Thanks a Million!

I can't believe our trip is ending! Did I mention we're coming home soon?! One of the main reasons we sold everything (or tried to) and left was based around Josh's existential crisis of purpose and vocation (and if you want to read more about that, here's his blog again). What we've both come to realize, I think, is that it is a more universal theme than either of us would have imagined. More especially for Josh though, was this reckoning and he spent much of our trip coming to grips with this and really delving into his own wishes and desires for the next chapter in life. And he's pretty well decided to finish up his bachelor's (he's one class and an internship away) at Messiah and then pursue a teaching certificate program (location TBD). But that puts us back in Hershey for a year which is very exciting for me because when we left three months ago, I didn't expect to be coming back for any length of time other than visiting my family. But I'm rather ecstatic to be going to where I consider home. And going home we are.  Our buyers fell through last month and we lost our contract because of a pretty major inspection snafu. But oddly enough, it works out okay and gives us somewhere to live while Josh finishes school. And we'll have the whole year to fix the problem so we can get the house back on the market at some point during the year. God certainly has odd timing and plans (at least to my human reasoning) but it all seems to be falling into place. Mind you it'll be one very empty house....

Anyway, our last stop before home (you'll all be happy to hear that we booked our flight home 2.5 weeks ago! I know, I know, you are so impressed that we're finally learning to plan ahead!!) is Ireland. We rented a car; a little white Skoda Rapid that we've given the moniker, Vanilla Bean. In Ireland, they refer to it as a midsize car but I can assure you in America it's no such thing. It's about the same size as my Bug and has a very similar transmission so I am thrilled with this. It's no Arden Spaceship campervan but I certainly fit better on these tiny roads. Very tiny roads. Like the whole road, both lanes, is smaller than the shoulder on an American highway. But they drive two cars wide on these things. I find myself very nearly closing my eyes every time I pass an oncoming car. Or tour bus. Good lord, the tour buses. I just sob anytime those are oncoming. This too shall pass. Every five minutes.

But, I digress. We got the car. We got a map and I booked a hotel for us at every stop along the way. No more just showing up and hoping for the best. We're planners now. People who plan. Planne-taters? Er...right.

We're driving the Wild Atlantic Way which is basically the coast of the country. It's incredibly scenic with oodles of vistas and pull-offs and mountain passes and cliffs and coastline and beaches. We can't ever make it anywhere quickly because I keep pulling over to snap another picture that can't hope to do the landscape justice. But I keep trying because I never want to forget what it looks like. It is so beautiful and so peaceful. With the exception of one hotel along the way that had decent wifi, the internet has been lackluster in Ireland so we've been virtually unplugged. We haven't watched TV (except one night when Josh turned on Ireland's version of Judge Judy. It was the most polite courtroom ever. I don't even know; just so strange). It's been simple and quiet and has given us the opportunity to have some of the most heartfelt and honest conversations. If for no other reason, I am so thankful for this trip for that alone.

We started on the East coast and had our stay in Wilton Castle which was AMAZING! We loved it so much that we ended up staying one extra night. The proprietors, Sean and Antoinette are so lovely. We had quite a few lengthy conversations with them. Sean is a serious Irish history buff and we learned a ton from him. His grandfather bought the land that the castle is on in order to farm it. It just happened to have the castle (ruins) on it. When Sean grew up and took over the farm, he painstakingly renovated the castle to what it is today. They did it room by room, eave by eave as money was available. They had to stop for years at a time when cashflow slowed. Their progress was also derailed by bats! A group of bats made its home in the project and as they are a protected species here in Ireland it brought the renovation to a standstill, requiring experts to be brought in. They finally opened to the public last year (nothing like a wedding booked in advance and a bride-to-be to keep you on a timeline). Each of the four suites is named for a previous owner of the land. We stayed in the Alcott Suite which was our bedroom, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining room and sitting area with a fireplace. They run it similarly to a B&B and so the following morning they served us up a full Irish Breakfast with the other guests staying that night (a couple from San Fran celebrating their 1st anniversary and a grandfather and his granddaughter on their sixth tour or Ireland). Next to Saltee Island (last entry if you didn't see it), Wilton Castle was definitely the highlight of Ireland.

It has actual turrets! You could only get halfway up it, though.

The ruins. They left a portion of the Castle as ruins and the effect is truly stunning.

The backyard.

Da hubbers in da ruins.

We really, really like the ruins.

Dining room

Lounging by the fireplace

The bedroom

The bathroom has stained glass windows! And a rain shower!

The rest of the suites are upstairs.

View from the dining room

The view of the front yard from the living room windows.

On our host's recommendation, we ate dinner out at an itty-bitty little Italian restaurant, Alba. It was divine.

The restaurant had business cards for the Irish mob handy. In case you need someone taken care of.

