Tuesday, July 7 We had a good night’s sleep after our busy day, but as we were drifting off, we heard the dolphins whistling to each other in the bay. We began our day with breakfast at the Last Cottage - Eggs, bacon (which is more like what we call ham here in the states), white pudding, scones, tea, and muesli. We also met the young couple staying in Margaret’s 3rd room; Laura and Noah, 2 first-year teachers from California. They were planning to bike the loop today. We began driving it about 10. Our first stop was an overlook with [View Full Entry]

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Saturday, July 4 -Galway, Connemara National Park. We have been so busy. I’m just catching up with our journal. Saturday morning we spent time relaxing around the breakfast table with our hosts, Liz and Joe. At 10:00, Liz led us into Salt Hill so that Dean could use the pool. It is a lovely facility with 3 pools, a gym, mini-golf, midway rides, etc. While he swam, Liz, Jackie, Jeff, and I strolled the “prom(enade)”-a walkway running the length of the strand at Galway Bay. When you reach the end, it is tradition to kick the rock wall. Next, we all [View Full Entry]

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We are back in Corbally for our last night before we leave for Dingle tomorrow morning. We had a lovely weekend in Galway with the Nolan family. I don’t have time right now to write about the whole weekend, but I will try to provide a rundown of Friday, when we drove to and arrived in Galway. Friday, July 3-Trip to Galway After Dean did his pool routine, we were on our way to Galway. We stopped in Ennis to see 13th century Franciscan friary. Quite a few of the walls were still almost intact, and they had done some restoration. [View Full Entry]

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Thurs, July 3 Today we stayed local, and did the Cliff Walk in Kilkee. It was as beautiful, and much less touristy than the Cliffs of Moher. The town had constructed a paved walkway running along the cliff edge for a mile or so leading from town. Mary advised us to walk it backwards. So we parked along the road at the top, and walked down to town. The views were spectacular. At one point, we descended stairs leading to a stony outcrop. Jeff and Jackie were daring and climbed down into Diamond Rock Sink Hole, a pit/depression that had a [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday, July 1 Last night, even though we were tired after our flight and drive from the airport, we stayed up to watch the sunset at 10:00 over the Atlantic. Ireland’s not the land of the midnight sun, but I’d never experienced a day as long as this before. Today is the best weather until the weekend (rain and showers only PART of the day, clouds otherwise), so we drove up to the Cliffs of Moher, over to Kilfenora, through the Burren, and then circled north from Ballyvaughan through Doolin before arriving back home at 9:30. Dean is getting used [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday, June 30 We are in Ireland- finally! Our plane took off on time, without event. We had 4 seats together in the center of the plane. We all took “No Jet Lag” tablets, and they really have seemed to work- so far. We all feel a bit tired, but not totally exhausted. For this blog entry, I’ve learned my lesson and will not put “dot dot dot” anywhere. I saw that they displayed as all sorts of random letters on the blog, so -no more dots. We arrived at Shannon on time at 6:30 a.m. Ireland time (1:30 a.m. New [View Full Entry]

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Monday, June 29 Rick Steves, a travel book author, says to relax, and do nothing for 48 hours prior to a trip to Europe... I guess he did not count on a tornado hitting Wethersfield Friday. The resulting electrical power outage forced us to change our "cook-out" for Mom Sweeney and Mom and Dad DesRosier into a potluck (“what can we serve without opening the refrigerator “). We have had difficulty sleeping due to the din from our neighbor’s million-decibel power generator. In addition to packing in the dark we have had to clean up the fallen branches in our yard, [View Full Entry]

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Thursday, June 25 It's hard to believe we will be in Ireland soon! We still have so much to do, and wanted to be sure we knew how to use this Travel Blog correctly. We promise our future entries will be more interesting--Wish us luck! [View Full Entry]

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