Trim Castle

Another ridiculously sunny day. I say ridiculous because we've had nothing but grey skies, fog, and rain for so long that when you get a couple sunny days it's like someone is playing a joke on you. I swear mom brought it in her bag. My face hurts from squinting!
Sunday we drove over to Trim to see Trim Castle. It's the largest Norman castle in Europe. It was amazing. The film Braveheart was shot here (in case you wanted to know). We toured the keep with a guide. Not for those who have a fear of heights--we got to go on the roof of the keep and look out across Trim. To exit the roof, we walked down a very narrow spiral staircase, 84 steps in total. This was a great site for the kids--they could run around the grounds. They are getting very tired of "staying on the path". It's was really nice to just lay on the lawn and soak up the sun.

Part of the moat that once surrounded the entire castle.

The keep

Trim Castle

Galway and The Cliffs

Another gorgeous, sunny day. I think Mom brought the sun with her! We're on a winning streak with the weather so we're taking full advantage of it. We drove over to Galway in the early afternoon and then headed over to the Cliffs of Moher to watch the sun go down.

I love how every time we go someplace we've been before, we always see something new. We've been to Galway a couple of times now and it was the first time we saw live statues. The statue in the picture is of a real person. If you drop a few coins in his jug he tips his hand to you. He was the best one we saw. He even had a pigeon sitting on his arm!

This woman was really good too. Sofie ran up and threw some coins into her bag (a great way to get rid of some change).

The Snow Queen handed Sofie a fortune from her bag. It read "We are what we imagine ourselves to be.", Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Since the wind wasn't blowing 30mph, I took hold of one girl, Tim grabbed the other one and we hopped the fence and walked along the footpath that follows along the edge of the cliffs. Can you see all the little people standing along the very edge? When you're on top you don't get the sense of how high you are until you lean over and look down. Still haven't seen any puffins. All we see are loads of sea gulls. After we watched the sun go down we drove home, first stopping in Ballyvaughn for dinner. We ate at Monk's, a seafood pub on the coast, complete with a roaring fire and hand knit wool curtains. Sofie promptly read the menu and said she'd like the mussels. Mussels? She loved them. I had mussels too. We had quite the pile of shells when we were done.

Riding Lesson VII

Riding lessons today. Perfect weather and finally (I think) I've kind of figured out how to take better action pictures. Who knew action shots were so hard? I thought my digital camera would do everything for me and make me look awesome. Not that easy. I picked up a couple photography books at the library....still trying to make sense of f-stops and aperture settings. My brain usually freezes when they start talking about depth of fields, light levels, etc. but I tried really hard to make sense of a couple of the action tips.
The girls did four jumps in a row this afternoon. It was just grand. Lucy is very serious when she rides. Sofie on the other hand shows all her emotion in her face. It's such a thrill to see them jump (and not fall off!). I think I hold my breath when they go over! Sofie on Pele.

Lucy on Berty.

Nana

Mom made it here this morning! The world is set right now that Nana is here. What a Thursday--Nana and riding lessons all in one day. Could it get any better? Jet lag hasn't hit yet.....it's coming. We went down to Athlone in the afternoon to walk around, feed the swans, and play at the playground before riding lessons. She was treated to a rare Irish sunny day. Athlone felt very alive today. The sidewalks were full of people, kids on the playground, bicycles zooming by....funny how a sunny day cheers everyone up.

Nana and Sofie

The Burren

Checked the weather for Tuesday.......looked promising. Those weathermen are worthless. Sunny and 40 translated into 30 and snowy. We headed west over to the Cliffs of Moher with Ruth hoping maybe the weatherman had been right and drove through the Burren. In Irish it basically translates to The Rocky Place. Appropriately named I might add since everywhere you look it's nothing but slabs of limestone. As fierce as it was you can't help but think of how people actually lived out here. Poulnabrone is one of 70 megalithic tombs in the Burren. It was excavated in 1968 and the remains of people were found inside dating between 3800-3200 BC. The men must have been incredibly manly to move such slabs of rock. Amazing.

Dublin

Well, we finally made it to Dublin. We walked down Grafton St., O'Connell St. and Temple Bar. We play Irish Monopoly here and I think the highlight of our day was seeing that there really is a Krumlin Place. It would be the equivalent to Baltic St. on American monopoly. I don't think Krumlin Place is on any tour. Think government housing. Who wants to tour that, right? The architecture was outstanding downtown. I prefer the small towns. You can take the girls out of the country but you can't take the country out of the girls-Lucy and Sofie were fascinated by all the pigeons. I think they miss playing with the chickens because they were desperately wanting to catch a pigeon and hold it.

Ruth and Lucy

Rock of Cashel

We all piled into the car this morning and drove to Cashel. The only thing to see in Cashel is the Rock. The Rock of Cashel was the seat of the ancient kings of Munster, 300-1100 A.D. It was eventually handed over to the Church in 1101. Ruth had the pleasure of Irish weather today-it started out incredibly foggy, then cloudy, next the sun came out for about 2 hours, another cloudy episode, then it started to snow! Yes, snow. That turned to rain and it was cloudy the rest of the day. Unstable weather makes for such dramatic skies. Wicklow Mountains

The Rock of Cashel.

Built between 1101-1200, the 92 ft. round tower was a mainly used as a bell tower and lookout post. The wooden door is 12 ft. above the ground. Having the doorway lower would have weakened the structure. Tim was impressed with the stability of the tower since it's built on a very shallow foundation. He looks at things no one else would think to look at-hinges, joints, etc.

Ruth, Tim and Lucy all admiring what's left of the cathedral.

Hore Abbey was built in the thirteenth century.

That's Lucy and Sofie running over the Plain of Tipperary. Even though the weather isn't the greatest, it really cuts down on the crowds. They're non-existent! The girls crawled all over the ruins of the abbey.