I'm back!

Yes, dear old Ireland has sent me home. They told me my money wasn't worth anything anymore, so they had no more use for me. :-P

I'll be writing up a fairly detailed account of my trip, a travel journal of sorts, since I want to have it all written down for myself. But of course, I didn't actually write anything while I was on the trip, so it'll all be from memory after the fact. If you're not interested in all that, just know that I had a wonderful time, and I'm wishing I could go back.

Anyway, Sunday, Sept. 21st. Travel day, so... boring. We got a van shuttle to JFK airport (about a 2 hour drive) for an overnight flight to Shannon. It was only 5 1/2 hours, and we arrived at 5:45 am, Irish time.

Monday, Sept. 22nd. We were all pretty tired, having slept very little on the plane, and what with it being the ass-crack of dawn (not even - it was still dark when we left the airport). We rented a car, and that's where the fun started. See, we'd reserved a Toyota or a Mazda, one of those little midget cars Europeans drive, but when we got there and my mom and Aunt Lynne looked at it, there was no friggin' way all four of our suitcases could fit in that car without someone being strapped to the roof. So we ended up with a Jaguar instead. A Jaguar. The damn car was smarter than we were. It knew when the windshield was wet, and the wipers would come on automatically! (Which, of course, freaked the hell out of Aunt Lynne, who couldn't figure out what she'd done to turn them on, or how on earth to turn them off again.) We had GPS, which it took us about 4 days to figure out (or, rather, it took until someone let me take a look at it for us to figure it out, lol).

So, we set off in our snazzy rental car for the Cliffs of Moher, which as you can see, are pretty awesome. (All pictures are courtesy of Meghan, btw, for reasons that will become clear later on.) After that, we made the looong drive to Dingle, where we would spend our first night. I slept for a good portion of the drive, which I'm told was probably for the best, considering my mom and Meghan were scared shitless of Aunt Lynne's driving. (They drive on the left over there, remember, and their roads are like donkey paths. Seriously. You're lucky if you can get two cars to pass each other without one going into the bushes. They've never heard of a shoulder, the roads wind around like they used a slinky for a model, plus while the cars are small, you're still dodging huge trucks and farm equipment as they come whipping around the curves. It's quite disconcerting.)

Anyway, we arrived in Dingle without incident (and the car mainly intact), and checked into our B&B. Dingle is a cute little town, but a bit sleepy in September. It seems more like a summer place, since it's got a harbor and lots of docks for boats and stuff. They also have a resident dolphin, Funghi, and there are boating excursions you can take to see him.

We tried to go out to the pubs that night to hear some traditional Irish music, but that was a little bit of a bust. We tried three different places that advertised music, but they were either not traditional music, or late getting started (the Irish are apparently not so big on punctuality), and we were too tired to stay out late.

I'll try to keep these posts manageable, so I'll stop there. More to come!