Brendan Francis Newnam is a Croatian Irish radio guy who’s traveled the world. But in all his wanders, he’d never really given his Irish side a chance—until now.
Read more here: https://rebrand.ly/f4d62hu
Brendan also hosts the Not Lost Podcast, listen here: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/not-lost/introducing-not-lost
Find more episodes of Travel Tales Podcast at https://www.afar.com/traveltales
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Read more here: https://rebrand.ly/f4d62hu
Brendan also hosts the Not Lost Podcast, listen here: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/not-lost/introducing-not-lost
Find more episodes of Travel Tales Podcast at https://www.afar.com/traveltales
Learn more about our advertising partner, Marriot Bonvoy at https://www.marriottbonvoy.com/chasecards.
CONNECT WITH AFAR
Afar.com is a digital and print magazine that publishes travel tips, guides, news, and stories: https://www.afar.com
Get updates on the latest articles, travel news, and more from AFAR by signing up for the AFAR newsletter: https://afar.com/newsletters
Follow AFAR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AfarMedia
Follow AFAR on Twitter: https://twitter.com/afarmedia
Follow AFAR on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afarmedia
Follow AFAR on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/afarmedia
Category
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TravelTranscript
00:00 I'm Aislinn Green, this is Travel Tales by afar.
00:07 In every episode, we hear from a traveler about a trip that really meant something to
00:11 them.
00:12 And in this season, we're actually sending people, writers, comedians, playwrights out
00:18 into the world to explore life's big questions.
00:22 In this episode, we'll fly to the UK with Brendan Francis Noonan.
00:27 Brendan is a culture journalist who has been covering travel in one form or another for
00:31 most of his career.
00:33 He once penned a travel column for CNN.com.
00:37 He's written travel features for various magazines, and he currently has a travel podcast for
00:42 Pushkin Industries called Not Lost.
00:45 But in all the time he's been traveling for work, there is one country he's never covered.
00:50 Until now.
00:53 Afar Travel Tales is brought to you by the Marriott Bomboy Boundless card.
01:03 Let these stories from the road inspire you to set out on your next adventure with a fresh
01:07 perspective and a deeper appreciation for the good that travel brings.
01:11 When you're ready for the thrill of new horizons, get the card that opens the door to extraordinary
01:16 destinations and unforgettable experiences.
01:20 Expand your world.
01:21 Go boundless.
01:22 Learn more at MarriottBomboy.com/ChaseCards.
01:32 My mother's family is Croatian.
01:35 Her name is Neta Solomon.
01:38 My uncle's name is Vladimir.
01:39 When I was a kid, we adopted my cousin, Marinko.
01:43 And in the summers, we would visit my cousins, Zoran and Dragon, and their parents, Anka,
01:49 Boris, Ante, Seika.
01:52 My name?
01:53 Brendan Francis Noonan.
01:56 Clearly, something got lost in translation.
01:59 Well, not exactly.
02:02 My father's name is Francis John Noonan, and he hails from an Irish family.
02:07 We're mostly Irish, and that's where Brendan comes from.
02:13 So technically, I'm from two distinct ethnic worlds, but I've always gravitated towards
02:18 the Croatian side.
02:20 There's the food.
02:22 I love garlic, fish, olive oil, artichokes, figs.
02:27 There's the genetics.
02:28 I'm tall and lean like my Croatian relatives, and my stomach can handle garlic, fish, olive
02:33 oil, artichokes, and figs.
02:36 Lastly, there's the vibe.
02:38 The Irish side of my family?
02:40 Very Catholic.
02:41 The Croatian side?
02:43 Godless socialists.
02:45 Just like me, comrade.
02:47 So when I grew up and started traveling on my own, it was only natural that I visited
02:50 and wrote about Croatia over and over.
02:54 Ireland?
02:55 Not so much.
02:56 Then, in early 2020, I was invited to a work conference in a small town in County Limerick.
03:03 And from the moment I arrived, I felt at ease.
03:06 The Irish people were kind, the abundant greenery lifted my spirits, and I was never once called
03:12 Brandon instead of Brendan.
03:14 In fact, the only real trouble I had was understanding why I hadn't come back sooner.
