Beginning Days in Ireland

Other than our laughable first adventures in driving, our first day in Dublin was a bit of a blur. I was very tired from sleeping only a little on the plane and from being 5 hours ahead of East Coast time. We had a nice little excursion down one of the main pedestrian streets to dinner. After that, we were all so exhausted we went home to bed... At 8pm. The next day was much more productive starting with the hop-on/hop-off city bus tour. We had a very lively tour guide that gave us the traditional history of the stops along with many funny anecdotes and jokes. From there we hopped off at the Guinness factory to tour and drink our lunch. A wonderful ending surprise was the top floor 360 degree window lounge. Awesome views of the city. We still had a little time before dinner, so we stopped in the Dublinia museum. There we learned about the Viking and Medievil history of Dublin. At dinnertime we headed to the Brazen Head Pub, the oldest pub in Dublin, and had some good food and of course beer. We ended that night (and our stay in Dublin) by meeting up with Karin and going on a musical pub crawl. Not as rowdy as you would think, but very fun. We went to 3 different pubs throughout the city and along the way learned about and listened to some traditional Irish instruments and music.

The next day we woke up early and left the city for Kilkenny. Once there, we briefly visited the town and design market (picked up some cute souvenirs) and went to the castle. After lunch, we went on to ou final destination for the day, Cashel. Quickly we checked into our B&B then went to explore the Rock of Cashel. It's a beautiful cathedral on the hill that's actively being restored and it was very interesting to learn about and watch the process of how they restore the old paintings.

Today we woke early again to head across to western Ireland and the Cliffs of Moher. Miraculously, we had a beautiful sunny day where you could see for miles. In true Irish weather tradition though, we were briefly rained and then hailed on all while the sun was still shining. Now Karin and I just finished a nice pub lunch after dropping the others off to golf. We'll be picking them up in a few hours to continue back into Ennis for the evening.

On to more adventures tomorrow....