Tuesday, July 3, 2018

June 28: Bunratty and Knappogue

Farewell to tiny Doolin! I woke up so happy that I had gone to the pub the night before to hear the music before leaving Ireland. We had done some music "experiences" in Dublin but they all felt staged and touristy so I was really glad that we took the time to hear the real deal.

I'm feeling a definite slump in energy - normally this would be the day that we head home from an international trip. And yet we have weeks to go! This makes me feel both excited and a little panicky. Plus the past couple of days have been relaxing, yes, but not quite enough to do and I might have tightened things up if I had it to do again. But I don't, and the only way of knowing that is to research a ton and then try it out. Live and learn!

So we checked out of our Doolin house, and unable to bear another meal at a pub, we stopped at a gloriously normal grocery store!! We were in heaven seeing fresh fruit and a salad bar. We drove around through some little old towns looking for a place to sit down with our picnic, and eventually found a lovely tree-shaded stream on the side of the road with a stone wall that worked as a counter. The kids ate sandwiches and carrots; I had Greek yogurt with berries and granola. I am aching to settle into a kitchen and actually cook a meal, and have a bowl of apples on the counter top. It's nice to have a chance to miss those things and not take them for granted!

After lunch, on to more ruins. This time it's Quin Abbey, another 12th Century monastery. It's beautiful, and I wish we weren't getting so accustomed to it. It is starting to feel like no big deal.

Next to Bunratty Castle and Folk Park, which Rick Steves said to skip, but Trip Advisor said to do. I remember liking it before, and I can never resist a living museum with characters in costume! In the end though it was soooo hot and we only saw one costumed docent - a lady who had just finished churning butter and said "yep, I just finished churning the butter. There it is on the table." And that was that. But we had fun touring the castle and I thought it was fascinating to walk through the re-created homes of Irish families hundreds of years ago. Two things struck me over and over: first, probably because I have read, studied, and written so much about Catholicism and representation of the divine feminine, I noticed the female representation in the ubiquitous religious art in every home. Most had equal numbers of holy men and women adorning their walls and mantels, which is completely foreign (and heretical) for a Protestant or Mormon. What a different experience to grow up seeing a Queen of Heaven represented - someone a girl can emulate and can actually aspire to be! Second, it made me so sad to see the living conditions of the poor - filthy burlap-covered piles of straw on the ground, with a place for a fire on the dirt floor and perhaps a rough-hewn table and chair. Meanwhile the masters for whom they worked lived next door in relative luxury. My mind threw itself yet again against the age-old questions of accountability, free will, justice, and charity. I feel this dynamic in my personal life all the time, not as starkly, visibly represented of course, but when my cleaning ladies speak to me in an overly deferential manner and call me SeƱora - like "Lady" - it just makes me squirm with discomfort. I don't understand why some people are born with every opportunity and advantage and seem to have a constant stream of good luck, and others are not. The only thing I do know is that I want to help whenever I can, and I want to treat all people with love and respect. If my soul were born on the other side of a country's border or with different parents or with a different body or different brain in my skull, who's to say what my life would look like?

And now I feel even stupider for admitting that after reflecting on the plight of the poor, our family went on to have a medieval banquet and spend a night at a castle, which we found on air b'n'b and was the surprise we were so excited to give to our kids. We should have flown home and donated all our money to the poor. Is that the right thing to do? I cry about it frequently and so does Erik. We don't know. We don't know why things are the way they are.

But yes, we slept in a castle - there a lot of small castles in Europe that have realized they can make money on blowing American tourists' minds, and they put on cheesy medieval feasts and rent out the rooms of real, genuine castles. This one was small enough that we had it all to ourselves after the banquet was over, including the grounds. When we arrived we were so hot and tired and the kids were so sick of walking around old buildings, that it took a lot for them to trust me and come in for one last tour of this really cool old building they had no idea what I had in store for them). The caretaker took us around the whole thing showing us this and that, and then she handed over the keys to the Lord and Lady of the castle and the kids went berzerk. My very favorite part was running around the gardens in the evening and doing a workout there in the morning.













































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