Dingle and Cobh: Surviving as an Older Traveler!

Traveling becomes a lot harder as you get older.  When you’re planning a trip, you really want to see and do everything but sometimes, you fall short of the plan.  Take for example, our plan to listen to traditional Irish music.  Our first few days were jam-packed with activities, including climbing the Cliffs of Moher (truth be told, there is a clearly marked path, but it is all uphill!), hiking to the top of Dun Aengus, an ancient fort located on a steep mountain on Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands, and running in and out of the rain while visiting the towns of Dingle and Cobh. Those first few nights, we could barely get through our dinners because we were so tired—made even sleepier after a few glasses of wine. The idea of going to a pub, ordering more to drink and then waiting until 9:00 PM for the music to start, was simply out of the question. 

But in Kinsale, where traditional Irish music can be found in nearly every drinking establishment, we decided, after quite a bit of deliberation, that we would shoulder through and go to a pub very close to our hotel (in order to hasten our eventual bed time) and listen to some music but only stay for one drink so that we could be in bed by 10 pm.   We arrived at a few minutes before 9 pm at O’Sullivan’s Courthouse Pub, where our men, Tommy and Jeremy were tuning up their guitar and fiddle, respectively. The problem was, they didn’t start playing…for a while. At one point during our wait, Bob offered to ask the boys to start playing because we had to go to bed soon! Finally, the music started and our feet were tapping! But when our glasses were empty, we were the first to leave the pub because there would be more adventures for us to stay awake for tomorrow. 

We also seem to worry a lot more.  I partially blame the fact that we are all from the East Coast where anxiety is just part of our charm. Today, we arrived in Cobh and had no idea where we were supposed to park the car, a.k.a. our mini-bus. While our luggage was safe at our hotel, we have continued to travel everywhere around the countryside with those two sets of golf clubs in the back. Every time Bob or Mark makes a sharp turn, those clubs rattle around in the back, and Bob yells, “Did we hit something!?” 

To set the scene, to say that it is pouring rain would be an understatement. We found a spot that said three hour parking with a sign that may or may not have been the Irish version of  “ParkMobil.” We saw no machine anywhere, which might be because of the blinding rain we were experiencing. I was able to get the back door open and ask a woman running by, where the machines were located.  She explained that  they could be found on the Main Street (where we were not) but that they were likely not working.  As we were worried that we would get a parking ticket or God forbid, get the car impounded (with the golf clubs)  we asked what to do, and she told us to go into the “blue store” (it’s color, not the name of the store) and buy a ticket there, but that it may cost us more than it would if the machines were working. Thinking we had no other options, we walked in to the store, shook out our umbrellas and said to the clerk that we wanted to buy a parking ticket. We were immediately told that they didn’t sell such tickets. We explained we were told to buy one there and our young clerk, said while laughing, “Who toldya that?!” It was then in all that rain, that Bob proceeded to try any and all machines he could get to on Main Street, none of which appeared to be working.

In the meantime, Judy and I were worried that Bob had not locked the car doors.  The town of Cobh could hardly be described as “the Hood,” but you never know who wouldn’t want to walk off with two sets of golf clubs and the latest version of “Rick Steve’s Ireland!” After asking him several times about the doors, Bob told us, in quite a huffy tone, that from now on, he was calling us “the Security Sisters!” I’m blaming his grumpy mood on the rain and his ParkMobil failure.  

Finally, he disappeared for a while, returning to tell us that he had gone to the town’s Information Office and explained our parking predicament to the clerk.  She reassured him that he would likely not be ticketed, and that even if we were, we shouldn’t pay it.  Bob’s first thought that was that we may never be able to come back to this town again if he didn’t pay the ticket. All our worrying was for naught—we didn’t get a ticket and the car, the clubs and Rick Steve’s book were waiting for us when we returned from our adventures in town. 

During a previous visit to Ireland, I said that this country was made up of writers and talkers, and that at the time, we had yet to meet a writer. While that still stands, I think I have to modify that comment to writers and storytellers. “Talkers” is not a good enough description of their magic with language.  Maybe it’s the Irish lilt, or their facial expressions or them being their best audience when it comes to who laughs first, but boy, can the Irish tell a good story. We visited Inishmore and met our native tour guide as soon as we got off the ferry. Mixed in with  the island’s history, he told us his views on why the island’s population continues to decline, saying “It’s the young—they don’t know how to work hard!” He then told us of a time gone by when every family member, young and old, played a role, through hard work, of sustaining their families while living on a small island in the Atlantic. Similarly, while taking a walking tour of the Titanic’s history in Cobh (its final stop before the ill-fated ocean liner headed to New York,) our wonderful guide, Dennis, talked about a fishing trip he had taken as a young boy, with his father and brother. He described how the day was foggy and as the mist cleared, the only thing he could see of the town was the cross on top of Cobh’s church.  With such grace, he said that in pointing the cross out to his father, his father stated that that cross was likely the last thing the immigrants saw of their native Ireland before beginning their journey to New York. In the magic and humanity of this simple story, I found that my eyes had teared up.

Tomorrow, we begin our day with a walking tour through the beautiful port town of Kinsale, where the forecast calls for more rain!