Kenmare

My third and fourth weeks in Ireland were the “sightseeing by myself” portion of the trip. I made two separate treks during those weeks where I left most of my stuff at the Airbnb in Dublin, threw on my backpack, and took the train across the country to see new things.

The first trip was to Galway. I saw the gorgeous Cliffs of Moher, one of the country’s most-visited sights, and spent two nights in pubs listening to traditional Irish music. I really enjoyed my time there.

But it was in Kenmare, a small town in County Kerry, that I had some of my best days in Ireland. Along the way, I was reminded that sometimes the most memorable experiences can result from not having everything planned out ahead of time.

My natural inclination is to make sure things are in order. I make lists. My house and my classroom are organized down to the inch. I am most comfortable when I know exactly what to expect. I know this is connected with anxiety – controlling the circumstances and environments around me makes me feel calmer.

This presents obvious problems. It’s one thing to have a maniacally organized closet; it’s another to be thrown off when you’re not able to prearrange the details of every situation.

I kept a journal in Ireland, and as I reread the earlier entries last week, I was surprised at how many times I mentioned feeling unsettled that I didn’t know where I was going for the third and fourth weeks of the trip.

And yet, forcing myself to sit with a little bit of uncertainty paid off.

My original plan was to go to the writer’s retreat in Donegal, then spend one week in Dublin, one week in Galway, and one week in Cork. It would’ve been easy to map out my steps for each city before arriving in Ireland.

But then a friend suggested getting a place in Dublin for three weeks and using it as a home base for short trips to other cities instead of dragging all of my luggage around and moving each week. That sounded like a better idea.

I also decided it would be best to wait until I arrived in Ireland to determine where to go during the last two weeks. That would allow me to get a sense of what else I wanted to see besides Donegal and Dublin. It seemed logical at the time, but as the trip grew closer, I started to worry about it.

The night after I arrived in Ireland, I asked my new Irish friend Catriona and her husband Jim where they would suggest going, and both spoke highly of a town on the Ring of Kerry called Kenmare.

I was only vaguely familiar with the Ring of Kerry, a 110-mile route around the Iveragh Peninsula in the southwestern part of the country. I first learned of it last year while reading Dave Grohl’s memoir. I was intrigued to hear a shaggy-haired rock ‘n’ roll drummer call the place “a corner of the earth that I have always adored: a place of serenity and natural beauty.”

After hearing what Catriona, Jim, and Dave Grohl had to say about the area, I decided to spend four days there during the last week of my trip.

A common way to see the Ring of Kerry is to take an all-day bus tour. The weekend before traveling to Kenmare, I tried to line one up. I called a local bus company and spoke to a driver named Andy.

On their webpage, the company advertised tours of both the Ring of Kerry and the Ring of Beara. I had never heard of the Ring of Beara and asked what the difference was. He was covering the phones for the owner and couldn’t speak to availability, but was helpful in answering questions about the two peninsulas and suggested I call back on Monday.

If I couldn’t line up a tour, he told me, he could give me his number and he’d be happy to take me out to see either route on Tuesday or Wednesday evening. Because it stays light out until well after 10 p.m. in Ireland, timing would not be a problem.

I was hesitant. This guy was very friendly and knowledgeable, but would it be safe to be in a vehicle one on one with a man I had never met?

I called the owner Monday morning before my train left for County Kerry and there were no tours I was able to join. I had not been able to set up anything else with other local companies either.

I decided to call Andy back.

I was still unsure about trusting a stranger but decided to go with my gut feeling, which was that he was a driver for a well-established company in the area and it would be fine.

So Andy and I chatted and agreed to meet up on Tuesday night.

When he arrived in his Range Rover, we introduced ourselves and I hopped in. We had texted a bit about specifics, but we didn’t decide to go to the Ring of Beara until just before we pulled away.

After we crossed over from Kenmare onto the Beara Peninsula, the views were stunning.

Andy told me a lot about the area and pulled over anywhere there seemed to be a good place to take a picture. Since there were very few other cars around, we sometimes stopped in the middle of the road.

