May 23

Due to the fast approaching Memorial Day holiday coming up we decided we would take advantage of the extra day off and do a little traveling with our good friends from work Michael and Katie. We got up early and headed to San Francisco. San Francisco is a lovely place to spend a vacation, with the airport being one of the highlights. We decided we enjoyed the airport so much we would stay there and play a game of Phase 10. Katie had advanced to the final phase but I think she could feel my comeback getting under way so she called the game and she and Michael jumped on a plane to Ireland.

We decided we enjoyed the San Francisco airport a bit more than they did so we hung around there for another six hours and then headed back to Phoenix. If anyone wants more details as to why we were so enamored of the airport in San Fran, you will have to speak with Sarah. We had decided that San Francisco wasn’t where we wanted to spend our Memorial Day weekend and jumped on a plane the next day (May 24) for Shannon, Ireland.

May 25

Michael and Katie had been there for a day and learned the beauty of driving on the left side of roads the size of sidewalks. So, they picked us up from the airport and we were off to McDonald’s. We were greeted at McDonald’s by a nice Russian chap, who scoffed at us when we asked for a Sausage Biscuit. He said, “Biscuit?? We are not Burger King, we have no sausage biscuit!” (to be read in a heavy Russian accent). Discovered later that cookies are referred to as biscuits and the nice Russian spy must have thought we were asking for a Sausage cookie, I wonder how well Burger King does at selling their Sausage cookies... Anywho, we got back on the road headed straight for the Cliffs of Moher or Mordor as they are known in Middle Earth.

Last year on “Where in the world, where in the world, is Matt Lauer?” he took all of us to the enchanted Cliffs of Moher. While we had already been there with Matt Lauer, Michael and Katie had not. The Cliffs of Moher are seriously awesome, and pictures cannot do them complete justice. We walked along the edge, well, while I was living on the edge, Sarah kept singing that Aerosmith song, “Janie’s Got a Gun”. I guess there have been quite a few deaths of people walking along the cliffs by sudden big gusts of wind, bad footing, and just being stupid. Luckily, none of us were infected with the stupidity virus while we were there, so we were alright. Some may say by looking at this picture I may have had a case of the stupids but according to my parents I had a severe case of it when I was young but you can’t get it twice, so I was alright.

Michael did some modeling at the castle, a favorite past time of all visitors. They had little hobbit shops that were built into the hillside that were pretty cool. We admired them and posed for pictures in front of them and then took off for the Burren. While driving in Ireland, you will come around a narrow bend and everyone will see a castle or some ruins of an abbey or leprechauns, it is seriously awesome until the driver starts to admire them as well and you realize you have drifted into the right lane of the “sidewalk” streets. This is a castle close to the Burren.

The sweetest part of the Burren is the Poulnabrone Dolman, a megalithic tomb that had like 20 people buried underneath it and is from about 3200 BC and possibly built by the aliens from Indiana Jones. It is in the middle of a field of rocks which is what gave the Burren its name. We decided to do a heel click to celebrate the field of rocks, we couldn’t quite get it right so Sarah had us do heel clicks for the rest of our travels until we could get it right. It was at this point in our trip that Sarah started inventing words, again, for more details you would need to ask her.

We continued on our exploration journey through Ireland and came upon an old Church and an Egyptian Castle in the middle of a golf course. We explored the church for a while and took more modeling pictures. We then walked along a “sidewalk” (a narrow wall with cars passing by on one side and a river on the other) to catch a glimpse of the castle on the golf course, it was nothing like the castles on the mini-golf courses I had played.

After a couple more stops we arrived on the Dingle Peninsula, this is where Dingle-berries originated and were brought to the New World and spread to farms across the land. Dingle is a rad little harbor town with its own Dolphin “Fungii”. If you visit a restroom while in Dingle, don’t get confused by the wide stance signs, it’s just how things are done there. We walked the streets for a while and went into a few pubs and enjoyed some of the famous traditional Irish music. We ate that night at Murphy’s pub and liked it so much we stayed at the Bed & Breakfast upstairs. It was a nice little place with a great host.

May 26

When we awoke the next day, we experienced our first “Full” Irish Breakfast, which was awesome. It is a plate of an egg, grilled tomato, bacon, sausage and an unidentifiable piece of meat that was tasty. We then went on an exploration of the Dingle Peninsula. It was on this Peninsula that Tomcole Cruman (Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman – for those of you who aren’t in touch with the awesome fad of combining two names for dating/married couples, it’s fun) filmed part of their Irish Movie “War of the Worlds”. This was one of the fields used in the movie.

