Fabio

There has been much talk of Fabio in our lives recently. Why is an Italian model invading our Irish vacation?

...Over 4th of July weekend, our family celebrated at King's Dominion Amusement Park, and as we waited in line for various roller coasters, we reminiscing about our past trips to Busch Gardens, Disney World, etc. And while I'm mentioning Busch Gardens, does anyone remember when the model Fabio rode in the very front of the newest ride, Apollo's Chariot?? And that a bird smashed into his nose...

http://www.ultimaterollercoaster.com/news/archives/april99/stories/040199_01.shtml

Well...we named our rental car Fabio after similiar events. Model Fabio got himself an f-ed up nose on a roller coaster and our Toyota Fabio got himself an f-ed up nose on a gravel hill in Glendalough. Note: we had been in possession of this car for LESS THAN 4 HOURS, and had successfully driven straight through Dublin, on the other side of the road, narrowly "missing" a small tap of our sideview mirror with another car's sideview mirror. Things were going well for us. At this point in our first day of travels, we were jet-lagged, had to pee, Kate was hungry and we both just wanted to get out of the damn car and enjoy some green grass. We had finally found our way to the street where our B&B was located, but unfortunately, the hand-drawn map our innkeeper had emailed us wasn't cutting it. We just couldn't find the "Big old oak tree" noted on the map amongst the many other "Big young oak trees" growing along the road. So Charlie was turning the car around for the 7 thousandth time to try and find the inn's gate, when we hear gravel crunching and some popping sounds. Oh no.

Charlie negotiates the car down the little hill and we hop out to assess the damage. Not surprisingly, the rental office hadn't given us their best car (I wonder why??), and our little Toyota Aventis has nearly lost it's entire front bumper. Seriously, the thing was hanging on by a few little latches. We decided to do our best to pop it back in, find our B&B and ask them what we should do.

In the end, we decided to hang onto the car, and for the first week, we'd have to stop about once a day to pop the nose back into place. At one point, as Charlie is laying on a pair of pants, in the middle of the Irish wilderness, trying to pop the undercarriage back into place, he came up with the perfect name for our car: Fabio.

On our longest day of driving, along the West Coast, we picked up some tape to basically tape the bumper to the body of the car. And wouldn't you know, the bumper stayed in place for the rest of the trip, an the nose didn't even come un-popped from the hood for the duration of the trip. We managed to turn him back into the rental office without incident, or fees, and just like that, Fabio was no longer with us. Not that we were sorry to see him go. The car had several idiosyncrasies that made it not at all user friendly, and was pretty dinged up. And the front left tire lost a lot of air b/c of all the parking we had to do on the sidewalks.

RIP, Fabio.

Back in "the states"

Just a quick note to say that Kate and I are back in America. I didn't blog much on our last week in ireland (because we were driving all over creation and internet was sparse) but I'm sure we'll get around to it this week. Pictures to come soon!

Our speed is winding down...

We are about to embark on our last full day in Ireland! In the last 3 days, we have driven cross-country, biked our way around Inishmor (the largest of the Aran Islands) and walked all over east Dublin trying to find the entrance to the Guinness Storehouse tour. And had Italian food 3 times...I think we're a little homesick for our own food(o: Today we are going to see the Book of Kells (more on that later) and maybe even a Riverdance show(o:

Brief Post...

Hey all! I know we're a little behind on posting, but it's been a crazy and fun 3 days.

We took a river boat Cruise today! We also saw a play tonight called "Free Fall" which was really fascinating. My head is still working through that one. It was very similar to the Movie "Momento"

Anyhow, gotta run! We're taking a trip to the Aran Islands tomorrow bright and early and we need to get up way sooner than we're used to. It'll be about 7:30 local time which is 2:30am Harrisonburg time!

Dingle Part 1: The lost Coast

So a very popular thing to do when touring Ireland is to go around the “Ring of Kerry”. It’s pretty much a drive around a rather large peninsula that takes about all day. It’s supposed to have lots of pretty scenery ect. I wouldn’t really know because we didn’t go.

We planned on going there after touring the Dingle Peninsula (a smaller one just north of Kerry) But Dingle has a magnetic charm that sucked us in. The town of Dingle sits in a small bay, surrounded by mountains. There is a fresh sea breeze from the Atlantic, but not too cold. Unlike most Irish towns, it didn’t seem too cramped and there was always a view of the mountains no matter where you were in the city.

