Ireland Day 2

Okay, back to the trip. There are more pics I could upload, but doesn't look like I'm getting to that, so I'll just go with these ones that I did a couple weeks ago.

Here we are in Glenanitchaquin Park, a stop on the Ring of Beara which is a beautiful drive. This place was wonderful. You follow a path and just take in the amazing Irish scenery. This is where we knew we were in Ireland. Here Amber is chasing some sheep in a pasture that we should or should not have been in.


We're still in the park, but heading back to the car.


Here's a shot of the park from atop a hill. It's too bad I don't have a photo of some pretty waterfalls they had here too, but isn't it so beautifully green?


Heading out on this one lane road. We only ran into one other car heading in the opposite direction but we were able to get past each other with some friendly maneuvering.


This is Healy Pass, another stop on the Ring of Beara. So amazing. We got a little rain, but it usually stopped when we wanted to get out and get pictures. How thoughtful.


I know how much you all love the punk jumps and have missed them so in the last few weeks.




Here we are in Killarney. We only stayed for an hour of shopping, which was just enough since all the shops closed about then.


See all the green and gold flags. We're in County Cork alright. The winner of the All Ireland match the night before. We heard from someone that there was going to be a huge party, like 20,000 people in the town square that night, but we had to move on.



But not before Amber let evoked a little leprechaun fun.

Driving north towards our next night's stay. We put in a couple hours driving here to Kilrush where we stayed for the night.

In order to get to Kilrush, we had to take a ferry. It was windy and rainy. Probably the only time our rain coats came in handy, but we could have stayed in the car. We asked for help on how the ferry works from another driver and he offered to have us follow him to Kilrush and a place to stay. There wasn't enough room for all of us, so Sarah B, Amanda and I stayed in the pub B&B and the other three hit up a B&B up the road. It was kind of nice to be in a smaller group for a night.


The other three girls snug in their beds. I don't know why I never thought to take pictures of my rooms until later on in the trip. Oh well.

I'll try to move faster on the rest of the trip, but I'm not promising anything.

Ireland Day 1

I meant to put this post up on Friday, but Blogger was giving me troubles uploading pictures. So hopefully, there won't be as much space between posts going forward.

Anyway, today we will look at our arrival in the beautiful country of Ireland. We arrive at around 7:15 am to a very empty airport. We proceed to the bathroom and kind of get ready for the day and church because we can't get our rental car until 8:00 am. I was not in a very good mood this morning, so I stayed pretty quiet and went about my business getting ready and avoiding everyone. Once we got our rental car (and hooray that it was a seven seater so we could all be together all the time, a blessing in so many ways that we had yet to realize) and strategically fit our luggage, just barely we were off. We had three designated drivers for the job. Now you might recall that Ireland drivers drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. Melanie drove us into the city of Cork where we going to church. Once in the city the stress really took hold, but after two nail biting hours of finding our way we made it to the church just in time for Sacrament meeting.

I dozed off and on throughout. But it was alright and it was fun listening to a talk with the accents. We chatted with some of the congregation afterward and then we headed out, this time Amber at the wheel. By this time we had a system in place where there was the driver and a co-pilot in front who told the driver when they needed to turn what lane they were going to turn into. Then there was the navigator. Unfortunately, during Amber's turn the co-pilot told her wrong and we headed into oncoming traffic. Luckily, the Irish are smart enough to employ a sticker that is a big red 'L' that means this is a new driver so everyone was pretty nice and let us back up and get into the right lane. But Amber was pretty frazzled and I was chastised because I screamed, but I couldn't help it. It's instant reaction. After that, we all tried to remain calm for any driver. The next challenge were the signs. They didn't really give much warning before you needed to turn. I don't know how many times we would tell a driver they needed to turn somewhere and they would say I need more notice than that. Well, we tell you when we know.

Our first stop was Blarney. We checked out the castle admission prices and times and decided to head to get some cash first and then eat lunch.

