Recently I have rejoined a website called View Bug.  I used to have an account (which is apparently still there but for some reason I can no longer access-no clue) and now I have a new account.  Anyway, they have contests all the time.  Some have big prizes and some are just for exposure (these are called 'Photo Challenges').  One of the challenges I entered was about "details" in a photo.  Which, to my surprise (seldom win anything) I won!  So, here is the photo that I won with!  And if you would like to see what else I have posted there (some stuff the same as this and my other sites, some different), you can go to https://www.viewbug.com/member/InnitouPhoto.   Brown Feather with Drops

Now it is February and I have finally gotten back to my Ireland photos!  So now there is a collection of five galleries from my time spent in County Kerry with family (people who live there make GREAT tour guides and driving navigators!) and two galleries of the two major Castles we visited!  We went to Bunratty on the way to Kerry and then after spending a week with family traveling around Dingle Peninsular, the Ring of Kerry and other fascinating places we headed out to Blarney where we stayed two nights in a little B&B literally across the street from Blarney Castle!  You just walk across the street, through the town park and there you are at the entrance to Blarney Castle and gardens!  And no, I didn’t kiss the Blarney Stone, but one of my sisters did! 

Enjoy!

The last full day we were in Doolin we took a boat out to the closest of the Aran Islands, Inisheer.  It was a rocky ride out and an even rockery ride back.  But we had a great time while we were there! 

Hope you enjoy all the photos.  Just go to Ireland then Doolin and the West Coast.  There are nine galleries.

Gerry

When:   Sunday, Oct. 15th @ 4:00 pm

Where:  The Pump-house parking lot at the south end of the Pond

What:    We will walk clockwise around the Pond so as to arrive on Arlington Road for sunset.  

      We will talk about the history of Horn Pond both natural and man-made, and the natural

      environment as it pertains to the foliage we might see.  

This walk is suitable for all ages.  We will be on the pavement at all times so it is suitable for strollers.  Please no pets.

After we left Dublin and picked up our car, we headed to the town of Trim.  Even though our GPS was weird, it brought us to a main road junction and there was our B&B right in front of us!  As it turned out, our B&B host was a wealth of information about the Castle which was only about a ten minute walk across the street and into a field which was the parkland of Trim Castle, known as the Prochy fields.  There are several ruins in this parkland including the “Sheep’s Gate” and the “Yellow Steeple” (so named because it looks very yellow in the sunset I was told by a gentleman I met walking).  It was overcast and threatening rain but we walked through the field down to the town center to a great restaurant for diner (recommended by our B&B host).  We were very hungry so we didn’t stop to admire the ruins and when we left the restaurant there was a light rain so we walked straight home.  

The next day we were picked up by our first tour guide Martin, from Beautiful Meath Tours, and off we headed for the “Ancient East” (Newgrange & Knowth).  From there we headed to the Hill of Slane. It was beautiful, a good walk with a fascinating history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slane)!   After that we had lunch and had planned to head to Tara, but the traffic in that direction was tied up for miles (four traffic accidents as it turned out) so Martin took us to a place called Monasterboice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monasterboice) where we saw beautiful ruins and two of the best High Celtic Crosses in all of Ireland!  We never got to Tara.

The following day we were leaving to go back to Dublin to pick up our other sister at the airport, so I got up early and walked the route back to Trim Castle.  It was a beautiful day, clear and bright!  I took photos of several of the ruins and the Castle Keep, (it wasn’t open yet as it was too early) as well as the “Curtain”, (the wall that surrounds the Keep and the land around it).  There were several other ruins which I never got to as I was hurrying to get back, have my breakfast and head out to the airport!

I have uploaded the next Collection entitled "The Ancient East".  Hope you enjoy!

More to come soon!

If anyone is interested, I have compiled a few tips for traveling to Ireland and traveling in general!!!  It is long, so just skip this part if you want.  If you want to read it, just scroll down after the photos.

