Blogs from Ireland, Europe - page 386

Hey everyone -- we're in Hollywood! Well, we WERE in Hollywood. Hollywood, Ireland. But it made us miss home... We were on the way to Glendalough (glen-da-lock), a beautiful spot in the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin. Glendalough is the home of Saint Kevin. Who knew there was a saint with my name? (Well, Erin, for one, who booked us in a wonderful B&B here.) The big draw here is the amazing scenery, which was somewhat reminscent of my motherland of the Pacific Northwest. Vaguely like Montana (the nice part) or Wyoming (the non-Dick Cheney part). Lots of fir trees, rolling hills, and wonderful streams where you can see many feet into the crystal-clear water. We checked out the surrounding area, stopping at St. Kevin's monastery. Kevin was a wealthy guy, who gave up all his ... read more

Hello everyone -- writing tonight about our day spent yesterday on Ireland's lovely Dingle Peninsula! We got an early start out of Killarney and headed northwest toward Dingle. Our first stop along the long and winding road was Inch Spit... a long sandbar in a town called Inch. It was actually totally, shockingly lovely -- it was quite warm, cloudless and beautiful. Almost like we were in Hawaii again. We've included some photos below... Erin was inspired, as you can see. Well, Kevin was inspired to make her do that... We got back on the road and eventually made it to Dingle town, the place of Rick Steves' dreams. It really is a fantastic place -- reminded us of a New England coastal town somehow. We arranged for a boat tour (more on that in a ... read more

Hey Blog Reading Folks……(Ed/ZAPPA here) The ultimate(I felt)best way to go about this was to do it as we went along…Fresh thoughts…get a real feel for the place…unedited…warts and all…balls to the paper journalism….Stream of consciousness…how it was happening…while it was happening…you get the idea…..Just as I am ranting now…just throw it down big fella…The problem … 1)Would it be understood? 2)Would it make sense? 3)Would it be boring? The bigger problem it ends up was ………not laziness not drunkenness(that would have added to the charm)but we could not get “hooked up”.We wanted 24-7 access…not to be had in “good ol Ireland” our rooms were not equipped.The idea was as we were done for the day getting ready to “kick it”…jot a few things down…wind down for the day...see what we were arguing about….put it on ... read more

Today (Thursday) we left Co. Clare and headed south to Killarney and Co. Kerry. We took a shortcut across the Shannon River via ferry, which was fun. It was just a short ride and we were able to see dolphins jumping in the water around the boat. From there, we drove into Co. Kerry and through the city of Tralee. We finally made it to our destination, Killarney. We'll be here for the next three nights. Killarney sometimes gets derided as a total tourist town, but I actually find it more pleasant than Doolin (which was just too rural for us). Killarney is set on the edge of Killarney National Park. It's some of the most beautiful lake and mountain scenery you can imagine. The weather continues to be unseasonably warm, sunny and gorgeous, so today ... read more

Limestone... ah, limestone...I'm going to keep this short, since we want some more pub food for dinner! (Fine dining is a casualty of the current exchange rate...) We spent a relaxing morning in Doolin, then drove off to spend the afternoon in The Burren, a wide expanse of limestone that, millions of years ago, used to be under the ocean (back in the days when Ireland was around the equator... ah, continental drift). Of course, now it's NOT under the ocean, so it's nothing but miles and miles of moonlike rock in every direction. Some vegetation grows on it, but not much. But you feel at times like you're on another planet. One of the more interesting things to see is Aailwee Cave, which goes deep underground for about a mile. Despite warnings from the tour ... read more