You always knew where to find ice cream in this country due to these big cones.


We ate lunch in a small restaurant and Sarah really enjoyed her big beer glass of water.


Here we are! Blarney Castle, once on the grounds we were already in awe and of course took some time to get some punk jumps in, but none that really came out that great.



A more close-up view of the castle.



I'm inside one of the watch towers I think. It was all so amazing.


This is looking down into the center of the castle from the top. It was all open. The castle is just in ruins mostly.


Here we are in line to kiss the Blarney Stone at the top of the castle tower.


This is Sarah kissing the stone. She had the best picture of what it's like. This guy holding her was kind of funny, but he had the same lines for almost all of us. Asking us if we were scared and all that.


This is the Blarney House on the grounds of Blarney Castle.


Just a little behind the photo photo I thought was kind of cool.


This was probably my best punk jump and probably the last one you'll see me do. It's all about perspective on the jump. The photographer was always low to the ground looking up at us as we jumped. I probably barely got a foot off the ground.


Heading to see more of the grounds.




So beautiful!!

After we were done at the Castle we crammed back into the car and headed west to our next stop. I was kind of the navigator and tried to keep us on track. It was only an hour and a half drive so I was really pushing to get us to Kenmare. Once there we needed a place to stay. We happened upon a Bed and Breakfast that looked cute and I was sent into investigate. After some deliberating and lowering of the price we took it and we were so happy we did. It was the best night's stay we had. Check out the beds.



The bathrooms were really nice and modern too. Our hosts, Sam and Sheila were wonderful to talk to and made our stay so great. That night in search of some live music and Irish Dancing we went into the center of Kenmare. County Cork and County Kerry (that we were now in) had had a Galic Football match (sort of rugby soccer) called the All Ireland (equivalent to our superbowl) that day and County Kerry won. So there were lots of people in all the bars very drunk celebrating. We encountered many men very eager to chat with six American girls.

This one in particular took quite a fancy to me. He was crazy drunk and not attractive at all, but followed me around for quite a bit. I have other photos of him but I'm too embarrassed to post them on my blog. I was teased quite a bit about him.

After some of us got some food in us we headed back to the B&B since there wasn't much else to see and got a great night's sleep.

London

Okay here is the beginning of the details of my trip with pictures. Enjoy!

Newly Arrived in London waiting for the tube in the Underground.


Schlepping our bags to our first hotel through the city. There was a lot of this throughout the trip as we only slept in the same place twice two nights out of the whole trip. Once we got settled we headed out into the city.


The view from the top of St. Paul's Cathedral. The one and only time we climbed lots of stairs. Thank goodness.


Sarah June and Amanda



Me and Amber standing opposite the cathedral about to part ways. Since four of the girls hadn't been to London before and Melanie and I had; we separated after this so they would go see things we already saw and we would see new things.



We hit the tube station at full speed, okay not really. We kind of eased along on this day. It was nice but a part of me regrets that we didn't speed ourselves up more and get more in.


We had lunch at this little outdoor restaurant in Covent Square and I had the most delicious panini. We did a lot of people watching, which was interesting. There were quite a few street performers who when they are done verbally solicit for money. It was like they had scheduled times to perform too, because when one guy finished another one started to set up for his show. It was very interesting.


This guy was really funny and had pulled in quite a crowd. Here he is just about to walk this rope while juggling three large knives and he did very successfully. He was very adamant about getting paid, which kind of turned me off and ruined the novelty of the experience but Mel and I each gave him a pound because he was pretty entertaining. The performer right after him actually called to me as I was walking by and I tried to ignore him, but I had to turn around since the square was virtually empty now. These guys are also set up with microphones and speakers. It was really odd. Anyway some silliness ensued with me being cuddled up next to some guy sitting on the curb and the performer taking my purse and making me chase him for it. It got old pretty quick let me tell you. So we moved on.


