We spent the first day (tired and dirty from the flying) futzing around the city just bumming around to see what we could find. After starting out with some delicious Irish food (soooo yummy, and so not healthy). I am such a food-aholic, I really just LOVE food. Ha ha.
Day 1 to 2:
Oh yes, don't you fear, I found a fountain to enjoy first thing. Yea I know I am obsessed, but I just love cool fountains. Water sign for sure.
Adorable little house in the park. So what I think of when I imagine Ireland :-)
Pond in the park
City Art
St Patrick's Cathedral
A little mini Saint Patrick Statue. I was drawn to this, very moving. I think I spent like 15 minutes just looking at this.
Seating arrangement throughout the cathedral
Stairway to heaven?
The stonework in the city is really beautiful, this little path was up to a library
Dublin Castle Stables (I think, it was the structure right by the castle at least, and I liked it the best)
There was a tad bit of sprinkling rain the first day, but somehow that just makes things look fresh and clean a lot of times. This walk way was just beautiful, especially with the flowers blooming in the background!
Ceiling of the little church in Dublin Castle, the church was the only thing that survived a fire years and years ago. Quaint little space.
Randomness we found in middle of city.
Trinity College, this was when we decided it was play time. No I didn't hurt her, but it sure looked like you could do a lot of damage with those things ;-)
Christ Church Cathedral
Well hello again Jo, Love you too.
Stole this pic from Jo, so cool. Door for the big people and for the little people? Thought might be a little big for the leprechauns ;-)
The tile work throughout the cathedrals in Dublin was stunning, this cathedral had the most intricate work that we saw though.
The bar we spent the most time in, Temple Bar, it was right by our hostel and it played Live Irish Music all day long!!! LOVE IT!!!
Beers in the Emerald Isle, Guinness and Smithwicks (both Irish beers, I started lighter and worked up). Smile big.
And the rest of the party joined up, welcome Nat and Hill!!! We have been warming up the town for ya!
Day 3 (Guinness Brewhouse tour - and looking at the outside of a lot of things that were closed because we spent so much time at the brewery):
Fun statues on our way to the Guinness factory
Barley for the brew
See, smell, taste
Next it was off to the prison. I wanted to go and hear all the gruesome ghost stories. We got there too late though, who knew we could spend so long at the Guinness Brewery, and that the map we had was soooo not to scale and it took way longer then it looked to walk out here.
They wouldn't let us in, but there sure was a disturbing statue/monument thing out front..
Since it was just across the road we tried to go to the Museum... that was closed too, but had some fun statues outside, and a cool path back to it!
Market, made me think of you Mom. Fresh food markets always do..
Jameson tour
Our official Whiskey taster, go Nat, none of the rest of us were bold enough to try it straight, not yet at least, but Jameson and Ginger Ale was delicious!
Once we stopped moving and were waiting for the bus we realized it was a bit chillier then we had anticipated. My girls criss-cross style.
Hello Galway, lets start off this adventure with an awesome street performance! Great introduction to a new city I would say! Really can't get enough of all the live music in Ireland! It was amazing!
Day 5 to 6 (Galway to Aran Islands to Doolin) -
After some debate and consideration on the time it would take to get the bus from Galway down further south we figured the cheapest and quickest thing to do was to get a car... And as I have lived somewhere that people drove on the other side of the road I think I got elected as driver. YIKES!! I will say that this was quite the experience! It is a very strange feeling being on the wrong side of the car, shifting with the wrong hand, and driving on the wrong side of the road with cars coming at the wrong side of your face. NERVE WRACKING!!! Especially in a totally foreign place without the best street/town signs... Anyway, day one was pretty lax, Natalie and I just got the car and brought it back to the hostel. Tried to hit the curb a couple times but got there unscathed!
Aran Island - a little step back in time to a much more rural Ireland. Was an amazing day, and very relaxing to get out of the city.
All the parcels of land were divided up by brick walls. Very quaint.
Leprechaun house!!! With cows in the pasture in the background. Love this pic :-)
I tried to get inside... to no avail.
Sitting on the edge of the world at Dun Aengus fort on the edge of a 300 foot cliff overlooking the Atlantic. I think we could have spent all day here, was a good feeling to this place, tranquil.
Bees, so cute!!! Hill and I got a little more excited about these little buggers then we probably should have, but they were fun!! So happy in the new flowers :-)
Big house, little leprechaun house... We decided that the purpose of creating a little separate leprechaun house outside was to give the little guys their own home so they didn't come into your own house and cause mischief. Total urban legend that we just made up, but sounds very reasonable to me ;-)
What a final resting place!
We spent all day out on the island exploring around, but alas, all good things must come to an end. And we had to carry on in our adventures. Back into the car we went to head out into the country to Doolin. Now that was the scariest road I have ever been on in a car. Driving on tiny roads, which were honestly only wide enough for 2 full sized cars to drive side by side, with no shoulder and stone walls on either side lining peoples properties. I think I might have doubled the amt of time that it would have normally taken to get there but driving on the wrong side of the road in the dark was terrifying. Oh and did I mention that the speed limit on the tiny winding slightly rolling road was 100 km per hour?? (approximately 62 miles per hour) And cars really did drive that fast, and the busses tried to do the same... Jodie almost got the boot out of the front seat for screaming (but I can't blame her, I would have screamed too probably with my driving). I managed to not hit anything besides branches which had encroached the road (the first full day of driving at least - second day when I was starting to get sick was a different story - it is doubly hard to drive around a town trying to figure out where/how to park a boat of a car on the wrong side of the road - oops, nothing too substantial damaged just a scratch or two). Boy was I glad we survived those first couple days - Natalie drove the second half of the second day since I was terrified after my couple little mishaps.
Ok, that's all for tonight, need to go to bed, this blog business sure takes more time then I would think ;-o
I will write about our stay in Doolin (once we made it there), and our adventures onwards after that.
P.S. It is really hard to trim down photo albums to pick which ones should go in here, and which ones to leave out... and the ones to steal from the other girls... hopefully this is a healthy balance and is not overload.. hmmm... guess it does a good job of reminding me of all we did at least. Online diary-ish. Last time I was in Europe I had a journal I kept, this seems to work well for me. Even though with the girls with me with their facebook updating it is interesting what we all do to make sure we remember all of our adventures. :-)
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