The signboard proclaimed, 'Jimmy G's Pub.'
We could spot nothing to the right or the left of the brightly painted log cabin. It appeared to have sprung up out of nowhere, precisely at the moment we wanted to take a break from the excruciatingly long car drive through the exquisite Irish countryside.
The inside was even more quaint, straight out from a Jonathan Swift setting --- a juke box, a dart board, dusty framed pictures; a harp propped (probably never strummed), a trumpet, all vying for space with other knick-knacks --- tins, cans, bottle openers, coins that went out of circulation aeons ago --- all adding to the happy clutter and the pastoral warmth of the place.
"Welcome, ladies, anything I can do?" a voice boomed in the deep Irish accent. It was warm as it is clear. A tall man emerged from the anteroom. Ducking his head to avoid colliding against the low railing of the door, he appeared to be in his late seventies.
"Can we…er.. have some..Tea?" someone from our journo's team inquired. "Tea?" he snorted. "Not care for anything stronger?" he teased. "No Sir, tea should be fine," said my colleague and he grunted, "O.K, I will try.... read more >>
Irish Travel Stories
We were spending two weeks in Ireland on our honeymoon. We decided to go to the Emerald Isle when my fiancé (now husband) and I looked at each other and said, "I don’t want to go to a beach." Let it be said that neither of us are beach people, I happen to hate the sand and my husband (who is Irish) burns because of his fair complexion. Therefore, keeping this in mind, we decided to do something untraditional and head to Ireland, a place both of us had always been entranced by.
When we arrived in Dublin, we spent a few days there before renting a car and traveling cross country to Killarney on the western shore. Let me just make this comparison, if Dublin is New York, Killarney is the East Village. It’s a very trendy, cool locale, young and thriving with interesting people. However, in the mix of all of that is a group of Irish that have been there before Killarney was cool. Not that I’m calling this group “uncool,” they earn a certain distinction that no trendy “pub kid” could ever dream of having.
Let me explain, one afternoon, upon... read more >>