Ireland Archives | In Lieu of Postcards

Kenmare, Ireland’s Hidden Charms

This summer marked my fifth trip to Ireland. Why, when there are so many places to go, do I continue to choose the Emerald Isle? For one, traveling to Ireland has been a formative experience for me. It was the first country I ever visited outside of North America, and the place where I spent a semester studying abroad 20 years ago. At this point in my Irish travels, there aren’t many major sites I haven’t seen. But in this place where I feel so many memories and connections, I tend to take pleasure in the mundane – walks to take, places to eat and drink, gardens and shops and inviting quaint streets. Sure, there are things I haven’t seen: despite living in Dublin for six months, I never went to the Guinness Storehouse, and I have never been to the EPIC Immigration Museum. I’d prefer instead to stand on the street in front of Kehoe’s with a pint in my hand, or to lounge on St. Stephen’s Green to watch Dubliners of every stripe intersect. Or, maybe head down to County Kerry for a slow amble through Kenmare.

The Must-Be Philosophy

I suppose I can sum this up as such: instead of “must-sees”, I gravitate toward a philosophy of “must-bes”: I must be back there. I must be in a moss-covered forest; I must be in the back of an Irish taxi with a witty driver; I must be sat at a table in front of the perfect toasted special; I must be in a pub where a fiddle is harmonizing with a concertina; I must be surrounded by slate-gray stone walls and ungainly bleating sheep and muddy crying skies. For this trip, these must-bes were converged in the small town of Kenmare, co. Kerry.

Kenmare, just off the Ring of Kerry with a population of around 2,500, is not exceptional among Irish towns, but it has long retained something of a mythical glow in my mind. It was one of the first places I visited on my first trip abroad at age 18. While my family only stayed in Kenmare for two nights, using it as a base to Killarney National Park, it was the first Irish small town I experienced, and it left such an indelible impression that I returned twice – for just one night in 2016, and then this summer for a whole week. I wrote a bit about Kenmare previously when discussing Kerry through Stephen Rynne’s cheeky book All Ireland, but after my third and longest visit, I wanted to delve more deeply into what makes this town such a delightful base for exploring one of Ireland’s most beautiful counties.

Escape from Killarney

As I wrote in my previous discussion of Kenmare, insofar as it is mentioned to tourists, it is usually as a more “cosmopolitan” alternative to neighboring Killarney, which has gone all-out in pursuit of American tourist dollars. In 2001, we stayed in a bed-and-breakfast called The Brass Lantern that I do remember as being quite elegant. It was run by a French woman named Colette, the showers were skylit and waterfall-like and the breakfast was a health-conscious platter of fruit and yogurt. This time, though, we acquiesced to modern convenience and stayed in an Airbnb (and a walk past the Brass Lantern suggests that though it is still ostensibly functional, is it not actually Xanadu), which was very close to the town center and let us explore Kenmare thoroughly in a week’s time.

Though the town has clearly grown since 2001, it retains its low-key charm, managing a nice balance with tourism that doesn’t impose on daily life. Is it boring? A little. But that’s the point. Tourists often say they want to live like the locals, but they don’t really mean it. In Kenmare, ordinariness – and straightforward, non-pandering Irishness – is the attraction.

Take, for example, the walk to town from our accommodations: we pass a field with a few grazing, wooly sheep, then walk along a river guarded by a stone wall and lush green trees. I run my hand along the wall, touching moss as soft as a shag carpet, feeling the ridges where stones were stacked, diligently, sometime in the distant past. (On one walk I managed to drop my scarf on the path; when I returned it was waiting for me, casually draped over a low shrub by a thoughtful passerby.) We spy a lone donkey eating languidly on an adjacent hill. A flower-adorned coffee shack, The Bean and Batch, beckons us across the street, and we perch on brightly colored chairs with flat whites and pain au chocolat (it’s Kenmare’s singular bastion of hipsterdom, but the clientele of sixty-somethings and young families are hardly intimidating). Just past this, the town begins: there’s a square and park that’s bustling with citizens and Kerry Way hikers making a pit stop. From there, two central streets branch out with shops, pubs and restaurants painted bright “Tidy Towns” colors, café tables spilling optimistically into the streets on the chance of a sunny day. Just a 10-minute walk and there, already, so much Irish charm.

Things to “Do” in Kenmare

You might be thinking that colorful buildings, mossy stone walls, and relaxed animals are all well and good, but what does one actually DO in Kenmare, aside from drive away to Killarney National Park, or other stops on the celebrated Ring of Kerry?

