irish sheep are bred mainly for meat, and their wool is not suitable for carding or spinning. There are some wonderful Irish yarns, mostly spun and dyed in County Donegal and available everywhere. But the wool comes from Australia and other places. Irish lamb (and beef, for that matter) is famous all over Europe and a good thing to order at restaurants.

When I travel with students in early January, we usually spot some early lambs just born that day and still wet. There’s a lot of commotion on the bus when this happens and a lot of high-pitched “Oooooh! Newborn lambs!” and the like.  With everyone moving over to the side where the lambs were spotted, we sometimes think the bus will roll over. I would estimate that more than half the students buy some kind of stuffed lamb toy or other sheep paraphernalia while in Ireland.

Here is a sample of my sheep obsession and a glimpse of what you’ll be seeing out the bus windows during our travels.

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An island with a natural sense of “differentness” from neighboring places and, during its “Golden Age” (6^th to 9^th centuries CE), the most advanced culture in Europe, Ireland has quite a few distinctive, ancient architectural features that are only rarely seen outside the country. Here is a selection of those we’ll see examples of on our tour.

Earthworks
Ireland’s numerous earthworks, like those at the Hill of Tara, give the landscape an eerie, pock-marked quality and are best seen from above. They remain somewhat mysterious, as most have never been excavated. These mounds of carefully shaped dirt, sometimes packed with stone, are believed to have been built during the Stone Age (6000-2000 BC), but they were reused, rebuilt, and reinterpreted by subsequent generations, including modern day so-called “druids.” Fortresses, burial or ceremonial sites, enclosures for animals, palaces—they served many purposes over the centuries.

Quite a few of the earthworks are associated with the myths and legends brought by invading peoples long after their construction. The Hill of Tara is the most famous of these, with its many mounds and furrows and stunning views of the surrounding countryside. The site figures in myth as a center of power and sacredness and continued to have such significance through the centuries. Tara’s mythological fame meant that Irish kings or clan heads wanted to be crowned there. When St. Patrick returned to Ireland to convert the pagans in the fifth century, he came to Tara. In the nineteenth century, the “Great Liberator” Daniel O’Connell held “monster meetings” at Tara, rallying Catholics to force Britain to repeal the Penal Laws that had been intended to stamp out their religion, thus eliminating them as a political threat. Cuchullain, the heroic boy-god associated with the rebels of 1916, is said to have lived at one of the most massive earthworks at Eamhain Mhacha (OW-en MAH-kah) or Navan Fort in County Armagh.

We’ll see the famous stand-alone mountain Knocknarea near Sligo: the earthwork or mound on top is supposed to be the tomb of Queen Maeve. The fairy  people were thought to live underground in these structures; they were called  “aos sí ” or “people of the mounds” (“sí” is the word for mounds), which was eventually shortened to “sidhe” (SHEE). You know this word in another word, “banshee,” which means “woman (ban) fairy (shee).” The sidhe are not adorable, tiny, Tinkerbell-like fairies, by the way, but a powerful and often malevolent race of life-sized or even larger people, a race that was banished underground long ago and continues to bother and seek vengeance on the usurpers of their land. Like the megalithic tombs mentioned below, the earthworks in Ireland still have a connection to the supernatural for some, as evidenced by the “rag trees” nearby–trees bedecked with scraps of clothing left in commemoration of the dead or supplication for the living. The earthworks building sites are thought to be “thin places” where the passageway between the earthly and the supernatural is notably fluid.

Round Towers
Built by monks from the 9^th to the 12^th centuries CE, these remarkable structures are distinctly Irish: there are only three outside the country, two in Scotland and one on the Isle of Man. They range in height from 59 feet to 130 feet and show sophisticated engineering for their times. Each one has a door seemingly elevated from the ground, but some scholars think these doors were once at ground level. Other common features are windows at the top facing four directions and a conical rooftop.

Used as bell towers to summon the monks for prayer and as lookouts, the towers were an integral part of daily life in the monastic community. The theory that they were used by the monks to hide their treasures and themselves from marauding Vikings has been discounted. After all, the wooden doors could easily have been set afire, and the tall, hollow towers would have made excellent chimneys. There were once at least 120 of these towers in Ireland: most are in ruins today, but about 20 remain in good condition. We’ll see a fine one at the Rock of Cashel, a partial tower at Drumcliff in Sligo, and others along the way.

Ringforts
Found in Wales and Cornwall but very numerous in Ireland, ringforts were circular stone or stone and earth structures with open courtyards. There is a lot of debate about when they were built, but recent theories suggest the early middle ages, probably between 500 and 1000 CE. Some researchers believe there were once as many as 50,000 of these fortifications in Ireland, each the domain of a family or clan. Defensive in nature, ringforts also seem to have been used for different purposes in different places. Some housed farm animals and small dwellings, others were used for manufacturing pottery, still others may have been the dwellings of royalty or places of ceremony. Weather permitting in County Donegal near Derry, we will be able to see one of the most famous of these, Grianán of Aileach, positioned on hill with stunning views of the surrounding countryside. Like many ringforts, this one was probably a place of varying significance for different generations and may have been built on a much more ancient site. The fort plays an important role in Seamus Deane’s novel Reading in the Dark.