At one point we came across a bar and café and Andy suggested we could stop for a beer if I wanted. I was thinking it over, but felt we were getting a little short on time. He had to be back to another town by 9 p.m. to pick up some hikers, and we were a good distance from where he needed to drop me off.

“Or you can get a Guinness to go,” he said.

That sounded like a perfect idea, so I agreed, and he turned the vehicle around. As we walked into Helen’s Bar, I said, “You’re going to be the ambassador for this Guinness to go business, right?” He assured me he would.

Andy knew Helen and introduced me. We talked with her for a while and then headed outside to hear a bit of the music “session” in progress (what we might call a “jam session”) before continuing on.

We ended up driving around for about 2 ½ hours, which was a perfect amount of time. When it was time to wrap things up, Andy offered to take me out again the next night so I could see parts of the Ring of Kerry, and I was happy I would get to see both routes.

Our first stop the following evening was the Blackwater Bridge. As I got out of the car to take pictures, Andy pointed out that he was in the poster on the side of the road.

The weather on the second night wasn’t as clear as it was the previous evening, but I still got to see the parts of the Ring of Kerry that were close to Kenmare.

I couldn’t believe how blue the water was.

We eventually turned around because the clouds were moving in and the visibility was poor. On the way back to Kenmare, we stopped into a pub that Catriona had mentioned.

Part of what was great about both nights was learning about the area. Andy was very knowledgeable about the history of Ireland and County Kerry in particular.

In addition to the spectacular views, doing the tours at night allowed me to explore Kenmare during the day. It ended up being one of my favorite places in Ireland.

The atmosphere of the town was relaxed and friendly and the triangular shape of downtown made everything walkable – restaurants, bakeries, pubs, and other shops. The Kenmare Stone Circle, Reenagross Park, and Kenmare Pier were also within easy walking distance.

An added bonus to the week was the fun night I had at O’Donnabhain’s Pub listening to music and yukking it up with a group of people I met from Donegal who were there on vacation.

Kenmare was the perfect place to close out my travels within Ireland. The pictures of both peninsulas speak for themselves, but even they don’t do the area justice. It was honestly the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, and I would’ve missed it altogether if I had insisted on planning everything ahead of time.

I’ve had a blank wall for a long time in my “writing room” that I was hoping to fill with pictures from Ireland. Framing my favorite photos from my time in County Kerry seemed only fitting – an extended reminder of what can happen when I loosen my grip and allow things to unfold.

Week 1: Arrival and Retreat

I was more than 3,000 miles from home, at the writer’s retreat that had brought me to Ireland, when I heard a saying that stuck with me:

Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine – We live in each other’s shadows.

Other translations or interpretations: Through the shelter of each other, people survive. We shade each other from the sun.

The takeaway: Humans rely on each other for support.

When I heard it, I was reminded of the importance of connection and the fact that the best times of my life have always been with other people. And yet, I had chosen to spend a month in a place where I didn’t know a single soul.

I had been in Ireland for five days and had already questioned my choice to travel alone. Quite a few of these unsettling moments came the morning I arrived. 

After an easy trip from Washington, D.C., to Dublin, I checked into my hotel in the early morning feeling good.  

“I’m doing this!” I congratulated myself, looking around the room confidently, “I’m in Ireland!”

Two hours later, after settling in for a needed nap, I woke up feeling nauseated and terribly anxious. 

The rest of the day was a struggle.

I was surprised at how familiar the feeling was. It was almost identical to how I felt the morning I arrived in Japan some 25 years ago – something just short of wanting to stay in bed all day and pull a blanket over my head. However, that time I was with my spouse, and he would be handling many of the details of our one-year stay because we were there for his job. This time I would be handling everything solo.

I tried to calm myself down by turning on the TV, but I kept finding channels where everyone was speaking with Irish accents. Worse yet, some were speaking Irish, a language I couldn’t comprehend at all. It served as a glaring reminder that I was in a foreign place.

I also had to figure out where I was going to eat. I had been told that breakfast was served at the hotel restaurant from “half 7” to 11 a.m. I didn’t know what “half 7” meant, but it didn’t matter. It was already 10:30.

