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We’re Home!

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Everyone was up pretty early this morning, preparing to have some breakfast before our 9:30 cab arrived to take us to Dublin airport.  And he arrived on time (a tad early), as did James, our ‘landlord’.  A very nice young man he is. The airport was the usual rigamarole, but we got through fairly quickly and spent the rest of the morning in the lounge.  At Dublin airport, as you walk through the passageways to the gates, they have these signs all along that are comments.  This is an example: A little entertainment.  I had noticed them when we arrived as well - all the kinds of things parents would say to kids, like “don’t make me come up there”. Anyway, our plane was late arriving from Toronto, so we ended up leaving about an hour late.  Such is flight travel.  Everything was pretty smooth until we hit Newfoundland - then it was quite bumpy most of the way to Quebec City.  I guess Hurricane Fiona was getting ready to blast the area. Then we hit a real mess in Toronto airport.  Getting t
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Last Full Day in Ireland

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 It is with mixed feelings that this is our last day in Ireland.  We’ve really enjoyed our time here, but we’re also ready to go home. Today was really the first day we had rain.  We had one other day of rain, but we were driving from the north to the south, so it didn’t really affect us.  Now we know what it’s like to have rain in Ireland!  But that didn’t stop us.  We came prepared with rain jackets and Gerard and I brought our umbrellas, so we were all good. After going out for an Irish breakfast, we thought we would visit Trinity College and the Book of Kells.  A couple of shots from inside the college grounds. There was a bit of a line-up for the Book of Kells though, and you had to book tickets ahead, so Sue & Bryan decided to stay and do that while the rest of us moved on. We thought we’d visit Dublinia, a museum that’s dedicated to the history of Dublin and Dubliners, starting with the Vikings, of course.  There was no city here before the Vikings. I asked Gerard who she wa
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Separate Ways Today

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 Today we decided to go our separate ways to see what we wanted individually rather than forcing everyone to go as a group. We visited the EPIC Museum first, crossing over the River Liffey.  A cool bridge. Then toured the museum.  You can’t really tell, but these are all ships on the end of those ‘things’ sticking out. It’s all about Irish Emigration, for various reasons - from the 1700s through to today.  It was OK - lots of things to see and read about, but not guided at all. Next we went to The Jeanie Johnston: An Irish Famine Story.  It was just down the street.  Here’s a replica of the ship, The Jeanie Johnston. This ship never had a death on it because it took on only half the people (200 vs 400 for the same size ship), they had a doctor on board, they let people up on deck for half an hour every day (4-6 week crossing to the Americas), they let them dump their waste buckets and shake out their blankets, and they fed them.  The other ships, called coffin ships, didn’t do any of t
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Guinness and Jameson Experiences

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 Here we are, our first full day in Dublin.  We decided to do the Hop On Hop Off tour bus, which gives an overall view of many of the sights.  So we rode around on the bus for about an hour or so and decided to get off at the Guinness Storehouse museum because it was probably the furthest away.  Here we are. We toured around inside, but we have to say this experience was a letdown compared to the Smithwick’s one we did in Kilkenny.  This was a large scale “cram them in” tourist trap.  You just walked around, had to read everything yourself, if you wanted, and that was it. The symbol of Guinness. Hops - and some previous advertising (fish peddling a bike). The really nice thing was the rooftop lounge where we could have a pint and view the city in a 360 deg. glass enclosure. We left there, hopped back on the bus, and headed for the oldest pub in Dublin, or at least we thought.  It’s actually the oldest in all of Ireland!  Established in 1198. And here we are inside. Next was the Jameson
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We’re Off to Dublin

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 We packed up early this morning and headed out by 9:00 am.  We left the rural Coach House property to head for the big city.  But we thought we’d take a winding road to Dublin instead of the highway.  So we drove through the Wicklow Mountains, which were between our place and Dublin. Lots of sheep in these hills…if you look real close.  In fact, they’re on the road once in a while too. A nice 5-stage waterfall. The mountains aren’t really mountains, but rather hills.  Although they’re bare on top, there’s a lot of reforestation that’s happened and there are some pretty big trees growing again. We wanted to do this nice drive (had to have an in-car experience just one more time) then return the cars to the rental car lot near the airport.  After that was done, we took the van back to the airport for a taxi to our place in Dublin. This is a police car sitting outside the airport.  Snazzy. It took a while to get a cab - wow, what a line-up of people.  But we finally got 2 cabs and made o
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Kilkenny…Again

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We had a leisurely morning this morning after a busy car day yesterday.  Our plan was to just head up the road to Kilkenny, so that’s what we did. We found parking and did a tour of Kilkenny Castle. Originally built in the 1300s, many rooms and features have been added over the years.  The courtyard,  and the grounds. And this was an interior room. We grabbed some lunch at a nearby restaurant then did a train tour around Kilkenny, which was rather fun. When this was done, we headed to our cars and found a grocery store in nearby Thomastown.  We decided to have a nice dinner at our place of rib-eye steak, potatoes, veggies and salad, and relaxed for the evening.
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Cashel and Blarney

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 Today was a bit of a castle day.  First we visited the Rock of Cashel.  This castle, built on a large limestone outcropping (the rock), was the home of Irish kings for centuries.  They controlled the whole southeast from Limerick, all through the south and all the surrounding area. We did a tour of the place which took about 45 minutes.  He explained the various buildings in the castle and some of the stories from the past.  Quite interesting.  In fact, St. Patrick was here as the castle was given to the archbishop of the time between warring kings.  This is St. Patrick’s well which is blocked off so no one can touch it. This is the cathedral inside…and the tower outside. And a beautiful view of the surrounding countryside. And another tourist kindly took our photo. When we were done here, we went to nearby Cahir for lunch.  We thought we would get out of the town of Cashel as it was pretty busy.  We walked by here and Gerard said he had to have a picture next to this.  Check out his
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