Our last days in Ireland

Ireland, con't.

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Thursday night we went to the pub in Creegh and enjoyed traditional Irish music. Three musicians, a conchatina (sp??) player, a guitar player and a tin whistle/flute player. They were really good and we enjoyed them for a couple hours. Things here always start later than we expect. This was no exception. The music started at "half ten" (10:30 p.m.).

Friday we got up and did a little laundry and then headed for the Burren. It is a rocky, desolate area, but beautiful in its own way. We had another beautiful sunny day, although a little windy. We were able to tour a 1,000 year old ring fort and saw some more castles. It is getting to the point where we say "look, another castle". It is amazing.

Saturday we packed up and left Sean and Allyson. They feel like old friends! we drove to Dublin, stopping at Bunratty Folk Park on our way. It is kind of like Old City Park in Dallas, but the main attraction is a castle from about 1400. It has been restored. There are a lot of period farm houses and other restored buildings around it.
We finally made it to Dublin about 5:00 and turned in the rental car. We took a cab to our hotel, walked around the area a little, had dinner and relaxed in our room. The computer here in the hotel was down all weekend so this is my first chance to be online.

Sunday we got up and caught a tour bus. It is a bus for one fare you can get on and off as much as you want. We got a three day pass which will include our transportation to the airport. On Sunday we toured the Guinness Brewery. We also toured Kilmainham Gaol which is a jail from the 1700s.

Today we caught the tour bus again and went through Trinity College (founded in 1500s) and saw The Book of Kells, an amazing collection of the Gospels transcribed in 800 AD. We then walked through Grafton Street, the shopping district of town and headed to St. Patrick's Cathedral. From there we went to Dublin Castle and toured that. It was built in the 1600s and is where some of the government offices are still housed. It is also where the Presidential Inauguration takes place. From there we went to the train station (Tommy wanted to see it!) and then on to the Jameson Whiskey museum where Tommy got to be an official whiskey taster!

We have had an amazing time. Our flight leaves at 11:00 tomorrow. We will leave the hotel around 7:30, have some breakfast and catch the bus to the airport. We have a layover in DC and then it is on to home. Tomorrow is a long day of travel so we are staying in again tonight.

We saw our first rain of the trip today. I think it sprinkled on us for 10 minutes!

Ireland, con't.

Our Ireland journey continues.....

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On Monday, we toured around the peninsula that we are staying on. Beautiful countryside and cliffs looking out at the Atlantic.

Our "landlord" Allyson, told us that the local village pub was having a "quiz" that night and it should be fun, so off we went. We got there at 7:30 or so, thinking that would be the starting time, being a Monday night -- there were only a couple people at the bar and we were surprised to learn that the quiz didn't start until 9:30! So we had a good time talking to the locals at the bar before the quiz started. Around 9:00, people started filing in and by the time the quiz started there were over 100 people there! There were 22 tables of 4 people and the bar was full. I got drafted to play on Allyson's team. It was a type of trivia game and I wasn't a lot of help as most of the questions were Irish. The quiz lasted until close to 12:30 and we ended up staying at the pub until about 2:30 talking to people and having a good time. We had walked down there and some of our new friends gave us a ride back home.

On Tuesday we had planned to get up and drive to Galway for the St. Paddy's Day Parade, but after our late night, we didn't get up early enough to make the 2 hour drive (the parade started at 12). And what seems like a 2 hour drive here may end up to be a 3 hour drive because you can often get caught behind a tractor. I have learned how to pass on the right though! Instead of Galway, we headed up the coast to the Cliffs of Moher. I can't understand why that is not one of the "wonders of the world." Absolutely beautiful. We were blessed with a beautiful sunshiny day also. We headed a little further to the small town of Doolin for a delicious dinner of fish and chips. The village was packed with celebraters -- we apparently just missed the parade, but the pub was very full. We headed back around 5 and every village we went through had people spilling out of the pubs into the street. We have noticed that every village, no matter how small, has at LEAST one pub!