03:20 I say "back" because Ireland was the first place I ever traveled overseas.
03:25 When I was nine years old, my family flew to Dublin and drove to Donegal County in the
03:30 northwest of Ireland.
03:31 That's where my grandmother's family hailed from.
03:35 Thinking back on it, it's honestly where I fell in love with travel in the first place.
03:40 I loved air travel, the lavish Irish breakfast, and being able to stay up late.
03:45 And even though now air travel is hell on earth, a high cholesterol diagnosis won't
03:49 even let me look at an egg, and I fall asleep drooling on myself by ten most nights, I still
03:54 love travel.
03:56 So three decades later, I decided to go back to Donegal to see what I'd been missing.
04:06 Part One.
04:07 Town.
04:09 I landed in Dublin, moved through the airport, went to the rental desk where the man said
04:14 he had a compact car for me.
04:16 "A compact?"
04:17 I said, mock horrified.
04:18 "You know, I'm arriving in Ireland as a single man, and you're ensuring I'll stay that way."
04:23 He cracked a smile.
04:24 He immediately got where I was coming from and what I was after.
04:28 "All right, let me see what I can do."
04:30 Note, don't worry, that's the one and only time I'm going to imitate a brogue in this
04:35 entire podcast.
04:37 I was pleased with myself as I slipped behind the wheel of my upgrade, a brand new four-door
04:42 Audi sedan, decidedly not a compact.
04:47 Now if I'd said something like that in America, I would have been met with a blank stare.
04:51 In Croatia, well, I wouldn't even have tried it.
04:54 But here in Ireland, it seems the people know from charm, and they were willing to reward
04:58 it.
04:59 Maybe these are my people, I thought.
05:01 "Do you know why the roads are so narrow?"
05:06 Ben Shannon is a guy to Donegal Castle.
05:09 I pulled up to our appointment a bit frazzled.
05:11 The tires on the left side of the car were scuffed up from repeated run-ins with hedges
05:15 and curbs as I drove the long distance from Dublin to Donegal.
05:19 It's back to the old custom.
05:22 The Irish word for road is bohar, and it comes from the word for cow, which is bow.
05:28 And the old laws of Ireland, the Brehen laws, stated that the roads were to be the width
05:33 of two cows wide.
05:34 So there you go.
05:35 Some of them are still the width of two cows wide.
05:38 And my car is the width of four cows.
05:40 That's where you get a bicycle.
05:44 Now I understood why my friend at the car rental counter was willing to part with a
05:48 big sedan.
05:50 The roads are too small for them, so everybody wants to drive compacts.
05:54 He hadn't yielded to my charm offensive after all.
05:57 Instead, he'd gotten revenge for my cheekiness.
06:00 Relieved to no longer be driving a huge car on the wrong, I mean opposite side of a teeny
06:06 cow path, I strolled with Anne around the grounds of Donegal Castle, which sits in the
06:10 middle of Donegal town.
06:14 And to be honest, it's pretty modest as castles go.
06:17 Just a three-story building with one long roofless wing.
06:21 But I wasn't visiting it for architectural reasons.
06:23 Well, we're in Donegal Castle, which was a castle built by the O'Donnell clan in the
06:29 1470s.
06:30 Now, the O'Donnells came to power around the year 1200, and they built several castles
06:36 in Donegal, some of them for defense.
06:39 This one here was built essentially for defense.
06:42 And that is shown in the width of the walls, which when you go inside are about three yards
06:47 wide.
06:48 Can I interrupt you right there?
06:50 So my grandmother's name was O'Donnell, Frances O'Donnell.
06:53 So when I was little, we came here.
06:56 And like in my head, I was like, oh, this is where long ago my ancestors lived.
07:02 That's probably not true, is it?
07:04 Well, let's say at every corner, every juncture in Donegal, there's an O'Donnell.
07:11 There's a lot.
07:12 It's a huge big name here.
07:13 Anne wasn't lying.
07:16 During my time in Donegal, I would encounter O'Donnell pubs, O'Donnell solicitors, O'Donnell
07:21 construction firms, and perhaps my favorite O'Donnell enterprise, O'Donnell mature cheese
07:26 and red onion crisps.