Attractions

First there’s the Bronze-Age Stone Circle, which I wrote about previously. The circle is probably Kenmare’s biggest tourist attraction, notable for being one of the few stone circles located in a town, rather than down some long and winding road in the middle of nowhere. The only issue is that while these circles are traditionally placed for their view, someone decided to plant trees in a ring around it, perhaps to set it off and protect it from the road. The result is an incredibly tranquil experience though one that isn’t exactly true to the intentions of its creators. There is also a souvenir stand, manned by an eager teenage boy selling plush sheep and Guinness knick-knacks aplenty, if that’s your cup of tea. But visit late in the day, with the crowds gone and the stand shut, and you can feel the hushed, almost mystical vibe of the place.

From the center of town, you can see the spire of a church rising just off the main square. This is Holy Cross Catholic Church, the most visually striking of the town’s churches, consecrated in 1864. In Ireland, there are interesting churches everywhere, and while this one is not particularly old or architecturally notable, it sits next to the former Poor Clare’s Convent founded by one of the town’s most famous residents, “The Nun of Kenmare,” Otherwise known as Sister Frances Clare (otherwise known as Margaret Anna Cusack). She was a prolific and especially intellectual nun: scholar and Irish nationalist, she established the convent and proceeded to write an impressive 35 books in the 1860s-80s.

A fairy fort in Reenagross Woodland Park, Kenmare.

You can learn more about this super-nun in the homespun and delightful Kenmare Tourist Information Office, which doubles as a history museum, chronicling the town’s industry, notable figures and daily life. I love small museums like this one that tell the stories of ordinary people (Nun of Kenmare aside) in ordinary towns. It might seem boring in the abstract, but its street-level humanity fosters a more intimate connection with a place.

Nature

Reenagross Woodland Park is the best nature one can see in Kenmare without a car. Like many beautiful Irish parks, this one is attached to a property designed for the wealthy, the 5-star Victorian-era Kenmare Park Hotel. Behind the grand stone structure are manicured gardens that dissolve almost imperceptibly into forest. Knobby trees perch over ferns and moss-covered stones, and gravel paths run along the edge of Kenmare Bay. While it’s no match for the spectacular views as on the Beara Peninsula or Ring of Kerry, it feels like a fairy-tale forest just a short walk from the bustling town center.

It’s these natural, magical edges of Kenmare that I found myself drawn to the most during our stay. Walk through the town center, take a left at the pizza place and proceed up the hill, and you’ll cross the River Finnerty, the tiny river that gives Kenmare a large part of its charm. Further up the road you’ll find Cromwell’s Bridge, an improbably steep structure that was built in the 1800s (though there was a similar structure here as far back as the 11th century). The bridge is unfortunately named for Oliver Cromwell, the English politician who led a bloody conquest of Ireland in the mid-1600s resulting in mass killings, land theft and forced servitude. The naming of the bridge is a mystery; Cromwell’s war did not even enter Kerry. The historical marker hopefully suggests that the name of this bridge was simply a mistake – the Irish-language word for “moustache,” alluding to the bridge’s rainbow-like shape, sounds like “Cromwell.” Name aside, if you’re a sucker for dry stones covered in moss, you’ll find it as enchanting as I did. Nestled on a small green surrounded by wildflowers, it’s the kind of place you can imagine reclining on a lazy afternoon.

Near Cromwell’s bridge is another of those especially Irish attractions: a shrine to the Virgin Mary, settled against a stone wall and tall hedge. This was one of Ireland’s “holy wells,” a site of folk religion during the period of anti-Catholic penal laws in the late 1600s-1900s. This well’s origin is not known; it may have begun as a site of pagan worship, then was blessed and turned into a Christian site. For pilgrims or simply curious onlookers, it’s another pocket of Kenmare enchantment.

Eating and Drinking

Lamb stew and Guinness at Coachman's — Lamb stew and Guinness at Coachman’s in Kenmare

As illustrated by these examples, life in Kenmare is not lived fast. It is a town for wandering, without expectations, and seeing what you’ll find. But while I may be making it sound like the humblest backwater, it should be known that the “cosmopolitan” label isn’t all spin. The town has quite a few fine pubs, restaurants and shops for its size; unlike other places I’ve visited in Ireland, its choices for dining and drinking are fairly numerous and high-quality. The Horseshoe, the town’s best-reviewed mid-priced restaurant, offers delicious food in cozy, candlelit surroundings. For a more ebullient dining experience, the touristy-looking O’Donnabhain’s was better than expected, offering a huge menu of well-executed Irish classics by similarly precarious candlelight (Kenmare is really not worried about people setting their hair on fire). Here the setting is a bustling pub environment soundtracked, at least when we were there, by a hipster college student alternating between affecting folk songs and improbable covers of “Dancing Queen” and other radio hits. Another standout, The Coachman’s, lacked in as much atmosphere but served an amazing Irish stew.

