Ireland Pt 1: In Which We Arrive to the Emerald Isle, Wretchedly Sleepy

Ireland was never at the top of my list. It looked beautiful, and I said I wouldn’t mind seeing it, but that it wasn’t even in the top 5 countries I wanted to see.

Ah, the foolishness of humanity.

After Covid19 struck and I couldn’t travel much for a year or two, it didn’t bother me overly much. I loved snuggling into my house and growing roots in the community here. The circle of friends grew close over that time and it was wonderful. I traveled within the US just enough to scratch the itch, you know, to places like California and South Dakota and Montana.

In June of 2022, newly full of grief and with a sabbatical coming up I started casting my net for a restful place to go, and happened onto an announcement about Ireland having dropped all testing and vaccination requirement. I had avoided so much as having to take one single test up until that time so the idea of a pre-2020 travel experience appealed to me, and Grace, Marjie and I made plans to go.

We arrived at around 7 a.m, or what was 2 a.m back home. Bleary, gritty, and exhausted, we stumbled into Ireland where men at the airport swooped to open doors and women carefully explained how to drive on that other side of the road. Being this tired was not how I would've chosen to drive on the left for the first time. Dublin wasn’t hard because one simply followed traffic and marveled at left turns being right turns, and right turns being left turns. Fancy that!

I panicked a few times in my state because I couldn’t figure things out, but Grace and Marjie helped me and we didn’t hit anyone. An hour later, we arrived in Enniskerry.

We had hours to go to get into our hotel, so we made plans to eat breakfast and then go meet some friends whom we had overlapped with in travels for one day. Aside from that wretched time that I got dehydrated in Haiti, I have truly never felt this awful while traveling. It dawned on me later I must’ve gotten dehydrated again, because I almost wished to die. I could think of nothing but sleep, I was desperate for it. Instead we went to get breakfast and sat there so miserably that the dear lady who ran the establishment told us to put our heads down on the table and sleep.

After breakfast we drove to meet Daniel and Janel, Sarah, and the kids at Sugarloaf Mountain. It was in retrospect a little bit of a saving grace, because the exercise helped us to feel just a smidge more human. It was misty, but we climbed it to get glimpses of patchwork greens and fluffy sheep.

The top was shrouded in fog and rain and chill. After our descent, Daniel and Janel and company came back to Enniskerry with us, and went to find lunch which we checked in at the Enniskerry Inn to shower and nap. I wanted badly to enjoy spending time with them — we have traveled together before and it’s always been a good experience, and I wanted this to be good too, but I felt almost delirious with fatigue and knew I had to go sleep.

It was, heavenly. We collapsed on our beds after showers in that cool, damp room and passed out.

An hour and a half later I woke up, brand new. I was glad to be alive. Glad to be in Enniskerry. Glad to go out and find my friends, who were at the coffee shop just down the street.

We went to Bray for dinner, to a sort of greenhouse restaurant which was outdoors, but actually enclosed with panels of… glass? I don’t remember, but we had a good dinner together overlooking the ocean, where we went after to look at rocks and enjoy the fresh evening.

Sarah

Grace and I drove back to Enniskerry after saying goodbye to the Haley’s, and since it was still early, popped into the inn’s dining area on some comfy chairs near-ish to the fire, to drink mint tea and write and read. We lasted until about 8:30 and gave up the good fight.

It was time for bed. The sweetest words.

G’night Ireland.

Tomorrow, Western Ireland and the Cliffs of Moher. Tomorrow, I had to drive 6+ hours on the left side of the road…