May was a busy travel month. I got back from Denver on Tuesday the 8th, was there in England for 2 days, and then flew to Ireland on Friday the 11th. (I had time in there to do a Wednesday night activity for the Young Women.)
My sister Audrey and sister-in-law Carrie planned a 9 day trip to Ireland. I had complained about all of the traveling that Alex got to do and how I wanted a vacation... Alex agreed that I could plan a trip. I didn't want to go by myself, so luckily Carrie and Audrey were both able to take a vacation with me. None of us had been to Ireland, and we all wanted to see it, so that became our destination. It worked out really well for me, because my flight from Newcastle to Dublin was only about £40 roundtrip. Accommodations, car rental, and food was another story... but the flight was cheap.
It was raining when we arrived, and that caused some flight delays, but we were on our way by Friday afternoon. We actually had great weather all week. It only rained on arrival and the day we took a boat tour of Skellig Michael. For Ireland, that little amount of rain was amazing! We were lucky to get good weather.
I don't remember exactly where we were on what days - we stayed in a new place every night. We made a big loop from Dublin to Kilkenny to Cork to Killarney to Galway and back to Dublin. We didn't make it to Northern Ireland.
Here are photos from the places we visited. I took a ton of photos - these were only a small portion of them!
Our first visit was Malahide Castle - the photo of us sitting on the steps was us trying to replicate a photo in the brochure. I think Audrey ended up with the brochure, so I don't have it to show. But we got a kick out of how similar our staged photo looked to the one we were trying to replicate!
We spent the first day or so exploring around Dublin.
This Ha'penny Bridge was pretty cool - I like the story about how it got its name. According to Wikipedia: Before the bridge was built, there were 7 ferries, which were in bad condition. The operator was informed that he must either fix the ferries or build a bridge. The operator chose to build a bridge and was allowed to charge a half penny toll from anyone crossing it.
Glendalough was a pretty place for a hike, but we were disappointed by the Poulanass Waterfall - not impressive (but the name was funny to say).
We had to visit the Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney Stone. I think it's actually pretty gross to kiss a stone that lots of other people kiss, but we went ahead and kissed the famous stone. It was surprisingly scary to lean back low enough to reach the stone - it's a long drop to the ground from the top of the castle. I can see why they put the bars there and have someone helping to lower you and hold you in place.
Carrie wanted to pet a sheep in the wild... she got one by the end, but this was her first attempt:
Still at the Blarney Castle... we found a cool tree and had fun posing in it (after laughing so hard about trying to get up in the tree... Audrey or Carrie might have a picture of my bum and me draped over the trunk as I attempted to get up on the tree). The fern garden was pretty cool too.
At the last minute, we planned a boat tour of Skellig Michael island, which was the place where scenes from the Last Jedi were filmed. It wasn't in our original itinerary, but once we realized what it was and along our route, we wanted to see it. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and rainy the morning we were there. And we were unlucky to just miss the season for the tours of the island itself. They weren't doing tours until the next week. But we still took the boat tour, despite having to wear heavy rain gear and not being able to see much. It was pretty amazing what we were able to see.
Our boat launched from Port Magee, a small town, which probably was mostly unknown before Star Wars. It now gets quite a bit of tourists to see Skellig Michael.
We had a fun time watching Irish dancing during dinner one evening. Audrey and Carrie even volunteered to learn some dancing (I didn't dance - someone had to take video... 😊 )
One of my favorite things of our whole trip was watching a Sheepdog Demonstration (maybe near Kenmare? We had a hard time finding the place - google maps led us to someone's driveway with chickens looking at us...)
The border collies are well trained to gather the sheep on command. We also got to see several different kinds of sheep. And...the dogs did remind me of our border collie Kai (who is not well trained, but is a smart dog too).
We took our shoes off at Inch Beach, despite it being a bit chilly. I'm not sure why they call it Inch Beach, because the beach seemed to be miles long... (I guess Inch or Ínse means sea meadow... that makes sense.)
It was a little overcast at Cliffs of Moher, but it wasn't raining and the temperature was nice. The sun came out eventually.
We walked all the way out to the end (Hag's Head). By the time we did that, my health app said we had walked 6 miles. Instead of walking back, we found out we could catch a shuttle back to the visitor's center (walking just a bit further to a nearby pick up point). It was €7 each, but it was worth not having to walk all the way back the way we came. We took the Paddywagon back to the visitor's center! One of the highlights of our walk on the Cliffs was seeing a white horse along the way. Audrey had been joking about seeing a unicorn - we figured the white horse was pretty close! Ha ha.
And we hit rush hour on the way back to our accommodation! 😄 Mooooo.....
Most of Kylemore Abbey was closed off for viewing, but one of the neat things to see was the miniature cathedral. It was built in memory of Mitchell Henry's wife, Margaret, who died at 45 when she contracted dysentery in Egypt.
The last day of our trip, Carrie drove north to run in a race. Audrey and I did a bike tour of Aran Islands. We had a nice stroll across the island (and a few hills to work through as well). We met up with Carrie again back in Dublin, where we flew out on Sunday morning. We had a great trip - seeing lots of things and eating lots of food! We did some shopping in there one day as well, but I don't remember which day that was. That wasn't a highlight for me... I think I got all the highlights. It was so nice to have a vacation without the kids!
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