There is also a resident Dolphin in the bay, nicknamed “Fungi”. He’s apparently been living in Dingle since 1983. He’s sort of the town mascot and you can see statues of him around town and sometimes hanging off buildings. I didn’t see him myself, but other tourists we talked to did while they were walking the coast or riding in a boat.

The first night there we stayed at a place called the Greenmount B&B. It was the quietest, nicest place we’ve stayed at so far! The rooms were nicely decorated, the bed was comfy, the bathroom had a shower AND and tub (rare in these parts to see a tub) we had a couch, some chairs, and a dining table. Now the coolest part is that the B&B was constructed so that EVERY room faced west. This was important for two reasons. 1. You got to see the sunset everynight. and 2. The B&B was built on a hill overlooking the whole town of Dingle. Very very awesome.

So we put our stuff down and decided that it was time to eat. Our Innkeeper suggested a few places and we were so hungry we ate the the closest place we could find, Ashe’s. This was the best dinner we have had so far in Ireland!!! I had the Salmon and Kate had Dingle Lobster, both of which were caught in Dingle Bay! OMG, this food was SOOOO GOOOOD!!! We decided to celebrate our day of driving with a bottle of wine which was also quite amazing.

After that glorious dinner, we decided to find some great Irish Music. Now, I’ve read in our tour guide that Dingle is famous for its great Traditional Music and we certainly passed a number of places that had it. I was feeling really picky this night though and I wanted a nice place to sit and listen. (most of the time you need to stand at the bar since the places are packed) So we eventually found a cute little bar that had a odd assortment of musicians. There was a Harpist, a guitarist, a banjo player, a wooden flutist, and an according player.

In most of the Trad sessions we’ve been to we’ve noticed that there is always a band leader. In this case it was the according player. He was a old sailor looking guy with a beard and pot belly and boy could he sing! He was belting out some obvious irish favorites while old ladies were singing along with their eyes closed in the back of the bar. When the group took a small intermission, he got up and promptly collected all the empty beer glasses from everyone in the place and returned them to the bar. It seems our band leader was also the bar owner!!!

Soon after the next set begun, Kate and I struck up a conversation with a mother and daughter from Holland. Little did we know that we were about to get 2 great new friends! More on that later....

Our Average Day

So we’ve kinda settled into a routine here. It goes something like this.

9am Wake Up
9:30 Eat at the B&B
10am Shower
10:30 Pack all our bags
11am Depart the B&B
11-4 Do something fun in the town we’re at.
4pm Depart for the next town
7ish Check into the next B&B
7-midnight See the town, eat dinner, go to a bar, see some great live music
12:30am Go to bed

To pass the time on the road, Kate and I usually sing funny songs and change the lyrics and play our Ice Cream Punch buggy game! (see facebook pics for details on how that works)

Favorite songs include:
“I fell in to the burning ring of Kerry”
and
“I like it, I love it, I want some MOHER of it!”

In fact, our entire trip to the Cliffs of Moher was spent by replacing every song I knew with the word “more” with “Moher” (pronounced the same) In fact, I didn’t realize that just about every contemporary christian song has the word “more” in it.

“Moher love, Moher power, Moher of you in my life!”

“Moher than all I want, Moher than all I need, your love is Moher than enough for me!”

“Moher of you, and less of me....” ect.

Needless to say, we’re having a fun and dorky time here in Ireland...

Massive Update from C-Dawg

Ok this is going to be kinda random. Really random. In fact, if you want a better picture of what Kate and I have been up to, please check out the pictures here.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?aid=2192501&id=31208752

I'll work on adding some really detailed descriptions later tonight. So onto the random.

Cork was kinda nutz. We had fun watching the world cup there, but otherwise it was just another city, but one with a ton of Europeans and nothing going on between 5-9:30. See Kate's post for more on Cork.

So then we headed out west to Killarney. The drive went pretty quick since there was a new highway that went straight there from cork. We decided to hit up Killarney National Park and a Wicked Victorian Era Mansion. The Mansion was about one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It was donated to the park system with pretty much everything still in it. Sadly we don't have much in the way of pictures since you weren't allowed to take them. But it was amazing. See pics for the outside shots. I with we had more time to check out the park. We didn't get to really explore it since we were short on time. Something to do next time!

