Skip to main content

We made it!!

Hello from Dublin!!

Aside from a fairly long layover in Toronto, the trip over went very smoothly!  Twenty seven of us left from Saskatoon around noon on Saturday.  We met the 5 people from Alberta in Toronto.  We were lucky enough to catch the first part of the Rider game in the Toronto airport but were disappointed to hear about the outcome of the game once we arrived in Dublin.
We arrived this morning (Sunday).  We were greeted with a “line up from hell”at customs, not what we really needed after an overnight flight.  We persevered and eventually we were out of the airport and meeting up with our TD Richard.
It was noon by the time we were on the bus but that was too early to book into our hotel so we got dropped off at Trinity College.  We had 2.5 hours to do some exploring.  Many of us went into the College to view the Book of Kells.  This is one of the great treasures of medieval Europe.  The book, written in Latin, contains the four gospels of the New Testament and was created by Christian Monks around 800 AD.  We also got to walk through the amazing old library that was actually used for making some of the Harry Potter movies.

After our educational portion most of us wasted no time in finding a pub!  We visited O’Neills pub, an old pub with lots of character!!  The weather was surprisingly pleasant, 23 degrees, calm and mostly sunny, so we took the opportunity to roam some of the popular streets to shop and people watch.


























At 3 pm we regrouped and walked about 2 km (RICHARD argued that it was less) to our hotel.  We were happy to have a couple of hours to rest and freshen up before meeting at 5:30 for our welcome drink!  From there we went to the hotel restaurant for an incredible three course dinner, a lovely wrap to a fantastic day!!  I doubt that anyone will be heading back to hit the pubs tonight, I am sure everyone is hitting the sheets!!!  Good night!!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle

Monday  We were treated on our final day to a later departure.  We left the hotel at 10:00, which gave us a chance to go for one last walk in the area.  Fort Augustus is a beautiful little village at the south end of Lock Ness.  Our hotel was a unique and quaint place, my favourite of the whole tour. There is a series of locks in Fort Augustus joining the lakes.  We watched as they lowered a group of boats through the locks. When we left the hotel we drove north along the shore of Loch Ness.  The lake is 23 miles long and 745 feet deep. We watched for the Loch Ness monster but “apparently” she never surfaces on Mondays!! 😉 . Our first stop was at Urquhart Castle. We watched a movie that summarized the history of the castle.  It was built up and destroyed several times before it was finally blown up and left in ruins.  It sits in a lovely spot overlooking Loch Ness.  We had time to explore the ruins of the castle and then we all went...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Isle of Skye

If I had to describe today in one word, it would be “breathtaking “!   We left from our hotel in Fort Augustus, which is situated at the south end of Loch Ness.   We headed Northwest, towards the coast and crossed over to the Isle of Skye.   The sky was a mix of sun and clouds but, somehow, we managed to keep the sun over top of us almost all the way.  The scenery was amazing, I wish I could find an adequate way to describe it.  The mountains are covered with ferns and heather that have turned to a copper brown.  The trees are a mixture of green, orange and red and we often were driving beside one of the lochs (lakes).  I did my best to capture pictures of the scenery. The Isle of Skye is so amazing!!  We picked up a guide that lives on the island and she told us all about life on the island as we travelled along.  It is remote and sparsely populated. We were driving up the east coast of the peninsula, heading for the Kilt Rock and Mealt...
Post a Comment
Read more

Blarney

The wind was really howling this morning as a big storm was moving across Ireland.  The good news is that it blew the clouds away and we got to drive in sunshine.  It took us a little over two hours to reach Blarney Castle, just a short distance out of Cork.   As I am sure you all know, Blarney Castle is famous for the Blarney Stone.  The stone is located the top of the castle, which is 83’ off the ground.  It involves getting into a line-up (about 45 minutes at this time of the year)  and walking up the stairs to the top of the castle (open to the outside).  When it is your turn to kiss the stone you need to lay down, on your back and then reach up with your head to actually kiss the stone.  Just to make it a bit scarier, there is an opening that you can see all the way down to the ground.   Legend says that kissing the Blarney Stone gives one eloquence and/ or the gift of the gab!  Since I have already kissed the Blarney Stone t...
Post a Comment
Read more