Michele Erdvig
ezOP
Posts: 105
(6/15/01 10:12 pm)

I Remember Ireland: Lucan 1973

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When I look back over the past 27 years of visiting Ireland I find favorite scenes and experiences frozen in time like an insect preserved in amber.

I'll never forget my first morning in Ireland. After arriving in rush hour Dublin during a thunderstorm, and not being able to find our way out of the city, I saw the sun setting behind the storm clouds and pointed my husband to the west. Out in the countryside we stopped at the Lucan Spa Hotel and it looked like a spooky haunted mansion with lightning flashing all around it through the twilight. It was an old hotel and our room had twenty-foot high ceilings, squeaky wood floors, walls three-feet thick and wooden shutters inside all the windows. The bathroom was huge with an antique claw-footed tub you needed a ladder to climb into. After all day standing by for flights we were exhausted and the huge feather bed enveloped us like a cloud. Neither the storm nor the creaky old place disturbed our sleep that night.

My husband Barry was up bright and early making cheerful whistling noises and folding back the shutters from the big windows that had old wavy glass. I'd had too much traveling and burrowed into the featherbed for more sleep.

"Get up, get up...You've got to see this!"

After a week in Norway I was sure nothing else could impress me. How wrong I was.

The storm clouds were gone and brilliant sunshine poured over the emerald landscape like melted honey. Cows grazed on gentle hills and the wet grass sparkled with diamond dew-drops. For as far as we could see the Irish countryside spread out with hills and hedgerows, stone walls and sheep. The air was cool, crisp and sweet, tinged with a faint hint of peat smoke.

Ireland captured our hearts on our very first morning...and hasn't let go since.

Michele Erdvig (c) 2000

Posted Originally From: Ireland - YES !



jstangl

08/31/00 5:00 AM

RE: I Remember Ireland: Lucan 1973


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Michele:
Great piece of writing! I completely understand the "capture your heart" statement. Can't wait to go back next year for a few weeks.
Jim

Posted Originally From: Ireland - YES !



IrelandExpert
(Community Owner)
08/31/00 6:34 PM

RE: I Remember Ireland: Lucan 1973


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Thanks Jim. Back in 1973 the Lucan Spa Hotel was way out in the Irish countryside. Since then it has burned down and been rebuilt. Now it's part of ever-expanding Dublin City and a motorway whizzes right past the hotel. But I still have my memories of the way it was. It sounds like you've been bitten by the Ireland bug, too!

Michele

Killarney
Unregistered User
(7/18/01 6:58 pm)

Nothing like Ireland

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My memories are very similar to yours about the beauty of the scenery, whether it be morning noon or night.
You have described it so eloquently.

Michele Erdvig
ezOP
Posts: 141
(7/18/01 9:55 pm)

Thanks

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Thanks Killarney,

I hope that you get to return to Ireland soon and add more lovely memories to those you already have.

Michele