Current Location: Tain, Scotland

First of all, to my sister, who is currently in Washington, D.C. attending a conference at the Library of Congress: Happy Birthday! Her age won’t be revealed, suffice to say that she is younger than I am.

In general, I’ve been following my gut when it’s told me that it’s time to leave a place and explore someplace new. Well, actually, I’ve been about a day behind my gut; I stayed in Glasgow a day longer than I meant to (and just about everyone I’ve spoken to agrees with my perception of Glasgow as a bit of a dump; in fact, the only person I’ve met who really liked Glasgow at all was the little old lady who worked the souvenier stand in Glasgow Cathedral — and I think she was paid to say that Glasgow is a nice place), and I stayed in Edinburgh probably a day too long. I couldn’t help it, though; Edinburgh is such a beautiful city with so many different things to do that I had a hard time getting away.

But get away I did. I took the train yesterday to Inverness, a much smaller city than Edinburgh, and one of the newest cities in Scotland (the town itself has been around for hundreds of years, but it was only incorporated as a city about ten years ago or so). I had been led to believe that Inverness would be a boring industrial city, so I wasn’t really looking forward to going there; but instead I found that Inverness was a pleasant enough town with a friendly character all its own. The Bed and Breakfast I am staying at is a charming little place, in a private home, and the owner is very friendly. She gets a certain sort of maniacal joy out of seating perfect strangers next to each other and encouraging people to talk. "First of all," she told me as soon as I showed up, "breakfast is at 8:30, no exceptions. You’re sitting over there next to the American couple from New York and the single gentleman from Sweden. You’ll have a lovely time." In the morning she introduced me as "Mr. Crawford from California, who will be married in July, isn’t that lovely?"

I wanted some time to explore Inverness, but I had an errand to run. My stepfather has recently received his certificate of legitimacy from the highland clan that he is descended from, and I thought it would be interesting to go up to the city of Tain, the seat of his clan, and have a look around, perhaps visit the castle that serves as the clan seat, and maybe even meet the clan chief. So that first morning in Inverness, I left the B&B and went to the train station to take the train up to the city of Tain.

Local legend has it that the town of Tain (variably spelled Tayne) has been in existence in the same spot since the year 1066. Some of the locals that I spoke with believe that legend, but the people in the museum and the historical society don’t; according to them, the city is not that old. The oldest reference to Tain comes from a piece of parchment dating from 1479 referring to a meeting between two nobles in the town in 1463. This means that Tain, a community of less than ten thousand people (including the surrounding hamlets and villages) has been around longer than the United States. This is more of that continuous ongoing history that the British, Scots, and Irish live and breathe every single day and which seems alien to a Californian such as myself. Indeed, throughout the British Isles, I’ve found that history fairly seeps from the land itself, a palpable substance that informs everything that happens here. And the Brits, Scots, and Irish are all fiercely proud of their history and their heritage. The people of Tain are no exception.

Seeing the castle which is the seat of Clan Ross is, unfortunately, impossible; it is currently owned by Mohammed Al’Fayid, an Egyptian fellow who has been trying unsuccessfully to obtain British citizenship for years. And the chief of Clan Ross currently lives in Aberdeenshire, which is too far out of my way to consider visiting. What I could do in the city was explore a bit, take the walking tour, visit the Tain through Time exhibition at the local museum, and meet some of the people here. As are all of the people in the British Isles, the people of Tain are without exception friendly, engaging, and outgoing. Their grasp of technology is a bit behind mine, of course; when I asked one fellow if there was an internet connection anywhere within the city, he gave me a strange look. "What’s an internet?" he asked me in all sincerity. When talking with the curator of the Tain museum, I found that the further north in Scotland you go, the more traditional people become. People in the most remote parts of northern Scotland, such as in the Orkney Isles, may not even have televisions and cars; a lifestyle unthinkable to modern Americans, I think, but I’ve encountered such a lifestyle before, on the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland (and such a lifestyle certainly has its advantages — the people of the Aran Islands live, on average, about two years longer than their more stressed out neighbors in Ireland and the UK; and the same is apparently true for the people of the Ornkey Islands as well).

Tain is a beautiful, beautiful town. I can’t see myself enjoying it for very long (I’d want to take the 50 mile journey to Inverness every weekend for something to do) but I can see my parents loving it. Most of the buildings are of 18th or 19th century construction though there are some buildings (notably St. Duthac’s Chapel and Church) which have stood for much longer. Tain itself was a popular spot for Christian pilgrimages because its church held the sacred head of St. Duthac, until the Reformation (when pilgrimages were banned and the head of St. Duthac — and his breastbone and one other relic, which escapes me for now) were presented to the Earl of Ross in Balnagowan Castle).

