We Were Supposed to Arrive in Dublin Today

Dublin Castle

We were going to celebrate our Golden Wedding Anniversary.  We weren’t so much going to exchange golden gifts as we were going to spend beaucoup gold on what would be the trip of a lifetime for us.  Today would have been our first day in Dublin.  

We were going to spend the weekend seeing sights we’ve only briefly visited, driven by, really, along with some pubs, trad music, etc.  We were going on to see the English/Scottish Border Lands, including a visit to Rosslyn Chapel of Da Vinci Code fame and then visit Edinburg during the International Festival, followed by an intensive sweep of Scotland and its Islands taking us to Dundee, Invergordon, Lerwick in the Shetland Islands, Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands, Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, Oban and Glasgow.  We would visit castles, palaces, lochs, mountains, national parks, churches, museums, distilleries, tea rooms, pubs and breweries.  We are seasoned travelers, but this trip was a crown jewel.  

I don’t know if competent national leadership would have made it possible to carry out our plans, but I do know that Trump’s and the Republican’s evil, incompetent and despicable maladministration of their duties has left Americans like us more or less persona non grata in the European Union and UK.  

Thanks to them, a nation in mourning has little to celebrate.