So we departed there and decided to head straight to Dingle, a town on a Peninsula off the west coast. This is the first time on our trip that we didn't have sleeping arrangements made already so we were hoping that we'd be able to find something once we got there. Luckily, you can't throw a stick around here without it bouncing off a B&B, breaking in half, hitting 2 more B&B's, breaking some more, then landing in the parking lot of 10 other B&B's. (some streets have only B&B's on them, it's crazy)

On our trek out to Dingle we discovered a great beach in the middle of no where!!! We had some fun with the pics there and got some much needed stretching done. Then off to dingle we went!

We we finally got there we were able to find room at a place our guide book recommended. It happened to be the nicest place we've stayed so far. Little did we know how awesome Dingle was. We ended up staying there for 2.5 days and had a blast! Total highlight of our trip so far! But you'll have to hear about it some other time. Sleep calls! Check out the pics for more info.

Ireland has dumb IT's

Ok. There are some great things about ireland, don't get me wrong, but they have very bad IT's.

Why do I say that, well a few reasons. First off, most B&B's we've stayed at advertise that they have Internet Access when, in fact, they only have 1 Dell computer from 2002 that is connected. Not only that, but it has one account that is open to just about everyone with little to no protection from Viruses, Keyloggers, and other Malware. As such, I wouldn't use it for anything because all my passwords would be stolen.

Secondly, every password to a place that has wireless has been something like this
"abcde12345" "a1b2c3d4e5" "abcde1234"

So sorry about the delays in our bloggin! Internet is spare.

Garnish House, home of the Girishman

Should you ever have any reason to come to Ireland, do your best to stay over a night at the Garnish House B&B in Cork. This place is incredible, and definitely one of the best places we’ve ever stayed! Before we even checked in, or had really even gave our names, our hostess ushered us into a little sitting room and sat us down to guzzle tea and scones. After a few cups of tea and enough pats of Irish butter to wash the taste of the road out of our memories, we were very efficiently given our room key and directions on where to find it, how and where to park our car and that if we needed ANYTHING to just ask.

Enter the Girishman (Jie-rish-man). Mishel, who manages the Garnish House B&B is incredible: he’s originally from Germany, but has lived in Cork for years, and he speaks English with a German-Irish accent. He’s also incredibly knowledgeable about everything there is to do in Cork, and can tell you specific places to find specific types of trad music on specific nights. We also asked him about places to see the final World Cup match, and he gave us two different pubs, noting which crowd would support which team (he was right, too!). Here’s the best part, though. Every time he talks to you, it is unbelievably evident that he loves what he does. People are drawn to him simply because of how he interacts with them. We talked with a couple who were staying at the Garnish House for the 3rd time because of how much they love Mishel. And the breakfast.

OMG the breakfast here is incredible. Seriously incredible. The food is outstanding (let’s start breakfast with the creamiest porridge ever drizzled with Bailey’s Irish Cream whiskey) and the service is super quick. And when you’re stuffed silly with the most amazing Irish pudding (which is actually a sausage-like substance) Mishel will come and ask you if you’d like a pancake for dessert.

We had dessert here(o:

Cork Confessional

We’ve discovered that we enjoy the smaller towns and villages a lot more than the bigger cities...Cork was our first stay in a big city here in Ireland, and we experienced the brunt of culture shock here. Our relationship with Cork started on a rocky note, in that as we drove into the city, many of the roads were blocked off for a huge rugby event, so the rest of the town streets were chaos. Charlie got really used to shifting the car between first and neutral as we hunted around to find our B&B.

Once we did find our new home, Garnish House (which is an AH-mazing B&B. You must stay here if you come. This place is so amazing that it will get it’s own post on the blog), we ended up sitting and talking with yet another American couple who were traveling. We sat and talked with them, getting suggestions on places to see, what itineraries to follow, etc. We actually ended up talking to them for such a long while that when we left the house, at 5:15pm, EVERYTHING in Cork City was closed. And very few people were out on the streets. ON A SATURDAY NIGHT. The town was dead. No shops were open, no museums, no historical sites, nothing. Just restaurants and bars and even they were fairly empty.

