Trip to Ireland

Here's another in our series of guest posts from 2010 KC Irish Fest raffle grand prize winner Shaun McMahon.

4/25/11.

What a treat! On 4/13/2011 I met with Rory O'Connor and his wife Paige along with Dan Regan at The Gaff to discuss the trip to Ireland. I brought along our intinerary and Rory came prepared with maps and brochures but, most importantly, his knowledge of Ireland and his grand stories; some of his growing up in Ireland and some of his visiting.

It is difficult to imagine more enthusiastic help. They all were very helpful with their experiences in Ireland and things to watch out for on our journey and how to do the blog etc. I had a fine time. As the evening progressed I found my enthusiasm for the trip growing and I thought it was rather high to begin with. It was just wonderful to be able to sit with people who were knowledgable and energetically sharing their information and who were as excited about the trip as I.

We are landing in Dublin so I thought we'd start there with some information but Rory kept saying "let's put off talking about Dublin till later" and later I found out why. He's from Dublin and had quite a bit to say about a lot of things and especially the various pubs, his knowledge was almost disturbing. Some of the stories began with "When I was a lad..." and they all were engaging and, if you know him, you might just ask him about the camping story - the one regarding his encounter with a fence. A very funny story.

Since then we've been packing, following the directions from the tour company (which is a lot like "tab A goes into slot B") and there are a lot of them. The information regarding the places we are visiting comprises about four pages and the instructions regarding what to bring, the things that the tour company wants done, and other suggestions is about seven pages.

Shaun Q. McMahon