To the fans of the EngagingIreland podcast…we know that there are a few of you out there…please be patient.  It’s September 8th and we’re beginning the update to our new hosting service, and our new WordPress blog.  Unfortunately, we had to shift the engagingireland.com URL over to the new site before we could begin our updates.  Fortunately, we’ve been working on creating a demo website behind the scenes, so the majority of the construction should be over fairly quickly (by the evening of September 8th).  The changes to the blogpage should not negatively impact the podcast feed subscriptions in any way.

So, what can you expect on our new page?  Well, we’re glad you asked!  At the very least, the new and improved Engaging Ireland website will (eventually) contain the following

• A much cleaner, nicer interface (with more photos, yay!)
• A list of our most recent Twitter updates.
• A separate photo page, with photo albums broken out by location.
• A forum, where you can all ask questions, share stories, and talk about Ireland.
• A separate page of travel tips.
• More detailed lists of our favorite websites and resources for Ireland trip planning.
• A new page for guest blogs and special features.
• More information about us (just in case you wondered)

Now that we’ve got you interested in what you’ll see once this is all over, hopefully you’ll be able to be patient while we finish today’s construction.  When you come to this page on 9/9/09, what you see (we hope) will be an immense improvement, and extremely useful to you when you’re planning your next trip to Ireland.

Thanks!  Slan!

Travis & Kathy

A view of the Irish Fest Cultural Village

Hello, Everyone! Kathy here.

Milwaukee Irish Fest is barely a week gone now, but I want to get things written down before they fade from my (ever-decreasing) memory.

What a time we had at 2009 Irish Fest! We saw and did so much; yet, there was so much more we wanted to do that we just couldn’t get to. We planned to do more interviews and watch more bands and talk to more people. The truth is that, just like when you’re driving yourself around Ireland, it takes longer to get from Point A to Point B than you think it should. This is not a bad thing! We lingered over a pint here and an exhibit there. We met up with some old friends and made some new ones.

We would certainly be remiss if we didn’t thank Corey and Liam from the Irish Fireside for showing us the ropes and acting as our tour guides for the weekend. And we can’t wait to go back in 2010! (more…)

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.