Ireland

Ireland has long been a place we wanted to visit.

This summer we had planned two cruises: An ocean cruise up the west side of Norway to visit the fiords and a river cruise down the Danube from Prague to Budapest. There were eight days in between these two trips that we had to fill with something and we decided to have a quick tour of Ireland.

First couple days were spent in Dublin - actually only one full day as the day we got there was a travel day and travel days are usually a write-off.

Dublin is home to a number of famous people. Oscar Wilde for one. This is a statue of him in a park across the street from the house he was born in.

Another very famous Dubliner was The Duke of Wellington - remember him? He was the guy who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.

He was born in a house just down the street from the hotel we stayed at in Dublin. It's the building with the black station wagon parked outside. We were further up the street - past the blue hoisting machine.

On our third day in Ireland we rented a car and set out to explore the southern and western parts.

Our first stop - if you exclude the stops we made to correct our path - was at the Powerscourt Estate which is quite famous and claims to be the Number 3 garden on the world. Quite a claim to fame!
Here's a link to their website which contains some nicer pictures.

They even have a graveyard for all of the pets that have lived there and died. I don't know if the people in the picture are mourners or just tourists like us.

There's actually horses buried in there.

Poor old Nicko Borzoi.

After Powerscourt we drive across the Wicklow Mountains. They're not really mountains....just big hills. Very picturesque though.

We stopped in Kilkenny to see the castle - pretty run-of-the-mill as far as castles go. We've seen better. What a busy town tho' - took forever to find a parking spot.

Some shots of the castle exterior.

This castle was built in 1195 and it's in very good shape.

The interior is being restored to show what it was like when the last people lived in it.

The grounds out the rear of the castle. Too bad it was such a dreary overcast day.

A link to Wikipedia.

Our first night out of Dublin was spent in a small place called Ardmore. Right on the water - too bad the weather was not cooperating.

A view from our room across the water.

Another.

The next day the weather had improved and we went for a hike around the area.

This is St. Declan's church and dates back to the 5th century.

And this is St. Declan's well further on up the trail. Some more info.

Another ancient church right in the town of Ardmore.

After Ardmore we drove to Cork.

Not much going on in Cork - they do have a nice cathedral though'

From another angle.

Not open so no inside shots.

Cork's other claim to fame is it was the last stop of the Titanic before she set sail on her maiden voyage to North America.

The white building with black roof shown below was where passengers were gathered before going by tender to join the Titanic which was waiting further out in the harbour.

The pier is where they would have last set foot on Irish soil before going to their doom in the icy water.

They have a fairly good Titanic museum there too.

A scale model of the Titanic.

Our next stop was the Dingle Peninsula. The weather was still holding and with the blue skies and sunny sun we could really appreciate the beauty of the land.

On the way we came across the strangest thing - people surfing. Even though the days was sunny and bright it was still quite cool but that didn't stop these people.

Check out the size of this beach - it must be five miles long.

They be dragging surf boards.

Three tough little buggers.

A wee beach video.

Carrying on we came across some very beautiful countryside.

That is a palm tree in the shot below - they have such mild winters here that palms can exist.

One of the things everyone does when visiting Dingle is drive around the Dingle Peninsula. Probably hundreds of cars going all going in a clockwise motion on a one lane road.

This is what happens when a few other people decide to go counter-clockwise. Everything comes to a grinding halt. The road was so narrow there was no passing. The people going the wrong way were finally convinced that they had to back up to a point where they were able to pull over and all of us going the right way we're finally able to get by.