Beannachtaí daoibh, agus fáilte fíorchaoin! Greetings, and a hearty welcome! Here you can follow along on a trip I made with my parents to Ireland in 2007, and see some beautiful scenery, read some beautiful poetry (and hear a bit too), and learn a bit about the Emerald Isle.
(It's possible, especially if you're using Internet Explorer, that you'll see a message at the top of the screen that popups are blocked. You'll need to disable that to see the bigger pictures. And if you have an older computer or a slower connection, it might take a moment or two for the page to load - there are lots of pictures).
I first visited Ireland as a university student back in the summer of 1989. Actually I went there with SWAP, the Student Work Abroad Program, and spent a couple months in Galway working for the I.S.P.C.C. - the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, an organisation to help underprivileged children. (You can click here to see their webpage). At that time Ireland was a very poor country, suffering from the Troubles in the North and political corruption. I came home with the feeling that the country is incredibly beautiful but the people were quite varied. The vast majority of people I met were pretty friendly, outgoing, helpful folk, but were obviously stressed with economic worries and frustrated with petty politicking in Dublin. But I always wanted to return and spend more time travelling around.
So in the summer of 2007, I decided it was time. The Celtic Tiger was alive and well, the Good Friday Agreement was holding up, it looked like a good time to go and see the "New Ireland". I was living in the Czech Republic then (as I am still) and as my parents had no plans for a summer vacation, I persuaded them to come over and meet me in Dublin for a two week trip around the country. My girlfriend at the time, Lenka, decided to go with me for the first week, but had to return after that to prepare for university and a new teaching job in Prague.
So here we go on our little excursion... you can click on the pictures to see a bigger image, then click on the little x in the upper corner to send it back into the darkness of cyberspace whence it had come.
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The trip, as it worked out. Not exactly as I had originally planned, but it
never is nor should be. Lenka and I flew to Dublin from Prague with Aer Lingus, my
parents flew from Hamilton (Ont., Canada) with Globespan. In Dublin we
rented a car and began our tour. Apart from that, we took a passenger
ferry from Rossaveal, near Galway, out to the Arran Islands, and at the
end of the second week, we left the car at the Laytown train station and
took the train into Dublin for the day.
— Car trip. Dublin Airport - Avoca - Killarney - Ring of Kerry - Dingle Peninsula - Foynes - the Burren - Connamara - Sligo - Giant's Causeway - Drumcliffe - Athlone - Newgrange - Dublin Airport. — Passenger ferry from Rosseval to Kilronan, Arran Islands. — Train trip. Laytown, near Drogheda to Pearce Station. — My jaunt to Drogheda after the parents returned home.
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Day 0 - We arrive.
Lenka and I arrived in Dublin quite late on the 5th; about 10:30, so it was close on midnight by the time we got to the hostel and got signed in. I can not, with a clear conscience, recommend Brown's Hostel in Dublin to anyone. It's relatively cheap, I assume because they don't pay anyone to clean it. If you can find a better place to stay (and you CAN) go there instead. My next trip to Dublin, I stayed at Avalon House - slightly more expensive, and a little farther from the city centre, but still, much much much MUCH better. Anyway, on to...
Day 1 - Irish Bogs
Our first excursion in Ireland was to see the Bog of Allen. It's actually quite a large area (covering several counties), so we aimed for the Bog of Allen Nature Centre, in the village of Lullymore. Quite interesting, with lots of information and displays, describing the geography, flora and development of the bog, and the history of peat harvesting. Peat, or turf, is dug from bogs - most people associate it with potting plants, but it will actually burn, which is what it's mainly used for in Ireland. In fact, at the nature centre, they said that something like 14% of Ireland's electricity comes from burning peat.
For more information on the nature centre, take a look at their website: Bog of Allen Nature Centre
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The Bog of Allen, where turf has been dug out on a large scale.
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The Bog of Allen Nature Centre. |
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Left: A display of traditional turf digging tools at the centre.
