Republic of Ireland, May 15 - 19, 2014

We arrived Thursday morning in Rosslare, the ferry port some 150 km south of Dublin, having sailed the previous night from Cherbourg aboard the “Oscar Wilde.”  Our fellow passengers included throngs of French teenagers on their spring break and their harried-looking chaperones.

“Oscar Wilde” in Rosslare Harbor

“Agatha,” our car’s GPS, was again speaking to us after a French Renault technician explained that we had inadvertently turned down her volume control, which was entirely separate from the radio’s control.  Her clear, firm instructions were essential in navigating the narrow back roads and roundabouts of the Emerald Isle.

En route to Dublin, we stopped to visit to Kilkenny, an almost prototypical Irish town located between the Kilkenny Castle and St. Canice’s Cathedral, an early Gothic structure beautifully restored in the 19^th century.

 St. Canice’s Cathedral

Todd needed a haircut but decided against this Kilkenny establishment

For our visit to Dublin, we had booked ourselves into a guest house about 20 minutes by bus from the city center.  This worked well, for there were great views of our route from the bus’s upper deck.

Dublin bus

We covered most of the traditional sightseeing venues in downtown Dublin.  Trinity College was a must-see, of course, not only for us but for throngs of other tourists.  However, the Book of Kells exhibit proved to be something of a disappointment, for the two pages on display were nowhere as bright and beautiful as the reproductions we had seen of the monogram page.  More impressive were Dublin Castle, whose interior is remarkably unchanged from the days of British rule; Christ Church Cathedral, Ireland’s oldest, where we stopped for Evening Prayer; and the Guinness Storehouse, where (for a not-so-small fee) visitors are treated to a very slick, multi-media introduction to the brewing of stout.  The presentation stresses the importance of successive generations of the Guinness family in the beer’s history, virtually ignoring its current ownership by Diageo, a British multinational.

Trinity College

 Dublin Castle

Christ Church Cathedral

Todd, ready for a pint of Guinness

While St. Canice’s and Christ Church cathedrals belong to the Church of Ireland (i.e., Anglican Communion), the great majority of churches in the Republic are Roman Catholic.  Even though weekly attendance is reportedly down, Catholicism plays an important role in the family life of Irish society as the following photos suggest.

  Shop near a large R.C. church in Dublin

Inside the shop

One afternoon we left Dublin to visit Powerscourt, thought to have the finest gardens in the Republic.  Built by the first Viscount Powerscourt in the 18^th century and enlarged by his successors, they surround and nearly dwarf the eponymous Palladian mansion.  The most amusing feature was the pet cemetery, where the Powerscourt family interred the remains of not only dogs and cats, but horses and cows (presumably after their cremation).

On Sunday we drove west to visit the Atlantic Coast, overnighting at B&B’s near Clifden and Donegal and stopping at Galway and Sligo.   We had booked our accommodations on Saturday through two websites that offered accurate descriptions of the properties, both rated four-star, which were as immaculately clean and completely appointed as any first class hotel.

 “Cove Lodge” B&B close to Donegal

All four towns are tourist destinations offering excellent meals, especially at the Olde Castle Bar in Donegal, where we had the best salmon dinners in recent memory.  These towns are also fishing ports, especially Donegal, which was also an important departure port, along with Sligo, for Irish emigrating to North America during the 19^th century potato famine.

  Downtown Clifden

    Famine memorial in Sligo

The Olde Castle Bar in Donegal

While we heard no one speaking it, Gaelic is reportedly more heavily used in the West than in Dublin.   Central government road signs throughout the Republic are in both languages, but in the northwestern counties we found local road signs only in Gaelic.   Campaigning for local and European parliamentary elections was in full swing during our visit.  Again, in the East the posters were bilingual, but candidates in the northwestern counties usually found it advantageous to advertise only with Gaelic.

Roadside election poster near Galway

While the towns are interesting, the main attraction of the West is the Atlantic coast itself.  We spent a number of hours traveling on narrow roads to reach the best possible viewpoints, and on these drives we were impressed by the number of new or recently refurbished houses or cottages that suggested a measure of prosperity for their owners, some of whom were presumably not locals.   As the photos below indicate, we saw some magnificent scenery during our drives, but the absolute best was the Slieve League, allegedly the highest sea cliffs in Europe, which we viewed amidst a flock of disinterested sheep after a steep climb by car and foot.