Ireland

We took off for a long weekend in Ireland..... here we are at

St. Patricks Cathedral in Dublin

We flew into Dublin and spent two days exploring the city of Dublin ate fish & chips and washed it all down with pints of Guinness. The entire country of Ireland is SMOKE FREE - so wonderful to sit in a bar and not dying of smoke inhalation....like we do in Moscow and Pittsburgh for that matter.....

We toured the Guinness Brewery - really neat tour! After the tour we each got a free pint of Guinness to sample....who knew that Guinness was so good!

After spending a few days in Dublin we set out for the west coast of Ireland to make our trek down the western coast of Ireland south to Cork and drive back to Dublin to fly back home to Moscow......

This was the first vacation that Jim has ever taken with NO hotel reservations - just the open road and our rented red mini cooper (that Jim had to have!!!) I was told NOT to reserve hotel or B&B reservations prior to the trip as you just have no idea what cute Irish town you'll be spending the night.....so we just played it by ear and ended up not having a problem finding a place to stay along the way......

Our first stop was a little town outside the Cliffs of Moher called Lahinch which is on the western coast of Ireland. After touring the cliffs we began our drive down the coast south towards the Dingle Peninsula to our next stop Dingle Town.

Shots of the Cliffs of Moher

Dingle Peninsula was a very neat drive and the town of Dingle was very fun -
lots of cute shops and great pubs.

Standing on Conor Pass

Jim standing at Dingle Harbor

After spending the night and the next day in Dingle we set off East down the coast towards the Ring of Kerry which unfortunately rained the entire day so the Ring of Kerry wasn't as impressive as Dingle Peninsula. We ended up driving to a town called Kenmare to spend the night.

A neat church along the drive towards Kinsale

The next morning we set off driving East again to a town called Kinsale which ended up being our favorite town. It's located on the Kinsale Harbor and made up of great outside cafe's and great shopping. After spending the day in Kinsale we began our drive North towards Cork and a quick stop to the Blarney Castle we were back on the road again towards Dublin
to catch our flight back to Moscow!