Kelly'S Resort Hotel & Spa Rosslare

87 year old Jimmy welcomed me into his house from his chair by the blazing fire. 'Play a tune for me,' he ordered, and he sat back in his woolly jumper with his crooked old finger indicating the fiddle case in my hand. I duly sat and opened the case. Having tightened the bow and checked the strings were in tune, I perched upright on the edge of the chair and placed the fiddle under my chin. Jimmy cocked his nearest ear (complete ...

... she was invaluable to us.. but sometimes she did seem to falter just when we needed her the most!! Right in the middle of town! lol.

We stopped off in Kilkenny, oh and can I mention when you ask the GPS to take you to a place it will take you right to its centre.. Kilkenny was my first taste of a small street Irish city, with buses and lorries etc.. oh no... The other thing I did notice about driving in Ireland, don't expect to see too much of the ...

... be near the water. The GPS lead us through the village and back out into the country. I started to get nervous. I thought we were getting lost. We turned a few times and then headed down a rather narrow track that seemed to get more narrow as we got closer to the water. The track was fairly long and we passed only three or four houses along the way. Finally on the left we saw the gates into the O'Leary ...

... who ate liverworst for lunch I decided NOT to kiss the thing. I could not be considered a chicken so I bent over and let the dirty old man molest me to kiss the darn wall. He kept pushing me further down and telling me - Com'on get down there fer'ther...I started to laugh and pulled myself up and he was laughing and I said You are horrible! He laughed and said - that's what she said last night! Dirty old Irish man - he was great!

We're in Waterford tonight ...

... than the P&O one, this one had its own games room with heaps of pinnies so we had a buck hunter challenge but unfortunately Matt won. We found a couch to have a snooze & were woken by 2 bloody screaming kids running up and down the room- they obviously didn't understand what a death stare was because I wasn't the only person giving them bad looks & their parents must have been just as dumb because they completely let ...

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 ...

Now, I hanging out in Roselare waiting for the ferry. The harbour is beautiful. I spent some time wantering around the shore gathering shells, sitting in a coffee shop talking to locals and pondering by the grocery shop. It's really nice to explore on my own and the air smells beautiful. The ferry leaves at 9:15 ...

... 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 ...

... problem, there's only one hostel in town." That's usually a bad sign - I got directions to the place (they were a little vague, but I managed to figure it out). My favorite part of the walk into the village was the stairs - 106 deadly-steep stairs, in the dark, carrying a pack that must weigh at least 50 pounds. I was pretty sure I was having a heart attack when I reached the top, but then realized it was the pressure of the chest strap from my bag, so after a five ...

... A shame, really. Would have liked to say goodbye. From there we drove to Cashel to see its rock. As in, The Rock of Cashel, not a rock at all, really, but a large-ish cathedral and small church built on a plain of limestone. There was an abbey, too, a short distance away, curiously named the "Hore Abbey". We didn't go there. The Rock of Cashel was spoiled for us a little by Blarney ...