It was a fine time in Ireland, and that's a fine car park over there

Hello hello...... long time, no blog, I know. Life has been fun and busy lately. My parents (Dad and Carolyn) spent a week in Paris and they had fun seeing all the big sites and museums. We spent the weekend together seeing some fun neighborhoods and shopping, and one night we went to Willi's Wine Bar (fantastic again!) and a couple cafes on The Champs Elysees! It was fun to have dinners together and plenty of wine.

After the fiasco of being bag-less for a couple days thanks to British Airways, they finally got all their luggage and we trekked on to Ireland! From the start it was a great time. Each of our taxi drivers had fun stories to tell (and sometimes the accent was strong enough that it was hard to understand their English)! After checking into the hotel room we walked down the block and had a yummy (and big) Irish lunch (lots of meats, bread, seafood, and soup) + Guinness beer...mmmm
Our hotel was in the Temple Bar area which was perfect because it was so cute, lots of colors, and lots of pubs! Dublin was pretty much 2 days of pub crawling, drinking plenty of Guinness as well as Irish whiskey. The first night we went to see the film U23D, one of their concerts in 3D. IT was amazing and felt like we were right in the front row! We saw the elementary school that Bono and The Edge went to in Dublin as little boys, plus we had a drink in The Clarence Hotel, which they both own. Being in Dublin was really fun since I'm such a big U2 fan!
Saturday night we met some cool Irish guys just a few years older than me in the pub next to our hotel, so that turned into a night of Guinness and funny, random stories.

Dublin was very relaxed and cool. I liked the people and the atmosphere a lot. It was full of young people and was kind of more my speed than the young life in Paris. I'd definitely go back there.

The other 2 days of our trip were in the countryside of Ireland, starting in Killarney and then doing The Ring of KErry. Kerry is a country in Ireland, and covers a lot of the country, so we really covered a lot of territory. We started out on a train to Cork and went to the Blarney Castle where we kissed the Blarney Stone and now have the gift of eloquence :) It was a little scary doing that because of the heights, but it was fun and we have great pictures to show for it.
We also went to Cove, a cute, colorful, quaint little town right on the water. It was actually the last calling port for the Titanic just days before it hit the iceberg. It was really interesting to be there and see the docks and the port and visualize the scene. There was a beautiful cathedral up on a hill and the view was spectacular! We ended the day with a stop in a museum devoted to The Titanic, The Luscitania, and the story of the Irish immigration. That night we stayed in a nice bed and breakfast and I slept like a baby :)

On Sunday we took a bus tour of the Ring of Kerry. Words can not describe how beautiful and different it was in the country of Ireland! wow!! It was so green, lots of small rolling hills, and sheep everywhere! Everyone's cameras were constantly on! The houses were all fairly new and the architecture was really neat. They had pretty colors and some were really big. Every now and then there were little old cottages, but mostly the houses were new. We stopped at a village of little old cottage type houses just to see how it looked a long time ago when there wasnt electricity and the houses were the size of a small bedroom.

Fortunately we also made it to the coastline (rivers and bays) and saw beautiful aqua blue water and tall cliffs. There were islands far out in the water too. The scene was gorgeous. The weather was usually fairly sunny with some clouds, but the wind was just awful, making it really cold!

All in all, it was a great vacation and I was really happy to do it with Dad and Carolyn! I would love to return to Ireland one day. There were bumps on the road with transportation and luggage, but it all ended up okay. We also had a very entertaining tour guide on Saturday that we had to try our best at to keep from laughing out loud (but I failed at that) :)

Well, I'd write more but its been a long day and I'm a little sleepy. I will write again soon to update on whats going on in Paris! And pictures soon!