Kurt's here!

A couple of days after Stacey left Kurt came to visit for two weeks! It was sooooo good to see him after 4 months of not!! He was here over Christmas and New Years too. We spent Christmas in Dublin and then rented a car and drove around Ireland...lots of things were closed to the whole weekend so we picked the scenic drives of the Dingle Peninsula and the Ring of Kerry. We also toured a few castles and stopped by some historic sites as we passed them. It was really nice to have him here. We lucked out and had some sunny days, but the pictures are deceiving...it was FREEZING! Finally we took a one hour flight to Edinburgh Scotland for their Hogmanay New Years festival! My friend Anna came and met us from France too. More on that on a later entry. Here are some pics from when Kurt was here:


Some Christmas decorations on the pubs in Temple Bar in Dublin. They went all out. The whole city was really beautiful for the season.

Kurt's first Guiness in Ireland...only took us 4 days or something to get him one :)

We found some reindeer in Phoenix park!

Spanish santa band in Dublin

King John's Castle in Limerick. We spent Christmas night in Limerick at a hotel. The lady there hooked us up with a superior suite for no extra cost!

Random castle on the way to Kilarney from Limerick

We happened upon a parade in the town of Dingle on the Dingle Peninsula! Turns out that on the day after Christmas (St. Stephen's Day) they celebrate "Wren's Day" here...get all dressed up and harrass people for money (we figured for beer since they were all pretty wasted!) It was pretty funny. We had lunch in a pub and they would come through all the pubs and collect money from the people in there.

On the scenic drive around Dingle Peninsula. It was beautiful! This place must be mad busy in the summer!

Dingle Peninsula

On our drive we got to witness a sheep dog rounding up the flock! It was so well trained...it rounded up the flock then laid down in the distance (you can see it in the pic).

After taking the drive around the peninsula we decided to stay the night in Dingle. It is such a cute little town. Everyone speaks Irish there too!

The next day we took off for another sightseeing drive. This time around the Ring of Kerry. It was soooo pretty! This pic is probably my favorite from all of them!

Self timer set in the grass. Turned out pretty cool!

Just a shot of the Irish countryside! Love the quilt :)

the lakes of Kilarney

Ross Castle near Kilarney at sunset!

We stayed the night in Cork. This is a cathedral in Cork that Kurt really loved.

Kurt wanted to go to Blarney...so here we are!

I thought this was a neat shot of the shadow of Blarney. One thing that was cool that I got to do on my second visit was check out the tunnels underneath the castle! There supposedly were tunnels for quick escape and whatnot that you can crawl around in. Creepy!

More from when my friends were here

These pics are from when Lizard and Stacey were here a few weeks ago...found some time to do some updating!


This is the girls at the Cliffs of Moher. I hopped the fence and hiked down to the side for this one!

On the way back from the cliffs we stopped by the Bunratty Castle and folk village. It was super cute. There was a santa's village set up too, but I'm planning on putting together a Christmas in Ireland section so those pics will come later!

Lizard found this sick hat at the gift shop at the castle. Two asses here?

Here's the Bunratty Castle. It was all decorated inside with authentic furniture and such from hundreds o years ago! Unfortunately no photography was allowed inside. We all picked a house to be "ours" at the village, and naturally I chose this one!

The Cliffs of Moher

me and Lizard peeking over the cliff. It was pretty freaky. We crawled on all fours to get out there. These pics really do no justice to show how incredibly high up the cliffs are!

Some helpful signs at the cliffs....

We stopped at the beach, Old Head, north of Galway. It was really beautiful with the snow capped mountains in the background. Stacey made her mark there in the sand!

Christmas Party

Our Xmas party was at a hotel kinda near my house...it was nice! We had minced pies and mulled wine (amazing!) as appetizers and a three course meal followed by a horrible BeeGee tribute band and dancing. My supervisor Linda bought me a Guiness too...turns out it is a horrible idea to mix Guiness and wine. Ask Lizard and Stacey about my hangover the next morning :( Here are some pics:


Me, Kay, Aileen, Mary, Louise, and Rebeccah. As you can see the good times crowd (not!)


Me and the lead singer of the "BeeGees...." The funny thing was that before the dinner this guy was roaming around the lobby being all creepy, hitting on ladies and whatnot. Our manager actually complained about him to security...but turns out he was in the band! Woops!

Linda, Aileen, me and Rebeccah by the tree.

Me and my supervisor Linda.

All the OT's and OTAs at Connolly Hospital waiting for the festivities to begin.

Belfast

So I've been busy and haven't updated lately...these pics are from a couple weeks ago already!







These were both taken at Belfast Castle. Its really nice...up on a hill so you can have a nice view of the city!

Foolin around outside the castle front...turns out there was a wedding going on so the poor unsuspecting guests in the background loved us I'm sure :)

Who brought this kid? For some reason the mother of the duke who designed the castle was in love with cats, so there are something like 16 around the castle grounds.

Queen's College in Belfast. It is famous for its Gothic architecture. Very impressive!

There are murals painted all over Belfast...mostly political in nature. We drove around for about an hour looking at and finding them. Very interesting and well done.

Here's one for ya "America's Greatest Failure." I agree!

We went to this cute international festival in front of the capital building.

I think this called the eye of Belfast...anyway we rode it and saw the city from the air! Twas fun. Also, as a side note, while we were standing in line Lizard said "guess which number car we're going to be on" (1-41) I guessed 12 and was totally right! pretty much the coolest thing ever.

Giant's Causeway (northern Ireland)

So my friend Elizabeth (Lizard) came to visit me! So awesome because we were talking on my birthday last week and figured out she should just come here already...so she did! Two days later nonetheless! I'm so excited because she also talked my other friend Stacey into coming next week for a while then Kurt will be here! I'm basically going to have visitors the whole time now which I love! This weekend me and Lizard took off to Northern Ireland to do some sightseeing. It was really amazing as usual for this place! Northern Ireland is home to Giant's Causeway, which is one of the natural wonders of the world apparently! We needed to check it out. We also went to Belfast, but I'll update about that later...so heres a little from our trip on Saturday:

This is Castle Bellingham!!! We saw it on a map and had to check it out. It is now a hotel, but it was really nice. We had lunch in the village ( D lish!)

We had planned on going to Giant's Causeway on Saturday afternoon but got distracted? Ok, the sun went down earlier than expected so we spent the night in Port Rush in Northern Ireland...and found ourselves some amazing arcades to keep us busy! Check out this HUGE crane game!

We literally watched the sun rise on our way to Dunlace Castle in the morning. You can see the castle there in the middle of the pic....it was Amazing!

Dunlace Castle



When we got to Giant's Causeway the visitors center was closed...which wouldn't have been a big deal except we had to trek down the trail sans trolley...and it was frosty and cold and far to walk! But it woke us up for sure! This pic is on the way there from the visitor's center. These rocks are all black and lava'ey? (is that a word?) Lizard told me they must be the giants' charcoal for bbqs :)
Here we are at Giant's Causeway! Apparently the legend is they are a stairway from N. Ireland to Scotland for when the giants from each land would meet in the middle to fight? Well thats what I hear anyway...(or they're some kind of volcanic formation nobody can figure out...take your pick!)

This is from my artsy photo collection ;)

This "castle" was reason enough for a drive all along the coast of N. Ireland! It was a beautiful drive back to Belfast for the afternoon.