Irish hospitality

With this trip amazingly drawing to a close, Sarah and I set our sights toward Ireland, the last destination on our itinerary before we fly home. The reason we ended up doing this jump is that we were able to get extremely cheap tickets from Budapest to Dublin on Ryanair, a low cost airline in Europe. Flying Ryanair is a lot like riding the local bus -- the clientele is similar and the feel is the same. They don't do reserve seating (kinda like Southwest Airlines used to do), so there is a mad dash to push to the front of the line to get the best seats. But since our tickets cost $15 each (that includes taxes), I guess we can't complain. =)

The flight ended up being delayed for three hours (of course), due to a radar failure in London airspace that disrupted air travel all across Europe. This was going to be our one flight the entire trip that didn't require getting up early or staying up ridiculously late, but with the delay we didn't get into Dublin airport until 2am local time, which meant that by the time we were settled for the night, it was 4am by our clocks (and 3am locally). But, the Budapest airport was comfortable, the flight was smooth, and we had a great place to stay in Ireland, so all was well.

We have been looking forward to this part of the trip for awhile, since my friend Joan McDonnell has a house just outside of Dublin and graciously allowed us to stay during our four days in Ireland. She and her husband Joe live currently live in Phoenix, so we weren't able to actually see them, but it was great to have an actual home to stay in! Their son John was home from university for the weekend, so it was nice to meet him. The house is located out in Celbridge, about 15 miles west of Dublin city centre. It is a small village that has grown a lot in recent years as the city has reached out to engulf it. Nevertheless, there are wonderful green fields and woods all around and the town feels fairly rural still.

We had done a little research and found that it cost as much to rent a car for the duration of our Irish visit as it did to take a taxi one way from the airport to their house, so that's what we did! We could have gotten there by public transport during the day, but our flight came in too late to catch a train out of town (even before the delay). So we picked up our Nissan Mirca and I tried my hand at driving on the left side of the road. Luckily it was the middle of the night and I was able to practice without many drivers on the road. The rental car was a standard, and I was concerned that the pedals were going to be switched around and I'd have to learn to push the gas with the left and the gear shift with the right, but luckily, that wasn't the case. Irish roads are often poorly signed and very narrow with no shoulder, so this just adds to the excitement!

Though Joan wasn't in Ireland to see us, we have been very well taken care of by her neighbors, David and Cooleen. We arrived at the house to find the bed all made up, a fresh, home-baked loaf of Irish soda bread on the counter, and even some groceries in the fridge! And if that wasn't enough, they also invited us over for dinner the evening after our arrival. We were treated to a wonderful, multi-course spread of melon and prosciutto, wine, rack of lamb, ratatouille, garlic scalloped potatoes, a french cheese, and finally, tea and an almond tort. This was hands-down the best meal of our entire trip, and Sarah and I left their house after 4 hours hardly able to walk! Irish hospitality is a beautiful thing to behold. =) We will be forever grateful to Joan and Joe and David and Cooleen for making our stay in Ireland so great.