Days Four - Eight: Irish Travels

Oops, I almost forgot to post the final travelogue.  Day Four we went to Middleton Distillery  for a tour of the old whiskey distillery near Cork, had lunch in Cobh , drove through Kinsale, and saw Timoleague Abbey. 

Day Five was the day for Dingle. That's where we saw the beautiful countryside, the beehive huts, Sleahead Drive, Conor's Pass and spent the evening listening to some great music. We even shopped at the Centra for some snacks for the long drive back home that night. 

Day Six was a leisure day spent at Bunratty Castle & Folk Park. Yes, I know it's truly a tourist attraction, but it is nice to be able to climb up and down the inside of a castle, rather than just see the ruins. Also, they have lots of thatched cottages so that one can see the original Irish dwellings. That's where we saw the cute baby goat (kid) and it's mama. 

Day Seven we drove to the Rock of Cashel  (truly spectacular), Cahir Castle  (you can walk up the sides to the top - no handrails!), and then off to Waterford Crystal Factory  where Steve and I finally decided after all these years to splurge on a LITTLE chandelier. I can't wait for it to get here - I'll post pictures then. After that we drove to Dublin for the last little bit of our trip. Day Eight we went to see the Book of Kells at Trinity College and then off to see the Guinness tour. Wow, that was very modern and artsy, but definitely an "experience".

Unfortunately I don't have too many great pictures for this, just a collage of some of the more colorful houses that I saw. Now, most in the picture are of some sort of tourist attraction (I think Bunratty's Folk Park). What I didn't manage to capture were all of the beautiful vivid pink, salmon, purple (yes purple!) and chartreuse houses in Ireland. Nope, not B&Bs, just people's regular abodes. I think it's very charming. Of course some of the color combinations were a bit, shall we say naive?! The last picture on the bottom right, of the large leaf, is perhaps my favorite photograph of the entire trip!


And this is a picture of Steve driving us skillfully through the narrow Conor's Pass in the Dingle Peninsula -- too bad we didn't get a smaller car than the Land Rover Discovery.  Steve said that we drove approximately 2,200 miles on the trip! The only mishap was a long branch that clipped the passenger side mirror. It knocked it out of the housing and cracked. We promptly bought clear tape and scissors from a petrol station and fixed it. I wonder what the people at Hertz thought when we returned it? All in all it was a good trip.