Ireland - Saturday Nov 18

Today we rented a car. A Peaugot 207. We had a lot of fun with that name :)

It turns out that Mark didn't bring/lost his license. SOOOOOOOOOO, "I" had to rent the car and had to drive it away from city centre. Well, holy shit. I was having a panic attack. I was going to be driving a standard, on the wrong side of the road, on the wrong side of the car in a city as busy as NY. So the butterflies started.

In the end, it was all just stage fright. I got along great and didn't even stall the car (which I made up for the next day!) Mark was a great navigator and between the two of us, we were on our way.

We decided to head on up through the Wicklow Mountains and onto Wexford Co where some Whittys are living that we wanted to visit. Bern & Jeff met them while in Ireland and all my aunties met them when Maura & Nicholas visited NS and PEI.

The roads were something else. They were so narrow and had no shoulder of the road, it was just crazy!!! I guess land it at a premium and roads were secondary :) The highways were great and full of roundabouts which I loved. Just like a rotary. I found them to be quite efficeint and much better use of space and fixtures than on/off ramps and overpasses. I wasn't in any in heavy traffic tho!

We saw some nice scenery and visited the village that is the set of ballykissangel. It was so picturesque and cute that you might think it was "fake" but many of the towns we visited were just the same. Quaint and charming. Here we visited the oldest hand weavers in Ireland founded in 1723 and still going strong. It was called the Avoca handweavers. It was a beautiful place and lots of gorgeous clothing and textiles. Wish I had had a fortune to spend!!

We visited an Art Gallery. Stopped for a short walk. Met a sweet horse. And were on our way again. We stopped for the night in Arklow. Another cute town. We stayed at a B&B and they were so nice and had a great breakfast there. Then we connected with Maura & N and decided to head up their way to visit.

In hindsight, we wished that we had hurried up a lot more and got there sooner. They had a beautiful home and piece of property. Tons of family right around them - and HORSES. They would have taken us all around to see the sights and even could have stayed there. If we had gotten there the day before we would have spent the night, but couldn't as Mark had to be back at work for Monday a.m.

Anyway, we didn't hurry up as we didn't know all of that and we stopped at the Irish National Heritage Park. The sign said a visit would be about 1 hour and we stayed for over 3 in the piss pouring rain. It was a great little park. A short movie. And then a recreated scene over the years from about 8000-5000 BC right up until the 1700 and 1800s. It was a great way to catch the history from the beginning and nice that we did it at the beginning of the trip.

Makayla just loved it!!! Our battery died tho in the camera and we were sad that we missed getting some pics that we would have liked to have gotten. Am going to scour the net and I bet I'll find some good ones there anyway.

I am now spanning two days so better get to the next post!