*tear*....*sniff*..... Last day in Ireland.

We were dreading this day from the second we landed in Ireland.... the last day of our honeymoon, adventure, vacation and pizza fest. I don't think we knew how much we actually dreaded it at that point, because there was no way to brace ourselves for the amazingness that is Ireland. But....the show must go on.

So we had one last drive we wanted to make on the way to the Shannon area. It's called Connor's Pass. It takes you thru two mountains that shape Dingle and also along the ocean. I was told that if we thought the Slea Head drive was tricky we'd better saddle up, cause this was even trickier!! ....is that a challenge?? ohhhh i think it was :) We reluctantly packed up, said goodbye to the sweet little house dog and jumped in the car. At first it was nothing....just the normal minii-sized road and some sweet views..... then the mini turned into basically not there!! Thank God there wasn't much traffic cause i'm pretty sure there would have been several cuss words dropped that day! This drice was fun cause we were higher up and inbetween mountains, so the views were different then we'd seen. We climbed up/down some things we probably shouldn't have (i remember telling Travis that if Debbie were here we'd be in SOOO much trouble!) We climbed up this one little place where there was a waterful, just certain that the damn water had to be coming from somewhere. .... higher, higher..... travis are you SURE there's a pond up here...... yes abby, quit being a baby..... higher higher.....TRAVIS seriously..... i think i see something.... travis this marriage isn't going to be a long one if i climb up the whole damn mountain and there isn't a flipping pond (i kid i kid!!). Well....there was a pond..... and it was freezing!!!! travis wanted to get it.... or actually push me in, i managed to scare him away from the idea and we sat for a while admiring the view from uptop....(lots of taking in the scenery is vital in a place like this....some tears may have been shed too) After reminding him that my mom would kill him if he didn't bring me back in one piece he helped me down the mountain and we were on our way.....again!!!

We were scheduled to fly out of the Shannon airport at 845 am Tuesday morning. I had asked travis is he wanted to stay in Shannon the night before or if he'd rather stay in a smaller irish town. He voted small town, which we both regretted at this point. Buuuuuut, a 15 euro late fee a piece wasn't something we felt like was necessary so we went to Quin. This place was ohhh about 10 minutes from Shannon, so not bad. But when we get there, the room isn't ready...and there's no internet. I was peeved. We hadn't had internet for two days and how in the world am i supposed to update you guys when i can't get a flipping connections!!!! I pouted....just a little! Travis was ready to just go up to the room get our stuff situated and rest. At first i was on board, but then decided we're in flipping IRELAND, there has got to be something cool in the area we can go see!! I researched, and i was right (weird!). The Cliffs of Moher were only a short hour away and a must see!! (because we hadn't had the internet i was unable to figure this out until we went to mcdonalds and used theres....yes mcdonalds.) Off we go....again....in the small car....on the small road.....to a place that we hope to God TomTom knows how to get to. Tom seems to know where it is....so we continue on!! As we pull into the nearest town, the first thing we see is a golf course...now there are plenty of these in Ireland but this course in my opinion is the DEVIL COURSE!!! I have never in my life seen land with so many hills....i mean seriously, do they want people to play there? The best of golfers could golf on here and leave crying.... if it wasn't for the scenery i don't think anyone would be brave enough to play. Maybe that's why they're booked up for like a year out, men like the challange..... or maybe they just like to throw away $1000 on a game of golf....i don't golf, so i don't understand. It did make me miss my dad though.... he'd of been grinning from ear to ear if he could have seen it! Anyway....on to the Cliffs. I've seen cliffs, i've been to the Grand Canyon and what not.... well, the GC's got nothing on these bad boys!! We tried throwing several rocks over, never seeing it hit the water.... wind? bird? who knows....all i know is it was steep!! The cement trail ended like a quarter of the way around it, but some smart or dumb people continued past that, leaving a sweet illegal trail for all of us non-rule followers. We made it about 3/4 of the way before i was over it.... it was cold, windy and i was hungry :) We got some great pics though....

Some pics from Dingle....

The fog.....awesome!


Dingle

Our Sweet Air pic trav mentioned :)

One of the beaches!

Slea Head drive....aka, one scary ass road :)

Ok...i was NOT that bad TRAVIS!!! I may have ran into the wall a few times and thought he was leading me to the wrong B&B, but i was fine :) (it's probably ok that we can't find Paddy's whiskey here!). Like trav said we got up, ate our lovely breakfast and went back to sleep for a bit! After all, we are on vacation!!! We got up and around and decided to take the Slea Head Drive. Its a short drive, about 30 minutes if you go the speed limit 50km/hour, and don't stop (not likely!). Well.... i was not about to drive that fast on this road. It's the size of ohhh a small car, two lanes, and the only thing keeping you from flying off the side into the atlantic is a small rock fence!! It was scary....and so you can imagine that everytime a car came up i made my usual Behhhh.... sometimes i may have actually screamed :) We stopped at least 12 times.... well at least when everyone else did, we're followers!! It was AMAZING!!! It was slightly foggy that day so the clouds were just over the mountains on the other side of the ocean making for one hell of a view!! We also got our first look at some of their beaches!! No.... we didn't strip our clothes off and run into the deep blue.... if we would have done this, we ourselves would have been blue!! That water is f'n COLD!!! I'm not sure how there were kids playing in it, they're used to it i'm sure, but still!! Some were smart and wore wet suits.....still crazy in my book!! ..... We had planned to stop for lunch somewhere along the drive, but turns out unless you want to eat in someones's actual kitchen, you're out of luck! So about 430 when we made it back we were STARVING!!!! And as luck would have it, Dingle had a pizza place :) We had what they call the GTC.... garlic tomato and cheese bread..... i don't think i need to go into detail about how good this is....... you should just know!! I started to not feel so good after dinner so we went back to the house and rested, watched some tube and just chilled. Around 9 or so travis decided it was time to eat again, eating may or may not have been one of our favourite things to do in Ireland!! Every town we'd been in we kept seeing at least 4 Chinese places. This baffled us. I mean, don't get me wrong, we love us some chinese food, but in Ireland??? We figured we'd better check it out..... and we weren't disappointed!! It was really good, and SUPER busy!! The only strange thing about it was before your food they brought out this spongey white things....almost like rice cakes, but not.... i have no idea. I thought they were gross, trav didn't mind. Then it was back to bed..... we were tuckered out at this point in the trip..... it's rough eating all the time and sight seeing :) Only one full day left in Ireland..... tear.