Well, no problem for us, we had already picked out a restaurant that we really wanted to try that had gourmet burgers on the menu, but when we arrived, we were told that their next available booking was open at 9pm. Hmm....silly guidebooks making places more popular. So we wandered about for a good hour, trying to find food that suited our tastes, and ended up stopping at this super posh place called Soho. At Soho, you order raw food and then the server brings you a hot volcanic stone that has been heating up for hours and hours and hours in giant ovens, and you basically cook your own meal on the stone. So, yes, you are essentially paying to cook your own meal in a restaurant. That irony did not miss us. But whatever. Time for us to find some “trad” (traditional) music.

Here’s a little honest confessional here: I had been seriously thinking that we’d be hearing traditional music pouring out of the windows and doors of pubs all around Ireland. Regardless of where we were, we’d be hearing it every night of the week. Well...we certainly were wrong. Many places will have specific nights of the week where trad music is played, I guess to allow for sporting events to be aired on the remaining nights of the week. So what’s a couple to do early on a Saturday evening in Cork? Well, drink of course. And participate in the national pastime of engaging in “craic” or talking. But there was no one at the bars for us to “craic” with. And the vibe of Soho was too fake.

So we went back to our B&B and watched some good old Irish TV, which is mainly from Britain & the States. AHHHH.....

At about 9:45 that evening, we looked at each other, decided if we were going to push ourselves out the door, or if we were going to stay in for the evening. We weighed the options: stay in, get good rest for the next day’s adventure of sea kayaking, watch more Irish TV, read, blog, etc OR put ourselves way outside our comfort zone, find a pub and try our hand at craic with some good old Irish strangers.

So we left our B&B again, determined that we were going to do our best to have a good time. After wandering in and out of a few places, we ended up at a bar called the Old Oak and sat down to get a drink. A few minutes later a bunch of girls (actually, these women were probably in their 40s) wander in for a “hen” party and one of them stopped at the bar for a drink. And she gets milk. Strange. She’s definitely Irish, definitely in a bar, definitely there for a celebration and definitely drinking milk. So I gotta ask. But I start with “What are your costumes for?” My new friend launches into a description of a hen party, and then tells me that she’s “got a bit of the indigestion from eating dinner too fast and now she’s on the milk to calm her indigestion.” I say, “Wow, I hope you feel better” and she says, “Cheers!” and leaves. Shit. Not a long craic session.

Next it’s Charlie’s go: He asks the guy who sat around the corner from us at the bar how’s it going and we end up talking to Scott from Europe, originally from Vancouver, actually originally from California. (Each place was revealed a few more minutes into our conversation). We ended up chatting with him for a good long while about nearly everything: God, Jesus, the Old Testament, music, the differences between cultures, how he got to Europe (by playing music on cruise ships), where he grew up (central California). We chatted for quite a while, until we realized that we had to get back for some sleep.

So, thanks to Scott, our Canadian/Californian, Cork day one was rescued from being a total bust.

MIA

We've been MIA from the internet for the last few days. We've come to realize that many places that say they've got "internet" have got it...they just don't have wireless internet. And their computers are incredibly slow. We've been keeping up with our posts, and now that we're in Galway, we're finally able to publish them!

On a side note, we're in desperate need of some laundry facilities. We'll be hitting up the laundromat tomorrow morning!

Movie

Here's some footage from the Hike we did on our first day. It's in Wicklow Mountains National Park, Wicklow county. The place was called Glendelough (Glen-day-lock)

Sorry it's low quality, blogger only accepts 100mb of video. Maybe I'll get more HQ stuff up later on youtube.

More Pics!

http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=2191893&id=31208752&ref=mf

-C

Cork, Sea Kayaking & the World Cup

Charlie is just waking up from a nap after we got back from our sea kayaking adventure that took us out along the Atlantic Coast of Ireland! We wandered around the town of Kinsale's arts festival afterward, catching some TERRIBLE street performers and some fun local artwork. We are back at our B&B in Cork, getting ready to head out to the pub to catch the final match of the world cup, then hopefully some live trad sets!

We'll update again tomorrow with details of our past two days in Cashel, Cork and Kinsale!

Don't forget to check out our pictures on Facebook - we'll be posting more soon!!

Pics are live!

I'm doing pics through facebook because it's the easiest to upload to with iphoto. You don't have to be my "friend" to see it, but you do at least need an account.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2191670&id=31208752

Irish Primer

So no one says Gaelic. It's called "Irish". It's now the National Language and it's undergoing a bit of a revival (despite the fact that only 1% of the population speaks it nativly, and 20% can speak it fluently)

So I don't know any "Irish" but even their English is quite different and has some really neat Colloquialisms. So here's your primer.

