Road Trip Ireland

The Crew

"Archibald Thatcher"
Logistics/General Voice of Reason

"The Mean"
Cook/The Decider

Cadbury Goodness & "Old Martha"
Choc treat & Motorhome Mother (we are still trying to get her back to the nursing home we stole her from)


"SleepyMonster"
Question Asker/Animal Whisperer

"Murdock"
Disgruntled RV Driver/Itinerant living consultant

The occasion? The arrival of 3 Chicagoan friends. As requested they landed bearing no formal plan, only the expectation of good times ahead. A bit of pre-departure talk among ourselves concluded that although we were all still mildy awesome, our prime of coolness had probably been declining since the glorious college years. Good thing our new buddy Keith, who was to rent us his motorhome, also possessed a Back To the Future DeLorean car completely fitted out with a Flux Capacitor. Ready to transport us back to our former glory.

Although Keith got high marks in street cred for his badass ride, he came up short in the judgement department when he handed me the keys to his motorhome.
Cause we were off like a pack of Banshees*!

*We found out during the trip that a Banshee is in fact a spirit in Irish mythology who appears to announce someone's death, which was a fact unknown to me and yet another revelation that I don't understand the meaning and origin of most of the expressions I use.

In my excitement I jumped ahead a bit. Before departing Belfast in the Party Palace, the crew and I rented a wee car and drove over to County Fermanagh to do a CouchSurf with the Whaley's, the family I initially surfed with back in February. The type of people that put you at ease within 10 minutes and feel thoroughly attached by day's end. They were kind enough to host us all and give Shane, Bridget, and Mary their first CS experience. Although we only had the afternoon and evening with them, it was enough time to see the nearby Necarne castle and drop in on my friend Niamh's uncle who runs the town's hotel/pub and is regionally famous for ruffling conventional feathers by organizing a parade of turkeys through the town and holding a wolf whistling competition soon with Miss Northern Ireland as the bait. I am sure he has some good stories to tell, should one be able to understand what he is saying.
And so after our stay with the Whaleys, we headed back to Belfast to return the car and pick up our home on wheels. For the first day our compass pointed North, with stops to the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge and Ireland's only World Heritage Site--The Giant's Causeway before we found some of our brethren and parked the RV just outside the Northern city with 3 names--LondonDerry, Derry, and the postmodern Stroke City, for those who refuse to the passive political game.

The first couple nights of RV docking put us in coastal RV parks and out of the possiblity for town carousing. Lucky for us, the Party Palace was equipped with a Disco in the back of it. With a U-shaped lounge and 2x2ft dance floor, the Party Palace was an apt abode for spontaneous fun and hadn't a group of men so politely burrowed my last disco ball back in Turkey, the Da Club in the RV would have been fully fitted.

The next few days brought us through Donegal and down the west coast before we set us shop in Galway. Galway's charm kept us there for 2 nights, with highlights being the repeated telling of the legend of Billy Lawless in town pubs, the gathering and cooking of sea fare (probably tainted), and our consorting with a certain Galway Hooker--the beer that is.
After Galway we headed down to the Dingle Penninsula to check out the berries down there and also to experience the area that had been so widely recommended to us. Also met up with my friend Niamh D , who was there camping with a friend on their Easter Break. The last night saw us in Dublin and from there most of the crew stayed to await there flight while I sprinted back to Belfast to return the suprisingly intact RV and hastily pack up my life for the next departure. A great trip made memorable by the unique personalities hailing from Chitown. This blog is missing many pics and stories, so it will be continously updated for awhile. I just wanted to lay the base down before leaving.