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hoping to win. By the end of the day, we rushed. Hilary put me on “suicide watch,”
were exhausted, but Noel, in spite of work- which meant I had to make sure she
ing all day, made us dinner: stuffed chicken stopped if a sheep decided to cross the
legs (outrageously delicious) steamed road.
broccoli, new potatoes, more home-made Glenveagh National Park in the heart
breads and merengue pie. of Donegal is 40,000 acres of mountain
Knowing that at some point we’d have bogs, lakes, woods, and a serene walled
to leave Noel and Dessie, we’d made plans garden. At its entrance was a 19th century
to forgo Ireland’s opulent castles and posh castle made from granite. In 1937, the
hotels and instead try a couple of Airbnb’s. Tabasco heir, Henry McIlhenny of Philadel-
Driving north, the scenery, which had been phia restored the castle and improved the
full of leafy trees lining the roads, changed gardens. The interior was nothing like a
to flat grasslands and granite boulders castle –more like a posh country home with
covered in gorse, country lanes where a music room where Yehudi Menuhin once
grass grew in the median strip, and fields performed for the guests. We explored the
of sheep and cows. It was so wonderful not walled garden, stopped in the tea garden
rushing from place to place as we have in for lunch, and continued northwest.
the past but rather seeing Ireland so un- Our first Airbnb was in Derrybag at the
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