1.  If you are going to Ireland, don’t fly into Dublin Airport if at all possible!  It is one of the most disorganized airports I have ever been in.  It is huge; you have to walk very long distances to get from the plane to baggage, then from baggage to customs, then from customs to the actual exit!  And sometimes the lines pile up!  We got to customs and the was over an hour!  Coming back into the airport to leave it is also extremely confusing.  Things are not well labeled. 
2. If you are staying in Dublin, for even a night, don’t hire a car until you are ready to leave!  Very few of the hotels in the city proper have any kind of parking.  And driving is horrible (think very big city with very heavy traffic, in narrow lanes, where everyone J-walks all the time) and there is major road construction going on which will be at least till 2018.  Even my cousin, who lives in the outskirts of the city proper, parked her car and we walked a lot of places.  The major city attractions are very walkable!
3. If you stay in a hotel near the airport, they all have shuttles to and from the airport.  BUT, they all park in a carpark for shuttles that you have to walk to (again, a long walk) dragging your luggage.  We drove up to Dublin the day before we were leaving to return the car and stay in a hotel I thought was very near the airport.  Easy, right?  Wrong!!!!!!!!  We had a terrible time trying to find the car rental place (again, terrible signage).  We lucked out after our third run around the airport and stopped at a red light beside a rental company truck and asked where to go.  He just said follow me.  Good thing as we never would have found it otherwise!  Turning in the car was easy (as was picking it up) then we had to schlep all our luggage onto the Hertz shuttle bus, go to the airport, then schlep our luggage into the airport and out the other side to the hotel shuttles car park.  Then onto that shuttle and over to our hotel.  In the morning we schlepped everything back to the airport.
4. Ireland has this thing called VAT (Value Added Tax) which if you are not a citizen, you can get back.  If you are lucky enough to shop at a place that gives out the little FeXco Tax Free Shopping card you are in luck.  They probably won’t tell you, but you can put all your “tax free” purchases on the same card (meaning no one told us) and when you get to the airport you just go to the kiosk, scan the card, fill out a form, scan your charge card and all the VAT gets credited back onto your charge card.   If you don’t have the card, sometimes you get a sales slip with a form to fill out as part of the slip, and sometimes you don’t.  Sometimes you will just get a plain sales slip with the VAT printed on it.  In which case you have to fill out a separate form (usually an envelope some kind vendor has given you to hold all your sales slips).  If (and that is a big IF) you have this all done when you get to the airport, you can go to the FeXco desk and get everything back then and there.  If not, you ask for an envelope to send it all in when you get home.  Needless to say, I took the envelope as it is very confusing.  Oh, and by the way, not everything has a refundable tax.  Think mainly souvenirs! 
5. The food portions are enormous!  A “full” Irish breakfast includes eggs (usually whatever way you want them), bacon (Irish bacon is more like thick-cut ham with a large strip of fat around the edges and they don’t do ‘crisp’), beans (kind of like baked beans but a little different), grilled tomato halves, black & white pudding (look it up), mushrooms (usually grilled or fried), Irish brown bread and/or toast.  Juice, water (usually with lemon and/or lime in it), juice and all the coffee and tea you want!  After a couple of those (minus the black & white pudding) I opted for the ‘mini’ Irish breakfast.  Just eggs (two instead of three), tomato, mushrooms & Irish brown bread.  Eventually I went to eggs & brown bread! 
6. Pub food is great!  I had the best salmon I’ve ever eaten in a little pub call McGann’s In Doolin!  And if you want traditional (Trad) Irish music you have to stay till 9:30 pm when the music starts!  But in most restaurants during the day what you hear is the same music you would hear in any American restaurant.  A little disappointing, actually!   
7. If you go to one of the Aran Islands, make sure it is a really nice calm day; unless you like lots of rocking and lots of wind!!!  I sat up top to take photos and loved every minute of it.  Even when it started raining about five minutes into the return trip!  However, if you are in any way, shape or form prone to sea sickness, think twice!  We went to the first island Inis Oirr (pronounced Inissheer) which takes about 30 minutes.  It was cloudy but dry the whole time we were on the island.  Not commercialized, but places to eat and stay over if you want (you will need reservations well in advance).  Just check the weather real well!
8. If you can afford it, hire a private tour guide.  It was split between three of us so not so bad.  It was worth every penny.  But some are better than others so if you are thinking of it at all, contact me and I can give you recommendations.  Mostly it is in new, high end Mercedes touring cars and your driver is also full of history and information.  You will get to many more places than going on your own as they will drive faster than you and they know the best routes so they will cover more ground.  (When I was driving I tended to go really slow on the small back roads, REALLY slow!!!)  We did take one large bus tour out of Dublin to the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland.  Basically it was driving on the motorway (translates as divided highway) really fast with some commentary now and then, getting from one stop to another.  It was a long day.  We left at 7:00 am and got back to Dublin at around 8:00 pm.  If we had done it on our own, it definitely would have been a two day trip!  But it was a great price and we saw a lot of other places as well.  Again, if you are interested, email me for recommendations.
9. There are things for everybody’s interests!  Like Ancient History and/or Archeology, make sure to check out the Boyne Valley with the ancient passage tombs, older than the pyramids!  Like the ocean and incredible waves?  Make sure you do at least some of the Wild Atlantic Way.  Lakes and mountains, rolling hills, horses, ancient ruins and castles, beautiful cathedrals; Ireland has all of these and more. 
10. Do not believe Google maps when it tells you it will take X amount of time to go from point A to point B.  Maybe for a native driver, but definitely not an American tourist!  Unless you are on a motorway, the roads are small and windy and sometimes extremely narrow.  Think little hot toped road barely wide enough for one car, with grass growing down the middle and you meet a farm tractor!  Yup!
11. Packing is an adventure.  We were there the first three weeks of June.  We left Boston in cool rainy weather.  We arrived in Dublin in cold, rainy weather.  Take a REALLY good rain coat/jacket. One with a zip in/out lining would be perfect.  I do not do umbrellas because it is hard to hold one when you are taking photos.  But I did see plenty of them.  Take both short sleeve and long sleeve shirts.  Don’t overdo it.  If you are the average tourist, you will be buying shirts there!  Take a sweater or sweatshirt.  If you plan on buying an Irish knit wool sweater, having something warm with you will give you the time to shop around for the best deal.  If you need cotton (I am allergic to wool) don’t count on finding anything.  Wear comfy slip on shoes for traveling (you have to remove them in airports).  Make sure to bring a really good pair of walking shoes.  Unless you plan on doing actual trail hiking, you won’t need hiking boots.  Bring several pairs of socks.  Dirty socks can irritate your feet.  The second day I was there was beautiful; sunny with big puffy clouds.  We didn’t see the sun again for about 10 days.  Towards the end of the trip we had five days of unseasonably hot and sunny weather for Ireland.  One of those days it actually got above 80 degrees F.  The average is usually in the mid 60’s. (Ireland’s temps are measured in Celsius, by the way).  When we left Dublin it was back down in the 60’s with heavy cloud cover.  Most large towns have pharmacies and grocery stores (villages do not, usually) but the names are all different.  So trying to find a cold remedy that you are used to can be a challenge.  Leave plenty of room in your luggage for souvenirs, brochures and books or other information about the places you are visiting.  Just remember, paper can get heavy.  This holds true for anyplace that you visit, in country or across the ocean!
12. Bring a book to write down your adventures in.  You think you will remember, but you won’t!  I wrote in my blog (probably not often enough) and my sister wrote in a little book I had brought.  Even just a few lines at the end of the day, is always a good idea.
13. Where ever you travel, relax, get to know the people.  Do things that you wouldn’t normally do.   But above all, have a good time!

