Ireland!

So, ya know, no big deal, but Pete and I just got back from IRELAND!!!


Let's see... We spent Day One in the Columbus, Ohio airport... We endured a maddening series of changes and delays, hope and despair. When we boarded our plane for New York, we rejoiced, buckled our seat belts and got ready to be in Vacation Mode. ...That's just about when the Captain announced that our departure had been pushed another two hours and anyone with connections would have to make other plans.

We had to get our backpacks, get off the plane and make a string of phone calls that included trying to secure a whole new flight itinerary (that added two days on the end!), getting a third round of child care coverage AND convincing Pete's Dad that we were NOT kidding about needing a ride home.

At any rate, it all worked out, and we owe a debt of gratitude to:

1. the Nice Lady at the U.S. Airways counter for working late and swearing at people on the phone for us
2. amazing, coordinated, thoughtful, selfless child care by (in order of appearance): MaryGrace (Grammy), Denny (Grandpa), Mary Ann (Nonna), Michael (Pop-Pop) and Jess (um, college student savior, but we call her Jess)
3. Denny, for driving to and from the airport three times
4. Colette and Ronan, for just rollin' with all our changes and picking us up at the Dublin airport at 5 a.m., and
5. Megan for picking us up upon our return, even though she should've been with her family for Easter

Now! Back to the trip coverage! We mostly ignored our exhaustion and got on a train from our buddies' pad (the super cool, modern apartment of Colette and David) to Dublin.

Did I mention this little guy? (This one's for you, Stacie!) Ronan Patrick McGuigan, who slept for most of our visit, but was an awesome little two-month-old tour guide. It was soooooooooo wonderful to spend the better part of two days with this guy and his parents, David (who had to work insane hours, but found time to give us great touristy advice) and Colette (who I love and miss, even though she spent most of our visit in her 1997 Greek Week t-shirt).

Colette and David own a fantastic pub (WISH I would've taken pics there! Sorry!!). It's even bigger and cooler than you're picturing--just so you know. It's about a 45-minute drive from their apartment, but the commute looks like this:

I think it was just starting to get really, really green while we were there, but this stuff was also just starting to cover every available inch not filled with grass or sheep. It's gorse, native to western Europe and very prickly!


These doors were in Dublin. I read that some Irish leaders ordered everyone to paint their doors black when some Queen died, but people revolted and painted all kinds of bright colors instead. I have no idea if that's true, but the punches of color in a sea of grey looked really cool!


And, in case you're wondering, sheep are not EVERYwhere. There are also horses and cows.


But mostly, there are sheep. And rocks. A lot of rocks!

What kind of tourists would we be if we didn't go to the Guinness Storehouse in downtown Dublin??


They are passionate about their Guinness (practically the national beer, as one taxi driver told us), and the museum/six-story shrine to the beer was pretty dang cool. Here's Pete, hand-picking the four ingredients:

At the top is a bar (look at me pretending to enjoy my pint! I had almost three-quarters of one!!) that offers 360-degree view of the city.

We also went to Trinity College, Ireland's premier seat of learning. (No, I did not plagiarize that from our tour book.)

I could only take some photos outside, but we saw the fantastically ornate, ninth-century Book of Kells and the Long Room, an awesome vaulted, barrel-ceilinged library with 200,000 ancient books.

The bikes! The bikes were everywhere!

We planned to rent a car for one day, but David convinced us we'd be fine for a few days. Pete was the picture of calm.

Actually, he did amazingly well (he's a roundabout natural!), while I got to look out the window at scenes like this:

The network of rock walls was so cool! Joking aside, many farmers don't have any gates, so they remove some rocks, put their herd in their field and then rebuild the rock wall. Crazy, right??

They say driving in Ireland isn't too bad because they don't have very many roads. Keep driving and you'll probably get there. We paid extra to have GPS in our rental car, but she had no problem directing us to turn on a ridiculous number of two-way roads that would be dangerous sidewalks here in the States. Pete estimated they were about the width of a small car plus a couple of feet--with no shoulder. (Notice the other car coming with a trailer?!? Yeah. Someone has to just back up until there's somewhere to get out of the way.)

But, ahhhh... We rented a car in part so we could spend one night in a castle! This is Abbey Glen in the Connemara region. (And a beautiful sunny day, too!)

The view from our sitting room:

Fireplace. Got it. BUT, they burn peat--as in dried dirt--in their fireplaces!

The castle had a full restaurant (where we met a very chatty older Irish couple, who wanted to stay up and drink all night in the piano bar) and three (yes, three) helipads for those guests who prefer to be airlifted. (Pete waited patiently for his ride...)

We made an amazingly treacherous drive to the Cliffs of Moher, but it was worth it! (I mean, I think. I wasn't driving.)

The Cliffs rise straight up some 650 feet out of the Atlantic Ocean.

This is the view in the other direction, with O'Brien's Tower in the distance.

I know nothing about this O'Brien guy, but his Tower sure did look pretty against a bright blue sky!


And here's proof we were actually there:

We also spent a night in Galway, a hip little city with lots of shopping and restaurants.

I just love a positively ancient building in the middle of a metropolis!

All signs are in both Irish and English. Soooo, if anyone can translate this puppy, I'd be grateful.

We visited Bunratty Castle, an awesome restored castle built in 1425!

I wonder what it costs to restore a castle and fill it with period furniture and tapestries... Here's just an average, run-o-the-mill piece (photo taken before I noticed the no-flash-photography signs... woops!).


Here's one of the amazing restored rooms, with, I think, a scarlet and grey floor. (Good to know Mr. Bunratty was a Buckeye fan.)

The staircase down to the dungeon was just about as wide as the roads we survived...

Isn't this a cool door knocker?? It was on the grounds at Bunratty. You could explore typical farmhouses (all complete with very smokey peat fires burning!).

...And one parting shot as we escaped on that very, very rainy day.

Ahhhhhh, vacation mode...

We ate and drank in a bunch of pubs. We talked to locals and learned words and pronunciations like "two-terds" (instead of "two-thirds") and "tinkers" (WAY more fun than saying "nomads" or "gypsies"). We learned the pub culture of buying rounds of drinks for the group, regardless of whether anyone's ready or wants more.

We got to see the small town (Loughrae) that was home to Pete's ancestors, and we learned that Loughrae is pronounced "Lock-ray," which is why no one could help us when we asked for "Low-ray." We learned that we're pretty tan to be waltzing around in Ireland. We logged 720 miles in our three-day rental car.

And we learned that plans are made to be broken in the laid-back Irish culture! We wish we were still there!!!