My room was a weird distance from the lobby and I was wishing I had left bread crumbs to help navigate my way back through a series of hallways and two different elevators. 

Nevertheless, I persisted, and made my way towards the lobby. Just ahead of me around the last turn was a man in a skirt. 

“Wow,” I thought, “I’ve heard Ireland’s gotten very progressive. Well, OK! Well done, Ireland!”

Then I turned the corner and came across a pack of burly, tattooed men in skirts. Or, as I quickly realized, kilts. And matching navy blue jerseys.

Oh! Right. Sports fans. (Scottish soccer fans going to a game in Dublin that day, as it turned out.)

I had to slip through the burly men and their matching ladies to get to the hotel restaurant. I was the only customer. 

It was 10:45 and the buffet had clearly been out for several hours. I was looking for something simple like eggs and toast. The eggs looked suspect.

This was hardly the time for food poisoning, so I took a couple of oddly curled pieces of meat (ham? bacon? I wasn’t sure) and the waitress brought me toast and tea. 

And that was my first meal in Ireland, sitting alone in an empty restaurant.

After I finished (six minutes later), I retreated to the safety of my room to lay down again and watch TV. I knew it was absurd that the Irish accents on Irish TV were throwing me off, but I couldn’t help it. My heart thawed when I came across a couple of channels showing American programs. 

I watched an episode of Friends (which I never liked in America, but now Joey and Chandler were really hitting the spot), then the movies Dirty Dancing (Baby, still not in a corner) and Beaches (which I hadn’t seen since 1989). 

Around 4 p.m., it was time to find food again and I decided I really did have to leave the hotel and walk around the area a little.

I stepped out onto O’Connell Street – a busy road with lots of shops, people, busses, and trams – and had some bright moments while heading towards the river. It was cool walking around in a new city, and I had an inkling that I would enjoy the place once I settled in. 

After crossing the bridge over the River Liffey, I walked through a touristy section called Temple Bar, which felt like a frat party on a city street. Enough of that! I crossed back over the river, and once again, seeking out familiar things, I ducked into a music store full of guitars. 

After about an hour I felt I could check the box that I had “explored” the neighborhood. On my way back to the hotel, I picked up another nutritious meal – a sandwich from the Subway inside a Circle K. 

Not surprisingly, the first day in the new place was challenging. I was exhausted from jet lag. I’m also a creature of habit, so having to get my bearings, make sense of new sights, navigate new streets, and forage for food, all alone, was tiresome. I just kept reminding myself that it was going to be worth it.

I was here to grow. 

I would need to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

The tradeoff was this, I felt: Traveling solo would open possibilities and connections that wouldn’t happen if I were with a partner or a friend the whole time. 

And fortunately, the next day, things got much better.

I met up with my sister’s friend Catriona, who lives in Dublin and who had kindly offered to show me around. 

I was nervous to meet her, but she set me at ease right away. Chatty, warm, smart, and fun, she brought me to the Museum of Literature Ireland, which had a ton of interesting information about Irish writers, and then to her house for dinner.  

Though I had only been two days away from my own home, it was so nice to be in a house, with a family, having a home-cooked meal. Catriona and her husband Jim told me lots about Ireland and answered my many questions. I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon and evening.

On the way back to the hotel, Catriona drove past Dublin Bay and explained a bunch of other things about the city. I ended the day feeling much more comfortable about where I was. When I got back to the room, I ended my journal entry for the day with this simple note:

Grateful for today. 

The next morning, I flew to Donegal, where my writing retreat would take place.

In addition to my first-day nerves, I had felt plenty of anxiety about the retreat in the weeks leading up to the trip. I was happy to start my month in Ireland with a week where I would be interacting with other people rather than sightseeing by myself, but I was also unsure of who else would be there and what we would be doing each day. There were only ten participants, so I knew we would be in close quarters. 

I met most of the other participants after we had landed in Donegal. I introduced myself at the tiny baggage claim area and we loaded ourselves into a van to the hotel. 

