The day started and ended unconventionally. A little blurb in the guidebook perked my curiosity to seek out Ireland’s very own Woodstock. Out of my way, I headed southeast from Kilkenny to the village of Inistioge. I meandered up Mt. Alto until I reach the pearly gates of the Woodstock Gardens. Pausing for a moment, I wondered just how a vehicle is supposed to travel through here. With a deep breath and a spirit for seeking out the weird on this day, I put the pedal to the metal. Once you pass through the gates of Woodstock Gardens, you have exactly 2 kilometers worth of utter panic that a car might turn around the bend and come straight at you. Truly sidewalk narrow with a somewhat steep drop, I held my breath and prayed for solitude on this short drive.

At long last, I arrive to the Woodstock Gardens parking lot, committed to my search for the truly weird today. The Woodstock Gardens are known for representing High Victorian garden style. The heavily forested space features both formal and informal gardens along with a collection of trees with a fame that has stretched all over Europe. First created in 1840, the gardens were the vision of Colonel William Tighe and his wife Louisa. I ponder this history as I begin the Noble Fir Walk, one of the surviving features of the 19^th century garden. 

I can hear the echo of my boot heels with each clip-clop through this thoroughfare. It’s not peaceful, but mostly bizarre and eerie. I am the only soul around and yet I very much feel as though these trees are souls too.

The path curves and a new element of weird presents itself. I see trees that don’t look very Irish or even modern day, out of place and time. This is the Monkey Puzzle Walk, another surviving feature of the grounds from its creation in 1845. Set out as an avenue, the trees are Araucaria araucana. Extremely valuable and threatened in their natural habitat in Chile, no wonder this specie looks out of place.

Only a few souls fill up the Woodstock Gardens, mostly men with chainsaws working on the land, or so I hope. It is funny how splendid isolation can be incredibly discomforting at the same time. We grow used to people that when we aren’t engrossed in activity, something doesn’t sit well. I decide to head out of the gardens but not before seeing the Woodstock House. Designed by Francis Bindon for Sir William Fownes in 1745, the manor home would change hands to the Tighes. They would transform the landscape into a full-blown park. I can’t imagine the grand manor home by any stretch of the imagination. I stare at a building that looks likes a collapse could occur any minute. The Woodstock House was burned down in 1922 after it was occupied by Black and Tan troops. Now its unstable condition only furthers my distaste of isolation amidst Ireland’s weird.

Perhaps the only element to the Woodstock Gardens that don’t stir up head scratching and shivers of isolation are the views of the River Nore Valley. After visions of a place the resembled no Ireland that I thought I knew, this unquestionably Irish landscape appears through the trees.

I gaze up at the wispy branches of the trees along Monkey Puzzle Walk. This is not the Ireland that I envisioned. However after a month in this land, I realize that is the point. Ireland is a country littered in cliqued ideas about what it is and isn’t. This isn’t Ireland and yet it very much is, a little weird and off color. I head out from the Woodstock Gardens the same way that I came in an hour ago. With that same hope for solitude to make it out of this narrow entrance and exit, I solider on, running into a backpacker on foot with his pet goat on a leash. Ireland is outlandish, eccentric and weird, luckily so.

Have you ever been to the Woodstock Gardens or perhaps a place in a country that just didn’t seem to fit?

They joked about their ex-wives as I stepped up to the ring. I was about to let two crusty old men dangle me from a 15^th century castle, all to kiss a stone whose surface probably belongs in a petri dish rather than a top tourist attraction. As I let the strange man hoist me upside down, I could see the glowing green earth below from an angle unknown to me. I was alone in Ireland, doing things I would have never considered solo activities before, including putting my faith in strangers to bring me back up from my big smooch with the Blarney Stone. 

It would be an utter shame to miss out on seeing a country merely because I had no one to accompany me. The excuses for not traveling run deep, with many pertaining to money, lack of vacation time and of course that pesky little reason that going alone is not an option. My first completely solo trip, one where I didn’t plan on meeting a friend a few weeks into my travels, took place in Ireland. I was asked a few weeks ago what was the best place to travel solo. I couldn’t help but reply Ireland. 