High Crosses
Large standing crosses elaborately carved with bible stories and symbols are found all over Ireland and Britain, with a few in Scandinavia. Dating mostly from the 9^th century CE, the crosses in Ireland are the most richly decorated and usually consist of a cross and a ring together: crosses of this type are called “Celtic crosses,” the ring thought by some to be a strengthening feature and by others to reference the sun god of the “Celtic” pagans whom the Christian missionaries like St. Kevin and St. Patrick sought to convert. I put “Celtic” in quotation marks because recent DNA studies and other research are dramatically challenging the received wisdom about the peoples typically referred to by this name.

Many of the high crosses were destroyed or damaged during the Reformation, and today they are falling victim to weather and air pollution. Some have been replaced by replicas and are housed indoors for protection. High crosses are thought to have been used as biblical teaching tools by monks, as the panels typically represent a standard selection of new and old testament stories such as Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, Cain slaying Abel, the adoration of the magi, the resurrection, etc. They also feature unique carvings probably representing the artist, such as the cats at the bottom of Muirdeach’s Cross at Monasterboice.

We’ll see an unusual type of high cross called a Latin Cross at the Rock of Cashel and a more typical carved high cross at Drumcliff. The crosses are scattered across the island, and my husband and I are on a mission to see all of them; so far we’ve visited about two thirds.

Court Tombs
There are many types of megalithic tombs in Ireland, structures that were reused and reinterpreted by subsequent generations like the earthworks mentioned above and often associated—even today—with the fairies. We’ll visit one of these when we drive north from Sligo, a place called “Creevykeel.” Probably built somewhere between 4000 and 25000 BCE, Creevykeel has an oval courtyard leading to two further enclosed areas housing burial chambers.

The elements along with tourists and vandals have damaged Creevykeel and most of the other megalithic tombs, so little is known about them except that the cremated remains of a small number of people—Royalty? Heroes? Priests? Particular clans?—were kept in their innermost chambers, and the efforts of more than one generation of workers went into constructing the tombs, often with large rocks that came from many miles away. Strong beliefs must have motivated such effort. Several rag trees on the path between the parking area and the tomb show that Creevykeel is very much an active place for spiritual communion today.

Beehive Huts
Beehive huts or “clocháin” (clawk-AWN) in Irish are dry-stone constructions with corbelled roofs that are usually associated with monastic settlements. They seem to have been built over a very long period from the neolithic era to modern times, mostly in southwestern Ireland. The smaller ones may have been used as places of hermitage, and they do seem to have had a religious purpose. We’ll see a group of them at Fahan on the Dingle Peninsulas that are thought to be 12th century.  There is another famous collection on Skellig Michael,  the rocky island off the Kerry coast recently in the news because the last scene of Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens was filmed there.  Click on the green text to see a short video about the movie in which the beehive huts figure prominently. Visiting the Skellig is all all day trip, but we’ll be able to see it from the Dingle Peninsula, weather permitting. Gallarus Oratory, also on our tour of the Dingle Peninsula, is a larger version, which some believe to have served as a church.

We will be spending two nights in the lovely County Kerry town of Killarney, a favorite place of mine, even though it can get a bit touristy in the summer. Surrounded by gorgeous mountains, forests, and lakes and the gateway to two spectacular drives, the Ring of Kerry and the Dingle Peninsula, Killarney is also known for its excellent restaurants and shops (including an outlet mall). The town is small enough that you can easily walk from one end to the other, and it has a nice selection of music pubs, if you want to hear a bit of Irish music in the evening and have a bit of “craic.” Pronounced CRACK, is the Irish word for “fun,” meaning laughs and good conversation.

I have a special love for Killarney because when I was spending a semester working at a primary school in London with my college roommate, we hitchhiked here from Dublin.  I remember a wonderful, bitterly cold March weekend of exploring the area on rented bicycles in the rain. I had never been so cold, or so happy being cold. My friend and I had not done any research on this locale, taking the word of an acquaintance who lived in Dublin before setting out, and when we realized where we were and what we had before us, we couldn’t believe our luck. There were castles and abbeys and manor houses galore, breathtaking views in all directions, jagged coastline and wild seas, and everything else we had expected Ireland to offer.

Hitchhiking around the Ring of Kerry one day, we were picked up by the local school bus, which was really just a covered truck with a lot of hay and seven or eight redheaded children in the back. It was a different time. The fanciest accommodation in town was the “Great Southern,” an elegant nineteenth-century railway hotel that is still there, though now called by another name. We couldn’t afford to stay in such splendor, but the exchange rate was so favorable that even on our student budgets we could afford a sumptuous dinner in the grand dining room. I’m quite sure we imagined ourselves in a Victorian novel that evening. I only spent a week in Ireland on that trip and only four days in Killarney, but everything about the experience had me hooked for life, and when I made my first return trip fifteen years later, I dragged my whole family to Killarney. They were also hooked.

