Providing travel tips, guides to places of interest, interviews and all things Ireland - Hosted by Travis and Kathy Nelson - Presented by Six Eight Creations
We give a brief update about the job hunt in Ireland and about our trip to Kinsale and Charles Fort.
Heritage Ireland/OPW - Info about heritage passes and all OPW sites. Also updates on clusures and schedule modifications. http://www.heritageireland.ie/en/
29 May 2008 In the past few days, we have had the privilege of visiting some of the sites in Ireland that are most steeped in history and myth and folklore.
We have been to the island of Inis Mor (Aran Islands) to visit Dun Aengus, a stone fort that was built sometime around 1000 BC. Part of the cliff, on the edge of which the fort was built, has washed into the sea, and you stand at the edge of a sheer drop of 100 meters (everything here is in metric units, as you will recall). We were brave enough to lay on our bellies at the edge and peer over - it'll take your breath away!
We also climbed to the top of the Hill of Tara, which uniquely intertwines prehistoric, Celtic, and modern history together in one small site. It's amazing how much history has taken place on this one small hill, but you can almost feel the energy that the place holds.
The climb to view the cairns at the top of Carbane East at Loughcrew will certainly test the strength of your legs, but it is totally worth the effort. Just be certain to obtain the key to Cairn T BEFORE you head up! You don't want to make the climb twice (just ask Travis!)... This is another of the places in Ireland where you just marvel at the effort and skill that was employed to create the burial cairns and surrounding earthworks. These cairns are said to have been built in 3500 BC, which well predates the pyramids at Giza (Egypt)!
We have visited so many places that we want to tell you all about! Unfortunately, there just isn't time to cover them all right now...
Tomorrow, we head for Dublin for four days, and then we are on our way back home. We are happy to go home and see family and friends, but we are very sad to be leaving this island once again. Until next time...
Just a note to let you know that we haven't forgotten you all! We have had very inconsistent Internet access (even in the places that claimed to have broadband, WiFi, or an Internet cafe in town).
We are taking notes and gathering information and photos to share with you, but we won't be able to do that until as late as when we get home in June.
Hello again! Just a quick update to let you know what we've been doing.
Day 5 (Killarney) Thursday morning we checked out of our accommodation near Dungarvan/Helvick Head and travelled west to Killarney. There's a national park near the town of Killarney, and the highest mountain peaks in Ireland are located near the park (MacGillycuddy's Reeks). We arrived in Killarney around mid-day, and, even though it was a little early, we decided to check and see if we could get into our B&B, so we'd have less in the car. They were very kind and did let us check in before 2 p.m., as our rooms were already cleaned from the previous night's guests. We got back in the car and decided to drive out to Killarney National Park, mainly to see Torc Waterfall. It was very beautiful (see the photo).
We then headed further up the road to Ladies' View, said to be named by the ladies-in-waiting of Queen Victoria as the most beautiful view they experienced on their visit to Ireland in 1861. It is a very spectacular view, and a very scenic drive to get to. (I almost said it was a "lovely" drive; however, because the road is quite narrow and busy with bus traffic, I can't really claim that it was a lovely drive. The drive was quite frightening, actually, but we made it without actually scraping off either of the side-view mirrors!) On our way back to the town of Killarney, we stopped at a couple of spots to take photos of the lakes. At one stop, there was a gentleman named Michael who asked us if we wanted to take a boat ride for 15 Euro each. We respectfully declined his offer as it was getting late, we were hungry, and 15 Eur. seemed a lot for a boat ride.
Upon returning to town, we parked back at the B&B and walked to the town center to find something for dinner. We passed a lot of restaurants on High Street, but most of the prices were well out of our range (in the $30-50 equivalent range). We settled on the bar service at a place called O'Meara's. Travis and Lisa had a lovely chicken curry with rice for 10.75 Eur, and Mom and I had the salmon salad for 11 Eur. I got to have my first Guinness of the trip, Lisa got her Smithwick's, and Mom finally got to taste her Irish coffee (she wasn't all that impressed, but now she can say she did it). The food was actually very good, and we were all quite hungry from all the walking we did at the park.
