Ireland remains a favorite spot of NonRevs to visit for the culture, history, and amazing bargains. If you haven’t yet visited, Travel & Leisure just did a fantastic article on enjoying a road trip along the west coast.
On a road trip along Ireland’s west coast, T+L discovers that the more things change, the more (thankfully) they stay the same.
It’s been a decade since I was last in Bunbeg, in northern Donegal, yet when I walk into Teach Hudi Beag at 10:30 on a Monday night, the pub seems unchanged: the white façade, the dark wood beams, the musicians gathered around a row of low tables to the right of the door. Dark-eyed Hugh Gallagher, the owner, plays fiddle at the head table, and seven or eight other players lean into the circle and ease through a succession of tunes. Soon I am seated among the musicians: a tolerably decent Irish-American flutist with a deep devotion to rural Irish culture, welcomed again into the flow of the tradition. I take out my cell phone and call my wife, a first-rate fiddler herself and a great fan of the Donegal style, so that she can hear what I’m hearing. It feels like a homecoming.