pantstributor

Home for the holidays (in icy Ireland)

Hello posh people!!!

I’m popping in today to write about my trip home for Christmas. I go home every year to do what most people do during the holidays: eat far too much and do as little as possible whilst fighting with various family members. This year however, we shook things up a little: my lovely girlfriend Jen came over for a visit.

I think it’s safe to say that Jen came back to Texas safe in the knowledge that there are two things you really need to know about Ireland. It is a beautiful country, and it is unmercifully cold. I have some photographic evidence to back up both of these statements.

You can’t tell, but she’s having a great time. We took this picture on a trip to the Cliffs of Moher whilst travelling around my favourite part of Ireland, the west coast of Counties Clare and Galway. Ireland is suffering the same cold snap affecting the rest of Europe at the moment, so things were pretty rough. The main road to my uncle Brian’s was flooded, so we had to (very slowly) take an alternative route. More chance to check out cool scenery though.

This part of Ireland is called the Burren, which is famous for being a karst region in Ireland, made up mostly of limestone. This makes for fantastic scenery. Oliver Cromwell famously sent a scout into the Burren, only for the grim report to come back that “There isn’t tree to hang a man, water to drown a man nor soil to bury a man.” Yup, Oliver Cromwell. Not a nice guy.

It also means there are some interesting geographic features, as my old teacher Mr. O’Brien would describe them. My favourite are turloughs, or winter lakes. Due to the higher water table in the winter and  the limestone bedrock, the Burren has lots of small lakes that turn up in winter time when the water table rises and disappear during the summer. Thanks to the unbelievable weather these lakes had frozen over.

See the fence over the frozen lake?

Of course, my main reason to go to the Burren is to see family. I don’t always have American tourists with me, you know. Here’s a picture of my cousin Cliona.

You see? I can embarrass younger cousins from thousands of miles away. My dad is the oldest of nine and has dutifully taken on the responsibility of making fun of all his younger siblings and their offspring at every opportunity. I’m in training to take over. It all works in a hierarchy though; my dad’s younger siblings are free to torment me and by extension Jen. For my uncle Brian this mostly consisted of driving about ninety miles per hour down roads barely wide enough for his car while interrogating Jen about trivial matters instead of watching the road. It was great!

After a couple of days of Jen being terrorised by my uncle Brian and some more rather hairy country driving, we returned to Cork, where it seems things have gotten a little ghetto since the economy crashed.

We decided it might be prudent to get out of the city, and braved the icy roads to visit the lovely town of Kinsale.

Kinsale was the site of the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, when a combination of Irish and Spanish forces were defeated by the English, more or less settling what is now known as the Nine Years War and resulting in the “Flight of the Earls”, the end of the Irish political aristocracy. Today, Kinsale is noticeable for being picturesque, having a comedy festival, and sporting numerous oddly named retail establishments.

It’s never really struck me before how easy it is to recreate postcard-type photographs in Ireland. You’ve got the little village by the sea:

and the medieval tower in the middle of nowhere:

This was even before I took Jen to Blarney Castle.

Incidentally, the gift shop at Blarney had quite possibly the most cray tote bag ever.

Jen kissed the Blarney stone, and is now officially an eloquent person everyone! Yay! She needed it, because it was time to make merry and meet all the people I went to school and college with, and still talk to, all while drinking quite a lot of Guinness.

Ok, ok. We were having too much fun to take any decent photographs of the pub shenanigans. To make up for it, I decided to post a picture of the family dog in  a snuggie.

Rolo, our American Spaniel. As you can see, the members of my family enjoy both celebrating the Christmas spirit and making animals look ridiculous. He seemed okay with it! We even had little Santas holding our olives and sun dried tomatoes in place (we were trying to impress our visitor).

I tucked in to my favourite meal of the year. Yum.

All in all, I think it went ok! My family succeeded at not imploding or otherwise being embarrassing in front of our visitor, and I think Jen enjoyed meeting so many people in such a short space of time. You did very well Jen. Maybe you can show me up in the comments! Though I’m not lying everyone. Really.

Bye Ireland. See you in December.

© 2010 Poshdeluxe.