There are only so many words you can utter to convince someone to try traveling alone at least once, especially when the only other option is to stay home. Sometimes the images of what we are missing are the only elements that can spur a person to book that ticket on a whim, even when everything inside of them is trying to stop that fateful click of the mouse. In a few words and a whole lot of images, I found that being alone in Ireland was worth every minute of silence and those moments of doubt. 

The bed and breakfast scene in Ireland tends to comfort the solo traveler, mostly through its décor and hot meals. I stayed in places that probably hadn’t been remodeled in decades, ones adorned in cow themes and others that featured teddy bears for a little comfort. Whether you stay in a hostel, hotel, bed and breakfast or even rent Sykes holiday cottages in Ireland, the solo traveler’s best comfort is that breakfast in the morning. By the end of my month alone in Ireland, I was a tad sick of bacon, eggs and mysterious puddings, but I realized along the way these moments at breakfast tables across the country provided a great deal of home. I would feast on the meal all while planning out my day. Breakfasts in Ireland served as the constant to every day. No matter what would transpire that day, triumph or defeat, the breakfast table was always there. 

Part of what I think makes Ireland so easy for a solo traveler came through its settings. I found myself staring at the haphazard gravestones in Glendalough shortly after arriving. There were countless tour groups around me and voices of those long since past. We toss around the phrases “solo travel” and “begin alone”, but in essence, that is very rarely the case. I found this out on that chilly day amidst the moss-covered graves of Glendalough. 

It is even more difficult to be alone in Ireland when you find yourself in the country on a major holiday like Saint Patrick’s Day. I secured a perch for the parade in Galway over a cappuccino. I wanted to be alert in order to observe the faces in the crowd, the juggler who just couldn’t juggle and the idea that crowds comfort the traveler alone. We all shared in the simple joys of seeing what act or float would come down the street next. 

I made my way up to the Dingle Peninsula on the west coast of the country to sit in beehive forts from 500 B.C. The thing about Ireland is that you might have a sense of self-consciousness for your first time traveling alone, but then you quickly realize you aren’t the first. I imagine the isolation one must have felt to reside in these forts and ponder the isolation of solo travel. We are all connected in the end merely by being here. 

Perhaps my favorite image of Ireland alone is not just one scenario. The images in my mind are those faces I had multiple conversations with, conversations I wouldn’t have been daring enough to make with a friend by my side. From the perfumer in the Burren to the café owner in Clifden to my own relative in the tiny town of Teelin, these conversations are what make solo travel thrive. 

The Homeland, Teelin, Ireland

I would cross over into Northern Ireland, technically a different land with a different currency to prove it. I captured the giant at his causeway at the Giant’s Causeway, a scene of pure ironic poetry. 

I crossed the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge as salmon fishermen have for decades, all with crashing waves below. I watched as a castle fell into the water and the funds in my wallet disappear without my knowledge. 

At the end of my solo travels, I was robbed in Belfast and soon wanted to return home. And at the same time, I knew this was just another test of being alone in Ireland. Could I handle it? Suddenly my favorite images of solo travel in Ireland flashed in my mind and I knew I could. For without these visions and without a giant leap of faith to trust in being alone away from home, I would be less complete. These images of being alone in Ireland would never have been had I not clicked purchase to go alone. You might not think solo travel is for you, but if you are not traveling for this reason, you could be missing these scenes, conversations and memories the camera has captured for the mind eternally. They are behind doors you have closed, ones that are just waiting to be opened.

Have you traveled alone in Ireland? What do you think is the best place to try solo travel for the first time?

This post was sponsored by Sykes Cottages.

When I reach the last few days of a trip, I tend to look at these remaining destinations with finality. On my way to the Dublin Airport, I decided to spend that finality in Trim, a place where many spent their own end. The small town just west of Ireland’s capital used to be a major player in the middle ages. Elizabeth I even considered placing Trinity College here. Home to the county jail, ironically Trim was where you could say the herds were also trimmed and thinned.