07:28 That's right, potato chips flavored with onions and aged cheddar cheese.
07:34 Now I don't know what the Gaelic word for umami is, maybe omami, but whatever it is,
07:40 these chips had it.
07:41 And I'd eat them, I'd think, man, these really are my people.
07:48 My relationship to the O'Donnells explains why I visited here when I was nine years old,
07:53 even though Donegal, back then in the 80s, wasn't exactly a tourist destination.
07:59 If anything, it was considered a little perilous at the time because of its proximity to Northern
08:03 Ireland.
08:04 Donegal is an Ulster province, an area colonized by the British in what is known as the Plantation
08:09 of Ulster.
08:11 It's called the Plantation because in 1609, the British began planting people there, mostly
08:17 from Scotland and Northern England.
08:19 And at this time in history, most of them were of the newly reformed Protestant religion.
08:26 So the Plantation of Ulster, going back to that time, is the basis of so many problems
08:34 that this island has had.
08:36 They basically tried to, yeah, weave in some British Protestant folks and...
08:43 Make it a little England.
08:44 That's what they were trying to do.
08:45 Make it a little England.
08:47 But it really wasn't.
08:48 It wasn't a success.
08:49 Colonization was not a success.
08:51 Now, if this seems like a heavy topic to bring up in an episode of a travel podcast, I included
08:56 it because it emerged unprompted within the first 10 minutes of my chatting with Anne.
09:01 And that's because, as I would discover, the history lives right under the surface around
09:06 these parts.
09:07 In fact, it came up again later that same day when I met up with Niamh Coughlin, a local
09:12 historian.
09:13 We're sitting on what's known as the Diamond, which is the central area here of the town.
09:19 The Diamond is a very particular term that you'll only hear in Ulster in the northern
09:23 half of Ireland.
09:25 And it stems from plantation times when the English came and colonized here.
09:30 And this is what's known as a planned town.
09:33 So it has a central area of commerce with streets radiating off.
09:37 And this was used as a marketplace from the 1600s on.
09:41 Niamh and I sit in the Diamond, which is shaped like a triangle, and look on as tourists scutter
09:46 to and fro between shops.
09:49 Local girls sit on a bench nearby and giggle.
09:51 We are sitting in the heart of Donegal town.
09:54 The region is also kind of considered Donegal.
09:56 And then there's a town Donegal.
09:58 What is their relationship?
09:59 It's not the county town and it's not the main town, but it would certainly be, as far
10:04 as tourism is concerned, it would be, I think, certainly the most visited town.
10:10 As you can see, it's very picturesque and it has a castle slap bang in the center as
10:14 well, which is a draw.
10:16 The tourists love a castle.
10:17 Well, everyone loves a castle.
10:19 Who doesn't?
10:20 I came here once when I was long ago, when I was nine.
10:23 My father took four of his sisters.
10:24 So it was my aunts, my father, my mother, me and my sister.
10:28 And by the time we got to Donegal, they were calling it the ADC tour.
10:32 Another damn castle.
10:33 That's good.
10:34 They were like, show us the pub and join us after.
10:38 Brilliant.
10:39 I like that.
10:40 Niamh and I decided to take a walk through the village.
10:43 How many pubs are in this town?
10:46 Too many to mention.
10:47 Yeah, I'm seeing like half a dozen right in front of me.
10:51 We're well served with drinking establishments, that's for sure.
10:55 Past the Old World Department Store in the center of town.
10:58 It has McGee's, which is a draw and brings people from out of town.
11:03 McGee's is the store here that would have been established in the 1880s, buying and
11:10 selling and trading and ultimately manufacturing Donegal cloth, sometimes known as Donegal tweed.
11:17 And it's a beautiful department store nowadays.
11:19 And it draws people from all over the country, really.
11:22 And past the statue of my old ancestor, Red O'Donnell.
11:26 This is Red Hugh the First, who has, I think there's a little bit of artistic license taken
11:31 in the depiction here, but I think he's got a certain charm, a certain je ne sais quoi.
11:37 I come and visit him every day and say hello and he never...
11:39 You do?
11:40 Yeah, I do.
