June 25th/26th: Back to Dublin, and on to San Francisco

June 25th: Back to Dublin

We hung around our castle as long as we could in the morning, then rocketed back down the country to Dublin. Portmarnock. The White Sands Hotel. A sea view. Just a stopover really for our last night, before an early morning flight back to San Francisco.
Spent the evening with mum and dad. Jessie planted pansies in their garden and we showed them a slideshow of our holiday photos. Highlight of the evening was managing to locate a photo mum had been remembering of the 1898 wedding of my great-grandmother and great-grandfather, Margaret Maia and George Kenshole. There were about 75 people in the wedding party and we marvelled at how many battleaxe women there were. Wouldn't want to mess with my ancestors! 

June 26th: BA287 London Heathrow to San Francisco

Always seem to be leaving Ireland. Back there, the already receding snapshot memories of our vacation: the toy towns and the toy people of a small, green, lush island with its tiny fields dotted with sheep and cows and bog cotton waving in the breeze. Already unreal as I face forward to the Bay Area, dry and hot and shimmering in the California summer;  work, and friends, and the ceaseless flow of ordinary life. 

Ireland was friendlier than I could have even hoped, considering I was "showing it off" to my husband and daughter. The people were salt of the earth. The food was top class, and the Guinness never better. The landscape, so familiar to me from childhood, was everything I remembered and more. The rain was just as rainy, and the wind was much windier. Roll on the next trip, wherever it is to, my bags are already packed...