Kate Visits Canada

We were thrilled to welcome Kate home for a visit from Australia this month. The two-week visit has flown by far too quickly and she's on her way back to Rob in Newcastle and her last term of Uni.

We'll miss you, Kate ... probably as much as Rob has these past two weeks. Here are few photos to remind you of us.

Love Mom

From Kinsale to Killarney

Friday morning in Kinsale and the weather was a little more promising, but still overcast. Here is a bit of a view of Kinsale from the vantage point of our bed & breakfast ... and a slightly blurry and cheesy self-portrait of Matthew and me setting off on the road.





You can see on the map that we are starting from Kinsale and following the smaller roads along the shore. We were generally heading west and wanted to make a stop in Bantry. Along the way we found some places with very melodic names like Skibbereen, Ballinspittle and Clonakilty. The downside to the beautiful scenery was that the roads were a little exciting by times.





There seemed to be only one speed limit no matter the size or condition of the roads. And as the saying goes, that was merely a suggestion.



Matthew had been reading about Bantry House in one of our guide books and thought it looked like a good place to spend some time. He was right. If you're in the area, Bantry House, located on Bantry Bay has beautiful gardens and wonderfully well-maintained buildings.

We enjoyed the gardens ...















Bantry House, itself, is beautiful as is the view of Bantry Bay.








The stables ...











We couldn't resist a picture of this huge and beautiful tree as we were leaving.



There is also a small museum called the French Armada Centre that gives a pictoral history of the 1796 invasion by the French and United Irishmen in an attempt to end British rule.

We ended up spending much longer at Bantry House than we had planned - not really a problem since we didn't have a set agenda and we totally enjoyed our time there. Matthew and I give Bantry House a big two thumbs up on the tourist scale.

After we left Bantry and were back on the road to Killarney, the sun came out and offered us a few glimpses of the incredible Irish countryside. We couldn't resist stopping the car a couple of times to take some short treks through the fields.

















Next post ... the Shannon River and more.

Ireland Cont'd

Well, not literally back to Ireland, but back to getting the rest of this vacation documented before I get even further behind. We've just returned from 2 weeks in Italy and in another two weeks, I'm leaving for Australia, so I can see that I am falling dreadfully behind.

To pick up the thread from a couple of posts back, after Matthew and I saw DMB in concert (Dublin) we picked up a rental car and started on our (primarily unplanned) road trip. Neither Matthew nor I like rigid schedules, so our entire plan for the next few days was driven by the weather, a guidebook and our stomachs.

We had decided to make for Kinsale for the night and do minimal sightseeing along the way. We found some fairly major roads and started our journey south from Dublin. On the way, we passed through Port Laoise. This town was cause for significant dicussion, debate and laughter over its correct pronunciation. According to the locals, it is correctly pronounced Port Leash.

We stopped for lunch in the lovely little town of Abbeyleix. Matthew was in charge of the guidebook, and had decided this was to be an ABC vacation (another bloody castle) and directed me to head for Cashel home of a castle just waiting to be explored.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't cooperating and the pictures show the drab gray sky. And that didn't really matter much - we had some fun exploring Chashel Castle.













The modern town of Cashel from the hilltop.


Proof that I was there too. Matthew finally took a picture with me in it!




Back in the car ... and heading to Cahir for another castle. Too bad we left it too late and the castle was closed for the day.


A blurry shot of the roadside. Blurry because we didn't stop the car to take it. Our lack of planning was making us quite late to get into Kinsale.


So late, in fact, that this is the only picture we took. It's too bad because Kinsale is a beautiful and picturesque town right on the water. It is getting a little too 'touristy' for my taste and quite crowded. Looks like lots of folks have discovered Kinsale. The seals don't seem to mind though.

Why Ireland?

The deciding factor for Matthew's choice of Ireland as a destination was that one of his favourite bands was playing in Dublin. After a year of indecision, last November he asked if he could have tickets to the concert for Christmas and his high school victory trip planned around the concert.

In short, he got two tickets to see the Dave Matthews Band in concert at the Point Theatre in Dublin as a Christmas gift then we set out to plan our trip around the May 23rd date.

As fate would have it, we were also planning a house move, a visit from my daughter and her boyfriend on their way to Australia for an indeterminate amount of time and a career change in the same 6-week period.

We flew from Toronto, through Heathrow to arrive in Dublin mid-day on Tuesday May 22, giving us some time to recover from jet lag and see a bit of Dublin before the concert the following evening. I should note that our intention was a driving tour of much of Ireland and not primarily Dublin itself.

Another point to note is that as we were connecting through Heathrow there were considerable limitations to our carry-on luggage. No cameras were allowed on board and that limited photography to what we managed with our little point and shoot cameras as I wasn't about to trust my digital SLR and lenses to the baggage handlers.

I had been advised to avoid driving in Dublin if at all possible. Good advice. Dublin has grown quite a lot recently and the traffic is extremely congested. We cabbed from the airport to our downtown hotel then cabbed back to the airport car rental to start out on the driving part of our tour.

In Dublin (remember the limited budget?) we stayed at the Earl of Kildare. While the Earl is definitely not a five star luxury hotel, it is clean, the staff is friendly & helpful, the price is very reasonable and you can't beat the location - it is mid-way between St. Stephen's Green and Trinity college.

Matthew and I both love to walk and explore cities, and Dublin offers no shortage of interesting places to explore. In the short time we had in Dublin we managed to tour Dublin Castle, walk around St. Stephen's Green, see Trinity College, visit both the Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of Ireland, have a pint of Guiness (Matthew, not me) eat way too much and take in a DMB concert at the Point Theatre.

Some photographs of our time in Dublin ...

First a couple of shots of the courtyard at Dublin Castle. The first is the only tower remaining from the medieval castle - the South East Record Tower. Next is a shot of the upper courtyard.




Here's Matthew ...



Parts of the campus of Trinity College.





Matthew, again. Isn't he handsome?



A most incredible tree on campus - from two perspectives, of course.





Stay tuned for more of our high school victory tour.

Travel and Teens

When my two children were still in high school, I decided to stash some money away every year. At the time, our high school lasted 5 years and I managed to put away about $1,000 each year. So when they graduated the plan was that I would have $5,000 saved for each of them. The money was to be theirs to spend according to my rules and my rules were pretty simple:

1. It had to be spent on travel;
2. The travel was just the two of us; and
3. $5,000 was the total budget.

My thinking in doing this was that I was giving them the gift of possibilities. Each spent quite a lot of their time exploring what part of the world they wanted to see first, checking into flight costs, hotel costs and things they might see when they got wherever they decided to go.

As an added advantage, I have had the pleasure of spending a substantial amount of time alone with each of my children when they are on the brink of adulthood away from cell phones, internet, friends and a multitude of other distractions teenagers usually find to avoid their parents.

The unexpected result has been that they are both infected with the travel and adventure bug.

My daughter, the elder of the two, graduated from high school a few years ago and she chose Paris as her destination. My son finished high school three years later and we have recently returned from a tour of Ireland.