As most of you know, Gram, Abi and I went on a week long trip to Ireland with my Uncle Mike and Aunt Holly Lowis, April 7-14. We'd spent several months in planning and for Abi and I, saving every penny earned. :)
I'm sorry I haven't posted sooner... We got home just a week ago today and I've been plagued with super bad jet lag since then. I still don't think I'm quite over it, but it's definitely getting better! The rest of our group got it pretty bad too... We were a sorry bunch this past week! :)
I'll just give a quick picture overview of our week in Ireland, just highlighting the places we went too. Hopefully that'll satiate you till I can get something done about a blog for the trip. I think that, for the entire trip, Abi and I alone took about 2,500 pictures, not including videos... So I think that I'l need a separate blog. :) Between us all, we had 7 cameras! Ya, we prob'ly went overboard in the picture department, but we were determined to take better pictures this time.
Most of these pictures are unedited, so you're really getting to see them in the raw. Anyway, enjoy your sneak-peak of what's to come!
Day 1
Our plane left Eppley Airfield at 5:15 pm. Here's the excited bunch, waiting in the secure area for them to call our flight.
Day 2
After a brief layover in Chicago O'Hare, we took off for Ireland at 8 pm. This picture is one of our first glimpses of Ireland after our 6 1/2 hr flight.
Our plane arrived in Dublin around 8:30 am, Irish time, 3:30 am CST. After the grueling 3 hr drive from Dublin to Broadford, we arrived at the cottage where we'd be stationed all week. Glenview Lodge is owned by a very kind elderly couple, Sean and Monica.
After we got settled in, we decided to get some supper. We were all famished since most hadn't eaten since that morning around 7 when they fed us breakfast on the plane. I hadn't eaten a square meal since supper on the plane at 9:30 pm. Sean told us that Adare would have places to eat, so we drove the 45 min. there, only to discover that all the places that weren't pubs had stopped serving supper at 5:30! It was 6 by then. So, we drove to nearby Newcastle West, where someone spotted a likely place. Even though they were closing down, they still fed our starving group supper. I haven't been that hungry before, at least that I can remember. That food tasted so good!
Day 3
Our first full day in Ireland started out with Quin Abbey and Friary. We had gone here during our previous trip and loved it so we wanted Uncle Mike and Aunt Holly to see it. This picture is of the abbey.
Sadly, the friary was closed due to restoration work. Boy were we ever disappointed! What a way to start out our first day!
After Quin, we swung up to see the Cliffs of Moher. It wasn't nearly as windy as it had been the last time, but it was still pretty windy! What a magnificent place!
We wanted to "do" some of the Burren, so Sean told us of a good route to take. What a dramatic landscape! I can't wait to show you all the pictures! BTW, you might want to do some research on the Burren, it's very fascinating.
Day 4
Back to Blarney Castle again for a flash by visit! Aunt Holly and Uncle Mike toured the castle while Abi and I toured the grounds. Gram's back was hurting, so she had to go sit down. :(
Abi and I just took the first path that we saw, called the "Herbaceous Border."As we walked along, we started getting peaks of Blarney Mansion. Sadly, it was closed for restoration work till June.
For lunch we ate at the Spinning Wheel restaurant located inside Griffin's Garden Center. We had eaten here two years ago when we visited Blarney. After we ate, we went back to shop at the Blarney Woolen Mills. That store is so much fun!
Cobh is just a short jaunt from Blarney, so we made a spur of the moment decision to drive down to the Cobh Heritage Center. There's a lot more to this story, but you'll have to wait till later before I divulge the whole of it. :)
Abi and I posing with the statue of Annie Moore and her children. She was the first Irish immigrant to step out at Ellis Island.
St Coleman's steeple was the last thing visible to Irish immigrants as they sailed away. The interior was gorgeous! It looked like a miniature of Christ Church Cathedral.
We stopped for supper at KFC. Gram, Abi and I were looking forward to having KFC's mac and cheese and mashed potatoes. Well, I guess Irish KFCs don't serve those staples. Gram got chicken strips. They asked her if she wanted gravy with it. She said yes, and when she opened the "gravy" container, we found out that "gravy" is beans!
