The Road to Durrow

Note:  As most of you know, after staying on the Finca los Tres Alcornoques in San Vicente de Alcántara for five weeks, we headed to Barcelona, my old stomping ground from six years ago.  With respect to the blog, as we had fallen more than a month behind, any available blogging time in Barcelona was spent catching up on our San Vicente posts.  And frankly, we were too busy living the good life of city, food and friends to spend too much time writing!  Fortunately, our experiences in Barcelona do not need to be shared chronologically and we have therefore made the executive decision to stay current with the blog and skip straight ahead to our new HelpX home.  Don’t worry, you will still hear all about Barcelona.  We promise to intermittently regale you with our stories of delicious food and more delicious food, cause that’s pretty much all we did!

“The Road to Durrow”

Monkey's All Packed Up!

After six weeks of visiting old friends, roaming the city and gorging ourselves on Spanish tapas, we packed our bags and left the beautiful but eternally sweaty summer heat of Barcelona for our next HelpX destination: The Gallic Kitchen in Durrow, Ireland. 

Gallic Kitchen Wares

Due to Jonathan’s diligent and persistent efforts on the HelpX website, we were able to secure two spots in the home of Irish couple, Patrick and Sarah, owners of the Gallic Kitchen.  That’s Gallic as in the French Gauls, not Gaelic as in Irish folk, a distinction which is clear after surveying Sarah’s menu of French style savory pastry pies and sweet fruit tarts.  While this HelpX host family does own horses and a fair bit of green Irish land, they are not technically a farm; however, with a fully functioning profession kitchen complete with café and several farmers’ market booths, from their HelpX profile they appeared to be an excellent segue to our next farm stay who could not accommodate us until September 1^st.

Johann & Baby Bird

After an emotional goodbye to my dear old friend Johann, at 7:30 p.m. we began our journey to the airport to catch our 10:30 p.m. flight to Dublin.  After a taxi and a train ride, we found ourselves at the check-in point for AerLingus at the Barcelona airport, holding our breaths that the attendant would not actually hold us to the 20 kilo weigh limit as it was likely that our bags were a mite overweight.  Now we had weighed them with our flat mate’s scale, but unless you have a nifty luggage scale like my dad, you will never really be spot on with test weighting the bags.  In addition, our experience so far with the strictness of Spanish airlines taught us that the limit was not actually enforced (even though we were 10 kilo’s over the limit on our flight from Extremadura to Barcelona!) so we weren’t too worried. 

Turns out that we were 4 kilo’s over the limit and AerLingus being an Irish, not Spanish airline, but who’s counting, we ended up having to pay €15 per kilo, yup, a total of €60 to get our bags on the plane; not an egregious amount but coming off of a minor spending spree in Barcelona, that €60 hurt a lil bit.  I told Jonathan that I didn’t need to bring eight dresses and twelve tee-shirts, but he insisted!  Anyway, we figured we’d help that bitter pill go down with a €3.50 glass of beer and a €6 mini bottle of cava at the gate (compare with €1.50 and €2 respectively if purchased at a bar back in the city).  Brilliant.

After a three hour flight and a time zone difference of one hour, we arrived at the Dublin airport at 12:30 a.m.  As we disembarked the plane, we stifled a few yawns refusing to be tired as our bus did not leave the Dublin airport until 5:30 a.m., and went in search of a place to park ourselves and our luggage.  As luck would have it, we came across a 24 hour food court complete with fabulous vinyl neon green couches, a TV that played an Irish news program on repeat, and lights so bright that guaranteed that neither of us would sleep a wink !  We staked our claim on one of said couches and settled in for the night.

As one well knows, sitting on a plane does not stimulate hunger.  Lying motionless on a vinyl green couch does not stimulate hunger.  You know what stimulated hunger in these two situations?  Boredom brought on by sleeplessness and, well, nothing better to do!  None of the hot food counters were actually open yet and the refrigerator only housed salads and, while they were actually quite impressive and tasty looking, they were also €12 and like I said, we weren’t actually hungry anyway, just bored.  After already having finished the piece of baguette and hardboiled eggs we had brought with us, I started drifting toward the French mustard packets.  In attempts to save me from myself, Jonathan went off to see what he could see at the airport mini mart while I held down the fort watching freshly downloaded America’s Next Top Model reruns on the laptop.

Oh joy!  Jonathan returned with a bag of cheddar popcorn and a clementine for me, a bag of salt and vinegar chips and a Twix for himself, and two coconut water juice boxes, complete with sippy straw!  My sweetie always comes through! 

