It’s 7 p.m. in Belfast (Greenisland, actually, pronounced “Green-island” not “Green-is-land” as we were corrected shortly after arriving) and I actually feel partly OK for the first time in a couple of days. Last night was about the sickest I can remember being for a few years — a horrible cold followed by uncontrollable chills followed by a fever. As is often the case with a fever, my mind was in a weird kind of semi-delirium most of the night, made worse by the fact that my cold was so bad and my body ached so much that I couldn’t sleep. Whenever I woke, or half-woke, my mind kept coming back to some strange recurring cycle of events, which made absolutely perfect sense at the time, but which I can’t even remember now. Suzie said I kept mumbling incomprehensible words, “semi-delirious” as she put it. Even when I woke up, at 11 a.m., I felt terrible, having added to the list of symptoms a clutching chest-ratting cough. All I really wanted to do was to stay in bed all day, but we had to take the rental car back, which meant Suzie and I both had to drive. She didn’t want to do it, and neither did I, but we had no choice.
So, it was another struggle with sitting on the right side, driving on the left side, shifting with the left hand, dealing with roundabouts that were running clockwise (the ‘wrong’ direction) and roads that had been placed down on lanes that were originally built pre-auto and so were often too narrow, all while feeling that I was viewing and interacting with everything through a thick syrup. The good news is that we accomplished our task without incident (as long as you don’t call getting honked at a couple of times an incident). After we got home, I drove Suzie and the boys to the nearest larger town (Carrickfergus, a great Irish town name) and dropped them off, giving me a couple of hours to vegetate. After I picked them up, we found a large grocery store, brought provisions, and came home.
To orient you to where we are, here is our house on Google Maps, which you can zoom and pan on to see our location vis-a-vis Belfast:
The neighborhood we are in is a small, freestanding development of small, cozy looking brick houses. Our house looks like this:
It is situated on high ground on the northwest side of the Belfast Lough, the large bay at the end of which sits Belfast. The area around us is lush and green and semi rural. Here are some of the sites from our neighborhood.
I can’t wait until I’m back to 100% and we can explore what’s around here. The town of Carrickfergus has a famous historical castle
that is one of the most famous in Ireland, and Belfast itself seems an active and upcoming place. More later.
Categories: Travel -- Ireland