Like most towns in Ireland, Killarney started as a religious settlement with several ancient church sites, and there are still remnants of buildings going back to the twelfth century. The name comes from the Irish “cill airne” or “church of the sloes,” referring to blackthorn trees. Killarney is surrounded by forests, unlike much of the country, thanks to its vast sources of lumber being commandeered for the building of the British fleet. The town sits at the base of Ireland’s tallest mountains, McGillycuddy’s Reeks, at just over 1,000 metres or 3,300 feet. The three famous “Lakes of Killarney” and countless waterfalls and streams add to the picture, and for centuries poets, artists, tourists, and at least one monarch, Queen Victoria, have been enthralled with the views.

Queen Victoria arrived with her entourage in August of 1861, only a few months before her life would change forever with the sudden death of her husband Prince Albert. She had already made several state trips to this part of the empire but had never gone as far west as Kerry. The couple reportedly enjoyed their time in Killarney and the hospitality of the Herbert family, owners of the splendid Muckross House, which is included on our visit. I don’t think anyone will disagree with me when I say that the setting of this house–on the shores of Lough Leane with mountains all around–is the most beautiful in Ireland, and the grand mansion isn’t bad either. The Herberts had spent the previous six years preparing for the queen’s visit, redecorating the house from top to bottom and running themselves into financial ruin in the process. We’ll see some of the splendid furniture and decor they provided for Her Majesty, valuing the success of the royal visit over their future financial security. After the Herberts, the house passed into other hands and was eventually gifted, along with its substantial parklands, to the Irish nation in 1932. And what a gift it was. Ireland’s first national park was established here, more land was added later, and the beautiful house and gardens were saved from ruin with painstaking conservation funded by the state.

We’ll see the national park from several perspectives, including bouncing along its automobile-less roads in a jaunting car—the horse and buggy conveyance unique to this area. The slow pace of the horse and the driver’s characteristic badinage set the mood for enjoying the beautiful lakes and woods, Ireland’s only herd of native red deer, and the wildflowers and other wildlife that thrive here in this oldest of Ireland’s national parks. The jaunt includes a stop at Ross Castle, a sturdy fifteenth-century Norman keep on the shores of Lough Leane. The castle is noted for being the site of last stronghold against Oliver Cromwell in all of Munster in 1652.

In addition to seeing Muckross House and the national park, we’ll use Killarney as our base for visiting the Dingle Peninsula. The drive there is long-ish, so use your time brief free time in Killarney well to stroll about the town and into the park, check out the shops, and dine in one of its stellar restaurants.

County Kerry is famous for being the home of numerous rebels  and ambushes during the independence struggle 1916 to 1923; there are memorials everywhere. And the county as a whole is mad crazy for Gaelic football, winning the All-Ireland championship four out of the last ten years. I can’t close without saying a word about the Kerry accent or dialect, which I hope you will hear when we’re in Killarney. It’s easy to distinguish this rapid, “bubbling,” lilting way of speaking from other accents and difficult, even for Irish people sometimes, to understand what the heck is being said. I couldn’t find a good audio clip of just the Kerry way of talking online, but for some extra “craic,” listen to this short clip on Irish accents in general, which dubs the Kerry accent the “crown jewel.”

The art of tour guiding (click the green text to read my blog post on this topic) is finely honed in Ireland, and over the years I’ve been fortunate to work with the best. In addition to Dave Yeates, our driver-guide for the upcoming ten day trip, you are going to meet two other wonderful Irish tour guides who have worked with Agnes Scott since 1998. One of the reasons I like to plan the tours well in advance is to make sure that Michael O’Brien and Ronan McNamara are going to be available when we need them.

Michael O’Brien will be joining us for our second day in Dublin as we tour sites related to Easter 1916. Michael was the driver-guide for the first five Agnes Scott student trips. For those trips, he was the heart and soul of our daily experience, opening his country to us and making us feel welcome. I learned a lot about Ireland from him, but I also learned a lot about how to do a group trip, how to maximize the experience for the group and for individuals, how to deal with the problems that inevitably come up, and how to remain patient and philosophical all the while. Now retired, he still does a lot of guiding, and whenever I lead a group, I insist on having him as our “city guide.”

Michael is a legend among tour guides for his deep and broad knowledge of Ireland, his storytelling ability, and his uncanny way of quoting poetry at length. On my first trip with him in 1998, I made a list of the poets he quoted from memory–whole poems, that is, not just lines: William Wordsworth, W. B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh (his favorite), Robert Service, Seamus Heaney, Francis Ledwidge, Patrick Pearse, to name only a few. You’ll notice the richness of his speech, too, along with his mastery of dates and other facts. Ask him anything, and he’ll have an answer and a story for you. On each one of our trips, he regularly made friends with all the students but kept an eye out for those who might be feeling lonely or homesick, and he always learned everyone’s name.