11:41 He never contradicts me.
11:42 He never talks back.
11:43 He's a perfect gentleman.
11:44 Yes.
11:45 I'm very fond of him.
11:47 And finally, we arrive at what looks to be an ADC, but it's something different.
11:53 So now we're approaching Donegal Abbey, known as Donegal Abbey, founded in 1474 by the O'Donnells.
12:00 Who else?
12:01 The O'Donnells as a Franciscan abbey.
12:03 When you're wealthy and powerful as an O'Donnell king would have been, a great way to show
12:09 your wealth and privilege would have been to establish a religious order.
12:14 So I own this is what you're saying?
12:16 Yeah, it's all yours.
12:17 Excellent.
12:18 I mean, it looks like it needs a little work.
12:20 But so we're basically on this little edge of the bay, lip of the bay, looking out on
12:27 wooded islands.
12:29 It's also the ruins of a 15th century abbey.
12:33 This would have been a very important seat of religious learning, religious education
12:40 in the 1500s.
12:41 It was a Franciscan friary and the Franciscans follow the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi.
12:49 Now remember, my middle name is Francis.
12:52 My grandmother's first name was Frances and my father's name is Francis.
12:57 I think I see how this got started.
13:00 Part of those beliefs would be a quiet life of poverty and contemplation.
13:04 A life of poverty and contemplation.
13:08 That also sounds familiar.
13:09 I have to say, if I'm going to spend my days in quiet contemplation, I can't really think
13:13 of anywhere nicer.
13:14 Isn't that glorious?
13:15 Look at that.
13:16 The view is stunning.
13:17 It's like the water looks like silver.
13:19 The clouds are dramatic.
13:20 Yeah, it's lovely.
13:21 Or as you say, you're looking across the beautiful wooded little islands.
13:24 You know, it's gorgeous.
13:25 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:26 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:27 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:28 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:29 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:30 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:31 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:32 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:33 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:34 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:35 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:36 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:37 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:38 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:39 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:40 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:41 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:42 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
13:43 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
14:09 It's like you're in a fairy tale.
14:39 Part 2.
14:40 Sea.
14:41 We had a lot of dolphins on the last tour.
14:44 We had quite a few.
14:45 Do you think we'll see some?
14:46 I've been very, very positive about where we're at.
14:50 Very positive.
14:51 Now, we've seen them on the last trip, Chrissy.
14:53 We've seen them all day.
14:55 So hopefully you'll get a chance as well.
14:59 The next morning, I'm up early and on a boat heading out to Sleave Lake.
15:03 Spelled entirely different than it sounds.
15:06 Sleave Lake's a Gaelic word, which means "mountain of stone pillars."
15:10 But the name is also shorthand for the mountain's dramatic cliffs.
15:14 Visitors can take a hike and view them from above, or they can stay seated and view them
15:19 from the sea.
15:20 Paddy Byrne is the skipper who leads tours around here.
15:23 Picture Irish Yosemite Sam, except a durag instead of a cowboy hat, and a brogue instead
15:30 of a southern accent.
15:33 How long have you been doing these tours?
15:35 I've been doing these tours for about, since 1995, in various shapes and forms.
15:40 I started off with a fishing boat, a 21-foot salmon boat.
15:47 We were working the, fishing the salmon.
15:50 Yeah.
15:51 And when the season closed, the guy that owned the boat decided he would leave it in the
15:55 harbor for a while.
15:56 He had no way to transport it.
15:58 So I asked him, "Could I take it out for a spin?"
16:01 And he said, "No problem."
16:02 So there was a couple of guys on the pier, and they said, "Will you take us fishing?"
16:05 So I took them fishing.
16:06 When I got back in, there was somebody else wanting to see the cliffs, so I took them
16:10 into the cliffs.
16:11 And for the rest of that summer, I took them in and out on the boat.
16:15 And, you know, I said, "Gee, you know, this could be fun."
16:21 We make our way through the dark Atlantic Ocean.
16:24 Sleave League's 2,000-foot cliffs loom above.
16:28 The green background one grows accustomed to while traveling by land in Ireland is soon
16:33 replaced by dark blue water and milk chocolate-colored rocks jutting from the sea like sculptures.
