Notes From Bret

The planned departure of Larry’s Magical Tour was from Newark on Tuesday 10/1 at 7:30pm, arriving in Dublin at around 7:00 Wednesday morning after a sevenish-hour flight. Despite my opinion of Newark in general (I understand that there are nice parts of it, and not every associated road is a packed madhouse), the United terminal is nice enough. We got there nice and early and got a late lunch in before the flight. Heading back to the gate, we spotted Larry sitting with some people at a nearby bar, and we stopped to introduce ourselves. We found Larry to be gracious and charming, with the accent that decades of New York hasn’t worn away. We also met Staten Island Tom Marlow, a former Black 47 roadie and a de facto assistant for the tour.

The flight left more or less on time, and everything proceeded smoothly for the next two and half hours. I do like the integrated entertainment system the airlines have in place these days; being able to watch movies, television, and seeing the current aircraft position help make flight time bearable. Particularly while they’re jamming you into ever-tighter spaces.

We had reached the northeastern coast of Newfoundland, where we’d be heading out over the main stretch of the Atlantic, when the pilot informed us that they were having a problem with the fuel indicator, and that they could not continue over the ocean with that issue. So they swung the plane around and returned to Newark. We touched down at midnight local, and everyone deplaned and milled about the gate area. It wasn’t a good sign when the flight crew deplaned and left with their bags; sure enough, around 1:30 they let us know that they couldn’t repair the plane and didn’t have a crew anyway. We’d be flying out at 7:30 that night. United would provide hotel rooms and food vouchers, but would not release our checked luggage; they did provide a small toiletries kit. If you need a reminder how much you like your job, at least they’re not calling you in at 2am to rebook flights and set up hotel rooms for several hundred very cranky passengers.

We finally got to our hotel room at 4:30am, and crashed until after noon. Back to the airport after and killed time there. I did get some guitar time in at a quiet nearby gate area, and consoled myself that I was getting a head start in working on the jet lag. The second flight was not as smooth as the first; way too much time (another hour?) once we’d boarded and pushed back from the gate, sitting on the tarmac in Newark while they negotiated with Dublin to squeeze us in. Can’t help but wonder why this hadn’t been figured out earlier.

I envy the people that can sleep on an airplane; I’m just not one of them. I was a little rugged by eight the next morning, when we descended below the cloud deck and we got our first look at Ireland, misty and rainy and green and wonderful. Stone walls and fields and rivers all around. We cleared customs, collected luggage, and gathered with the tour group; I had my first Irish tea there in the airport (a desperately needed caffeine fix).

We’d arrived – a full day late.

Most of my travels have been domestic and have often been the result of relocation, job or military service. With age has come a certain amount financial freedom, the ability to take destination vacations actually out of state. In our current geopolitical climate, traveling internationally gives me a small amount of pause; our elected officials have done nothing to endear Americans to the world (to say nothing of the behavior of the average American abroad).

But there are places to go and things to see before I die. Ireland has always been on my list, this beautiful island.

The friendliness of the people is legend, the music is haunting, and the sheer weight of the history of this little country is much greater than our young country. And I’d be remiss if I failed to mention the pub scene there appealed to me greatly. An added bonus is that English is the main spoken and written language there. The Troubles are two quiet decades in the past; Ireland seems a safe enough destination these days.

The catalyst for this trip was a man named Larry Kirwan. A Wexford-born gentleman who has made his home in New York for more than three decades, he is a musician, writer, playwright, and more. He was one of the driving forces behind the Irish rock group Black 47 (https://www.black47.com), and now hosts a radio program called Celtic Crush on Sirius XM.

Larry takes a tour to Ireland with him every year in October, and interviews the tourists as part of his program right after the tour. We were struck by the joy of everyone he interviewed, and the idea of taking his tour the next year took wing. Touring with Larry in Ireland, with his humor and musical background – this would be a blast.

Larry’s tour goes five days, and the itinerary changes yearly. His 2019 tour would go to Belfast, Dublin, Wexford, and Limerick. While these cities would be wonderful to see, there were other places that hit my must-see list; Dingle, Galway, Killarney and the Ring of Kerry, and particularly the Cliffs of Moher. So the plan became for us to leave the tour in Limerick when everyone else was getting ready to fly back home from Shannon Airport, rent a car, and stay a few more nights to see the rest of the places on the list. In addition to the car rental and hotels for the additional nights, I needed to make flight arrangements separate from the tour, since we wouldn’t be flying back with the group. It was important to us to hook up with the group flying out of Newark to Dublin, just to meet some of the people at first and get comfortable with them…and if the flight happened to be running late, we’d still be with the tour. Insert ominous foreshadowing here.

TripAdvisor was a big help in booking the hotels and the flights, and I recommend this site for any sort of travel recommendations. I dealt with Enterprise for the car rental and everything worked flawlessly with them. I splurged for two options on the car rental that I’d highly recommend: an automatic transmission and a GPS. Driving on the opposite side of the road and sitting in the right hand seat was enough to manage at first; dealing with a manual transmission with the left hand is an extra level of oddity I felt like I wanted to avoid. I could have used Google maps on my phone for directions, but having the Garmin stuck on the windshield was simpler and I didn’t have to worry about my data plan and cell reception there.

The timing of a friend’s wedding limited the amount of extra time I had to work with in Ireland; three extra nights were what I could manage. Based on flight costs, the extra nights lined up in Dingle, Galway, and a last night in Dublin before the flight home. The mechanics of the trip were set.