Home

Well one day we are admring the view and the next day we drove back to Dublin. Caught the plane and are safely back in Wagga. Hope you have enjoyed our "holiday". It was great

Dingle

Friday 27th Feb

The drive to Dinge was spectacular. We stayed in a beutiful guest house overlooking the harbour area where all the fishing boats come in. This part of Ireland is very proud of the Gaelic heritage and speak Gaelic, so "An Daingan" is Dingle

Beautiful hills and little streams running into the ocean everywhere. The one below was actually running over the road and Craig did his fast drive through to make a splash like we were in a 4 wheel drive instead of our Nissan Micra!!

The paddocks run right down to the water or the cliff face and the fences are all stone and the grass is sooooo green. The photos might not show exaclty how green it was as most of them are late afternoon and there was not a great deal of light. This is how I imagined Ireland to be - beautiful!

Blarney castle

Well this area is what I thought Ireland really looked like. It is beautiful. Blarney is a cute little village with a traditional village green, and the people are fantastic. And the Blarney Castle hotel is the most beautiful hotel.
Craig and I ventured out to Blarney Castle (about 100m from the town centre). The grounds and gardens were beautiful and in a few weeks time the bulbs will be magnificent and I'm sure the trees will soon begin to get their leaves
Blarney Castle is a ruin, but you can walk all the way to the top to kiss the Blarney stone if that is what you like. The picture below is of the opening that you hang down from to kiss the stone. Yuck! Anyway, that is my excuse - nothing at all to do with heights!!
We are running short of time at this end of our holiday, so the very friendly man at the hotel had suggested an itinerary for today that will give us the best of the west coast in a day!
We drove to the Killarney lakes area via Kenmare and then to the Dingle peninsula, rather than whole of the Ring off Kerry. Dingle peninsular is a bit smaller than the ring of Kerry and the roads are too small for the tourist buses, so it was perfect.

Waterford - Cobh

Well, we are both still alive and haven't strangled each other yet!! This hotel is the oldest in Waterford and we were not able to get there last night but had a look in the day light. We spent last night in a traditional Irish Pub in Waterford - Dooleys, just around the corner from this one.Then we set off for our drive to the Cork area. On the way we detoured to Cobh (pronounced Cove) where the Titanic had it's last stop before that fateful night. There was the most amazing cathedral on the cliff face which took 47 years to build - nothing compared to the 600 years for the Colgne cathedral!! But still impressive.
After getting a little lost in the city of Cork, we headed out to Blarney where we are staying in the Blarney Castle Hotel and will have a great day tomorrow guaranteed!! Very nice!

Ireland - Dublin

Tuesday 24th Feb
Well we've had a busy day. We've been doing the hop on hop off thing and had a great time at Trinity college and looked at the "Old Library" that houses the "Book of Kells" That was fairly impressive. This is just the entrance to Trinity college and you weren't allowed to take photos inside
We walked around Temple Bar but didn't find too much exciting to do there. It was an interesting walk however.

Then we spent a good time at the Guiness Store house where you go through the whole process and history of the company and finish with a Pint in the Gravity Bar which is still one of the tallest buildings in Dublin, and one of the oldest with a great view.

The real test of our marriage will be tomorrow when we pick up our hire car for a few days. We might not even make it out of Dublin!!

The Highlands

Sunday 22nd Feb
We set out for a day in the highlands. We left Strathallen school at 10.30 and went on a very scenic drive through some little villages and with beautiful bridges and we were so lucky that the sun peeked through and we could see for a long way into the distance - no lingering mist. We were driving for quite a while when we pulled over into a little road side stop, where we had morning tea (a beautiful gluten free carrot cake) and had our photo taken with this very brave Scotsman. It was great to hear the bagpipes in the highlands and the view was typically Scottish and gorgeous.
Then we drove on to Fort William and Loch Ness. The Lochs are amazing and vast. There is just so much water everywhere running off the hills - I wish I could take some home with us!
Here are Craig Nicholas and me with "Nessy" at the Lochs leading into Loch Ness

Edinburgh

Saturday 21st Feb

Janine drove us in to Perth where we caught the train to Edinburgh. We had a good ride and went over the iconic train bridge (will remember the name soon and put it in). We didn't over do it in Edinburgh. We walked down the "Royal Mile" to the Queens Scotland castle "Holyrood" and walked through the part of the castle that was open. It was nice but not nearly as impressive as the German castles. The picture is only a very small part of the residence.

Then on our way back up the hill to Edinburgh castle we had lunch at a Scottish pub with the football going and a Scotsman playing the bagpipes just up the road

This picture is for Ruby and Ned back home. This little cemetry is the dog cemetry in Edinburgh castle and it is in a prime position overlooking the city. It was very very windy and cold on top of the hill but the castle was very impressive.