Meet the (Grand)Parents (1/2)

of emerald isles...

Welcome back to the newsletter you’ve likely forgotten about. We’re still here, trudging through our quest to counter the turbulent news of our town/country/world with the wit, wisdom, and sometimes good cheer of our time abroad. We’re writing from Morioka, Japan¹ but we’ll get to that eventually. For now, enjoy this belated retelling of our last stops in western Europe, coauthored with none other than those who begat us. Due to our parents’ lack of appreciation for pith, we’re breaking this up into two posts.

IRELAND

Despite the grandparents luggage going missing at the start of the trip, and Grandpa dinging the rearview mirror along a stone wall on the wrong side of the road, we managed to have a pretty lucky trip to the Emerald Isle. The food exceeded expectations, the Guinness flowed at all hours, and the people were gentle and boisterous and nosy too! If we so much as made eye contact with an Irish(wo)man, they’d preach at us for half an hour about how “Greta Thunberg’s got a lotta nerve with her private jet and lack of farming experience!” It was a nice change from the blonde coolness of the Danes. We were craving more ruddy hair and constitution.

For the first leg, we stayed in a former schoolhouse on a bay at the base of Mount Brandon. We loved the “town” — really just a street — of Cloghane and spent most evenings at the pub with live music and a fireplace. It felt like Ireland. Townsfolk would show up with their whistles and fiddles and once the concertina opened everyone joined in with their stout-fueled contributions to the jam. Rather than sit side by side in the pubs, the locals pull their stools together in little clumps so that they can chat elbow-to-elbow, face-to-face in circles of cheer.

Since Chester was still in a 5am wake up stage, we got a lot of early morning hikes in, greeting the sunrise over the water and trekking through rolling hills of sheep and big shaggy horses that look a lot like this famous sketch:

The highlight of the trip was our day in Dingle popping into shops pubs and petting zoos as we biked along the oceanside cliffs. It was about as charming a ride as we’ve ever been on as an influencer family.

We then went on a very long drive to the other side of the Wild Atlantic Way, truncating the journey with two stops: one in Valentia Island for a very cold, very boring boat tour despite the guide’s impressive attempts to hype creation of the Transatlantic Cable²; the other with a charming elder sheep farmer named Timothy who dazzled us with a herding demonstration and bemoaned the price of Irish wool³. Alex was initially dubious of paying an old man to move sheep from shape to shape for demonstration purposes but he became enthusiastically perplexed by the complete absence of wool-processing infrastructure in Ireland, a place famous for sheep.

Our second stop in coastal Cobh proved a little less spectacular, a town known primarily as the last stop the Titanic made on its way to its final resting place. Liz recommended it based on a dazzling endorsement she received from a stranger in a brewery. Sometimes these things pan out and other times they don’t. After spending the first half of our stay trying to turn on the airbnb’s heat and hot water, we enjoyed our cozy boarding house style rowhouse and leveraged the grandparents to get our very first overnight away from the son at a golf resort/castle ruin filled with modern art. Liz got a massage, Alex got a sauna, and we felt like new people when we met up with grandma, grandpa and little son the next day. We finished out the trip with a few homemade meals, and tender moments with the grandparents. Liz was wistful at how brutish she’d been, especially to her mother. Speaking of her mother, read on for Ireland in her words!

Verbatim Testimonials from Karen/Grandma/Nina, and Andrew/Grandpa/Tita

Karen: “We loved spending time with Alex, Elizabeth, and Chester, exploring the small towns of the Dingle Peninsula. When we all were driving to Cohb near Cork on the second leg of our trip, we stopped in the bustling town of Killarney for a delicious dinner. We were all so appreciative that despite the packed dining room they acquiesced and showed us to the perfect corner table. Truth be told, the charming Chester got us in. (He started playing hide and seek with the server and she was smitten.) We let Elizabeth and Alex take off for some R&R for the night and we had the time of our lives exploring the coastal town of Cohb. Chester was a prince. We must have worn him out because he slept for 12 hours! “

Andrew: “The little stone schoolhouse on the water in the tiny village with a great pub and a cute little grocery store. Complete serenity. Exploring the surrounding areas on the one-lane roads with strange-sounding names and oncoming traffic. Climbing the mountain nearby, bundled with several layers since it was chilly and watching the Irish walk past us wearing shorts and tee shirts. Riding bicycles along the steep, narrow, ribbons of highway near Dingle, with a baby Chester in tow! This was simultaneously breathtakingly and terrifying, dodging oncoming traffic while we gawked at the unparalleled beauty of the coastline below.”

photos supplied by Karen Permenter

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If you’ve made it this far, write back any life advice query/request for a picture of Chester in whatever scenario, and we will do our best to oblige your particular and no doubt peculiar interests.

Signing off,

wearing the pajamas we successfully stole from the Dormy Inn, Morioka

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1. Listed #2 on the NYTimes 52 places to go in 2023 and delivering big time

2. More riveting information available here

3. Seriously, this guy has barns upon barns of wool. He’s waiting for the price to go up because it costs more money for farmers to process it abroad than the current commodity price. There’s an opportunity here for the right buyer. More details here if you’re open to subscribing to the Irish Times.

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