From the moment I started dating Kevin back in 2005, he has regaled me with tales of his many adventures in Ireland. Although only 20 at the time, he had already visited the Emerald Isle three times, the first being at the ripe age of 8 months, wherein he allegedly cried the entire flight from Chicago to Dublin. His grandfather had been born in a small village outside of Dingle and moved to Chicago when he was around 10 years old. Ireland remained such a special place to his grandfather that he decided to take each of his grandchildren to visit when they reached a certain age. Having 15 grandchildren led to several trips back to the old country, including two with Kevin.
Sometime in early 2013, we began talking about and researching a large group trip to Ireland. This was the first time that we had opened up our travels to whomever wanted to join us, and luckily we got many takers. Kevin’s parents had not been back since that trip when he was just a babe, so they were interested in joining us and seeing the family they have in Dingle. Another cousin on his mother’s side, Mary Ann, was also keen to join, as well as Kevin’s cousins Julie and Jeff and our friends Kelly and Rob. The random assortment of friends and family worked out better than we ever could have imagined – it remains one of our most memorable trips, primarily due to the incredible camaraderie. After significant planning, we decided to leave shortly after Christmas and spend the new year in Galway before heading to Dingle to visit Kevin’s family.
After a layover in Boston, we took the overnight Aer Lingus flight to Shannon Airport, arriving at around 7:00 am. We somehow found a large van taxi that first dropped off Ken, Maureen and Mary Ann at their hotel before making its way to our vacation rental, pleasantly nicknamed The Crescent. This was pre-Airbnb and I had done a lot of research to find a vacation home that could fit the 6 younger members of the group comfortably. In true Irish fashion, the owner of the home, Cathy, gave us a full tour while telling us her life story and inquiring of ours. We were all pretty wired at that point, so we headed to town to grab some breakfast and tour around. I received a proper introduction to the full Irish breakfast, a meat and egg lover’s delicacy consisting of bacon, sausages, white pudding, black pudding, toast, beans and fried tomato. When the server asked if I wanted white or black pudding, my naivete led me to ask, “What’s the difference?” Her reply: “Not much.”
After breakfast, we walked around the main street in town and popped in St. Nicholas’ Collegiate Church. The church, which now belongs to the Church of Ireland, was originally a Catholic church named for St. Nicholas of Myra, the patron saint of children and sailors. We were immediately struck by the faded and battered flags of the Connaught Rangers, a military regiment from the west of Ireland founded in 1881. We then thought it was time to find our first Guinness (to be fair, we had been there for several hours at this point). We found a pub, Tig Choili, and all settled in for a proper pint. A third of the way through said pint we all started to fade, the jet lag hitting us hard. Several hours later, we awoke at the Crescent ready for more exploration.
Ken and Mary Ann met us out at the Kings Head Pub on Quay Street for some pints and dinner. Maureen was exhausted from the trip and decided to stay in and catch up on her sleep that night. After dinner, the “youngsters” pushed on and ended up at The Quays bar, a popular hangout with students from the National University of Ireland Galway. There was live music and we danced the night away, but not before becoming privy to the gem that is British darts tournaments. The bar was playing the tournament on TV and we were in awe at the seriousness with which they took the sport, cheering crowds and an almost World Series of Poker-like atmosphere. We vowed that we would head to the UK next year to see the tournament live. (Fun story – we didn’t.)
The next day was Sunday and a big day for Chicago Bears fans. That evening they were playing the Packers for a spot in the playoffs and Kevin was determined to watch, despite the fact that we were currently in Ireland. Thanks to the internet, he was lucky enough to find a pub that would play the game for him. Before the game we did some more wandering around Galway town, basking in the rich atmosphere of a Sunday in Galway. Patrons visiting shops on the main street and street buskers singing covers of popular Irish tunes for the tourists. A harrowed street performer dragging in passersby to his daily show of an impressive dog walking on the back of a donkey. We met up with the other three for happy hour at Taafe’s bar, where a traditional music session was taking place. Dinner was at Trattoria Magnetti, where Kelly, always the trendsetter, introduced us to squid ink pasta which had just started becoming very popular.
The walk to the pub where we had planned to watch the game was majestic. The streets were quiet and the Christmas lights shone brightly over the cobbled streets. When I think back to Galway all of these years later, this is the image I am left with. If only the Bears game had been as majestic – they ended up losing not only the game but their hopes at the playoffs after a last minute touchdown drive by Aaron Rodgers. Copious amounts of red wine had flowed at the bar, and we weren’t ready for the night to end, but seeing as it was a Sunday, we had limited options. We stumbled into the Coyote Ugly bar around midnight, where we begged and begged the DJ to play C’est la Vie, the smash 90s hit by B*Witched that Kelly and I had grown up with. A dance party ensued but I won’t embarrass us by posting any photos of it.
