Sean Henri

The N17

February 12, 2012 // 0 Comments  // Add yours »

I love the song N17 by the Saw Doctors. It's about an Irish emigrant longing to be back home on a road in Ireland. I've never been, but it's on our to-do list for our next trip to Ireland along with most of counties Galway, Mayo, Sligo and Donegal.

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We're Engaged!

August 08, 2011 // 0 Comments  // Add yours »

Just went on the trip of a lifetime - a ten day long tour of Ireland with the love of my life...  and came back engaged! 

It was on the second to last full day of our trip when I proposed.  We had taken a boat out Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway, and biked our way out to the "Man of Aran Cottage" where we stayed for the night. Man of Aran is modeled after the old fashioned thatched roof cottages that were once common in Ireland, but was actually built in the 1930's for the documentary "Man of Aran".

Arriving at the cottage via bike

Our view while we enjoyed some wine in the backyard

Joe Watty's - best pub on the island

Walking up the trail to Dun Aengus, an ancient fort built around 900BC alongside an extremely high cliff... and where I proposed.

Kelly lovingly scaring the sh*t out of me

I could see the headlines - "Woman falls off cliff to her death seconds before boyfriend proposes"...

Fortunately she stepped far away enough from cliff where I could feel safe enough to get down on one knee and ask her to marry me.. and SHE SAID YES!!!

After we got back I did some reading about the place and learned that the name Dun Aengus translates to Fort of Aengus.  Aeungus was the pre-Christian god of love, youth and poetic inspiration.  The myth says he had four birds flying about his head, which supposedly is where the xxxx's symbolizing kisses at the end of love letters come from. Cool!

Couldn't be happier!

Posted in:  A Day In The Life, Aran Islands, BlogSherpa, County Galway, Inishmór, Ireland, Ireland 2011, Irish Travel, Travel | Permalink |  Digg This | Share on Facebook | Comments (0)

The weekend in Inishmór

October 27, 2009 // 3 Comments  // Add yours »

The other week I made my second visit to Ireland this year. It was a much shorter trip than the one I took in August, and had a very different feel to it.  This time around I was there primarily to visit some friends of mine, whereas the last time around I was there to tour the country. My friend Rachel and her boyfriend James were kind enough to let me stay in her home in Limerick for the few days I was over, and for the most part we just relaxed. 

The one big plan for the weekend was to visit Inis Mór, one of the Aran Islands located in Galway Bay. The islands are known for their strong Irish culture and loyalty to the Irish language and are only accessible by a small plane or boat.  To get there we had to take about a three hour drive north past Galway and through Connemara to a ferry in Ros a' Mhíl. The ferry ride was about an hour long, and we arrived on the island sometime after dark.

The first thing that struck me was how quiet the island was. Aside from the few cars that were waiting at the pier when we arrived, there wasn't a vehicle in sight.  The sky was perfectly clear and we could see ten times as many stars as I could ever see back home in Derby, and aside from the waves crashing and a few teenagers playing on the steps near our hostel, there wasn't a sound.

At night we walked up the hill to a pub called Joe Watty's.  They had some of the best Guinness I've ever had and the experience was a memorable one.  There were some regulars, some sober, some drunk.. one guy with no teeth and drool all over his face who was stumbling from one table to a next trying to find someone to join him for a dance.  Then there some people visiting from the mainland of Ireland, including a man from Dublin sitting on a stool in front of the musician singing along, who dropped his pint on the floor then made his way towards our table for a sloppy sing-a-long of the Saw Doctor's "N17" - a song I had never heard before until that night.  By the time the night was over we found ourselves acquainted with a number of people, including three other Seans - a first in my life.

In the morning the three of us rented bikes for the day.  Since there aren't many cars this is the primary way to get around the island.  We rode from Killronan, the main town of the island, to a prehistoric fort on the cliffs about four miles away known as Dún Aengus.

Posted in:  A Day In The Life, Aran Islands, BlogSherpa, County Galway, Inishmór, Ireland, Ireland 2009, Irish Travel, Photos, Travel | Permalink |  Digg This | Share on Facebook | Comments (3)

The drive from Dingle to Limerick

August 07, 2009 // 0 Comments  // Add yours »

At this point in our trip we had given up entirely on worrying about any sort of a schedule, so we took our time driving north to Limerick.  We made our way through Conor Pass blasting Beatles the entire way, and then slowly wound our way back down from the mountains to the coast, pulling over to stop whenever something interesting caught our eyes.

By the time the mid-afternoon had come, we had already seen and done enough to fill an entire week. In need of a boost, we stopped at the first "coffee" sign we came across. We pulled in thinking we had come across a small cafe, but instead found ourselves drinking coffee in a someones kitchen and chatting about the weather.

