Karinne's Family Tree

I think I need to explain our reason for visiting Ireland, as we had originally planned to skip over to Greece after Italy and tour Athens and Santorini. But, while traveling in Europe is cheap, we didn’t factor in the costs of museums (why can’t they all be free like in England?), eating at least two times a day (we can always skip breakfast or have Linner/Dunch), and the souvenir must-haves that seem to come with every trip (I think I really do need that pencil shaped like a baguette after all). After looking at the cost of traveling to Greece, we decided to give Eileen a call.

Eileen is Karinne’s grandmother. She immigrated to California from Ireland when she was 18, leaving her two sisters, Cait (pronounced like Cotch) and Anne, as well the rest of her family.

Fast-forward fifty years, and Cait still lives in Dublin. Her daughter, Eleanor, lives around the corner from her mother and is married with two boys.

When Eileen heard that Karinne and her friends (that would be me and Haley) were looking for a place to go on a budget, she suggested we visit her family in Ireland. We, of course, immediately took her up on the offer (I remember us jumping up and down together in my kitchen, screaming “Ireland, here we come!!!”), and Eileen arranged everything for us.

We stayed in Cait’s house in Dublin, as she was away on holiday to New Zealand visiting her son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter who live there. It was a lovely home in a charming district of Dublin called Clontarf. We felt so grand staying in our very own Irish home and making delicious Irish brown bread buttered with you-could-eat-it-with-a-spoon Irish butter every morning before catching the bus into Dublin.

Karinne’s family was spectacular. Eleanor not only picked us up from the airport, but also stocked Cait’s house with food and cooked us lunches and breakfasts. She arranged our bus to Cork (more details to come), and had champagne and tarts to bid us farewell when we left Saturday.

Karinne’s Irish family felt like my Irish family, and truly made me appreciate the small, but tremendously welcoming country.