Highlight of the trip was Mizenhead, Ireland's most southwesterly point!  This was the last view of home for all those Irish who emigrated to America.  It was spectacular!  I did the whole walk all the way out to the Signal Station across the bridge!  What a place!  Rocky cliffs, crashing waves, birds, blue sky (at last!)!  Couldn't have asked for a better day!  

Tomorrow we do Blarney Castle and then head for Waterford!

Today we are off to Blarney Castle and one of my sisters fully intends to kiss the stone!!!

When we left Galway we headed for the Burren.  This area of 250 square kilometers is a strange place where there is very little soil, just slabs of limestone rock with over 700 different kinds of ferns and flowering plants growing in the cracks!  And right in the middle of all this rock is a 5000 year old Portal Tomb called Poulnabrone Dolman!  It was foggy and misty when we were there so it made the tomb look even more mysterious!  Then we headed for Connemara and Kylemore Abby!  A very long drive through absolutely stunning country!  The only hiccup was that there was scaffolding over about a 3rd of the Abby!  I still got some good shots and the walled garden was beautiful.  On the way there we made a quick stop at a little bridge made famous in the movie "The Quite Man" with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara!

It was a long way back, but again, through breathtaking county!

Today we took a boat out to the closest of the three Aran Islands, Inis Oirr (pronounced Inisheer).  It was a bit rough going out but we had a lovely tour and lunch and I got great photos of the hundreds upon hundreds of stone walls!  On the way back (out was about 30 minutes and in was about 1 1/4 hours) we went to the base of the Cliffs of Moher.  Only problem was it started raining shortly after we left the island!  So it rained when we went to the top of the cliffs, and it rained when we went to the bottom of the cliffs.  But this is Ireland!!!  This is why it is so green!