Best. Wine. Ever.

This was taken at 10:41pm. 22:41. I mean, the sun isn't even the whole way down yet!

Front yard of the Castle

The whole thing! The white part and the first chunk of the natural brown stone is the bit that's been renovated. The rest has been left in ruins.

Tiny turrets!

Aww.

On the way home from dinner we encountered this. Can you tell that that is the world's smallest stop sign? So ridiculous. But it made me laugh.

Since we stayed an extra day at the castle, that put us behind schedule for our coastal tour. I decided that I didn't want to kiss the Blarney Stone as much as I wanted to stay in a castle so we ended up skipping Cork and the Blarney Castle altogether. I'm not at all disappointed. Maybe if we come back someday i'll go kiss the Stone and gain the gift of Gab, but not this time. So we made our merry way along the Beara Peninsula towards Dursey Island, home of the Dursey Island cable car that takes you from the Peninsula to Dursey Island. When we got there at just before noon, a sign had been taped up saying that they were closed for lunch from 11am to 2:30pm. Whaaaaat?!? We were staying at a very small hotel that night with a specifically scheduled check-in time so we weren't really able to wait around for the car to open back up. So we hung out with some sheep, took a few pictures and kept on driving. We stayed in this little coast hotel right on the water that had actual keys for the doors. 

On the way to Dursey. Bahaha!

Also on the way to Dursey. Baaaaa!

Dursey Island. Not quite as exciting or splendid as Saltee so I'm not too miffed that we didn't get to go.

Such a tiny cable car. Josh isn't too miffed we didn't go either.

It did have some pretty sweet algae, though.

The primary residents of the Island

It's alllllmost standing on the mirror.

Actual keys! Attached to a piece of wood the size of a brick. Ain't nobody stealing these keys.

The view from the room.

The next day we drove the Iveragh Peninsula which is home to the Ring of Kerry, an incredibly scenic circle around the peninsula. Along the Ring is some hit tourist spots that these two tourists didn't hit mostly because I'm not really into museums and didn't want to drive two hours out of the way and Josh isn't really too fussed about what we do in Ireland. It's all up to me. Da power!! No, just kidding. It takes too much planning. Bleck! Anyway, around we drove stopping at the Skellig Chocolate Factory, because chocolate. It's a small, family-operated production. You can watch them make the chocolate and taste a bunch of their wares. We took our treats to St. Finians Bay to eat and enjoy the view of Skellig Michael, which is in fact, Luke Skywalker Island in the newest Star Wars movie. Weeks ago, when I was researching places I wanted to see in Ireland, I had a picture of Skellig Michael up on the computer screen. Josh rolls ups behind me and says "Hey! That's from Star Wars!" It totally is. And in fact, they just finished filming the second installment of new trilogy just a few days ago in Ballyferriter, a town just a few hours north of the Iveragh Peninsula. We went through that town a few days later. It's kind of great. There were signs everywhere, welcoming the cast and crew, including one painted by a local elementary school. So cute.

The Skellig Chocolate Factory

Gotta love the Wonka-inspired murals!

Star Wars, everywhere!

One side of St. Finian's Bay

The other side of St. Finians. It almost looks like two completely different places. So much of the country is like that. You can be driving through rolling hills and fields of sheep one minute and the next is coastline beaches and cliffs. It's phenomenally diverse.

Joshy with his favorite toy. Film.

Snacks and selfies. These are a few of my favorite things. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens....

I love this picture! I don't know how you can be surprised by a selfie because obviously you're the one taking it but this was one in a long line of hitting the shutter in quick succession and when I pulled them up on the computer, I was delightfully surprised! It's one of my favorites.

I discovered the landscape function on my camera phone. Worlds have opened up.

Welcome Star Wars!

Star Wars coming to a cafe near you.

We next started driving up towards Kenmare towards our B&B (which had the best view!) for the evening when we stumbled upon the Cliffs of Kerry Experience. For four euros per person you too can climb 1000 feet in less than a quarter of a mile distance to view the splendor of Kerry Cliffs. So much work to push up the hill. It's like straight up. And up. So sweaty by the time we got to the top but it was worth it. Really incredible views. And just for a laugh, we got back down and the guy at the ticket booth looked at us sheepishly and said he totally forgot to mention that "Disableds can drive up, sorry". Good times. Heaven knows I needed the exercise.

The Kerry Cliffs. So expansive and so beautiful. Extra so I think, with the stormy sky above.

We finally made it to the summit. So sweaty. My favorite of this selfie session. Really captures our essence.

This one just so you can see Skellig Michael, which is the tiny island all the way in the upper right hand corner of the picture. Apparently it's the only time I managed to get a clear picture of it?!

Kerry Cliffs

The water is turquoise! Blue Koolaid turquoise!

Landscape function. Aww yeah!