Atlantic Bar, a no-frills institution with a blue façade on the town square, became our go-to pub for lunch. With its perfectly presented toasted special (a hot ham sandwich with aged cheddar cheese and onion on robust buttery toast, served with golden chips), delectably fluffy Guinness, and cheerful proprietor, it was the platonic ideal of the Irish pub. Each time we visited, local workers of various professions laughed together and mingled with a few tourists enjoying a slower meal. On our second visit, we sat next to two friends on holiday from the UK, who engaged us in conversation on issues ranging from Paul McCartney to British and U.S. elections.

Traditional music session at Crowley's Bar — Trad session at Crowley’s

At night, the pubs come alive, and many try to offer live music, at least in the summer when tourists are around. This is highly variable; “live music” could mean a true Irish session, a solo accordionist, or an earnest young man playing “Wonderwall.” (Granted, the latter style can still be appealing; my husband and I did enjoy a pint in front of P.F. McCarthy’s as the band inside played a fine cover of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.”) Crowley’s Bar is known as the place for “real” trad sessions, though Kenmare is not celebrated for its music scene like Dingle or Doolin. But the crowd packs in, and the festive atmosphere accompanied by lively fiddle, guitar and mandolin is irresistible. Elderly tourists holding iPads aloft seem to come out of the woodwork for a trad session, but a pervasive atmosphere of good cheer envelopes everyone anyway. During our visit, an Irishman visiting from another county treated the audience to a beautiful Sean-nós performance of the traditional tune “Little Saro.” His clear voice rang out in the hushed room, stopping for a moment the extroverted environment of the pub and turning inward – an old song and a new emotion.

Embrace the Boring

We made quite a few day trips from Kenmare, to beautiful and impressive surroundings (recommendations below). But when traveling anywhere, I’ve learned not to take for granted the ordinary experiences that aren’t on anyone’s bucket list. Next time you’re staying in a humble town, even one that’s never been labeled “cosmopolitan” or “colorful,” I recommend plunging yourself into the mundane, the boring, the every day. These are the things that make the essence of a place, and these are the things – as evidenced by my 23-year-pining for Kenmare – that you’ll remember.

Things to see near Kenmare

Gleninchaquin Park & Uragh Stone Circle: This breathtaking private park and neighboring stone circle on the Beara Peninsula is like something out of a dream. It’s a long drive on an incredibly narrow road, but worth it.
Kissane Sheep Farm: For animal lovers, a sheepdog herding demonstration on this picturesque farm is a delightful way to spend a morning.
Killarney National Park: This one’s obvious, but a hike in KNP is a must-do if you’re nearby. Tourists tend to flock to Muckross House and Castle, but the trails are peaceful and wooded. Arthur Young’s Walk was our choice; a lovely trail along the lake.
The Ring of Kerry: Another obvious one. There’s a lot to do on the Ring, but I’d recommend choosing a place and staying a night or two, rather than driving the whole thing in one day. See my previous post for discussion of Cahersiveen and its surroundings.

Mayo, Ireland: Ordinary Heritage, Preserved in a Bog

This June, I had the opportunity to spend nearly three weeks in Ireland – see my previous post on Dublin – always a welcome experience. And because my parents were coming over and meeting us for the trip’s second half, we couldn’t resist returning to County Mayo (in Irish Mhaigh Eo, meaning “plain of the yew trees“), home to ancestors on both my mother and father’s sides of the family.

We stayed in the lovely town of Westport and put together a plan to explore areas we hadn’t on our previous visit 15 years ago, like beautiful Achill Island, the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life in Castlebar, and Céide Fields ancient site. After a few days in Mayo, we would head up to Sligo and Donegal to finish out the trip. Put together, our experiences in Mayo and Sligo prompted me to think more philosophically about this unique stretch of land and my connection to it.

Beach at Achill Island on a gorgeous day.

Land of the Blanket Bog

County Mayo — particularly the western part of the county — is covered extensively in blanket bog. This means the ground is layered with partially decayed vegetation called peat, which has historically been harvested and burned as a source of heat. Mayo’s landscape is not very useful to people trying to survive, and poor topsoil for farming has made this a site of struggle for thousands of years. But the bogland does have some good qualities. For one, peatlands act as carbon sinks, which makes them useful in slowing climate change (however, peat extraction — on the decline but still ongoing in Ireland — counteracts this with large emissions). Squishy to walk on and covered in golden-hued flora, the bogland is also an astounding historical archive: archeologists have found evidence in the bog of early civilizations, even well-preserved human bodies, which tell the story of this land as far back as 5,000 years.