I almost gave up leading trips to Ireland when Michael retired, thinking I would “never see his like again” (to paraphrase The Islandman), but I was fortunate enough to be paired with Dave. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have worked with two of the most knowledgeable, kindest, and most helpful driver-guides imaginable.

When tourists first started coming to Northern Ireland in the 1990s, the tourism business was not well developed, and sometimes you would encounter guides with strong sectarian leanings they didn’t bother to hide. On the first Agnes Scott trip in 1998, I was apprehensive about our guided “wall walk” in Derry, thinking we might be stuck with a rabid Republican or Loyalist, the extremes on the two sides of the conflict. Once again, my luck held, and I met Ronan McNamara of McNamara Tours. Ronan hails from the Republic, born and raised in a town in the middle of the country called Banagher. He went to university in Northern Ireland, fell in love with Derry, and started giving tours of a city that was only beginning to recover from The Troubles. Ronan is credited with launching tourism in that city. He has a deep and encyclopedic understanding of NI and its troubled history, and like Michael is a consummate storyteller. He has brought tears to my eyes more than once with his stories of the tentative steps towards peace and reconciliation in Derry.

Our students love Ronan and can’t get enough of him on our tours. They always develop a real connection with him for many reasons, but especially because, as you might have guessed from the photos, Ronan is biracial, like many of them. His mother is Chinese, his father Irish, and Ronan has spent a lifetime navigating Ireland’s gradual recognition and acceptance of diversity, which continues to be a defining factor on both sides of the border. When he speaks of the percentages of Catholics and protestants in Derry, he always adds “and one Buddhist.” His knowledge of such issues and his openness about discussing them resonates well with our multiracial, multiethnic, socially conscious students.

Michael, and Ronan, and Dave will add immeasurably to our group and your individual experience. For me, each of them is synonymous with Ireland, and I count time in their company as my best times in their country. I am also grateful that all of them are willing to put up with my whims and crazes, my insistence on taking the bus down windy country roads to remote locations like the Lake Isle of Innsifree,  and my tendency to hold the group up with poetry recitations and other literary digressions.

For poetry and other materials related to Derry, see “Trip Documents” or click here. 

You might be wondering why the name of the city we will be visiting in Northern Ireland is often represented two ways. The story behind that practice says a lot about the city’s history. “Derry” is the city’s original name; it comes from an Irish word “doire” (DOY-ruh) meaning “oak grove.” St.  Columcille (also Columba, Columb), one of Ireland’s “top three” saints along with Patrick and Bridget, established a monastery on the site in the sixth century. Columcille had a great fondness for his homeland: long after he had moved to Scotland to found the famous monastery at Iona, he wrote poetry full of longing for Derry:

It is for this I love Derry,
For its quietness, for its purity,
And for its crowds of white angels
From one end to another.

A scholar, monk, and warrior, St. Columcille had a fascinating life and was involved in what is considered to be the first copyright case, the “Battle of the Book” (he lost). The Church of Ireland (Episcopal) cathedral in Derry is named after him (St. Columb’s). Remember that the oldest and most beautiful churches throughout Ireland—including the magnificent St. Patrick’s in Dublin—are Church of Ireland properties rather than Catholic. When Henry VIII decided to dissolve the monasteries in his kingdom in order to destroy their power and grab their wealth c.1540, he absorbed these edifices into his new church. And that was the root of the “Troubles” in Ireland for centuries to come. Under subsequent protestant monarchs, Ireland was “planted” with settlers to spread the faith and the king’s sovereignty. The Catholic, Gaelic speaking residents and landowners (or so they thought) of Ireland were not consulted, and many lost everything to the colonists. Ulster, the northern quarter of Ireland and the closest in proximity to the other island, was the most heavily settled during this time. The “plantation of Ulster” in the early seventeenth century made protestants wealthy landowners and Catholics poor tenants or worse, setting the stage for the sectarian strife of the twentieth century.

Derry was not destined to be a place of “quietness” for long. Strategically located on the River Foyle connected to a large inland sea called “Lough Foyle,” the settlement grew quickly during the plantation period, and in 1613 was granted a royal charter by King James I. London-based guilds gave money to build the walled city, and their contribution would be commemorated both in the city’s new official name, Londonderry, and in its most famous building, the Guildhall, built in 1890 and today the seat of the city government.

At the behest of Ulster protestants who wanted no part of an independent Ireland and in order to shore up votes for the political party in power, Britain partitioned Ireland in 1920, creating the six-county province of “Northern Ireland” (the remaining twenty-six counties would become the Irish Free Sate in 1922 and the Republic of Ireland in 1949). The six counties were chosen because they had a protestant majority. While religious differences between the two sides were minimal and not part of their conflict, class differences deepened and led to Catholics being excluded from access to housing, jobs, voting rights, and more. No wonder their acts of defiance soon began to resemble those of the American Civil Rights movement.

