Cliffs and Castles, Pubs and Hubs

In my eagerness to relate all of my recent adventures, I'm afraid I did not do justice to our three days in Western Ireland. It was spectacular.
I don't want to bore you with every little stop we made, so I'll just list some of the highlights.
Our first stop, rather early on a Monday morning, was a whiskey distillery called Locke's. It was founded in 1756 (or something that sounded like that), and is now a museum. It was interesting, especially since lots of the original equipment was intact. The tour included a sample of their whiskey, which I did try (and manage to finish, with the help of a lot of water). I wish I was the kind of person who could order a whiskey, but I'm a real girl when it comes to drinking, I'm afraid--the less it tastes like alcohol, the better! But now I can check drinking Irish whiskey in Ireland off my to do list, so that's a real plus.
After that we went to Clonmacnoise, a 5th century (I think) monastic site. The ruins were fantastic, and the setting--on a hillside by the River Shannon--could not have been more picturesque. (Someday I'll make you look at the dozens of photos I took there, and then you'll see just how much I take that phrase to heart!)
The Polnabrone Dolmen, an ancient buriel site set on the barren limestone landscape of the Burren was next; amazing to think the managed to set one massize stone slab on two others without so much as a forklift!
Next on our list was the Cliffs of Moher--a 700+ foot drop, straight into the Atlantic! It was so spectacular, I actually think my camera was smoking from overuse.
We spent that night in the tiny, adorable town of Doolin, and caught a spectacular sunset (or some of us did--I had to stop to pet a King Charles Spaniel puppy, and sort of missed the main event...no regrets, though)! We ate and later enjoyed music at a charming pub, until the cold (it was quite chilly) sent us back to our hostel to get some rest for the next day's adventures.
On Tuesday morning we made our way out on the Dingle Peninsula, which features some truly amazing and very dramatic scenery. We hiked out to a point to truly enjoy the views, and even the point itself was spectacular, covered with heather and moss.
We spent that night in Killarney, a small city that seemed very nice; unfortunately, we didn't have much time to explore (that's okay, I'll just have to go back). We did, however, manage to squeeze in a quick tour of the Killarney National Park in a horse and carriage/buggy/whatever! It was beautiful, especially the castle that lies in the a lake, with mountains behind it...it looked positively magical! The tour was surprisingly humorous, too, thanks to our driver and guide, who immediately got Ashley to sit next to him and then told us she was his wife. He took such a shine to her, in fact, that in addition to repeatedly trying to hold her hand and get her to sit in his lap, he actually called his mother and made Ash talk to her! It was too, too funny... We had a pleasant dinner in one of the pub/restauants, and then met up at a hotel pub that had opened recently. I went to bed fairly early to nurse my head cold (which blossomed the day we left--of course), but Jess and the others had a grea ttime dancing the night away.
Our last day started out at Blarney castle, where we rushed up to the top to kiss the famous Blarney stone! Our timing was perfect; by the time we had finished taking all our photos, there was a huge line. We enjoyed the rest of the castle, and some of the grounds, including a great tree that looked perfect for a photo of people sitting in it (which turned out to be harder to execture that we had expected--for more information, please ask Tyler to see the video I took of everyone trying to get into the tree)!
We managed to fit a little shopping in before going off to check out the Mitchelstown caves, which displayed some incredibly stalactite and stalagmite formations, as well as curtains, and calcite deposits that posititively sparkled! It was very cool, and the only thing I don't have any photos of (photography was prohibited)...forunately, we were able to buy a little booklet with some photographs, so we'll just have to do a little cutting and pasting. The acoustics of the main cave are amazing (they've actually held concerts down there), and we volunteered Tyler to be the singer for our group which led to a giggle-filled, slightly pathetic rendition of O Canada. It was very good fun.
Our last stop was a very quick moment at the Rock of Cashel, before we had to head back to Dublin. It was impressive, nonetheless, to see the great fortress perched on such a massive rock.
And that was it, more or less, for our time in Ireland, because first thing Friday morning Jess and I flew to Brussels...

A Very Bad Blogger

It's true: over a month since my last post...I'm afraid that makes me a Very Bad Blogger. My sincere apologies to anyone who has been wasting their time checking for something new (and possibily even interesting). The good news is that I have a valid excuse, at least for the last few weeks: I have been traveling! Quick catch up: the last weeks of July were spent working 40+ hours a week and enjoying the TV that Celia and I purchased. It sounds pretty pathetic, especially since we don't get a single channel and can only watch movies, but after so long without TV and since I was working so much...well, it was actually pretty enjoyable. I also believe that I was conserving energy for what I knew was arriving at the beginning of August...my sister! For those of you who who haven't met her, Jessica is two years my junior and about a hundred times more energetic and driven than I am. So resting up for her visit was wise. Really. The basic outline of our trip went like this: she arrived August 3, and we spent a couple of days checking out Dublin and some of its surroundings (namely Howth, a cute little port town with seals in the harbour). On August 5, after months of cordiation with her friend Ashley, Jess managed to surprise two other friends, Tyler and Nikki by meeting them in Dublin. Actually, it was a pretty funny event. Jess and Ash had arranged to meet on the Ha'penny Bridge (a well known tourist attraction in Dublin, named for its one-time half-penny toll, pronounced "hay-penny"). Jess and I got that shortly before the appointed time, and were hanging out on the middle of the bridge when there was a big commotion down the river; someone had jumped off the bridge, bringing about 6 fire trucks, 4 ambulences and 9 police cars (yes, I just made those numbers up, but it was something like that). This was entertaining for a while, until the drunk homeless guy standing next to us decided that jumping in was a great idea and climbed over the railing! Jess and I opted to ignore him, figuring that he was just looking for attention, but we were the only ones wise to that and soon a fair crowd had gathered. We were a bit torn about what to do--we didn't want to get caught up in the chaos, but we also didn't want to miss Ash and co. and ruin the surprise. Fortunately we saw them, right after the police turned up to coax drunk guy back onto the safe side of the railing. Jess pointed them out to me like this; "that's Ash with the video camera, Tyler scratching his ear and Nikki in the striped shirt." Well, she was right about the camera and striped shirt, by Tyler wasn't actually scratching his ear: after seeing that Ash appeared to be videotaping the jumper, he was trying to pretend that he wasn't with her! He claims that it was this embarassment and confusion that put a damper on his reaction to seeing my sister (he seemed a bit underwhelmed), while Nikki bounced around excitedly and tried to get Ash, who was filming their reaction, to turn and look at Jess, not realizing that Jess' appearance was anything more than a coincidence. We spent the next day with them in Dublin, and on Monday, August 7, headed out on a bus tour with a company called the Shamrocker. It was a 3 day tour of Western Ireland that took us took a whiskey distillery, Clonmacnoise (a monastic sight), the Cliffs of Moher, Dooling, the Dingle Peninsula, Killarney, and the Barney castle and stone, among other places. It was fantastic! We had a small, and apparently very quiet group, but we really enjoyed ourselves and made a few friends. The others on our bus were all Canadians and Australians, plus one New Zealander, and we got on very well. We returned on August 9 to Dublin, spent the 10th getting organized and seeing Ash, Tyler and Nikki off. First thing on the morning of August 11 we flew to Brussels. I'm about out of time for now, so I'll continue this tomorrow. Just to give you something to look forward to, we went from Brussels to Zurich to Interlaken to Cinque Terra (via Milan) to Venice (via Florence) to Munich to Salzburg to Paris and then back to Dublin!