Visiting Tain was almost a pilgrimage for me. While I told myself that visiting the city was a favor for my stepfather, I’ve come to realize that it was more for myself than for him.

For the spiritually inclined of ages past, going on a pilgrimage meant going to a holy shrine to view the relics of a saint or other holy personage. For me, coming here meant setting myself a goal, figuring out how to achieve it, and making it happen. I’ve never been very good at setting goals and making them happen, so this was a big achievement for me.

I spent the afternoon in Tain, exploring, meeting people, taking pictures, taking in the scenery and the quiet atmosphere (the only sound was the din of hundreds of birds in the trees). I could have found accommodations in Tain instead of Inverness, but, in a way, I’m glad I didn’t.

My next stop after Inverness is York in England. It will be sad to leave Scotland, but it’s time to move on.

On another note, this is the 100th entry in my on-line journal. Well, okay, I find that cool!

• 1 sheep’s pluck (stomach bag)
• 2 lb.. dry oatmeal
• 1 lb. suet
• 1 lb. lamb’s liver
• 2 1/2 cups stock
• 1 large chopped onion
• ½ tsp. cayenne pepper, Jamaica pepper and salt

Boil liver and parboil the onion, then mince them together. Lightly brown the oatmeal. Mix all ingredients together. Fill the sheep’s pluck with the mixture pressing it down to remove all the air, and sew up securely. Prick the haggis in several places so that it does not burst. Place haggis in boiling water and boil slowly for 4-5 hours. Serves approximately 12.

When I first started planning this trip two or three years ago, I bought a pair of hiking boots by Clarke that I planned to wear all over the continent. I wore them for a few weeks to make sure they were well broken in and fitted to my feet before I tried to trudge around a foreign country in them, then put them away, figuring that I’d wear them next a few months later, in Ireland.

Of course, things didn’t work out that way. My boots got put away in a closet and went unworn for a year or two while my trip kept getting postponed again and again. But when Jennifer and I worked out a way with my employer to get me a month off so that I could take this trip, I dug out my Clarkes and put them on before I even got on to my plane in San Francisco. They’re on my feet now, as I write this. I’m looking forward to being able to point at my boots and say, "See them? They took me rock climbing in the Aran Island, hiking in the forest around Wigtown, hoofing the streets of Dublin and Glasgow, and through the water logged vaults under the streets of Edinburgh." Today these boots walked me from Edinburgh Castle to the palace at the end of the Royal Mile.

Edinburgh is a beautiful city, and I wish I could stay here for the remainder of my trip, but I’ve already stayed one day more than I should have, and I really need to get up to Tain tomorrow. After Tain, I’ll probably be heading down to York; sadly, Wales will probably fall by the wayside on this trip, just like Italy and Germany and Switzerland have. That makes me a bit sad, since I would like to see Wales, but I guess I knew that parts of my trip would have to be canceled. I hadn’t intended to spend most of my trip in the UK, but I certainly have no regrets.

The vaults of Edinburgh, which my boots took me through as part of a walking tour, were quite impressive. Historically, they don’t go back that far; they were built, as I recall, in the last century under some of the older buildings in Old Edinburgh as a place where the wealthy could stick the poor. And as you wander around you can see small rooms where poor people lived. The vaults are made of stone, they’re cold, they’re damp, and you can see "miniature stalactites" (or is it stalagmites? I can never remember) forming on the ceiling as evidence of how long the vaults of have been unused. In fact, the vaults were pretty much filled in with debris and stone until about ten years ago when a home owner in the area started digging in his basement (and I have no idea why he would do that) and discovered these vaults all over again.

These vaults are fantastic! They bring me back to the times when I played Dungeons and Dragons with my friends, and our characters wandered through dungeons and underground catacombs and castles fighting monsters and looking for treasure. The vaults underneath Edinburgh are dimly lit and quite extensive, apparently, even though we only saw a few rooms and a few meters of corridor.

