Easter in Ireland

No baskets, no colored eggs, no girls dolled-up in dresses and hats: Easter in Ireland is quite different from the one back home. Common ground is found, however, in the chocolate eggs and sweets. Cadbury is everywhere here, so I am in heaven. The Irish do not do the "American Tradition" of creating and hiding baskets, nor do they color eggs- when we asked some locals if they did these things, they looked at us like we were crazy! Asking us what we did with the eggs once colored, and how it worked exactly...they said the closest thing they do is hiding a few eggs around the house for a "hunt": another commonality, children DO participate in Easter egg hunts! On Easter day, we had to refrain ourselves from jumping in the children's hunt because we so missed the festivities going on at home! Easter here in Ireland though provided us a chance to create new tradition and experience something new, and that we did.  After attending mass, complete with a beautiful choir and flowers, we headed out for a hike. Our lovely "Easter Hike" took us to the top of Collagan Woods, overlooking all of Waterford county...it was beautiful. The rain didn't bother us a bit, it was actually quite lovely.We then explored the river and tromped around till we found a tree worthy of our initials. Here, we carved our names into the wood: now we will forever be in Ireland. Our hike ended at the ocean, windy and pouring rain...but still breathtaking! Back home, we gathered our resources and created an Easter dinner for our entire townhouse "family"- it was perfect. We may not have been home for the holiday, and everyone was missing there families, but we made the best of it and got to create our own special "Irish Easter". I wouldn't trade this experience for the world.

our initials