Still physically feeling our exploits from the night before, we woke up very early the next morning and walked to Kevin’s parents’ hotel where we would be picked up for our bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher. The day trip, which we were all looking forward to, made several stops along the way, including Dunguaire Castle, which dates back to the 16th century, and the Burren, a vast landscape comprised of archaeological wonders and fascinating rock formations. We stopped for lunch at a pub near the Burren and I enjoyed a delicious Guinness beef stew. Back on the bus, our lovely tour guide started telling us about the nearby villages including Doolin, famed for the traditional Irish music found there, and Clarenbridge, well known for its annual oyster festival. One thing I always admired about Maureen was her spontaneity. She got up from her seat on the bus and asked us what we thought about getting off the bus in Clarenbridge on the way back to Galway and taste-testing these legendary oysters. We thought it was a great idea and were somewhat surprised when the tour guide was completely fine with dropping us off in a random town on her way home. This would be the first of many “this would never happen in the US” scenarios that we have found throughout our travels…be it for liability purposes or the good ole fashioned power trip, I feel an American tour guide would tell us to stay seated.
Not to harp on the fact that we were still in our 20s on this trip, but we were, and we were dumb. So dumb that, after a night of recreating Tyra Banks’ infamous bar dance moves, we forgot to charge our camera before we went to the most picturesque spot in Ireland. Therefore, we were only able to snap one photo of the Cliffs of Moher before the camera died on us. It’s ok.
Clarenbridge was all it was cracked up to be, crisp, fresh oysters and great craic at the local pub, Jordan’s, where Kevin claimed to have met a current member of the IRA. The young man said, without a moment’s hesitation, that he was a part of the “club” and asked if Kevin would like to come to the shooting range with him and his buddies the next day. While we were all a bit skeptical (he never made contact the next day) Kevin likes to tell the story to friends who think that Ireland’s uprising days are well behind it.
The next day was New Years Eve and having planned a little dinner get-together at our rental house that evening, we needed supplies. We went and grabbed a quick lunch and did some grocery shopping at the supermarket and some speciality food stores in town. We found some dollar store-esque New Years Eve decorations (poppers, green sparkly wigs and headbands) that turned out to be a humorous talking point later in the evening when all the pub patrons looked at us like we were nuts as we donned our paraphernalia. If anyone had any doubt about us being tourists, it was confirmed the moment we walked through the door.
For dinner, we made a charcuterie plate and some cacio e pepe, another pasta dish that had recently become popular in Chicago. Maureen suggested an activity her and her friends did every NYE where they would go around and rate their year on a scale from 1 to 10 and give a reason. It was a great reflective exercise and we have done it every New Years Eve since. After dinner, we started out the night at Crane Bar where a lively group of musicians was playing classics on the guitar, whistles and accordion. Next on our pub crawl was John Keogh’s and then Monroe’s, where we stayed for the remainder of the night to watch the band play. Julie met a nice Irish lad who stayed with us for the rest of the night and others at the bar had a grand time photobombing us in almost all the photos we took. While we had an amazing night, it wasn’t until later on the trip that we found out that Dingle actually has one of the most popular and well attended NYE fests in Ireland and that we had apparently missed the boat by a day.
The next morning, while we all slowly started gathering our belongings, Kevin and his dad went to go pick up our two rental cars. Little did they know that there was a marathon taking place throughout Galway town that day. It took forever for them to maneuver their way back to the rental house and as they did they noticed a large plume of smoke coming from the back of Kevin’s car. Turns out he had the emergency brake on from the time he left Hertz and with the stress of having to figure out driving on the left side of the road, through a marathon, he hadn’t noticed. It made for an interesting start to our journey to Dingle.
Recommendations:
- Tig Choili. Mainguard St, The Latin Quarter, Galway, Ireland. https://tigchoiligalway.com/.
- Taafe’s Bar. 19 Shop St, Galway, Ireland. https://www.facebook.com/TaaffesBarGalway.
- Trattoria Magnetti. 12 Quay St, Galway, H91 V0C5, Ireland. https://magnetti.ie/.
- Cliffs of Moher. https://www.cliffsofmoher.ie/.
- The Crane Bar. 2 Sea Rd, Galway, H91 YP97, Ireland. http://www.thecranebar.com/.
- Monroe’s Tavern. 14 Dominick St Upper, Galway, H91 WD2H, Ireland. https://monroes.ie/.
