Travel Blog: An Irish Christmas Surprise

An Irish Christmas Surprise

Freezing and grey with whiskey….it must be Ireland.

So two weeks before Christmas, I had my little emotional breakdown and decided that I needed to spend Xmas with family in Eire (Ireland) for the first time in 20 odd years. We had planned, booked and organised our time in Hawaii till the end of January – What to do? After sharing my distress with Dara she hopped onto her laptop and took 23 minutes exactly to cancel all prior plans, flights, cars, accommodation…and book new flights via New York to Ireland. Bless my Gen Y.

So we arrived in Shannon (west coast of Ireland) on the bloody freezing cold morn of Xmas eve – Ciara (my sister) picked us up at the airport and chauffeured us to Spiddeal in Galway where my parents and nephew found us under the Xmas tree later that day. Their surprise and joy was worth the several forfeited hawaiian paradise weeks… yes we had a very lovely Irish Christmas.

Put on your wooly jumper Dara and have another hot whisky! You’ll be grand!

Christmas Morning in Ireland has the oddball tradition of an ice cold morning swim – after the presents and before the roast turkey lands on the table in the afternoon. So the die hard among them will gather on the beaches all over the country and take the plunge en masse at noon…and ye thought I was mad! No I didn’t join them…

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