Some of our stops included Lislaughtin Abbey, Ballyheighe - a place where I enjoyed some of my first beers in life ten years earlier, and a pub Kildare where we stopped for dinner. It was close to ten by the time we arrived in Limerick.

Posted in:  A Day In The Life, Adare and Around, BlogSherpa, County Kerry, County Limerick, Dingle, Dingle Peninsula, Ireland, Ireland 2009, Irish Travel, Limerick City, Photos, Travel | Permalink |  Digg This | Share on Facebook | Comments (0)

Fungi the Dingle Dolphin

August 07, 2009 // 1 Comments  // Add yours »

After getting lost in the mountains we found ourselves arriving in Dingle about an hour and a half behind schedule.  In fact, we never actually pinpointed where our bed and breakfast was for the night.  Instead we just drove around until we came across it.  Prior to arriving I had exchanged emails with the owner, Katharine, and agreed that if we were going to be late we would call in and let her know.  Unfortunately we never got around to doing this, so by the time we arrived the door was locked shut and we were stuck out on the sidewalk.

Fortunately the people in the pub across the street where more than helpful.  The bartender called her on her cell and she raced down to open back up for us.  While we were waiting, the owner of the shop next door came outside and offered his assistance as well.  Nice people.

That night we followed the advice given to us by someone we had talked to on the street and made our way to a yellow pub down the street. After a few pints and about an hour's worth of traditional Irish music we stepped outside for some fresh air and were told about the "fine hourses" at the races that weekend in Dingle.

With a long day behind us and another planned for the following, we enjoyed one more pint then headed back to our B&B, the Lantern Townhouse, for some rest.

In the morning we took a walk from the B&B and visited the church where the study abroad program for Sacred Heart University is based.  After a quick, memorable tour of the church and a somewhat uncomfortable conversation with an English author about American culture, we walked towards the water with the hopes of taking a boat ride.

We spent the next hour chasing around Fungi the Dingle dolphin.  It was a lot of fun, and even a bit funny to zoom back and forth with a bunch of boats going "there's the dolphin!" every few minutes for an hour as if we had never seen one before.   Then again, I suppose it isn't every day you see a dolphin.

We finished our morning with lunch in a pub down by the water and then began our drive to Limerick.

Posted in:  A Day In The Life, BlogSherpa, County Kerry, Dingle, Dingle Peninsula, Ireland, Ireland 2009, Irish Travel, Photos, Travel | Permalink |  Digg This | Share on Facebook | Comments (1)

The Wicklow Mountains, Glendalough and the Rock of Cashal

August 05, 2009 // 0 Comments  // Add yours »

It was going to be a long day.  The night before we had stayed out late on a pub crawl and that morning we had approximately 240 miles of driving planned with many stops in-between.

After a quick breakfast in Dublin (sandwiches from a grocery store), we made our way south towards the Wicklow mountains. Our first stop was Enniskerry, a small village which I had visited three years earlier.  We grabbed a coffee and then visited "Aladdins Cave", an antique gallery on  Church Hill that is PACKED with cool antiques including paintings, silver, jewelry,etc.  After a long conversation with the gallery owner, John O' Brien, I picked up a circa 1870 Victorian-style tankard to make a pair out of the one I had bought at the same gallery during my last visit.

The next stop, a spontaneous one, was at Glendalough - home of an early medieval monstac settlement founded in the 6th century by St. Keven, a hermit priest, in a beautiful glacial valley.

Glendalough really impressed me.  It's one of those many places in Ireland where pictures could never do justice.  After walking through the gravestones and buildings, we took a few minutes to stick our feet in the water and relax for a bit.  It was freezing, like we had expected, but also refreshing considering the long drive ahead.

We continued through the mountains and then made our way towards Cashal, passing through Kilkenny along the way.  I had originally planned on stopping here, but with the stop at Glendalough we didn't have enough time.

Around sunset we found ourselves at the Rock of Cashal, much later than expected.  The castle was closed at this point, but we still enjoyed the views from a nearby hill.  For dinner we stopped at a local pub and it was probably the worst meal we had all week.

Posted in:  A Day In The Life, BlogSherpa, Ireland, Ireland 2009, Irish Travel, Photos, Road Trips, Travel | Permalink |  Digg This | Share on Facebook | Comments (0)

The mummies of St. Michan's Church

August 04, 2009 // 3 Comments  // Add yours »

We began our only full day in Dublin by visiting St. Michan's Church, one of the more unusual attractions in the city. Below the church lies a series of vaults, containing numerous coffins and four exposed mummies - two women and two men. They say that one of the mummies was a thief - his body missing one hand, possibly due to punishment prior to his death. Both of his feet are cut off and tucked under his legs so that he could fit inside his coffin. Directly behind him is much older mummy - about 800 years old. It is said that he was a crusader, and it's become tradition to "shake the hand" of the mummy for good luck. Shaking his hand really involves just touching his finger, which both of us did. 