It may sound corny to say “we came in as strangers, we left as friends,” but I believe that’s what happened. Even though we ranged in age from 30s – 70s and came from England, Ireland, Germany, and a wide variety of U.S. states, the group seemed to gel almost immediately. A workshop where people are writing about their lives lends itself to getting to know people well in a short span of time.

The retreat was thoughtfully organized. Starting with the first night, we got a writing assignment each evening. Mornings were spent sharing our work and giving each other feedback. From our first morning, I was so impressed with the writing of my classmates. Each day there were pieces that blew me away, and I felt I learned a lot just by hearing the writing of others and the feedback given by the group.

We also had instruction and discussions each day about specific aspects of writing – things like story arc, dialogue writing, and ways to make writing clearer. 

On two of the afternoons we took trips to local places that highlighted the culture of the area. The first was to a thatched-roof cottage, the home of a traveler and author from the 1800s. We had a big lunch of Irish stew, brown bread, and scones and cream, followed by a lesson in the Irish language. 

The second afternoon we went to Dunfanaghy Workhouse, where we learned about life during the Irish Potato Famine. We walked through a narrated exhibit about a woman from that area who lived through the hardship of the famine. The museum was on the site of an actual workhouse, a place where people could go if they had no food. It was an enlightening and very somber afternoon. 

After the Workhouse, we went to a castle in the area, which I found peaceful and interesting.

Evenings were spent at the pub in the hotel, which was not only a ton of fun – I really enjoyed getting to know this diverse group of people – but also served as my first view into how pubs seem to play an important role in communities. 

Because the Teac Jack hotel was set in a rural area, it was clearly a gathering spot for people from the surrounding towns as well as hotel guests. And perhaps most importantly, it’s where I broke my strict allegiance to Coors Light and ventured on to Carlsberg and Guinness.

During the first week, I was already getting a taste of the experiences that would tower in my memories of this trip: although I purposefully chose to travel alone, the best parts of this adventure were when I found connection with others.

The Irish are known for their culture of hospitality. You can go into any gift shop and find the saying Céad Míle Fáilte (One Hundred Thousand Welcomes) on a variety of plaques and cards. I don’t know how many Irish people walk around actually speaking these words, but the saying represents something I experienced firsthand, especially that first week.

I was left with the strong sense that I was genuinely welcomed and that people I had just met were looking out for me. What a great feeling to take with me as I began my solo journey.

In her article on travel writing in The Paris Review, Tara Isabella Burton points out that travelers don’t only see what’s in front of them; they also see what they expect to find from a given place, especially one they’ve been thinking about long before they arrived. 

The place I’ve been thinking about for many years is Ireland. Next week, I’ll leave for a month-long trip to the island I first became aware of as a nine-year-old, when my grandmother gave me a book she had used as a schoolgirl outside of Dublin.

I was thrilled with the gift and took a shine to two of the pieces in particular: the poem “Try, Try Again,” and a Christmas story called “Little Jack.” In the story, Jack lives with a cruel aunt and gives one of his shoes to a child whose circumstances are even worse than his own. In the end, Jack’s generosity is rewarded by a kind stranger, and his aunt’s heart softens as she is overcome by the Christmas spirit.

This was the first time I remember wondering about Ireland. Thankfully, the stories I read in Blackie’s New Programme Reader didn’t entirely shape my view of the country. If they had, I would simply have viewed it as a place where people weren’t very good at things but tried really hard, over and over again; where kids lived a dreary life, some sleeping in doorways without shoes; where adults were heartless (aunts, specifically); and where children could only rely on Christmas to improve their lives. Sheesh. And this was reading instruction for five-year-olds!

As I got older, I did more reading that was also dark at times but equally as intriguing. My favorite course in college was Irish Literature with Dr. Fitzgerald. She introduced me to the work of Edna O’Brien and Seamus Heaney, among others. I was really taken with both writers, whose work created an impression of the landscape (green and lush, with white washed buildings and lots of farms) and an impression of the people (smart, strong-willed, religious, understated).

