May 6, 2011 - Jameson and Rock of Cashel

On Friday, we left Killarney and drove east. Our first top was Midleton, near Cork, to see the Jameson Distillery.



We are good parental role models, yes?



Will and Grandpa Bill learn about the history of whiskey, while Will sits on a whiskey barrel chair.



Will, in front of an old delivery truck.



Will on a copper kettle.



Evie and Lorney in the barrel storage room. You may be asking yourself why Evie is wearing a sweater around her legs, and why her feet are bare. Just before the tour started she somehow managed to poop. Not in her diaper, but out the side and into the leg of her tights. ????



Then Gail and I volunteered for a whiskey tasting. We made some new friends at the table and talked for awhile.



After Jameson we drove up to the Rock of Cashel. This is where St. Patrick converted the King of Munster in the 5th century, though the buildings are mostly 600-800 years newer than that. The scaffolding is pretty recent.



St. Patrick's Cross, from the 1100s (I think).



The ceiling of the chapel. My architecture teacher in London liked to tell us that you could always tell a ship-building society by the way they built their roofs - you could turn this one upside down, caulk it, and set sail.







Will, shortly before he bit it in some mud on the grounds and ended up with mud all up and down his back, legs, and arms.



Evie found the Rock kind of boring. She was more interested in her teething biscuit.



Lorne spotted this broken chunk of stone in the corner of the graveyard. The carving on the stone is the same pattern he used when he designed my engagement ring.



Here is a terrible picture of me trying to illustrate the design on my ring and the design in the stone.



This is the ruins of Hore Abbey, just at the base of the hill that holds the rock. It was built in the 13th century.



The town of Cashel.

After we were done touring the Rock of Cashel, we headed down to the cars to change Will out of his mud-caked clothes, then had late lunch/early dinner (linner? dinch?) at a restaurant in town. Then headed up to Dublin for the remainder of our stay.

May 4-5, 2011 - Cliffs of Moher, Dingle, Killarney

On Wednesday, Lorne's conference ended at noon. We got some supplies, loaded up the cars, and headed south towards Killarney.



Lorney drives the awesome rental Peugeot. If this car was available in the U.S. we'd totally buy it.



That's Bill and Gail's car. It's tiny, yet takes up most of the small road. Oncoming buses were kind of terrifying.



I kept taking pictures of the hills while we drove. I couldn't get over how green everything was.



We stopped at a pullout at the top of a corkscrew hill (narrow roads + hairpin turns + steep + tour buses coming at you!) and ate some lunch. Evie had her first bites of cheese (Irish cheddar) and loved it. Will was completely, totally passed out in the back seat.



We stopped at the Cliffs of Moher. It's a 1,000 foot drop into the Atlantic. Awesome.



It was cold and rainy, so Evie wore her gnome hat.



This is how Will kept warm - shirt + sweater + sweatshirt + knit hat + hood over hat + sweatshirt pulled up over his mouth.



When I came in 2002, there were no walls and no steps. Basically nothing preventing you from walking up to the edge and falling to your death. My friend and I were stupid enough to sit on the edge to get our pictures taken. The EU recently gave them a bunch of money to fix it up though, and you can no longer tempt fate for a neat picture.



The cows can do as they please, however.



That first picture at the cliffs was taken from the top of O'Brien's Tower, which was built in 1835. I'm pretty sure its restoration was part of the "make the cliffs less deathtrappy for tourists" money from the EU.

After the cliffs, we headed further south, across the Shannon river, to our cottage in Killarney.

On Thursday, we took a drive around the Dingle Peninsula and spent a little time in the village of Dingle. Dingle Peninsula just sort of dangles (dingles?) out in the Atlantic Ocean.



This is Inch Beach. It was funny, I stopped here on my backpacking tour with my friend in 2002, but I didn't really remember it until we drove by. As soon as I saw it I was all, "Holy crap, I've been there!" I had similar experiences throughout Ireland. "Hey, I totally ate here once." "Hey, that's the hostel where I drank too much."



This is one of the beehive huts. They've been there since the Iron Age. Seriously.



