Since Gavin has been spending the year communing with “his people,” I also wanted the opportunity to visit my ancestral homeland. Like many Americans of European descent I have a mix of ancestry, but my maternal grandfather is Irish, and so I’ve always sort of wanted to go to Ireland.
My grandpa’s Irish family. He’s the one in the far right.
Unfortunately, we picked about the worst time to go, as Ireland was experiencing its first hurricane since 1961. So, how did we cope? Here are the options we came up with:
Option 1: Drink
Alcohol is pretty expensive in Norway, so we’ve cut back our consumption in Trondheim. But, the drinking/pub culture seems to play such an important cultural role in Irish society that we couldn’t well pass it up. Our first stop on Saturday afternoon was the Jameson Whiskey tour in Dublin, which is held at the the location of the former distillery (operations have since been moved to County Cork). The tour includes the history of Jameson whiskey, an overview of the production process, and then a taste comparison against two other whiskeys (Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker Black Label), which are chosen to contrast against Jameson’s “smoothness.”[1] In reality, this means you get three different shots of whiskey on the tour, followed by another celebratory glass, followed by getting dumped in the gift shop (they’re clever, those Irish). It was not a bad way to start the trip.
The other alcoholic cultural phenomenon in Dublin is Guinness; unfortunately, the Guinness factory was closed due to the hurricane, but we managed to find a bar that would serve us some.
It wasn’t that hard to find.
Option 2: Hike
Many folks had told us that Dublin is very different from the rest of Ireland. Given our limited time, we weren’t able to get out and see the whole country (which turned out to be for the best with the hurricane), but we still wanted to get a sense of something outside of the nation’s capital. So, on Sunday we took the train to Howth Peninsula for a hike. Despite the upcoming storm, the weather held for us, and we had spectacular views of the blustery Irish coast.
Option 3: Tweet
By Monday morning we had almost forgotten about the upcoming storm, but to our dismay we woke up to learn that literally everything in Ireland had been shut down. Kids were out of school. Businesses and tourist attractions were closed. Our plan had been to take a tour of Brú na Bóinne (literally translated as “some Druid shit”), but this was also canceled. So, we killed time perusing twitter for the best tweets about the storm.
This is what we would have seen.
Turns out Irish Twitter is pretty entertaining. Here are some of our favorites. The pictures are worth clicking on.
#Ophelia Americans…do not shoot at the hurricane.. Irish people… do not throw holy water at the hurricane.
— Jennifer Donovan (@Donovanjen) October 16, 2017
Emergency services being rushed to Kerry! #Ophelia pic.twitter.com/6jiKGGUE7k
— Koci (@Koci71) October 16, 2017
#Ophelia, you’re breaking my shed;
You’re shaking my chimney pots daily.— Matt Frost (@MattFrostie) October 16, 2017
And they thought keeping the kids off school today would help… #Ophelia pic.twitter.com/qtV4YzLuzE
— Barry O’Rourke (@orourke28) October 16, 2017
#Ophelia trending 1st in Ireland. #Opehlia 2nd. Are we sure about closing the schools?
— Ciaran McGrenera (@ciaranmcgrenera) October 16, 2017
I’m having a garden furniture giveaway..winners to be selected at random….#Ophelia #Opheila
— Declan O’Brien (@deccy1919) October 16, 2017
The whole world: Ireland this is #Ophelia the worst storm to hit your country since 1961 stay indoors
The Irish: pic.twitter.com/L1pzyS2sPh
— Declan Corcoran (@declan_corcoran) October 16, 2017
The unfortunate thing was that Dublin was completely sunny at this time, and the day was quite beautiful. We were sure that the Irish had overreacted.
Not pictured: hurricane.
Option 4: Huddle around your smartphone for an app-based city tour in gale-force winds when everything is closed.
By late morning it was still sunny, but the winds had started to pick up. Since everything was closed, we were at a loss of how to spend the day. So, we downloaded an app that contained a walking tour of Dublin. The tour was fairly good, but the traffic and the howling winds made it kind of difficult to hear. Still, it allowed us to kill time until the winds got truly too strong to stay outside.
Option 5: Plan a return trip?
The next day it was time to leave. Unfortunately there’s a lot about Ireland that we didn’t get to do. We didn’t see that much of the countryside. We didn’t hear any folk music. We didn’t get to go to the National Leprechaun Museum. (I’m not usually one for kitch, but the museum was heralded by the Irish Times as the “Louvre of Leprechauns” and featured an exhibit about the 1959 Walt Disney movie Darby O’Gill and the Little People, which was a cinematic touchstone of my childhood.[2]) But, maybe that just means we need to come back someday!
Hurricane Ophelia.
[1] According to the tour, Jameson’s smoothness is due to its triple distillation process; by contrast, Jack Daniels is distilled once, and Johnny Walker is distilled twice. This gives both a harsher flavor. We thought all three were grand.
[2] The family watched Darby O’Gill and the Little People at least once a year, until the youngest cousin declared that he “hates leprechauns.” I checked back with him this week, and at age 25 his feelings about leprechauns have shifted to “neutral.”
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