Bogland in Ballycroy National Park, County Mayo

The bogland, it turns out, holds onto things. It holds within it a staggering history, but one which documents simple lives — what those in our contemporary society, lovers of conquest and great wealth and great wars and intellectual innovation — might call mundane. It’s a history of pastures divided up by stacking stones, of basic thatched-roof dwellings, of hard labor on harsh land. It’s a history of small, eccentric traditions. It’s not extraordinary in any way, really, aside from its perseverance.

A poetic description on a signpost in Ballycroy National Park, Mayo

What have we found in the bogs? Stone ruins, animal fossils, tools, books, jewelry, the bodies of young men (human sacrifices dating to the Iron Age — the most exciting bogland happenings you’ll ever hear of), and butter. That’s right — great heaping, towering portions of butter, looking fluffy as marshmallow creme, pulled out of bogs throughout Ireland. Turns out, the Irish have always been good at dairy.

This verse from Seamus Heaney’s poem “Belderg” comes as close as any text to capturing the awesomeness of the bogland:

When he stripped off blanket bog The soft-piled centuries
Fell open like a glib; There were the first plough-marks, The stone-age fields, the tomb Corbelled, turfed and chambered, Floored with dry turf-coomb.
A landscape fossilized, Its stone wall patternings Repeated before our eyes In the stone walls of Mayo.

My Unshakeable Mayo Roots

I know how annoying it is when Americans prattle on about their “Irish heritage” — and yet I too can’t help but give in to the desire to feel connected to my ancestors. My great-grandmother came from a town in Mayo called Crossmolina, a tidy-but-drab burg about which nothing much has ever been said. As far as my parents know, further back most of our ancestors on both sides in fact from this same hardscrabble land — Crossmolina and the more cosmopolitan nearby Ballina. I’m a full three generations removed (and even then only connected by the single thread of my great-grandmother), but I do feel a connection to this land. Is it real, or am I fooling myself? Is there any way to really know?

My great uncle, Father Eugene Devitt, with unidentified relatives in Crossmolina, County Mayo. — My great-uncle, Father Eugene Devitt, with unidentified relatives in Crossmolina, County Mayo.

This feeling of connection could be due to associations from fragmented stories half-told; to daydreams of Ireland conjured in my mind before I even set foot on the island itself. Maybe it stems from those old color slides I’ve seen, taken by my great-uncle the priest (always addressed properly as “Father Devitt,” never “Uncle Gene”), who visited in the 1960s and was invited in for tea by unidentified relatives whom he later photographed, unsmiling, standing in a pasture beside a donkey. (My mother says not to assume they were unhappy; it was rather more likely they were self-conscious about their teeth.)

But in a more metaphysical sense, could it also be the bog itself, that meticulous preservationist, soaking memories and identities into its spongy surface? Holding them intact like great gobs of butter and ginger-haired bogmen, revealing a whiff of them each time a farmer cuts away a new shaft of peat? I wonder too if my grandmother, who never had the chance to visit her own mother’s homeland, might have felt an even stronger pull of some nebulous connection, from a people who shared a similar perspective, perhaps, or gait or countenance or manner, or in fact a similar approach to life and family, work and community.

Céide Fields neolithic site in north Mayo, bogland which contains the oldest and most extensive field systems in the world.

Yeats & the Lure of the Land

Does the land merely preserve the physical — that which can be seen or analyzed? Poets certainly don’t seem to think so, particularly Irish ones, who write about the land like an oracle, keeper of secrets and holder of grudges. Sligo, where I recently spent a few days, is considered the adopted home of the poet W.B. Yeats — a fact of which one is constantly reminded via statues, murals and the tourist-attraction grave of the man himself. Yeats wrote famously of the strong pull he felt toward the Sligo landscape, including the Lake Isle of Innisfree, which to any clear-eyed observer most closely resembles a mound overgrown with brush, inelegantly plunked into modest Lough Gill. “I will arise and go now,” he wrote, off to his personal utopia, a slice of his soul there preserved.

Downtown Crossmolina, County Mayo, Ireland. — Downtown Crossmolina on a Sunday, County Mayo, Ireland.

