traveling with my parents

This post comes to you from Lexington, KY, where I'm visiting my sister Clare and her husband Peter (joined by our other sister Sarah) for a week before I come home.

So, on Friday the 13th my parents arrived in Dublin and we traveled for a week. We had sunny weather for A WEEK STRAIGHT - this is UNHEARD of! We were as lucky as you can get.

The first thing we did was to head out to Mountainstown, but since you've already seen plenty of pictures of all my walks, I'll just include this one of me with Ozzy and Schnoogie.

This is one thing that surprised me about being at Mountainstown - I learned to like dogs! I missed them as soon as I left, and now I've started hoping there is a dog at my job this summer... I never thought it would happen to me. I still like big dogs better, though. And part of the reason I liked these dogs is that they are well trained. So I don't have a blanket love for all dogs. Don't get any ideas.




So, the first stop on our journey was Ardmore, on the coast, which has a lovely coast walk as part of St. Declan's way. The cemetary near his church - note all the Celtic crosses:


View from the walk:

Check out this thatch!

Sign for a hiking trail:

St. Patrick's Day! We went to a parade in Killarney - lots of kids. Yes, that is a Guinness in my hand...

Happy cigarrettes?

The next two nights, we stayed at the Harbor House and Leisure Center on the end of the Dingle Peninsula just outside of Castlegregory. If you find yourself in Ireland some summer wanting to do some scuba diving or surfing or horseback riding - this place was empty when we were there, being the off season, but you can tell it's a blast in season - they are big into all of those things, the whole family dives, the proprieters talk talk talk talk talk (they're Irish), but they are lovely people, they have a nice restaurant... I definitely recommend this place.

Anyway, our first night featured a glorious sunset, so we went and played on the beach.

Mama and Papa:

Papa finds a toy:

We climbed some sand dunes to watch the sunset:




And the sun had a tail:

We got unnaturally tall:

And then we saw this guy telling us to stay off the sand dunes - oops:

Next day we drove over Connor Pass to Dingle. There were some spectacular views along the way:

In the west, we found more rocks:

And more glorious views:

Obviously this is a very small taste of our trip - but if you are planning to travel in Ireland please tell me so I can either tell you about places I liked or just live vicariously!

So, that's my final blog update until next time I leave the country - stay well!

weekend in Cork

I went to Cork for less than 24 hours, due to various factors. Here are some pictures - certainly not the best I've ever taken, but I guess they'll get the job done.

First, how I travel:

The tiny room in the hostel. This is how boring I am: I was completely exhausted after having spent the week alone with the kids, so I ended up going to bed at 7:30 and falling asleep by 8. I'm sure my roommates were unimpressed, but then again I didn't really talk to them since I was catching up on some much-needed sleep.

View of Cork

I toured the old Cork city gaol, which took forever to find because the Irish don't believe in decent signage - quite frustrating, in fact - I've noticed it in Dublin and Galway as well, signs are sort of arbitrary and you only get them if you're lucky. So some streets won't be marked and you just have to hope for the best, and other times you come across a signpost with literally 10 different signs pointing to different sites and such. This is the jail:

The tour is kind of cool, you get a headset and listen to an audio as you walk through the rooms. There are figures in different places and the narrators tell you their stories, why they are in the jail, what they did, and also giving you some information on conditions during this time (mid 1800's to early 1900's). It's a good tour, but very weird and grim.

This is to show how thick the walls are - that's my foot:

Apparently during this time people believed that criminality was communicable, so most prisoners were held in solitary confinement. As a result some people went insane. The most common crime, as my tape was fond of saying, was that of poverty.

Jail or castle?

Obama is everywhere! The button reads "YES YOU CAN" - it's an Aer Lingus ad (which I see EVERYWHERE) for cheap rates to the US.





Well I guess that doesn't say much about my time in Cork. I didn't do much, just eating, wandering, getting lost - I did walk through the University campus, but being a Sunday morning, not a lot of people were out and about.

As of FRIDAY, 13 March, I'm finished at Mountainstown! I'm traveling with my parents for a week and then I'll be heading back to the fifty nifty United States.

I know you've missed these

So I'm putting up some PICTURES FROM MY WALK TODAY!

This is the ruin out behind the house. It's become a cool foresty area. Atty is thinking of restoring it to a garden but I think it's kind of neat the way it is. Still walkable but a bit overgrown.

The one in the forefront is Millie, Atty's thoroughbred. In the back is Champ, the littlest pony and the oldest. Johnny rides him.

