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Ireland

We are in Ireland!

For the third year in a row, we are visiting Ireland.

We left Taos on Tuesday the 12th at 7 AM, and were promptly greeted by a member of the New Mexico Highway Patrol, who stopped us to say congratulations on yet another trip to Ireland and will you please slow down a bit.

His advice was spot on, because after we drove 5 hours to the airport, arriving at the check-in counter perfectly on time (2 hours prior to our 4:05 PM flight), the kind agent informed us that our flight was going to be 4 hours late leaving Denver (but it ended up being 5 hours late!). Our first flight was to leave Denver and take us to Frankfurt, Germany, and then we were to catch another flight from there to Dublin. The agent rebooked our second flight on a later one, and we went off to the United Airlines lounge to wait.

The UA Lounge wasn't the greatest in that they didn't have much food, but we did get free beverages, and it was much nicer than being left in the airport at large for 7 hours.

When it came time to board, things were very exciting around the gate area. The plane was parked right outside the window, and it was huge. The photo doesn't capture it well in the slightest. When we got on board, our business class seats were amazing. They were super comfortable, with tons of legroom, built-in entertainment center and massage, too, although I forgot to try it out.

When we got to Frankfurt, we had to wait in the lounge again, but only for a few hours. I spent almost all of it in line at the desk, trying to get confirmed seats on our second flight. The whole place was in chaos because of the huge snowstorm they had the day before, which closed this busy airport and stranded thousands of travelers.

We finally did make it to Dublin, and we stayed the first night at the Conrad, which is the first place we ever stayed on our first trip 3 years ago. It was really nice, but we probably won't be able to stay there again, since Hilton has just instituted a huge devaluation of their program which will make those kinds of stays very difficult to obtain.

It was so nice to be back in Dublin, and we were very excited about the next day's trip out to Tipperary and the Glen of Aherlow. I hope that I can find some time to write more in the near future…

Tipperary and The Lake

We had an amazing time in Tipperary. Our friends Freda and Declan invited us to stay longer, so we got to enjoy the castle, the countryside, and them more than we ever had in the past. I wish I had time to write more.

We left Tipperary and didn't know exactly where we were going, but we ended up at a place called Lough Lein, one of the Lakes of Killarney. It was so amazingly beautiful, it's hard to describe. While we were there, a friend of mine asked me to look out the window and describe what I saw. This is what I wrote:

We are near Killarney in County Kerry, and out the window is a painting that I've seen on a hundred walls, but I never knew the source. There's a lake, impossibly smooth, the colors somehow deep and pale at the same time, surrounded by mountains that seem too dramatic to be in what I thought was such a mellow country. The near shore of the lake juts out to a point in the center, and there stand the ruins of an old castle, the former headquarters of the Chieftains McSomebody. This point creates an estuary to the right that hosts some light brown grasses and shallow water. Small black ducks are floating just beyond the grasses, and beyond them three deer wade slowly, hoof-deep in the water, munching on something — but the water is so still and full of clouds that they appear to be standing in the sky, repeatedly bending down to kiss their upside-down lovers. Behind the deer a heron stalks unseen breakfast, and further out there's a surprisingly huge bird of some kind, perfectly still, and so bright that he seems to be the source of his own light.

We only had a sketch of an idea about what was waiting for us at sunrise when we wandered into this place last night, totally by whim. We promptly heard from an old friend whom we didn't know was so near, and he walked over to meet us for pints in the hotel pub. The night already was totally charmed, when out of the blue our friend mentioned that he was baptized in the Church of St. Lelia. This turned out not to be a euphemism. There really is such a place, and it's right down the street! So now we're about to have some breakfast and explore…

Hotel Pulitzer