Round Ireland with 2 kids
Trip Start
Feb 08, 2006
1
18
20
Trip End
Jul 19, 2006
Cork, Ireland
Thursday, July 6, 2006
The next morning we arrived in Ireland, rented a car, and drove straight to Blarney castle. Oddly, while waling to the castle I ran into a former student of mine. Having essencially just gotten off a plane from the middle east and landed in Ireland it was, needless to say, a bit surreal to see someone from Aliso. So we did the kissing of the Blarney stone, etc. Then we headed out to Killarny. The next day we drove the Ring of Kerry. Ireland is even more beautiful than last time I saw it, maybe it was the (ever so slightly) improved weather, since last time I was here it was January.
We spent sveral days just driving through the countryside, stopping whenever the whim struck. We stopped at a Celtic theme park and graden, beautiful but obviously not on the top sightseeing places. We also went to a horse "museum" on the way to Galway. The kids went riding and we learned a lot about the internal workings of horses (see the pic of the kids next to an actual horses colon). We saw Kylemore Abbey and stopped at Clonmacnoise and chatted with an old irishman with a blind puppy who the kids befriended.
We made it to Galway in time to watch the heartbreaking loss of France to Italy in the World Cup. We didn't get a chance to see the family but did drive through Oranmore and it has changed so much in the last tem years that I never would have recognized it if there hadn't been signs. Let's just put it this way: Last time they laughed at us when we asked about the address for the family because apparently you didn't need one, now there is a subway and Yen's chinese takeaway. I spoke to Nora (Kenny) and they had just had a new grandbaby the day I called. She said to call back in a day or two but we decided not to intrude.
We worked our way north along the coast until we came to the village of Ballina which was hosting its summer festival. We arrived the day before "Heritage Day" which was a day of demonstrations of traditional Irish trades, etc. It was great fun and it was really nice to blend in for once. Nobody stares at us here.
On the 13th we left Ballina heading south and stopped at Bunratty Castle and folkpark. We headed back to Cork but because of roadwork it took much longer than expected (3 hours to go 60 miles) and my plan to arrive at the airport 2 1/2 hours before our flight ended in another missed flight and another night on an airport floor. Actually that had been the plan anyway we had just planned on sleeping in Gatwick instead of Cork.
Now London...
