Im back

Welcome back!

not sure how large these pics will come out. I havent resized them since I uploaded them to photobucket.

Not many pictures of Dublin. It's where we started our trip, but we were a bit tired and not in the photo-taking mood, but here's the Spire on the North side of the River Liffey. The tour book said that it's affectionately known as the "stiletto in the ghetto"


Some pictures of some Megalithic burial/ritual sites about an hour North of Dublin near the site of the Battle of the Boyne, Knowth (first pic) and Newgrange (second pic). Newgrange has a chamber where for 5 days a year around the winter solstace sunlight enters and illuminates the chamber. The rest of the year it's dark. Kinda cool.




Northwest of those sites is the Hill of Slane, where St. Patrick supposedly lit a fire in defiance of the pagan kings. The church and abbey were erected long afterwards I imagine.




On our way South from Dublin we drove through the Wicklow mountains. The town of Glendalough has two lakes up on top of this mountain range where a monk escaped to looking to become a hermit. It didnt work, and word got out about this place, he developed a following and now it's a tourist attraction and you can hike all around the grounds. We were sucking wind since we're so out of shape.

waterfall that divides the two lakes


my melon obscuring said waterfall


view of the upper lake from where the monk (later a saint) had his "cell"

We made our way down to Waterford and took a tour of the Waterford Crystal Factory then spent way too long agonizing over which pieces we should buy. Alot of these pictures didnt come out so well for some reason.

dude blowing the crystal into shape


dudes shaping it further



Then we drove onto a little town called Middleton and toured the Jameson distillery. The tour was kinda ok, but the Mrs. and I got to be official tasters of Irish Whiskey, and got to compare 3 Irish whiskey brands against Johnny Walker Red Label and Jack Daniels. I actually prefered the Irish Whiskey and took an oath to only drink Irish Whiskey from now on and was given a certificate.

outside of old distillery. The new one is just beyond the old buildings and they didnt let us go inside.



the official tasters of our tour group



me with a stupid grin showing off my favorite whiskey, Powers.

It was a bit cloudy so some pictures from the other days didnt come out so well, but we got some nice ones from our tour of the Dingle Penninsula in the Southwest of Ireland. It's just north of the Ring of Kerry, which we bypassed in order to see Dingle. Alot of people suggested this actually. The people here speak Gaelic first and English second. All of the road signs were in Gaelic, and like all of Ireland the roads were fucking narrow. Beatuiful though, and even though it rained in the morning it cleared up very nicely by the afternoon.







Leaving the penninsula we went through the Connor Pass which afforded some great views back over what we had just driven through and where we were about to go. This picture is looking back.



The next, and our final full day in Ireland we drove to the Cliffs of Mohor. They were huge, and there was construction everywhere. You cant walk right up to the edge anymore, and theyre building a new visitor center. I wish we could have gotten closer to the edge.







That's about it for now. We took over 300 pictures. A bunch of them suck, but I figure this is all you guys really need to see to get an idea of how beatiful Ireland is. There's lots of stuff we didnt get pictures of because there was no place to pull over safely and snap a few photos. Lots of the country roads were as wide as one way roads here, and the speed limit on those roads was 100 km/hr (60 mph). The locals definitely drove the speed limit and I nearly shit my pants on a number of occassions. I bought extra insurance for the car we rented, but we didnt really need it. Murphy's Law though... if I hadnt gotten it I would have crashed.