Counties Clare, Limerick, Tipperary, Kerry and back to Dublin

I finally have internet access again. We're at the airport hotel in Dublin getting ready to head back home early tomorrow morning. The only news I've heard from the states is that Dallas is 2-0, UT is 3-0 and OJ is back in jail, all good news. Hopefully nothing big has happened over the past 2 weeks.

I didn't jot down as many comments the last couple days, probably due to the constant drinking and traveling. Here's what I got:

More Clare

• After 7 days, doing laundry has finally become a desperate matter. Drove from Milltown to Killrush about 45 minutes for the nearest laundromat. At least that's what we thought, I don't think Ireland has laundromats, but there are places that will launder and fold your cloths, which is even better. This means that we have 3 hours to kill in Killrush a town of probably less than 3,000. Of course Killrush is an adorable "irish looking" town, like they all are. I think 3 different older gentlemen crossed the street to say, "hello" to my Aunt Patty, kinda welcoming and creepy at the same time.
  
• Dolphins frequent the waters near Killrush, which would explain how I learned from a statue by the bay that dolphins when they give birth have a pair of midwives that bring the newborn dolphin up to the surface, carried on their noses, for it's first breath otherwise it will die. Sometimes I think the Irish are constantly fucking with me.
• One morning, I climbed the rocks in the small cove near the hotel. Around 11:3o in the morning the tide is almost completely out and the water recedes from a huge rock formation that is much like a finger extending from the coast into the middle of the small bay. I was able to walk out on the rocks for about 2oo yards and check out all the tide pools full of small fish, sea anemones and muscles in the rock hallows. The whole time the waves crashed on either side of this narrow rock peninsula. This may have been my favorite hour in Ireland.
• Clare, the owner of the Spanish Armada is the best hostess I've ever encountered. She has a knack for telling a story that she's probably told a thousand times as though it's for the first time.
• In the pictures I have on my flickr page, there are pictures of a ruin near the Armada hotel. It was a hotel build in the early 1900s. After WWII there was a tax in Ireland on any structure that had a roof. So they took the roof off. I wouldn't recommend doing this with your home.
  

County Limerick

• Had lunch in a refurbished old castle. The food and service was really good. As a general rule the service in Ireland sucks ass. The waiters and waitresses, even in the fine dining establishments, wouldn't know how to refill your water much less open a bottle of wine. What was kinda funny was that our waitress was from Ennis, Ireland but had what seemed to be an affected British accent. It think it might be because most of the old mansions were built by the English land owners and some of that mystique lingers on.
• My great great grandfather on my fathers side comes from the Parish of Oola in county Limerick. We'd heard a couple stories of people looking for their ancestors in Ireland, they typically go like this, "I met this _____ who went to ______ looking for his relatives. He steps into this bus/pub/church mentions that he's from American and looking for his relatives. Then _______ says, 'why you look just like ______.' The person is then reunited with his family and spends 3 or 4 days with them catching up on everything that has happened over the past 100-150 years." This didn't happen to us. We went to a couple cemeteries, and there are tons of Ryans. In fact, there are so many Ryans in this area that the different Ryan families have nicknames. If you don't know your ancestor's nickname you're pretty much out of luck, because they're all named James, Patrick, John or Tim. Everyone was still very helpful in this possibly impossible endeavor.
  
• While we were waiting for the heritage foundation to tell us that they can't trace us down our ancestors because of there being so many possibilities, we stopped in another Ryan pub. We met Michael Ryan, owner of the pub, who was really nice. He told me how most Americans really don't like living in Ireland; because the towns are really small like 2,000 to 5,000. This means that people can be pretty closed to strangers, but then once they get to know you, they're all in your business.
• While we were in the County of Limerick we stayed at the Dundrum Hotel. My dad really liked the golfing on the grounds. He hopes to bring some of his buddies back to Ireland for a golfing tour. I found the accommodations lacking. I felt like I was sleeping on the original mattress and pillows from when the manor was built, but the owner Austin Crowe is one super cool dude.
  
• There was this wedding party going on the last night we were there. We didn't see much of it. I was in one of the bars in the manor and the bartender mentioned that the bar was closing down at 1:00 to reopen in the basement, to stay open until 4:00. I'm still cursing Tim for the Jameson shots and myself for the vodka/red bulls earlier in the evening that helped to convince me that staying up and crashing an Irish wedding party at 2 in the morning would be a great idea. It started out at 2 with a all-day-drinking-Neddie arguing with me about how Bush and by extension I were essentially fuckers. Took about half an hour to enlighten all-day-drinking-Neddie about my leftist political leanings. It doesn't matter, next thing I know he's singing some songs about the black and tans. I really couldn't understand what he was talking about most of the time. He kept calling me a "Republican" but wouldn't tell me if he meant US or IRA, damn we were drunk. Then the rest of the wedding party shows up and I don't really remember the rest. At least I didn't get the shit beat out of me.
• The next day in Limerick was rough.
  

County Kerry

• On the way to Dingle in County Kerry we kept seeing all these pennants on cars for Kerry and Cork, all we knew was that there was an important game between them, but had no idea what game it was.
  
• Football could be the most misinterpreted word in the world. For instance, what we call soccer is also called football in the rest of the world. Yet, other parts of the world could call rugby, football, and then there is Gaelic football which is like a combination of soccer, rugby and volleyball.
• At one point, I felt like I kinda knew what was going on with Rugy. My dad and I'd seen a couple games on TV, Ireland and South Africa looked like they were good, we were even starting to talk to people about the games in Clare and Limerick. That's how good we were assimilating. It's Saturday, and we meet our first rude Irishman, a bartender in a pub. We thought we'd drop a little rugby knowledge on this bartender by asking if they would be playing the rugby game of Ireland vs Ukraine on TV. To which he replies "we won't be supportin' that!" Plus some other obviously American guy asks for a martini and he asks what that is, as if he'd never heard of it, calling it some "American drink". Tim says, " I can see why they have a bouncer outside."
• After watching Kerry play Cork in their game, I finally realized that there was Gaelic football, I think this might be what the bartender "supported". Damn there are so many types of football.
• Owna outside a bar in Dingle says that "Kyle" is "Colum" in Irish.
• When we tell a cabbie in Dublin where we're from he replies with "Walk the plank", cockney rhyming slang for yank. He also turns off the meter to show us a round tower.
  

Random

• My power converter makes a buzzing sound when I plug in my laptop. This concerns me.
• With the flipped up collars, all the young kids here look look like they're the cool/bad kids from a John Hughes film. Is this coming back or is it just now hitting Ireland?
• I think the best possibly part about traveling is the perpetually clean bathroom.