Destination Romance

On this day of love, I present to you the island of castles on the bluff, maidens in flowing red hair, and little folk o' the rainbow.

In highschool, I used to picture myself living in Ireland in this scenario:

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 The vision was hard to get over. I loved it so much! It was like Somewhere in Time where I thought if I could nearly taste every detail and wished and wished and wished for it enough, I could be there.

Although, via literature, I occasionally indulge in a medieval Irish swoon, now I find Ireland romantic in a haunting, fog in the hills, gazing over the sea in my homespun clothes and rubber boots, with my journal tucked under my arm, kind of way. I should eat a breakfast of Irish oats, hike along the small stone walls in the afternoon, explore the shore, and return to potatoes by the fire with a book and some sighing Celtic music. I would love to get to know a few of the local folk and their histories. That really can happen, don't you think?

A few movies that are set in Ireland caught my eye (War of the Buttons, The Secret of Roan Innish, the beggining of Far and Away) but two blurry bits of Dancing at Lughnasa won out.

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Irish Tidbits:
-Ethnicity is primarily Celtic and English, with the official languages being both English and Gaelic.
-Their main national holiday really is Saint Patrick's Day on March 17th! St. Patrick introduced Christianity in AD 432. 88% of the Irish are Roman Catholic.
-Ireland "belonged"--with great unrest--to Great Britain for 700 years. By the Act of Union (1801), Great Britain and Ireland became the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.” A steady decline in the Irish economy followed in the next decades. The population had reached 8.25 million when the great potato famine of 1846–1848 took many lives and drove more than 2 million people to immigrate to North America. I've heard more people leave Ireland each year than are born there. The current Irish population is 4.2 million.
-The national symbol of Ireland is the Celtic harp, not the shamrock.
-A single day of good weather that pops up in a long stretch of bad days is known in Ireland as a "pet day."
-According to tradition, a wedding party should always take the longest road home from church. 
-One of the most popular radio shows in rural Ireland is still the weekly broadcast of local obituaries.
-An odd Irish birthday tradition is to lift the birthday child upside down and give his head a few gentle bumps on the floor for good luck. The number of bumps should allegedly correspond to the child’s age plus one.
-Killyleagh Castle {below}, in County Down, Northern Ireland, is the oldest occupied castle in Ireland. Built in the 13th century, it is still in use as a private home. Now see, some of you still have the chance to marry one of these Irish sons and gaze from your tower at dawn!