Ireland: Land of the Tourist

I’ve been gone for a bit! It was time for a vacation, and with it being my husband’s and my twentieth wedding anniversary, we flew to Ireland for two weeks. I’d dreamed of all the wonderful things in that ever-green country since I was young. Would I stand in the bog lands one day? Would it be as great as they say? Would I find all the wonderful places I’d read about?

Well, it was more than I could ever imagine. Different than I ever pictured, yet still magical and glorious.

We landed in the unexpected bright sun of a Monday morning in Dublin. It wasn’t the dreary dark rain I’d read about. It was almost cloudless! Warm, too. In the mid sixties. I almost cried to touch the ground I’d dreamed of. It was my time there. A time to live another life, even if only for a couple weeks.

The smell of that land that speaks of Ireland is unique to itself, sweet. The air, windy at any given moment, carried the lilt of an Irish accent everywhere we turned. Faces so like my own stared back. Irish blood runs somewhere on my mother’s side of the family. And the rain that can rush down yet yield a mere five minutes later touched my skin within minutes of magnificent sun shed. I was finally there.

Yet there was a sadness there, too. Just under the surface. Did it speak of all the injustice served the Irish in cascades through their history? Oppression buried only inches under the surface of life? A story waiting to be told?

Explore this beautiful, enchanted, yet mysterious land with me over the next few months.

Have you visited Ireland? Did you feel the undertone as I did? Leave a comment and let me know your Irish thoughts.