Day 6 (Dingle) After a tasty breakfast at the B&B, we headed out to take the tour of Ross Castle on Lough Leane. Ross Castle has been very well restored, and the tour is very informative. We enjoyed the 1/2 hour tour of the tower portion of the castle (you can't go into the rest of it). We were a little sad that we were not allowed to take any photographs inside the castle, but we liked the tour and our guide, Maureen, anyway!
At the conclusion of the castle tour, we made our way to the Dingle Peninsula. We stopped at Inch Strand (beach) to have our picnic lunch - we have a picnic lunch every day to save money. Inch is a very long, beautiful stretch of beach. If you've ever seen the film "Ryan's Daughter," part of that movie was filmed on the beach there. It's a beach where many people ride horses (I've heard there are actually races there...), and there were a few there when we first arrived, but they left shortly after our arrival. We walked up to the sea edge for a bit and then headed on to Dingle Town and our B&B for the evening. After a brief chat with our hostess, Angela, and checking in to our comfy rooms, we went back into town (the B&B is about 1 km past the town center) to check out the shops. Lisa was able to cross several hard-to-find items off her shopping list and was a very happy girl!
We were going to drive up Connor Pass - since the last time Travis and I visited Dingle Peninsula, it was totally foggy and rainy and we couldn't see a thing - but we decided we would take a chance that the weather would hold, and we'll go over it tomorrow on our way to Tipperary. Today, we went to visit Gallarus Oratory - a very small stone church that was built in the 7th or 8th century (they're not exactly sure). The church was built using a corbelling technique that still keeps the church bone dry on the inside, even in the heaviest of rainstorms! Upon leaving that site, we went to Kilmalkedar, where there's an old church, an ogham stone, an ancient sun dial, and a cemetery.
The weather was very cloudy for a good part of the day, but the clouds broke and the sun came out and the day was another beautiful, sunny day! What a blessing! We're ready for some rain about now, though, oddly enough...
Again, the restaurants were really quite expensive, so we decided to have a picnic supper as well. We bought a few items at the local grocery store and returned to our B&B to sit on the balcony that overlooks Dingle Harbor. After we finished our cheese and brown bread and an interesting little dessert we found that was supposed to be cheesecake (but had more of a consistency of a thick pudding), we retired to our rooms for the evening.
Tomorrow, we finish our tour of the Dingle Peninsula and head for our self-catering accommodation in Tipperary. Until then...Slan!
Day 2 in Ireland, we headed over to Kinsale to visit Charles Fort and view the cute little village. Charles Fort was well worth the drive - even after getting turned around in Cork - and we would recommend this site to anyone visiting the area.
We left Kinsale and headed over to Cobh to the Queenstown Story, but we left the Heritage Island books in the car several blocks away, so we would have had to pay the full 7 Euro each to go in. Our traveling companion, Lisa, was the only one who actually went through the display, but she said it was very well done and informative. We then walked up many stairs to get to the more elevated portion of the town, where we wanted to see St. Colman's Cathedral. We did get to see the cathedral, but we were too late arriving to get to go into the building. Sigh... We headed back down toward the waterfront and asked a shopkeeper where we might acquire fish & chips take-away, and she kindly referred us to Mimmo's on the square where the Lusitania memorial is located. It was our first taste of Ireland's fish & chips, and it was so good! We ate our dinner in Kennedy Park at the waterfront.
After we finished our dinner, we headed back to our accommodation near Helvic Head (just outside of Dungarvan).
Day 3 - We piled in the car early (about 8 a.m., which we thought was early enough, but we were wrong!) and headed up to the Wicklow Mountains to visit Powerscourt Gardens and Glendalough monestary. We wanted to walk to the Powerscourt waterfall as well, but we arrived at the estate around noon (two hours later than we had anticipated), so we had to decide if we wanted to leave out the waterfall or risk missing Glendalough. We decided we definitely wanted to make it to Glendalough, so we skipped the walk to the falls. We were bummed, but you have to make these kinds of adjustments sometimes when you're traveling like this.
