Bettystown Court Hotel

... rest of the day. Our departure from Cork was quiet and uneventful. As we sail to our next destination, tonight we have our third and final formal night. There was a farewell cocktail party with drinks and canapés in the atrium levels 5, 6 and 7. Everyone looked so nice in their evening gowns and suits. Photographers were there for taking formal pictures. There was a piano player playing a vast selection of songs...and waiters walking ...

... we were not complaining. So we are all moved and have been living there for about a week now. Fiona is a med student and apparently goes home a lot to Tullamore, a country town about 1.5hrs away from Dublin, as her family and boyfriend live there. So a lot of weekends she wont be home. She can also work quite long hours at the hospital during the week. When she is at home, so far she seems to be in her room studying. Our first weekend she went home on ...

... long, but it was cool that we passed throught Limerick on the way, the industrial town from Angelas Ashes. Killarney night life seems concentrated on pubs, but then again it was a saturday as we walked throught. We were both so exhausted, that we threw our bags on our beds, Mal read a bit, me typing this on the computer. We plan on going to the Ring of Kerry tommorrow, supposedly the "stereotypical" image of Ireland and its landscape.

... shades of green, a monastic city, took a 1km walk through the woods, had lunch at Avoca (aka Ballykissangel) and learnt a little about an Irish poet called Thomas Moore. I'll have to use him and a couple of photos at my Friday morning poetry group at Brightwater in Mandurah when I get back. Photos...well we have taken a few but we are still in the throes of downloading them! You can't rush some things can you? Another favourite sight in Dublin's ...

... also try to find out from other backpackers what their highlights have been in Vietnam. Something we'll definately be doing is making the short trip from Hanoi to Halong Bay. In Halong Bay we'll take a 3 day boat tour around the 3,000 islands that make up the bay. We'll also make a stop off at the Cat Ba Island National Park famous for its various species of Monkey. From Halong Bay we'll make our way down the east coast of Vietnam where ...

... get some more time. Today, I went to my very first castle ever, Dublin Castle. The most amazing thing to me is that it is still being used by the Irish leadership. The president is inaugerated there every year. Anyhow, that's all I have for you right now. I promise that more detailed entries will come in the very near future. Till then... ¬ sandi ¬

... how they were pronounced) , we immediatly began the St. Patrick's Day celebration with some lessons in Irish dancing, singing a song called 'Hail Glorious St. Patrick' (which we sang many more times that day and is still in my head, it sounds like Away in a Manger a little bit, something of a children's song), and mixing up some green coffee and green pancakes in the shapes of celtic crosses, the isle of Erin (Ireland), and shamrocks. This was so fun, maybe ...

The time had finally come and so had my last day of work! No more London, no more England, no more Teaching! I was out of here and the rat race. I was headed to the South of France to Vias Plage, to work for a company called PGL! I had given up my lovely apartment and well paying job to live in a tent on a beach for six months for 70 British Pounds a week! Was I crazy?? Yes!! Crazy for watersports! For the first month I was trained up to be a qualified instructor and then for the next ...

After picking up our rent car, a Renault Megane, we drove North. We forgot to buy a road map, but we got our first directions from the Avis man. Driving left is a bit confusing at first. Junctions and roundabouts make you think twice. One hour later we were in Newgrange. It is a monument known to archaeologists as a passage-grave or passage-tomb. It was constructed around 3200BC, more than 600 years older than the Giza Pyramids in Egypt, and 1,000 years more ...

We woke up and headed off to breakfast. The owner had baked some bread; however, it wasn't as good as the bread I'd had at the Morehampton Townhouse. But, it was filling enough to allow me to skip "the full fry" for yet another morning.

Our goal for the day was to get back across the country in order to catch the train to Belfast for our ferry ride to Scotland. Of course, we didn't have a reservation at any B&B on the east coast. But, we hadn't had any trouble ...