The vaults I visited were part of the "Ghost Hunter Tour" of Edinburgh. There are supposed to be only a few ghosts haunting the vaults, and only three in the part of the vaults that we were in but there is no denying that they are a great place to tell a good ghost story. Tonight I’m going on another such tour, but with a different theme… the "Mary King’s Close" tour. A "close", in the city of Edinburgh, was a very small, narrow street leading from the Royal Mile (the stretch of road between Edinburgh Castle and the royal palace) to other side streets… or sometimes just coming to a dead end. The closes were named, generally, after the people who lived in them — hence, "Mary King Close" — or after notable features or the type of business that went on in the close — hence, "Fishmarket Close" or (my personal favorite) "The World’s End Close", so-called because it was right next to the gate in the city wall which marked the very edge of Edinburgh until the middle of the 1800’s. Beyond the city walls, of course, there was nothing interesting for those who lived in the city, so the end of the city was pretty much the end of the world. There is a pub right next to the World’s End Close called the World’s End Pub. I may never go drinking there in my life, but I think it’s a great name for a pub.

These walking tours are a great way to get to learn about the city — I went on one in Glasgow as well — and a good way to meet fellow travelers as well. The touring company that puts them on in Edinburgh and Glasgow is Mercat Tours, and I highly recommend them.

And, of course, I never promised that all of my stories that came out of Europe would be interesting ones. This one simply goes to show that I have a pretty darn cool pair of boots.

A month or so before leaving for my trip, I read a newspaper article about another university-sponsored expedition to track down and study the Loch Ness Monster; just a few days before I left the U.S., I read another article, this one about a Wiccan priest who had cast a spell over the Loch Ness Monster to prevent it from being detected. When I heard about that, I thought, Smart witch… very clever marketing ploy. I couldn’t help but wonder if the same University had set it up; if they didn’t locate the Monster, then the witch could claim it was because of his spell, and an entire new layer of New Age mystique would be cast over the Loch.

Now, the first recorded sighting of the Loch Ness Monster was apparently in the year A.D. 863. St. Columba, one of the saints to visit and attempt to convert Scotland, was confronted with a monstrous creature while rowing across the Loch. Upon seeing the creature, he dashed to the bow of his row boat and showed it his cross, crying out, "Get thee to thy depths, and never shalt thou harm a living man!"

And since then, of course, Nessie never has.

Yesterday I decided to go on a day-long sightseeing tour of the Scottish highlands which would include a cruise on Loch Ness. Since I’ve been fascinated by cryptozoology and monsters and the like since I’ve been a young boy, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to do a bit of Nessie hunting myself.

The drive from Edinburgh to Fort Augustine, from where the cruise boat that we took, The Royal Scot, launched, took something like four hours. The bus driver, Jock, was knowledgeable about Scottish history and geography and made sure to point out all of the historic landmarks that we passed by and related stories about everything that we saw. Some of the stories were bits of history and some were personal anecdotes, but all were amusing and interesting.

The Highlands of Scotland, of course, are gorgeous. As we drove through tiny villages and small towns, passing castles and fortifications that have stood for centuries, and monuments to various heroes and villains from Scottish history, I chatted with the other people on the bus, and daydreamed about emigrating to the United Kingdom or to Ireland. I listened to Jock and learned that the Roman name for Scotland was Caledonia, which means, "The Wooded Land". Though you wouldn’t know it to look at it now, Scotland, land of open fields and wide meadows, was once entirely covered by forests. But over the past few hundred years, through the deforesting actions of ranchers and farmers and other groups of people, the forests of Scotland have been drastically reduced to cover only about two per cent of its former size. The Forestry Commission owns most of what little forested land remains in Scotland, and a good deal of that is put aside for lumber interests.

"The deforestation of Caledonia," said Jock, "is probably the greatest man-made ecological disaster in history."

The Scots, like the Irish, take their environment very seriously. Most of the Scots I’ve encountered have been ardent environmentalists (this was true of many of the Irish that I encountered as well). Perhaps, with the thousands of years of history that this society has (as opposed to the paltry five hundred years or so that post-Columbian history in the US has), they’re simply more aware of their environment and their landscape.

Again like the Irish, the Scots that I’ve met take their history very seriously as well, but there’s a certain sense of humor that surrounds it as well. The movie Braveheart, starring "that Great Scotsman, Mel Gibson" (as one historian that I met put it), is well loved in this country, despite its great technical and historical flaws. William Wallace, for example, being a lowlander and not a highlander, would not have worn a kilt; however, he was, of course, depicted as wearing a kilt in the movie, since that is probably how most Americans would view a Scottish hero: kilt-wearing and bloodthirsty. Plus, William Wallace would never have had an affair with the princess as depicted in Braveheart; or, if he had, he would have been quite a pederast, since this same princess was only about three months old at the time that William Wallace died. But in spite of these errors (plus the fact that Mel Gibson, who stands at about 5’8", would not nearly have been large enough to play the 6’4" William Wallace) most of the Scots I’ve spoken to, even the history buffs, love the film.