The States = America
Ye = You all, yall
Clear out the cobwebs = To Wake up (like getting ungrumpy, not physically waking)
Having a Lean in = Making out
Toilets = Bathrooms
Brelly = Umbrella
Less 10% = 10% off
Love = Endearment when talking to the opposite sex, even strangers
What's on offer? = What events are coming up
Are you having a browse? = Are you just looking around or are you looking for something?
Is it = Used at the end of most questions.
Bin it = Trash it
Ramps = Speed bumps
Rubbish/Litter = Trash (like trash cans will say "litter" on them)

Speaking of the road signs, everything is "Dangerous". You will see signs like "Dangerous bends ahead", "Dangerous intersection ahead", "Dangerous Bridge ahead" The funny thing is, when you see one of these signs, you can usually ignore them, however if you EVER see those yellow arrows that go around a bend, YOU BETTER FREAKING SLOW DOWN to 20 kph OR YOU WILL DIE. Anyhow...

People talk about the weather like they are talking about sports. It's no small talk like in the states. Just about everyone has apologized to us that we visited and it happens to rain. Then I tell them that I'll take rain over the 37 Degree weather in Virginia anyday and they usually look horrified that a place could be so hot! (that's Celsius for 100 Fahrenheit, the temp in D.C. when we left) The hottest summer days here get up to about 67 degrees Fahrenheit.

Speaking of weather, the sun gets up about 5 and goes down about 11. Ok bedtime for me. More to come!!!

-C

In Search of more than just Charms

Alright, I love this country so far but I have one complaint. The radio sucks. You get 3 choices. 1. American Country (no thank you) 2. Politics (sometimes is Gaelic though!) and 3. American Pop

No lie. In fact, American Pop is played EEVVVEERRRYYYWHHHHEEERRREEE. What do I mean by that. Literally everywhere you go there is Ameripop. Going to the bank? Be prepared to jam out to Kanye. Going to a castle gift shop? Kessha. Going to the bar? Eric Clapton. Headed to the Hotel Lobby? T-Pain.

It's quite amazing that places that would never play pop in America (banks?) play it here. It's also noted that there is no Rock. You get pop from the 80's, 90's, and 2000's, but no rock at all.

So I've been in search of Irish music for 3 days. Yesterday I even bought an Irish CD Set that's supposed to have song and instrumental stuff but it sucks and is bland. Tonight though, we FINALLY got a taste of the good stuff. We went to a show here in Cashel that was like a mini-riverdance! There was song, dance, solo singing. I'll have to blog about it later and post some audio, but they blew me away. (especially the Harp player, good god that was awesome)

I've also been in search of a Good Quality Celtic ring. Most of the ones that I see in America are made out of some super cheap metal that can be bent if you sqeeze it hard enough in your fingers. So today in KilKenny we went to about 4 Jewlery shops until finally I found one!!!! It just fits on my Index finger on my right hand which is downright amazing. My fingers are SUPERWIDE after all the marimba playing I've done and I'm Super lucky I've found something that fits!!! Why Index finger? Well shaking hands with someone with rings on your right hand can be downright painful if it's on your right ring finger. Pic to come.

-C

Charlie's Thoughts

Hey everyone! Can't let Kate tell all the good stories now can I? So what to say about the last three days? Here's some random thoughts about Ireland...

Ireland is everything I imagined it to be. I can honestly say that's never happened to me before. Usually when I get all excited about going somewhere I've never been, I get this notion in my head about what it's going to be like and it never matches up once I get there. Not to say that those places aren't fun, but not like it was in my mind. Ireland however, is EXACTLY as I thought it would be!!!

So what exactly is that? Well everywhere is BEAUTIFUL! There are soft rolling hills everywhere, covered in lush greenery. The hills are mostly covered with grass with lines of trees as the "fencing". Actually there are 2 kinds of fences here in Ireland, Stone and Tree. I think we passed about one house that had a wooden fence.

The vast majority of the land is "farmland". I say that in quotes because One: It doesn't smell. All the farms are free range and the Animals have PLENTY of space to roam around. Two: There are no factory farms. Period. It's a welcome change from rockingham county Virginia where you pass one milk farm or one chicken plant and the area smells horrible for up to 10 miles. Or all the plant farmers that spray poo-based Fertilizer (gathered from factory farms) that make the whole county smell like Toilet. Not Ireland!!!