I went to see both writers speak at different times after I graduated, Seamus Heaney a year after college in Upstate New York, and Edna O’Brien in 2016 at a synagogue in Washington, D.C. O’Brien was promoting her new novel at age 85 and the feisty spirit that I saw in her writing was on full display that night.

After college, I was introduced to Irish music during my time in the bars of downtown Boston. I quickly progressed beyond just shouting “No, Nay, Never!” with a bunch of sweaty post-college kids and discovered I really enjoyed The Chieftains and other bands. I grew to love a variety of Irish music and listen to it regularly. 

I came close to traveling to Ireland a couple of times. Before each of my marriages, my soon-to-be spouse asked if I’d like to go to Ireland for the honeymoon. Both times, I said I wanted to make that its own special trip.

Fast forward to a few months ago, when I had just dropped off my 20-year-old for his first semester away at college. A friend asked me what I was doing for myself and my own growth now that my son was living in another city.

I thought about it. I’m 53. Twice divorced. Transitioning out of my role as a caretaker. My son had said he might not be coming home for the summer. What would I really like to do?

The first thing that came to mind was to finally take a trip to Ireland. I quickly decided that I wanted to visit for an extended period of time so I could see the country in an authentic way, as I did when I studied abroad for five months in Spain and lived and worked in Japan for a year. Since English is spoken everywhere in Ireland (I think), I figured it would be feasible to travel there solo without too much trouble. 

I don’t expect that I’ll have the same kinds of language snafus in Ireland that I experienced in Spain and Japan, but I understand that I’ll come across different ways of expressing things and probably some big cultural differences. Like many Americans of Irish descent, I’ve always “identified” as Irish, if you will, but on the eve of my trip, I recognize that I’m fully American. 

In hopes of being slightly more informed before arrival, I got a copy of Irish History for Dummies, which in itself feels very American (just the Cliffs Notes version, please!). Actually, I picked it up because it was funny, with chapter headings like “I’m Irish – But Who Isn’t?” and “The Romans: They Came, They Saw, and They Didn’t Bother.”

Humor aside, I know there has been a tremendous amount of conflict in the country, especially within the last century, and I wanted to understand that better. I’ve only gleaned a superficial knowledge of what has transpired and why, and I will be interested to know more through my visit.

I also re-opened an Ancestry.com account that I had set up for my dad several years ago and learned that 11 of 16 great-great-grandparents were from Ireland and came to the U.S. around the time of the Irish Potato Famine. My parents had told us that we were Irish, English, French, and Welsh, but I was surprised to find out just how many relatives came from Ireland. The one strand of the family that came from England is the one whose name we carry—Phillips. More prevalent were names like McQuiggan and Doherty.

It occurred to me that most of them likely left the country because of the famine. I wondered if, like many of the immigrant students I teach, my relatives felt a deep sadness about leaving behind family, friends, and home and did so only because circumstances had become unbearable. My parents visited Ireland in the 1990s, and my father told me recently that when he saw how beautiful the country was, he thought, “They left this?” 

I’ve planned my trip to take in as much as possible in the month I’ll be there without rushing around trying to see every single sight. 

The first week of my trip will be spent at a writer’s retreat in Donegal. The workshops will focus on creative nonfiction writing, but the week will also involve learning about Irish culture and language. 

For the remaining three weeks, I’ve rented a one-bedroom cottage in Dublin. Two close friends from Virginia will be meeting me for five days, timing their visit to coincide with the Dublin Pride parade at the end of June. We’ll also do some sightseeing in other parts of the country together.

Other than that, my plan is to ask people at the writer’s retreat and elsewhere for recommendations of where to go and then just wander using public transport. I have never traveled solo with this much unstructured time, and right now it feels both exciting and terrifying. As someone who rarely plans to “wander” and who tends to have a good deal of anticipatory anxiety about anything unknown, I have lots of questions.

Several friends who have been to Ireland have said they felt at home there and assured me that I would find the same thing. Will I? 

Will I feel some affinity for family members who came before me, the Farrells, the McQuiggans, the Donnellys, the Dohertys? 

How will the real Ireland compare with the one that exists in my mind’s eye? 

I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to finding out.