Last Tuesday my dear friend Cathy arrived in Dublin for a week-long visit. It was obviously a week I'd been looking forward to for some time, and now I'm a bit sad that it has come and gone so quickly. But it was so wonderful having her here, and we had such a great time. We spent a couple of evenings hanging about in Dublin, having dinner at a pub that's housed in an old church (only in Europe do they have enough churches to turn old, unused ones into pubs), and partaking in the literary pub crawl. The crawl was very inspiring as we were treated to snippet performances of some of the most famous Irish literary works -- Waiting for Godot being one -- and told colourful stories about James Joyce, Brendan Behan, and Samuel Beckett. It reminded me that I'd like to read more of these writers...perhaps not Joyce's Ulysses, but maybe start with The Dubliners or something a little more accessible!
On Good Friday Cathy and I took the train to Galway, the largest city on the west coast, and spent the day there. There are two days in the entire year when you can't buy a drop of alcohol in Ireland and Good Friday is one of them (Christmas day is the other). Luckily we had known about this and brought a bottle of wine with us:) We spent the day wandering around Galway Bay, getting lost while looking for the cathedral (there's never just one cathedral), and having a fabulous Irish breakfast at 3 in the afternoon...yum...
Saturday morning we took the ferry to Inisheer, which is the smallest of the three islands off the west coast, collectively referred to as the Aran islands. These islands have been at the top of my list of places to visit since I arrived in Ireland, so I was excited to get there! And Inisheer lived up to the hype -- it's totally gorgeous and charming. It has literally thousands of low stone walls and has a wild, windswept, almost desolate feel. We spent most of our time wandering around the island, checking out the shipwreck of the Plassy on the east side, and the lighthouse at the southern tip, as well as the ruins of O'Brien's castle.
On Saturday afternoon we stumbled onto a teahouse run out of a local home by a woman named Mairéad (pronounced Mar-ade, the Irish version of Margaret). Meeting Mairéad was the highlight of the weekend. She's a woman of 60, originally from Cork, who married an islander. Mairéad is one of those totally dynamic women who people fall in love with and want to take home with them -- at least that happened to me:) She has run the teahouse for several years and is a whiz with textiles -- she spins and dyes her own wool, knits incredible things with the wool, and also crochets, weaves, sews and anything else involving fabric. She served us tea and scrumptious cakes, then sat and talked to us about the island and about knitting.
I learned to knit a few weeks ago (yes, Braden, I know, I'm old before my time) and Mairéad gave me some beginner tips. I bought quite a bit of her wool -- hand spun and dyed -- and am planning to make some special things with it. While we were at Mairéad's, two girls who were artists in residence on the island came in. They are studying at an art school in Holland, and are on the island for 6 weeks. They are living in an old factory that has been converted into an arts and culture centre. On Sunday we returned to Mairéad's for more of her yummy cooking and then went with her up to see the girls in the residence. They have a gorgeous studio with high ceilings and a view of the west side of the island, which means they see stunning sunsets from the comfort of their couch. I was drooling with jealousy and was trying to think about what artistic talent I might have that could be parlayed into this situation...but, no luck.
Anyway, it was a wonderful, magical four-day Easter weekend, and it was a treat having Cathy here. Cathy and I lived in residence at UBC together way back in 1995 (!!) so we've known each other for a long time. It was so nice to have someone here to talk to who knows me -- my friends and family and life history. It was like having a piece of home here in Ireland.
Pictures from the weekend are on my Flickr site.
Till next time, then!
Love to all of you,
Tessa
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