1000 feet up!

Rossbeigh Beach House, our B&B in Kenmare



Definitely the best room with a view yet.

The B&B's guard dog. He was a walking ball of fluff.

From Kenmare we continued up to the Dingle Peninsula to drive around Slea Head Drive which is described as a 30 kilometer panoramic road. It is lovely. But by this point both of us were done being in the car. Our bodies are sore and are spirits are...um...grumpy. That's the best way to put it. It was one of those days where you look at each other and say "Are we really fighting about that?" It's always something little and stupid and really doesn't matter. We found rejuvenation when we hit the town of Dingle. It is awesome. Self-proclaimed foodie town of Ireland, it definitely lived up to its title. Regular food aside, it was all about the ice cream for me. We stumbled on to Murphy's Icecream where they use milk from Kerry County cows and make their own sea salt boiled and filtered from the bay not 20 yards from the ice cream shop (we couldn't decide if that's incredible or gross. The water looked cleaner than the Chesapeake so I'm going with awesome). Josh got gin ice cream (next to Tequila, gin is Josh's absolute fave. And it turns out that Dingle just opened up its own distillery four years ago, making their own whiskey, gin and vodka). It was so fragrant and creamy. I had their version of sticky toffee pudding where they caramelize bits of Irish Brown Bread in a creamy base. I should've taken pictures of it. I want to remember it forever. It was that good. We had to go through Dingle once to get to the Slea Head Drive route. Once we made it all the way around, we had to go through Dingle again in order to get back to the main route towards our hotel for the next night. We very nearly stopped at Murphy's a second time. I was only stopped by a lack of parking space (that and my chagrin at potentially having the same people dish me ice cream again not two hours later).

The beautiful, wonderful ice cream.

The shirts they sell say Pog mo Cone. It is a snarky reference to the Gaelic phrase, Póg Mo Thión which means 'Kiss my ass'. Hilariously, they sometimes will tell tourists that Póg Mo Thión actually means 'thank you' and then have a good laugh when they go around saying it. Excellent.

Murphy's in downtown Dingle

Dingle distillery

Lots of different landscapes again, even in this short section of the Dingle Peninsula



My favorite vista from Slea Head Drive

My other favorite vista

 In order to get to our hotel that night we went through Connor Pass which is one of the highest mountain peaks in Ireland. It was neat, but like I said, we were ready to be out of the car. But I'm glad we saw it. Now we've got the luxury of being in the same space for two nights in a row. It's funny what becomes a luxury and what we take for granted sometimes. Two nights in the same place means getting to wash underwear! I was literally down to my last clean pair. TMI? Probably. But hey, it's the little things in life, sometimes. 

After we checked in, we explored downtown Ennis where we found a film camera shop and Josh was in heaven. He was admiring the collection and talking with the owner who told Josh that he would sell him all of them or none of them. He wanted to know where they all went because he got lonely sometimes. He had over 40 Leicas alone let alone the other two-hundred cameras on display. We didn't ask the price. But he was a charming gentleman who shared Josh's passion for film photography and I think they both enjoyed their conversation.

Connor Pass

The Irish camera collector

My hubby's heaven

The incredibly extensive collection

Today we went to the Cliffs of Moher which is evidently the most-visited natural tourist destination. It was full of people. It is also paved which made it wonderfully accessible. It is also very uphill. Very. As in, so uphill that instead of taking pictures of the natural wonder behind them, we had people take pictures of us struggling to push up the hill. Thanks, humankind. I'm not really bitter because as these lovelies are taking pictures of us, an older not-so-in-shape woman rushes from the opposite direction to help us up the hill and put all those other peeps to shame. We're grateful to you lady! Snark aside, it was pretty but very tourist-y. Worth a see though. 

From the Cliffs we drove a little further up to hit The Burren Perfumery which is a local soap, essential oil and perfume facility. It's not much more than a couple of cottages; one of which is the soap making facility, one is a shop and perfume-mixing area and the other is a tea room with the best tomato soup and Irish brown bread I've had. I also got pooped on by a bird. It was a pretty good day.

We rounded out our day by coming back to the hotel for one last Afternoon Tea. And we heard some great Irish music played by a group of children buskers of all things. There was a group of nine kids and three or four adults jamming out on bagpipes, accordions, penny whistles, flutes, fiddles and one bodráhn (an Irish drum). 

The North side of the Cliffs with O'Briens Tower. The little jut of land in the bottom left-hand corner is a bird sanctuary. Without a telephoto lens or binoculars you can't really make out the birds but there were definitely tiny puffin dots flying to and 'fro. 

Sign says 'Extreme Danger'. Naturally we went beyond it.

This was the best one believe it or not.

The South Side of the Cliffs. Probably the most oft-photographed portion of the Cliffs of Moher.

