Swann Family Travel Blog: 2014

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Ireland 2014 videos posted on YouTube

I posted selected videos from our amazing trip on my YouTube channel (Jerilyn Swann). Go check them out! =)

Friday, June 6, 2014

Ireland 2014 - Dolphin video in HD

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Home!

As always, it's great to travel, and it's great to come home. We're all back safely and deposited in our homes. Wonderful trip! Thanks to Mimi and Papa for providing much of the funds needed to pull it off - we will remember this for the rest of our lives!!

Monday, June 2, 2014

Last night in Dublin

What a great trip this has been! We took our last dinner in Ireland at a popular Scottish pub, McDonald's. We tried several other proper Irish places to eat, but between the bank holiday (lots of places are closed today) and the ladies' charity races today (what places are open are full of women in yoga pants and spandex), we truly didn't have much else of a choice.

To cap the evening and the trip, everyone got a gelato and we toasted our journey in the middle of Grafton Street. A final walk back through the kids' favorite park, St. Stephen's Green, and we're back in our room getting ready to fly home. Fabulous trip.

Three Musketeers in Dublin

One of numerous Georgian doors, all so pretty

Unitarian Church

These horses are so tall!!

Street vacuumer was fun. He goosed the back of Mitch's leg with the hose and made him jump a little, grinned a huge grin and gave a mischievous little laugh, very cute.

Cheers to our Irish adventure!!

St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin

We toured St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin today. It was very ornate and lovely and our whisper-quite tour guide was informative if you were standing within a 3-foot radius of her. ;)

Floor tiles were redone as part of the Guinness restoration in the 1890's. They're beautiful.

Toophus in front of a very large gold lectern.

One side of the choir area, also where most prestigious Knights of the Order of St. Patrick sit whenever they are there for ceremonies.

Winding staircase up to the organ's pipes

Jonathan Swift was Dean of the Cathedral in the early 1700's. He is buried there (vertically, by his insistence) next to his best friend, Stella Johnson

'Have an Irish Coffee, for fook's sake'

As we were all walking through Dingle, a drunk proprietor of a music store asked me if I would like an Irish coffee, and I tried to politely decline. It was 7:30 in the evening and I wasn't at all interested. Bill joined us and he offered Bill the same. He also politely declined. The proprietor looked at us like we were crazy. He said, 'It's available. It's already made up. It's AVAILABLE! For fook's sake, have a coffee!'

'Available' means 'free'. He couldn't understand why we were turning down free alcohol. =)

Walking around Dublin - Mitch's tooth

Well, we didn't look at our guidebooks early enough to realize that we should've gone to the museums on Sunday - all the museums are closed on Monday (today). So, we're walking around, getting the last bits of shopping in. We stopped at the park for the kids to enjoy the playground. Mitch got on the little rocking horse toys that are designed for 3-4 year olds. Was load-testing and stretch-testing it and popped himself in the mouth with it - broke part of his front tooth off. Could've been worse.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Dublin Castle

We did a wonderful tour of Dublin Castle - we had a great tour guide (recent PhD in architectural history, teaching first-years at Trinity College now) who gave lots of interesting information on the history of the castle.

The original castle was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1684, but some parts remain, such as the records tower. In the 1980's, the base of another tower and part of a side wall was discovered.

It was the first castle built by the British in Ireland over 1000 years ago, and 153 viceroys lived or worked there until 1922. British rule of Ireland ended in 1922, and since then the castle has remained as an important ceremonial center for presidential inaugurations, receiving of foreign heads of state, and other official events.

Records tower behind royal cathedral

Old gate excavated in 1980's

One of several Waterford crystal chandeliers in the state rooms of the castle

Ladies drawing room

A Van Dyke portrait of a countess, from the 1600's

The paintings on the ceiling in the main state room were not done in place, rather they were done on canvases and positioned up there afterward.

After Dublin Castle, we found a nice place for dinner, then walked around town some more.

One of the many bridges over the Liffey River

Trinity College Old Library and Book of Kells

We walked from Kilronan House into town through a beautiful park and got a great lunch at Keogh Café. Then we walked to Trinity College and toured the Book of Kells exhibit in the Old Library.