On the way to Loch Ness, we passed the William Wallace memorial as Stirling Castle, which was held by William Wallace. I did not, unfortunately, have a chance to explore the castle; we only passed it on the way to Loch Ness, our ultimate destination.

On the road, we also went through "Rob Roy Country". Jock advised us to take everything we’d learned about Rob Roy from the Liam Neeson film of that name and dump it all as pure fiction. Very little is actually known about Rob Roy except that he was a cattle rustler and outlaw who died in a duel at the age of 73. The film Rob Roy was based on a novel called Rogue Highlander, by William DeFoe (and not Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott, as I had originally thought). It should not have tried to pass itself off as history, according to Jock.

The landscape changes several times on the road from Edinburgh to Loch Ness. Once you get past Edinburgh Airport, the land becomes green and lush and beautiful. A ways further along, it becomes brown with heather (at this time of year, at least — in the summer, the heather turns purple). Later on it becomes mountainous and forested, which is how it is around Loch Ness.

Loch Ness is a huge lake ("Lake is the English word for ‘Loch’", Jock informed me), some twenty-four miles long, though narrow enough so that even at the widest point you can see from one bank to the other. It is the fourth in a series of three lakes connected by the Caledonian Canal, built in the late part of the last century and improved around the first world war. The monster — whatever it is — has been spotted in the Loch many times throughout history, with sightings that date back to 863 (as I mention above), some that go to 1200, and many from this century. As the tour bus pulled up to the quay at Fort Augustine, I looked out over the waters, feeling overwhelmed that after nearly thirty years of wondering about the Loch Ness Monster and seeing pictures of the Loch and imagining things about it, I was really here, looking out over the water. I stared intently looking for the monster, but I could see nothing unusual around the crowds of people and the boats and the shops that surrounded the quay.

After a few minutes, we all climbed aboard the cruise boat, The Royal Scotsman, and sailed out onto the lake.

"This boat," Jock explained to us, "has two features which are essential for monster hunting: first, it has a sonar which will show the depth of the lake and any large creatures that happen to be swimming below; and second, it has a bar."

So we sailed out. The course of our little boat took us about halfway up one bank of the loch, then across and back down the other bank. The captain, whose name I didn’t catch, turned out to be an older fellow who had spent his life studying the Loch Ness Monster. He had once worked for a marine research company and had compiled a great deal of information about the creature — the "animal", he called it. But then he learned that the company he’d been working for was planning on using the information to capture and kill the animal, so he resigned and copyrighted all of his research, making it unusable to the company. Since then he’s been working on the Loch, tracking the animal, and studying it.

Being the inquisitive person that I am, and being someone who hates the silence that inevitably follows when someone asks for questions, I asked, "What is the monster, exactly?"

The captain then told us that the creature — the animal — was in fact a rare species of creature, a warm-blooded mammal shaped something like a pleisosaur, with an elongated neck and tail and flippers. These animals, he said, propel themselves through the water using magnetism, in much the same way that certain deep-sea creatures use electricity as defense. In Loch Ness, he said, there are something like five hundred of these creatures, and there are other specimens throughout the world in various locations.

I couldn’t help but feel that having a scientific explanation for the Loch Ness Monster like this kind of took away the mystique of the creature. All my life I’d been hearing about this creature, and imagining some sort of alien monster living under the surface of this peaceful lake; now I hear that the monster is just another animal.

"Have you ever seen the monster in the flesh?" I asked.

The captain chuckled a bit nervously. "Can I pass on that question?"

I grinned. "Nope, I want to know."

"Well then," he said, "Not directly myself, no. But I was guiding a cruise just such as this when one of the passengers saw something that might have been the creature."

The captain went on to tell us how local legend had grown up around the creature over the centuries. According to local folklore, if you see the creature and then talk about it, you’re inviting "demonic things" to happen to you. Which is why reliable stories about the Loch Ness Monster are rare to this very day; the locals still believe that. And, of course, when they do talk about it, they don’t call it a monster or even "the creature". They refer to Nessie as an animal like any other.

