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Ah, ‘tis a warm Irish welcome. The sun is shining and Christy Barrett, snappy in his tails and top hat, waxes lyrical in his Irish baritone. As greeter extraordinaire to both Dublin’s fair city and its Conrad International Hotel, Christy is his own trumpet. Checking-in with more genial Irish staff, I begin to relax after the transatlantic trail in the spacious blond beech wood-lined lobby with its rich carpets and Irish greenery. |
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 St. Patrick was not Irish. William of Orange, the militant Protestants’ hero, was backed by the Pope. Who knew? Not I, but all my Irish-American friends did. The sixteenth century lives in their 21st century psyches like the 1960’s do in mine. A trip to Dublin and two hours in Johnny Connolly’s "seminar on the street" helped me understand why.
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They say there are 40 colors of green on the Emerald Isle. I can see 39 of them from my window. Left, a stone wall is drenched with pearly-pink clematis and a white horse grazes on kelly green grass. The scene is framed by forest-green pine trees adorned with new lime-green growth. Ahead, towards the sea, the farmer tromps through the daisies and buttercups of a chartreuse and spring green meadow on his way to fix the fence. Beyond the fence, knolls of olive and avocado green brambles form a portion of the Broadlough Bird Sanctuary. On the horizon, two tiny figures cruise along the coast of the blue-gray Irish Sea and the dove-gray puffs in the soon to be rainy sky. |
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 Tinakilly Country House is in a meticulously designed new addition which detracts nothing from this Victorian Italianate Manor. On two levels, the spacious dining room allows single diner’s like myself the option of either gazing out at the garden undisturbed or to pretend to gaze out while eavesdropping discreetly. The main topics this evening are golf, the Irish rush hour and Chef Christopher Daly’s rendition of wild Irish salmon.
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