O'Briens Tower

The view from atop O'Briens Tower. I guess it doesn't look much different than below. But now you can see bits of the turret. Woohoo!

The Visitor's Center is built INTO the hill. Hobbit mansion?

There's a bunch of little shops by the visitor center. Josh says this pointed to one selling wool sweaters. I think it's pointing Aurora to her 16th birthday present. But sure, wool sweaters.

The soap-making facility/cottage at the Burren Perfumery

Basically my dream home.

They had adorable garden paths at the Perfumery divided into sections by use. This was the Tea Garden. Josh is excited.

The Kitchen Garden. Details out uses for things like fennel and other things that I don't remember at all anymore.

The perfume-making spot. It probably has a more eloquent title like distillery or something. Maybe it's perfumery. That could totally make sense given the name of the place. Totes.

Afternoon Tea!!!

The girl playing the penny whistle got up and did some Irish dancing for us, too!

Definitely my favorite buskers

After finishing our coastal journey we made our way back to Dublin as that's where we fly out later in the week. It only took about 2.5 hours to get from one side of the country to the other. It's so strange because 2.5 hours of driving in the U.S. hardly gets you anywhere. We can get from our house in PA to visit Josh's parents in D.C. in that amount of time. But here, you can make it the whole way around the country! We stopped at a service plaza at one point during the drive and discovered that it is the 'Barack Obama Service Plaza'. The entire top floor of the plaza is a museum/exhibition devoted to information on Irish-American presidents. I dashed upstairs to take a gander and it was surprising...

Barack bust door greeter

"There's no one as Irish as Barack Obama". I'm not making that up. It really says it on the left panel.

Shout out to the Y-chromosome Clinton

Other Irish-American prezzies 

He visited Ireland in 2011 and it seems people were really excited.

We decided to stay one more night in a castle. I hate to say castles are a dime a dozen here because that's not really the case, but it is surprisingly easy to find affordable accommodation in a castle. They are everywhere here; some are in ruins and others have been made into 5-star hotels. It's glorious. Clontarf Castle is in Dublin and made for an excellent second-to-last night in this wonderful country. The bed was huge (have I mentioned that most hotels only use double or twin beds--they're so tiny! In fact, if you book a room with a king-size bed in Europe, it's only what would be called a queen size in the U.S. Kinda funny...).  Our stay included a 4-course dinner and the best continental breakfast buffet I've ever had in a hotel. It was a rather fancy dinner joint and considering how we've been traveling, our clothing choices were pretty limited. I did have one pair of not-legging black pants I've been reserving just in case. Of course after we were seated in the restaurant I realized that I may have stepped it up with the pants but I totally forgot about the toothpaste stain on my shirt...

We also made one last trip into Dublin city center to visit John Gunn Camera Shop. We'd been in there a few weeks ago while staying in Dublin and Josh fell in love with a camera. He didn't get it then but spent our roadtrip time thinking about it and decided to go back and if it was still there, buy it. It was! He's super excited. Like, super duper looper excited. It's a Voigtlander Bessa-R. I've named it Bessie.

A room in a castle! This castle was much more like a hotel. And we didn't have it all to ourselves like Wilton. It's located just outside the city center of Dublin, in the suburbs. No cows in the front yard here. 

The view from the upper floors of the castle. 

Dessert. Clearly you can see my priorities as I never seem to document any foods other than dessert. 

Thrones on the way to the restaurant. 

Tapestries and chandeliers 

Lots of old castle-y stone still exposed in the inside.

This is where I shall commence my rule from. 

We clearly have different feelings on ruling the kingdom.

Suit of armor selfie!

Clontarf Castle

We had James Bond's room.

There was a super fancy phone that we didn't touch, but on the bottom of the screen it says, "Welcome Mrs. Samantha"! 

We found a Delorean in the parking lot.

1550 kilometers of driving. 963 miles. I'm getting pretty good at driving on the opposite side of the road now. I think it might be hard to switch back. If you see someone coming down the road in your lane next week, sorry about that....

Bessie.

Now we staying near the airport so we can get up and catch a flight back to Iceland. Sadly we won't be there for any length of time, just a short layover until our flight to Baltimore (just long enough to stock up on some of that Icelandic chocolate. Because it really is the best. Trust me, I've checked.) And then we go home. 

I feel like I'm at a loss for words on how to come to an end here. The people of Ireland say 'Thanks a million' anytime they say thank you. It just seems to be the normal way to express gratitude. And that phrase feels like it's a pretty good way to end the trip. It's been an incredibly spectacular journey full of discovery, food, laughter, a few tears, simplistic living, people, culture, learning and love. I am so grateful that we had the opportunity and that we took it. I think we're both ready to start another chapter now. Thanks for your support and prayers and love. Thanks for journeying with us.

Thanks a million.