Irish Country Life

Dear Reader,

We returned home to Ireland this week after 10 days in Italy and a few days in Paris to find the tulips along our garden wall in full yellow and orange bloom and the cherry blossoms beginning to bud.

I left Baltimore, Maryland, in 1998, to start a new life, with a new husband, on the southeast coast of Ireland. We brought International Living with us. Since then, from our new home in Waterford, we have produced both International Living...and a son--little Jack, now 4, a dual citizen who got his Irish passport before his U.S. one.

Why did we move to Ireland? This is the question we are most frequently asked.

We came to this country to take advantage of an affordable labor market, tax incentives, and, perhaps primarily, the opportunity for a change and a little adventure.

Five years later we have made it through the honeymoon period, when we were infatuated with every aspect of Irish life and found every new thing charming...through the panic period, when we wondered how we could have taken complete leave of our senses and done something so foolhardy as to move ourselves, our children, and our business to another country (during this time, we seriously considered, three times in fact, returning "home")...through the frustration of coping with day-to-day life in a place where, although the language is the same, the attitudes and the culture are certainly foreign (the Irish don't use the word "manana," but they embrace the concept)...to, now, the realistic appreciation of what this country offers.

Ireland is one of the world's quiet outposts. Still a developing country...rugged and wild, with expanses of open fields and relatively little population. The countryside is as green as you've heard...greener...and pock-marked not with suburban track homes, mini-malls, and gas stations...but sheep and cows, low stone walls that have marked boundaries for centuries, and ancient towers.

We are infatuated with these reminders of times past, and with the fortresses, secret gardens, and whitewashed cottages that the Irish seem to take for granted. And we relish the safety and peace of this little island. For us, Ireland is a good place to raise our children...a welcome place to retreat to at the end of the business day...and the ideal place to come home to after an extended journey.

Perhaps what I have come to appreciate most about this place is its long history. Those towers you see were built by the Normans in the 12th century. They share the fields with crosses left by the Celts. Waterford dates to the Vikings, and pieces of the original Viking walls, built in 1003, still stand. Strongbow was married here in Waterford, to Eva, daughter of Dermot MacMurrough, in an effort to unite the Norman invaders with the native Irish. The two were wed in Reginald's Tower, which continues to guard the harbor.

Traveling the old country roads of Ireland you feel connected to this history.

We came to Ireland in a rush. But Ireland has taught us to slow down. It has taught us patience and a great respect for tradition.

Kathleen Peddicord
Publisher, International Living

P.S. Steenie Harvey, International Living's roving Euro-editor and fellow expat in Ireland, has just completed her most comprehensive report ever on this country. Whether you're thinking of relocating to Ireland with a young family...whether you're a retiree or an investor...whether you're a traveler smitten by Celtic magic and mysterious twilight places...this report was put together with you in mind. Read it here.