Two literary countries that a writer needs to visit

Last month, we went to London and Ireland to witness my eldest sister’s marriage into an Irish family. Honestly, Papa and I, as well as my older sister’s family, wanted to be there but, at one point, decided not to go due to lack of funds. Pounds and Euro’s values are way higher than Peso and Australian dollars! And anyway, Ate Ellis and Kuya Patrick will have their church wedding in the Philippines next year.

But God is a good, good Father—He blessed their union through the generosity of the people around them, and the beautiful couple very kindly shared their blessings with us. After witnessing several weddings in the past, I can say that such an outpour of blessings is a sure sign from heaven that the couple’s love is true and graced by God.

And so, who wouldn’t say yes to a sponsored trip?

The whole trip was enchanting. Since it would take a long while to get a visa straight from Ireland, we got one from the UK—and that made the plans better.

My sister booked us a plane from our countries to Doha then to London Heathrow, so we got to experience London for three days. It looked stunning both during the day and at night. Honestly, I was generally feeling unsettled due to the cold weather (it was winter) and jet lag, but I was ecstatic all the same! Some of the places we visited were Oxford, the Tower Bridge, Piccadilly Circus, and museums. Every corner of it is a tourist spot, what with the old brick buildings and the astounding architecture of their modern infrastructure! And in Oxford, I just couldn’t believe I walked into the Great Hall and other parts of Hogwarts, as well as ate panini at the tavern where Harry Potter drank butterbeer.

We flew over to Ireland after that, and it turned out to be a windier laid-back London. We arrived in Dublin past midnight and were warmly welcomed into the home of Kuya Patrick’s family that looked so much like the houses I’d seen in movies. What’s more is they live in Bayside, which is a provincial northside of Dublin. It was gorgeous. Papa, my older sister’s best friend, and I were offered their cozy attic for bedroom. Its slanted ceiling had a large window overlooking their verdant back garden and the railway. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I’d hear seagulls’ pointy toes as they strutted over the window glass or their beaks as they pecked at it, and I loved it!

Since we stayed longer in Ireland, we got to explore it further and farther than London. With Tita Eileen (Kuya Patrick’s mom) as our guide, we walked by the seas, around parks, and up the beach dunes that looked like Andrew Wyeth’s painting “Christina’s World”. St. Anne’s has tall and huge trees, so marvelous that they oddly reminded me of scenes from Hunger Games and Tolkien. Tita Ann (Kuya Patrick’s aunt) also treated us out to Dublin Zoo, which is way cleaner and bigger than Manila Zoo—plus, it has the Meerkat Restaurant that sold really good pasta, vegetarian burger, and chips. Most of their animals looked comfortably living there since the Zoo provided them with amply spacious habitats.

I’ll also never forget how we climbed the hill at Phoenix Park, exactly where the Papal Cross stood. The vast landscape over the other side of the hill is like how I imagined the haven I described in my book Finding You. Right then and there, I felt I had to twirl and sing “The Sound of Music”, and Ate Ellis helped me record it!

Before this trip, I learned from my sisters that Dublin is one of UNESCO’s Cities of Literature—and I understood why. Their bookstores in the city are big, and they have tall shelves packed with great titles, mostly penned by Irish writers. I couldn’t believe seeing seven shelves of biographies there—and even separate ones for essays and other creative nonfiction books! I could spend a day merely browsing them one by one. Furthermore, I got to see James Joyce Court in Bayside as well as Balscadden House on our way to Howth’s Coast Trail, where the poet W.B. Yeats had lived from 1880 to 1883.

There was more that we saw, and we couldn’t thank enough the O’Connor family and their extended family who fed us good Irish food and treated us like we were family. We also enjoyed our stay at Ate Ellis’s apartment a day before their wedding. Her housemates are kind souls, who also made us feel very welcomed.

I have many thoughts about this trip, and I feel it may take me a book-length memoir to preserve all of it. I haven’t even written here about how lovely my sister’s wedding was and how much I’ve learned from the O’Connor family! But overall, I realized that trips like this can make anyone’s perspective wider. Depending on how you take it, the experience can change you inside. Somehow, knowing what actually goes on out there makes me wonder how I can be part of a greater whole or contribute to something larger. Apparently, it gave me a lot of things to think about, and hopefully, once I’ve fully recovered from jet lag, I could experience this trip’s full impact on me. I just wish I could express this better, but I really felt like London and Ireland spoke to the writer in me!

It’s a beautiful world, and I cannot say yet that it’s small. I mean, this is just my third out-of-the-country trip, and it went only for over two weeks! I can’t wait to have more.

A million thanks, Ate Ellis and Kuya Patrick!

Photo by Anthony Delanoix