Ireland Travelogue Part 1 - Why? Why in Dec?

 

Back in Oct'22, it hit that Dec will be soon upon us. Last two weeks of December, what will we do? Where should we go?

The answer came down to Ireland. And the way I do, to make my plans concrete, I tend to broadcast them, especially in office. This acts as a way to give heads-up to my colleagues that I am not going to be available. But to whomsoever, I have shared this, to folks who met us at airport in transit, to Irish-folks who we met, they all had this question - Why are you going to Ireland? Or why are you going to Ireland in December. It is amazing that so many folks have asked this question. 

So, in my this three part Ireland blogpost, I am going to start by answering this question.  The three parts will cover - 

• Part 1 - Ireland Travelogue Part 1 - Why? Why in Dec?
• Part 2 - Ireland Travelogue Part 2 - Itinerary
• Part 3 - Ireland Travelogue Part 3 - Irish love, North vs South Ireland,  & some learnings

There is no single answer to why Ireland. It has many nuances and let me unfold each one -

Because it is so beautiful !

Compare the google image search results of various countries - Ireland, India, Germany and you will get an idea. It has castles, lush green grasslands, blue ocean, beaches, beer etc. Our New Zealand trip three years ago was awesome and I would have again gone there but the flight costs were 2x. Next to NZ, it has always been Ireland for me to visit. Ireland has always been in the bucket list. 

Enya & her castle, Once, Irish music

I read this buzzfeed article on Enya in July/Aug. First, I am a big fan of Enya. Secondly, this article shared how she owned and lived in a castle, how you can stay in castles in Ireland; the article has some pics with some amazing scenery. Plus, I am in love with the movie Once, it is simple, brilliant, full of love, warmth, struggles and genuinely good people. Once put Ireland to my bucket-list and Enya's article sealed it. In general, Irish music has occupied a special place. I had a CD of Irish folk that I bought from a yard sale in US, it came back with me and I still play it in some road trips. 

Visa, Cost. 

To be honest, I also did check Visa dates for some other countries like Italy and they were not available. I submitted my application on 3rd Oct and my VISA was on 14th Oct. No other country was this quick.  South American countries like Peru were also considered but flights were crazily expensive. So, Ireland was also practical :)

GoT :)

If NZ was LOTR, then Ireland, atleast North Ireland is GoT. Makes it a bucket list place to go and see Winterfell castle. Though it is unfortunate that we could not make it there :) 

Why December?

Because I work in an MNC and it is the least productive time of the company. Most of the company is on a break after 21st Dec, it is just the best time to take off with least impact on work. It also has many holidays in-built, so number of leaves that you have to take also come down. 

Plus, I needed this break for myself. Not to check up on work. 2022 challenged me a lot and I needed time off to focus on myself. 

But, Ireland is so cold in Dec

So many folks told me this. It rains in Ireland 300 days so, it just becomes cold rain :) We spent the last winter in Germany, so we were prepared for it. Temperature was also showing around 7 degrees which is better since we survived upto -13 in Germany :) 

Plus, I also strongly feel that the classical definitions of weather are no longer true. Weather patterns are changing drastically. For example, in Delhi, the cold wave hit on Jan 7 and December was very normal. When we visited Delhi in Sept, it was hot. like old-summer hot.  

In hindsight, I was right. We got cold weather, saw snowfall, some sleet as well, but overall it was cold but very manageable. Nothing that a nice warm woolen hat, jacket with raincoat, maybe some gloves that can not solve. The natural scenery was very beautiful even in Dec. Maybe it is more so in summer but gosh, Ireland is incredibly blessed with nature. 

However, there is another aspect which I did not consider and my wife knows that I do not consider this. That is that in off season, things are also not that open as they are in summer. Winter season implies less daylight time. It is dark by 5 pm and folks tend to stay at home. In rural areas, not-so-populated towns, things shut down and it becomes very quiet. Some places like the Dark Sky reserves were closed this time as well. I have heard that pubs are more livelier in summer time with more people. We felt this in Vietnam and I must admit that I did feel some regret in this aspect. 

Christmas markets

Our Germany trip last year got us hooked to Christmas markets, they were awesome - lively, good food, music, lights. We assumed that Ireland may also have a similar culture and hence you can only see these markets before 25th Dec. So, this also becomes part of a draw. However, now-we-know, Irish Christmas markets are no-way close to German ones and they were skippable. 

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A note on Visa process & prep

Irish visa process asks so many documents - they wanted my old passports, old place of work, countries that I have visited with Visa dates etc. Took me a while to get all of this. Plus, they wanted photocopy of all pages of old passport for some reason. But apart from this, the process was smooth. Not much queue, very few people were traveling it seems :)

As part of prep, we watched this movie Michael Collins, rewatched Once :), and I bought this book - Modern Ireland, though I could not make much progress. We had anyways seen movies like Brooklyn in the past. I wanted to watch The wind that shakes the barley but it was not available in any OTT platforms. I also remembered In the name of the father, though vaguely. Perhaps, I should revisit it.  Some other Ireland history videos like the Ireland population decline - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wViBPPjEdD8 gave decent context for us to understand this country before.

Shamefully, I was also not aware of the Ireland vs North Ireland split until I started filling the Visa application and understood the BIVS clause which gave Indians entry into North Ireland. It definitely piqued a lot of curiosity on how a country, a small island has two countries living side by side with a history of violence behind it.  This curiosity, plus the fact that Britishers were behind this, or atleast had a role to play in all this, made me really wanted to know more about this place. It is really fascinating to understand how this small tiny country has evolved. Geographically, it is 1/40th of the size of India yet it packs so much.