Fifty Shades O' Green

Our vacation to Ireland was so wonderful, I think it was probably the nicest family vacation we've ever had, and we've had some good ones in the past. The island country of Ireland is simply beautiful. I love the hillsides with either stone walls or hedgerows separating fields of all different shades of green, dotted with sheep or cows. I loved that when I asked for tea, I got a full pot of tea with a small pitcher of milk. I loved the Irish language, and the variety of accents in the English speakers. Our tour guide's name was Matthew, he was from Derry and pronounced the th with an f sound so he said his own name "Maffew." The guide we had from Kerry said the th with a hard t sound, so he pronounced it "Mattew."

This is a photo of a typical hillside, unfortunately out of the bus window.

It was a walking tour, so we walked, and ate our way through the country. Thank goodness we did so much walking, had I eaten like that and been pretty sedentary, I probably would have put about ten pounds on, as it was, I managed to only gain about 3 pounds. We had fish and chips and seafood chowders; we had delicious scones with raisins; we had all kinds of smoked salmon; we practically ate our weight in brown bread with butter. I may have mentioned a time or two before how much I love tea, so I was in heaven in the country that drinks more tea per capita than any other country.

Daisies grew everywhere in Ireland.

Fair warning: I took about 1500 pictures on this trip. I will not subject my readers to all of those pictures, but I will give you a fair number so you can see what a lovely place Ireland is. I'm planning on splitting my posts up so I don't overwhelm you with information or photos on any one post.

We left Denver on a Saturday morning and flew into Newark. I have never been to New York city before, so it was really cool to see the city, Central Park, and the statue of liberty in person (if far off) as we landed at the airport. Then we got on the flight to the Shannon airport in Galway. According to all of the information about how to fight jet-lag, I was supposed to sleep on that flight, and then not again until bedtime the following night. I, and my children, were unsuccessful in sleeping on the plane, so we were wrecked that first afternoon. Although there were times that my eyes slipped closed of their own accord, we did manage to stay awake until bedtime that night, and then we were pretty much on schedule.

We visited Bunratty castle that first day, and toured the little shops in the area. Although my memories are a little hazy of that day because I was so darned tired. After a night of rest (basically the only night on the entire trip that I slept through the night), I was much better for the rest of the trip. We learned there that in Ireland, regular food can't be legally served before noon, so we had scones for lunch that day.

This photo is a bit fuzzy, and apparently I was too tired to realize it when I took it.

My daughter standing in the doorway of the blacksmith's thatched roof  cottage on the grounds of Bunratty castle.

A little blue thatched roof cottage at Bunratty castle.

My son working with the blacksmith. The woman in the background is one of the teachers from the middle school who traveled with us.

My kids at the top of the castle in front of the Irish flag.

After Bunratty castle, we went to a place called Coole Park with beautiful gardens. Ireland gets so much rain, and has such a narrow temperature range, that everything is covered with green, and plants grow out of the walls.

Sun shining through the trees, right before it started to rain.

Roses growing on the wall.

A red gate and more flowers growing on the walls.

Once we got into Galway and checked into our hotel we decided to walk around a bit, to try and stay awake until dinner time. One of the songs we played at my dad's memorial service was Galway Bay, so it was really neat to be able to see the bay. There was a pedestrian area called Shop Street that reminded me of the Pearl Street mall in Boulder. We spent several hours walking around there.

Swans in the bay.

That night we had dinner as a group to formally meet everyone in our travel group, who all turned out to be wonderful. There were the 13 of us from Colorado (my family of four, two teachers from the middle school, and several family members of one of the teachers), two sisters from California, three friends from Iowa, two friends from Pennsylvania, and a couple from Washington, DC. Everyone was friendly and up for any adventure our tour guide offered us.

This is already a pretty long post, so I'll close on the end of our first day, and start on the second day in tomorrow's post.