Ireland!

This was a relatively brief trip for us---five plus hours from SFO to Newark and the same flight time to Shannon. We arrived at 7 a.m. this morning and were greeted by showers, wind, some sun, brilliant green fields dotted by sheep or sometimes cattle and horses. The houses we passed were neat and tidy with brightly-colored doors. It looked just like the scenes in the many Irish movies we've seen throughout the years, but now we were hearing it in the voices of the people greeting us and feeling it in the air, and it was just as everyone has said. Ireland is beautiful.






Martin, our guide/bus driver started right out telling stories. The first
concerned "fairy trees," actually Hawthorne trees. If they are disturbed, for instance by the building of a highway, something terrible can happen. So, after several accidents on the road leaving the airport, it was decided that the highway had to be moved to accommodate the fairy tree even though it would cost over one hundred thousand dollars to do so. The result is the small tree in the picture below, safe now with fairies, we hope, happily placated.












We crossed the River Shannon, the longest river in the British Isles. Can you see the swans in the middle of the picture?



The remains of a church built in the 6th century. Ireland's landscape is littered with ruins like these.



We don't know what this plant is called, but isn't it beautiful?














This is the amazing Clonmacnoise, founded in 548 AD by St. Clarián, on the Shannon River. Most of the chapels, high crosses and graves are from the 10th to 12th centuries and remain in surprisingly good condition. It burned many times and was attacked often by Vikings and the Irish, but the monks always managed to rebuild.




















































The "whispering door" where one can hear words whispered from one end of the arch to the other. We forgot to try it!


















And now we're at Esker Retreat House, a huge monastery over 100 years old. There's a bit of a wind gusting about and creaks and cracks and bumps in the night surrounding us as we settle into a bed for the first time since Sunday night in San Francisco. The Irish ghosts won't bother us tonight at all, at all.

Location:Esker Retreat Center near Athenry