Torkelsons & Doc Sue in Ireland

Doc Sue and the 6 of us flew to Ireland to tour the country. As we may have mentioned before, Doc Sue has a special ability to affect the weather wherever she is visiting. This caused the coldest/snowiest weather that Ireland had seen in 50 years we were told by some locals. We flew out on New Year's Day and the plane was delayed for about an hour as the Dublin airport was closed for weather. Fortunately they reopened and we were able to land, but we had to drive very carefully as the roads were pretty snowy and icy, for the 4 days that we were there. Tom was an expert driver and thankful for the manual transmission in certain icy spots.

Day 1- After landing in the Dublin airport, we were starved and bought some sandwiches at an airport shop - we were also a little tired and found the napkins & chips funny:

Catherine didn't make it to lunch:

[When we went outside to catch the bus to our rental van, Catherine dropped her bunny in the snow and mud. We were very thankful that the hotel lent us some detergent to wash the bunny in the sink that night and after a night of drying on the radiator, bunny was good as new!] We drove 3 hours to Cork in the fog, snow & slow traffic. We had planned to go to Blarney Castle the first day, but the weather and delays forced us to just go to the hotel, eat dinner & go to sleep.

Day 2 - We woke up early and headed to the Blarney Castle to be there when it opened - we had the entire place to ourselves as not many people were venturing out in the freezing cold temperatures (high of 3 to low of -12 Celsius: 37 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit). We walked to the castle and up the steep, small spiral staircase to the top of the castle where the famous Blarney stone is located. Tom, Debbie & Doc Sue kissed the Blarney stone as MANY others have before us. We had to actually lay upside down and hold onto railings while a man held our legs to reach the stone. Here are some photos from the Blarney Castle, cave, and kissing the stone:

After the castle, we drove to Killarney to start the Ring of Kerry drive. On the way, we saw this sign and had to take a picture for Sandy, Bryan, Rachel, Zac & Abby:

We drove the ring clockwise and saw numerous beautiful views along the way - waterfall, mountains, coast - here are the photos from the Ring of Kerry:

The boys really enjoyed looking at the icicles and collected several for the short walk - here are a few:

Here are the beautiful coastal scenes we saw:

After finishing the Ring of Kerry, we drove another 1 1/2 hours to Limerick to spend the night.

Day 3: We made our first stop at Bunratty Castle when it opened and again had the entire place to ourselves. Many fun sights in the castle and village:

One of Catherine's favorite words she learned on the trip was "dungeon" - here's the Bunratty dungeon:

Catherine petting an Irish Wolfhound at the castle:

After the castle, we drove to the West Coast of Ireland to see the Cliffs of Moher which were in the movie The Princess Bride as the "cliffs of insanity." The views were beautiful, but there was a little haze which made the photos not as clear as we would have liked. Also, it was the coldest place we visited and we really couldn't just hang out and enjoy the views - we quickly walked to the cliffs, snapped these photos, then went back to the car:

We opted to take the scenic coastal route to Galway where we spent the night. We saw many cool castle & church ruins along the way:

Day 4: We drove back to Dublin and explored the city. There were many beautiful churches and castle-looking buildings in the city. We tried to go to the National Museum of Ireland, but it was closed. Then we started trying to find Dublin Castle and headed toward castle-like places, only to find they were other buildings. We did finally find Dublin Castle and paid for the tour which was very informative. The building is mostly a government building now and doesn't look much like a castle except for one tower - here are some photos from Dublin:

We learned the derivation of the name Dublin. There were 2 rivers that pooled together into a black pool of water by the castle and Dublin means black pool - here is where the black pool used to be - it's now a circular garden:

After the tour, we tried to find a souvenir shop without much luck. We ate dinner at a pub, then went for dessert at a chocolate shop:When we returned to the parking garage where we left our car, we discovered we missed the closing of the garage by 20 minutes and had to call someone to come open the garage to get our car. Of course we had to pay a fine for calling someone out, but we needed the car to get to our hotel that night. We woke up very early the next morning to drive to the airport and fly back to England. We then drove from one airport to antoher to drop off Doc Sue for her return to the States. After a very tearful goodbye, Sue made it on her plane and safely returned to Colorado. Now we'll have to start planning another adventure!