A DAY IN THE COUNTRY
I wanted... this must be clear; it was I who wanted to do it, not Colleen... I wanted to drive into the countryside of Ireland, way deep in the heart of Ireland. I had seen on the net that there was this thing called the Bog Railway near Athlone, and being smack dab in the middle of the country, that was definitely heartland. There was a railway connection, direct from Dublin. There are, in fact, full-day and half-day and multiple-day excursions by rail from Dublin. But we were going to be on a train a lot in England and on the Continent, so I thought driving would be fun.

Dublin to Galway
After breakfast at Lansdown Manor, before we got the car I had reserved, we talked with Cook about going to Athlone and, perhaps, as far as Galway. The web maps had indicated we could even go to Galway in an easy one-day drive. We could overnight there, and head back fresh in the morning. But as we spoke, something odd started happening. Colleen puts it this way:

Pronunciation in Ireland is different from English or American. Though it may seem you are talking the same language, sometimes it is not. At breakfast one morning we were talking to Cook about our intended destinations for the day. We intended to visit a bog in Athlone but she just could not understand us, though both sides were trying hard. After a while, we wrote it out for her. Oh, Atlone she said, dropping the h.

I should have been sharper at that point, and picked up on the fact something important was going on that I did not quite understand. And a red flag should have gone up when she suggested we speak to another of the staff, because they had been all the way to Galway. But no, I was determined. The other staff member spoke with us about going to Galway. She even gave us a phone number of friends at a B and B where they might be able to put us up for the night, if we wished. Very kind of her, and we appreciated it.

The Car
So we took a taxi to go get the car. Yes, that made sense at the time. I had reserved a compact car. The photo of it is at the left. It is red. It was a mistake.

Looks small enough, certainly. But no.
There are several categories smaller than this in Ireland. I did not know the reason for that, or I would have gone down at least two sizes. This is equivalent to an SUV on American roads. Or maybe a Humvee. But we got in, and after decades of driving rather well on the right hand side of the road, I made the transition to the left side.

I must be fair and say that Colleen did not scream much. Even when the four-foot-tall traffic cone ran into our side view mirror. I blessed the engineer who had given our car a spring-loaded, swing-back side view mirror, and went on through the Dublin traffic, which was, predictably, extremely heavy for that time of day.

After looking at two differnt maps we had been given, along with instructions given to us both verbally and in writing by a very kind person at the car agency, we finally got out of town and its very crowded (we had been warned) very narrow (we had not been warned enough) streets, and onto a major highway into the countryside. I relaxed a bit, having now full inches of room between our car and the others. It was fairly normal.

That did not last forever. We had to get off the nice freeway, and onto a major road that went to both Athlone and Galway. At first, we ended up going through traffic circle after traffic circle, further and further up and into the hills. Finally, in a flash of inspiration, I decided this was the wrong way, for if we continued, we would end up somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, by my reckoning.

So we stopped at a convenient Shell station, saw a friendly looking Irish trucker, and asked him directions to Athlone. And I was quite sure I was pronouncing it Atlone all the time, although Colleen tells me I still had the h in it. He seemed to understand me perfectly, much to my delight, and expounded on the way to go, a very complicated way, it seemed to me. I went inside to buy something, and as I was waiting at the counter, he came in and said, no, that was not the way to Athlone after all. In fact, he was not sure where Athlone was. The counter person heard what was going on, and I believe she was a member of Mensa, because she not only told me the right way to Athlone, she saw I could not comprehend the directions, and wrote them down for me. I never learned her name, but want to say a formal Thank You, and would gladly send her our firstborn. So we went back to the highway, and got off on the right turning to the major road
to Galway and ellusive Athlone.

The pastoral picture above is not of the wrong turning we made. It is representative of a section of the major road to Atlone and Galway. No, it is not for one-way traffic. I wish it were. It is also not for 15-mile-an-hour traffic. It is for light-speed and above. Oh, and trucks. BIG trucks. Granted, some of the stretches were much wider. Half again as wide, as I remember. But the width in this picture is not atypical.

Colleen wrote about our little journey to our daughter this way. It was amazing we survived driving through the little towns along the road. Many of the streets are quite narrow. Usually cars are also parked along the curbs or sidewalks, leaving little room to manuever your car in the oncoming traffic. Cars would head towards each other in the middle of the road, and then veer off to the side at the last possible moment, kind of like a continual game of chicken. It was a little nerve racking.

Yes, it was.
Only by the grace of God did we eventually arrive in Athlone. But not at the Bog Railway. The road NARROWED at that point, and I had enough of narrow roads. We went back to a really country-looking, really friendly-looking eating establishment we had seen just a little earlier, and gratefully took a table.

It was a good idea. We were right at the end of lunch, but local people were still around and talking, and it was a great place to meet Ireland. As we stirred sugar into our tea (the sugarbags are reproduced here) we listened to the conversations that were table-to-table, among people who had know each other probably all of their lives.

There was a table of about six laborers, two tables of men in their 80s, a young couple at another table. Also, every woman who had ever worked there as a waitress, it seemed, was sitting and standing around a large table, having coffee, smoking as was everyone else in the room, and talking about the events of their lives.

To be there was to know you were in Ireland. Colleen observes the following about the language. The Irish lilt, with its slight question at the end of each sentence, is very charming, honoring, and makes the communication more pleasant and polite. While Spanish and French use different words for informal and formal address, the Irish use the internal question. That internal question within the sentence is the Irish making the dominant English foreign language its own, in my opinion. It does make their thought process just slightly off center, but its very nice.
As I mentioned before, Colleen is of Irish heritage. As am I.

The Way Home.
On our way back to Dublin, we took our time and stopped in different places. One was Tyrrellspass Irish Castle, a reminant of a 600-year-old fortification with tiny slit windows
that must have been very, very cold in the wintertime.
Not these days, however. Now there is a rather fancy restaurant with an excellent menu and well-stocked larder.
We did not eat there, but would have if we had not just done so.

As the sun set, we returned to Lansdowne Manor, parked the car as you see it in the photo, and left it there until it was time to return it. We took DART into the city, and visited the new Temple Bar area that is now the very hippest place to be in Dublin, now that people have money.

But that is a story for another day.
We've done all of Ireland we're going to do for now.
So you can click on one of the buttons at the bottom of the page to select another country, and see more of a Visit to Europe as we go through England, France and The Netherlands.

Or perhaps you would like to start planning your own visit. If so, we here at InformationEurope.com certainly can recommend Rail Europe. They could have gotten us a nice seat on the train to Athlone, but I decided to do it my own way. Next time I think I will listen to them a little better.
After all, they are the experts.

And for Eurail and Eurostar rail travel in Europe click here to
Travel Europe the way Europeans do.
Rail Europe has been serving the American market since 1934.
They help more than 1 million american travelers a year spend 215,000,000.00
on their travel plans. Is it a good idea to book with them... I think so.

Visit our Europe Travel webstore featuring Love To Travel gear for your Ireland vacation,
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