All About G: Ireland

This has been sitting in Draft for a while...

Ireland was lovely as always. It's a truly beautiful island despite the bad rep that it receives because of its rainy weather. We were there for 12 days and we saw a lot of the island so I'm just going to give a very brief, concise account of where we went... and then there are photos.

We flew into Dublin, collected our hired car and drove up to Belfast (N. Ireland) where we spent 2 days. Belfast is a city that is going through a transformation as it tries to hide the scars of its history... so it's somewhat sad but very interesting too. After that we drove back down to Dublin and spent a night there before heading to Powerscourt to attend a wedding. Powerscourt is a truly beautiful place and the wedding was held in the sumptuous Ritz-Carlton hotel. The town of Shankill was next on the list where we spent 2 nights with an aunt and we then drove across the country to beautiful Co. Kerry.

We stayed in a house in the middle of the countryside where we had cows for neighbours and not much else. We'd light the fireplace in the evenings and I even saw a fox run out of the front garden one morning. The scenery is truly special over there. We drove around the ring of Kerry and went to the Dingle peninsula where each twist and turn in the road brings you to a spot more beautiful than the one you've just seen. We also walked along the beach of Inch despite it being rather cold... the only problem was that the sea spray began hitting us when we had walked quite a distance away from the road and then the mist came down and we were caught in a cold spell which saw us getting completely and utterly soaked by the time we got back to the car. But it was all part of the adventure I guess!

We went to the family home which is a dairy farm in Co. Kerry. I wanted to join the milking session of the cows but we were having dinner at the time and I didn't think that it was too polite to just leave the table. But I did get to walk behind the cows as they were led back to the field, and by cows, I'm talking about 150 of them! The one thing about walking behind cows is don't walk too close behind them because they will not think twice about letting loose (if you know what I mean). I didn't get hit.

We headed back to Dublin for the last 2 days of the holiday where we opted for a Hop On-Hop Off sightseeing bus because it's a great way to go round the city and see the main spots from the top deck of a double-decker. We got off at Kilmainham Gaol which is the old jail of the city - a very interesting piece of history. We also visited the Old Jameson Distillery which takes you through the triple distillery process of Jameson's Whiskey - P got a certificate as an official whiskey taster :) I'm not a whiskey fan at all but I tasted it with Ginger Ale and that was rather yummy. We didn't do much sight-seeing in Dublin (partly because we were there last year) but it was lovely to be back, even just for a couple of days.

Here are some photos... a selection out of the many, many that I took!