Daffodils in the forefront, snowdrops in the background. A little droopy but give them some credit, they endured a frost last night.

And after walking through all that... ta da! Steps leading nowhere. Unless you count down a ditch to the horse pasture.

A few pictures -

Mittens has made himself at home in my room, and takes advantage of the bed of clothes without invitation.


Josie and Skittles take a car for a spin - that's Johnny playing the wii in the background.



Now for something surprising: pictures from my walk down the bog lane yesterday, with Marina, Ozzy and Schnoogie for company.

The Prince of Darkness himself. Someone get Christa a towel - I can feel her heart melting!

Lambs - this appears to be the nursery, where the lambs hang out while mommy goes and eats some grass or something. You can see that a shift change is taking place - one little lady is leaving, and the new arrival is going to be in charge. I don't know if sheep actually do that, but it sure seemed that way.

weekend in Galway

After a few sets of plans fell through, I took a bus to Galway with Amy, an Australian girl just finishing a month of interning at a vet's office in Navan. She lives with Atty's sister while she's here; that's how we met.

We arrived in the evening after a slow bus ride (due to traffic and snowy weather) and walked the minute or so to Kinlay Hostel and checked in. We went to Finnegan's for traditional Irish food - I had salmon and Irish soda bread - basic and delicious! We shared a slice of Bailey's cheesecake for dessert - yum.

Then we went to King's Head bar and had a few drinks and chatted. We waited and waited for the band (Knot Sure) to start, but when they finally did, they turned out to be a cover band. I was pretty tired so we headed back to the hostel and I was out pretty fast.

The next day we went on a tour of the Burren and the Hills of Moher. About an hour into the bus ride we got off for a walking tour (others went on to a cave) and did a slow, easy hike partway up a mountain. Our guide explained to us that the many, many stone walls we were seeing came from people clearing their fields. At first when they would clear the fields the stones were just piled in one corner, but as property rights became important they were used to make walls to distinguish owners.

There are also walls leading up and over hills: walls with no purpose. These were commissioned by good-hearted English people who wanted to give people work, this way they could pay the workers and the people would have a way to earn money or food. That's the people-are-kind view, the not so optimistic view is that the English didn't want Ireland to gain a decent infrastructure and become an economic threat, so instead of putting them to work building roads or doing something actually useful, they were given backbreaking, pointless work as the only way to earn some money.


Another interesting thing about these walls (my pictures don't show how they were ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE) is that they weren't just sort of slapped together - they were made by stonemasons. You can imagine that it was important to stack the stones properly since there is nothing holding them together - no binding agents, just stones.

Amy and I pose by one of the walls. Billy, our tour guide, also made it into this shot by including his shadow.

Next up, the Cliffs of Moher! There are all sorts of paths that obviously were used recently but which are now blocked off, although people don't pay much attention to that. These cliffs seem to be popular among the suicidal. I did see a sign "Need to talk? Call the Good Samaritans: xxx-xxxx" but I wasn't in need of counseling, so I didn't make use of their free services.

Hey Sarah, check out my scarf. Does that help prevent me looking like a boy?

Another shot of the cliffs, this time without someone's big head in the way.

A tomb for lots of important people many years ago. All of my knowledge of pagans comes from Eddie Izzard, so don't ask me about the significance of this stuff.

Limestone is everywhere in the Burren. Burren means "rocky country" or something like that - a very accurate description.

My understanding of why it looks like this: millions and millions of years ago, when everything was one big continent, Ireland was down near the equator and this area was chillin under water. Fish would die and their skeletons fell to the sea floor and slowly were crushed and formed limestone. As the earth shifted underneath, the cracks formed.

The soil here is full of calcium, so it's a good place to raise cows.

This was when I conquered Ireland:

Back in Galway

View from the Prom - a walk along the shortest river in Europe.

I ended my day with my FIRST EVER meal of fish and chips at a nasty greasy little restaurant.

The rest of the weekend: before this fish and chips shot, we watched Ireland beat France at rugby (a big deal - it doesn't happen often!) on the big screen at the King's Head. Then dinner, then wandering the streets, stopping in some pubs.

As usual, I was sleepy and not super interested in drinking and hanging out in pubs, so I went back and went to bed and Amy, being much cooler than me, went back out to the Front Door to hear some traditional music. She met some Irish people and hung around with them for the night.

Next day we wandered down to the Prom (Promenade) and walked through Galway, did some shopping, and caught the 2:30 bus back to Dublin, and from there the bus to Navan.