Day 12: And then we came to the end

As they say, all good things must come to an end. We have reached the end of our trip, which is ironically also the beginning. This afternoon we arrived back at Bunratty Castle Hotel, where our journey began.

This has been an amazing trip; everything about was just awesome. I have very few complaints ... actually I don't really have any other than there are a couple stops where we could have used more time, but that is the nature of these kinds of trips. This is an amazingly beautiful country and the people are just wonderful. If you ever have a chance to visit, take it. You won't regret it. And if you ever come, make sure you find an older Irish person and aske them to tell you about their country. The Irish people are so good at telling the history of their country. Our guide in particular was amazing. He knew more times and dates and names of history than I do of our history, and our history is so much shorter than his country's history. It was impressive.

Our flight leaves at 9am tomorrow, and we have to be at the airport by 6. Way too early. Then, when we arrive in the states it'll only be 11. How weird is that? Tomorrow is going to be such a long day. But I'll get to see my dog! I can't wait for that. I think she's the only thing I've really missed about the states these last two weeks.

I hope you guys have enjoyed these posts while I was here. I'll probably post some more about Ireland in the coming weeks. There's a lot of things I would have liked to include here but didn't have time. For now I have to get to sleep, because 4:30am is going to come way too early.

Ireland Day 9: Catching Up, National Stud Ranch and Blarney

I’m sorry I haven’t been posting regularly. A combination of late nights and lack of internet access has prevented me from being able to post anything recently. But we’ve been having an awesome time, and I can already tell I’m not going to want to come home.

Thursday was cold and rainy. We toured Glenveagh Castle, which isn’t a real castle. It was built in the 1800s to be a hunting lodge of sorts and designed to look like a castle. However it was amazing inside. Then we stopped briefly in Letterkenny, the sister city of Elizabethtown. I found a book there that is a collection of letters written to a man who immigrated to Lancaster County. Thursday night we went out to a small pub nearby (and I mean small, the bar itself took up half of the room) it was full of other members of our tour and we all drank and sang and had a good time. I have several videos of that night (mostly of our driver sing for us) that I’ll probably post on youtube at some point. It was possibly the most fun I’ve had so far.

Friday we drove up to Northern Ireland and took a tour of (London)Derry. What you call it is based on whether you’re a Loyalist Protestant or Nationalist Catholic. The town was the site of a lot of struggle during the fighting between the religious groups. Then we toured Giant’s Causeway. Unfortunately it was another rainy, cold day so it wasn’t as much fun as I was hoping it would be, but the rock formations at the causeway are amazing. I’ll have to get some pix posted so you can see them. Friday night we stayed in Ballygally castle, which is haunted but unfortunately I did not see the ghost, though I very much wanted to.

Saturday was a beautiful and we took a driving tour around the town of Belfast and heard about the history of the town. Belfast is one of the many towns that was divided and became a battleground between Catholics and Protestants for years. It was sad hearing the stories and see all the reminders of that time period. In the afternoon we stopped in Downpatrick to visit St. Patrick’s grave, then took a long, scenic drive to Dublin. We had to take a detour, so it was longer than anticipated, but it was a nice drive and took us through a part of Ireland we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

Sunday was another beautiful day, I can’t believe we had two in a row. We visited Dublin Castle and the Guiness Storehouse in the morning. We had our free pint in the Gravity Bar on top of the storehouse, which offers an amazing view of the city. I’m not a beer fan, so I couldn’t finish my pint, but it was fun anyway. Then the afternoon was free for us to wander Dublin. We saw the Book of Kells, which was another item on my must-see list. The book is amazing; so much detail and artistry went into making that. We couldn’t take pictures but I bought a poster and a book with lots of pictures. The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping. We stopped and bought shirts in Hard Rock Dublin and wandered around for a while. I fell in love with Dublin during that time; the sights, the sounds, the smells, the people – everything is incredible. I would love to live in this city for a while. For supper we went to The Abbey Tavern and had a traditional Irish dinner and entertainment, including singers and dancers. It was a lot of fun. On the way home our drivers led us in singing some traditional Irish songs. That was even more fun. Our guide, Ken, sang this one song called “Four Green Fields” and it was just amazing. He has so much passion for his country and his people and it really came out while singing that song.


Today started out nice as well, and most of the day wasn’t bad. I think it only really rained while we were on the bus. First we stopped at the Irish National Stud Farm and learned more than we really needed to know about breeding horses, and saw the most expensive horse in Europe. In the afternoon we drove to our hotel at the Blarney Woolen Mills then spent some time shopping after checking in. We wanted to see Blarney Castle, but it costs 10 euro to get anywhere near the castle so we decided it wasn’t worth it. All in all it was a pretty good day, not as busy as usual. I can’t believe we only have three more days left, I don’t want to come home (although I really miss my dog).

Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain so naturally our itinerary includes a walking tour of the town of Kinsale. Oh well, I getting used to being cold and damp by now. I have some pictures of the first couple days posted, I just have to figure out how to link to them. Keep an eye on the links to the right of the page, if I figure it out it will appear there.

Update: Pix are up! Some at least, check out the link in the list on the right. Hopefully more will come soon!

Ireland Day 4: Knock, Yeats' grave and Belleek

This will be a short blog, because believe it or not I'm actually trying to upload some photos! Not many, because I'm afraid of going over my limit and it takes a while to load them. I have over 300 pix at the moment, so there will not be a shortage of them to view when I get home.

This morning we went to the Knock shrine, which is a place some people saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary back in 1879. Since I'm not catholic it wasn't too interesting, but there was a cool graveyard nearby.

We stopped at Yeats' grave next. It was a lot more plain than I had imagined for Ireland's greatest poet. But I got some pictures and I bought a book of poetry edited by Seamus Heaney.

