A month in Ireland: all’s well

Hello all,

I am still largely without Internet connection, so the posts are still few and far apart. Yesterday marked a full month in our move to Ireland, and I am happy to report things are getting much better. Since we moved to Blackrock, the stress has gone down quite a bit. A number of people here have expressed the fact that the area we were living in was indeed a rough area before, and not family-friendly. Finding a place where Baby could walk around have fun was our primary concern (and my wife’s safety), so it was a big relief to move out of the inner-city.

Also, as the stress has gone down a lot, we’ve had more time to enjoy life in Ireland too. For example, the town of Blackrock sits right next to the ocean (it was in the olden days a seaside resort), and so when I take the morning train, the DART, to work, the train station sits right next to the ocean. I can see out north across Dublin Bay to Howth and also to my right I can see the harbor of Dún Laoghaire (sounds like “doon leary”).

Also, we’ve been getting to know a lot of nice people here. Yesterday, I had to send some important escrow papers back to the US to close the sale of my house there, but the nearest Fedex station was far north near the airport. We hired a taxi to drive up there, drop off the papers, and go back home. The driver was a very nice old Irish gentleman who had kids married and living in the US (Boston, Milwaukee and other places), and though we were stuck in traffic and torrential rain, we had a great talk about travel and life in Ireland. He highly recommended taking a trip to Austria, particularly Innsbruck, which he said was very family friendly (in his words, “no drunks falling all over themselves”) and great weather/food. We’ll be planning a trip soon since it’s short and cheap from Ireland. He also recommended parts of Italy (not Rome) and also Portugal.

In any case, we’ve definitely come to appreciate Irish hospitality quite a bit in recent days, and my wife and daughter are much happier lately, so all is well.

Namuamidabu