Reminiscing About and Missing Ireland

You can blame this foodless post on the fact that today is St. Patrick's Day.

B and I went on our honeymoon 4 months after we got married.  We spent one week in Ireland and one week in Italy.  As long as I can remember, I had wanted to go to Ireland - I even thought that I could do a really good Irish accent.  I know now that mine was seriously awful, but I was just in love with Ireland.  B is quite Irish, so it seemed like if we were going to go on a good long trip to Europe, Ireland should be at the top of the list of places to go.  We decided that we would fly to Shannon, make our way down the west coast, travel the south and then back up to Dublin, staying in B & Bs the whole time, except for our last night, when we were in Dublin.

We went at the end of June, which is supposed to be one of the best times to visit, but it ended up being one of the rainiest weeks of my life.  I have no idea how normal it was for that country, but wow, it was wet!  All that rain though, left us with some great green color everywhere.  I still can't get over that amount of color.  It gets really rainy in northern Virginia in the early Spring, and when our lawn turns green B and I always say that we can see Ireland in our back yard.

One of the best days we had there is when we missed the ferry going to the Aran Islands.  We ended up driving our rental car to Oughterard where I got to experience the wonder that is Supermac's, but on the way, we stopped our car on the side of the road and played on some big boulders and climbed hills.  I look really serious in this picture, but it was a really fun afternoon.  Back to Supermac's.   I had a kebab, and B had one of the largest servings of fish and chips we'd ever seen.  We ended up making the next ferry for the islands where I once again experienced Supermac's, although this time, I had a tiny ice cream sundae.

We of course ended up seeing the "Cliffs of Insanity" or the Cliffs of Moher, the Rock of Cashel, B kissed the Blarney Stone, and me, being an ice cream addict, I ended up finding delicious ice cream at Murphy's in Killarney.  By the way, Killarney National Park is a must see/explore if you're ever visiting Ireland.  We made our way to Dublin, but only after stopping for our last night in Rathvilly and ended up eating at Germaine's in Baltinglass which was far and away the best food we ate there.



Although I'm not a beer drinker, B is, so while in Dublin we had to visit the Guiness factory.  When we made it to the end of the tour, we handed our tokens in and each got a free beer.  Having already said that I'm not a beer drinker, you can see in this picture here that B was one happy boy!

I'm really missing Ireland right now.

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

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