In fact, that brings me to one of my favorite things about Ireland. EVERYWHERE SMELLS GOOD!!!!! And I mean everywhere. I have not once smelled any pollution, farm smell, dirty smell, or Sewage smell anywhere, including Dublin.

Oh here's another one, every single Burger I've had here tastes downright amazing. I am somewhat of a Burger snob and I can honestly say that the burgers here are the best I've ever had. The meat just tastes amazing. I don't know if it's a spice they add, or if the beef just plain rocks.

"Can I take a picture for you? You look like you're having fun!"

This is how a couple from South Africa introduced themselves to us while we were visiting the Powerscourt House and Gardens. They caught us recreating some of the statues we were seeing and asked us if they could take a picture for us. We had a wonderful conversation with them, and they highly recommended that we drive up to the north to see Giants Causeway. We haven't planned to drive up that way, but we might have to after hearing about it from this couple!

Powerscourt is an absolutely incredible place to visit simply because of how the gardens were situated to interact with and compliment the landscape. Not to mention there is a huge pond at the back of the house, with a fountain of Kind Tritan blowing water 100ft into the air! We had a great time wandering the Japanese Gardens, the Azalea gardens and the formal gardens. The house itself isn't much to speak of, as it was gutted by fire in the 1970s and the only parts that have been restored are now used for shops and dining rooms.

And it hasn't rained!

But before we got to Powerscourt, we had to pay our way out of the Derrymore House in Glendalough. And luckily, the American couple that we ate breakfast with informed us that they did not take cards. So I asked Penny, the Innkeeper's wife, if they took checks. Nope. So, we backtracked through Rathdrum, found the Bank, got some cash (our cards don't work in the ATMs...) drove back through to Glendalough. We paid, said goodbye to Penny, drove back through Laragh (Laura) and got ourselves to Powerscourt, which is just south of Dublin. At this point, Charlie is getting really good at driving on the left, shifting with his left hand (yes, we have a standard transmission) and Kate's getting really good at pressing the imaginary break on her side of the car, and white-knuckle gripping the Oh-shit handle.

After Powerscourt, we backtrack again through Laragh, but this time head northwest towards Kilkenny. We took the back roads, which in this area means drop-offs on Kate's side of the car and huge tour buses barreling towards us on Charlie's side of the car. These Irish roads are not for the faint-hearted. Nor are they meant for giant SUVs. We now understand why Europeans drive such small cars - it's because bigger cars don't really fit on the roads...when we rented our car, we figured we'd upgrade to a larger sedan, but decided that we really didn't need to, and that we'd actually probably have gotten used to driving more quickly if we'd gotten a Mini Cooper. Oh well, we know for next time!

We ate lunch in a cute little town coffe shop, having something called a Vol-au-vent, which is a very common dish of meat, mushrooms and gravy spooned into and over a biscuit. We kept pressing on to Kilkenny, however, it's getting chilly enough for us to pull our jackets out of our bags.

Kilkenny is a fun town, but like all countries outside the US, most shops close down at 6pm. So our 6:30 arrival time meant that we rested and napped at our hotel (the Zuni House), watched some tv - Hollyoaks for any of you Dan le Sac fans! - and tried to log onto the internet. Until this point, internet has been spotty, but we figured that Kilkenny is a bigger town, we should definitely be able to get access. But no - and we accidentally ordered power adapters for Europe, not Ireland, and don't have a way to recharge our batteries, laptop or iPod.

So what are we to do but head out to find some Smithwick's (a local ale) and some good live music. We found both at a well-known bar called Langton's, and also ran into fellow JMU graduates there. We talked with the couple for a while before heading back to our hotel for the night!

And it's finally rained! And continued to rain and mist and rain and drizzle and mist and fog and rain constantly since then!

Have you got an ATM?

After we've been fed at the local pub just outside of Kilpedder, we ask the barman where the nearest ATM is located.

He takes Charlie outside to point him in the direction we need to go, and says that we should turn right whenever we can and we should find a Centa (like 7-11 stores in the States) with an ATM.

We take the road that was pointed out to us, miss the right turn and find ourselves winding around the countryside, oohing and ahhing over the view, but not finding an ATM. Hmm...