During the most intense era of sectarian strife, The Troubles from 1969-1998, the name Londonderry became controversial, with Catholic nationalists and republicans adhering to the original “Derry” and protestant unionists and loyalists standing by “Londonderry.” During the peace negotiations in the 1990s brokered by President Bill Clinton and Senator George Mitchell, the president came to speak in the city. Clinton and Mitchell are still praised all over Ireland for their fairness to both sides of the conflict, and the people of Derry were anxious to see how Clinton would handle the name controversy. Ever the diplomat, he spoke of the “city of Derry. . .in the county of Londonderry,” using both names throughout his stay.

Derry city center was nearly leveled during The Troubles and was the site of much bloodshed and destruction, including the infamous “Bloody Sunday” massacre of 30 January 1972. The city has come a long way since the Belfast or Good Friday Peace Agreement of 1998 and is now a center for power sharing, reconciliation, and planning for a peaceful future. But the city name is still a problem for some. Outside Derry you’ll notice road signs where the “London” of the official name “Londonderry” is crossed out. When conferences are held there, the organizers must produce two sets of name tags, one saying “Derry” and one saying “Londonderry.” While most attendees don’t care what their name tags say, some will ostentatiously rip up and toss out the one they don’t like. Though a law in 2007 declared “Londonderry” the official name, today most people from both communities call the city “Derry” for the simple reason that it’s shorter and easier to say.

You may also hear Derry called “Stroke City,” a name conjured up by a local radio personality to reflect the stroke mark (technically a “virgule”) often seen between the two names, as in “Derry/Londonderry.” Others believe “stroke” refers to the life-threatening medical condition possibly induced by the city’s history of violent conflict or Northern Ireland’s predilection for large platefuls of fried food.

Derry is Northern Ireland’s second largest city after Belfast and is today a beautiful and fascinating place. An intact wall built in the early seventeenth century rings the city center, affording marvelous views of the old city inside the wall, the River Foyle with its elegant bridges, and the surrounding scenery. The Guildhall, St. Columb’s, the Craft Village, and the Tower Museum chronicling the city’s history are the must-sees within the wall.

Our visit will include a guided wall walk; a look at some of the famous political murals that commemorate the conflict ; the Guildhall; and the Museum of Free Derry, an interpretative center dedicated to the story of Bloody Sunday and staffed by relatives of the fourteen peaceful protesters who were killed by the British army on that day.

Whenever I’m in Derry/Londonderry, I make it a point to walk across the stunning Peace Bridge, a foot and cycling bridge opened in 2011 to symbolically join the largely nationalist “Cityside” and largely unionist “Waterside” communities (see slideshow below). On the day the bridge opened, thousands of people on both sides of the river thronged the streets, lining up to walk across the bridge, many of them in tears. Today, the bridge is the site of festivals, performances, and other joyful activities. (see video). Visitors wonder why the Peace Bridge forms an “ess” curve instead of reaching directly across the River Foyle as the other bridges do. The answer is simple: the path to peace is never straight.

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Since the Belfast Peace Agreement in 1998 and the mostly steady though sometimes faltering progress towards peace in Northern Ireland, outsiders have begun to discover the extraordinary beauty of the northern coast of the island. The so-called “Causeway Coast” stretches from Lough Foyle all the way to the town of Ballycastle, where it joins an equally stunning stretch called the Antrim Coast or the “Glens of Antrim” that reaches around to Belfast. With the wild North Atlantic all around, Scotland visible in the distance behind a veil of mist, and magnificent cliffs, glens, beaches, and rocky promontories galore, the views along this coastline will take your breath away in any season.

During our two-day sojourn in the North, we will spend a long afternoon and early evening–remember, the sun doesn’t set until 10 p.m.–exploring the Causeway Coast and its two most notable features, one natural and the other man made.

The Giant’s Causeway was formed 50 to 60 million years ago by volcanic eruption and consists of about 40,000 upright basalt columns, most of them hexagonal. These columns are of varying heights and are clustered along beaches and cliffs in extraordinary formations.  When the surf is roaring in and the sunlight reflects off the sea turning the columns red and orange, it’s a magical place. No wonder it figures in myth and legend. The Giant’s Causeway  was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1986 and is considered the “fourth natural wonder” of the United Kingdom.

Nearby Dunluce Castle perches dramatically on a cliff above the North Atlantic. A castle has been on this strategic site since the 1200s, and the current edifice includes remnants from past centuries. The castle was a center of power and intrigue for several important clans who vied for control of the area. Cair Paravel in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia was probably inspired by Dunluce (Lewis was a Belfast man). Recent excavations are adding to the history of Dunluce and its importance in Irish history.

