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Overall, I would give our trip a B+. We encountered a few travel glitches, but nothing insurmountable, and the meltdown on Friday afternoon was really the only time that tempers flared, so from that angle things went just fine. I'll know not to bother with one of those prepaid debit cards again -- that could have been a bit more aggravation if the others hadn't had their regular debit cards with them. It was awkward to have to rely on someone else for cash, especially after our confrontation, but he got his money back when we got back to The Big Red House.
Were I to plan another trip to Ireland, I wouldn't bother with County Clare again. It was fine for a drive-through around the Burren, but otherwise that part of the west coast is still quite remote and under-serviced. By contrast, I think none of us were prepared for just how beautiful County Kerry would be, and, while some places might be a bit overburdened with tourists in the height of the season, it's easy to see why so many American tourists choose that region to visit. The drive from Tralee to Dingle, and then around the Slea Head Road was unquestionably the absolute highlight of the trip.
The food was a pleasant surprise. Despite Tim's complaints from his last two trips, every meal we ate was good, with the exception of the banquet at Bunratty Castle. Traditional Irish food isn't terribly imaginative -- it comes from a culture of entrenched poverty and deprivation -- but wherever we had it I thought it was well-prepared. It was nice to get a night off from Irish food at the Chinese place, to be sure, but I ate better than I thought I would.
The biggest disappointment, for me anyway, was the pubs. Being off-season and mostly in tiny rural towns, we outnumbered the locals almost everywhere we went (and there were only the three of us). We had some conversation with the old woman and her daughter in Annascaul, but overall the pub scene did not match my expectations at all. On the plus side, though, we got our own private traditional Irish music performance on the very last night.
Though it isn't at the top of my list of places to visit (and wasn't beforehand, either), I would go back another time and see Dublin and the east coast. I'm sure Bridget would be even worse to drive with than my nervous-nellie brothers, so I'd just be sure to plan a route that avoided any 1000-foot cliffs. There didn't seem to be much that would appeal to children at all, so I think if we do go back we'd either wait until Charlotte was much older, or farm her out to her grandparents and go alone.
I think I have somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand photographs to go through, so that is about the only business left from the trip. Once I've culled out some highlights, I'll upload them to flickr and post a link for anyone who's interested.
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