I find myself appearing just outside a roadside tavern with a sign over the door that proclaims it as "Laman's Ladle.” It's a small, shabby sort of place, but cheerful. As I enter, there's a stone fireplace blazing on my right, and to my left is a rickety-looking staircase that presumably leads to rentable bedrooms. At the back is the bar, behind which is a burly (but somewhat overweight) man with a large beard and a dirty apron. He is friendly and roars a loud, friendly greeting to every customer who comes through the door.
Read MoreToday will be my last post about Ireland, as I recount our final adventures.
We said a fond farewell to Killarney and headed out to the Wild Atlantic Way where we caught a ferry from Doolin Pier for a tour of the Cliffs of Moher… you might recognize them from movies like The Princess Bride or Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince!
Read MoreKillarney was probably our favorite.
I don’t know why, but I never expected to find mountains in Ireland.
But as we drove from Blarney Castle toward Killarney, that’s exactly what we found.
Read MoreDay 4 of our travels brought us to Cork
Where we had a lovely walking tour through the city with a couple from Colorado, a woman from California, and a woman from New Zealand.
The couple from Colorado had a driver with them as part of their vacation package, and he decided to join the tour as, “I’ve heard you’re quite good” he said to Mary, our tour guide. But then he had to dash off to re-park the car. He showed up a little while later, but we’ll get back to him in a minute.
Mary was a wonderful tour guide and I really enjoyed wandering around Cork and learning all about it. At one point, we had paused and were just chatting amongst ourselves about where we were from and what all we had seen so far on our various vacations, and I mentioned, “Everyone we’ve met in the past two days has made a point to tell us that Cork is the real capital of Ireland.”
Read MoreWelcome to the second installment of my Ireland trip travel-log!
If I’m being perfectly honest, our first two days in Dublin were a little disappointing and Derek and I had a couple of moments of wondering, “Did we just waste a lot of money on this trip?”
And now we had to get ourselves to the car rental place and learn how to drive on the left side of the road. And by “we” I of course mean “Derek.”
It was all getting a little overwhelming.
Read MoreGood morning, friends. It’s been over a month since we got back from our Ireland trip, and it’s been a whirlwind of a summer since we got home. But I made a promise, Mr. Frodo, and I aim to keep it.
I promised to tell you all about our Ireland trip, and here I am to make good on that promise!
It was such a great trip and we had so much fun and we made so many epic memories and I probably can’t fit it all into one blog post, so get ready for a series of posts.
In the heading picture of this post you can trace our travels through Ireland. We started in Dublin, drove down through Waterford into Cork, then on to Killarney, up to the Cliffs of Moher, through the Burren National Park, back to Limerick, and then back to Dublin by out-of-the-way of Kilkenny.
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