I check into my hotel just across from the Trim Castle, obviously the showpiece to this now snoozing town. The Castle brags of its Braveheart fame just merely by appearance. You can see why filmmakers thought it the perfect spot to imagine the past. However, the Trim Castle seems far more proud of its size, restoration and importance.

Serving as Ireland’s largest Anglo Norman fortification, the castle is standing, crumbling proof Trim was not so sleepy in medieval times. Founded in 1173, what I wander around today is mostly from 1200. A green space surrounds this area of Trim, where locals come to walk their dogs. I observe they don’t notice the castle, probably a site they have wandered past their whole lives. It’s funny how with time we forget just how extraordinary our backyard can be.

Across from the castle and the River Boyne is St. Mary’s Abbey, or what is left of it. Cromwell wasn’t kind to this 12^th century Augustinian abbey. However a lone bell tower still stands, albeit in a haphazard fashion, proving you can knock Trim down, but the town can still rise.

I head back in for the evening, but I can’t avoid Trim’s medieval glory. I spot a glow of midnight blue out my window, lights making certain the Trim Castle is still visible through the darkness. And while this was the end of my Ireland adventure, I recognize Trim is the perfect spot from ending and beginning. Quiet, crumbling and stoic, Trim isn’t a big player now, but its remains from the glory days prove that doesn’t matter. It might have been the end of my Ireland excursion, the end of the solo travel glory, but it was also the beginning of a new adventure. The traces of my Ireland trip will still remain, just as Trim Castle seems to say.

Have you been to Trim?

I turn the handle on a squeaky blue painted door in Clifden, hoping for a simple meal. That simple meal quickly turns into a complex conversation with the owner about the state of Ireland. As she laments the country’s recession, she says with a hope, “But it will get better.” Her words are simple, and yet so complex. Most worries are only temporary and believing in their passing is the best we can do.

Post dinner and discussion, she bids me good luck on my travels and I enter the colorful streets of Connemara’s capital. Clifden decorates in brightly painted shops and restaurants, generally forgotten in the winter and swarmed in the summer by tourists. I’m happy to be here before the swarm. The silent streets allow me to ponder the resolve of the Irish spirit that café owner possessed.

The next morning, I decide to explore the Connemara coast, an area north of Galway, comprised of rough bogs, valleys of isolation and of course the lapping waters of the Atlantic, the only element connecting me to my home.

On a short drive out of Clifden, I find a tiny sandy islet, one a few cars are driving across. Not wanting to get stuck with a rental car, the ultimate embarrassment, I enjoy the Connemara coast on foot, sinking like quicksand into the surface below me.

A lone boat keeps watch, alluding to the past by the peeling of its paint and its careless location. I wonder who owns it. I wonder who placed it here, perhaps just for the eye candy, for the typical shot of this unbelievable land.

As I head out of Connemara, I stop briefly at the Kylemore Abbey, first a castle built as a declaration of love later turned into an Irish Benedictine Abbey. Set up a few kilometers east of Letterfrack, the castle-abbey looks more 3-D puzzle than real construction.

And like most elements to Connemara, you almost have to pinch the picture in front of you to decide if it is fact or fiction. Post-pinch, I recognize Clifden and the rest of Connemara are composed of scenes of a tangible fairytale. The narrator of this scene, that Clifden café owner, reminds me that all fairytale settings come with a harsher reality. Then again, the harsh reality always gets better, as that Irish spirit would say.

Have you been to Connemara?

Driving into Cork, I noticed an abundance of high school students. And then, I realized I’m getting older. These are college students attending the University College Cork, home to around 7,000 students. Cork’s youth is apparent, even if a little more immature. You don’t sense age in this city, just pure youth and innocence.

A good day in Cork begins at the Old English Market, with no connection to the wood cleaner brand. I am delighted to find not bottles of wood polish but rather stall after stall of random goods. T-shirts and meats, delicious fruit tarts and vegetables, the market is one of the few old elements to Cork. Its beginnings stem from a charter of James I in 1610 for its construction. It wasn’t finished until 1786. A fire in 1980 would damage this old soul, but it would be refurbished and restored.

