I'm not sure if I'll have access to this site when I get to my final destination, but if I do and am able to blog, I will be publishing the blogs as private so you'll need to sign in with a password to see them. I have to send out an invite for people to access my private blogs. I've actually sent them out a long time ago (Jan 13) and the system shows them as waiting, but I'm not exactly sure how you'd access that. If you want access to my private blogs, send me an email (or a [View Full Entry]

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I woke up in the hostel on Monday super early, even without an alarm. By 7:00 I was up, showered, dressed, and going over my plan. The “breakfast” that the hostel advertised to be complimentary, actually consisted of 3 different kinds of cereal and a carton of whole milk in the fridge. No one was around, so I munched on some muselix then had to wash my bowl out afterward. It was the most normal breakfast I’ve had here yet. I still had to get to an ATM to get pounds to pay for the room. I decided that I could [View Full Entry]

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Happy Mother’s Day! March 22 is mother’s day in Ireland. Weird - their dates are a little different than ours for certain things. Daylight Savings is also different - they do have it, but they’re a couple of weeks off from us. The time difference from there to here is normally 5hrs, but has been 4hrs for my whole trip because we’re in that couple week period between us springing forward and them. Sunday morning I woke up early (8:00 should be early for anyone!). A quick shower and I was downstairs enjoying the best breakfast of my time in Ireland. [View Full Entry]

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Saturday I woke up with the worst crick in my neck. It lasted most of the day (and is still bugging me) but fortunately wasn’t as debilitating as they sometimes can be for me. We overslept a little on Lisa’s last day, so were on a little tighter schedule (not bad though). We started off with a fantastic breakfast in our B&B. There’s something called the “Traditional Irish Breakfast” that’s served and advertised at most places. It usually consists of eggs (I think over easy is more classic) served on toast, bacon (which is more like canadian bacon or jus [View Full Entry]

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Friday morning started out with a nice breakfast in the Montenotte. There was a full spread “Irish breakfast.” Eggs, bacon (which is more like Canadian bacon), sausage, toast, beans (some white bean in a sweet-ish red sauce - yum!), and black pudding. Black pudding was the one thing I had sort of vowed never to eat. It seems like on each trip I try some local delicacy, the thought of which is usually disgusting to Americans. In Peru it was guinea pig, in Japan it was cod sperm, in Ireland it’s black pudding. What is black pudding you wonder? It’s fried [View Full Entry]

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We got up in the morning fairly early, but decided to forego the churches in favor of getting on the road. We got an upgrade to slightly larger car because they didn’t have any small automatics left. I wish that we drove automatic better, but since we’re driving on the wrong side of the road, a strike against us, we didn’t think it would be wise to try to struggle with a manual car as well. So we forked over the higher fees and paid for our “luxury” car. It worked out well. Driving on the other side of the street [View Full Entry]

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As predicted, I wasn’t able to write last night. It wasn’t so much from intoxication as it was from exhaustion (ok, plus beer). Yesterday morning we slept in a little then got up and met up with the 1916 Historical Walking Tour. On our way we stopped at our favorite local grocery store (much like a Whole Foods or Trader Joes) and picked up a scone and coffee/milk. It was a great breakfast on the run! We ate it on the way to our tour. This tour is recommended by my bible (with a discount for showing them the book!) and [View Full Entry]

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I woke up today just in time for Lisa to arrive. She wasn’t supposed to be here until 11 or so, but everything was ahead of time and went smoothly, so she got here just as I was getting up at 9am. We hung out for a little while and got ready, then we were out the door to the parade route. St Patrick’s Day, by the way, is actually a Catholic holiday, made to celebrate St. Patrick. He was famous for introducing Christianity to the Celts in the 400s AD and converting a whole country in one of the only [View Full Entry]

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I should preface this by saying that I’m coming up on being up for 2 days with a 2hr (broken) nap on the plane. My flight was fine - got a nice plane (757) that had the personal TV in the seat. Even had a 110V outlet at my seat. Nice! It was hard to sleep with all those options, but I figured it would be better to catch some zzz’s on the plane than waste my day sleeping. Turns out it was a REALLY good thing I did that, between the delay at the airport and not being able to [View Full Entry]

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I set sail on my next adventure on Tuesday morning. First destination: North Carolina. A mere 10hrs away (plus an hour for the time change - yes, it’s central time in Pensacola) and I was pulling into my cousin Meem’s driveway. While she graciously stayed awake for me (it was 11:30, which is apparently really late for old people haha), little Nicole, Gianna, and Stephen woke up for me (or more aptly, I think I woke them up). Wed I spent a day in the life of a stay-at-home-mom. One, in particular haha. It was a nice day hanging out with [View Full Entry]

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