The Luck of the Irish
Every year or two my wife and I rent a villa, chateaux or manor house for two weeks. These have been mostly in Europe or Mexico and are intended as a way to offer our extended family and friends a way to enjoy some time in foreign lands at minimal cost. I figure we can do this for two weeks more or less for the price of a high-end suite on a cruise, so it’s actually a good use of vacation dollars to us since we very much like to share with our family and friends and get more enjoyment and nice memories from it all.
It started when I rented a villa in central Italy many years ago before I ever met my wife. It was a somewhat smaller version of this program and we went slightly outside the immediate family. Then we did another villa in Todi, Umbria in Italy. It was a wonderful trip with lots and lots of stories that became family legends. We have done three villas in Mexico, one in Akamal on the Mayan Riviera and two in Cabo San Lucas. We have also done another one in Italy outside of Rome and a lovely castle in Normandy (our most recent adventure). They were all well-worthwhile and I now consider myself an expert rental Villa Selector and Kim an expert Tour Arranger.
The usual format is to book two weeks (all rental villas I have encountered rent from Saturday to Saturday) and to get an abundance of rooms. We have gone from sleeps 12 to sleeps 18 to this next one, which sleeps 26. We are becoming the Perillo Tours of family vacationing. Kim’s family usually comes one of the weeks and my family comes the other week. We have no problem mixing and matching, but they seem to like to hang with their own more often than not. Last summer we did a variation for Kim’s 60th Birthday Extravaganza at Hearst Castle where everyone was together and there were no fireworks or anything, so it’s really just a matter of space and time. We would love it if everyone stayed for two weeks, but that gets really hard with younger people’s limited vacation time. So, they all choose their week.
Kim then makes a list of all the stuff there is to see and do in daytrips nearby. In Normandy we had a rich array of choices ranging from Mont St. Michel to Bayeaux and Paris. In Rome the choices were endless and even included a visit to a cousin’s ancestral home village of Carpenado, a memorable excursion for us all. The thing is, to keep everyone happy, Kim generally books everything twice so that each of the two weeks has a more or less identical schedule so no one has the opportunity to be disappointed. She tends to do everything twice and I pick and choose since staying home for a relaxing day on a chaise lounge is never an issue for me.
I am always looking for a place where we can go as a family and both afford to accommodate everyone and yet make it interesting for everyone. I tried doing one in Costa Rica one Christmas and it was fun, but there are simply only so many places where one can rent villas, especially large ones. When we all went to Morocco I did a version of this by renting Riads (or large self-contained homes) wherever we went. That worked well. So, when I went looking for the next family venue I thought of Spain, Greece and Ireland and I quickly settled on Ireland since so few of us had ever done the Emerald Isle properly.
As I mentioned, we have extended this program beyond our family to several close friends, mostly friends of Kim’s who can use this to afford an otherwise too-expensive trip. This year, several good theater friends of Kim’s asked how they could get onto the Marin Family Vacation Program. She asked and I welcomed them since we certainly have an abundance of room in the place I found, which as I said, sleeps 26 in the manor house, stable and cottage complex. So, she invited these two to join. One of them jumped aboard immediately and booked his airfare, forgoing his usual annual sojourn to Disneyworld/Epcot for the first time in years. The other hesitated, wondering if he wanted his first trip to Europe to be to Ireland. I could see his wrinkled up nose over the corned beef and cabbage, but really? Common sense got the better of him and he chose to book in as well.
Now I get the fun of watching Kim struggle with all the tour bookings. The most recent was over the boat ride to Skellig Michael Island, where the last Star Wars movie ended on its dramatic landscape. It seems the Irish seas can be rough in summer and the trip can be quite harrowing, not to mention physically taxing as the island is rather barren except for the monastic steps up the mountainside. I watched with humor as people opted in and then out as the realities of the hardships came and went. The pull of The Force is great, so more opted in than out. I will stay back and record all the stories for posterity. I will organize fun activities for the weak of stomach who stay with me so that we can have competing stories to tell.
We will be staying on the Ring of Kerry, which is a 111-mile route from Killarney all the way around County Kerry. The roads are supposedly so narrow that traffic (especially buses) are encouraged to take the trip counter-clockwise to avoid excessive traffic jams. We are staying in a place called Westcove Manor, just off the route and on the Irish Sea. It was the Manor house of one of the Jardine Matheson Taipans of Hong Kong (Refer to James Clavel’s novel Taipan) and is now out for rent and quite well-regarded in the renter community.
Based on prior experience with my gang and because we have a newly expanded roster this time around, I will suggest that while we are fortunate to all be going to Ireland this summer for a fortnight, the Irish economy is really the one who is getting a wee bit of good fortune.