Fourth Ireland Post: Glasnevin Cemetary
Sunday morning we packed up the apartment and waved good-bye as we moved into the second part of our trip.
But first, we detoured to Glasnevin Cemetery in Northern Dublin. Recommended by a friend of Buds’, it was a peaceful, beautiful stop, with a lovely cafe for a bit of lunch before our long drive to Limerick.
While Zoe contemplated the deeper stories she likes to spin in such a place, the littles and I occupied ourselves with searching for the person who died the longest ago, and the youngest person buried that we could find. We found someone who died in 1836, and we found a wee babe who passed at 2 months old.
After time at Glasnevin, we loaded up the car for our journey to the friend’s house where we’d be spending our next two and a half weeks.
This was my first time driving on wide, open, “interstate” roads, and they were delicious.
It was also my first time driving on a typical Irish country road, and that was more unnerving for Buds than me. The main difficulty in the driving is not shifting the gears with my left hand, which is what I suspected would be difficult, but two other issues:
1) The full focus that driving takes. I cannot zone out the way a person often does when driving a well-known route. I have to stay mentally involved all the time. And despite the much greater comfort I feel at driving here now, Buds and I both still have a slight heart palpitation when a car is driving toward us on the “wrong” side of the road.
2) Clipping the hedges: I scraped against a hedge in the same spot two different times, and bumped two curbs with the passenger side of the car. None of these incidents caused any damage to the car, but they show how difficult it is to judge where that side of the car is. My typical driving habit at home is stay away from the center line because that feels safest to me; greater distance from the cars going the opposite direction.
On the country roads here, when no cars are coming at you, you are driving with the driver side tires over the middle line of the road, so it gets off-kilter. Oh well, no harm no foul, and Buds is slowly learning to trust my driving skills. Bless his heart.
The drive to County Limerick was uneventful and beautiful. The children grow tired of the tight seating in the back on these longer drives, so we were glad to arrive.
The house we are staying in deserves a post all its own, which I will write, but the pictures aren’t uploaded yet, so the full layout will have to wait, but here are a couple highlights:
One of the children’s favorite memories will be the delightful jacuzzi tub. That has been a real treat.
For me, the views out the front and back are simply amazing. I love looking out the windows in the morning and evenings to see which fields the cows are in today; watching the gray mist move in over the mountain, or seeing how the sun is peeking through the clouds. Green meditation.
Next post: Our First Ruins!