My Own Ordinary Innisfree

I forgive Yeats his hyperbole, because I get where he’s coming from. Crossmolina, after all, is my Innisfree, my own mediocre island with an otherworldly pull. On our way to (the magnificent and extremely well-run) Céide Fields, my parents, my husband and I stopped in Crossmolina for lunch, walking to the cemetery to look at the gravestones and try to somehow understand by osmosis who our relatives were and if there might be any left. It was our second visit to the sleepy town; 15 years earlier my parents and I had met with a genealogy specialist who said something about great-grandmother Mary Munley who was actually Munnelly, and about some spinster sisters named Quinn who might share some of our genes and donated a statue to the church when they died.

A closed-down Crossmolina business, possibly owned by some relations of mine.

Suffice it to say the findings would remain sparse unless we ponied up some more Euros. But we didn’t, because that’s not what it’s about. People conduct genealogy tests to reveal connections to extraordinary people who did interesting and glamorous things. But in County Mayo, in the bogland, we know what our ancestors did (bog finds detail the more ancient past, while recent civilization is captured in the comprehensive and truly immersive National Museum of Ireland – Country Life). They toiled on the land, farming and raising animals; perhaps someone owned a pub, was a grocer, a tradesmen, or a member of the clergy. They were (mostly) faithful Catholics, attending mass and community gatherings and weddings and funerals, putting on a fine Sunday lunch on occasion for the parish priest. They were ordinary.

A view of Croagh Patrick through a heavy fog, Crossmolina. — A view of Croagh Patrick, Mayo’s mountain pilgrimage site, through a heavy fog in Crossmolina.

I Will Arise and Go Now

And here I am, a woman from a small, Midwestern American town who has always strived to be different, assured that my circumstances didn’t suit me, that I was destined for more excitement, more glamor, a somehow more interesting life.

But the bogland preserves; it records. And here in Mayo, the land tells me otherwise.

So walking along the road to the cemetery in Crossmolina, catching fat raindrops on my nose and running my fingers along stone walls, I think about who I came from, and how they’re in me more than I may think. I can smell it in the ozone, on the contentment that rises in me despite the fact that I’m spending a rainy morning in a cemetery in a boring-ass town with a handful of pubs, a few churches and a library, in a county where it rains cold stinging pellets 280 days per year.

I guess what it is, as it was with Yeats and his god-forsaken overgrown oasis, is a sense of belonging. It’s a feeling of nothing less than identity, I suppose, corny as that sounds: the call of “I will arise and go now,” beckoning from the bog.

“Dublin” on My Heart: In the Drizzly City of Contrasts

My third visit to Dublin began with—of all things—a discussion of the city’s tram system, Luas. Chatting with our taxi driver on our way into the city from the airport, my husband and I recalled the chaotic Luis-related construction we encountered during our most recent visit in 2016. This came as a surprise as we assumed it would be done—way back in 2004 when we were studying at University College Dublin, the project was already beginning operation. So what happened? All told, our driver explained, the project took a turbulent 13 years (it’s finally finished): first city government decided on two separate city centre lines; then they decided to join them; next they realized the tracks were two different sizes and needed to be redone; and eventually the 2010 recession stalled the whole endeavor. Hence the 2017 completion date.

Our new friend from the north side put it like this: “In this city, we prefer to do something wrong the first time, and then spend ages fixing it.”

This little motto seemed even more apt days later, when we stopped in at the National Gallery of Ireland. Upon our last visit to Dublin, the museum was in the midst of a laborious, drawn-out renovation that pushed some of its most celebrated art into storage. But when we returned these three years later hoping to finally see the beautiful (supposedly complete) new wings, we found them shut down once again, for “essential maintenance.” Those Jack Yeats paintings will have to wait until our next visit, I suppose.

Dublin: City of Frustration?

I’ve spent more time in Dublin than perhaps your average tourist—around 7 months or so total—but I can’t claim to know it, of course, like people who live there. And yet the great thing about being a repeat visitor to any destination is the ability to see different sides of it: you observe its changes over time, but you also can’t help but change your own perspective on it. This time, I feel like I’ve I’ve shaken the stars from my eyes a bit and started to see what the locals see—that in some ways, Dublin is a frustrating place.

George's Street, Dublin, Ireland — George’s Street, Dublin

As countless poets, novelists and songwriters have observed over the years, Dublin spends much of its time being gray, drizzly and smelling of exhaust, the traffic is a nightmare and stalled building projects seem to glare from every corner. Like many other 21st-century metropoles, the city of Dublin has a problem with poverty, homelessness and drug addiction, and gentrification and skyrocketing housing costs haven’t helped. Perusing local independent paper the Dublin Inquirer, I read stories on rising noise levels in the city, the housing crisis and other myriad city problems. Being a Dubliner, never easy, seems to be getting even harder. So why do I, why do many of us, love this city so incredibly much?