I stopped myself from asking the obvious questions; like, if his research relied primarily on sonar readings and local legend, how was he able to determine its respiratory methods, or how could he determine that there were nearly five hundred of these animals living in the Loch. There are times when you just don’t want to ask questions like that; if someone has spent their lives studying a mystery, there is no point in asking the sensible questions.

The cruise boat returned to the quay and we piled out and headed back to the bus, which drove us the rest of the length of the Loch and then back down to Edinburgh via Inverness. Jock shared much more history and folklore and natural history of Scotland with us, and played us some great traditional Scottish music. We met a bagpiper who stood on the banks of Loch Ness all day and played his music. We daydreamed, we gazed, we chatted lightly with each other.
Along the rest of the twenty-four mile trip past the Loch, I stared out the window, woolgathering, and keeping an eye out for the Nessie through the trees. I saw no sign of it; but, then, the Loch is a deep place, nearly six hundred feet deep in its deepest spots, and there are many hidden places and underwater caves. The surface of the Loch was calm on that day, but sometimes a calm surface is a poor indication of the mysteries that can lie beneath.

A– and I left Ireland yesterday, after deciding that we’d had enough of Westport (actually, I think I could spend another two or three weeks in Westport quite happily, but there are other places that I wanted to go), and took a cab up through Northern Ireland to Larne, where we caught a ferry to Scotland. When we woke up in Westport, it was raining, and it hasn’t stopped yet. The sky was gray and it rained continuously throughout the day, sometimes heavily, sometimes lightly.

Northern Ireland was dreary. There was nothing there that I could identify as uniquely Irish. We did stop in one small town, Lisbourne, to ship back some books and clothing that we wanted to stop carrying around with us; and aside from the one or two people who spoke with an Irish accent, nothing seemed like it was Ireland. It felt like a nation that had been stripped of its character, and was shell-shocked from both that experience and from all the years of turmoil with Britain. We sped through Belfast and made it to Larne to catch the ferry.

While on the ferry we perused a tourist book that we’d found in the ferry waiting area. We discovered a town called Wigtown that we decided to visit by virtue of its eighteen or so bookstores, and its proximity to historical sites like castles and archaeological spots. Indeed, while driving here in the cab, we passed by a small stone circle (which was, of course, closed to the public because of the foot and mouth disease scare) and noted its historicity and archaeological interest. Then we arrived at a bed and breakfast and checked in for a day or two.

Of course, every Bed and Breakfast in the world is different. The Man of Aran on Inis Mór was a separate house located near the rocky beaches of Kilmurvey; the one I stayed at in Galway was a modern-style suburban home located near Salt Hill; and this one reminds me of one of the Victorian brownstones in New York or San Francisco. Like most of the B&B’s that I’ve encountered, it has a bathroom facility which is separate from the bedroom (very few places, I’ve discovered, have en suite facilities); the toilet and the bathtub are down the hall and around the corner, and the place is laid out like something out of a Dungeons and Dragons game. It’s quite charming, actually (as is the entire town, if you overlook the fact that it dies at about 6:00 p.m. every day). However, there is one difference: our bedroom has a reconditioned closet which is now a shower. So while A– went to take a shower in the main bathroom, I decided to take a shower in the closet — mostly so that I could say that I’ve taken a shower in a closet.

I’ve done most of the best thinking in my life while in the shower. This morning I reflected that even though I’m enjoying this trip (though I’m a bit intimidated by the fact that after today I’ll be on my own, since A– is going to Aberdeen on the north coast of Scotland while I’ll be hunting for Glasgow and Balnagowan Castle), my enjoyment is being darkened by the fact that I really miss Jennifer. I’ve seriously considered cutting my month-long trip short to fly home from Glasgow or Edinburgh or London instead of making my way over to Amsterdam via Belgium and France as I’d originally planned, a week or two early. I promised myself that I would not make this decision until Friday at the soonest; what I’ll probably wnd up doing, though, is postponing that decision until next Friday, since I do want to see Wales while I’m out here in the UK.

Besides, at this point, I have two missions in Scotland. First, my stepfather has received his "certificate of legitimacy" or membership or authenticity or something from the Scottish clan that his family descends from, so now I’m planning on hunting down the clan seat and visiting it. I’m not sure what I’ll do once I’m there; take pictures, of course, but perhaps I’ll also see if I can get a handshake from the lord of the castle.

