We based ourselves in Killarney for day three, as there’s loads to do in that part of the country. First up was a visit to Ross Castle.

Turns out there’s not much to do at Ross Castle, unless you’re willing to shell out cash for a tour of the lake. Willing we were not, so we instead headed down to check out the Torc Waterfall. We all agreed that it was very waterfally.

Another big drawcard of the area is Gap of Dunloe. We were told that it’s “near impossible” to drive through the Gap, and were instead encouraged to rent some horses (for the girls) and a cart (for Philip and us). Of course, this all turns out to be a huge myth – it didn’t look any more precarious than the rest of the driving we’d done – but the Irish lad who drove our cart was quite entertaining, and well worth the cash – though I hope for his sake, he invests some of it on some underarm deodorant. Poo-ey!

Persistent rain on day four ruined our plans to drive the Ring of Beara, so we took an early turn-off and headed back to Blarney to visit it’s famous castle. My expectations were very high after the glowing review it got from Julian, however I suspect they visited on a day that it wasn’t pouring with rain.

The Cookes were particularly amused at the lack of safety equipment fitted to the castle; instead, they merely blow off any potential lawsuits with a blanket warning along the lines of: “Old castles pose an inherent risk to visitors”. I suspect that the climb to the top of the castle (where the Blarney Stone awaits your tender loving kiss), up multiple sets of slippery, narrow stairs would definitely fall into the “inherently risk” category; but when in Rome Ireland…

(Note the rain on my jacket!)

Despite Trip Advisor’s claim that this is the most unhygienic tourist attraction in the world, Dani, Philip and I all puckered up for the challenge – though I was somewhat comforted by the bottle of antibacterial surface spray that the attendant had sitting next to him, even if it was only for show. I dunno if my speech is, like, more eloquent now and stuff, but I definitely reckon that it’s done us wonders, ay!

View the Ireland photo gallery on Picasa or on Facebook.

We had a big day of driving ahead of us for day two in Ireland, so we made an early start at the crack of dawn – which according to Sam and Dani is around 10am. We drove along the beautiful coastline down to Kilrush, where we caught the ferry across the river Shannon. As it turns out, that was the first time the Cookes had been on a car ferry!

We could see dolphins swimming in the channel from the deck of the ferry – however it was nothing like the seaworld dolphins swimming in a pool, as pictured on the Shannon ferry website. I feel our journey was misrepresented!

On our way towards the Dingle Peninsula, on a particularly precarious stretch of road called Conner Pass, we passed two fairly harmless looking hitch-hikers, each carrying huge backpacks. I’ve never been tempted to pick up hitch-hikers before, but for some reason, we found ourselves discussing it between us at length. Too much length as it turns out, because by the time we decided against it, we were at least 1km down the road anyway.

We consoled ourselves that not picking them up was the probably the right decision, as we didn’t want to give the wrong impression (i.e. hitch-hiking is cool!) to the young Cooke ladies in the car right behind ours. However, only moments later when we stopped for some photos at a particularly scenic spot, we got a rousing from Natalie for making the wrong decision and not picking the poor backpackers up! Boy did we call that situation wrong!

Still, our stop was for the view – and it was particularly scenic, despite the rousing.

Anyway, the universe must have heard all the yelling, because about half-an-hour later, two more hitch-hikers presented themselves to us. And they turned out to be lovely! An older (mid-sixties, maybe) couple from the French/Swiss border, who had spent a good portion of their lives hiking around in Europe. They had a decent knowledge of the area, and they pointed out all the good spots for us to take photos – of which there turned out to be many! It’s a very scenic drive!

One of the sites that our hitch-hiker friends pointed out to us was a collection of “beehive houses” dating back to 2,000 B.C.! It was €2 each to go in, which also scored us an informational sheet about the historic site. I ended up splashing out an extra €2 to cover Samantha’s entry fee, and in return I insisted on the unofficial audio tour (i.e. I made her read the sheet aloud for us all). Best €2 I spent for the whole trip.

We finished off our tour of the very scenic Dingle peninsula, made a quick stop for a chip buttie for Kristy, and then drove to our hotel in Killarney (which turned out to be awesome!). We were glad to have had such amazing weather for the drive, as we knew that Ireland was not known for its sunny skies!

Our holiday in Ireland technically started late on Wednesday night last week, but I wouldn’t count our stay in the Cork airport Travelodge hotel as one of the highlights of our trip. No, things really kicked off on Thursday morning, when Philip and I picked up our respective sets of wheels, before we all headed off to Doolin to see the Cliffs of Moher.