I’ve just learned how to do slideshows on this site, and I couldn’t think of a better story to tell in photos than that of the Causeway Coast. Enjoy these photographs of the Giant’s Causeway, Dunluce Castle, and other sights along this route in many moods and weathers.

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Don’t forget to scroll down to read previous posts and click on the green text to find other materials!

While history and literature are endlessly fascinating, when I’m traveling I always find myself to be keenly interested in the details of daily life and other miscellaneous trivia. How are grocery stores arranged in other cultures? What are the rituals of the morning meal? How do common idioms do the work of everyday communication? How does geography, or weather,  or a relationship with neighboring places influence culture? As we approach our departure date, I have been thinking about a few small items of interest or amusement that I wanted to convey to you, so this post is a collection of bibs and bobs.

Land of the Midnight (or 11 p.m.) Sun
While we are in Ireland, as Midsummer approaches the sunset each day will occur at around 10 p.m., and it will be light outside until nearly 11 p.m. We will be situated, after all, at the same latitude as Hudson Bay. The sun will rise around 5 a.m. during our stay, so no relief at that end. The very long days are great for sightseeing and photography but not that great for sleeping if you are sensitive to light and dark. When I’m in Ireland, I find I always have to acclimate myself to this new definition of “nighttime” and work on my sleep habits.

“Are you all right?”
Although Irish English is closer to American English than is British English in both diction and pronunciation, you’ll hear many wonderful Irish/British phrases and words that are usually easy to understand from the context. But here’s one that sometimes gives Americans pause. In restaurants and bars, the server is likely to greet you at your table with the phrase “Are you (ye) all right?” or “All right, are ye?” or some variation of it. This is not an inquiry about your health: it means, “Can I help you?”

Pint v. Glass and Guinness Etiquette
If you are a beer drinker, there are several things you need to know when ordering at a bar or restaurant. Beers in Ireland come in two sizes: pint and glass. A pint is 570 ml., which is about 19 oz. or 1.2 US pints. A glass is a little more than half a pint and is served in a thinner, shorter glass. Pints seem to be ordered more often, but glasses are also popular, especially among the ladies. If you say “a pint of Guinness, please” or “a glass of Murphy’s, please” the bar tender will know exactly what you want. Guinness is poured into glasses of both sizes following a time-honored “pour” method that requires patience on the part of the drinker. When ordering a Guinness, never grab the glass to drink until the “pour” is complete and the white head and the dark brown stout have completely separated–separation takes about five minutes. If beer is not your thing, another nice, Irish-made drink to order at bars is Bulmers (called “Magners” outside the Republic of Ireland) Cider, a hard cider that comes in both apple and pear flavors,

“Full Irish”
While most of our hotels will have breakfast buffets, some will also offer an ordered “hot breakfast,” meaning some combination of eggs and meat or even pancakes. I recommend that you go for the “full Irish.” A “full Irish” breakfast is a joy to behold. It usually includes one or two fried eggs (but you can ask for scrambled or poached), Irish bacon (more like what we would call “Canadian bacon”), a couple of Irish sausages, slices of “black and white pudding” (another kind of sausage), a grilled tomato, and toast. Sometimes you will get baked beans or sautéed mushrooms with your “full Irish.” If a “full” is too daunting, you may always ask for any combination of these elements, such as egg, sausage, and grilled mushrooms—or whatever you please. In Northern Ireland a “full Irish” is called an “Ulster fry” or a “heart attack on a plate” and will also include potato or soda “farls”—delicious triangular bread-like things. North and South will sometimes add a potato cake of some sort. Unless you are a vegetarian, you should really try a “full Irish” once at least. Hey, you’re on vacation—go for it more than once!

Country Codes
When telephoning, the country code for the Republic of Ireland is 353 and the code for Northern Ireland (and all of the UK) is 44. While in Ireland if you want to call someone in the US on your cell phone, use the plus sign (European long distance) and the country code; like this: +1-404-555-5555. The +1 followed by the ten-digit number is also used if you want to call someone from the group with an American phone while we are in Ireland.

Cash v. Credit Cards
You will need cash (Euros in the Republic, Sterling in NI), as some smaller businesses don’t take credit cards. I use my ATM card all the time in Ireland on both sides of the border. You will probably need to alert your bank that you are traveling. American Express cards are accepted less widely there than here, so having a Visa or MasterCard is a must.

Tipping
The Irish have a different attitude about tipping than we do; they see it only as gratitude for excellent or extra service. In the US, tipping provides a substantial part of  a worker’s wage, while in Ireland and the UK, servers, bartenders, and other workers make better hourly wages. In Ireland it is not customary to tip when ordering drinks only at bar. When ordering food at a bar or restaurant, you can tip up to ten percent or round up a few Euro. Usually the server will bring a handheld credit card machine to your table, but the process does not always involve a line on the bill for a tip, so cash tipping is generally favored. In a taxi, the tip usually consists of rounding up or adding some loose change.