Our travelers, of all ages, are getting tired. We are enjoying exploring Dublin on foot and by ourselves. If we were on a tour bus, I'd be batty crazy by this point. I certainly prefer going it on our own, even though I know there are advantages to other touring options, too.

Old Library at Trinity College

Beggar

Driving to Kilronan House in Dublin

Holy cow, THAT was an adventure. I'm exhausted. Last night, I got on Maps on the iPad and wrote down the dozen or so turns (road numbers) we'd need to make to get to the last B&B of the trip, and from there to the Budget car hire place where we needed to return the car by 11am. I was so confident that I could navigate us straight to the place that I insisted that Bill drive us in. He is the more navigationally gifted of the two of us, but I was very sure of myself. Once it was clear, as we both reached then passed Dublin, that I didn't have the first actual, reliable clue how to get there, we stopped and switched to our more suitable roles of me, driver, and Bill, navigator.

There are no road numbers posted anywhere once you get to the outskirts of Dublin. The names of the roads are occasionally listed on the corners of buildings, but every block, the road names change. Seriously, every block. And, even after Bill figured out where we were, the one-ways were not marked on the map, which gave us an added challenge. Finally, we got to Kilronan House, which is amazing, beautiful, and in a nice part of town (Mimi rocked it out on finding really nice places for us to stay during our trip - thank you, Mimi!!).

We dropped our bags off, and left the kids with Mimi and Papa, and got back on the crazy roads to find Budget Car Hire. Bill did a stellar job navigating and we wound our way around. We ended up on a road that Bill said when it came to a T, it would be the road the place was on, and we'd have to choose left or right. As luck would have it, when we got to the end, we saw the Budget sign directly in front of us – hallelujah!! We somehow managed to pick a road that took us right to it. I loved driving in Ireland, but driving in Dublin (even as briefly as it was) was a nightmare, and I was very glad to be shed of the car.

We quickly hailed a taxi and got back to Kilronan House in short order. Our driver was a hoot. Very opinionated and not at all shy. Mimi and Papa and the kids looked like they'd been shot with sleepy darts when we found them in one of our rooms. Kilronan House is beautifully appointed, and centrally located for easy walks to interesting parts of the city.

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Trim Castle

We drove from Galway to Trim today. We found our B&B, White Lodge, with not too much hassle. After getting our luggage settled in our rooms, we walked through the park to tour Trim Castle. Trim Castle was built in the late 1100's, added to a couple of times over the next few hundred years, then finished as a castle fort by the 1600's and left to ruin until the 1800's when Anglo-Irish folks starting touring the castles (during the Romantic Period). Trim is one of the few castles in Ireland that has not been drastically restored, which makes it very interesting to tour, because you can see more of the structural and architectural details. We named the castle cat 'Moo Cat'. He is a typical cat - acting disinterested when the kids tried to get him to come to them, then walking into their path when they turned walked away. He flopped over and let them love on him, purring. Silly cat.

After the tour, we caught a late lunch at a quaint little café, then took the river walk back to our B&B. We saw some horses, donkeys, and puppies, and lots of ruins.

Bill's gut has been giving him fits off and on for a few days – it's really starting to wear him down. Now he has a low-grade fever, just enough to make him feel cruddy. :( It's never any fun being sick, and worse when you're traveling. He still cuts a handsome figure in a picture, though. Some got it, some ain't. ;)

Roads with no shoulders are typical fare in Ireland. Most cars have significant scrapes and scratches down both sides. It's quite hair-raising the first 30-40 times you meet a tour bus on these roads, then you start to get used to it.

This might be my favorite picture of them on this trip. That's Yellow Steeple ruins in the background.

The north tower collapsed, but was where foods were stored (cold side of castle).

Castle was surrounded by curtain wall for defense.

Smart engineering/architectural design – corner of curtain wall was built with two 2-feet thick walls. Attacks from outside might get through exterior wall, but interior wall would remain intact – takes longer to penetrate for enemies.