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Day 35. Five weeks; and it’s starting to feel like it!
Today was largely a driving day as we departed from the westernmost point of Ireland to drive directly across the country to Dublin. It sounds long, but it probably was only 3 hours of hard driving.
We made 3 stops.
The first stop was at a local crystal shop where we got to see cutting/etching up close and personal. This man was an artist. He had used a sharpie to draw some reference lines on a clean crystal bowl and then he started etching by hand using wheels in the old school way. To get the varied depths of the cuts he used his body weight to lean in. It was like watching a ballet!
From there we ventured on toward Dublin and took a brief lunch break at a Circle K. Seriously. But, they had a McDonalds which after all the fish and chips of the last 5 weeks, looked really good. Quarter pounder, fries, shake. A little taste of home.
After lunch we continued on to Dublin where we stopped at the Pearse Lyons Whiskey Distillery. It’s a small batch distillery delivering on the founder’s love for all things bourbon. He emigrated to Kentucky in the 1970s, developed his skill, and brought it back to Ireland to influence the production of unique Irish whiskeys.
Even more unique was that they refashioned a church (leaving the cemetery alone) into a high-end distillery. There was no production today because the head distiller decided to take a week of vacation, but we still learned a lot.
The evening farewell event was at an Irish music venue about 30 minutes away from the hotel. We practiced a lot of clapping to Irish jigs on the bus so we would not embarrass ourselves at the show. Given that we were to leave at 6PM and not get back until after 11, we opted to just grab a quiet bite to eat (just a plain rotisserie chicken) and be ready for a 7AM pickup from the hotel to catch our flight to Paris.
So this ends Stage 4 (1: Amsterdam, 2: Iceland cruises, 3: Dublin, 4: Irish castles) and tomorrow brings on Stage 5 in France. Stay tuned.
