Ireland Trip - Part 3

Day 7

Here's a pretty old church. There were a lot, so I just picked a nice one.

Here is my mom enjoying the scenery again. Crushing it mom!
  

Our initial stop was at the Kerry Big Village. They had this festival where they would make a goat king. So here I am by the statue of the goat king. I think he likes me! I want to be a queen!!


Here is a pile of peat. Basically, peat is condensed vegetation. And then they carve it out of the ground in bricks for heating.

The Bog Village had some cute Bog Ponies.

They even had a crazy large sheep dog.


We spent the bulk of the day taking the bus around The Ring of Kerry. We made a couple stops for photos. I am just going to put in a lot of pictures. The scenery was beautiful, although probably less interesting via photo only.

Here's my mom enjoying the beautiful Irish countryside!!

This isn't a very good picture, as I was trying to take the picture from very far away. But this island has an old monastery on it. But most importantly, I know where Luke Skywalker is!! He's out there in the Irish ocean on that tiny island!

What can I say? I think sheep are adorable! And they are EVERYWHERE!

Those are award winning cows. The are out standing in their field.

We then went to the Muckross house. I only have outside pictures because we weren't allowed to take pictures inside. The first room we entered was huge and had deer heads ALL over the walls. It was a little creepy.

Evidently all large fancy houses in Ireland are by lakes and have fancy gardens. Where can I get a house like that?

Wait, I change my mind. These gardens look like they take too much work. So unless I could pay a gardening, or had a husband with a green thumb, many I don't want or need a yard. I make plants die.

Hey! Here's our bus!!

Day 8

Fun fact - all of the road signs include the information in Irish. In some areas the signs are only in Irish. I tried to pick up on how to pronounce things. Matching the letters to the sounds is very different from English and I could not pick up on.

I love all of the towns! The buildings are so fun!

Here I am looking really hot! And so sweet too.

On Day 8 we went to Blarney. We were supposed to tour Blarney Castle. However, we found out we had to pay extra for tickets, and it was pouring rain! Plus, I didn't have the desire to kiss a stone that's probably covered in gross stuff. So, instead we just went shopping! Luckily, this was the only day where it actually rained, which is rare for October in Ireland.

After Blarney, we arrived in Waterford and checked into our hotel. I am going to take this moment to say I miss having porters to take my bags to and from my hotel room. I guess I can have that at any hotel, but it's not all inclusive. :)

That afternoon it was time for shiny things! We went to Waterford Crystal. As a millennial, I have no need or desire for crystal. It's expensive, I'm a klutz, and I don't have fancy dinners. But it's very pretty!!

I want to break crystal with only my voice!!


To become a Waterford crystal cutter, a person has to apprentice for a number of years. And they have to pass tests. This bowl is the test bowl. It contains all the cuts used to make the many crystal pieces. A cutter has to be able to execute the cuts to make a bowl like this.

Here is the inside.

I decided to splurge and buy a very small, subtle piece for my apartment! ;^) Just kidding! But if I had the disposable income and a house with a large enough ceiling, I may just need a crystal chandelier. And one day I will also become the Queen of Mars!

In the Waterford location, they mostly create the special, custom pieces. They build the molds for those pieces from wood. They can't use wood molds for the common pieces because the wood doesn't later more than a few castings.

Here is a picture of one of the workers blowing a piece of crystal. I am not going to lie - I obviously had a gap in my knowledge, but I guess I expected crystal to be made of actual crystals. And they had to mine the crystals and shape them into things. Turns out crystal is just fancy glass. And I have problems keeping regular, reasonable priced glass in one piece.

Here is another guy cutting the glass once it's shaped.

Here are some samples. The pieces are marked on to show where the cuts were to be made.

Here is a young man cutting a piece of crystal. I don't know how they can concentrate using a dangerous blade while a large group of noisy people come through. I would be hella distracted, even if I had sound proof ear gear. Just see other people would make me want to look over to see what's up.

And now! Time for shiny things!

I want the pink ones!!

The make trophies for important sports events. Dang it! I should have been a sports person, and then I could win the crystal for free!


I really wanted to touch, but I figured they would not appreciate me touching the fancy sword, and declaring myself queen when I pulled it from the stone.

That evening we took a quick bus tour of Waterford before heading to our option excursion to the pub. Our tour guide talked about this being the can't miss excursion. We picked up the gentleman who would provide the evening entertainment, and who also was a great local tour guide.


We then had an evening of music and drinks. Everyone fit snugly in the pub together. We were told to send one person from our pair or group to grab the drinks, so as to avoid too many people moving around, given the tight space.


So, I was in charge of getting drinks for my mom and me. We each got 2 drinks included in the pre-paid price for the excursion. When I got the first round of drinks, I got a whiskey and diet coke, and just a diet coke for my non-drinking mom. They gave me the whiskey in the glass with ice, and the diet cokes in little cute bottles! So, being the genius that I am, for the second round I ordered a whiskey and diet coke, and a cider for me. Then, I gave my mom her 2nd diet coke, and I got an extra drink of whiskey. So clever!!

