Have you ever dreamt about the Irish countryside? That idyllic picture of rolling green hills and a little cottage separated from the rest of the world. Spending the days baking bread and the evenings at the local pub. The only tasks are milking the cows and tending to the sheep all while drinking a cup of Lyon’s tea. This has been my dream forever and I got to live it for a day. This is the story about how 6 Americans and a Malaysian traveled from Galway to Listerlin, Ireland. (Yes, Listerlin. And no, you haven’t heard of it.)
It all started on boring Sunday in the beginning of October. We wanted to plan a weekend getaway the next weekend. Our first thought was Cork, because we all wanted to visit Cork. The problem with the big cities in Ireland, like Dublin and Cork, is that is hard to get a cheap hotel. We looked at hostels, but couldn’t find one that would work. This resulted in an Airbnb search. While we couldn’t find anything in Cork that we could afford, we found an affordable cottage that would fit all of us in Kilkenny.
We quickly booked with no thought as to how we would actually get there. We thought it wouldn’t be too difficult to get to. It would probably just be a quick taxi ride from Kilkenny, right? Well, we were wrong and we had a week to figure out how we would get to Listerlin.
Some ideas included renting a car, but none of us were old enough to rent a car and we couldn’t find one to fit all of us. Then we thought we could borrow a van from one guy we knew, but that kind of fell through. In the end we settled on a train. Sort of.
Our plan was to take the train to Dublin. Then take another train from Dublin to Thomastown, which was the closest train stop to Listerlin. Then in Thomastown we would take a taxi to the cottage. So this is what we went with. We woke up early Saturday morning for our one night stay in Childwall Cottage. Thank the Lord for the lovely home owners. They were willing to put us up for only one night (since that is what we could afford) and helped so much with trying to figure out how we would get to Listerlin from Galway.
We had a smooth journey. We relaxed on the train to Dublin. I plugged in my Irish Trad and alternated between staring out the window and homework. We eventually arrived in Dublin and had some time before our next train, so we walked from Heuston Station to find some lunch. We landed on a little cafe that had sandwiches. We ate them outside as we looked out at the River Liffey. This was my first time in Dublin. Of course I flew in to Dublin, but I didn’t really experience it at all. Sitting next to the river I picked up a very different vibe from that of Galway. Galway was lively and Bohemian. Dublin was more like an American city. I was just another person in this city of busy people . In that moment I was so thankful to have chosen Galway. Galway was my city, not Dublin.
We walked back to the station, with a stop at Spar, where we discovered our favorite thing, Sour Squirms. We thought they were hilarious. They were gummy worms, but sour. They quickly became an inside joke. We continued to the station and had a moment when we saw a naked guy bending over in the park. This would become one of our favorite stories to tell from this trip.
We continued on to Thomastown where we stepped into an Irish dream. It was the cutest little train station. It required a little walk into town though. I began to get really hot in my Aran sweater and wool socks on the walk. I guess not all of Ireland is cold and rainy. It was warm and sunny, not to mention it was extremely green. It felt like a European spring to me, not the 9th of October. We eventually found a grocery store and I was able to rest my blistering feet a little bit. I never had as many blisters on my feet as I had in Ireland. It is the humid climate mixed with tight, non-breathable rain boots.
We grabbed all of the groceries we would need to make dinner that night and have breakfast in the morning. We planned to make pork chops, mac&cheese, and salad. Plus we got the supply of alcohol we would need for that night. We already had a bottle of gin that Honoria’s mom gave us, even though none of us actually drink gin. As we checked out we began to look into getting a taxi from the grocery store to the cottage. The trick was to find a taxi big enough for the 7 of us that would also go on 20 minute plus drive into the countryside.
We sat outside that grocery store for awhile until our taxi picked us up. I’m pretty sure many of the locals were concerned about the strange Americans with backpacks outside the grocery store. We traveled through the beautiful Kilkenny countryside, where I absolutely fell in love with Ireland again. All of my roommates were talking about which of our states this looked like, but I could’t join the debate. This was so uniquely Ireland to me. There is no way I could compare it to anything in Minnesota.
We paid our taxi driver and then the couple who owned the cottage let us in. They had a couple dogs and some chickens, which we all went crazy for. The man showed us around the cottage and even gave us some bread, butter, and jam. We thanked him a million times and then took in the beauty of this cottage and its countryside.
The night was full of us dreaming about moving here. There was more than one occasion where we stated that we would just buy this cottage and then work at the local pub. It was a great night of bonding for all of us. We cooked dinner together, sat at the table and complimented each other on the meal, and learned to say cheers in Chinese as we tried to drink our gin. We spent some time outside, where it felt like a summer night. Then we came inside, attempted some Irish accents and played Irish trivia provided to us by the homeowners. We also spent some time in the garage-turned-game room. We had so much fun that night. We made some great memories that night at cottage, most of which I probably shouldn’t share on here.
The next day we woke up and cleaned the cottage. We called a taxi and left some Euros on the table to replace some of the glasses we broke. We didn’t really think about how hard it would be to get out of Listerlin though. It is easy to get a taxi from Thomastown, which is a fairly big town, than it is from Listerlin, which only has a small grocery store/gas station. We ended up having to wait a few hours for a taxi, so we went to the little store and got some snacks. The cashier was so surprised that we were Americans and a Malaysian. I think the biggest surprise though was that the guy standing behind me in line was from Texas. We chatted with him for a little bit and then sat outside on the only picnic table. I sat there eating my scone and thought about how thankful I was for that weekend and my friends. We bonded a lot during that weekend and I saw it all so clearly sitting at that picnic table.
A cat came up to us and sat at the table with us for awhile. I know you shouldn’t pet stray cats, but I petted this cat. I missed mine so much and this one was so sweet. We hatched a plan of how we could smuggle him back to Corrib Village, but we never executed it. Instead I got many pictures. This is also when we learned about a particular murder that happened in the town. It would not be Ireland without overhearing the store clerks gossiping about a murder. Apparently it was the anniversary of a murder and everyone was so devastated that the one pub sold out of alcohol the night before. I can’t make up the things that happen in this country. You just have to laugh at it.
Our taxi eventually picked up and took us to Thomastown. This man was from Belfast and he gave us candy. Should we have been eating candy in a van with a stranger from Belfast, maybe not, but we were paying him, so it had to have been safe.
We spent the rest of the day in Thomastown as our train was not going to leave until 6:30pm. We had a few hours to kill, so we grabbed some lunch, from a local fish’n’chips place. Then we mostly just walked about the town. There was not much to do on a Sunday evening, but the weather was nice, so we spent a lot of time outside. We ate our food by the river, where we hung out for awhile and took lots of pictures. Later we walked to the local church. We had become a little obsessed at looking at Irish cemeteries so we explored this one a the church little bit. It was a beautiful town. It became one of my favorite places that I visited in Ireland. I didn’t do much here, but it was full of charm with its cute buildings and green landscape. I will just let the pictures explain its beauty.
We walked back to the train station and waited there for a bit. Then we got on our train and we all became very tired. We had a different stop this time at Newbridge. It was a weird experience being at a train station at night. We were not really sure what we were doing and it was a little sketchy, but we got on our train back to Galway with all of the other Irish students going back for class the next day. We walked back to Corrib Village from the train station and thats when I found out I wasn’t the only person in the world who says bag weird. That was a big topic of the day, because they all found out Minnesotans say bad like B-ay-g. We messaged someone we knew from Wisconsin in Galway and I was no longer alone in my midwestern accent. On top of an amazing weekend, it was great to have an accent win!
Here is my Irish Trad playlist!
The Journal of Wanderlust 
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