Ireland
I’m bad at starting these posts. I can’t ever figure out a good first line. I want them to be engaging and interesting without sounding over-thought or pretentious. My first attempt with Ireland was to express its sentimental meaning as the first foreign country Brandi and I ever visited. And here’s where I failed at not over-thinking. I really got stuck on the word foreign. It has two definitions that I think don’t very well parallel each other:
of, from, in, or characteristic of a country or language other than one's own
strange and unfamiliar.
So what do you call a country that is no longer foreign to you but still not your own? Before our trip, Europe was entirely foreign (and still wholly is). Brandi and I had never set foot outside of the lower 48, much less overseas, but now, over 3 years later, there are places like Ireland that I feel a stronger connection to - places that I feel foreign is no longer the right word to describe them. They are no longer strange; they are no longer entirely unfamiliar. I don’t claim to have even scratched the surface of these places, but I felt acquainted enough for the word foreign to feel inappropriate, even negative. Anyway, if anyone has the answer and cares to share, I’d love to hear it. I’ll try to actually write something about Ireland below…
If you ever have the opportunity to visit, the East side of Ireland is super special. I’d recommend trading time in Dublin city for what we considered the real treat and where we spent most of our days: the surrounding towns. It’s there that we fell in love with Ireland. During our stay, we visited three wonderful places: Donabate, Malahide, and Howth. Donabate was homebase as it was the nearest town to Dublin via train with the most affordable accomodations. We Airbnb’d there with a wonderful lady named Emma. As a first impression of the world outside our own, we couldn’t have asked for someone better. As for Donabate, it was straight out of a storybook. It was a quaint little town with one of everything: one main grocery store, one school, one train station, one central road in and out. And everything was within 15 minutes. If I could retire tomorrow, it would probably be to Donabate, Ireland. Malahide and Howth were equally wonderful in their own right. Malahide is home to a local castle and Howth is a fishing village, boats coming and going with the sun’s rise and fall.
This time in Ireland was a phenomenal start to our 6-week trip through some of Europe’s incredible cities, a time period from which many of the next stories in this series will be recounted.