Day 5
This was our long day... We'd be traveling a total of 6 hrs. Our first stop was the ancient monastic site, Clonmacnoise. Founded in 545 AD by St Ciaran, it has been the seat for monastic groups for centuries. This had to be one of my favorite places.
Our next stop was the Strokestown Famine museum in Roscommon county. Supposedly it's the best famine museum there, but I was disappointed in it. I'm not exactly sure what I expected, maybe more displays and historical pieces... Overall, though, it was pretty informative.
Day 6
Another Blarney Woolen Mills! We planned to shop at this fun place, then tour Bunratty Castle and Folk Park.
Ate a yummy lunch at Lilly Mai's Cafe'.
Bunratty castle was spectacular! I don't know why we didn't tour it when we were here last! I could've spent a lot more time there...
Bunratty Folk Park was sort of like our Living History Farm's. Again, I could've spent a lot more time there. Abi and I had to rush through it, and didn't even get to see it all.
When we went to Rock of Cashel last time, we wanted to see the Hore Abbey, but thought that you had to walk a long way to get to it. Abi and I researched it before we left and discovered that you can drive almost right to it. We were ecstatic! Now Gram could see it!
Hore Abbey was all that we'd imagined and more!
Then we drove to Rock of Cashel for a quick tour. It hadn't changed too much since we'd been there 2 yrs ago. It was still fun to walk down memory's lane.
Of course, we had to stop at the little shop at the foot of Cashel hill. The cashier told us about a good restaurant that didn't serve alcohol in the village of Cashel.
Here's the restaurant! We had a great time there and the food was yummy!
Day 7
That next morning was going to be a nice leisurely morning. Abi and I made a special breakfast of biscuits, gravy, bangers, scrambled eggs and tea. Yum!
We left home about 10 am to "do" the Dingle peninsula. This is Blue Flag Beach.
Right on the beach was Sammy's store and cafe'. We decided to have an early lunch here before driving out further into the Irish speaking region.
We spotted a sign for the ancient Beehive huts. They were supposedly built around 2,000 BC.
This is one of my favorite pictures of Dingle!
This might rank as second...
We stopped at this little hole in the wall cafe. A lot of the signs were in Gaelic, but thankfully the menu wasn't. Some of us got apple and rhubarb crumbles. Abi and I decided to wait till we got back to the cottage to eat. We wanted to save our money for things other than food. :)
Day 8
Everyone was up and about bright and early for our last morning in Ireland. We left about 8 am for the restaurant that we ate at on our first day. Uncle Mike ate black pudding here!
Our pile of luggage had grown by one suitcase. :)
Here we are on an escalator in the Dublin airport.
Everything went very smoothly through customs. Before we knew it, we were saying good bye to Ireland.
Our flight in Dublin was delayed for a half hr while they fixed a malfunction in the personal entertainment centers. The entire flight was 8 1/2 hrs long! We were pretty sure that because of the delay and the extra long flight time that we were going to miss our connecting flight to Omaha. Our plane left at 7:23, and we didn't land in Chicago till 6:45 or so. We rushed to our terminal, only to discover that our flight had been canceled! We aren't sure why it was cancelled, 'cause another flight was going out to Omaha. We rushed over to see if we could hitch a ride on that flight, but for some reason, we couldn't use that one either. Now, we were faced with a long night in Chicago. There's more to this story too! :)
A lady at the airport helped us find a hotel room at the Weston Hotel. by that time, it was about 8 pm CST, which means that it was 2 am in Ireland. Ugh.
Our room was fancy! But, oh, that bed felt so good! I hardly slept that night because I was still too packed with adrenal. I was awake for awhile after midnight, then woke up every hr till 4 am. We got up then to make our connecting flight to Omaha at 6:30.
Day 9
Waiting for our plane to be called in Chicago... We were so ready to be home!
On the tiny airplane on the way home! It only had four seats across, so it was tiny!
Lovely Iowa! We flew right across Iowa. Mom met us at the airport while Dad drove around. It took us forever to get out of the airport. Somehow in the mess at Chicago, they lost our luggage. We didn't end up getting it till the next afternoon. What a day! What a past couple days!
So concludes the end of the overview. Hopefully you enjoyed the quick peak into our week in Ireland! :)