In several of the vaults we could see exposed hands, arms, legs and skulls bursting through decaying coffins.  One vault contained the coffins of nobility.  The coffins were all decorated with crowns to indicate their status, all except for one - a man who was assassinated due to his unpopularity.  The family apparently didn't like him either, so they buried him in a plain coffin.

Another vault contains the remains of the Sheare brothers, who were hanged, drawn and quartered by the British for treason following the Rebellion of 1798.

Posted in:  A Day In The Life, BlogSherpa, Ireland, Ireland 2009, Irish Travel, Travel, Videos | Permalink |  Digg This | Share on Facebook | Comments (3)

Clonmacnoise

August 03, 2009 // 1 Comments  // Add yours »

In order to break up the long drive between Galway and Dublin, we took a side-trip off the N6 to Clonmacnoise, a former monastery founded by Saint Ciarán in 545 AD.  Considering most of the remaining structures were built sometime during the 12th and 13th centuries and that the settlement had suffered dozens of attacks by the Vikings, Anglo-Normans and English, it's amazing that anything still stands.

I've been told the best way to go here is to take a boat ride up the River Shannon from Shannonbridge, but we were a bit short for time so didn't bother and took the road up instead.

While there we kept running into this overly friendly dog.  I thought it might have been a stray, but after asking some of the staff about it we found out that it was owned by someone living down the street.  They didn't seem very fond of him. 

Posted in:  A Day In The Life, BlogSherpa, Ireland, Ireland 2009, Irish Travel, Travel | Permalink |  Digg This | Share on Facebook | Comments (1)

Morning in Galway

August 03, 2009 // 0 Comments  // Add yours »

Monday morning we had the option of either catching up on some much-needed sleep or leaving early for a trip out to Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands. I'm not sure we made the right choice (as I was yelled at for this choice later on in the week), but we opted against going to to the island and took it slow instead. 

The plan for the day was to drive to Dublin, which is about a 3 and a half hour drive away and a bit boring compared to other parts of the country.  So we took our time walking around the water, stopped for breakfast and a coffee on Quay St., and then stocked up on red bull and cheese and onion Tayto crips before hitting the road.

Posted in:  A Day In The Life, BlogSherpa, Ireland, Ireland 2009, Irish Travel, Travel | Permalink |  Digg This | Share on Facebook | Comments (0)

A drive through the Burren

August 02, 2009 // 3 Comments  // Add yours »

This will be my fourth time in Ireland, almost ten years exactly since I first visited for three weeks as an exchange scout at age 15.  During my l last visit over in 2007 I decided to focus on a single area - Limerick, primarily because I had several friends living in the area and I felt as though I hadn't spent enough time there during my trip over one year earlier. 

This time around the plan was to get a rental car and travel across the country with my friend Patti.  We were going to go from Shannon to Galway, to Dublin, to Killarney, to Dingle, and then finish in Limerick.  We had a very loose itinerary, but I made sure I knew all the places worth stopping at in between.  Then plan worked out perfectly, with the exception of one major snag in the very beginning.

The flight over was great.  We flew with Delta from JFK to Shannon overnight.  It was about 5 1/2 hours and we were served both dinner and breakfast.  Wine and beer was complimentary, the food wasn't half bad, and we had dozens of movies to chose from at our pleasure from our seats.  Arriving at Shannon was easy and stress-free as it usually is.  The problem came about when we went to go pick up our car.

I had placed a reservation for the car through Expedia.com with a company called Payless Car Rental.  My reservation with Expedia stated that my total would be €314.40 for the week, which equated to approximately $450.00.  I had called to confirm that total with Payless 24 hours before departure to be safe.  I let them know I was concerned that because I had payed in full in advance that there would be additional fees when I arrived, but I was assured over the phone that there wouldn't be. 

As it turned out, Payless Car Rental is an American company that books car rentals through an Irish company called Dooley Car Rentals.  When we finally realized this (there was no sign for Payless), I was informed that there would be an additional €124 for airport fees, taxes, etc.  I disputed the extra charges and brought up my conversation with Payless 24 hours earlier, but they wouldn't budge.  Since the car was a necessity for a week I went ahead and agreed to the additional charges.  So they ran my card, then gave me a second receipt for my payment of €1,500.00 - an insurance deductible that was being put on hold until I returned the car.  My car rental had gone from €314.40 to over €2,000.00 without any warning. 

