Our trip to Ireland

This post is way overdue!  I am a lazy blogger.

So here it is... the story of the rest of our summer travels:

Ireland.  Ireland is awesome.  I know why it is so green there.  Because it rains ALL the time!  It's also really cold.  I had to buy a raincoat and an umbrella and like 5 pairs of socks!  I was freezing the whole time we were there.  In August.  It was kind of funny actually--every time the sun came out (which was only for a few minutes at a time) and the temperature increased to about 65, everyone would start complaining about how dreadfully hot it was!!  Anyway, it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.  And Irish people are pretty cool.

We didn't learn our lesson from the first car rental and did it again in Ireland.  At least it was not a hybrid this time, but we did have to drive on the left side of the road which was WORSE!!!

Dad shifting the gears with his left hand.

We saw a lot of old castles like this one on our drive.

The beautiful fields in the countryside.  It's probably hard to see the stone walls that separate the fields but that was one of my favorite things to see.

Anyway, the first day we drove down to the southern tip of the island, to Bally Bunion.  People drive crazy mad in Ireland, like 80 miles an hour on the small two-lane highways.  Scary.  Bally Bunion is famous for golfing.  Even President Clinton was there once, and they built him a statue in the center of the town!

The reason we decided to stay there was because John and I have a friend in Atlanta from there.  His family is still there.  So we were planning to meet them but something came up with the family and we never ended up meeting them.  But it was ok, because we stayed a bed and breakfast that looked right out over the beach and the sea.  It was so beautiful.  Check out the ancient castle ruins.

By the way, there were toddlers running around NAKED on this beach!  I was barely able to keep from shivering with my sweatshirt on!

The next day we drove north.  We stopped by the Burren (pronounced "burrn") National Park in County Clare.   It is a huge area covered in limestone rock with little cracks where the grass came through.  While we were there we saw the oldest man-made structure that I had ever seen.  It is an ancient tomb and I think they estimate that is is 5,000 years old.  Here is someone else's picture from the internet.

The Burren had stone walls like this everywhere.  Some of them were reeeeally really old.

We also stopped by the Cliffs of Moore which are these really cool cliffs along the ocean.  Sorry, no picture.  I think it is where they filmed some scenes in the new Harry Potter movie!

Anyway, Dad and John went home the next morning and Mom, Carlene and I stayed for the epic event that we had been waiting for... the whole purpose for our trip to Europe.  The Fleadh!  The biggest traditional music festival in the woooooorlddd!  This year it was in Cavan.  It was awesome.  We stayed with a host family who we paid 35 Euros each per night.  They made a killing off of us.  (Everyone in the town rented rooms for the same price so I guess there was no way to negotiate it.)  The mom cooked us traditional Irish breakfast every morning.  It was more like meatfast than breakfast but what can you do.  They eat this weird thing called black and white pudding which I never ate because I heard someone say "pig's blood" and that was the deal breaker for me.  But I did really like their brown bread and porridge.    Our host family had four children who had names like Cian and Cara.  It took me a few days before I could understand anything they were saying but they were nice to us.  Their house was freezing all of the time.  I took a shower as little as possible because the window to the bathroom was always open and I hated taking a shower while cold air was blowing on me!  One night we asked them if they could turn the heat on and they looked at us kind of funny and then brought a little space heater into our room.

This was the view of the front and back yard of the house.  The house and property had been in their family for many generations.  I can't imagine what that would be like!

Well, we started out the week by attending the Scoil Eigse, a big music camp that proceeds the Fleadh Cheoil.  All of the students were divided into groups by instrument and ability level.  I joined the adult mixed instrument class.  The teacher of my group was Mary Nugent and she was so cool.   This was my first experience learning tunes by ear and it was really hard.  I played the whistle, by the way.  It was the easiest one to carry all the way over from the US.  Mom was playing the flute and Carlene was playing the fiddle.  Other traditional Irish music instruments are: accordion, banjo, uilleann pipes, and concertina. Every evening after we spent the day memorizing new tunes, they had a huge "session" with everyone in the camp.  It was crazy to be in a big room with like 500 people all playing tunes together!  (A session is when irish musicians get together in a pub and just play tunes together.  Kind of like a jam session I guess.)

This is my teacher's cd that just came out.  (She's the one playing the flute!) I love it.  You should check it out.

At the end of the week the town became flooded with thousands of Fleadh-goers.  There were concerts and sessions going on all over the place, and competitions, and (my favorite part) busking going on all over the streets!  I didn't know what busking was before this trip.  Basically it's when you play on the street for money.  People of all ages (even cute little kids) were playing by themselves and in groups all over the place.  And the streets were packed with people listening and enjoying themselves.  Literally, the streets were packed so tight that sometimes I got stuck in a human traffic jam and couldn't move.  It was crazy to see how excited these Irish people were about the music.

This was a spontaneous street session that we joined for a little bit.  After a while people had to start sessions on the street because there was no more room in the pubs.  

Some young buskers.

Mom and Carlene played in a few sessions.  I was never brave enough to join in. 

This session was fun because there were kids playing in it.  The bar served them soda instead of Guiness. 

Some of our highlights were seeing Andy Irvine (front row seats!!), Lunasa, and my favorite--Dedannon!  They were soooooo awesome.   One of the main draws of the Fleadh are the competitions.  They have competitions for every instrument and every age level.  We went to some of them, and were totally blown away at how good all of the kids were who participated in the competitions.  There were little kids playing the fiddle who would knock the socks off of some of the famous fiddle players in the US that I have heard!  And that goes for all the instruments.  Banjo, concertina, etc.  It's like they were born with the music in their blood.  The most interesting competitions we went to were the whistling and lilting.  They would just stand in front of the room and whistle tunes!  They were very serious about it.  Lilting is hard to describe, but it was also really cool to watch.

Andy Irvine

Going to the Fleadh was the most intense introduction to Irish music anyone could have.  It was awsome.  I am totally into it now.  "Trad" is what they call it over there.  I love "trad."  I listen to it all the time.   The thing that really surprised me was how into it the kids were.  There were hundreds and hundreds of kids at the music camp and in the competitions who were SO good.  I've never been to a music camp that had so many kids who were so excited to play music.  It was really unbelievable.  I can't wait to go back someday (but I probably won't be able to afford it for a long time)!