The drive took around three hours, which put us in Doolin square on lunch time. Only seconds after complaining to Kristy that all of the good parking spots were being taken up by a Paddywagon Tour bus did we realise that cousin Kylie was on a Paddywagon tour of Ireland at that very moment! And only a few seconds after that, who did we happen to run in to? Yep, cousin Kylie, with her friend from Australia – Prim!

There’s an outside chance this photo wasn’t taken on location; there’s an even more outside chance that that’s not even Prim in the photo. But hey, when you forget to take a photo in the moment, you have to improvise… and the blonde one on the left is definitely Kylie.

First up on our activity roster was a boat cruise along the Cliffs of Moher. We selected a tour operator on the very specific criteria of having availability shortly after the time that we turned up; not to mention their amazing internet site (judging by the standards of 1998). Truth be told, we were a little early, so we waited it out in the car, and hoped that the rain would pass before we hopped on the boat (which it thankfully did).

Though the rain passed, the wind didn’t, and it made our trip out to the cliffs extremely rough. I’ve never been on a boat which rocked up and down so much – it was honestly like being on a roller coaster. People squealed! Stomaches dropped! Natalie fed the fish! It was totally awesome (though I think Natalie disagreed).

All of this, simply to get a close up view of the cliffs. Rather than go into a load of detail about the landscape (which I actually don’t know anything about), I’ll leave it at, “the view was lovely”.

We sailed up close to that spiky rock cropping out on its lonesome (on the right in the photo above), and then sat there for a few moments to enjoy the photo opportunity. It was covered in loads of birds of various types – the ones that stood around like penguins reminded me very much of penguins. There were puffins about the area too, though I can’t see any of them in this photo.

Our sail back to land was somewhat smoother, and I think most people were relieved to step off the boat.

Our hotel was only a little way up the road, and after checking in, Kristy spent a good 45 minutes rigorously testing that the bed was adequate for a full night’s sleep. After she emerged to report her findings, we all headed to McGanns Pub for dinner and some traditional Irish music. Admittedly I didn’t jump up and entertain the crowd with my Australian/Jamaican rendition of an Irish jig, though this is mainly due to there not being enough space for an impromptu dancefloor. That, and I didn’t want to steal too much focus off the band.

It was very late by the time we were done, and we were all quiet tired, so back to the hotel we trolleyed, to double check Kristy’s findings from earlier in the day. I’m pleased to say that her testing was excellent, and her results were accurate – we all slept very soundly!

In just over two weeks, we’ll be on a plane bound for Hong Kong. Who’d have thought there’d be so much involved in moving countries?! So much to do, so little time!

Unfortunately, I’ve not been home enough to keep the blog up to date over the last few weeks, so here’s a few updates in brief, ordered in precisely the order that I think of them:

• On Sunday, we returned from four days in Ireland with The Cookes. Overall the trip was lovely – Ireland reminded me a lot of Tasmania, just with way more rain! More on this later, when I’ve had a chance to sort through the photos.
• Kristy had a very successful 31 week scan which confirmed that “everything is as it should be”, which means the doctors are now happy to sign a “safe to fly” letter for her (which many airlines require before they’ll carry a 26+ week pregnant woman). This was the final hurdle which may have prevented our departure!
• We enjoyed a lovely night out with Pat last night at the London branch of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. I tried three different whiskys and enjoyed each one; the food was also devine! My only regret is not having visited earlier, or better yet – joining the society for myself!
• London is hot at the moment! It’s currently 21°C at 11 PM at night, and suffice to say that London housing is not built for the summer!

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

The Cookes are here! I trolleyed out to Heathrow on Sunday morning to pick them up after their red-eye from Florida. They looked surprisingly chirpy given that that’d averaged about 13 minutes of sleep between them!

We took them for a hearty breakfast/lunch feast (they really had no idea what time of day it was) at our favourite dim sum restaurant in Chinatown, and then tried to keep them in the sunshine as much as possible for the rest of the afternoon, since that’s apparently one of the best things to combat jetlag. We walked around Chinatown, Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square, and Pall Mall, finally finishing up at Westminster to see Big Ben and the London Eye.

We also had some ice-cream at Freggo before walking down Regent Street to Piccadilly Circus, before heading home – thoroughly exhausted!

Yesterday they spent all day visiting the Tower of London, which must be a new record, since we were in and out of there in around 2 hours! After such an awesome dinner at Tayyabs with Jacob and Daniella, we repeated the same last night and once again had an amazing feast that rang in very cheaply on the wallet!

Two more days of touring for them (which equates to two more days of working for us), then we head to Ireland for some tripping around the West coast – to be sure, to be sure, to be sure!