The moral of this story: Do not rent cars from Dooley Car Rental, do not rent cars from Payless Car Rental, and don't place reservations for car rentals with Expedia.com because you will be cheated.

We canceled the reservation with Dooley, got the money back, and then picked up a car from Budget Car Rental, which still ended up costing $600 more than I had planned.  But we didn't let it bring us down.  We got in the car and a few minutes later the stress was behind us - to be resolved later when I got back to America.

From the airport we took the N18 northwest to Ennis, we we stopped in a pub & restaurant called Brogan's, and then drove towards the cliffs of Moher.  We had the weather you'd expect going to Ireland - cool, rainy and windy.  It was refreshing after the flight though.  The wind at the cliffs was strong as always.  The rain was refreshing, at least initially.  It messed up a ton of photos though.. there's water blotches on more than half of them from the day.

From the cliffs we drove towards R480, which brought us through the heart of the Burren past Leamanagh Castle, Carran Church, Caherconnell Stone Fort, and Poulnabrone Portal Tomb.

Galway was extremely overcrowded - presumably because the Galway Races had ended a few hours earlier and many people had off from work the following day due to a bank holiday.  We went out and had dinner at Riordan's Food House before making our way out to a few different pubs - meeting quite a few interesting drunken fools along the way.

Posted in:  A Day In The Life, BlogSherpa, Ireland, Ireland 2009, Irish Travel, Travel | Permalink |  Digg This | Share on Facebook | Comments (3)

Video from my trip (Part 2)

August 15, 2007 // 1 Comments  // Add yours »

Here's some more footage from my recent trip to Ireland.  This one starts off on the tour bus that I jumped on with the Troop 3 scouts from Derby, which brought us through The Burren to the Cliffs of Moher, and then down to our hotels in Limerick.

Posted in:  Ireland, Ireland 2007, Irish Travel, Travel, Videos | Permalink |  Digg This | Share on Facebook | Comments (1)

Video from my trip

August 14, 2007 // 0 Comments  // Add yours »

This is a real touristy-like video from my trip to Ireland.  It's mostly just footage of the landscape from when I first landed and then while I was walking around Galway.  It's more for my own memory than for anything else, but I'm sharing it anyway.   I have one more clip coming.

Posted in:  Ireland, Ireland 2007, Irish Travel, Travel, Videos | Permalink |  Digg This | Share on Facebook | Comments (0)

Back home from Ireland

August 12, 2007 // 0 Comments  // Add yours »

I'm back home from Ireland.  I've posted all of my pictures as well as a few that I swiped from Randy from Troop 3 in the Pictures section.  I'll have more tomorrow once I get my hands on my brother Kevin's pictures.  I'll also upload my video from the trip very soon.

Posted in:  Ireland, Ireland 2007, Irish Travel, Photos, Travel | Permalink |  Digg This | Share on Facebook | Comments (0)

One last night in Limerick

August 10, 2007 // 0 Comments  // Add yours »

This week has been unbelievable.  Yesterday, after my stroll around Limerick, I checked out this restaurant across from my hotel on O'Connel St. called Luigi Malones a quick dinner.  The food was great.  They even gave me a glass of complimentary red wine which wasn't all that bad.

Following dinner I met up with my friend Rachel and from there we joined with a bunch of people for another night out at Molly's.  Had a blast, although I came back home with a few scratches and a bruise on my back.

Today started off much like yesterday did.  I walked around by myself for a bit.... ended up in People's Park and then made my way all the way down to the Hunt Museum to check out the 50's Chic/60's Cheek exhibit, which was somewhat of a disappointment due to the lack of photography they had on display.

That evening I met up with my friend Rachel and her friend Claire, who rode the bus with me up to the Ryan's where I saw Hazel and Mike once again.  We all had some pizza (which wasn't all the bad) and then we made some plans for the night.

My last night there was incredible.  Hazel, Rachel, Claire, and myself all went out to a a few pubs and a few clubs, including Nancy Blakes, Molly's, and Icon.  I can't tell you enough how good it felt to be there... especially with Hazel and Rachel who I hadn't seen prior to this week in about 8 years.

At some point in the night a photographer took our picture.  I guess it'll be in a Limerick newspaper sometime next week.  I'm looking forward to seeing it.

I had to end the night by packing for my trip back home.  My flight leaves in just a few hours and I need to stay awake to catch the bus to the aiport.

Posted in:  A Day In The Life, Ireland, Ireland 2007, Irish Travel, Photos, Travel | Permalink |  Digg This | Share on Facebook | Comments (0)