Yes, the View is Lovely, but...

County Donegal, Ireland


​The first day of our trip was an eventful one. 
 
I’m looking out over a beautiful lake through a gigantic window, sitting on an older and somewhat comfortable armchair. My children are all still asleep after our first day on the ground in Ireland. The view is spectacular with snow-capped mountains in the distance that look very much like something out of a Bob Ross painting.
 
It’s stunning. Breathtaking, even, especially after the rain and ice of yesterday.
 
And I can’t wait to get the hell out of this place.
 
We landed just about twenty-four hours ago after a relatively uneventful flight. We got our luggage and rental car without too much hassle. Originally, they put our family of five in a sedan which couldn’t hold our luggage, much less five adult sized travelers, but we worked it out, moving into a decently sized SUV.
 
My wife insisted on the full insurance. That’s kind of significant, as while I am sitting in the lovely cottage with uncertain heating, almost no food, and a Wi-Fi password that doesn’t work, our rental car is stuck in a ditch about two kilometers down a treacherous country path.
 
So yeah, we’ve had a pretty eventful start to our Irish holiday.
 
We booked this home exchange in an effort to be somewhat close to the family that we are still hoping to visit, though as it turns out, it’s nowhere near them and in fact, as I can assure you from my hike through the frozen rain last night, (there’s wasn’t room for the Boyo and I on the neighbor’s tractor until he kindly dropped my wife and daughters off at the lovely cottage), it is literally the middle of nowhere.
 
Our host had mentioned that the road to the house might be a challenge and in fact, he kindly met us in town and had us follow him up the hill, where we both got stuck, and through a series of misadventures that I won’t elaborate on at this time, our SUV, with my wife and kids inside, landed in said ditch, where it remains, drivable, but stuck as I write this.
 
I just took a picture of a rainbow, lingering near the larger of the Bob Ross snow-capped mountains. It’s truly lovely. But I can’t wait to see it from the rearview mirror.
 
Last night is the coldest I have been in my life since the Eagles Super Bowl parade and it wasn’t raining then. I thought I was going to lose a toe. The walk to the house was freezing, with sleet and rain pelting us, our feet struggling to find purchase on the country path. The neighbor with the tractor was kind and helpful, as was another neighbor who drove past and offered to take our bags in their little sedan that had no trouble on the path, for some reason. Just the bags, of course.
 
Everyone was miserable. Everyone was wet. It was dark and Boyo and I had trouble knowing which way to go in the dark until the neighbor with the tractor came back for us.
 
But I remain deeply impressed with my family’s resilience. With the rain picking up and seeming to come from all sides, my son turned to me and said, almost with a smile, “Well, Dad-now you’ve got something to write about. It can be a story about how people use home exchanges to lure tourists to their deaths in the middle of Ireland.”
 
Not sure I’m going to take that on, but I appreciated the thought.
 
Once we were all together at the lovely cottage, with the view we couldn’t see yet because it was pitch black and pouring rain, people began to warm up. I no longer worried I would lose that pinky toe, and we began to do what we so often do when our family invariably faces a challenge:
 
We close ranks, we take stock, and we figure it out.
 
Thank God we stopped and picked up a few items of food at the local gas station. It’s called “Emo” for some reason but is essentially the Irish 7-11. Had we not stopped there, the only food and beverage we would have had on hand would have been the bottle of Jameson’s and half the Toblerone we got at Duty Free and four cans of baked beans that represent what our host described as “a few staples.”
 
Honestly, a night of beans, whiskey and Toblerone sounds like the beginning of a great story that might be set in my college days, but less appealing as a family holiday as we get ready for our eldest twins to head off to college next year. Oh, and it’s almost Christmas.
 
But we managed and within an hour or so we were huddled under blankets (I’m done trying to figure out the heat, and with the luck we’ve had so far, I’m not chancing the fireplace) and enjoying the “Shawn the Sheep” holiday episode. And Jameson’s. Thank God for Jameson’s.
 
And thank God for everything else too. For the fact that no one was hurt, the car appears to be overall fine, I hope, the fact that we’re all together, and for the kindness of a neighbor with a tractor who came out to help. And for the kindness of my Irish family, who I can’t wait to see tomorrow, (he said hopefully). Thank God for all that, and for the fact that the kids are safe and asleep and looking forward to moving on from this lovely house on the lake.
 
I can hear my grandmother’s voice in my head as I look out at the far green country, rolling hills and billowy clouds saying, “Well, you’ve gotten all of the ex-O-tic events out of the way on this trip. Now you can have some fun.”
 
I’m looking forward to it, to be certain.