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.

Canada Day Weekend

My husband, Roel, and I had the pleasure of spending the Canada Day weekend in St. John's, Newfoundland. The photographs today are compliments of 'Roel'. I had never seen our eastern-most province and am very happy to have addressed that shortcoming. We stayed at an excellent bed and breakfast - the 'Angel House Heritage Inn'. A stay in Angel House is definitely recommended if you are visiting St. John's.

Our hosts, Patricia and Russel, were knowledgeable, interesting, welcoming and non-intrusive. Angel House, itself, is a charming and lovely place for a getaway weekend. Two very appealing elements of this particular B&B were the exquisite breakfasts and the gardens. For breakfast, Annie, the chef, offers a a different mouth-watering local specialty every day - or you can have Patricia's homemade organic granola with yoghurt. The best granola I've ever found! Sunday evening, we were invited to dinner, offering another local specialty, something called Jig's Dinner. We had other plans for that evening, and judging from the smell of roasting turkey when we came in, we missed something very special. Russel and Patricia create a very unique atmosphere at Angel House. Though my husband and I were only there for three days, we felt we had become a part of a small community. Breakfast every morning brought a lively discussion with the other guests on politics, sightseeing opportunities and some pretty bad jokes. We shared a table with some very interesting guests from Nova Scotia, Toronto, Orillia and New Jersey. The company was as appealing as the food.

The rugged coastline was beautiful, made even more so by the fog and mists. Since we had rented a car, a dashing PT Cruiser, we spent most of our days sightseeing. Newfoundlanders have the most colourful names for towns and bays I've ever heard. Witless Bay, Ferryland, Placentia, Argentia, Mistaken Point ... We drove first to Witless Bay - and missed it. So we kept heading south to Ferryland. The rugged coastline was beautiful, made even more so by the fog and mists. On our way back from Ferryland, we managed to find Witless Bay. From there you can take boat tours to go whale watching and to see the bird sanctuary, home to 500,000 puffins. We did both, though we didn't count the puffins.
On Sunday, we headed cross-country toward Placentia Bay then south to Cape St. Mary's. This is about a 3 hour drive and there really isn't much between Placentia and Cape St. Mary's. At the cape, though, there is another bird sanctuary. Home to thousands of gannets. We made the 20 minute walk and it was not a waste of time or effort.

This was definitely a trip worth making, though our time was short. I haven't mentioned the walks through St. John's itself. The city isn't large, compared to some, but you will need a map as the streets tend to change names frequently and feel no compunction to run in any consistent direction.

B & B Weekend

If you like gardens, birds, beaches and privacy, there's a bed and breakfast on the shores of Lake Huron just waiting for you. The hosts are Audrey and Bob Hamilton and they have built their retirement 'cottage' on the south shore of Lake Huron near Camlachie, Ontario. The B&B is absolutely lovely. The entire ground floor is for the guests and is more of an apartment than a guestroom. And then there are the gardens ...

Just outside your door is a beautiful and mature garden, complete with flowering shrubs, mature perennials, bird feeders and trees. There is a covered sitting area where you can enjoy the garden and the birds even in the rain. And the birds are plentiful - orioles, doves, ruby-throated hummingbirds, finches of all kinds, cardinals, red-winged blackbirds and many more I can't name.

My mother found this beautiful retreat and introduced me to it a few years ago. We try to visit at least once each summer to enjoy the gardens, the beach, the birds and the peace. There's not much nearby, so you will need to take a drive to find a restaurant or town. The beach is a short walk away, down a shady lane. This is definitely a place for adults, not children. And adults who know how to wind down and relax.