Right: A geo-historical staircase into a bog. |
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The nature centre also has a small greenhouse where you can see the plants that grow in bogs. Because of poor soil nutrition, many of the plants are carnivorous, such as these:
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| Sundews | Pitcher plant and flower | Flytraps |
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A Monkey Puzzle tree that we saw on the way to the Nature Centre. These trees are actually indigenous to Chile, but they do well in Ireland's temperate climate. It was interesting to see that there are palm trees and other tropical and sub-tropical plants in a country so far north, but the Gulf Stream keeps the island mild in winter and temperate in summer. We also noticed a dearth of fruit trees, but although the climate is warm, there is very little sunshine, which fruit trees need. |
Day 2 - The Parents Arrive
The next day, my parents arrived, we picked up our rental car and headed off on our excursion.
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Car & Driver - An Audi A6. Terrible car. A lane & a half wide and you can't see nuthin' out the back window. It may be a decent motorway cruiser, but never, ever, take it off the four-lane. You're a fool if you do.
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The view from the back; navigator and driver. In fact, the
navigator spent most of the time looking at the map and saying, "I
have no idea how the hell you're supposed to pronounce that. Where are we
anyway?"  |
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The harbour in the village of Dún Laoghaire (or
Dunleary, as they call it - it means Laoghar's Fort), where we spent our first night. |
Day 3 - The Avoca Valley
As my Dad is a great fan of the t.v. series Ballykissangel, I figured a stop at Avoca village would be appropriate. (I myself enjoyed the first couple seasons, but then I moved away, and when I saw it again, some years later, many of the characters had changed and I'd lost track of who was who.) But Avoca village, down between the Wicklow Mountains and the Irish Sea, is the place where most of the series was filmed.
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The Vale of Avoca, with the Irish Sea on the horizon.
This is the place that Thomas Moore described in his song, The Vale of
Avoca:
There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet, |
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| The Village of Avoca, better known to televisionland as Ballykissangel. |
Homage to BallyK: The BallyK Minimart. |
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| Fitzgerald's Pub | Of course, we had to stop in for refreshments. |
After leaving Avoca, we continue on down to see Avoca Handweavers, a traditional woolen mill.
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| A building at the entrance to the grounds. | The traditional method of weaving on a loom. | A more modern automated loom, with punched plastic sheets to control its operation. |
Day 4 - Westward Ho!
After spending the night in Courtown on the east coast, we head over to the west to start the real tour. We arrived in Killarney and found a B&B and then went to explore the area.
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The Sweep, a pub where we stopped for lunch on the way to Killarney. |
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If you'd like to see what's happening in the town of Killarney right now, click on the picture to see a live webcam view of the main street. |
Just south of Killarney is a magnificent former estate and mansion, Muckross House. Today the gardens are open to the public, and the house is a museum and library. At the entrance to the park is a "19th century taxi rank"; i.e., a row of horse drawn jaunting cars. These contraptions, with their loquacious drivers, are an amusing way of seeing the grounds.
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| Thomas & Billy (Billy's the quadruped), our guides through the Muckross House park. | Muckross House, built in 1849. |
Around Muckross -
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| In the Jaunting Car. | Muckross House with tourists. | Muckross House with cows. (No relation to previous caption implied) |
The Ladies' View, in the Lakes of Killarney National Park, so named because Queen Victoria went to this spot to see the park. |
Day 5 - The Ring of Kerry
Some scenes on the way around the Ring of Kerry on the Iveraugh Peninsula.
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On the way, we stopped at the village of Ballinskelligs (In Gaelic, Baile na Sceilge, meaning Homestead of the Rocks), an area popular for swimming and other water sports. There is also the ruins of this defensive tower, built around the 16th century to protect the area from pirates and other invaders. |  |
Day 6 - The Dingle Peninsula - An Ghaeltacht
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The next day we went up into the Dingle Peninsula, and into the Gaeltacht. The Gaeltacht refers to areas of Ireland where Gaelic is still spoken as the primary language. Although almost all road signs in Ireland are in both English and Gaelic, here you will often find signs only in Gaelic, such as the Yield (Give Way) sign on the left. |
Making the Gaelic names of towns and villages official is a great boon to Ireland's heritage, but I do wish they could get their act together with the cartographers a little better. You're standing on the roadside looking at your Michelin map, and you look up at the sign that announces your arrival in the village of "Ceann Trá", and you're thinking to yourself, "I wonder if that says 'Ventry'? (In fact it means "Cape Beach" - Ventry was the name of an English landowner who lived in the area, but Michelin still uses his name for the village).