My other mission involves the younger of my two sisters, C–, who is a big fan of the sadly late Douglas Adams. Because in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the character Ford Prefect purchased a towel from the department store Marks and Spencer, I promised C– that I would purchase one there for her as a memorial to Douglas Adams who died on Friday, May 11, of a heart attack at the surprisingly young age of only 49. My sister was very sad to hear the news (one of her best friends was apparently in tears when he’d heard the news) and I admit that I’m also sad about it; I love the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (though I like the Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency books better).

I had the foresight to bring a towel along with me on this trip. Yesterday I attached the towel to the outside of my backpack out as a tribute to Douglas Adams; and I’ll probably do so again when I go up to Glasgow tomorrow. And if you don’t know why that is a fitting tribute, then you really need to go out and read the books. Go ahead, I’ll wait for you.

There, so now you understand that bringing a towel when you travel is probably one of the wisest things you can do. And even though I’m traveling by bus and by train and not hitchhiking, it seems smart for me to bring along a towel as well.

So last night, A– and I returned to Westport. We were both in bad moods; she’s been on the road a lot longer than I have been but even just a week has been wearing me a bit thin. And both of us miss our significant others. We checked in to our B&B, and I told her to take an hour in the room to herself so that she could call her SO, while I went to the restaurant downstairs to get a Guinness and do some reading.

At 8:30, A– shows up at my table, looking crazed. "Did you get in touch with C–?" I asked her. She replied, "Do I look like someone who’s gotten in touch with C–?" In the fourteen years that I’ve known her, I’ve learned that when A– gets like this, the best thing to do is just go with the flow. I started to make some smart-ass comeback remark, but she interrupted me: "And don’t even tell me you don’t know what someone who has talked to C– looks like, because it’s not funny!." She sat down and ordered us a couple more pints of Guinness.

After commisserating for a few minutes I asked her what she wanted to do. I said, "If worse comes to worst, we could always just go back to our room and watch television."

"Do you really want to do that?"

"Hell no," I replied. "We’re in Ireland. Let’s go wander the streets and see what happens. Maybe we’ll get lucky."

We left the pub and started wandering around. We finally happened upon a pub in downtown Westport called Matt Malloy’s. This pub is owned by Matt Malloy himself. Matt Malloy, in case you don’t know, is the flautist for the great Irish band The Chieftains, specializing in traditional Irish music. We stepped inside and it was crowded. We went to the back room and settled in for a bit, watching an older man, probably in his sixties, singing traditional Irish folk songs (as well as some new ones, like "My Girlfriend’s Got a Mobile Phone") and chatting with some other guys who turned out to be programmers from Dublin. It was turning out to be a great evening.

But then P–, one of the guys we were talking to, glanced up and said, "Uh oh." He stood up and said to A–, "In a few seconds, the owner will be sitting right next to you." A– said, "No way!", but a few moments later, an older gentleman carrying a flute sat down right next to us, along with a man with a fiddle, another one with a guitar, and a third carrying his bodhain. The flautist turned out to be none other than Matt Malloy himself. He shook our hands, introduced himself, and began to play.

A– rushed back to our B&B to pick up her own guitar and returned a few minutes later. People in Ireland treat musicians well; A– was allowed to pass through the crowd easily when she carried her guitar case, but it was a battle to get out of the pub to get back to our B&B in the first place.

There are some times when I wish that I played a musical instrument (I don’t usually; usually, I’m content to listen and appreciate); last night was one of them. But as I listened to these great musicians, including one of the best Irish flute players in the world, I was swept away and enthralled. "This," I thought, as the music swelled and I was crowded by people behind me and breathing in clouds of cigarrette smoke and joking with P– next to me, "is what I came to Ireland for."

The session lasted a couple of hours, but it felt like ten minutes. Never have I enjoyed a live performance so much, or enjoyed being in the company of strangers so much. At midnight, the pub started shutting down, and A– wanted to leave while the music was still happening in order to have the memory. I thought it was a good plan, so we left and returned to the B&B.

This morning, the mood that hung over me last night has returned. I awoke thinking of Jennifer and called her at about 1:30 a.m. her time and nearly broke down on the phone with her. I’ve got to wash my clothes, I’ve got to figure out how I’m going to get around Europe when A– heads off to Iceland (not Norway, as I’d originally thought she was doing) this Friday, and figure out how to keep my sanity while traveling alone for the two weeks after that. I’m hungry, I have a headache, and I miss Jennifer more than words can possibly say.
But the magic that filled Matt Malloy’s pub for me last night will never fade away; and I knew as we left the pub that this would be my fondest memory of my entire trip.