This is one of my favorite pictures, ever. Off to the left of Will is the Blasket Islands. The Rick Steves book told us that people lived on the islands until 1953, and then Ireland was all, "Dude, you can't live here anymore, your way of life is not sustainable." In earlier times, farmers would put their goods in a boat, row 30 minutes to the peninsula, then walk miles and miles to Dingle to sell everything. Nuts.



Will and some sheep.



Our kids need posing lessons. Perhaps we should send them to Barbizon.



Lorne and Will walking up to the Gallarus Oratory. It was built sometime between the 6th and 9th centuries. Monks used it as a chapel. The stones fit together so well that it's waterproof.



Will's Oratory dance.



Ruins of an old church from (I believe) the Middle Ages.



Lorne and highly annoyed Evie in Dingle.



Will was all, "Take my picture at this big door!" (The door to a church.)



The best thing about Dingle: it has the highest per capita ratio of bars to residents. Why? Because everything is a bar. There's a bookstore/bar. There's a music store/bar. But the best thing is the hardware store/bicycle store/bar, Foxy John's.



We went to a music shop and Gail got to play a bodhran, an Irish drum.



There's this dolphin that lives in Dingle Bay, Fungi. He's lived there for awhile, so he's all famous now. Will picked out a book about Fungi to take home with him, so we told him to get a picture with the Fungi statue. But he was totally skeptical. This is actually really close to the face he makes when we watch the dolphin show at Sea World. (Which he kind of hates - as soon as the people get in the water with the dolphins he starts shaking his head, making that face, and saying, "That isn't right." We don't go to the dolphin show anymore.)

We went to Killarney to find some dessert. We (unknowingly) went to Ireland's most expensive ice cream shop, Murphy's. But it was super yummy. Then we walked a little, then went back to our cottage.



Thatched roof! What what. The beige car is the Peugeot that we liked so much.



Will totally posed this picture. It's on the landing of the stairs in the cottage. He told Grandpa Bill where to put Evie, then climbed up and gave her his stuffed Thumper and sat next to her with Mr. Lion.

Then Lorne and I went to the local pub and had some beer, but we took no pictures of that.

May 1-3, 2011 - Galway

I'll post a couple days at a time for the trip, instead of an entire week. I can see myself writing a lot and showing like, 50 pictures in one post. I'll try to cut it up a little to make it more manageable.

On Sunday, we arrived in Ireland! Grandma Gail and Grandpa Bill met us at the airport, we rented our car, and we got on the road to Galway. Lorney did a fantastic job of driving on the wrong side of the road while incredibly jetlagged. We got checked in, showered, rested a little, ate at a pub, then got everyone ready for bed.



The kids enjoyed the mirror in our hotel room. I thought this was funny, as this is one of the pictures on our trip with Will to England when he was Evie's age:



On Monday, Lorne had the first day of his conference. The kids and I wandered around Galway with Grandma Gail and Grandpa Bill.







Will was very excited about the fact that Ireland ALSO has playgrounds!





Will, post pigeon-chasing in Eyre Square. Chasing the pigeons was one of his favorite things in Galway.



Bill took this picture of Williamsgate Street, which was Will's third favorite thing in Galway (after the playground and the pigeon chasing). He liked all the people, but he really liked all the street musicians and asked if we could go to Williamsgate Street every time we left the hotel. I suspect he also liked the street name.



That night we ate Indian food for dinner, then the kids stayed with Grandma and Grandpa while Lorne and I went on a little pub crawl with his fellow scientists.

On Tuesday, we went on a bus tour of Galway. While we waited, Will debated about whether he really wanted to ride on top of the double decker bus, but once we were up there he liked it pretty well.


Will expounds upon the virtues of sitting in the front seat of the top of the bus.


Dino enjoyed the scenery.


River Corrib

After the bus ride we met up with Lorne in the hotel, then walked back down Williamsgate Street (Will rejoiced!) and headed to a fish & chips place, then up the street to get some ice cream. The kids were all tired out when we got back to the hotel room.