A few scenes from the town of Dingle itself (An Daingean, The Fort).
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| A brass monument to Fungie, the town's dolphin mascot, who showed up in the bay one day some years ago and decided to stay. | Another monument to Fungie, on the façade of a souvenir shop. |
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| Downtown Dingle | An Daingean, An Lár |
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| Gaelic/English street sign. | Even the Guinness adverts are in Gaelic |
Near Dingle is the Coláiste Íde, a private school, where this group of Ogham stones is on display. Ogham was a form of writing used before the arrival of the Latin alphabet, made by cutting strokes horizontally or diagonally across a line or edge of a stone. Julius Caesar wrote that the Druids on the Continent used it as a form of secret communication among themselves, and therefore many modern Neo-Pagans consider it a magical alphabet, like Runes. Stones with this writing usually bear peoples' names and were used as gravestones or territory markers. These stones date from maybe the 5th or 6th century A.D.
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Leaving Dingle town, we weren't sure where this place was, so we decided to stop and ask an old man who was standing at a bus stop. Dad asked him where the Ogham stones were. The old man looked confused and said, "Ogham stones? What are they?" Dad started explaining about the stones, so I grabbed the brochure out of Dad's hand, checked it and said that they should be at a place called 'Burnham House' (The building was originally a manor house owned by the Burnham family). The old man scratched his chin and smiled politely, "Burnham House...Burnham House... Huh. I've lived here all my life, I don't know a Burnham House..." I check the brochure once more and say "What about kolahshtya eedya?" He says, "Oh, Coláiste Íde. Yeah, that's just a couple miles down this road. You'll see a turning to the left... Coláiste Íde, that's what we call it around here, anyway, it's the Gaelic, you know."
Now we'll continue around the Dingle Peninsula itself. The stone below marks the
westernmost point of Ireland, the End of the World. After
this, there are only a few islands, and then the edge, and you fall off. Some fools maintain that there's another land beyond.
Ignore them.
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| The stone at the End of the World. | The islands at the End of the World. | The sheep at the End of the World. |
Some more scenes around the peninsula.
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Here are some photos of the Gallerus Oratory, a drystone church constructed around the 6th century or so. The stones are laid flat on each other without mortar. In Gaelic, it is Séipéilín Ghallarais, that is, "The Church of the Place of the Foreigners".
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Legend says that climbing through the east window will cleanse your soul, but when you see how big the window is, I think this only applies to cats.
Day 7 - More Dingle - Foynes
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After spending the night in Dingle, we start the next day at the ruined monastery of Kilmalkedar (Cill Mhaoilchéadair, or Church of Maoilchéadar). It was founded in the 7th century, but the church here dates from the 12th. |
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The canonical sundial. Every monastery had a sundial to show the canonical hours. A funny thing in a country that has 3 days of sunshine a year, but I guess the first monks came from Rome, where there's lots of sun. |
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Left: An early large cross.
Right: An ogham stone, here used as a grave marker. This churchyard has been in use for almost 1500 years. |
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| The main doorway, showing a Romanesque detail. | The Teaching Stone inside the church. It's covered with symbols and the Roman alphabet, and was used to teach scribes to write. |
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Foynes (or, Faing). The first trans-atlantic airport in Europe. Opened in 1937, the first flying boats from the U.S. arrived
here, via Botwood, in Newfoundland. It was very active during the war (or the
Emergency, as the neutral Irish called it), but closed down soon after the war
ended. Wartime developments in landplane technology and improved airport
facilities in Europe had made the flying boats redundant. |
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| Original radio and navigation equipment used at the airport. | A display panel comparing a 747 with the 'boats that came into Foynes. | You too can fly a 'boat across the Atlantic (or drive it through a forest, as some people did. Ahem). |
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| A reconstruction of a Boeing 314, the first passenger plane to arrive at Foynes | The cockpit. Pretty simple compared to a 747. | Accommodation onboard was simple but comfortable. And when you're flying for 20 to 30 hours across the ocean, beds are a pretty welcome thing. |
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A plaque on the building reads:
I, the poet William Yeats, |
And in a letter, William added this epilogue:
And on my heirs I lay a curse, |
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In the tower. |
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"My Soul: I summon to the winding ancient stair..." |
Then we continue on to The Cliffs of Moher (Mothar, meaning ruin), stretching straight up to 200 m above the sea.