“Dublin” on Our Hearts

James Joyce allegedly once stated that when he died, they’d find the name “Dublin” written on his heart. It’s a sentiment you’re likely to hear from others who have spent any amount of time in the city, even (perhaps especially) those given to griping over daily annoyances. I think perhaps what makes the city near and dear to so many are in fact its contrasts; this juxtaposition of the frustrating and the inspiring.

There’s the way those gray, rainy mornings can open up into sunshiny, optimistic afternoons—the kind that call post-work crowds to sunbathe on St. Stephen’s Green or congregate chattily in front of pubs with friends and pints in their hands.

And maybe it’s that feeling when you enter Merrion Square, and the shocking green of the vegetation seems to throw the city into technicolor, and its statue of Oscar Wilde, artfully slouching on his rock, half-smiles as if to say not too bad, is it?

Or those times when you enter a crowded, cozy pub, with its snugs and panels of beaten wood, and just when the barman has topped up your Guinness a few generous lads get up and leave you the perfect table.

The Winding Stair Bookshop, Dublin, Ireland

Perhaps also it’s the seemingly endless number of great bookshops to duck into, swearing you’re just going to browse until you encounter the carefully curated tables piled with enchanting works and the shopkeeper from central casting with the owl-eyed glasses (and 100 euro later you stagger out with a stack and a tote bag and a new lease on life).

And it’s noisy, yes, but in such a way that heightens one’s appreciation of the quiet places, like the medieval sanctuary at St. Audeon’s Church, the dignified stacks in the 18th-century Marsh’s Library, the dusky elegance of the Central Hotel’s upstairs Library Bar.

St. Audeon's Church, Dublin, Ireland — St. Audeon’s Church

Library Bar, Dublin, Ireland — Library Bar

Finally then there’s the way the noise seems to fall away on a Grafton Street Sunday morning, when the street’s occasionally tacky cover-song buskers make way for a singer-songwriter with startling talent, and people crowd around and listen as though they were in church.

David Owens on Grafton Street, Dublin, Ireland

Postscript from a Smitten Tourist

There’s a lot I could say to you about Dublin, about the ways I like to walk the city, its hidden charms and jagged edges, the off-the-beaten-path attractions, the food, the pints, the wit and wisdom of its people. But these few points of description really say it all. Dublin is a city of frustration, grit, poverty, occasional violence. But it’s also a city of tender moments, of beauty and softness, of light breaking through heavy clouds and bright colors on Georgian doors, of a group of friends and a song and a pint in your hand on a summer evening.

Ha'Penny Bridge on the River Liffey, Dublin, Ireland — Ha’Penny Bridge on the River Liffey, Dublin

Dublin Recommendations

Books:

Books Upstairs, 17 D’Olier Street, Dublin 2
The Winding Stair Bookshop, 40 Lower Ormond Quay, N. City, Dublin 1
Ulysses Rare Books, 10 Duke Street, Dublin 2
Hodges Figgis, 56-58 Dawson Street, Dublin 2

Pubs:

Library Bar at the Central Hotel, Exchequer Street, Dublin 2 – Go up 1 floor for the bar. This is a great place to have a pint by yourself with a book, though I’d recommend going before 5 p.m. to get a good spot.
The Long Hall, 51 South Great George’s Street, Dublin 2 – Classic Victorian Pub that’s small but always seems to have room for you. It’s faded Dublin elegance at its best.
Palace Bar, 21 Fleet Street, Dublin 2 – Another Victorian bar with a cozy skylit room and outdoor street tables. Midcentury meeting place for journalists from the Irish Times.
Mulligan’s, 8 Poolbeg Street, Dublin 2 – Storied 18th-century pub frequented by James Joyce and Irish poet Seamus Heaney, nicely hidden near Trinity College.
Bruxelles, 8 Harry Street, Dublin 2 – A Dublin institution frequented by musicians and featuring a statue outside of Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott, one of Ireland’s biggest rock stars. Go downstairs and you’ll have your choice between a cocktail lounge (the Zodiac Bar) and the Flanders Bar, a pub for aging punks and what Bruxelles’ website calls “rock heads.” I’d highly recommend the latter.
Kehoe’s, 9 Anne Street South, Dublin 2 – Traditional pub that draws large post-work crowds. Stand outside on charming Anne Street for a view of beautiful St. Ann’s Church.
Whelan’s, 25 Wexford Street, Portobello, Dublin 2 – Dublin’s best music venue, with a pub in the front and a club in the back.

