Kindle and Ireland

As you may remember from my previous posts, my mom and dad bought me a Kindle prior to our trip to Ireland.  I’ve got a stack of books that needed to be read, but my mission for this trip was to read a book about Benjamin Franklin.  Here are some shots of where the Kindle and I worked on accomplishing my Ireland Mission.

 

Here we are near the Dublin Zoo…

at the pier for Clare island…

 

inside Moorehall Cottage…

outside Moorehall Cottage…

 

with Murphy outside our cottage in County Tipperary…

I worked hard on finishing this book and as of yesterday, I accomplished my EVEREST! 

Connemara National Park

From our first cottage in County Mayo, we took a day trip to Connemara National Park on the far west side of Ireland. We hiked to the top of Diamond Hill, but it is more like a mountain.  Above is me at the very highest point.  You can easily see the 3 rocks piled next to me.  At that moment, I was the higher than the highest point…actually Matt was since he was standing to take the picture.

Part way through our hike there was a lookout over the area.  It was so pretty…and very very high.

Look at this amazing hike.  I can’t believe that I was able to crawl up the mountain.  Matt left me in his dust and I was constantly behind him in the hike.

View from the top of the mountain…again.  If you look close at the bottom middle you can see Kylemore Abby.  It’s pictured in more detail below.

Moorehall Cottage-County Mayo

Upon arrival to Ireland, we took a nice long drive to our first destination…Morehall Cottage.  It was a cottage on Lough Carra near Castlebar.

Our host, Patrick, welcomed us with wine, bread, butter, and blueberry jam. 

  Here is Matt and I bird watching from our deck.  It was beautiful the entire stay…didn’t rain once!

Photo taken from the kitchen window.  So close to the water!

Apparently there have always been 2 swans that lived at the lake since the beginning of time.

Here is the view of our lake cottage from the end of the pier outside our house.  The dock in front is under water, but there is a working dock on the other side of the house.  We had access to the boat house and the boats on the lake.

Here is how happy Matt is on the boat ride.

Here is the same boat ride with my feelings clearly displayed.

Of interest, here is our toilet.  The shower, toilet, and sink are all in one room…with no division.  Very interesting.

We did have one plague at this cottage…DUCK FLIES.  These crafty little buggers were all over.  Apparently it’s a great sign for fishing but they were annoying…very annoying.  You can see that they are all over our cottage…they speckled our beautiful white cottage.

They look like little mosquitoes but they don’t bite.

Ireland-Day 1

After a 3 hour drive to Chicago, Matt and I embarked on an 8 hour flight to Dublin, Ireland.  The flight was full of movies and snacks for Matt while I slept most of the time.  Once we arrived, we got our rental car.

 

This was me for most the trip.  I was the navigator for our trip, along with my friend Tuohy’s GPS. 

Newest Puppy

So I was kindly reminded by my sweet Aunt Debbe that I have yet to comment on her beautiful new puppy, Lucy.  I have been receiving daily emails with the latest puppy photos.  For your viewing pleasure (and bragging rights), I’ve posted some of my favorites.

Here is Lucy in her crate.  See how tiny she is…so precious.

There was some concern that Callie (Aunt Debbe’s old dog) would not get along with the new puppy.  As you can see in these two photos, they are becoming best friends.

 

This is my ALL TIME favorite picture.  How CUTE!