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After that, we head into the Burren (Boireann, meaning Great Rock), a rocky, austerely beautiful
wasteland. Here you'll find many Neolithic & Megalithic monuments such as
Poulnabrone (Gaelic Poll na mBrón, The Hollow of Sorrows). This is a
portal tomb dating from somewhere around 3000 B.C.
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On the way through the Burren, we happened to stumble upon this castle ruin - Leamenah Castle, from the Gaelic léim an éich, the horse's leap . If you look closely, the rightmost part of the castle looks different, more like a medieval tower, which in fact, it was. The building started as a tower, built around 1480, and then around 1648, an extension - i.e., the house proper - was erected. The house was abandoned at the end of the 18th century, and the furnishings were gradually removed and relocated to other premises. |  |
Below: Carron Church, (Teampall an Chairn) built around 1200 and used until the 16th century. Although the churchyard is still used, the church itself is pretty much only visited by sheep today.
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Day 9 - Inis Mór, Arran Islands
This day we drove over to Rossaveal where we hopped onto a ferry and sailed over to Inis Mór
(in English, "Big Island", anglicized Inishmore), the biggest of the Arran Islands.
On the island, Lenka & I rented bikes for the day, Mom & Dad went on a mini-bus tour.
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We took this boat, on the right. |
A typical farmer/fisherman's cottage on the island. | Seals. |
A popular attraction on Inis Mór is, Dún Aonghasa, or Angus' Fort, a semi-circular fort built on the edge of the sea cliff. It dates to
around 1100 B.C., but it seems that after about 700 B.C., nobody lived there anymore.
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The fort was surrounded by a ring of small sharp stones (called a chevaux
de frise) as a means of slowing down invaders. Why in God's name
anyone would come way the Hell out here, to a desolate island on the edge
of nowhere, to attack a fort is really beyond me. You'd need to be really,
really bored. |
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| The square in Kilronan (Cill Rónáin), the main town on Inis Mór - horse and wagon, high cross, and brightly painted Georgian house - a quintessentially Irish image. | Low tide at Kilronan harbour |
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| The sea cliffs. | In the past, farmers on the island made their own "artificial soil" by burning seaweed. | The rocky wastes. | And stone walls. Everywhere, the stone walls. |
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Checking the map - I did this quite often. Not because we were lost, but when the road narrows down into one lane & then the asphalt turns to gravel & then the gravel turns to dirt, we had to check & convince ourselves that this was indeed still the "main road". |
Day 10 - Connamara
Back on the Mainland, we head northward into the Connamara, a bog-lover's paradise. The type of landscape that cries out for mist and eerie music.
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| Bog, | empty bog, | as far as the eye can see. | But the sheep look happy. |
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Digging and loading turf, on a small scale. A special attachment on a backhoe cuts up the ground into these brick forms above, they're piled up to dry, and then loaded onto a trailer and taken away. |
Below: Nothing but empty bog as far as the eye can see. Somewhere in this bog, in June of 1919, Captain John Alcock & Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown brought down their Vickers Vimy after flying across the Atlantic Ocean. It was the first time in history an airplane had done so. They touched down (or rather, fell down & went boom) 16 hours after having taken off from Newfoundland.
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They came down somewhere in here. |
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The white marker and concrete wall show the location of a former Marconi radio tower. The operators of this tower were the first ones to see Alcock and Brown when they crashed in the bog. |
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A monument to their achievement. Dad also has a photo of himself standing next to a similar monument in Newfoundland where A
& B took off. |
Here, some historical photos of Alcock & Brown.
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| The intrepid pair just before their take-off from Newfoundland. | Taking off. | Their arrival in the bog. They were met by the workers from the Marconi tower, who burst into laughter when these apparently not very competent pilots told them that they had just come "from America". |
Day 11 - Giant's Causeway
We carried on to Sligo (Sligeach), where we spent the night. The next day
Lenka got on a bus back to Dublin and returned to the Czech Republic. It was a pretty cold and
wet day, and I and my parents didn't feel much like sightseeing, so we decided to
drive up into the North to see the Giant's Causeway.
