We spent Sunday out in Skerries, a village on the outskirts of Dublin where my sister Orla and her family live. I think almost the whole family was there, nearly 20 people! We ate lunch at Orla's, which was great, but mostly we wanted to see her house, which had been seriously renovated since we had last been home. It's very common in Ireland for people to buy homes and then add on to them over the years. Her extension resulted in a huge kitchen, with lots of space to cook, eat and gather, as the kitchen is the main gathering spot in Irish homes. Skerries is right on the coast, so after lunch we all went out to walk on the beach. There is a stony beach to the north and a sandy beach to the south with the old village more or less in between the two (Orla and Joe live in a newer part of Skerries). It was cold, of course, but it was a very nice walk. There are several small islands off the coast, including one that my father tells me was briefly inhabited by hippies, who left because there were too many rats. But they wanted to go back, so they released 50 cats on the island to kill the rats, but when they came back several weeks later, there were only a dozen or so cats left. Yuck!
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