Singing in an old echo-y room

For your listening entertainment...

More tales from the Emerald Isle

For those of you who were wondering, we've had some absolutely incredible weather the whole time we've been here. Not a drop of rain yet! The first 2 days were actually sunny (I didn't bring any sunglasses thinking I wouldn't need them) and the last 2 days have been cloudy but still clear. Another fun thing has been breakfast at the B&Bs. I never really slow down for breakfast in real life, but here we have a couple cups of tea and take at least an hour for breakfast.

This morning we headed out to Waterford to take a tour of the crystal factory only to find it was closed for "holiday". So we wandered around for a bit, realized we couldn't afford a thing in there and left. We headed to lunch and then did a little shopping before getting in the car again to head to Blarney. We took the scenic route (another thing I never do in real life) and discovered this adorable little fishing village called Ardmore. We saw this church and walked inside to hear Josh Groban playing overhead. Random.

Also, I personally feel we've managed the driving pretty well; it actually feels normal to drive on the left side of the road now. We've also come to know and love our dear GPS thingy, whom we affectionately call Melba June. She's lead us astray only a few times, and even stopped talking to us for awhile after we yelled at her, but we've since repaired that relationship and we're all doing fine now.

Tonight, despite being in the most Irish place we can think of (Blarney) we couldn't find any traditional Irish food (or music for that matter) and settled on Suko Thai for dinner. Not very Irish, but we settled for the fact that it was Irish Thai and ate our Cashew Chicken and Pad Thai in contentment.

Tomorrow, we're headed to Kinsale which we hear is a great spot for fish and chips and traditional Irish music. If Rick Steves has lead us astray again, our friendship will most certainly be on the rocks.

Happy New Year's everyone! We'll let you know what 2009 looks like since we'll see it first. :o)

*The picture on the left is Powerscourt, and old Irish home complete with incredible gardens.  Fun fact: The Count of Monte Cristo was filmed here!  (The scene where he comes down to the party in the big hot air balloon.)

Today, we saw Kilkenny castle and the Rock of Cashel, which is amazing.  The drive to Cashel was just as amazing!  We took backroads from Kilkenny and we felt like we were truly on an Irish adventure!  Complete with sheep, rolling hills and incredible homes.  (Caralyn, you'll be happy to know that there's a CD player in our car so we've been listening to all of your playlists!)  It was built sometime around 450AD.  That's old people.  We walked into this room with all of these coffins (there's an official word that neither of us can think of) that had incredible acoustics.  I know this will surprise everyone, but I decided to sing.  It was amazing!  We'll post that video later.  :o)

Interestingly enough, we've had a hard time finding food to eat!  The pubs don't seem to serve food in addition to beer and all the restaurants we've found are either Italian, American or Mediterranean and are overpriced.  However, we did have Chicken Pie our first night (leave it to Lisa to bring up the food) and that was, as the Irish say, magically delicious!

Also, there's a bar here in Kilkenny called Paris, Texas.  I know.  Believe it.  So random.

This is us leaving the airport and driving on the right side of the car and road for the first time!  We nearly missed an old lady on her walker but that's it. (We opted for the automatic instead of a manual. Smart move) :0)

3rd day here!

We have finally found access to the internet so we apologize if some of you have been waiting by the computer for our next entry!

We'll make this brief:
We left the airport on Saturday, upgraded to an automatic (so we would live to see our children/or get married), had a few u-turns on the freeway, lots of laughs and managed to get to our first B&B safely. We have a video of us driving that we will post soon. We didn't have hot water for our first night, we cried ourselves to sleep. We went to a local pub in downtown Dublin and had our first official Irish beer with real Irishmen. Yes, there were a lot of good-looking men there. It was quite lovely. But...the only one who approached us to ask Lisa why she wearing her hat inside was a close talkin', spitter. Not so lovely. Watched rugby and had some good food.
That night we went to sleep at 7pm and woke up at 1am. We both couldn't sleep so we watched the top 50 best comedies ever made...we had a good laugh and then conked again. We woke up at 9am just in time for brekky. We chose the wrong table to sit at because we encountered an Irish women with no filter for letting others talk. Hello! Shut it now Irish woman!

Left there yesterday and we are now in Kilkenny. Awesome and lovely! Cheers! We love it here. The B&B is so quaint and sweet but a little chilly in our room but who's complaining. We'll post a pic later. Went to find a pub last night but nothing was open serving food so Lisa downed a Guiness and the waitress bought us both a baby Guiness shot which reminded us of meeting Jesus for the first time! It was soooo good! It had Kaluha, Bailey's and Guiness. Mmmmm....Marybeth, you would have been proud of us!
Ate dinner at an Italian place...it was okay. We sat in the poor man's area, practically in the kitchen.

We are going to the Rock of Cashel right now. More to come....love you all.
Liz & Lisa

So alas we are waiting anxiously at the O'hare airport for our little blimy plane to the Irish Isles!  On my flight from Phx (Liz) I ran into my friend Ryan Adamson and we found out we were on the same plane to Chicago! It was a nice surprise and we talked the whole way here.  We got off the plane and there waiting for us was Lisa my travel lassie!  

We got our bags, went to check in for Ireland, had problems swiping our passports (looked like total doofs), finally got it and then went and had a nice tasty morsel of food at Chili's To Go. What a nice, upstanding dining establishment. 

We are now sitting in the airport waiting to get on our flight to Dublin and we are soooo excited! Outside the window, the weather is frightful but my dear it's so delightful, la,la,la,la,la!

Nighty night. Tomorrow another entry from the Emerald Isles!  

Twas the night before traveling...

Ok, kids, this blog is appropriately named because Liz and I will not only be driving on the wrong side of the road and on the wrong side of the car, but we'll also being trying to navigate the narrow roads of the Irish countryside in a STICK SHIFT. That's right people. It's a driving nightmare trifecta.

Check back here as we update this blog with stories (horror?), photos, tall tales and antecdotes from the road. Or perhaps photos of shoes we'll be wearing, gum we'll be chewing or proper British rubber chickens.

And remember kids, Lucky Charms, they're magically delicious!