For St. Patrick’s Day: Thoughts of Kerry, Ireland

Reflections and recommendations on experiencing the magical Kerry.

“A point comes on the fabulous Ring of Kerry when one earnestly wishes the scenery would flatten out and shut up. But it does nothing of the kind. . . Apart from the heady excitement of the big scenic shows, a succession of charming cameos keep the eye busy: stone walls running and wiggling up mountain slopes; turf-cutting scenes to left and right; near an ordinary and unornamental cottage, arum lilies growing in such abundance that they are practically wilding; farther along the roadside, children cheer and wave at the sight of a yellow bus. There is no rest in County Kerry from sights that are both lovely and interesting.”

– Stephen Rynne, from All Ireland, 1956

“Being born a Kerryman, in my opinion, is the greatest gift that God can bestow on any man. When you belong to Kerry, you know you have a head start on the other fellow. . . In belonging to Kerry, you belong to the elements. You belong to the spheres spinning in the heavens.”

– John B. Keane, in Voices of Kerry by Jimmy Woulfe, 1994

St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner, which prompted me to do a little #TBT post on one of my very favorite places to travel: Ireland, specifically the magical County Kerry.

The breathtaking Ladies' View at Killarney National Park — The breathtaking Ladies’ View at Killarney National Park

To a person who has spent any amount of time in Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day in the U.S. can be a particularly dreary affair – every bar suddenly decides it’s a pub, bud light gets dyed a sickening shade of emerald, and green hats and leprechaun jokes abound. Sure, as someone who has experienced St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin, I can attest that there is a lot of green and just as many boorish drunks (though they are boorish in a slightly different – and to this American, more amusing – way). But nothing about American St. Patrick’s Day celebrates the Irish culture in any meaningful way, and it always feels like a missed opportunity.

Kenmare, Not Killarney

Still, I typically do find myself reflecting this time of year of my love for the Emerald Isle. There are beautiful spots all over the country I could talk about, but as many tourists know, Country Kerry is always a good place to start. When I first visited Ireland back in 2001 with my family (my brother was concluding a study abroad semester in Cork), one of our first stops was in Kerry. We visited the breathtaking Killarney National Park and stayed in Kenmare, one of Ireland’s more cosmopolitan small towns.

Kenmare is a recommended first stop on the Ring of Kerry, which is one of those things that every tourist to Ireland seems to have on his/her agenda. But why not? As the droll mid-century Irish writer Stephen Rynne (I wholeheartedly recommend All Ireland to any Irelandophile who can get their hands on a copy) points out in the excerpt above, it is jaw-droppingly, excruciatingly beautiful. The photos accompanying this blog are those I took upon my third visit to Kerry, in 2016. My husband and I went to Kenmare from Dublin and then on to Caherciveen (and eventually to Skellig Michael, which is a bigger subject for another post).

If you visit Kerry and you’re not, say, the type of person who enjoys browsing in Carrolls Irish Gifts, I’d recommend spending little time Killarney. I’ve been to Killarney thrice now, as it’s the transportation hub within Kerry, and each time its more crowded with tourists and tourist attractions than the last. Killarney National Park is incredibly beautiful and certainly worth a visit. But once you’ve seen it (and it can be lovely to hike, if that’s your jam), it’s best to set out for one of Kerry’s many other intriguing towns.

Kenmare's busy main drag — Kenmare’s busy main drag

Any Irish tourist knows that one of the best sources of news and views is your taxi driver, and I can confirm that the town of Kenmare, a mere 30-minute drive from Killarney, has the Irish taxi driver seal of approval. When we told our Dublin taxi driver we were taking the DART to Kerry, he got right to the point. “Don’t go to Killarney,” he warned making a disapproving face in the rearview mirror. “It’s full of tourists.” Feeling pleased that we must look like the “right” kind of tourists, we assured him that we were in fact headed to Kenmare. He brightened. “Kenmare is lovely!” He enthused. Thirty minutes makes a big difference.

One reason Kenmare remains lovely is that the DART doesn’t go there. The train goes to Killarney, and you find your way from there. We ended up calling a taxi number posted to a dusty bulletin board in the train station, and soon we were riding with Dermot, who not only drove us through Killarney National Park but insisted upon stopping at Ladies’ View so we could take photos. Dermot told us he had never even been to Dublin. He was born in Kerry and in Kerry he stays. Looking around, who could argue with him?

