The Great Irish Adventure

Can you drive around the Republic of Ireland for two weeks with your parents and your husband and your two small children?  Yes, you can!  Follow these easy steps and you'll be on your way to an Irish Adventure.

First, let your husband do all the planning, hotel picking and car booking.  But always double check his work.

We decided the best way to travel to Ireland would be by car.  It would be fun, we thought, to be all together, singing road trip songs all the way, feeding the seagulls from the ferry decks and watching the dolphins dancing along beside us.  Mom and Dad arrived in London the Thursday before we left and on Friday I went to pick up our rental van...only to find out that they wouldn't allow us to take it out of the UK (for those who are geographically challenged--and I mean this in the nicest way because I was clueless about 'The Irelands' when we moved here.  I blame it on the fact that I was educated in Mississippi--Northern Ireland is part of the UK, but the Republic of Ireland is part of Europe). Of course I immediately assumed Jim had forgotten to mention this info when he booked the car, but he swears up and down that he was very specific about which Ireland we were going to.  After a few minutes of talking to the rental car employees at that particular establishment, I doubt that the majority of them knew the difference between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland either. 

After a little panic, we managed to find a much larger car to rent for our trip:  The Transporter.  (Alas, ours wasn't orange) https://www.volkswagen-vans.co.uk/range/transporter/.  The picture from the VW website doesn't do it justice.  This thing was a BEAST.  Just the week before our trip, I managed to knock our VW Golf's side view mirror nearly off in the narrow streets of London, so I wasn't feeling confident enough to drive something that was essentially the size of a tank through the winding roads of England, Wales and The Republic.  It was up to Jim to get us where we were going.

As it turned out, the giant van just barely fit us and all of our ridiculous amounts of luggage.  Loaded to the gills, we headed out...and started having car trouble just outside of Reading.  The VW people helpfully suggested that we go back to London and wait for help, but we decided that, despite the fact that the van wasn't shifting correctly and wouldn't go faster than 30 MPH on hills, we were going to forge ahead, stopping only for the bathroom and sustenance!

Sustenance came in the form of a really bad pub somewhere in Wales.  

Not long after the pub, the roads started to look like this:

And Millie started to look like this:

Pembrokshire is spectacularly beautiful, but not ideal for people who get motion sickness.

By the time we got to our hotel--The Warpool in St. Davids--we needed more than a cup of tea, but instead of hitting the bar we decided to hit the...village.

Out of the car, the girls were chipper again!

And, even with a lot of fog and what we quickly realized wasn't enough layers, we enjoyed the fresh air and the walk after our long and arduous road trip.

We hadn't done any research on the town of St. David, but eventually stumbled onto St. David's Cathedral, which has been around in some form or the other since c.589 (read all about it in Welsh or English here: http://www.stdavidscathedral.org.uk).  The cathedral is pretty spectacular with high wooden ceilings and beautiful stained glass windows.  There are also ancient ruins of the original site.

On the way home, the wind was whipping and little legs were tired.

After a yummy fish dinner and too much wine, we headed to bed.  In our room, which was facing away from the cliffs and the sea, we played musical beds all night. People were falling out of bed left and right and Jim ended up sleeping in our family room bunk bed.  In Lala and Peepaw's room, 'it sounded just like Wuthering Heights!' (She said with romantic enthusiasm as we all mainlined our coffee in the dining room the next morning). 

To get our blood flowing before our exciting ferry ride from Fishguard to Ireland, we decided to brave the weather (whipping winds, sideways rain and, still, insufficient jackets) and walk down to the cliffs.  It took us a while to figure out how to get out of our local cow pasture....

But when we did, we were rewarded by the healing waters of St. Non (mother of St. David.  This well was said to have sprung at the moment of his birth).  We stuck all of our aches and pains in and kept walking up the hill to the cliffs.

Only a few of us made it (not really, but everyone else got sick of being rained on and decided to go back and drink more coffee and tea).  It was worth the weather!

As we headed in to change our soaking clothes and warm up before driving to the ferry, someone mentioned in a casual and innocent way that the ferry crossed 'a rough patch of sea.'  In future, we will recognize the foreshadowing of that statement, but ignorance is bliss and we happily piled ourselves in the giant van and headed to Fishguard.  But not before we bought better coats and hats and gloves and ate (again. In retrospect, not such a great idea).

On the way to Fishguard the roads were narrow and windy and we kept passing jaunty old tractors with flags on them.  Millie, in windy road agony, fell asleep before I could give her any Dramamine (yes more foreshadowing).  When we got to the ferry there were even more patriotic tractors.  Turns out there was going to be a tractor race and the Irish had come over on the ferry to compete.

The ferry was huge and at first we were impressed by all that it had to offer: Duty Free shopping! An arcade!  A play area for kids!  Movies!  A coffee shop!

But it didn't take long before people started dropping like flies and the girls both approached us with funny looks on their faces.  In the corner, sprawled out next to the women's bathroom, a teenage boy threw up repeatedly for the entire 3.5 hour boat ride.  All around, people were lying on the floor or walking shakily around the boat, trying to regain their equilibrium.  Millie, for the first time in her life, was able to announce that she was going to vomit just before she did, thus making good use of the remarkably sturdy and well made barf bags.  The ship's crew calmly mopped up puke. Evie threw up and got it in her hair.  The people next to us (who's children were also vomiting profusely) shared their wet wipes.  Jim nearly tossed his cookies and even I had to take a Dramamine.  Mom and Dad remained stoic and unaffected and a little disappointed that we didn't see any dolphins. 

Just to give you a little bit of an idea of what we were up against, here's a short video clip of our attempt to get some fresh sea air. 

Later, Evie and Lala nearly got blown off the deck.

And poor peaked Millie even took a walk around to try and settle her stomach.

It was with great relief that we pulled into the port at Rosslare. I think we actually cheered.

 Unfortunately, we had several more hours to drive to get to Kinsale and, also, unfortunately, Millie's stomach wasn't quite settled.  When we finally arrived in Kinsale at the Old Presbytery B&B we were exhausted, starving, smelled like vomit and really needed a drink.  The owners of the B&B sent us to Jim Edwards Pub, where we had our first pints of Guinness in Ireland (Mom had her first sip of one ever) and some of the best seafood we have ever tasted.  Irish fish chowder became a mainstay of our trip and, while all of it was good, none of it was as good as that first bowl we had at Jim Edwards.  But the best part was how nice our Irish waitress was, despite the fact that we all stumbled in five minutes before they were going to close.  It really is true about Irish people being amazing and friendly!  It was a good start to a fun trip.