Tuesday, October 12, 2004
October is a risky time of year to try Ireland from a weather standpoint. Well let me actually qualify that statement. Anytime is risky. Were one unlucky enough to get a week of rain AND the cool October temperatures, the trip might be a bust. However, if you hit it right and manage to stay ahead of or behind the rain-filled clouds, then I promise you heaven on earth.
We went this time to Connemara on the north-west coast following a two-day trip to Sixmilebridge where a good friend of ours had her wedding. It was an Irish fairytale wedding and proof once again that it is awfully hard to escape your roots. A progressive, sophisticated high-tech Dublinite the bride is but her early pledges to keep it all simple were no match against the unrelenting pull of her heritage; the plenteous wedding breathed traditional Irishness from every pore: flowing white wedding dress (as opposed to the stream-lined one she originally picked up in New York and later discarded), harps, hymns, and a magical medieval reception at the 15th century Knappogue Castle. Lords and Ladies for the night, we feasted on lamb whilst rosy-cheeked lasses sang, step-danced, and waxed their charmingly poetic, albeit revisionist, historical anecdotes. Personally, I was most impressed by the tributes paid by both the bride and groom to the guests. Of course anything sounds good to me when there is an Irish accent involved but these were also very good speeches -- heartfelt and hilarious. I told them at the end that they should take on Jay Leno's spot...
Too bad I was still suffering a severe bout of poison ivy... As the wine kicked in and started pumping warm blood to the capillaries nearest to the surface of my skin, I was soon scouting the castle for the nearest disbanded medieval torture chamber where I might lie down on a bed of nails to relieve the itching. We took a taxi home before the band and dancing started. Guess that's what a San Francisco-nite who tries her clueless hand at gardening wearing shorts and a tank top (all the better for the poison ivy oil to make its way to every inch of her body) gets. I lay my splotchy red and welted skin onto the cool sheets of the hotel bed and I must say that it will go down in the annals of my marriage as being the very first time ever that hubby didn't jump on a hotel-bed-vacation moment/opportunity, if you get my drift.
The next morning we climbed into our lavender Nissan Micra a.k.a. sardine can and headed along Ireland's death-defying narrow roads to the Connemara region. October ushers in two wonderful facets to Ireland: no tourists and an unrivaled panorama of color: purple heather, red fuscia, bleached yellow blanket bog, beautiful chesnut red hues of the spent ferns that cover the countryside (the very red of many an Irish head), and of course the typical symphony of Irish green and enchanting rainbows.
We stayed at the Rockglen Hotel in Clifden. A lovely place run by the same family for the past thirty-three years. A place that would be completely unsuitable to bring a family with young children however. The bath faucets are about as child UN-proof and dangerous as you could possibly imagine i.e. the water is either icy cold or scalding hot. The dining facility serves exquisite four-star, five-course meals, the majority of which would most likely be wasted on the finicky child's palate. During this off-season time, the dining room's acoustics (or lack thereof) are extremely unsuitable for loud banter (or whining children...); you feel almost forced to whisper. I'm not sure that the heavy peat moss smoke emanating from the fireplace is too healthy either. Lastly the egg-pastel room decor practically invites chocolate-smeared hands to ruin it -- particularly the cream-hued carpet (we were very fortunate that the glass of red wine hubby knocked over from the bedside table landed inside the drawer he had left open and so the carpet was spared....). But otherwise this hotel is charming and thankfully lacks the many little knick-knacks the Irish seem to so dearly love to place on every available horizontal surface (a source of infinite distraction to this minimalist). The most appealing attribute is the hotel's quiet vicinity near to some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen. Sheep aplenty. And white Connemara horses. Plunging cliffs. Crashing waves. And blissfully few people.
If you would like to meet this lovely family at the Rockglen Hotel then you must go there soon. The hotel is on the market. Bin Laden has been very, very bad for business....
A FINAL NOTE. I must scold Ireland a bit for two man-made blights. One it can't really help given the existing layout of almost every Irish town I've driven through. The other it most definitely could. The blight it can't really help is the fact that upgrades to major thoroughways means that 60-mile-per-hour traffic barrels through the center of little towns ill-equipped for this sudden onslaught of tourists, commuters, and Euro transit. Perhaps I am just overly sensitive after having lived on a main street for fifteen years but I can't help thinking that this incessant zooming traffic isn't a major infringement on the quality of life for the thousands of Irish who live along these quasi freeways. However, the second blight Ireland could have well avoided and shame on them for not having done so. It's called Gallway.... Hmmm... Let's take every major mistake America has made in terms of suburban sprawl and infrastructure malaise; put it all on steroids and call it Gallway. The developers who are building the tree-less, pub-less, infrastructure-less row-houses sitting more or less on top of Ireland's major freeway through Gallway should be strung up and tarred. It is a reprehensible disgrace. No sidewalks to walk on. No nearby parks. No little shops or points of interest. Just sterile strip malls wrapped around round-a-bouts of cars. I only hope that these cheaply-made 'homes' have at least been equipped with double-paned windows...
