What better place to spend a birthday

Gary's birthday today and we headed for a quick drive through Cork and Blarney and back down south to the coast to Kinsale then off to the stunning scenery of the west coast. The day started off in perfect sunshine - in fact it stayed like that for most of the day with cloud coming across occasionally. We have been blessed with the weather - it is usually wet most of the time they tell us. We travelled the coast road through Clonakilty, Skibbereen, Ballydehob, Bantry, and out to the Beara Peninsula passing through Curryglass and finally to Allihies - just love the names of the towns and villages. We are spending the night in the ever so tiny village of Allihies. 

                                 Colourful buildings overlooking Cork Harbour

Boat harbour in Kinsale

Nice spot for a cuppa

 

                                        More rolling green hills

                        Gary's birthday present - a puffin from Iceland
                                - it has now become our mascot

                       Timoleague  Priory - stopped for a spot of lunch

                                How the countryside has changed
                        

Back to our rolling hills

                           The rugged coastline is now coming into view

                                     View from our B&B window - magic

Dinner was at the only pub/restaurant in town - O'Neills - for a celebration dinner. We were told it had very good seafood and it did not disappoint - their seafood chowder was superb, as was the lamb shank.

Looking forward to the Ring of Kerry and Dingle Peninsula tomorrow. 

Ann

Challenging narrow Irish lanes

Forgot to mention yesterday that there is a signed photo of Tom Hanks in the bar we had dinner last night. We were told they filmed the beach scenes for Saving Private Ryan in Courtown - an interesting piece of trivia.

Fully sated after our full Irish breakfast we were back on the road again heading towards Kilkenny travelling through more gorgeous countryside and quaint Irish villages. Found ourselves lost on more than one occasion today and driving through lanes - that's right not roads - which barely allowed for a car. Don't know what we would have done had we come across a vehicle coming toward us. One way roads are rarely marked here and as cars are allowed to park in any direction on both sides of the road, it is impossible to know which way the one way traffic is supposed to go - unless you are following another car. Fun fun fun!

Staying just outside of Cork tonight - tried getting a B&B down the road on the coast but the villages are very tiny and as they say, there was no room at the inn.

Beautiful countryside



One of the many tiny villages we pass through
every few kilometres



Imposing Rock of Cashel

Can't get enough of the rolling green hills



Very impressive Lismore Castle

Grounds of the castle

Rear of the castle



Dramatic change of scenery - found ourselves
climbing and driving through a rainforest

Heading back to the coast tomorrow making our way to the Ring of Kerry and Dingle Peninsula - expecting see some spectacularly rugged scenery.

Ann





On the road again............

Left the lovely Brooks Hotel to pick up our Avis car for our much anticipated road trip round the Emerald Isle. The Sunday roads were very quiet driving out of Dublin through the suburbs - we headed south to Wicklow then west to Glendalough Valley in the Wicklow Mountains National Park - a very scenic part of the world. As we seem to always be drawn back to the coast we spent our first night in the little harbour town of Courtown at a lovely B&B looking right over the boats in the harbour. Walked down to the local pub - The Taravie - the only food in town opened on a Sunday night and had a fabulous meal - roast lamb - with the locals.


Quiet Dublin roads on a drizzly Sunday morning



Suburban Dublin





One of the lakes at Glendalough- very peaceful

Harbour House B&B in Courtown and our 
 Renault hire car - very nice

View of the harbour from our room



 Picturesque Courtown

The plan for tomorrow is to leave the coast and travel west to Kilkenny, and southwest to Cork but who knows where the road will take us - or we may get lost as we sometimes do with my navigating.

Slán go fóill

Ann

Dublin - 25, 26, 27 April

A long long day to travel the rather small distance from Iceland to Dublin, via London. Icelandair would not forward our bags direct, which meant we had to pick up our bags at Heathrow, go through customs etc....it took forever.

After our 3.30am start, we arrived at the hotel, very tired, at 5.30pm. Thought we would have a rest before tackling the cold, yes very cold here as well. Silly thing to do, didn't wake up till 8 the next morning. Although hungry, we felt fully refreshed and rested.

Unusually sunny weather greeted us in Dublin and we started seeing the sights of Dublin by hop-on-hop-off bus - seems the city is full of pubs, churches, breweries and parks and the obligatory castle. We had a wonderful eveinging on Friday at the Brazen Head Pub, Dublin's oldest pub - a night of food, music, folklore and stories - extremely entertaining and good fun.



St Stephens Green

St Patricks Cathedral



Typical Irish pubs



Statue of Molly Mallone - sells cockells by day
and ?????? by night



Christ Church Cathedral



Dublin's favourite ale



Dublin Castle

Temple Bar area - very hip area to be seen in

 

Popular shopping area of Grafton Street

 

Trinity College

Walked up to the corner from our hotel for our last meal in Dublin - to The Hairy Lemon - don't you just love the name - more importantly though, the food was good.

 Slán go fóill

Ann

Snow, fire and ice - 24th April

An early start this morning for our 45 min flight to Akureyri, the business and commercial centre of northern Iceland to start our Lake Myvatn excursion. We set out from Akureyri in a mini bus - 4 of us - our first stop was to visit a fully automated dairy farm - the cows are milked by robot - very interesting. Then on to the Godafoss waterfalls, not quite as spectacular as earlier ones we had seen, but beautiful nonetheless. Europe's largest bird sanctuary was next, Lake Myvatn was next (not too many birds at this time of year as the lake was frozen). The still-active Krafla volcano was next, then on to sizzling Hverarond, famous for its bubbling sulfur mud pots. We then walked round Dimmuborgir, a lava park with unique rock formations. Lastly, a welcome dip in the Myvatn Nature Baths before our flight home - an exhausting but wonderful day of astounding beauty.   

The farm we visited

These gorgeous baby calves were just 2 days old



Godafoss waterfalls



In the salmon fly fishing season it costs $2000 per day
to fish in the rivers and the fish are thrown back





Frozen Lake Myvatn

 

Still-active volcano





Lava park



Decided on a very quick dinner tonight - 8 by the time we arrived back at the hotel and a 3.30 start in the morning for our flight to Ireland. 

Not one of our better dinners


 Bless bless

Ann