16:39 And the edge of the coast is jagged, like a side of shattered crockery.
16:44 Paddy cuts the boat's engine and tells us a story, his arm outstretched toward the cliffs.
16:49 In the old days, the women would climb down the cliffs behind there.
16:53 They'd gather any wreckage that was washed in on the shores over here.
16:56 And they would haul it back up the cliff again.
16:59 They'd carry the wreckage up with them.
17:01 In case you didn't get that, he's saying local women would carry usable ship wreckage they
17:05 found on the shores here all the way up the edges of the cliffs.
17:10 People are often horrified to find the women done it.
17:12 Where were the men?
17:14 The men would have done important stuff.
17:17 The men would have been reading newspapers and drinking beer.
17:20 They'd be drinking Guinness.
17:24 But they'd be doing it in England or Scotland.
17:26 They wouldn't be at home.
17:28 They would hire themselves as farm laborers, working for peanuts.
17:31 They'd move off then into England and Scotland.
17:35 They would maybe dig in railway tracks, digging canals, tunnels, whatever work was available.
17:41 So they would work away in England until maybe April, May, come back home, meet the new family
17:49 member, probably create another one.
17:52 They would start and leave the homestead self-sufficient again for another year.
17:56 And that was the cycle they had.
17:58 How long was Jimmy away?
18:00 Jimmy was away 15 years.
18:01 How do you know that?
18:02 He's got 15 fine children.
18:05 Every year he came home he met the new one.
18:08 It was a wild time.
18:10 I was learning the past is never too far away in Ireland.
18:13 I could imagine these women hauling shipwrecked treasure up the steep cliffs and raising a
18:18 gaggle of children on their own because I'd grown up with the same sort of strong women.
18:23 My grandmother Franny, my aunts Margaret and Catherine, Nan and Jeannie, all independent
18:28 and determined whether they're with a man or not, doing what had to be done.
18:33 Paddy brought us around a bend and threaded two hulking rocks sticking from the ocean.
18:38 He idled the boat and then looked up with pride.
18:41 This is our highest point here now, folks.
18:44 1,972 feet, which is just less than 600 metres.
18:51 We have a little cliff down the west coast of Ireland called the Cliffs of Moher.
18:55 We call them the Cliffs of Less because ours are almost three times higher than theirs.
19:01 And I respect that.
19:02 The other ones are nice and regimental.
19:04 They look like they were built with a square and a plumb.
19:07 These look like something I would have built.
19:10 Like a lot of things I built, it's falling down again.
19:13 But no, it's beautiful. It really is.
19:16 Part 3. Country.
19:21 The Wild Atlantic Way is a 1,500-mile tourist trail along the west coast of Ireland.
19:29 It was invented in 2014 to attract travellers, and it's worked.
19:34 But as you drive along it and look upon the snarling ocean
19:37 and the miles and miles of naked hills around you,
19:40 you start to understand how hard life must have been here
19:43 before modern technology and the global economy arrived.
19:47 I took a detour from the Wild Atlantic Way and visited Glenties,
19:51 the town my most recent ancestors hailed from.
19:54 It was early in the morning and everything was quiet.
19:57 And when I found the local historical society, it was temporarily shut down.
20:02 If I wanted to get a better sense of the world my grandmother's family left behind,
20:06 I was going to need to go someplace else.
20:10 Part 4. Country.
20:13 I think this is God's own country.
20:16 Of course, naturally, as a Donny Gallman, I'm biased,
20:20 but you'll get beauty like this, comparable beauty, in any country in Ireland.
20:26 But I think it's a beauty, a beauty of God.
20:31 Glen Columnkill Folk Village sits on a crook of Glen Bay Beach.
20:36 It's a clutch of thatched cottages on a hilltop,
20:39 founded in 1967 by the man you just heard, Father James MacDyer.
20:45 The folk village is a replica of the impoverished rural community MacDyer found
20:49 when he was assigned to this region by the church in 1951.
20:54 When Father James first arrived in the parish,
20:58 there was no electricity in people's houses, no piped water,
21:02 no parish hall, no industry or economic infrastructure in the area.