Bathroom Talk
Knowing what to ask for when you need to use the facilities is an important topic in any country. It is quite common in Ireland to say “toilets,” so “Where are the toilets?” is the most common way of asking. Other common terms are “Ladies” and Gents.” Everyone will understand what you want when you say “bathroom.” In the Irish language, the terms are “Mná” (mn-AWE) for the women’s bathroom and “Fir” (FEAR) for the men’s.

Adaptor
The only adaptor that works in Ireland is “Type G,” the one that also works in the UK and Hong Kong. It is pictured below. You can purchase these at travel stores, Target, and online. I get mine from amazon.com

More travel tips…A more complete list of travel tips is available in the Trip Basics section of this site.

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At last we have an itinerary! I’ve posted it on the “Trip Documents” page. A few things still need to be tweaked or corrected, but the basics of each day are laid out with accompanying details. I know you will have questions. Please ask away by commenting here or sending me an email. If your question is of general interest, I’ll discuss it in another itinerary-related post.

One note about hotels. We were supposed to stay two nights in Galway City, but the hotel we had chosen experienced significant flooding during the winter and is now closed. Because it’s such a busy time of year for tourism in Ireland, Celtic Tours had some trouble finding a place for our group of 46 to stay for two nights, contacting over 35 hotels in the process. I am grateful for their efforts. Given the touring we had planned for those days, the best decision turned out to be to spend one night in Galway City, not far from where we had originally intended to stay, and the second night in the town of Ballinasloe. It’s nicer to have two nights in one place, but we couldn’t make it work.

Please note the instructions on the itinerary for the morning of Sunday, June 5, as we gather the group together for breakfast at the Man O’War pub. Some of you will already be at the hotel and can board the bus with me at 8:00-8:15 a.m. for the drive to the airport and the pub.  For those arriving at the airport that morning, we’ll be waiting for you outside baggage claim at 9:00 a.m. I’ll provide phone numbers closer to the day, but I check email on my phone pretty often, so you can always reach me that way.

For anyone arriving before the June 5th start date, I will be at the Davenport from June 1 and will be happy to consult on sightseeing plans, restaurants, or anything else you want to discuss.

Once we leave Dublin on the bus, we beg your indulgence and permission to make small changes to the itinerary every now and then. Depending on the weather and other things, we might want to change the order of certain stops, or take a brief detour to see something special. “Comfort stops”–a very nice Irish way of saying “bathroom stops”–will be frequent, but you may always request one.

As noted in “Travel Tips for Ireland,” we ask you (and your traveling companion, if you choose to sit together) to sit in a new place on the bus every day. That way, everyone will get a turn at the better seats, and you will have a chance to talk to different people. The bus is very well designed and will have state-of-the-art stabilizers. Irish roads can be windy, but in all my trips, I’ve not had anyone experience motion sickness. If this is a worry for you, please bring whatever medicine you take to be comfortable. We’ll keep a supply of cookies and crackers on the bus for those hungry moments as we roll, but you may want to bring a water bottle or thermos and your own snacks for the longer drives.

Our trip is less than four weeks away.  I hope you are as excited as I am!

On our trip around Ireland, we will be visiting several  “stately homes,” what the Irish call “Big Houses.” This term refers to the divided nature of life in previous centuries when the Anglo-Irish Protestant aristocracy owned the land and the mansions and castles on it, and the “mere Irish” (a common derogatory term used by the Anglo-Norman invaders) lived as small tenant farmers on land that had been confiscated from their ancestors at various stages of England’s colonization of the island.

As you might imagine, a contentious history surrounds many of these houses, not to mention the ones that were burned down by rebel forces during the independence movement and subsequent civil war in the first quarter of the twentieth century. As a result, there’s no money, no tradition of preservation, no National Trust as in the UK to tend to the rich history and traditions of these magnificent edifices. Where private money and the few government grants are not enough, the houses have fallen into decay. It’s a shame, because a great deal of history and a great many important works of art and culture adhere to these places.

That contentious history has resulted in “the Big House” becoming a focal point of many novels that tell complex stories of life and love and offer critiques of the landlord system centered on an estate with a large, unmanageable house at its center, a site of inevitable individual, class, and cultural conflict. The tradition had its start in 1800, when Irish writer Maria Edgeworth broke new ground with her satirical Castle Rackrent, a novella critiquing the absentee landlord system that contributed to so many Irish manor houses going to ruin. Criticizing her own class, the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, for its exploitation and neglect of its Irish estates, Edgeworth innovatively adopted the persona of a faithful servant to tell her story; Thady’s loyalty to the castle-owning family blinds him to the way they bring this ruin on themselves but sheds satiric light on the problem for the reader to appreciate. Considered the first regional novel, Castle Rackrent was praised by none other than Sir Walter Scott, a famed poet who was about to become a regional novelist himself.