On Tuesday evening we were told that there would be music in the local village pub. We poked our heads into one and it must have been a room 10x15 feet. We decided it was too small for music and headed back to the one we were at the night before. It was quiet as well. We stayed an hour or so (it was 10 by then) and headed back to our car. I heard music coming out of the small pub so in we went. There was a guitar player, a squeeze box player and some singers. We went in and were serenaded by Irish tenors until about 1:30 am. They sang Happy Birthday to me. People would just start singing from all sides of us and for some songs the whole pub was singing. There were probably 15 or so people there and when they found out we were from Texas, they enjoyed singing all the cowboy songs they know also!

Yesterday we took the ferry to the next peninsula and drove to the tip of it to Dingle -- the western most city in Europe. It is buried between mountains and the sea. It was absolutely beautiful also. The drive was incredible with steep drops down the side of the mountain and sheep grazing in the fields. We actually did something we would never do in America -- we picked up a hitchhiker! There was a man standing in the middle of the road at a turn we made and he flagged us down. We thought he had car trouble so we stopped and he asked if he could have a ride into Dingle. He seemed harmless and Tommy said yes, so he rode with us the last 20 miles or so. Dingle is much more "touristy" and we saw a lot of Americans. We enjoy our area where we are the "oddity". I did buy a piece of beautiful locally made crystal there. The artist autographed it while we watched!

We got back to town around 7:00 and stopped at the store for more breakfast food (we have been cooking all our own breakfasts). Then we decided to get some chinese take out. The Irish apparently love chinese food! We saw a video store and they let us rent a movie so we had a night in last night.

Today we are doing a little more local sightseeing and then there is music in another nearby village --Creegh ("Cree") -- tonight so we will head down there at "half nine" or so. Tomorrow we will pack and do laundry before heading to Dublin on Saturday.

It is sunny again today and Allyson says this is the first sunny week they have had since September, so we are really blessed. Yesterday we were in shirt sleeves and very comfortable -- must have been close to 70 and sunny. Today is a little windy, but still quite warm and sunny. This is the third day in a row with sun which apparently is an oddity here. We have not seen a drop of rain although it often looks like it might rain.

Our first Days in Ireland

Tommy and I took a dream trip to Ireland March 13-24, 2009. We were supposed to share the trip with our dear friends, Kirk and Denice, but because of some health issues, they had to cancel.

While on the trip, I did a "trip journal" that I emailed back home to friends. Here is the journal (in three parts)
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We arrived in Ireland without a hitch. We supposedly had a two hour layover in Boston, but by the time we found our terminal and ate a quick bite, it was time to board our next flight. We arrived in Dublin at 4:45 a.m. on Saturday. Got through customs and got our baggage by 5:30. The car rental did not open until 6:00 so it was close to 7:00 before we got on the road. Neither of us felt sleepy at all. We were able to sleep a couple hours on the plane.

Driving on the opposite side of the road is quite an experience. I am already a nervous passenger and it was multiplied about 100 times. While we were on the divided "interstates" it wasn't a problem. But the last 70km or so was narrow roads. Very well traveled narrow roads. Very well traveled roads with a speed limit of 100kph (about 70 mph). The whole time I felt like Tommy was headed off into the ditch. I was so tense by the time we reached our destination that my body almost hurt.

We saw lots of ruins of castles, beautiful countryside and yes, Denice, even sheep in the meadows. Everything here is green, leaves are budding on the trees, and daffodils are blooming wild everywhere. We got to the cottages about 10:00, got settled, took a shower and a nap.

Our cottage is very nice. We have a living room/dining room, kitchen and bathroom downstairs. Upstairs is the bedroom. The downstairs has stone floors and upstairs is wood floors. We have a lovely fireplace in the LR/DR. The resident dog has adopted us and Tommy is happy to have a dog to talk to.