21:07 He set about getting recognition and grant aid from the people
21:10 whom he'd like to call the bureaucratic authorities.
21:14 After Father MacDyer modernized the local village somewhat,
21:17 he undertook an act of karmic jiu-jitsu.
21:20 He decided to create a replica of the pre-modern village he'd first encountered,
21:24 and he did it to give employment to that very community.
21:28 I toured the folk village with the woman in charge, Margaret Cunningham.
21:32 It's a funny little place.
21:34 When you walk into the first cottage,
21:36 you encounter a life-size replica of Father MacDyer himself.
21:40 I was already frightened by that guy in there.
21:43 Yes, that's a replica of Father James MacDyer who founded the museum.
21:47 I'm sure you would have picked up a few bits and pieces about him throughout the place.
21:51 It's startling, though. Have you ever been spooked by that mannequin?
21:56 Yes, every single visitor has.
21:58 I think the funniest thing I've ever seen was the smallest man in the parish
22:02 carrying him through the grounds.
22:05 We were putting a fresh coat of polish on his hair.
22:08 It was really funny.
22:10 Somebody was driving over the road and they seen this really tiny man.
22:13 He's about four foot nothing, carrying that huge statue.
22:16 It was just the funniest.
22:18 He looks like Ronald Reagan.
22:21 Each little cottage in the village is filled with artifacts that tell the story of Ireland.
22:25 There's a replica of a town store with old Guinness beer bottles,
22:29 a fisherman's cottage, and a famine pot.
22:32 The cauldron where food scraps were accumulated and boiled into soup during hard times.
22:37 It all felt a bit like a movie set, and apparently that wasn't a coincidence.
22:41 When we were small, somebody was amusing the fact that
22:44 Liam Neeson might play Father MacDyer in a movie.
22:47 So what happened only last March?
22:49 Who came here to be in a movie in that particular cottage?
22:53 Only Liam Neeson. This here was Liam Neeson's cottage.
22:56 Do you want to take a look at it?
22:58 But what was he doing here? What was the movie?
23:00 It was an action movie called In the Land of Saints and Sinners.
23:03 And he was using this as part of the set?
23:07 Yeah, this was the set. It's called Finburgh's Cottage.
23:10 And if you walk around, the movie was based in the 70s.
23:13 So we fell out of wonderful props and artifacts from the 70s.
23:19 Because this house went to the 60s when the museum opened in '67.
23:23 But then everything in it, we brought it up to the 70s.
23:26 It's funny the way Hollywood movie made us revamp back into a proper home feeling.
23:31 Also, Liam Neeson's not a bad-looking guy.
23:33 He's not a bad-looking guy. I got to meet him when I was leaving.
23:36 He says, "Do you not want a photograph?"
23:38 He said that!
23:39 Of course I do.
23:40 Margaret's not an actor herself, but she is right out of central casting.
23:45 Beaming, confident, game. I felt a kinship to her immediately.
23:50 So what are some three things I should remember or take away with me when I'm here in Donegal?
23:55 Well, I think for us in particular, the location, the scenery, the beauty, the culture, the crafts.
24:01 You know, the fact that that is lived on.
24:03 And I hope you get to hear some of the music.
24:06 Music and the people. The music, the people, the crafts.
24:09 What are the people like in Donegal? What differentiates them from other parts of Ireland?
24:12 I think, what I've heard before is that because we're so cut off,
24:17 a lot of our way of life and kind of humor and culture was kept because it wasn't infiltrated as much in other ways.
24:24 And people tend to like our accents. Do you like our...
24:27 Your accent's pretty damn charming. I'll give you that.
24:30 Yours isn't so bad either.
24:32 It's been really nice talking to you, Bredan.
24:34 And I really appreciate coming here because, you know, for a long time we were kind of...
24:38 I suppose we were kind of forgotten, but not anymore.
24:43 My last night in Donegal, I stayed in the town of Ardera,
24:48 about 40 minutes north of Glencombe Kill, near another inlet.
24:52 For dinner, I had fish, chips and a glass of wine.
24:56 I'm still my mother's son, after all.
24:59 After I ate, I strolled down the main street and poked my head into a local pub.