The Real Charlotte (1894), written by cousins and writing duo Edith Somerville and Martin Ross (aka Violet Martin), looks at these same problems and the fate of intelligent, aristocratic women trapped by social expectations in a story set in a mansion with a contested inheritance in southwestern County Kerry. My favorite Big House novel is Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September (1929). Set during the War of Independence, also called the Anglo-Irish War, in 1920, this lyrical novel examines Ireland’s uncertain future—and that of the heroine Lois—as the colonial system begins to unravel. Bowen grew up in a Big House, Bowen Court (called Danielstown in the novel), and actually inherited it, but she eventually had to sell out, and the house was allowed to fall into ruin.

Of the four “big houses” on our itinerary—Muckross House, Westport House, Lissadell House, and Strokestown Park House—only Muckross seems to have a secure future. Set in a gorgeous landscape on a lake at the foot of McGillycuddy’s Reeks, Ireland’s highest mountains, Muckross House, where Queen Victoria once stayed, is now part of Killarney National Park and is maintained by the government. Westport House in the town of Westport, once the home of the famous “pirate queen” Grace O’Malley, has been in the hands of the same family for hundreds of years and was a model of how to operate a house and estate as a family business, until it was abruptly put up for sale last year. Lissadell House, the childhood home of the revolutionary Constance Gore-Booth Markiewicz and frequented by the young W. B. Yeats, is currently owned by a wealthy family, the Cassidy-Walshes, and has been lovingly restored, but as a private home faces future risks.

Strokestown Park House, with its connections to the Great Potato Famine of 1845-52, is owned by a somewhat eccentric local person whose idea of preserving the house is to leave it just as it was, decay, cobwebs, and all. We will also be visiting Coole Park, home of writer and literary patron Lady Augusta Gregory, but only to see the beautiful gardens and lake, as the house fell into ruin long ago: it was simply too expensive for anyone in post-independence Ireland to afford. These varying—and in the case of the last three—precarious circumstances are a good representation of the attitude towards such monuments following independence, though a greater sense of the houses’ significance is increasingly evident in Ireland today.

I think you’ll enjoy all four houses and their grounds and the grounds of Coole Park. I have my favorite spots in each of them. The views of the lawn, lake, and mountains from the Muckross House drawing room are spectacular, though I’m afraid the Victorians made much use of the heavy curtains they favored. As a hunting lodge, the house is decorated with taxidermied animals and antlers from the surrounding area.

Westport House is filled with art, furniture, and artifacts of historical importance, including a knitted cap left there by Alfred, Lord Tennyson when he visited the Browne family. There’s a portrait of a lady with wild curly hair that I am pretty sure was one of my ancestors. At Lissadell, you can see where its most famous denizen, the Easter Rising heroine Constance Gore-Booth Markievicz, etched her name on a window pane and gaze out the “great windows open to the south” overlooking Sligo Bay and the mountain where Queen Maeve is said to be buried, Knocknarea. In his poem “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz,” Yeats wrote these lines about Constance and her sister Eva, whom he had a crush on.

The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.

Strokestown Park House is a marvel of Georgian Palladian architecture. It has a fabulous kitchen with a gallery around the top from which the lady of the house could drop the menu down to the cook, so she didn’t have to dirty her gown or mingle with the servants. My husband, Ron Calabrese, is a neurobiologist who studies leeches, so we love this leech jar in the Strokestown kitchen. Leeches were once used for medicinal bloodletting and, interestingly, are still used today to increase circulation after microsurgery.  On our trip in mid-June, we should be in time to see the beginning of the vegetable and flower gardens that stretch out behind this beautiful house.

Whenever I visit one of Ireland’s few Big Houses, I’m grateful that it is still open to the public, still offering a window on the life of the rich and the poor, still echoing with the hopes and dreams of ages past.

Be sure to scroll down on this page to see posts you might have missed!  The green, underlined text means that’s a link to a video or audio file or a website. You can also click on the photos to see them enlarged.

Ireland is a land of writers and other creative people. It is an inspiring place, and our group trip will be an inspiring experience, so we want you to have an outlet for your creativity as we travel.

Each day, travelers will be invited to the bus’s microphone to read their trip-related limericks, six word essays, or haikus. All are welcome (no one is required) to participate in this fun way to comment on what we are seeing, doing, and experiencing as we roll around the island. Your poems and six word essays should be about the trip; humor and insight are always welcome. At the end of the trip, we’ll award prizes for the best works.

Most group bus tours of Ireland encourage Limerick writing; it’s a longstanding tradition, and something about being there makes you want to write poetry.  We are unique–we are Agnes Scott, after all!–in enlarging the activity to include the six word essay and the haiku. I like to encourage these writings because I think it connects us to the language and literature we are focusing on in our travels.  And, sharing these works over the microphone each day  makes for good laughs, good insights, esprit de corps, and camaraderie.

Under “Trip Documents” you will find a handout entitled “Limerick, Six Word Essay, Haiku” that gives guidelines and examples for each form.  This guide will be included in the “trip booklet” I’ll give each of you upon arrival in Ireland.