As many of you know, I went on a nine day tour of Scotland. It was great! I will only give you the highlights from the 9 days. We left Tuesday, July 28 at 9:00am. I chose to go on a small tour so there were 16 of us, plus our crazy Scottish driver/guide (Danny) in one small van. There were people from all over the world. We had 6 from Australia, 3 from Canada, 2 from Germany, and 1 from each - Italy, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Holland and Iran. I could not have asked for a better group or guide. [View Full Entry]

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I arrived in Scotland this morning. I took a very cheap ($51 CAN) and very short flight from Dublin to Edinburgh. It was less than an hour. I had a window seat with 2 empty seats beside me. This is unheard of on Ryan Air. It was sunny when I left Dublin and rainy when I arrived here. On occasion when the sun came out it was really warm, however, that was not often. My hostel is great. I am staying in a very large room with about 14 girls. I was lucky enough to get a room by the window. [View Full Entry]

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(I posted an entry yesterday but did not send out the emails.) What a great night! We were among the first people let into the concert and the first to buy our t-shirts. Croke Park is huge - holds 80 000 people. It is a rugby pitch. The pitch had to be removed for the concert and U2 had to pay to put in the new pitch once the concerts are over. Approx. cost of the new pitch is 1 million. Concert was even better than you could imagine. The crowd was amazing, on their feet screaming even before U2 hit [View Full Entry]

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I had a very relaxing day yesterday as 4.5 hours were spent on the train. On my train from Belfast to Dublin I met a local Dubliner. She was an architect and had been working for the day in Belfast. She was a wealth of knowledge about many things. She offered to share her taxi with me as my hostel was on the way. The best part was that she was expensing the taxi so it was free! Alice and the taxi driver got in a great discussion about life in Northern Ireland during the uprising. She was from the north [View Full Entry]

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A couple important notes. Sherrie is not with me and it is not 2008. However, it seemed easier to use this blog instead of creating a new one. This computer does not allow pictures so this will not be very exciting. I left Toronto on Monday at 11:55pm. I had a great flight. Two good movies that I slept through and an empty seat beside me. I landed in Dublin and took a 2 hr train to Belfast. Then I took 2 more trains to arrive in Portrush, which is a little seaside village on the Northern coast. My bed and [View Full Entry]

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On Thursday night, we left Galway and headed for Dublin. Sherrie's tour returned an hour late and she was literally running for the train but no worries, she had at least 2 minutes to spare. This was the last day our train pass was valid and conveniently, the last day we needed it. We arrived in Dublin around 9:00pm and checked into our hostel. This hostel was very organized and well run (Abbey Court). They had a place to lock up our passports and had bins under the beds which locked as well. We went out to check out some of [View Full Entry]

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We landed in Ireland around 11:30pm on Saturday night. The flight was good, however, there were kids everywhere. One little girl commented to her mom on the way to the plane that "Licorice is lovely." It was very cute. Another little girl who was sitting in front of me screamed BLASTOFF when the plane took off. It was hilarious. Ireland is great. Immediately, we loved it, regardless of the fact that it was cold and raining. We had not seen rain in 4 weeks - it was bound to appear at some point. We have been carrying jeans and rain coats [View Full Entry]

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Portugal has been great - very relaxing. We decided not to go to Lisbon but instead spend our time in the Algarve, an area on the southern coast. It is quite beautiful. English is much more common here than in Spain. We found most places we did not have any difficulty with the language. We stayed in the city of Faro. This is where the airport is that we fly out of tonight. Thursday was a nice relaxing day. We spent the afternoon at the beach which is about 6km away, easily accessible by bus. The beach was great, however, I [View Full Entry]

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It has been a busy few days. We left Barcelona on Monday morning and headed to Madrid. The train was very nice - spotless, gave us chocolate and candy and played a movie. It was in Spanish with Spanish subtitles but we cannot have everything. We had 3 hours between trains there so we threw our bags in a locker and hopped on a bus tour. We spent 1.5hrs riding around the city, learning about its history. It is really nice city and we both could have spent a lot more time there. There was water in the fountains which excited [View Full Entry]

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(We have also added photos to a couple previous entries. The one entitled ´Venice then to Rome´ - we have added a lot of pictures from Rome. ´We May Never Leave´we have added more pictures of Cinque Terre. ) Friday morning arrived bright and early. We were both up by 4:30am and to the train station by 5:35am for our 6:00am train. Before too long, we realized our train was delayed by 15 minutes. No worries. Then 20 minutes. 30 minutes. 40 minutes. 50 minutes. Hmm. At this point we realize we are going to miss our second train and never [View Full Entry]

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