The Insane Asylum

After getting home from Australia and letting our credit card bonus miles build up, we headed to Ireland for a few weeks in Southern Europe.

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     The ocean was frozen solid. As far as I could see. Not a sight an old Arkansas boy sees every day.

     The flight was long, an hour waiting on the tarmac and seven in the air. We lost six hours coming over, so it was well up into the morning when we passed over the coast of Ireland. It was a beautiful sight, bright green rolling hills blocked off into little squares by dark green hedge rows.

     Barbara was returning to the land of her forefathers, and her eyes were fairly shining with excitement.

     The good kind of excitement eased off a bit when we arrived at Dublin, and we learned that our bag was lost. Our only bag for the next six weeks. The nice lady at the desk was very sympathetic. Didn't help much. She gave us each a small bag with a t-shirt and underwear, a tooth brush and toothpaste. Come back in a day or two and maybe it will show up. The city bus took us close to the Paramont Hotel. The room is small, fairly clean, but didn't look like 90 bucks.

     We finally found a fairly inexpensive lunch counter in the back of a grocery store. Huge savings, and we carried out enough for supper, too.

     Dublin was fairly bustling with people. Loud, rowdy, fighting people. All there for The National Hurling Championship. Now, in Arkansas, hurling is something like throwing up. In Ireland, it's something like Soccer with a stick.

     Barbara, maiden name Dunnahoe, keeps hearing names like Donahue, Donohoe, O'Donahue, on TV, so she is excited to be in the middle of family. All in all, a frustrating day. Maybe a better day tomorrow.

     The next day, we spend a goodly amount of time calling the airport over luggage issues. Not much help. We walked into the city center to look for clothes. We see people with what appears to be the result of that Irish fighting spirit, black eyes, bruises and such. Seems they take their Hurling seriously. We find a clothing store, a TK Max. Underwear for me came in two styles. One with a playboy bunny silhouette, one with a tiger. Now, I really was not either type, but I finally went for the tiger. Barbara's type underwear was generic, didn't have a silhouette at all, and we walked out fifty dollars poorer.

     All right, time to go back to the airport and talk to a human face to face. No luck yet, they said. Barbara is not one to be so easily put off, in such a situation, so she just kept ragging the man until he finally agreed to escort her back to the luggage room, to see for herself. She must go alone, I couldn’t go. He showed her the bags that came in that morning.

    "See, I told you so."

 Tears were coming. Then, through her tears, she recognized a strap. The very one she had put on our bag. It was in a pile on the other side of the room. Looked like a bunch of torn-up bags. She started running.

     He was shouting. "Oh, ma'am, you can't go over there!"

     "That's my bag!”

     "It can't be"! He said. She was not about to be put off at this point. "OK," he said, "Tell me what's in THIS pocket!" Barbara had packed, repacked, and repacked again, every part, to get it all into one big bag. Barbara listed every item in that pocket. It was busted up pretty bad, a few things were missing, but it was OUR bag, our salvation. Things started looking up for us immediately.

     We rented a red Toyota Corolla and headed out of Dublin. Dooblin, they call it. We drive into Carlow, found a motel, and the desk clerk quoted $140. Seeing the shock in our eyes, she said, "I can go one tirty." They just cannot say "th" in Ireland.

     We hauled out of there and wandered around aimlessly awhile, then spotted a B&B. It said "No vacancy," but the name told us she was kinfolk. Not to be put off, Barbara told her she was a Dunnahoe, and the nice lady, a O'Donaghue, let us stay anyway, for $65, with a man sized breakfast included.

     She gave us walking directions to a bar for supper, which included a stroll across an Insane Asylum's grounds. Should be a good place to make encounters worth writing about, but no luck. Now, if this was just a part fictional story, I could have made some hay with this place! As it was, everyone we saw was just far too normal.

     As it turned out, the bar was in the "one tirty" place, so we sneaked in past the front desk.

     Driving the next day took some adjustment, because we not only drove on the left, but we drove on very narrow roads with high hedges sticking right out into the road. What was that I was feeling? Could it be the early stages of a panic attack?

     The scenery was beautiful, and we soon came to our first castle, at Kilkenny. We didn't tour it, not in the budget. But we did walk the grounds and pictured away. We drove on being pushed up against the hedges, Barbara making little soothing sounds to settle me down. We went through many small towns where we stopped and walked around. We're like that. We spend our money eating and lodging, and the attractions have to be really spectacular before we spend money on  touristy attractions.  We're pore' folks, ya' know? Gas is high here, but their cars have really good gas gauges, that go down really slow. Why can't they make gauges like that in the good ole' USA? Oh, well. At lease, we have rich oil companies, and rich car builders, and  we are all happy about their success.

     We booked a night's stay at Donaghue Castle Farms. Barbara loves to stay with relatives. The castle remains were very old, neat to walk through. The bed was very old, too. It was not to Barbara's liking, so she tried putting her head at the other end, but jumped right back up. "Oh, no, bad foot odor!" Castle folks are not in the habit of washing sheets much, it seems. But breakfast was good, the $50 price was good, and those castle people were nice, except for the dirty sheets.