I grab a crumb and some coffee with Katrina of Tour Absurd at a café overlooking the market. As I try to block out the smell of fish below, I wolf down the crumble and coffee, ready to explore Cork from the outside.

Katrina suggests a more offbeat attraction in Cork, the Cork Butter Museum. This is something you don’t believe when you see it, a museum entirely dedicated to butter. Throughout walls shaded the perfect shade of butter, I learn of the important role of butter on Irish life throughout the ages. What began in 1770, Cork’s butter exchange was the largest exporter of salted butter in the world. Enter the bright orange doors and you too can feel like you have entered a giant butter dish.

We pass by St. Anne’s Church, also referred to as the Four Faced Liar. Apparently St. Anne can’t keep time. Each of the four clocks on the tower tells a different time. You can also ring the church’s bells to whatever tunes you please. I pass up this opportunity to annoy the people of Cork. Even the city’s St. Anne’s Church doesn’t believe in time, or at least the right time.

Crossing the River Lee in town, I head back to Cork’s youth, through the black iron gates of the University College Cork. On campus is the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, a public art gallery with ever-changing art exhibits and installations. The exhibit today deals with education, a comment on the conditions of schools and their practices. After reliving a few bad moments in Catholic grade school, I step back out on to the University campus. My youth is best left behind, but Cork’s is ever-present. There are wrinkles in time here, but Cork must have a great night cream for you can’t see signs of age.

Have you been to Cork? Did you mistake the college students for high schoolers?

A peat fire warms a pub in Kilkenny as The Beach Boys “Sloop John B” blares in the background, a song about wanting to go home. The woman next to the fire reads her newspaper and steals bites of dinner in between stories. Her glasses rest on the lower end of her nose as her plate of food goes flying due to an accidental elbow. She doesn’t bat an eyelash at her mistake and continues to read the evening news. I sit on the other end of the fire, eating crispy fish and chips. Suddenly I realize being alone in a pub is a good thing. You can observe the soul buried in her literature, the family meeting up with friends, the babies and children perfectly accepted in a bar. This is Kilkenny, Ireland.

I finish the last of my pint of Smithwick’s, the town’s true local brew. The Smithwick’s Brewery began in this town in 1710. Kilkenny keeps close to the bottle, offering countless pubs and bars to sample all manner of beers.

While a political power throughout the Middle Ages in Ireland, Kilkenny is not so much powerful as it is pleasant. The pleasantries begin at the Kilkenny Castle. Massive in size and dark gray in color, this is the castle my Irish dreams are composed. With foundations dating back to the 1100s, Kilkenny’s royal family, the Butlers, eventually bought the castle. When hard financial times fell on the city’s first family, the castle was sold to Kilkenny for a modest £50.

I tour the inside, home to most notable the first toilet in Kilkenny and the Long Room, a space said to be the second longest room in Ireland. The furnishings are all recreations for much of the castle’s interior was sold at auction. I look out from a window in the castle, admiring its expansive green grounds. Once I am free from the tour, I slip out to troll these grounds, finding that classic fool on the hill.

I rest up for the evening at the Butler House, a hotel owned by the Kilkenny Civic Trust. The Kilkenny Castle is within reach from some of the rooms, the former home of John Butler’s mother in 1794. Used as a soup kitchen during the choler epidemic in 1832, even if you aren’t a guest, you are still free to roam the gardens.

A new day in Kilkenny brings a new trek through its streets. I decide to end my last day at St. Canice’s Cathedral, medieval in origin. On the grounds of the Cathedral is the Round Tower, a structure built in 849. It rises to a height of 100 feet.

I decide to join the school group climbing the tower. Little do I know, it is also an ancient way up to the top. I climb wooden planks headed straight upward, with just one side of railing. After the uneasy climb, I hear the chatter of Dutch teenagers as I admire the top of Kilkenny. It’s a long way down, indeed.

The Butler House sponsored by stay while in Kilkenny. My opinions are always my own.

It is the eve of the last month of the year. December is a month I seldom travel. It is a month designated for family time. Each weekend seems to spur an event or occasion. It is also the final chapter of the year, a time for reflection.

And on the eve of the last month of 2011, I couldn’t help but think back on my travels for the year, as many of us do throughout this time of ending and beginning. What I have concluded about my travels this year is that I learned something about travel I didn’t realize before. The realization comes after travel, when you are home reflecting on experiences. Travel should make you wonder how you did this, how you got through that. It is almost mystical in a sense, a hazy memory in the past. Questioning its reality only makes it that much more special.

Last Minute Travel

When an opportunity presents itself, especially in regards to travel, I have learned you have to seize it. Invited on a press trip to Mexico, really by chance and not so much by choice, I found myself jetting off to Ixtapa without knowing what I was doing here. As the snow fell in Colorado, I dug out all of my summer clothes and headed south of the border. I watchedcoconut candy the color of a highlighter set being made in a modest village. I wandered through markets in Zihuatanejo and observed the close proximity of freshly cut meat to children’s toys. I arrived at the miraculous in Petatlán, a statue to Jesus adorned in lime green.

Before this year, I had never taken such a chance on travel in such short notice. I know many would not turn down this opportunity unless they had a commitment they couldn’t get out of or an obligation to meet. Luckily for me, my office can move with me. Mexico opened my eyes to the brightest of colors and the remarkable sheen to traveling last minute. You don’t have time to think about what you are doing, if it’s right or wrong. In essence, travel worry time is eliminated. You go into the experience wide eyed and leave that way. There is no time to prepare for what you will see and that might be travel’s best gift. A lack of preparation gives you the rawest view of your destination, the most unaltered and unbiased perspective.

Solo Travel

After braving it in Mexico for several days, without knowing a soul, I think I was even more prepared to head to Ireland all by my lonesome. As I have mentioned before, I was a bit of a solo travel fraud. I had made the occasional trip by myself, but I had never set out to do something completely alone, without visitors or friends joining me along the way. In March, I left for Ireland to drive on the wrong side of the road and discover what it means to travel solo. I talked to strangers and sheep, on more occasions than I anticipated. I discovered Irish humility with every turn of the bend. I was robbed for the first time abroad.

I can’t say solo travel is for everyone and I can’t say it is completely for me. However until you take one trip alone, no matter how big or small, you can’t completely know yourself. At least that’s what I learned. A few week’s ago I said to a friend, “I can’t believe I did that, drive around Ireland for a month all alone.” It is the unbelievability of travel I don’t think I had seen before. Solo travel is a great way to bring this about in yourself. You are forced to recognize yourself with a new-found confidence. It becomes unbelievable once you return home and all the more powerful you came, you saw and you conquered, solo.

Travel In One’s Own Country

This year, I traveled my country. So often you hear Americans don’t travel, they lack passports and culture. What is seldom brought up in those articles is that the United States is massive. This year, I found myself nearly traveling from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic. A wedding out in California spurred a road trip across Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. I found the loneliest highway in America and appreciated the lack of activity. Loneliness can be good for you. I returned home, only to plot another road trip, this time across America’s South. Beginning in Arkansas, I made my way across Tennessee, North Carolina, down through South Carolina and Georgia and up through Alabama and Mississippi. I spent a weekend in New York City, revisiting a city so unique and overwhelming.

The two road trips were different, but their meanings were the same. I set out to get to know parts of my own country I traveled mostly on family road trips as a terrible toddler. I wanted to get to know where I am from on levels many don’t deem worthy these days. Glamorous and fulfilling travel doesn’t have to be off in Moscow or on the streets of Paris. It can be in one’s own country, a notion I picked up this year.

Next year no doubt will bring new realizations, new appreciations of why I travel. I don’t know where I am going, how I am getting there or whom I will go with, but I know I will go.

What have your learned about travel in 2011?