To Trafalgar square. It's famous for Nelson's column and the National Gallery. It had a really good vibe. There was a group of mimes all copying one mime on top of a column. It was very silly.


There was also this huge art installation of a chess set as you can see behind me. It was really cool. Then we headed into the National Gallery and saw some amazing portrait work and some Monets which are my favorite. The colors were so vivid in most of them. It was amazing.


Unfortunately, we arrived at Harrods too late. It's the largest store with seven floors. We just did a little window shopping and then headed back to the hotel. The other girls had all returned already. Here is what they had been up to while we were gone.


They took the tour of Tower Castle and Bridge. Sarah Davis, Amanda and Sarah Buttars


Amber and Sarah B.


They took a river tour and passed Big Ben and the London Eye while seeing other major sites in London. They next headed to Picadilly Circus, which is similar to Time Square.


The next morning Melanie and I headed out bright and early to take the train to Salisbury to take the tour to Stonehenge. "The greatest of all the henges!" We were pretty tired due to not a very good nights sleep. Melanie wasn't sleeping well anyway and then about 1:30 am an alarm went off. Everyone thought it was my phone alarm, but no it was more like a smoke alarm or something. It eventually stopped but not too long later it went off again. I decided to unplug some things that were charging and see if that did anything and it never went off again. So we only had a few more hours to sleep.

Our train ride to Salisbury was very interesting. A guy decided to sit down next to us on the train even though there were plenty of seats elsewhere. He was pretty granola. His name was Graham and he just chatted with us for our entire trip about life and his anxiety attacks and how to him the train was like a prison because you have to buy your own water. He was pretty out there but fun to talk to. He made us laugh quite a bit and he was really nice. He did swear quite a bit, but everyone does over there. He made fun of my accent because I pronounced Salisbury wrong and made me repeat it until I got it right which I knew how to say it, it just came out a little too American for him, I guess. Anyway, I could talk a lot more about him, but we'll move on.


After a short bus ride we arrived at Stonehenge, we had an audio guide and took our time going around the circle. We took lots and lots of pictures. And while we were doing this:


The other girls were doing this:

Buckingham Palace

Big Ben

Westminster Abbey

And seeing this:
Buckingham Palace


Kensington Palace


We hopped on the train to go to Windsor. Which confused us quite a bit but we eventually got there after a really long train ride with lots and lots of stops. I had really wanted to tour the castle but we made it too late. A half hour too late.


The door is right there, but dang the cops are there too.


To say the least, I was bummed. Really Really bummed!


But the night wasn't over yet. We had a stressful train ride back to London because I knew we were going to be an hour late meeting up with the girls and I knew that they were going to be buying us tickets to a show. What show, we had no idea so if they weren't where we said to meet we were screwed. As soon as we got out of the tube station at our stop I switched on our walkie talkie. That's right I brought walkie talkies. They came in very handy at this point. We were able to get hold of the girls just as they were walking to the very tube station we were at. We met up with them down the street as a couple of the girls ran back to our hotel to retrieve our tickets that they had left for us. That's when they informed us the show was Wicked and we needed to haul butt to get to the theatre. Oh man, we were running everywhere on this trip. I was so excited though. I've always wanted to see this show.


And it was so wonderful. I loved it! I desperately need the soundtrack.

After the show we got a quick bite to eat at the train station near by and I had my most disgusting bathroom encounter ever. I can't even talk about it. Then back to our first hotel to grab our bags and head to our next hotel which we decided to stay in kind of last minute. It was really sketchy so luckily we only stayed there four hours as we had an early flight out of London. We ordered a cab and drove 45 minutes to the airport and of course we weren't there early enough and we had to run through the airport to our gate because it was final boarding, but the plane didn't even close the gates until ten or fifteen minutes after we boarded. Can I tell you , I am not a fan of the running. Then I slept most of the way to Ireland.

To be continued...