patrickjegan

June 9, 2015

The Swans Of The Shannon River: Limerick On A Warm Afternoon

I dropped Mariam at our hotel and drove off to find the parking lot. I made two lefts and passed two pubs, one of which was called The Sin Bin. I took note of the name. Maybe this pub had something more than pints of Guinness. I walked back to the hotel and we decided…

June 8, 2015

Crossing The Liffey: Our First And Last Full Day In Dublin’s Fair City

I was sitting opposite my wife in the restaurant of the Arlington Hotel where we are staying. It’s just steps away from the O’Connell Street Bridge. I was making strange, odd and contorted…some would say ugly faces in her direction. She simply stared back at me. My eyes watered and I continued to wiggle my…

June 8, 2015

Dublin On A Sunday Afternoon

It was a brief flight. Heathrow to Dublin airport in a little over an hour. No time for a movie. No time for any real food. I looked across Mariam’s lap and watched the fields of Wales slide under us at several hundred miles per hour. Still, when we landed and took the taxi to…

June 6, 2015

May The Sun Rise To Meet Him

On Wednesday, my son, Brian will step off the red-eye flight from JFK and the sun will rise to meet him. I will have my son, my boy, my only boy with me while we tour our ancestral island with my wife (on her first visit, too). It’s been thirty years since I’ve been…

June 6, 2015

If Hand-Hewn Beams Could Talk: A Proper English Pub

I’ll repeat what I said in a previous post: “If you want to know what is happening in an English village, just sit in the pub for an hour or two.” I am convinced that this is true. Pubs and not bars in the way we know bars in the States. If the village is…

June 4, 2015

I Never Met An English Country Church I Didn’t Like

[St. John the Baptist, Buckthorn Weston, Dorset] It’s been said by many travelers that if one wants to know what’s happening in any small English village, just go to the pub and listen for an hour. I think the same is true, to a degree, of social life provided by the Church in these towns…

May 31, 2015

68 Steps Along The Nave Of Wells Cathedral

Three hundred and sixty-five days ago, I was climbing the endless steps of Sacre Coeur in Paris. My wife was at my side. We paused on the 67th step, and, in the warm Parisian sun, we turned and looked back at the City of Lights. We kissed on that 67th step. It was my 67th…

May 31, 2015

The Haunted Well Of Avebury

I heard about the haunted pub and the cursed well of Avebury while touring a church in Gloucestershire. I was purchasing a CD of Traditional Country Songs (sung by a small chorus) at the gift shop of St. John the Baptist in Cirencester. I recognized many of the titles from my collection of Irish songs…

May 29, 2015

The Green Man: Watcher Of The Lychgate

I am a conflicting image. Sometimes I appear in churches, carved into the bosses of an archway. At other times, I am associated with pagan symbols of nature worship. I am a man and I am a tree…one part of me morphs into another. I am called The Green Man by those who study the…

May 27, 2015

The Magic Sheep Of Gloucestershire

I was turned into a sheep on May 26th, but I got better and I’m a much better person because of the experience. England, it’s been said, is a magical country and now I can attest to that being a reality. It all started when my wife and I decided to challenge ourselves to taking…