Discovering the sound of Ireland

One of my favorite parts of our preparation for Ireland has been discovering new music. James and I already had an array of Irish and Irish-inspired musicians in our collection – on CDs, on iPods and on our smartphones. I personally own almost every album U2 has ever put out (excluding some rare limited releases.) I have a few Cranberries CDs, a couple of The Pogues and The Corrs albums, James has a few Dropkick Murphy’s songs (an American-band with a Celtic-rock sound) and we both have a bit of Van Morrison.

U2 Innocence and Experience Tour San Jose, May 19.

We discovered Pandora to be a great resource in discovering new music. We added a Chieftains “station” and got lots of traditional-sounding music. That station led us to the Dubliners, which led us to Flogging Molly and other American Celtic-rock bands.

Some of our favorite new songs we’ve discovered since planning the trip include:

• Seven Drunken Nights by the Dubliners
• Rocky Road to Dublin by various artists – This version is by the Dubliners
• Drunken Lullabies by Flogging Molly
• Dublin Reels by the Chieftains
• Who Will Sing Me Lullabies – by Kate Rusby (she is English, but her songs came up in the mix and I really like them)

James has joked that our apartment sounds more Irish than Ireland will sound when we arrive in September since we’ve been playing so much of this music lately. James even downloaded a “Celtic rock” pack from RockSmith, a video game that helps him learn new songs on  his guitar, so he could play some tunes himself.

James and I are hoping we will continue to discover new music – or hear old traditional music for the first time – on our trip. We will be scouting out pubs in Dublin that play live music. We are also staying in Doolin and Inishmore (on the Aran Islands) for one night each in hopes of hearing some traditional music.

The I discovered when I was in Ireland as a student turned out to be the best souvenir I brought home since I can still enjoy it today. I hope we’ll have the same experience on this trip.

Tourbook tagging

Early on James and I decided against using a tour package for our trip to Ireland. The package deals can be a little cheaper and for many people they probably take the stress out of travel since someone else is dealing with the logistics. We wanted the freedom to handpick our destinations and we want the flexibility to change our minds once we get there.

Book pages are tagged with Post-It flags.

We invested in a few more guidebooks and a bunch of Post-It note flags in our initial wave of planning. We flipped through the books and tagged places or activities we thought might be fun. I recommend DK Eyewitness Travel Ireland and Lonely Planet’s Ireland’s Best Trips as they have lots of pictures as well as good information.

I wanted us to see a few places I especially enjoyed around Dublin and Coleraine. James was interested in historical sites, such as castles and ancient ruins. I marked many spots along the west coast of Ireland, known as the Wild Atlantic Way route, as I hadn’t had a chance to see it when I was a student. James wanted to find pubs where he could enjoy a pint while listening to live music. I checked off notable restaurants with plans to look for menus online. James requested we add some places to hike. We both were interested in museums because they would be a chance to learn more about history and culture, and many of them offer free admission.

We did most of this with a blind eye to the distance between destinations, the cost of each activity or how many days we might actually need to see every spot. If we had incorporated all of the places that looked interesting on our first exuberant glance through our guidebooks, we probably would have hit all 32 counties in the Republic and Northern Ireland.