On the way back to the hotel, our tour guide told us some really funny jokes, now that he was "less shy" from imbibing at the pub. He was not a fan of Camilla, and told a great joke! If you ask me, I'll tell you sometime.

Day 9

More sheep!

The morning of Day 9 we went to the hand weaving mill in Avoca. We got to see them weave wool to make all sorts of brightly colored scarves and other products. Then we visited the shop. After all the amazing colors I saw being woven, I of course bought some nice wool gloves - that are grey on grey. They match the color of my soul. ;^)

These machines old all of the spools of wool to thread into the machines as they weave.

Here this gentleman works on one of the hand looms.

They also have electric looms.


Here's a random photo from inside the bus - our ride for the 10 days of the trip. We had a very precise process for changing seats - we moved 3 rows counterclockwise each day, so everyone had a chance to sit up front. Mostly people tried to rely on those in front and behind them to help make sure they moved to the correct seat.

In the afternoon we visited the monastic site of Glendalough originally founded by St. Kevin in the 6th century. If I remember the story correctly, St. Kevin ran away to the wilderness because he wanted to devout his life to God, and some lady really wanted him to marry her. I think she followed him and tried to convince him, but he didn't relent. All I could think was, please never let me get that desperate!

Here are some pictures from the area.

This is the entrance way into the monastic area. Back in the day, only men were allowed in the holy places, so women couldn't go into this entrance. Thank goodness for modern times!


Here are some photos from inside!

There are many towers like this one all over Ireland. If invaders came, people would get inside these and wait out the invaders, way back in like the Norman and viking days (I think). You can see the lowest entrance is above someone head, and we're even taller than people back then. They would let people inside and the raise up the ladder. Inside the column would be wood floors and ladders for additional levels.

Inside the ruins of one of the churches.

I believe this is St. Kevin's church. Here are a couple shots of the outside.

Here we are inside the church. I am really glad church building improved by the time my local church was built. I could only imagine attending Friday mass in a church like this as a Catholic school child. It was really cool though!

We left this location right as a small spell of rain hit. Luckily our bus was nearby and we were leaving anyway. We then bussed back to Dublin (we made it full circle!) to check into our last hotel. The optional excursion that evening was a trip to the Guinness Factory. Since neither my mom nor I live beer, we skipped it. Instead, we made an evening in Dublin. Here's what we did:

• First, since it was right across the street, we went to the Irish Modern Art Museum, which was open for a little while longer. The grounds and building the museum are in were gorgeous! They were obviously someone old estate, now a museum. There was even a wedding going on. The walk to the museum was up this long driveway - probably took 10+ minutes to walk up. Unfortunately, the art sucked. I admit, I am super biased against modern art. Mostly gone are the skills of painting and sculpting as the great artist used to do. This museum only had art from the last 10 years. It's totally not my thing, and I am super judgy, so I was very mean. It's not my kind of art. But again, the building was fantastic!
• Second, we took a 20+ minute walk down to the train station just to realize we had no idea what direction to travel because we didn't know where we where and how that related to where we wanted to be. So then we walked back to the hotel.
• Third, after a quick stop for change, we took a taxi to a busier part of Dublin. We did some quick shopping before giving up on doing much of anything because we were very hungry, and my feet hurt so bad I would have been okay with someone chopping them off.
• So fourth, we asked a local (who was very nice, very cute, and had a great accent), where there was a good fish and chips place. I could seriously have eaten fish and chips everyday there. We walked way farther than we should have, and finally found the place when we turned around to give up. We then ate, and headed back to our hotel.

Day 10

Lastly, we come to day 10 - time to travel home. The bus took us to the airport. I was worried about my bag being too heavy, but they didn't ding me for that. We then took advantage of the shopping. We also had to process some purchases made in Ireland to get back the tax that they charge there, but you can get refunded if you don't live in the EU.

The Dublin airport let us do custom in Dublin. I was freaking out because my mom was not ready to head that way within the time the people told us. Luckily we had plenty of time, but I am a stickler for following directions and not missing flights.

We then headed back to Newark, with even more movies to watch. Unfortunately our plane was set to land 5 minutes after boarding started for our connecting flight. Plus, having been on the plane for hours, we needed pit stop. So, we dashed off one plane, made the fastest trip to the bathroom I've ever done, and were right on board our trip home to San Francisco. After having only a 10 minute window between 6 hour flights, I never wanted to fly again!! But we made it home!

Unfortunately our luggage didn't make our flight, so we had to wait around for like over an hour for the next flight, which did have our luggage. It also didn't help that it was after 10pm and we were hungry. But finally we got our bags and were able to head home!

We had an amazing trip, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it with the pictures!