Addison in the City: Ireland

May the road rise up to meet you.May the wind always be at your back.May the sun shine warm upon your face,and rains fall soft upon your fields.And until we meet again,May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
- An Old Irish Blessing

Ireland is beautiful. It has such different landscapes everywhere you look. Green fields, tall lovely mountains, fields of limestone, cliffs, forests all shoved into one little country. One little country called Ireland.

We started our travels of Ireland in Dublin. It was quite interesting since we rented a car, and dad was driving. He had to get used to the left side of the road and different positions for the stick shift. But he did excellent! Since we live in London, the city did not much interest us, so we only stayed one night. We saw the Book of Kells, which is an old prayer book, illuminated by the Irish monks. We also saw a well, where St. Patrick was thought to have baptized many Irishmen. The best part of Dublin though, was the food. Now, Irish food is almost exactly like British food, so there's not much to try there. So, we went to an Italian restaurant, Il Vicoletto, for dinner. I got caramelized pear and taleggio cheese risotto. Let me tell you, that was the best risotto I have ever tasted. The cheese was, in my opinion, a little heavy and just a tad bitter, but the pear was so sweet and light; they balanced each other perfectly. It was so delicious! Then we took a walk down their high street to find a little ice cream shop, called Murphy's, which was supposedly one of the best in Ireland. They had a few odd flavors like sea salt, brown bread, buttermilk, Guinness, and marmalade. I got sea salt and peanut butter! It was so good! In the morning, we grabbed some breakfast, and drove to the Wicklow Mountains National Park. It was beautiful! There were the ruins of a Monastery among the mountains and streams. Us girls tried to cross the stream using rocks instead of a bridge, and Jordan unfortunately fell in. It was a little funny! :) Then, we drove into a town close to the park called Glendalough (pronounced Glendalock) where Dad rented a pole and went fly fishing! He caught a trout. Then we drove to a little town called Limerick. And we wrote a few limericks on the way!! Really, there was nothing to do in this town, so we just had a little bit of dinner and watch some movies at the hotel! The next morning we drove to Dingle. On our way, we stopped at village called Adare. It is one of the only villages where a majority of the buildings have thatched roofs. It really did look like a picture out of a medieval history text book. Out side of Dingle, we stopped to climb a few mountains. The first one we climbed had huge rocks to scramble up, so we couldn't go that high. But there was a little lake in between the mountains before they became too high to climb. It was so pretty. The water was so cold and refreshing. But it was so foggy you could barely see and the wind was so strong like it wanted to pull you off the mountain. The next mountain we climbed we went all the way to the top, because there were no rocks, or trees or anything, it was just grass. When we reached the top, we couldn't see anything, the fog was so thick. Sometimes, there was a little glimmer in the air as a small drop of sunshine peeped through. And the wind was so strong you constantly had to fight it. I tried to just relax, and the wind almost knocked me over. Once in Dingle, we walked around there little town only to find, there was a Murphy's there too!! So we walked along the coast with our ice cream. I got sea salt and caramel honeycomb. It was also delicious. Then we tumbled back into the car and drove along the coast to see the sights! We saw a famine cottage left deserted when the great Irish Famine in the 1840's hit. We saw beehive shaped structures which we assumed to be ancient dwelling, but nobody knows for sure. The next morning we went to Killarney National Park. It was beautiful with it's numerous lakes and mountains, but also pasture land. We took a carriage ride through the park, which was fun. Then, we went to have lunch and discovered that there was a..... MURPHY'S!! I got Kieran's Cookies and Peanut Butter! Need I say it was good? Then we went to Ross Castle. It was really just a tower that had been restored. We kept seeing electrical sockets and joking that they were very advanced! Anyway, the reason it had to be restored was because the family who owned Ross castle no longer lived there, and at that time, something called the roof tax was being enforced. Which basically made you pay a tax on any extra roofs a family owned. So the family who owned this castle, but no longer lived in it, took of the roof off Ross castle to avoid this tax. Then the entire building was open to the elements and quickly fell into disrepair. We then drove to our final destination for Ireland, The Burren. The landscape here, was a little odd, it was pretty much limestone. Limestone mountains, limestone fields, limestone was everywhere. We stayed at a little B&B called Cappabhaile House that was excellent. It had a game room with DVD's and a pool table, which was Maddy's favorite. We went to an old abandoned church, a cave, climbed one of the limestone mountains, saw a neolithic tomb, an ancient fort, saw another castle, hiked a few more mountains, drove along the coast, saw wild ponies, and climbed the Moher Cliffs before we hopped on a plane back to London. Oh, the best bit about the The Burren, was that dad let me drive!! Let me tell you, manuel is hard. Very hard. I killed the engine maybe 6 times, but I actually got it driving about 2 times!! And my dad said that the car we had was a very hard manuel. Even he killed the engine, and he doesn't kill engines. Anyway, Ireland was fun, and I hope we get to go back to do a little more exploring!

Wherever you go and whatever you do, May the luck of the Irish be there with you.

and just a warning, there are half a ton of pictures....