One year ago I had just returned from spending three weeks along the Wild Atlantic Way in Co. Donegal in Lettermacaward and Dungloe.  Now it wasn't my original intention to spend that much time there; I originally intended to spend three days in Dublin, go on to Scotland and then come back to Donegal where I have friends.  But I got sick in Dublin and that changed my plans in a hurry.  So I took the bus across the country to Letterkenny where a neighbor from here who has a home on the coast of Donegal picked me up.  I stayed there until I returned to Dublin and my flight back to Florida.

Back and forth between Lettermacaward and Dungloe I went every day, I got to see the real Ireland, how people live and work.  A farmer drove his sheep past the window in the midst of a gale the day after I got there and then back again that evening.  A few days before I returned to Dublin, I looked out the window and the same farmer was sending two of the largest dairy cows I've ever seen right past the window (I've been in my ex's family's dairy barns many times).   The road in front of the house is hardly wide enough for one car so any time you met up with one going the other way, you had to pull over; something I was aware of but still was very interesting.  Since the house is located on a peninsula jutting out into a bay, many small roads twist and turn leading to it through steep hillsides dotted with sheep and gorse in full bloom.  All the road signs are in Irish in Donegal; I learned to read them quickly!

To the person, everyone I met wherever I went was so very nice!  By the time I left, people in the restaurants in Dungloe knew my name and welcomed me back.  Twice we knocked on strangers' doors for information and were never turned away.  Once was outside of Derry when the man who took us to Derry stopped to knock on someone's door to find out where a WWII hospital was located since I was trying to find out where my mother was stationed in Ireland.  The other time I knocked on someone's door to find out how to get to a dolmen located in a field.  The people were so nice each time.

Unfortunately because of my illness, I only got to see a very small part of Co. Donegal and onlya little of Dublin.  I want to go back so badly I can taste it.  I want to see the Wild West of Ireland!  I want to see my friends again. There are so many places yet to be explored.

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