Been super busy and have seen lots of wonderful things!!  Friday we took a bus tour up to Northern Ireland.  First stop was Belfast for about 45 minutes.  Just enough time to get some Pounds Sterling at the ATM and grab a cup of coffee!  Then it was back to the bus and we headed to the Dark Hedges, a road lined with 300+ year old beech trees that hang over the road blocking out the sun.  It is used in Game of Thrones so has become very popular!  Next up was a quick stop to take photos of Dunluce Castle!  It's a very famous castle on the very edge of a cliff!  One of the places I really wanted to see!  Got my wish!!!  Then we headed to the Giants Causeway!  Amazing place with all these Basalt columns formed by a volcano, millennia ago!  We were scheduled to go to the Carrick-a-Rede bridge (a rope bridge over a chasm right on the ocean) next.  Sometime the end of May vandals had tried to destroy the bridge.  They had repaired it and reopened it but it turned out that it was closed again for more maintenance.  So we got in for free and could just walk down to the bridge.  I ended up not going all the way down as I was taking so many photos along the way, I ran out of time!  Our last stop was this little seaside village with a small cave in the cliff in a pretty little cove.  I didn't bother with the cave as I was busy shooting the pretty little cove!  Back to Belfast for 30 minutes and then back to Dublin!  A very long 13 hour drive!!!  But what the heck, I wasn't driving!  LOL

Saturday we tooled around Dublin and went to see the Book Of Kells!  Magnificent!!!  Something I have wanted to see since I was a child! Another wish fulfilled!  Later we went to the old piers in Dublin Bay.  They had just celebrated their Bi-centennial.  Then Saturday night I had a Dublin Photo Tour which was going great until 10:00 pm when it started to pour rain with a strong cold wind!  That ended that!

Sunday I got to shoot lots of Georgian Doorways on our way to the National Museum to see the ancient Gold artifacts (think lots of jewelry)! After that our cousin drove us back to the airport to pick up our rental car and our REAL adventure began when we headed to Trim, Ireland with Me driving!  Let's just say, it's different!

Monday we had a wonderful private tour of the Boyne River Valley to two megalithic passage tombs, Newgrange and Knowth.  After that we went to The Hill of Slane, Slane Castle and Monasterboice (pronounced like Monstaboyce).  Thank you Martin from Beautiful Meath Tours!  Next morning before taking off back to the airport to pick up my other sister, I took a walk and photographed Trim Castle, about a quarter mile from our B&B!

Which brings us up to today, Tuesday.  Another private tour to the Cliffs of Moher (everything they say they are and more), the Burren (a carst limestone environment), the Poulnabrone Dolmen (an megalithic portal tomb) at the Burren,  Lahinch Beach, St. Bridget's Well and some other small church and castle ruins!  Another FABULOUS day!!!  Even with the rain!!!  Thank you Fergus from Celtic Limo Services!!!

Again, I am sorry that I am not able to upload any photos.  I will keep trying!

Getting the last of my B&Bs lined up.  We will be using B&Bs throughout the trip.  Dublin is a big hotel, but then we go to Trim to a B&B, then Doolin to a B&B, down to our cousins in Ardfert (they have a guest house) and while there we will be hitting the Dingle Peninsular (maybe a B&B there for one night) and a few days later a B&B in Kenmare as we do the Ring of Kerry!  After that down to County Cork to a B&B in Blarney and then our final place is a Hotel in Waterford.  So we begin and end in hotels but visit lots of great sounding B&Bs along the way!

Also, found a nighttime photo tour in Dublin for my first night!  Really looking forward to it!  I hope to get some great night shots along the river!  I really love reflection photography!!!

Did you know that they make special earplugs just for jet travel?  These little things are called “earplanes” and they are designed to dampen noise while helping to equalize the pressure that occurs when flying!  I usually just chew gum, but that’s kind of hard to do when you’re trying to sleep on an overnight flight!  (We’ll see if I really do get any sleep!)  

CabbageReceived a third place ribbon in the first ever Stoneham Rotary Art Show fundraiser.    

Now I am in the process of gathering what I plan on taking, not only for clothes, but for camera equipment.  I just placed my last order (well for now, anyway) with Amazon.  This trip is finally giving me an excuse to get a bunch of little photo odds and ends that make organization easier.  And also to pick up extra batteries and SD cards for my two cameras.  Next on my list is to learn more about taking video with my cameras!  I’ll keep you posted on how that is coming!

29 days & counting!!!