The gardens at Powerscourt are gorgeous and not to be missed if you are in the area! We've been to Ireland twice before, and this is the first time we have actually gotten to see the gardens. We'll be back for certain, as it was well worth the 8 Euro we had to pay to get in. We, again, didn't have access to our Heritage Island books (because they were in the boot of the car, and you pull up to person taking money from a booth - like a toll booth - right at the front gate, which we weren't expecting), or we could have had reduced admission to the gardens. Ah, well...
We had been to Glendalough before, so we knew what to expect there. We knew we loved it there and would want to spend some time in the valley there just soaking up the atmosphere and listening to the stream trip over rocks on its way by. Glendalough is one of those places where you just stand in awe of creation. It just seems so perfect and peaceful and beautiful! Don't miss this place when you come to Ireland!
By the time we got back to our accommodation, it was after 9 p.m., so we warmed up some leftover spaghetti, then headed for bed.
Day 4 - Everyone who is traveling for any length of time needs to have "decompression days." These are the days when you plan to do nothing much and catch up on things like blogs, writing postcards, washing laundry, and writing in your journal.
Today was one of those days for us! We went over to Ardmore, which is only a few kilometers from where we are staying, to see the cathedral and round tower there. We got done there about 10 a.m., so we decided to take a quick drive over to Lismore, just to see the town and the castle. We didn't actually go into the gardens there at the castle, but they do come highly recommended by several people (including residents of Ireland). From what we could see of the grounds, it would seem that the gardens are probably quite lovely and well-manicured, but we just didn't have the two hours or so that we knew we would want to spend to truly appreciate the gardens. We came back to the Old Barn to relax and get ready to head on to our next accommodation in Killarney on Thursday.
Someday, we'll have to tell you about our walk down to the beach near where we were staying near Helvic Head, but there's no time for telling today!
We have been blessed with the most fantastic weather, and Travis is quite sunburned! That is very odd that he's the only one with a sunburn, as the rest of us three are very fair skinned and generally burn fairly easily...
We will post more about our travels as Internet access permits. Ireland is not the most 'wired' country in the world. Stay tuned!
Just posting a quick note to let you all know that we've arrived in Ireland!. We drove quite a bit yesterday, traveling down to the ring of Hook drive, then toured Hook Head lighthouse. We've got some great photos of the area and audio from the guided tour there that we hope to post within a few days. We also walked around Duncannon fort and Dunbrody abbey, then took a drive through the Comeragh mountains and then back to our self-catering accommodation near Dungarvan. Our internet connections are somewhat sporadic, so our uploads of new podcasts are going to lag behind a bit, but we'll save up anything we don't immediately post for later shows.
We're just adding our podcast to a few of the major podcast sites and needed to add this post so we can claim our podcast at Podcast Alley and Odeo. We also should be showing up on Podcast Pickle, Pod-Planet and Odeo. If you enjoy what we're doing, posting a review at one of these sites, or at Itunes will help others find our podcast too. Thanks!
Well, after a bit of fighting with Dreamweaver and the Libsyn interface, the blog page is finally looking a little better. It's still a bit bland, and doesn't have all of the formatting and headings in place, but looks much better than the old, slightly modified vanilla Libsyn template that we had in place before.
The May 9th departure date is rapidly approaching and little details keep coming up (determining who is going to take care of the cat and figuring out how we'll get to the airport among them). We've also had a few itinerary changes (Adding Loughcrew to the list, fitting in Newgrange/Knowth if we can). More on that in future podcasts.
The job hunt continues with a CV submission for a position in Galway. The potential job is with a multi-national company based in the United States, so they may be more willing to sponsor the work Visa application. There are a couple of other possibilities, depending on how the job descriptions posted by the recruiting firms really should be interpreted.
The Ring of Hook, Hook Head lighthouse, Duncannon and Dunbrody Abbey
