Day 3: A windy day in the mountains.


Another day in Ireland is complete! We’re having a good time and are already sad to be leaving Friday morning. I’m DEFINITELY coming back to Ireland. I love it! Internet is painfully slow, but other than it’s great! I’m still working on the first day’s photos to upload. It’s taking about 2 hours to upload about 20 pictures. And I’m even just downloading the least quality & it’s still taking that long. So if the pics aren’t that impressive, it’s because I am downloading a “very low quality” version of them. I don’t think I’ll be uploading any pics onto the blog itself as that takes pretty long too. So use the link on the right to go to my photo website. As I type this I am finishing up uploading all of yesterday’s pics, then I’ll start on today’s.


Today was supposed to be an early morning... key words... supposed to be. We had a 10am tour that had a meeting point about 10 minutes from our hotel. We planned on getting up early and having the famous full Irish breakfast. Not this morning! A tip to travelers. An alarm clock plugged in to a voltage converter does not keep time. It looses about 10 minutes each hour. It wasn’t really a problem this morning, but more of a shock. Thank God I happened to look at the time on my watch. We thought it was around 7am and it was actually 8:30am. So we skipped the breakfast and headed right for the tour.
The tour was an all day tour leaving at 10am and returning by 5:30pm. Today’s tour took us to a beautiful estate, Powerscourt, that has been used in films and TV shows (The Tudors, The Count of Monte Cristo, etc.). Next we headed down “Braveheart Road” to a village dating back to the 6th century, Glendalough. It had many churches and was just incredible! Then we saw some spots where Braveheart & PS- I love you (among others) were filmed. Next we headed to the top of the Wicklow Mountains and then we made our way back to Dublin. What a day! Our tour guide, John or Mickey if we didn’t like him, was another great guy! Very funny and very nice.We found out from him that to play golf in Ireland at a decent course starts at 150 euro per game, that’s almost $200 and doesn’t include any rentals- that’s just for the game!! Expensive, but I’m willing to bet you’ve never seen a golf course like these. Ireland is so gorgeous! Beautiful rolling hills of every shade of green imaginable, with sheep periodically showing up. Amazing. We also found out today that Ireland is not a fan of Obama... or Biden. “You know both Obama & Biden are Irish? We don’t claim either of them.” I think it may be how religious this country is. They just made divorce legal in the last few years and abortion is still illegal, so I could see where they are not a fan of Obama. No comment. ;) By the way, no CNN anywhere, only SkyNews, Fox News’ sister station. Anyway.
Today for dinner we finally got over to Supermac’s. It’s their version of McDonald’s & KFC put together, but 100% Irish. It was so good. My fries were called taco fries- they were fries (chips) with everything you’d have on a taco on them. So good. My mom got cheese fries and my dad got curry, cheese fries. My dad got their chicken (big surprise) and my mom & I got burgers. It was really good. Nothing like fast food. The manager was helping the kid taking our order and he was so funny. I swear, the Irish are all the same, extremely funny & friendly. He was picking on us Americans, than us NYers, then our Mets and then finished with telling us we were going to go home and open our own place selling their fries and be millionaires in a year, because, “...you can’t get those type of chips in the US...We’ll put anything on chips...” After Supermac’s our fast food time was not complete without our “must visit” in each country we ever go to, McDonalds. The reason being that for all you old-timer McDonalds fans you’ll remember how amazing the apple pies were before the dumb food police came in and wrecked them by making them bake the apple pies instead of frying them. Yeah, ‘cause when I go to a fast food restaurant I expect a healthy meal. Whatever! Anyway. Any McDonalds you go to other than in the continental US still serves their food the good old way- even in Hawaii. We’re the only dummies that force our fast food chains into serving healthy junk food. We’re so dumb. So anyway. We stopped in McDonalds to get my dad a coffee and my mom her obsession, only available in foreign countries, McDonald’s deep-fried apple pies. Watch for the pics of her enjoying her long lost love. 
After our fast food binge we headed back to the hotel real early, like 6pm, to repack all our suitcases. Flying here we were allowed our checked bags to be 50lbs & our carry-ons could be whatever. Now our flight early Friday morning we can only have our checked bags weigh 44lbs and our carry-ons 22lbs. Looks like we’ve got all that situated perfectly. I still have to contact our MIA taxi driver and make sure he’ll be here Friday morning. 
There are not many pictures of us today, lots of scenery though. They were having very unusual wind gusts of up to 60mph! It was crazy. When we were on top of the mountain I started to blow away while I was trying to take a picture. I had to plant my feet at like 1 & 7. I looked funny, but at least I stayed upright. It was so windy! And my hair! Oh, my. It did not do well today. I went to the bathroom to fix it about halfway through the day and then realized that that was pointless as I was going right back into that wind. So like I said, not many of US, but many of Ireland.
Tomorrow we’re going to actually see Dublin. We’re taking the hop-on-hop-off bus around Dublin and end with a meal at Temple Bar in a “traditional” Irish pub. Then we’ll be heading to bed early... we have to leave for the airport at 3am!!! 
Day 1 pics are up on the site... still working on today’s.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lisa,
OMG! Your pictures are fabulous! I was getting so excited thinking about the scrapbook possibilities but then I realized not my pictures! Ha Ha! I wish I did not have this OVERWHELMING fear of my feet leaving the ground and could travel the way you do! I would have to be knocked out completely to get me in an airplane......I guess I will settle for my 20 hour car ride to Fl and please keep the pictures coming!
Laurie

mayo3dill said...

Lisa....the pics were absolutely breathtaking!!!I guess Ireland IS as beautiful as I always imagined it to be. (Just one thing....if I was your mother, you'd be DEAD!!!) Love you Lisa!!