25:06 There was a small room with a bar that opened out into a longer room,
25:09 which was filled with musicians performing songs.
25:12 They weren't a distinct band, but instead locals who showed up with their instruments
25:16 and were taking turns performing.
25:18 There was a handsome silver-haired man with a flute,
25:21 a lady with spectacles and a string around her neck playing fiddle.
25:24 All around them, a crowd gathered holding pints of beer.
25:27 I took a seat at the bar, and next to me, three men in their 20s were talking excitedly.
25:32 After ordering a drink and taking in the music for a bit,
25:36 I started to have an uncanny valley kind of experience.
25:40 The guys I was sitting next to, they looked a lot like younger me.
25:45 I felt a bit like Ebenezer Scrooge looking back on myself with the Ghost of Christmas Past.
25:50 In fact, had it not been for my hipster tote bag with a microphone peeking out of it,
25:55 I could have passed for one of their older brothers.
25:59 Perhaps it wasn't the fact that I didn't identify with my Irish heritage
26:03 that kept me away from Ireland so long, but the opposite.
26:07 It felt too familiar.
26:09 These faces, these smiles, the outgoing nature of everyone I'd met
26:14 was reminiscent of my father's family and many of my schoolmates growing up.
26:18 On the other hand, my Croatian family was kind of exotic to me,
26:23 something to learn about and explore.
26:25 When I travel, I'm usually looking for a vibe shift, something new to sink my teeth into,
26:30 and Croatia fit the brief, whereas Ireland, I guess I assumed it would fall short.
26:35 But the past couple of days, taking the history of Donegal and its physical grandeur,
26:40 there was a depth to it that I hadn't anticipated.
26:43 And then, a funny thing happened.
26:46 A young boy passed by wearing a Ronaldo soccer jersey,
26:50 and it reminded me of all the little kids in Croatia who run around the cafes at night
26:54 as their parents sip beer and take in performances of klapa and other local folk music.
27:00 I remember sitting there too and feeling at home.
27:03 And for a moment, I felt like less of a stranger to my own self.
27:08 For a moment, I felt whole.
27:11 That was Brendan Francis Noonan.
27:19 Brendan says he will definitely return to Ireland.
27:22 Now that he's finished his quote-unquote "homework"
27:25 in other words, acquainting himself with the history and with his ancestral roots,
27:29 he wants to return and enjoy Ireland as a civilian.
27:33 But until he gets back there, he has a little memento to remind himself of the trip.
27:38 Brendan told me that before Ireland, he was never a hat guy.
27:42 But in Ireland, he noticed that men wear wool caps, and they don't look corny.
27:48 So, while he was in Donegal, he had a hat made of Donegal tweed.
27:52 Brendan told me that now that he's back home in New York City,
27:55 he's been taking his hat with him when he leaves the house.
27:58 "I put it on trepidatiously at first," he said, "but now it's part of my repertoire."
28:03 You can check out his hat on social media @bfnoonan.
28:07 And if you want to hear more of Brendan's adventures,
28:10 subscribe to Not Lost wherever you get your podcasts.
28:15 [music]
28:18 Ready for more travel stories?
28:20 Visit us online at afar.com/traveltales
28:23 and be sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter.
28:26 We're @afarmedia.
28:28 If you enjoyed today's adventure, we hope you'll come back in two weeks for more great stories.
28:33 Subscribing makes this easy.
28:35 You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.
28:40 And be sure to rate and review us. It helps other travelers find the show.
28:44 This has been Travel Tales, a production of Afar Media and Boom Integrated.
28:49 Our podcast is produced by Aisling Green, Adrienne Glover, and Robin Lai.
28:54 Post-production was by John Marshall Media staff Jen Grossman and Clint Rhodes.
28:59 Music composition by Alan Koreshia.
29:02 And a special thanks to Irene Wang and Angela Johnston.
29:06 I'm Aisling Green, your traveling as much as I possibly can host.
29:11 I am so happy to be on the road again.
29:14 As we explore the world this year, remember that travel begins the moment we walk out our front door.
29:20 Everyone has a travel tale. What's yours?
29:24 [music]
29:27 [MUSIC]