Cead mille failte (a hundred thousand welcomes)

It's been such a fun, relaxing week in Ireland. Wednesday morning we drove up to Dublin to take the Crowleys to the airport. They're in England now for a few days visiting some friends and hopefully having a wonderful time. On the way back from Dublin we drove down to Wexford and walked around and had lunch - pretty little town with a nice harbor. Yesterday we went to the Rock of Cashel, which is a medieval fortress-turned-cathedral and then tried to go to the Swiss Cottage which is a pretty hunting cottage from the early 1800s made to look like a Swiss chalet. It was closed for the season and under construction but we managed to climb over the fence and through the woods to see it :) Didn't get any good pictures, unfortunately; couldn't risk the noise and the flash so close to the construction workers. Today we tried to go to the monastery at Kells (birthplace of the Book of Kells) but that was also closed. Still it's always nice driving through the countryside.

Random fun Ireland trivia:

On the west coast of Ireland they refer to Boston as "the next parish over." Isn't that cute?

Right now in Ireland they have a funny (if oddly intense) anti-littering radio campaign that we love. It goes something like this: "Littering is disgusting and so are those who do it. If you act like filth, you'll be treated like filth." We get a kick out of that every time.


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Blarmy!

Someone has stolen 180 kegs of Guinness (worth 64,000 Euro!) from the Brewery in Dublin!
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Happy Thanksgiving!

It's been a long time since we've posted! We don't remember when we last wrote but we think it was before Frankfurt so we'll start there.

Frankfurt was great - it was nice to be back in Germany (seemed so familiar and easy after Greece!) and the city was one of our favorites so far. We went to the zoo last Tuesday, which was fun.

Wednesday we flew to Dublin where we met up with Cathy/Mom! We were so excited to see our parents and be back in Ireland (we were here for 3 weeks in 2004). We LOVE Ireland. We went straight to Galway from the airport and had a fun bus ride of chatting and catching up. Friday we had a really great day. We rented a car and drove down the lovely west coast to the Cliffs of Moher then stopped in Lisdoonvarna for a fun lunch on the way back.

Friday we went back to Dublin and met up with Kathy/Mom and Pat/Dad and it was just so fun to be all together. We went to the always-entertaining Guinness Brewery and to Temple Bar for dinner, then out to a fun pub that had a great guy singing some good old-fashioned drinking songs. Saturday we took a bus tour, saw the Book of Kells and the Old Library at Trinity, did some shopping and enjoyed all of the lovely Christmas lights strung in the streets.

Sunday morning Cathy/Mom had to leave early from Dublin and then the rest of us drove down to the nice place we're staying at the Knocktopher Abbey. It's a lovely little apartment in a small town only about 20 minutes from Kilkenny. The city of Kilkenny is pretty and fun, with lots of little shops and restaurants. We stopped in a pub that, according to legend, used to be the residence of the only woman ever burned as a witch in Ireland. True? Maybe. We had fun either way.

Today we went down to the Waterford Crystal factory, which was really interesting. Waterford is also a nice town, they're all so pretty and charming.

It's been so fun to have our parents here, we wish they could all stay longer. So nice to see some familiar faces after being only with each other for so long! And it worked out really well that we could meet up in Ireland. It's such a wonderful, magical place and every time we're here we want to stay. It was also a good place to come because the Crowleys are from Ireland, of course, so it's an extra special place to visit. Unfortunately, we only know that the family came from County Cork, nothing more specific, so we weren't able to track down a home town or anything. That will have to be saved for another trip!

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