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| On the way. A pretty foggy, rainy day. | We arrive at the northern coast. | At the Causeway. |
On my trip to Ireland in 1988, I crossed into the North (from Dublin), and I still remember well the half hour spent at the border. The big, heavily armed guards, the watch-towers, the concrete barriers, and the big billboard reading, "Security forces regret any inconvenience. BLAME THE TERRORISTS". And so I was expecting something comparable when we crossed the border this time, and I was keeping an eye on the map to see when we would get there. Suddenly there was a sign, "All distances in miles", and I figured we must be close. Then we came into a town and there was a filling station, with the price for regular petrol marked as 98. Now the usual price around Ireland was €1.20 - €1.50, and I thought that 98 cents was pretty cheap! Then it suddenly hit me - that's Stirling! It's 98 pence! Good God, we're in the North already! No big, armed guards, no concrete barriers, no watch-towers... no nothing. The Irish have come a long way since the days of the IRA. Let's hope they can carry on.
Anyway, at the Causeway...
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| Part of the Causeway. | All the stone columns have a regular five or six sided pattern. | The Giant's Organ. |
The Giant's Causeway is an area of basalt columns and blocks, all with a regular pentagon or hexagon form. They were put here by the giant, Finn Mac Cumaill (anglicized as MacCool), who wanted to make a roadway to Steffa Island in Scotland (where the same columns can be found) to get to his lady love. But after he arrived, he was driven away by Scottish giants, and as he fled, he pulled up the stones and flung them away so the Scots couldn't pursue him. But people today go on about volcanic flows, and stones cracking during cooling processes, yadda yadda yadda. Ignore them. The giant put these there.
Day 12 - Knocknarea - Carrowmore - Innisfree
Just west of Sligo is the sacred hill of Knocknarea, or Cnoc na Righe - The Royal Hill or Coronation Hill.
"The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caolite tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling, Away, come away..."
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| Knocknarea, with Maeve's Cairn perched on top. | Maeve's cairn on Knocknarea, a monument to the Goddess Medb (Maeve), who rules the Province of Connacht from this hill. | From Knocknarea. | Ben Bulben. Home of the Sidhe (Shee), the spirit people who rule the land. |
Then over to Carrowmore (Ceathrú Mór, meaning "the Great Quarter"), a Neolithic gravesite. A square kilometre containing a number of tombs and stone rings dating from 6000 B.C. to 2000 B.C.
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| The gravesite. | Knocknarea from the gravesite. |
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| The centre of the site is this cairn, called Listoghil, dating from about 3500 B.C. | The entrance to the cairn. It was excavated and renovated in the 1960's. | Inside the cairn is this dolmen, or passage grave, similar to that at Poulnabrone. (The Gabian baskets are probably not original - I don't believe that Stone Age people had steel wire). |
And then we continue our little tour around the Sligo area...
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Tobernalt, a Holy Well. Legend says that St. Patrick baptized early Christians here. Today it's a place of rest and meditation and Mass is said here every Sunday. |
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THE LAKE ISLE OF INISFREE |
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I will arise and go now, and go to Inisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core. |
(For a long time, I wondered why noon should be "a purple glow"; but when I discovered that Inisfree is Inis fraoich, the "island of heather", it made a little more sense.)
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Ok, fine. You've done your little homage to Bill thing, let's get back in the car and go. It's cold and wet out here. |
Then up to Drumcliffe, William's final resting place.
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| Drumcliffe Church, where William and his wife George are buried. | "Under bare Ben Bulben's head, in Drumcliffe churchyard Yeats is laid..." | Drumcliffe was originally a monastery, and so has high crosses. |
The pictures below are from the town of Mullaghmore (Mullach Mór, or
"The Great Summit") , where we spent that night.
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Day 13 - Beleek - (Corraquill) - Athlone
The next day we went back into the North and stopped at the town of Beleek, famous for its hand-made pottery. We then headed south and stopped at a canal lock, just outside the town of Corraquill.
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Making a bowl at the Beleek factory. | 
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There are a number of old canals across Ireland, many of which have been recently rejuvenated and re-opened to the public for recreation. We stopped at the lock in Corraquill to see a boat pass through.
