Churchtown House Hotel Rosslare

... effects of reaching a ripe old age setting in, Jimmy played with gusto, correcting my mistakes and setting down his own fiddle every few minutes for a little break while I played the tune in question back to him. For over an hour we played jigs, reels, polkas, hornpipes... And at the end, as always, I was disappointed to leave, but renewed with enthusiasm filled by the magic of sharing music with a master of his instrument.

... now there is a car up my ****... sorry Dad!!

We then continued onto Waterford.. the oldest city in Ireland. Lovely mixture of new and old and a very unusual piece of art hanging from the storage sheds over the river. See pics of girls face! We spent some time in our favourite place, the tourist centre and booked accomodation for tonight and our stay in Kilanery. Our guest house was called Portree.. very appropriate as we just came from that city in ...

... the wind whipping into them, so we didn't linger. We cleaned the sand from our feet and sauntered back down the lane to the house.
This was our most relaxing night and day of our trip. It makes me feel calm and serene when I think about it. Some day we'll go back and stay a few more days.
After our walk, we packed up and headed to the Dublin airport to return the car. The hustle & bustle began on the M50.

... crystal factory has gone out of business - bought by Bank of America which is going to send manufacturing to someplace like Texas for sure...sad, but we'll see what's left tomorrow.

Then back to Dublin...Guinness Factory Tour and then sadly back to the US.

Now for Sister Carolyn - Darnit Katie has all the fun! I ate dinner with a window salesperson from Wisconsin. Turns out he sells Kolbe and Kolbe windows. Which we have in our house. I hate them ...

... I think they even stayed awake until our breakfast stop at another of the many service centres.

It was a pretty easy drive across, barring the only other stop we had to make due to Reilly's tantrums in the back seat. Not a great performance from the back seat duo this morning...
"Leave your brother alone"
"Stop flinging that around"
"Patrick get your feet off that"
"Reilly don't throw that around"
"Boys, leave each other alone"
"Yes, we're in Wales now"
"Yes ...

Arrived in Ireland at 0820 in the morning. Since we were driving the island, we went to pick up our rental car from Enterprise. It was off-site, so we took the shuttle bus there. The car rental was a relatively easy process. I started off driving and it was weird getting used to driving on the opposite side of the road. To get to our first destination, we were thrust right into highway driving ...

Well, I made it. For the next ten weeks, I will be in the south of Mauritania, training to become a Peace Corps volunteer in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania! Alright! As many of you know, I have wanted to do this for quite a while. I knew that if I did not do this now, I would likely never get the opportunity to do it again, and I would more than likely regret it. So here I am! I am just thankful the time had finally come. We ...

... by the hire car company to get us out of the airport car park coming to a fee of €48, the unclear route signs heading south out of Dublin towards County Wexford leading me to take a slightly convoluted course, the struggle to find a pub still serving food at 9pm in the town of Arklow, and then when we did chance upon one finding out they didn’t have my first, second, third, fourth or fifth choices ...

Buses...buses...buses. That was my whole day before I finally arrived at my destination. An 8 hour bus ride across Ireland, just to get off at the wrong stop. It only cost me 106 stairs straight up with a 35lb pack. No I didn't count, the 70 year old woman in front of me did. I felt pathetic, she wasn't even ...

... the country) were used as refuges. So, my comment that "we will never know" is proven wrong after just 3 days and Alex's suggestion about the wooden staircase is correct! Which is pretty much the story of the trip, really... xxx From Cashel we drove to Kilkenny (which I thought was Killarney until we got there) where we had a cursory look at the castle from the outside but decided ...