Last was a tour of Belleek pottery, they make some really nice pieces. I bought a small jewelry box.

Tomorrow we go to Glenveagh castle and stop in Letterkenny, which is Elizabethtown's sister city. Should be fun. Now, if this internet connection can hold up for more than a couple seconds I'm going to go upload more photos.

Ireland Day 3: Walking Man tour and Galway

Today we spent most of the morning driving through Conemara area of Ireland.

Before we left Galway and stopped at St. Nicholas and Our Lady Assumed into Heaven Cathedral (I think that's the name, it's at least something like that). The cathedral was beautiful, though it was hard to get good pictures because the lighting wasn't great. In the one room was a larg mosaic of Jesus, and at each side was a smaller mosaic. One was of Patrick Pearce who led the Easter Rebellion in 1916 and the other was John F. Kennedy, who was apparently just as well loved in Ireland as he is in the states.

Conemara is a beautiful part of Ireland, though it's extremely rocky. I hadn't realized how rocky the terrain was. It's amazing. I wouldn't want to try to farm this land, that's for sure. We stopped for lunch at Eddie's Bar or Pub, (I'm really having trouble with names). Apparently Eddie is related to one of the four men who discovered the Comstock Lode and also has a relative who married a Vanderbilt. This all came from Eddie himself.

In the afternoon we went to the village of Cong and toured some of the sites used for the filming of The Quiet Man, including Pat Cohen's Bar. Now the bar was not a bar at the time and actually just opened as a bar for the first time a few weeks ago. Apparently only the exterior shots were filmed here the rest were done in the states. Thanks to this tour I am now "married" to Ken our tour guide. If I ever get those pics posted I'll show you the "family photo." They pick people to dress up and I had to play Maureen O'Hara's part. It was kind of emabarassing.

Before dinner we had some free time to wander around Galway, which is a nice city. I bought myself a zip-up sweatshirt that says Ireland on it. It's pretty cool.

Dinner was fancy again. I wasn't expecting any less. Then afterwards we went to an Irish pub for a little while. As I'm still exhausted I didn't stay long. I wanted to come back and pack some stuff up as we leave Galway tomorrow and I wanted time to post this.

Tomorrow we do some driving around in the morning and visit some random places, one of which is the grave of William Butler Yeats. I'm really excited about that (that was one of the places on my "must see" list when we were selecting the tour). Then in the afternoon we're touring the Beleek pottery factory. I have no idea if I'll be able to post tomorrow, I've been lucky so far. I still haven't uploaded those photos (sorry!) I'm starting to think I might just wait till I get home. I will try hard to get at least a few posted before then, but I already have almost 200 photos so it's unlikely that I'll get them all posted. However I promise if I don't get them posted before I get home I will when I get back.

Ireland Day 2: Cliffs of Moher, Celtic Crystal and Galway

Tonight we're staying at an awesome hotel in Galway. I think this is the fanciest hotel I've ever stayed in, which isn't saying much since I haven't stayed in many, but it's pretty fancy. And we don't even have the best rooms! My aunt are staying on the top floor and they're room is like a mini-penthouse. Oh well, ours is nice too.

Today we were treated to typical Irish weather, cold and rainy. It was kind of disappointing; the Cliffs of Moher are so much more amazing in sunlight, but I still got some decent photos. And it was cool to actually be there after seeing so many photos of them.

This afternoon we stopped at the Celtic Crystal place and saw how they etch designs into the crystal. It was pretty amazing. It takes a lot of talent and its all done by hand. Mom bought a little dish that's just like the one we saw made.

I've quickly learned that the one stereotype of the Irish that is definitely true is they're love of drinking. There are pubs everywhere. There was one tiny "village" that was basically about 20 houses and 3 or 4 pubs, that was the entire village (that may be a slight exaggeration, but it's pretty close). One night we're going to have dinner in a pub and here the local music. That should be fun.

Tomorrow we go to Connemara and visit the village of Cong, where the movie The Quiet Man (starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara) was filmed. We're taking a tour of the places the movie was filmed. In the afternoon we have some free time to hang out in Galway. I'm hoping the weather is a little better, though I'm not going to get my hopes up, since it rains so much here to begin with.

I know I promised pictures, but once again it's starting to get late (ok, so it's not even 9:30, but I'm still working on making up the sleep lost Saturday night while I was flying) and it'll take me a little while to load them onto my computer, then upload them to the internet. And actually, I have to decide where I'm loading them. I never installed webshots on this computer and I don't know if I really want to. We'll see. How easy is photobucket?

Anyway, I hope everyone is having a good time in the states! We're staying in the same hotel tomorrow, so hopefully I'll get my photos uploaded then, I should at least be able to have another blog on tomorrow's activities.

Ireland: Day 1, Arrival and Bunratty Castle

Hello everyone! I'm writing this from Ireland! We got here around 6:30 am local time (that'd be about 1:30 eastern time). I didn't sleep much; it's kinda hard to sleep on a plane, you know? Besides that, Continental has these cool screen/entertainment systems on the back of each seat that allows you to pick a movie to watch, or play a game or do all kinds of things. So I ended up watching Mis Pettigrew Lives For a Day, because I couldn't pass up a chance to watch the adorable Lee Pace (and now I might have to go watch the second season premiere on my iPod).

Ireland is amazing. We're staying in the Bunratty Castle Hotel, which is amazing. We just got back from a medieval banquet held in the hotel. It was so much fun. Tomorrow we're going to see the Cliffs of Mohr, I can't wait.

I'm hoping I'll have free internet access throughout the trip, but I can't count on it. Whenever I do I'll try to update this site for you guys, so keep an eye out. I'll also try posting photos sometime, but I don't really have time tonight (I am way too tired to worry about that).