Here we are on the side of the road looking like crazy blokes as we find the land known as "Bog". Our little friend Rick Steves' told us in his book about this unusual ground that can be found on the side of the road in certain parts of Ireland. A Bog used to be a body of water and over time weeds have grown over it and it now acts as a spongy surface that can hold up to 10x it's weight in liquid. We visited the Museum of Archeology in Dublin and there they have 4 men who were found in bogs and their remains have been somewhat intack for over 1500 years. It's crazy! Below the bog land there in no oxygen so bacteria can't form and a body can be preserved. (back to the video) So if you jump on it, you can feel the ground move and someone can feel the ground move 15 feet away. And yes, that's right, we tried it. As you can see, drivers passing were entertaining by tweedle dee and tweedle dum.

That's all folks...cheerio!

Temple Bar: Before and After

Well, it's the end of our trip and we're in Dublin for our final night. What better way to say "adieu" than hit up the Temple Bar area for a couple of pints and some live music. Also known as a Pub Crawl. I doubt it'll be bad enough where either of us are actually crawling, but we're planning for a good time.

Today we shopped (post-Christmas deals are good!) so if you're lucky, you're on our list for Irish souvenirs. :o) This morning, however, we went to the Chester Beatty Library which holds some incredible ancient texts, including some of the original copies of Paul's letters to Corinthians, Romans, Galatians and several copies of the Gospels (c.200AD). They're on little scraps of a linen-type paper and it's amazing to think how even those scraps survived for almost 2000 years. It was absolutely incredible. We had lunch with a friend of Liz's at the Irish Bible Institute and learned that less than 2% of Irish people are considered Evangelical Christians. Pretty staggering numbers.

We had a little mix-up with our B&B vouchers so we're roughing it at the Clontarf Castle. (we got a smokin' deal. Thank you Orbitz.) We'll post a video later tonight that we think is quite funny. :o)

Cheers!

The cliffs of INSANITY!!

Yesterday, in Dingle, we drove around the Dingle Peninsula, which is a scenic drive called Slea Head. The views from there are things you only think exist in the movies! We stopped at a restaurant for afternoon tea and "sky rockets in flight". Ok, just kidding. But we did have some homemade bread and jam that was delicious! Here's a photo of us having tea and generally being irrevrant of the sacred English tea time.
In Dingle last night, we had dinner and then listened to a lot of traditional Irish music in the pubs where we also met a nice Australian family who told us we should "give them a ring" if we're ever there and then actually gave us their phone number. So nice! We also met up with a couple from Maryland that were also staying at our B&B. We had drinks with them at The Small Bridge pub for more traditional music. This morning we started our drive up to Galway and made a few stops along the way including this one:




Cheers!

Some photos

He could put legs under a chicken

You may be wondering where those words of wisdom came from, and we will tell you: a sugar packet in our B&B in Dingle. Apparently it's an Irish saying meaning someone is very talkative. And we definitely ran into a guy last night who could put legs under a chicken at the pub we were at! We went into to listen to some music and he chatted our ears off! Very nice guy though. We finally found some legit traditional Irish music complete with a hand pipe. (CJ, I think we should find a way to incorporate this into the Element band.)

The drive here yesterday was absolutely breathtaking! We took some photos along the way that we'll post a little later. We were listening to the Hillsong United "I Heart Revolution" CD and it was awesome. The hills here really are green and luscious with little sheep.

Also, apparently we stand out like sore thumbs around here. Everywhere we go people can tell we're Americans even before we talk. Who knows.

More later...love!

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)