Kenmare is indeed a beautiful town with a number of charming B&Bs (the two I’ve stayed in – both stellar – are the Brass Lantern and Ashfield). The town has your usual host of pubs, seafood restaurants and knitwear shops, but its most interesting historical attraction is the Bronze Age Stone Circle just at the edge of town. Inside the circle, it’s incredibly peaceful. I felt like I could stay for hours.

The awesomely still Stone Circle (with my husband Robert in the background).

Kenmare is an excellent first stop before really embarking on the Ring of Kerry, as it’s a fairly happening town. You get your fix of civilization before preparing to go further out. Many tourists do “The Ring” in the same way: they take a tour bus or drive, hitting all the main towns in a day. But I don’t usually go in for that kind of fast-paced tourism and besides, we had a Skellig Michael adventure planned that necessitated us making our way to the coast. So we headed to Caherciveen, one of the western-most towns on the ring. We rode the (surprisingly prompt) Bus Éireann through some of the most awe-inspiring landscapes there are, and made our way to the tiny western village.

The sleepy town of Cahersiveen — The sleepy town of Caherciveen

Caherciveen, Where “the People Are as Clever as Pet Foxes”

In All Ireland, Stephen Rynne doesn’t spill too much ink on Caherciveen, except to say: “It is an end-of-the-world town with an excellent hotel, and of course all the people are as clever as pet foxes” (102). It remains a pretty accurate description from what we gathered. At first, we marveled at the seeming emptiness of the town. The only people we seemed to spot around were groups of Spanish students, upon whose rowdiness any Irish proprietor we met seemed to comment disapprovingly. No one explained what they were doing there (on holiday?) but they lent an air of youthfulness to an otherwise quite elderly town, and seemed perfectly pleasant to us.

One of the best, simplest meals I've ever had. Kerry crab on brown bread in Caherciveen. — One of the best, simplest meals I’ve ever had. Kerry crab on brown bread in Caherciveen.

On our last night in town, however, we saw Caherciveen come to life: we stopped into what was supposedly the town’s best restaurant, an elegant seafood bistro. We were surprised to see the place filled up over the course of the night with cosmopolitan-looking people of various ages, many of whom seemed to know one another, drinking wine and laughing and talking and having a great old time. The little town wasn’t so quiet after all.

The outskirts of Cahersiveen — The outskirts of Caherciveen. No. Filter.

Caherciveen (which we learned, after listening closely to a number of taxi drivers, is pronounced “CAR-siv-een”) is a town of a few blocks that dissolves into some of the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen. Water, mountains, wildflowers, and big, fluffy clouds – it’s all there.

One of Ireland’s many incredible old castles, Ballycarbery, is within about a 45-minute walk to the village. We lucked out with beautiful weather and made the journey (see the top image for full effect).

Ballycarbery Castle near Cahersiveen — Ballycarbery Castle near Caherciveen

This is the problem with writing a blog – it’s got to come to a close sometime, but there are certain subjects about which one feels inclined to go on and on. Kerry is one of those. If you’re taking a trip to Ireland, visit this beautiful place. But I’d recommend avoiding the typical hop-on-the-bus, see-a-town-for-10-minutes method. I personally have been to Kerry three times now, and I still haven’t even seen all towns on the ring. But I know this: each and every town has its own special quirks and surprises. So why not just pick one and go?

There are two tiny memories that come to my mind when I think of Kerry: one I saw from the window of the bus Éireann on my last visit, as we rolled through one of the northern towns – either Glenbeigh or Killorgan. It was a lazy Sunday, and I watched a white-haired man emerge from a shop with a newspaper in hand. As he walked down the street, he was greeted by passers-by – clapped on the shoulder, waved to, chatted with. It was a slow, sunny, cool day in Kerry, and nothing could seem more perfect.

The other memory didn’t even take place in County Kerry. I was on a ferry heading to Clare Island in County Mayo as I watched a little boy bend to pet a handsome Irish Setter. “He’s lovely,” the boy said to the dog’s elderly master. “What’s his name?”

“Kerry,” the man said.

The little boy looked up, surprised. “I was born in Kerry,” he said.

The older man smiled at the boy. “So was I.”

I’ll leave you with some more from Stephen Rynne:

“In the nineteenth century, Kerry was already fashionable; in the twentieth century it is almost riotously popular. The ink nearly dries on my pen at the thought of how it is over-written, over-romanticized and now almost overrun. The tens of thousands who have admired its scenery imagine that they know Kerry; so they do—from the outside. There remain the people. ‘Kerry brains’ are proverbial and, if anything, the people of this country outmatch their scenery in the variety and unexpectedness of their intellectual gifts” (107).

The road back to Cahersiveen — The road back to Caherciveen

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