A couple of hours later, about 4:30 a.m., we decided we had better have breakfast since we had a two hour bus ride ahead of us and we only had semi specific arrangements for how to get to the house after that (i.e. we had no idea when our next meal would be).  Still most definitely not hungry but grateful for the change of pace, we ordered a traditional Irish breakfast to share: two rashers (back bacon), two sausages, black and white pudding (sausage patty with and without blood), two pieces of white toast, scrambled eggs, and a grilled tomato.  Just a snack to keep us going till our next meal.

At 5:10 a.m., we tromped through the rain to our bus stop just in time to see it take off with a little wave from the driver.  Uh, problem?  As it was only 5:20, ten minutes before the bus was supposed to leave, I optimistically reassured myself and Jonathan that the wave meant that the driver was just getting fuel or something and coming back for us.  My current state of mind (tiredness, bordering on grumpiness which inevitably leads to weepiness) forced me to believe that he was coming back, and frankly did not allow for any other acceptable option. 

Luckily for everyone around me, namely Jonathan, the bus reappeared at a few minutes after 5:30 and we were once again on our way.  Thus began our first foray into the complications of dialing an Irish phone number (it’s harder than just dialing the number, I promise).  With less than €5 of credit left on our prepaid Spanish phone, we tried dialing Patrick and Sarah to let them know we had made it on the bus and we would be in Portlaoise (pronounced port leash) ready for pick up at 7:30.  Our efforts rewarded us with some blathering in Spanish about the number we dialed something something something.  After various combinations of including the country code, the area code, etc., we had tried every option on the Spanish mobile phone and therefore resigned ourselves to holding off until we arrived in Portlaoise so we could find a local payphone.

As the sun continued to rise revealing a crisp Irish morning, we pulled up to the bus stop in Portlaoise.  Exhausted and ready to lay our heads on our new pillows, we went in search of a payphone.  While the chill in the air was a welcomed contrast to the sweltering, sweatiness of life in Barcelona’s August heat, not only was I tired and a little grumpy, but now I was cold.  Luckily we found a mall whose doors were open even though none of the shops were.  With only a few euros in change and virtually no credit on our mobile phone, we again attempted to call Patrick and Sarah to please come pick us up!  This time there was no Spanish monotone lady telling us we dialed wrong, not even an Irish voice telling us how to properly dial an Irish phone number, only a few clicks and beeps and sucks for you cause the pay phone ate your money…again!  And again!  Needless to say, the more euros down the drain, the more frustrated and cranky we became.

Finally, as much as I scoff at the iPhone addictions of my husband and friends, I have to admit that it was Jonathan’s iPhone and the mall’s free WiFi that ultimately saved us: “How do you dial an Irish phone number?”  Oh, you are supposed to remove the country code and replace it with a 0?  Really?  And we were supposed to know that how?  We later found out that we were not the first HelpXers to be challenged by the dialing process, hence the websites dedicated to answering the How to…question.  Thanks for the heads up, folks!

With our last euro we were finally able to leave a message on Patrick’s mobile and hunkered down on a bench to wait for a return call.  As the computer battery was almost dead, I plugged it in to an empty socket near the bench until I was confronted by a helmet wearing, Segway riding mall security guard who stated that I was welcome to use the free WiFi but not the electricity.  Ok, then.  After about 20 minutes, Patrick appeared in his blue Gallic Kitchen van and we were finally on the last leg of our trip to our final destination: our new home in Durrow!

After about a 20 minute drive through green, green and more beautiful green, we drove up the driveway, past the neighbors cows, past Sarah’s horses and the kids’ ponies, and pulled up to a large brick house.  We were immediately greeted by a bounding golden retriever who couldn’t have been happier to have yet another two people who were willing to pet him.  So far so good!  We helped Patrick unload a few supplies from his trip to Portloise into the Gallic Kitchen professional kitchen which they had conveniently built a stone’s throw from the house.  In the kitchen we met Sarah who quickly introduced us to Claire (France), Kimberly (Taiwan) and Ruth (Ireland), before immediately sending us off to bed.  11:30 a.m. marked the conclusion of our 16 hour red eye and sleepless trip, and we finally crawled into our new bed for a much needed nap.

We awakened from our nap around 5:00 p.m. at which time Patrick immediately snatched us up and took us to Bob’s Bar in Durrow for some pre-dinner chit chat and a Guinness.  Despite our slightly rough road to get here, I gotta say, between the greenery, the crisp and refreshing air, the nice people and of course Guinness, I love Ireland so far!