Blogs from Ireland, Europe - page 13

July 16 Today is the day that we meet the people with whom we will be spending the next two weeks. We will travel by bus around Ireland and Scotland and will part ways once we end this tour in Edinburgh. Breakfast was at 8 am. It was a buffet breakfast complete with components of an English breakfast along with many extras such as pancakes, fried potatoes, mushrooms, and a variety of breads. Once finished, we had time to return to our rooms before boarding the bus for a trip around Dublin. I always laugh at the word Dublin…..it’s because of the many jokes Terry Wilson tells. I won’t share it here in print, but you can ask him and I’m sure he will tell you. Top of the list today……find a shirt that says Dublin ... read more

We sadly departed Dublin without kids on the 12th with Bird and HP just moping along. Otherwise day was okay, warm with folks vehemently complaining of heat in the mid-seventies. A couple of days later when in Portmagee, jumping off point for Skellig Michael, a Yellow Flag warning was issued for temperature as on 16 July it was to rise to a blistering 73F. Honest Abe folksYellow Flag. Chatted with an Airbnb host one afternoon and she warns temp may reach the intolerable levels of the eighties with no rain. She didn't say but one would imagine, they blame the U.S. and China for the bulk of climate change. Countries in Europe by and large are doing the work to reduce carbon, but the big boys do little. At any rate visited a couple of demolished ... read more

Hello there everyone! I’ve never written a blog before so there may be a few technical issues, mainly me trying to figure out how to Blog but sure I’ll give it a go. A lot of you have said to me that you’d love to see how I’m getting on over yonder, when I finally get there, and I don’t want to go back on Instagram so a colleague suggested I write a blog, and here we are. I’m just going to write it a bit like a journal I think and post a couple of pics every now and again so hopefully it works out! I will do my best to post regularly and let you all know the craic. Thanks for caring enough to read this incoherent post, Kirsten... read more

We were greeted by grey, overcast skies and chilly temperatures. We left the Lodge, said goodbye to the doggies, packed Sherri, and set off to our penultimate stop in Kilkenny, about an hour away. Once we had found parking we attempted to find our lodgings, eventually asking in a café at approximately the correct address. Luckily the café owner was also our host, so we had somewhere to stay for the next 2 nights. The accommodation on this occasion isn’t Airbnb and was booked by me rather than Susan; I’m afraid to say the quality isn’t really up to the same standard as our last few accommodations, being small and a bit tatty. It is clean though, and we’ll only be using it as somewhere to sleep, so it’s not a major problem. We went for ... read more

Susan’s birthday! Of course, that means she gets to choose what we do today. We headed to Birr about 15 minutes north, and visited Birr Castle Demesne. This is a castle, still lived in by the Parson family who have lived there for over 400 years. The current incumbent is the Seventh Earl of Rosse (Brendan Parsons), Lady Rosse (Alison Cook-Hurle) and their family. The castle is situated in around 120 acres of beautiful gardens and parkland. We wandered along stone-lined paths, following the start of the Solar Trail, where information boards spaced to the scale of the solar system give interesting facts on the sun and planets; each step was the equivalent of 1.6million km in space. Once we got to Mars we turned onto the trail taking us towards the castle, finding our way ... read more