Rhu Glen Hotel Waterford

... hearing aid) towards me and once he recognised the Gorey March, started tapping along. 'Hmm. Hmm,' he nodded his appreciation in time. 'I can tell you've been practising all right,' he stated when I'd finished, and he leant over and pulled out his own fiddle - older than himself - from under the tv stand. I couldn't decide which was the bigger compliment - the words, or the actions. With no hint of arthritis, but with the ...

... My body braces for a cold shock as my naked feet enter the water, but I'm pleasantly surprised at how warm it is. Much warmer than Tofino for sure.

It was a perfect evening surf. Nice sets of 5 ft waves, were broken by smaller sets, making it easy to get out. A quilt of high cirrus clouds cast a beautiful light on the rolling emerald hills, broken by the occasional sand dune or crumbling cliff. Everything about the place felt soft, even the warm waves were soft.

... British mind you, so I'm inclined to think option B was more likely.

I chuckled to myself as I spotted a girl, about 7 or 8, sitting across from me. She was half-finished her dinner, and was inspecting the chocolate mousse with an expression that bordered between confused and disgusted. She took a couple curious bites, then pushed it away.

The philosophy "if you set your ...

... 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 ...

... GPS! Even though is led us on roads that looked like cow paths, we reached the final destination. Glendalough was St Kevin's Monastery and had a lot of ruins and an old cemetery located on the grounds. We also hiked up towards the lakes. We decided to take a break and sit on a log and met a really funny Australian couple. They were retirees and had traveled extensively.
We wanted to ...

... will you? Unless I get lazy, or don't make it back. The time of each dummy entry is the time I get into a particular region. Each region might result in multiple entries, depending on how interesting it is, or how much time I have to play on the interwebs.

... t stretch to 50 Euro main courses! After that we went up the road to the Powerscourt Falls. After handing over some more Euro (you pay for everything in Ireland, even nature) we enjoyed a few moments there. Then it was a drive through the twisty mountain roads to Glendalough, site of an old monastic tower. A little later we ended up in Wexford town. This is where Dave's grandmother Ann grew up. We ...

... far from the Kilkenny Castle. This is quite a bit earlier than the last couple of nights. We only had to walk a couple of blocks to a great restaurant where we treated ourselves to a indulgent meal: appetizers, wine, dessert, and special coffees. Yup, no main courses. Well, you see, every night we are so stuffed and are always tempted by the desserts but never have any room. What a better time then to indulge than Mother's Day? We left the restaurant four very happy travellers.

... a blackboard outside a pub advertised that tonight was ‘Irish Night’. Obviously this makes a change from usual, perhaps it must be ‘Fijian Night’ the rest of the week.

I thought that Tintern Abbey, a twelfth century monastery, might be worth a stop but, with no maps in our possession other than those in our Lonely Planet guide, it wasn’t the easiest place to find. And the fact that we arrived at a T-junction with ...

... party. One part of the group is obviously wanting to have some big nights out on the Guinness enjoying the local craic, before stumbling into the room in the early hours a little the worse for wear and generally causing a continual nuisance to the other, more refined part of the group. But it was something we had discussed in the months previously and Nanna promised to at least try to be on her best behaviour.