Ireland = awesome, what else did you expect?

Ahoy There Mateys!

So apparantly I have loads of relatives in Ireland who are super nice and willing to drive Maggie and me around the country.

For example, Josie (Lily's sister) took us to Adare for the day.

Adare is a small quiet Irish town straight out of a movie. They also have a Manor. Bit of history for you, the Lord Dunraven was put in charge and built a lovely Manor for himself to live in. And despite being English he was a good guy and built houses for his farmers/workers to live in. The people of the town liked him and everyone lived in harmony. I'm assuming there was harmony, if my boss built me a house I'd be pretty happy with him.

We walked all over the Manor property (which is open to the public). It was a beautiful day and the sun was out. At one point we came up to a sign that said, "Residents and Guests Beyond this Point Only," to which Josie said, "Well girls, are we residents or guests?" We continued toward the Adare Manor, looming in the distance. As we approached the Manor there was another sign reading the same as the one before. And again we ignored it and went inside the Manor. By the way the Manor is now a ridiciously nice hotel, originally built in the 19th century with a medieval flair. Anyway, the inside was magnificant. A giant chandelier is the focal point in the main lobby. As we were touring the extravagantly decorated high tea room, I turned to Josie and asked "Do you think this place is haunted?" and she responded "It'd be a pity if it wasn't," which I thought was quite a splendid answer. After that we went outside and walked by the river which is near the golf course. Once we left the grounds of the Manor, the three of us lunched at a pub down the road and it was quite lovely.

And yesterday, two more of Lily's siblings who we didn't know about, Noula and Michael, drove us to the Cliffs of Moher which were quite spectacular. The view was awesome, it was super windy, and the rain held off just until we got into the car to continue on our journey. From the cliffs we drove to Galway which was maybe an hour and a half or two hours from there. Galway was a cute little city with tons of stores, restaurants, and whatnot. We ate at another pub, of course, and I had an awesome seafood platter, Maggie the Irish stew. From there we walked around for a bit and then headed back to Michael's house. Oh and Padre, on the way back we stopped for a drink at Durty Nelly's, it was gnarly.

Got to go,
Heather