They have rare farm animals on this peninsula like donkeys and horses, these are scary creatures. We stopped by some “Beehives”. These were built over 4000 years ago and had inhabitants up until around 1200 AD. They are made solely of rocks and look like Rock Igloos, possibly built by Eskimos. The Dingle Way is filled with all kinds of cool sites. They build all their farm lands with rock walls to keep their cattle and sheep. It was pretty sweet to see these farms from a distance and see all the walls. We saw a beach and decided to check it out a little closer. Props to Michael on maneuvering down an even narrower road than we had yet seen, we only had one near death experience when we thought the car was in reverse but it was really in 1^st.

On the rest of our travel around the peninsula we noticed the informative signs like “Hobbit Crossing” and “if you see a car, run like there is no tomorrow because they are probably crazy American drivers admiring Castles, ruins and leprechauns.”

We grabbed a little lunch and headed for Cashel. On the way to Cashel we stopped in a small town with an incredible church. Everyone needed to visit the wide-stance bathrooms and we may have done a couple of illegal things in trying to park and find a water closet. It was then that we noticed a “Bobby” crossing the street for us. We decided we didn’t need to use the wide-stance right this minute and got in the car and continued our journey.

The Rock of Cashel is an incredible castle sitting on a hill in the city of Cashel. It served as the home of the Munster kings and was turned over to the church in 1100. It is said to be the site where St Patrick converted one of the Munsters, probably Herman. More pictures, more heel clicks. There was a cool Abbey out in the distance that we hiked out to. It is incredible to be surrounded by all these sites.

We then headed for Kilkenny for the evening. We arrived at the Bed & Breakfast but our hostess wasn’t there, so we knocked on a neighbor’s door, and they kindly invited us in from the rain. We chatted with the Kilroys. They were super friendly and were filled with great stories and recommended an excellent restaurant. Our hostess arrived and we stayed in one of the best B&Bs ever. Sarah felt extremely pampered as she stole all of the hot water for her evening bath.

May 27

After another amazing “Full” Irish Breakfast we were off to Glendalough. It pretty much rained the whole day so it made our stops at the sites short and sweet. Glendalough was a monastery and it had a really old cemetery with sweet grave stones. They say if you put your arms all the way around the Celtic Cross grave you get to make a wish. Sarah wished it would stop raining, I wished it to continue raining so we can see who the wish fairies like more.

We then headed towards the Powerscourt Gardens. The GPS system, appropriately named Vicki (Small Wonder), led us instead to Powerscourt Waterfall. As we drove up we expected to see a little water trickling over a rock, but it was a huge waterfall, the highest in Ireland. We drove around it for a bit and then headed to the Gardens. The Gardens are supposed to be impressive, however, it was raining so we did some shopping inside the old mansion.

Back in the car and off to Trim. Trim castle was used in “Braveheart” and “High School Musical 2.” We did a quick trot around the grounds and couldn’t believe how people could possibly live in those conditions, especially with all the rain they get in Ireland and the lack of wide-stanced water closets. It was an awesome castle.

We grabbed a quick bite and headed to Bru na Boinne, an ancient burial ground. They are a couple of tombs in hills all covered with grass, pretty sweet looking from the window we got to see them out of. We missed the last bus by about 15 minutes, but still had a good time looking around the visitors center and learning more about them.

We ended the day in Howth, a harbor town just north of Dublin. Our host here was hilarious. He gave us some good recommendations for food and for our short trip into Dublin the next day. We had some excellent salmon pasta that night and topped the night off with the Irish flick, “Nacho Libre,” filmed at the monastery in Glendalough but Jack Black needs to do a little work on his Irish accent.

May 28

Our last “Full” Irish Breakfast was a little harder to get down as my arteries weren’t working quite as well as they were for the first few. After breakfast, Sarah gave driving on the left side of the road a whirl, I was scared, but we all survived.

We got to the train station in Howth and headed to Dublin. The train took a bit to get there, longer than we had anticipated and then my excellent map reading skills took us the wrong direction to a couple of shops where we did some shopping and such. We had time for a quick trip to Trinity College and O’Connell Street with the Spire (world’s tallest sculpture?) and headed back to the train station. Dublin is kind of a dreary town, but it was a good quick visit we had. We got back on the train and headed out to Howth.

We didn’t have much time to get to the airport so Michael required us all to sing the Jason Bourne music as he whipped through the streets of Ireland. We made it to the airport and searched for the rental car return. We passed it and didn’t have any time to go around the massive loop again so Michael did what Jason Bourne would have done, he threw it in reverse and politely backed his way through a one way street all the way to the Hertz. We were all impressed that we didn’t die.

The airport was a mad house but we eventually made it on our flight. We had no clue that you go through customs over there and we should have planned appropriately, but we still made it. To top the trip off, for the flight home we enjoyed the witty and adventurous “Devil Wears Prada”, filmed somewhere in Ireland but we didn’t make it to that site.

Special thanks to Katie & Michael for putting up with our unbelievable "Luck o' the Irish"!

THE END.

Posted by Sarah & Trent at 4:04 PM