For our vacation, we were part of a bus tour that took us around Ireland, and a little bit of Wales and England. Our leader, Deirdre, was an older Irish woman, and everyone absolutely loved her. She was hilarious and always had some story to tell us. The tour consisted mostly of the older folks, but that's what I expected, and there were a couple people that were also pretty hilarious. Janice was my grandma's doppelganger on my dad's side. They looked the same, they sounded the exact same with that southern accent, and their enthusiasm for everything was the same. Then there was 77 year old Betty who was saying things you would never expect to be coming out of a woman's mouth at that age. I always got a kick out of her.
We spent the first weekend in Dublin, where we took a tour around the city, saw the Book of Kells, an extremely old book, and also visted the Guinness Storehouse. Our last night in Dublin, we went out for dinner and a show, where there were singers, dancers, and also a comedian. My favorite was the dancing of course.
One of Dublin's many colorful doors.
Cafe where we ate lunch.
Carriage ride through Dublin
After Dublin, we took the bus to Killarney, which is on the other side of the country, but since Ireland is so small, we were still able to do it in just a few hours. Along the way though we stopped at the Rock of Cashel. Then the next day we took a tour along the Ring of Kerry, the Kerry Peninsula. This was my favorite part of the trip because it was absolutely gorgeous, even if it was raining for part of the day.
Rock of Cashel
Bailey's and Chocolate. Again, two of my favorite things ever.
After the castle, we stopped in another town to have lunch, and next to the pub was a Famine Graveyard, where somewhere between seven and fifteen thousand bodies were buried during the famine. I never realized how bad the famine truly was. Two million people died, two million people emigrated, and the country only had nine million to begin with.
After lunch we drove to Waterford where we took a tour through the Waterford Crystal company, and then drove on to Wexford where we spent the night to catch our ferry to Wales in the morning.
This cost 30,000 Euros!
We only got to spend an hour in Wales, but while we were there, we had to get a pint of the locally brewed beer. Brains. It wasn't too bad actually.
After Wales, we drove on to Bristol, England where we spent the night. The next morning we drove to Bath, Jane Austen's birthplace :) There we took a tour through the ancient Roman Baths, and then we were on to Stonehenge.
After Stonehenge, we continued on to London, our last stop on the tour. That night we walked around a little, saw Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and the Millenium Footbridge, which was in the last Harry Potter film. We also stopped at a local grocery store to pick up some goodies for the night, and I was ecstatic to see that they had one of my favorite German candies, Fred Ferkel, which are these gummy pig things, but they're delicious. In London though, they're called Percy Pig, and not only did they have Percy Pig, but they also had Reversy Percy, Percy Piglets, and Percy Pig and Pals. I've never been so excited about candy before.
The next day was our only day in London, so we had to make the most of it. We went to the Tower of London, where we walked around for a couple of hours and saw the Crown Jewels. From there we hopped on a city tour bus to see the rest of London, including Tower Bridge (which we actually thought was London Bridge, but isn't), Big Ben, Westminster Abbey (but only from the outside because the line was way too long to get in), St. James's Park, and Buckingham Palace. I really liked London, but I definitely know after all these trips that I am not a city person at all. I'll just stick to visiting them I think.
Westminster Abbey
And early the next morning we all headed to the airport. I flew back to Deutschland, and they flew back to Dublin for one more night. It was a wonderful trip, and it was wonderful to see part of the family again :)
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