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Most locks are automated and have a simple push-button control panel. You just get a smart-card from the national canal authority, and you can operate the locks and use dock facilities.
We stopped for the night in Athlone (Baile Átha Luain, Town of Luain's Ford), on the Shannon River.
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Left, the Church of Saints Peter and Paul.
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Day 14 - Kells - Newgrange/Knowth
Just as many canals have been renovated for recreational use, many have also had their towpaths renovated as cycling and hiking paths. Below is the towpath trail on an abandoned canal on the Boyne River.
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| The bridge on the Boyne. | The abandoned canal and path. |
After that we stopped in the town of Kells (Ceanannas, or The Great Chief Abode), most famous for the Book of Kells. A monastery was founded here by Columban monks at the beginning of the 9th century, who created the richly ornamented Book of Kells, containing the Four Gospels.
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| The Unfinished High Cross. | The Cross of St.s Patrick and Columba. | The mandatory sundial. |
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| A detail of Patrick & Columba's cross, showing the Crucifixion. | A page from the Book of Kells, showing the symbols of the 4 Evangelists. Thanks to Paul DuBois for the picture. | Another page, showing the style of calligraphy. Ta once more to Paul DuBois. |
Then the main attraction of the day - Newgrange. An artificial hill built some 6000 years B.C., containing a passage about 40 m long. At the end is a chamber where ashes of people were laid on three large flat stones.
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| The mound. | The entrance to the passage. Every year at dawn on the Winter Solstice, the sun shines through the window space above, and lights up the back wall of the chamber. Pretty good for a bunch of guys who had neither wheels, iron tools or Microsoft. | The Trispiral, a carving on the entrance stone directly in front of the passage entrance. |
Another nearby mound with a passage inside is Knowth, very similar to Newgrange.
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| The main mound. It was surrounded by several smaller mounds. | One of the stones surrounding the mound. They all have some decoration on them, some of which are decipherable, some are a complete mystery. | A wooden henge next to the main mound. | The passage. Like Newgrange, the sun shines through this passage on the Winter Solstice and lights up the back chamber wall, but here it happens in the evening. |
Day 15 - Dublin
Mom & Dad's last day, we went into Dublin for some last minute souvenir shopping and sightseeing.
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| The choo-choo that took us from the Laytown station to Dublin, Pearse Station. | Molly Malone. "In Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty...". | Part of the library in Trinity College. |
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| The GPO, General Post Office, site of the 1916 Easter Uprising. | The former Customs Office, which now houses some ministry and government department offices. |
Christchurch Cathedral. |
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| In the courtyard of Dublin Castle, which houses several ministry offices | and conference facilities. Here, the side entrance. | The entrance to Trinity College. |
Day 16 - Mom and Dad Leave for Home - Drogheda
Mom & Dad's last day. We drove back to the airport, dropped off the car and checked in.
After that, I had another couple days to spend before returning myself, so I took the bus up to
Drogheda (Droichead Átha, or Bridge of the Ford), about an hour north of Dublin.
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| The Boyne River in Drogheda. | The town hall and Martello Tower. | The Martello Tower, which is now the city museum. | St. Lawrence's Gate, into the old town of Drogheda. |
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| A warning sign next to the river in town. | The sign. | The reason for the warning sign. Although Drogheda is some 15 km or so inland, it's still affected by tides. Sometimes high tide comes up a bit over the banks ... | ... and floods some parts of streets. You park your car and come back six hours later and find it floating. |
Day 17 - Monasterboice
My last excursion alone was up to the monastery of Monasterboice (Mainistir Bhuithe). Founded in the early 6th century, it was active until the 12th century when the Cistercians established another monastery nearby. The cemetery however, continued to be used up until the 20th century.
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| The West Cross, chapel ruins and round tower. | A Gaelic & English inscription on a cross. | The sundial. | A plethora of high crosses. |
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| The masterpiece of Monasterboice - Muiredach's cross, the largest and most richly decorated high cross in Ireland. | Some details on Muiredach's cross. |
Day 18 - Dublin & Home
My last day, I was flying out late in the afternoon, so I went into Dublin for some last-minute
sightseeing and souvenir shopping, and then to the airport, where I bid a fond Slán
agat (or perhaps Feicfidh mé níos déanaí thú) to Éire, and headed
back to Prague.
