 Niamh (the bride) set it up for us to stay with one of her friends (Liz) instead of in a hotel. I MUCH prefer that because I did not want to be a tourist as much as in and among "real" people, getting to know the culture as much as possible.
Liz has a charming home, she has traveled all over the world, and has things all around her home telling of her travels. Her home was filled with color, one wall yellow the other wall deep purple with a dark wood fireplace in the middle. The photo above shows a print from Japan that was above her sink. the window looks out to a walled garden, filled with flowers, herbs and vegetables, and a little cottage-y shed in the back. 
I know I did a terrible job slicing this cheese ( two kinds of Dublin Cheddar) but I had the knife in one hand, the block of cheese in the other, and we were bumping along roads through the Irish countryside. This is what we ate almost every day for lunch, along with Nutella, orange Ginger marmalade or honey. "When you arrived into the kitchen you were seated on a soft sugan chair and given a cup of scalding tea colored with goat's milk and a cut of bread with a thick layer of homemade jam, and afterwards you got a fistful of strawberries, or raspberries that were soft and luscious." (Pg 95 To School Through The woods by Alice Taylor) 
We went a few days before the wedding to see if the bride's family needed any help, we so deeply enjoyed spending time with them. Steve helped paint and clean (the ceremony was on their property) and I did help, but when there was nothing else for me to do I asked if I could explore their backyard. This family lives way out in the country, literally. I did not hear any neighbors, mostly the donkey next door and cows. The father of the bride had told me all about the 1600s-era abandoned settlement on their property. Seen from their back porch, it looked deceptively small and accessible, half-hidden in the tall grass and bushes; but when I got down into it, it turned out to be quite large, maybe football-field-sized, or larger...the size of a village. The picture above is only 1/3 of it. The grass was deep, chest deep, and it was boggish, which in our terms means swampish, and I was wearing the size 10 "wellies" (Wellington boots) Niamh's father had let me borrow. I had to lift the boots up quite high with each step and quite often got stuck. The bog land has deep holes that you trip in and prickers. I felt like I was in a British comedy. If I was being filmed, you would all be laughing at me. I would take a break every once in a while and take shots of the flowers/weeds that were in my face and then continue on, like a distracted child. The stone fences were NOT easy to climb in boots twice my size and my camera gear. My face was bright red, eyelids hot, and I could hear my heartbeat thumping in my ear, and all the while I was thinking..I cannot believe God is so good to give me this adventure, I did not even know to ask for this. I am here alone with no one in sight in any direction exploring the ruins of a 1600s settlement! I ran my hand over the stones, moved one and found an old glass jar, and yes I brought it home, I sat in the corner of an old house, stood in the middle of a primitive stone church, prayed, closed my eyes and felt the sun, and enjoyed the experience to the fullest. There were large trees that had grown up around the stone structures, wrapping their roots all in and out of the stones, and flowering bushes growing in what was at one time a living space. There are too many pictures to post them all here, just trust me the memory of it is a treasure to me now. 
The old road, I walked on all soft now beneath my feet. If I lived here with all this in my back yard I would spend my entire childhood as a self proclaimed archeologist and fill my afternoons digging for clues of the past. 
distractions 
When I was finished exploring (I got a little lost, but no regrets) we drove deeper into Connemara, where the land is even more rugged and wild. Most people go right to Clifden, but what I wanted so badly was to take little side roads and go to not-so-popular places so that I could feel like it was at a place still wild and uncontaminated with thousands of peering eyes..Contradictory I know, being that I am one big pair of wide awake peering eyes. It is just that when a place is selling tickets and you are viewing it with hundreds of other tourists and parts are roped off it loses so much. 
We stopped for cows crossing and sheep sleeping in the road and views knocking on our windows. Connemara is beautiful, hand on your chest, you can't take it all in beautiful, in a vast lonely way. 
Steve is standing next to an old fisherman's cottage which is near a stream. Everything looks richer and brighter when he is holding my hand. We have been comparing this trip to our Paris/Niger Africa trip. Niger felt like it was always in me, confirmed my desire to be a missionary to a third world country. The people were earthy and the life hard, but there was joy in the people like no where else. Paris was romantic and artsy and alive just like you would think with flower stands and street musicians and tiny winding stone roads and painters painting out in the open and lovers kissing with pigeons flying around and bakeries selling crusty bread..and you wanting more than anything to speak fluent French because it sounds so smooth. but Ireland...I know now why people return year after year. It was old and strong and wild and lonely, and it took my breath away. Connemara is where we most want to return, it feels vast and there is so much more to explore. It reminded me of South Dakota, the color of the land and the rocks. 
A very common site, an old structure of a home, from the famine? Earlier? It was almost painful this insatiable desire to know the stories of the people who lived here. It is not fair not to know, they should leave journals behind, tell us who they were, who they loved, of the heartaches and highlights and traditions of their lives. Before we left I had read books by Alice Taylor and others telling about their childhood growing up near here. "Uncle Andy Connie, he must have been fairly old but he had the heart and fitness of a teenager. Leading into our outside yard was a five foot gate and into the garden a smaller one, and he never opened either one but jumped over them. He loved singing and dancing and often stood in the middle of the kitchen floor and danced a jig or a reel. He just danced because he was full of the joy of life and we loved the see him coming as he was a ray of sunshine." (Pg 56 To School Through The Fields by Alice Taylor) 
"My father stood with one hand on his hip, and the other rubbing the base of his neck; it was his stance when everything was right in the world." (Pg 112 To School Through The Fields by Alice Taylor) | 
