The Real Hero of the Week

I sat down with Glo today (post trip) and asked her what thing, or place, or person was her favorite part of the trip.  I already knew what my favorite was, but I was curious to hear what she had to say.  Turns out, her number one was also my number one:  Kilcoobin Cottage.

Funny story.  We were told the combination to the lock box (for the key) was 3030.  We tried every combination of that with no success.  We even figured that maybe I misunderstood, Keith, the leasing leprechaun with the thick Irish accent, and thought that perhaps he had told me 1313.  Obviously, we wouldn't do well on "The Amazing Race"  seeing as the combination was:  3131.

This might sound ridiculous, but our little cottage on the north coast of Northern Ireland was almost a character in and of itself in our vacation.  A couple of months ago, when I had the itinerary of the trip mostly planned, I started looking for a vacation rental.  We had stayed in Irish cottages before, but the company we had used in the past only rented in Ireland proper.  I contacted a place which seemed to have a lot of listings in Northern Ireland (and especially along the coast) and asked for a suggestion.

Miriam at Causeway Rentals returned my email within days, and at the bottom of the list, for the cheapest price, was Kilcoobin Cottage, a small cottage that would sleep all seven of us.  I looked at the pictures and couldn't see why I wouldn't rent it--it looked idyllic.  Turns out, it was.

The "morning after".  This photo makes us appreciate exactly how high Glo was when she climbed on the roof!

I woke up the first morning, opened the window in my second story bedroom, and saw this--see the ocean in the distance?  I wish I could capture the smell and feel of it too.  The breeze, and the sunshine, and the birds.  *sigh*

Glo took this picture of a sunset, as seen from the front yard of our cottage.

Aside from the initial problems of getting into the cottage, we couldn't have asked for a more fun place.  It wasn't always easy staying there, seeing as the temperature in the cottage would fluctuate from a chilly 50 degrees when we arrived to near 80 degrees during game playing.  Too, there was no clothes dryer--just a "clothes horse" which I was unsure of when told that by the rental agency.  However, it's these kinds of situations that just make it all the more fun, right?  Yep.

To allow us to bring less luggage (and leave more room for souvenirs on the return trip), we only brought enough clothes for the first four days (of eight).  This meant on Wednesday, I needed to do laundry.  Lucky me, there was a brand-spanking new washing machine....in the kitchen.  Yep, I had forgotten that pretty much any large appliance in an English house will be in the kitchen.  I put in a load, thinking that I would be able to hang the clothes around the balmy house over night.  Three hours later the load still wasn't done.  However, you better believe that I had the absolute cleanest clothes I have ever had.  I waited until 2 a.m. to take out the clothes, but finally gave up and waited until morning.

The infamous fire.

At that point, I learned that a "clothes horse" is just an indoor clothes rack.  However, there was also one of those clothes lines that has four sides to it...outside.  Thankfully, the weather was fairly sunny and breezy on that day, and when we returned home, that one load was dry.  Too bad I had three more loads to do!

There was a reason that the game-playing room reached a stifling 80+ degrees at night.  The Kennedy wardrobe for the week was posed in front of the wood-burning stove, attempting to dry.  It was a funny dance, seeing me move in between my turn at Siedler and rotating the easier-to-dry clothes to the front and replacing them as soon as they were deemed semi-dry.

My good friend, Sarah (and I mean this even more now), took our friendship to an entirely new level when one afternoon (while John and I were napping) took the clothes out of the washer and hung them on the drying rack.  I'm not talking shirts and such, although those were part of the load.  Nope--she hung our underwear even :-)

You have to love it:  Siedler at the table, underwear by the fire....and Jared eating.

The funniest part was seeing the men peeling off their clothes during games, and when they couldn't remove any more clothes and remain decent, they would attempt to open a window on the sly.  The problem with that was the temperature would immediately drop and Sarah and I were notified instantly that something was wrong.  We wanted our tootsies to stay warm, for goodness sakes!

We fought the new-fangled gas stove in the kitchen (and John won), and we lost power on the last night there.  Thankfully (my vanity being the most thankful), Jared won the battle with the fuse box, and by the next morning, everything was up and running again, including my hair dryer and flat iron.

I can't mention the cottage without mentioning "meat pies".  Turns out, these are quite the treats in Ireland, and they are sold in all flavors and sizes in every grocery store.  Sarah and John were hooked instantly, but it wasn't until Jared smelled the purely delicious smells wafting from the kitchen that he just had to try one.  It didn't last long.

We loved the kitchen table too.  It was big enough with room to spare for all of us to eat dinner, or play games, and in true European fashion, it was solid.  We all admitted that we wouldn't mind owning a table like that ourselves.

You know you have good friends
when you can take out your tooth,
and drink water from a ginormous
beer glass...and no one judges you.
Yep, I love the Morans!

The cottage was darling.  The layout was terrific.  The bedrooms were so cozy and cute, and the two bathrooms had more than enough room for the seven of us.  Even John, the aficionado of good beds, gave his seal of approval to the mattress in our bedroom.  Too, there was strong WiFi for the kids to watch movies at night, and the view was terrific.  I loved that nobody was around--it was just the seven of us, and Kilcoobin.  It was so fun to come home to at night, after a day of various adventures. Snug as bugs...

And being the good friend they are, the Morans let me take this photo several times before it was just right.