After a nap, we got up and went into "town" which is Kilrush. It is about 10km away from our cottage. Our cottage is in Cooraclare which is a "village" that has three pubs, but no grocery store. We walked around a little, and went to the grocery store for some snacks and breakfast foods. (you have to buy plastic grocery bags here for about a quarter each) Stopped at a fish and chips store for dinner to go and headed back to the cottage. Apparently the clerk didn't understand Tommy because when we opened our bag at the cottage, we only had "chips" so we had a dinner of chips. We watched a little TV. Our TV gets two channels -- RTE1 and RTE2. We chose the All Ireland Talent Show over rugby. We were in bed by about 8:00 and slept until 10:00 the next morning.

Yesterday we got up and Tommy fixed scrambled eggs, "rashers" (which is Irish bacon -- a little different than ours!) and toast. We relaxed a little while and headed back to Kilrush for a St. Patrick's Day parade. There was a band playing on the town square and lots and lots of people lining the streets. It was a lot of fun. The final entry in the parade was the "Hell on Leather" dance school. There were hundreds of kids aged about 5-16 surrounding the town hall. They all did a traditional "set dance". It was also very fun.

After that we headed to a pub and had some "real" fish and chips. We learned that we could order one meal here and split it! After dinner we headed to another pub where we saw they were having music from 6:00-8:00. We were a little disappointed when they started playing "American" music but they were quite good. We listened to them for a while and then headed down the street to another pub. There was no music there, but we were surprised to see the All Ireland Talent Show on the big screen TVs! Everyone was watching it and cheering on their favorite act. It was actually the final night so we watched and saw the "winner" of the entire show. It was fun to watch the people so excited about it!

Everyone here recognizes right away that we are foreigners and they are quite nice. I don't think they get a whole lot of Americans in this part of the country.

Today we stopped at the library here in Kilrush to send this email and we are off to do some sightseeing. Tonight we plan to visit the pubs in Cooraclare. I became the official driver yesterday. I am much more comfortable in this position. Tomorrow we plan on heading to Galway (about a 2 hour drive) for a bigger St. Patrick's Day parade.

Well, I guess 2+ months is a little long to wait for an entry, isn't it? Guess you can tell that not a lot has been going on around here.

We are getting ready to go on a really big trip with some friends. We are going to IRELAND! I can't wait. We leave on March 13 -- just 12 days away! We will be spending 11 days there.

In preparation for the trip, I got a video camera. So now I am playing with it and trying to learn how to use it. I'm not so good yet.

This is a video I took of the grandkids just to play around. Let's see if this works. I tried to edit it to make it shorter but I haven't mastered that yet.......

I'm all caught up!

I shipped off the last custom order I had for this year. It consisted of two memory quilts and three pillows. I think they turned out pretty nice and the customer seemed pleased.

After getting that order shipped off, I was able to work on a Christmas Shopping Bag! I used it as a gift bag for a Christmas Party/gift exchange I went to. It seemed to be a hit!

You can find the pattern here: http://www.anotherpat.com/fabricbagXmas.htm

Where does the time go?

I often think about a new blog entry, and then time gets away from me and I don't get it done.

A lot has happened in the past three weeks! First of all, I completed another t-shirt quilt for a customer. It is a very basic design, but it is what the customer requested. Here are a couple pictures:

The other "big" thing that happened is just a little bit crazy. A couple years ago I went on a diet. I opened my mouth and told my daughters-in-law that if I got to my goal weight I would get my belly button pierced. My husband told me I was totally crazy to make such a bet. Of course, the girls held me to my word. I have lost about 35 pounds and the deed is done.

There, my secret is out. It really didn't hurt nearly as bad as I thought it would, however I have learned that where your waistline hits is a VERY important detail!

The Finish Line

I did it! I walked 60 miles in 3 days and raised $2300 in the fight against Breast Cancer! WHAT an experience! You can see me above, looking over my shoulder, right in front of the lady with her arms up in the air (that's my best friend, Janie). This was during closing ceremonies when we were marching in -- over 3000 walkers. It was way more than I ever imagined. In fact, I'm planning on doing it again next year!