Ireland 2022 Part 3: A Brazen Act of Kindness

We flew into Dublin and spent a day and night there before driving to Kinsale.

We walked from our hotel to the Temple Bar section and enjoyed our first pints on Ireland soil in a very crowded tourist bar, listened to a talented Irish musician there, and, it being Ireland, quickly struck up a conversation, with a couple from Australia who were on a round-the-world trip.

Dublin is teeming with college students and young workers at the major tech and consulting companies there, including Accenture, Google, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and Deloitte. Trams, busses, cars, and scooters whiz through the city non-stop.

The next morning we visited the former home of Sister Catherine McAuley, founder of the Sisters of Mercy, a Catholic women’s institution that operates education and healthcare facilities around the world. Donna's sister Sue is a Mercy associate and lives in McAuley Hall at a Mercy facility.

A locals’ pub

Many of the pubs we visited are geared toward tourists. Others are local haunts where Americans are accepted if not warmly embraced. In Wexford, between Dublin and Kinsale, we found a pub a couple blocks from the main street called Jim McGee’s. We got a pint and sat at a table with a comfortable, if a bit aged, couch amid the bar’s abundant kitchy wall hangings and with a view of the TV showing horse racing.

A man entered the pub accompanying his elderly mother, who gave us a long stink eye. I asked if we were in their spot, and the woman said no, then the son said, “she would never say so.” We apologized and moved to a different table. A regular customer, she had come to watch the races at her usual table; she was effusive in her gratitude to us as she positioned herself to watch the horses while her son joined her with a couple pints. We finished our drinks and bid good-bye.

Beautiful Kinsale

We stayed in Kinsale for three nights. The town of 5,000 near Ireland’s southern coast is beautiful, brightly colored, and nestled alongside the River Brandon, which feeds into the nearby sea. From our room we had gorgeous views of a marina filled with pleasure boats and large fishing vessels.

Kinsale is a playground not just for foreign tourists but for Irish too. It boasts posh hotels, chic boutiques, and excellent restaurants serving fantastic fresh seafood. Our favorite restaurant was Blue Haven, with a rich, wood-paneled dining room, outstanding service, and really, really, good seafood. At another very good restaurant, Fishy Fishy, we were seated next to a party of about 10 Irish of all ages. It again being Ireland, we struck up a conversation with one of the adults, who seemed to know everyone in the country: Jim McGee, the owner of the Wexford pub we had patronized (he’s an excellent golfer); the owner of the crystal shop in Dingle (a former Waterford master glassworker who left to go out on his own); and on and on. He was very friendly and chatty (it being Ireland).

Mad Hatters Taste of Kinsale

Unbeknownst to us and coincidental to our stay, the Saturday we were in Kinsale was the annual Mad Hatters Taste of Kinsale event – an Alice in Wonderland-themed restaurant crawl that draws hundreds of participants who wear outlandish hats and garb and partake at the town’s top eateries. Here’s a link.

Irish Kindness

Parking ordinarily is at a premium throughout Kinsale – at our 75-room hotel, for instance, there were spaces for perhaps 25 cars, and street parking is limited. The morning of the event, before we knew what was happening, we gave up our hard-found and tiny parking spot in the hotel lot to take a day trip to Cobh. On our return, the town was clogged with partiers – and their cars. Our hotel lot was full; luckily we found a spot at another hotel’s lot and walked back to our hotel. We stopped at the front desk to explain where we had parked and why, and were told that our car was illegally parked and subject to ticketing or “clamping.” My protests about having secured parking at the hotel being met with a shrug of the shoulders, we stepped outside and I was resigned to get the car and somehow find a legal parking spot somewhere.

Donna, seeing a deliveryman heading to his van in our hotel’s lot, asked if by chance he was leaving; he answered yes and asked if we would like his spot. Donna said we would very much like it, but our car currently was across town. “No worries, he said, “I’ll wait.” So he and Donna conversed in the lobby while I sprinted past knots of would-be Alices and Cheshire Cats to get the car. Upon my arrival he left with a friendly wave of the hand and we gratefully took his coveted parking spot.

Here are more pictures from Kinsale: