Monday, 10/10/2011 - PowersCourt Estate, County Wicklow, Ireland

Still working on catching up.  Left Oisin and Susan's home late yesterday morning, ~1015, bound for the town of Enniskerry just south of Dublin in the beautiful rolling hills of Wicklow County and our lodging, the Ritz/Carlton Hotel.  Just sitting here in our room, 417, after a very good albeit misty/wet/sometimes rainy day, working on my blog for our Day 3 in Ireland.

Not long after arriving at Oisin and Susan's, Mom got a cake

Oisin and Susan's home

Oisin, Rose and, Rosie outside of Rose's grandmother, Alice's, home in Waterford

The Ryan family grave site in St. Mary's cemetery

The cable ferry coming to fetch us for dinner on the 'Island'

A lot of Ryans and family (will add names in the book I publish)

Ray and Mary Ryan.  Ray is Rose's younger brother

Sunday, 10/9/2011 - Day 3:  Waterford with the Ryans

Up early again ~0645.  Feels like I just went to bed.  Looks like we're going to have a 3rd straight day of great, Irish weather - mostly overcast, light, blustery wind with hints of sunshine.  Knocking on wood!

Oisin also got up fairly early to fix us a traditional Irish breakfast of:  sausages, black & white pudding, rashers, toast w/butter and jams, coffee/tea and juices.  We also had free range brown eggs - which Susan and Rose went out to pick up at some corner shop.  Susan readily admits to Oisin's cooking talents... something he and I have in common, yeah, yeah!  :-)  I liked his method of cooking all of the meats in the oven broiler.  He covered a cookie sheet with Reynolds wrap, layered on all the various meat products and put them under broiler turning once during the cooking process.  Everything came out perfect!  Not to mention the fact that we all enjoyed the meal.  Really enjoying all the conversation and story telling going on.

Wasn't too long before Diarmait dropped by to pick up Mom to join Peggy for noon Mass at Sacred Heart church at Ferrybank.  Soon after that Caoimhe returned home with some of her girlfriends who stayed over at her friend's birthday party sleepover:  Rachel (best friend), Chloe, Shannon & Erin (sisters), Casey and the 'old soul', Molly - just a doll.  We were expecting to hear back from Rose after Mass but, 1330 came and went and still, no call.  We had a bit of shopping and visiting to get done before a 1600 dinner engagement with all available Ryans at the Waterford Golf Country Club.

It soon became apparent, particularly to her parents, that Caoimhe had gotten precious little sleep at the sleepover.  She's 7yrs old.  ;-)  She was very conflicted with the many options she had on this day to have fun.  In the end the terrific parents that Oisin and Susan are relented, and Caoimhe stayed back to play with her friends.  The rest of us got cleaned up and headed out to pick up Rose from Peggy's house to make our rounds of Waterford,  Rose had been enjoying tea with Peggy after Mass.  By the time all 5 of us, Oisin, Susan, Rose, Rosie and I, were together, it was after 1400.

First stop for us was 94 Poleberry, the address of Rose's late grandmother, Alice.  Took a bunch of photos of Oisin, Rose and Rosie in front of the row house.  Jumped back in the car and headed off to a few places to do some shopping.  At Aldi's, a smaller version of Sam's Club in the US, we picked up some flowers for our visit to St. Mary's cemetery later in the day.  We followed that up with a trip to a Tesco's shopping complex where Rose wanted to find and procure some particular Christmas cookie spices, unfortunately, to no avail.

Left there for St. Mary's, a very extensive cemetery, so we could visit and pay our respects and lay some flowers out for some Ryan's that have gone before us including:  Grandmother Alice, Patrick and Gerard Ryan, brothers (Gerard is Rose's father), Al Ryan who passed in 2007, husband to Peggy and father to the 7 sons and daughters I would eventually meet on this trip and, Alphonsus Ryan, Rose's younger brother.  St. Mary's is definitely one of the best kept cemetery's I've ever visited.  We also stopped in to check out, as I understand it, the recently renovated church on premises.  To be honest, I didn't like it.  Just looked like someone went to IKEA and bought all the wooden pews there.  They were very uncomfortable to sit in for long.  Just felt wrong.  If whomever designed the renovation was hoping to ensure parishioners wouldn't stay long after Mass, much less come back for seconds, he/she succeeded.

By this time we were running a bit behind schedule as we headed over to the cable ferry that would take us over to the 'Island' for dinner.  Rosie and I've been on many the car ferry but, none operated by cable.  When I thought about it, made sense.  The span of water that needed to be crossed was no more than 1,000 to 1,500 wide.  A ferry attached to cables and pulled back and forth worked just fine, particularly in light of the rapidly moving tide in the river.  Another 'to do' off of my bucket list.  :-)

By the time we parked and walked into the Country Club, was ~1630.  We were 1/2 hr late, all the other Ryans were already there and I was feeling a bit bad making everyone wait.  Having said that, all the Ryans' appeared to be nonplussed about our arrival and were just happy to see us.  Likewise.  At the end of this blog I'll list all of the Ryans I'm aware of - if for no other reason so that I don't forget them, hopefully spell their names correctly (thank you Susan!) and highlight with an asterisk '*' those brothers/sisters and children I actually got to finally meet. 

Oisin brought out a birthday cake for Rose to blow out some candles - with the help of young and precocious Joseph Leamy, son of Maeliosa (youngest Ryan) and Brendan Leamy.  He's a fine 2 yr old.

After dinner and cake, we left the club to walk down to Waterford Castle for after dinner drinks and family photos to be taken by yours truly :-)  The Castle's a good size and has been converted to a hotel with a bar and restaurant.  Would have liked to have had more daylight and time to really check it out.  Really enjoyed just hanging out with the Ryan's on this evening and reluctantly left the castle for our last event of the evening - a visit with Ray and Mary Ryan.  Ray is Rose's younger brother.

Oisin and Susan dropped us off at Ray and Mary's home just after 2000 before heading back to their house.  I've wanted to meet Ray and Mary ever since my 14yr old daughter, Meghan, had the chance to visit them 12 years ago while she was on a young people's People-to-People group trip to Great Britain.  They were very gracious, caring and spoiled her during her visit back then.  Enjoyed their company this evening.  They surprised Rose and Rosie with gifts and Rose with a little birthday cake we all enjoyed along with a few other desserts Mary served out.  Mary made me my 1st Irish Coffee in country.  Tasty and had a good kick!  Talk about being bloated!  :-)  Around 2200 we bid our goodbyes to Mary, and Ray drove us back to Oisin and Susan's.

Once again while Rose, Rosie and Susan retired for the evening, Oisin shamed me in to having a nightcap with him... obviously against my 'teetotalers' will and, before you knew it, we finally headed up to get some rest by 0130.  I vaguely remember solving the World's economic problems before calling it a night.  :-)

This was most likely the best 2 days of our trip - at least for me.  Actually meeting and spending time with family, who had only been names that I've associated with silent pictures of children in Ireland based on many fondly recounted stories by Rose and her children over the years, has been fantastic.  The real Ryans are so much better!  :-)

Dia dhuit ar maidin (Good morning)!  Will post photos later.  We're off to Galway this morning.

The Ryan's in family order:
*Peggy - Mother of All
Fiona Griffin - Daughter, married to Damien Griffin with 2 children:  Alannah and Gearoid
*Oisin - Son, married to *Susan with 1 child:  Caoimhe
*Aislinn - Daughter
*Gearoid - Son, married to *Kate with 2 children:  *Maeve and *Sam.  We briefly met over Skype.  They live in Australia.
*Diarmait - Son
*Una Ryan - Daughter, 1 son:  Robert.
*Maeliosa Leamy - Daughter, married to Brendan Leamy with 1 child:  Joseph.

Fuji