Ring of Kerry and Dingle

travis has the urge to blog..... so here he is :)



So I have multiple things to say......It's day 5 and I have to say Abby's been a wicked good driver. Only about taken out one poor little suicidal sheep and just brushed up against one other cars side few mirror......totally their fault though. Aside from that Ireland is fantastic.....I'm so glad we came over here as opposed to a beach which we found along our drive any way today.....however we didn't go in the water as it was freezing but others were enjoying it and it looked like fun. Another beautiful day for the drive weather was 62 and sunny.



So as we arrive in to dingle we notice a crowd of people most of them in running gear looking rather sluggish as they've just ran The First Annual Marathon of Dingle which runs accross Slea Head Drive....still not sure what drives people American or Irish to run that far for any reason.....after getting in to town we went to park in a "car park" to find our B&B because Tom let us down and couldn't find it. So as we went on a walk about we decide to go to the pier and check it out we ended up taking some amazing photo's of ourselves catching sweet air i.e. the pictures to come later!

Up next was lunch which we ate at Danno's Pub! I had the fish and chips and Abby had the special.....which we both had the day before.....amazing sandwiches (Ham, tomatoes, and amazing cheese....sometimes onions can't talk anymore about them i'm getting hungry). So as most of our story has gone the first night we proceeded to eat dinner have lots to drink then stumble home.....well abby stumbled I watched in amazement as every time i thought she was going down she managed to catch herself. Before this however we went in to a Pub called ~Dick and Macks which is accross from the church....the church is conincedently accross from Dick and Macks. There we made quick friends with the old town drunk there who tried to steal Abby's ring becaused he guessed the net value of it was $10,000.......yeah well he would have been sadly dissappointed and he wasn't a very good thief. . . . . however his body guard scared me and looked similar to Indian Jones/Gorbachov....sp....he also fancied bringing in his own bottle of liquor as opposed to buying it over the bar! Smart man in my Book. So as you can guess the next day to follow was going to be rough but no worries we ate then took a sweet ass nap! Abby you Up!

In honor of game day....and our Purple Pride!

A Little Wildcat shout out from Ireland!! GO CATS!

K.....

S....

U....

U....

WILDCATS!

A glimpse into Heaven!!

What our view was for basically the whole drive.....amazing!


A small fishing town called Castletownberra

Sunset.....

Day 4....DUDE!!! You almost just took out that sheep!

Hello!!!! What an amazing trip we've had so far (i'm sure it'll only get better!!) Yesterday after we made our way from Kinsale to Blarney Castle (Yes we kissed it, and yes we have much more eloquence from it!!) we came to Kenmare. This town isn't a big place, and it's actually quite quiet during the week. When we first got here we just walked around for a few hours, exploring, window shopping and checking out the views! We stopped into a bar for some lunch and ordered the worlds HOTTEST pizza!!....side note, the pizza here, is AMAZING!! sorry papa johns, you've been pushed out of first place in our eyes :) We've had pizza at least once a day for all four days we've been here! So if we're fat when we get back, i blame the pizza! After that we found ourselves a nice little wine store and helped ourselves to a nice bottle while uploading pics! We headed out to find some live music and drinks. We found ourselves in a little place called PF McCartney's. It was a great time. We met a couple that was visiting from Florida... they pretty much are doing the same route as we are but reversed! So they had some good things to say about all the places we're headed next! We then went to a bar called O'Connors. this place wasn't much bigger then the Lou in Aggieville, but Travis insisted we stop in and get a drink of Paddy's! We sat at the bar and quickly made friends with three little irish men. They kept asking me if my dogs name was Toto....this was funny the first 10 times, then i was getting annoyed!! They were very friendly though, and gave us some good advice as to what to do today! They said since we're diving the Ring of Kerry tomorrow that we should drive the Ring of Bera also. IT WAS UNBELIEVABLE!!! I don't think it's fair that people get to live here, and see this everyday......it's breathtaking to say the least! And on that note, we'll need someone to pack up our stuff and send it out here. we won't be returning home.....ever :) That was pretty much an all day adventure.....but driving along the coast and mountains was worth it!!! another side not, sheep and goats....they don't stay in fenced areas, they like to stand in the middle of the road and apparently some of them have death wishes! We made it back here in time to stop and watch the sunset...again, UNBELIEVABLE!! (seeing a trend here!). I'm posting all my pics as we speak on facebook, i'm sure they won't do justice, but it's all i have!! I'll try to get a few on here as well!! Tomorrow we're off to drive the Ring of Kerry as we make our way to Dingle. The locals call it "The Kingdom". Apparently you can't get much closer to God!!!