It was long time for a visit to the emerald isle. So we braved Ryanair [never again] stayed a night in Dublin doing all the city stuff; The double-decker bus tour, the Guinness factory, a nosey at Trinity college and Saint Patrick's Cathedral, it's all very expensive but it was raining so we enjoyed indoor things! We joined a folk music pub crawl. Which was BRILLIANT!
The musicians were genuine and wanted to teach us all about the real traditional folk music in Ireland. We learned about the instruments, the rules of a session and why the music is so important to Irish people. Which is handy if I am indeed going to learn to play the fiddle...
We took the train to the west coast and stayed 2 nights in the beautiful little town of Westport. They were having a folk music festival! The town was buzzing with music and the Westport House stately home was having an open day. We got a tour of this huge mansion for free and rode on the pedal swans in the estate lake!
We had a wonderful time browsing the pubs with names like "John J. O'Grady's" and "G. McGing's" and finding the music sessions inside. We drang loads of Guinness and met some wonderful friendly people, including Redmond Cabot: of "Cabots Source", a brilliant organic, locally sourced food restaurant; and Richard Wall: an artist who spent many years in New Zealand. It was a shame to have such a short time there but we hopped back over on another cheap nasty air carrier, bmi [never again] and had one of the worst landings ever in Glasgow. It's good to be alive - to be sure!!!!
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