We decided to press on towards Glendalough (GLEN-da-lock) and hope that we find a bank on the way. Even with our amazing road atlas of Ireland, we manage to yet again get lost, mostly because we really didn't even know what road we were on the first place, but somehow managed to find ourselves rolling through towns that sounded familiar from having read about them in our travel books. We stopped to ask for directions at a camping park and here we learned a very valuable lesson. When asking for directions, never ask to find your way to a specific road. Always ask for directions to a specific place, or building in that place. Otherwise, if you ask for directions to the R755 as I did, you'll have native Irish telling you they've never heard of it. Rather disconcerting for us streetwise Americans. So, you'll ask for and receive directions based on places, like: Turn at the post, then keep going until you see O'Kelly's pub, turn left there, and then drive until you see the giant oak tree and you've arrived!

That's how we found our way to Glendalough, and we received a hand-drawn map via email to direct us to our B&B, the Derrymore House. Noted on that map was "a very large oak tree." Needless to say, we missed the entrance to the house a few times. We also accidentally pulled the front bumper off of the car while backing up and turning around. Oops.

And it still hasn't rained yet.

Ok, so we finally get ourselves up to the Derrymore House, which is overlooking the Lower Lake and ask Pat, our innkeeper about the bumper of the car. He tell us that he's got no experience with cars, but we might be able to bump it back into place. We try that, and it seems to work! After a quick rest, we head out for a hike around the Upper Lake at Glendalough. We followed the White Trail, which was 9km of beautiful hiking! We hiked through forest, along streams and waterfalls, through bogs, through giant boulders, past an old mining operation and along an access road to the mine. We didn't realize that maybe we should have gone to the right, though, because we ended up climbing what seemed to be thousands of stairs to get up to the peak of the mountain.

Needless to say, we nearly fell asleep face first in our dinner!

Wet, damp, soaken, dribbly, misty...

Well, Ireland surely has lived up to it's reputation of being lush and green, which means it's wet a lot of the time. We landed in Dublin on Wednesday morning to cloudy skies, picked up our rental car and and promptly drove straight through the city, which was either ballsy or rather crazy decision. Probably both. We were hopelessly lost a few times, but managed to get ourselves through the city without any problem.

No rain yet.

We drove south, going through roundabouts, reminding Charlie to stay to the left, to the left, no the OTHER left, hoping to each lunch at the great cafe that has a tree growing in the middle of the dining room. We found the town of Kilpedder with no problem, but finding the street was another story. We drove all the way through Kilpedder (about 800 meters) and found ourselves right back at the edge of the highway we had just gotten off of. Well, this is no problem, we'll just ask someone for directions! So, we park in between a pub and a convenience store and wander into the convenience store to ask for directions. (Note: We have no cash, we're jet-lagged and have been driving for about 1.5 hours. And we look awesome, ie rumpled and confused.)

After buying 10 euros of candy, soda and bananas, we ask the clerk for directions to Tinna Park. They look at us with a puzzled look. We try again, asking for directions to Marc Michel's. "OOOOOOh, yes...well, you're right close to it, but you can't get there from here."

Ok. How do we get there?

Here's where we received our first set of directions that had us absolutely confused, but we tried hard to listen anyway. "Get back on the motorway, and at the roundabout, head towards Dublin. Then, at the second roundabout, head towards Wexford (the opposite direction). Then, you'll pass this store, but you'll be on the other side of the road. Then, a little ways down, get off the motorway, then get back on, but coming back here. The road you're looking for is just on the other side of this pub here."

About 30 minutes later, we are sitting in our car, on the other side of the same pub, down a dirt road, reading a sign that says that the cafe is temporarily closed because the county government says that they need better access. I'll say so!

So, we go back to the same convenience shop, the clerk sends us on to a pub "just down the road" and we're off again.

Still no rain yet.

Monday at the Masons

Happy 4th of July!

On a typical day before Charlie and I leave on a big trip, I have lost my mind. While packing for the trip, I am also simultaneously trying to deep clean the house (baseboards, dusting, scrubbing something with a toothbrush), throwing in a load of wash, calling family, calling the bank, gathering addresses, making a pair of earrings, finishing up last minute reservations, etc etc etc.

But today, Charlie and I are spending the morning with our housemates Eric and Cindy in Mechanicsville, at the Masons' house. I woke up this morning to a homemade latte, otherwise known as a happy caf. Yummy!

So I'm sort-of staving off the loss of the mind, with friends, coffee, mascara and a new blog for our trip(o: