Saturday, 14 May 1955
We left Ashford Castle under clear sunny skies but storm clouds inside the plucky little Anglia. B complained about the cold at breakfast of excellent smoked kippers. Ruth and I got another warmer room somehow. Everything is downhill after the splendor of the castles. These turned out to be the most elegant meals we had in all of Europe. That’s in seven months, not a couple of weeks. We stop for tea in Castle Island in a place that turns out to be dank and drab.
We finally get to our destination, Killarney. The first hotel we consider is a letdown, looks and feels like a beachside fire trap and is cold as a tomb. A clean small guest house proves to be better but still cold. I swear they leave the doors open because it’s warmer outside. It’s where my fingers are so stiff from the cold that I have trouble signing the guest register. We meet Jackie and Leonard G, from San Francisco, who have spent the winter in Europe, he playing the famous golf courses and writing about them. He’s going back to the States to work on staff at Collier’s, a weekly magazine whose new editor, had been his boss at the S.F. Chronicle. We have a bad meal together at the International Hotel and talked of freelancing stuff to magazines. I saw his byline many times in many books later through the years following our chance meeting. We speak of the Irish coffee at the Buenavista in San Francisco with a degree of nostalgia, but apparently no one at the International has heard of Irish coffee. Our guest house doesn’t seem as cold upon our return but maybe it’s because we’ve had food and drink, even if we can see our breath in our room.
Sunday, 15 May 1955
Today’s scenery much more spectacular around Magillicuddy’s Reeks and the famous lakes of Killarney, though not up to that of Connemara. Had a delightful lunch at Victoria Hotel in Cork for five shillings and sixpence, which came as a surprise.
Street scene in Castle Island on a Sunday afternoon
Cormac’s castle in Cashel
Black metal Celtic crosses with Gaelic legends mark the spot of ambushes where Irish nationalists were killed during the Troubles. Back in Dublin the Anchor Hotel has no vacancies so we are back at Wynne’s. Try again for Irish coffee and this time a wild-eyed night porter says he will bring us some Gaelic coffee. After about an hour he returns to the lounge with a long story about why it is quite impossible to arrange. Apparently.