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Category Archives: Vacation

Ireland – Our Last day

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Family Photo

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On our last day, we were up early, driving around the Ring of Kerry. We began in Killarney and took an accidental detour through Mall’s Gap. That was okay because we just met up with the path/road again in Sneem. We stopped in Waterville for lunch at the Bayview Hotel. We had hoped to eat at the Cable House, but it was closed. This is Charlie Chaplin’s town or at least he ate at the nearby Butler’s Inn. The town holds a Chaplin Festival here in September. Most notable thing [...]

Ireland – Day 6

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Lakes abound in this area

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On day 6, we woke up to a slight drizzle – which was really not all that surprising, given that we were in Ireland! We decided to hike around the Slieve Mish Mountains. The owner of the B & B recommended this to us, and it turned out to be amazing! We went to Glanteenassig for a walk around the breathtaking views and waterfalls. It was very windy and rainy, but we made the most of our rain jackets. This was precisely why bought them. The lake was pretty large, [...]

Ireland – Day 5

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More rain? No problem.

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Day 5 On day 5, we had to talk ourselves into leaving the B&B and head out for the day. It was very windy on this particular morning. We finally decided not to let the weather dictate our fun time. We were so glad to have gotten in the car and drive to Crag Cave near Castleisland. It’s a small cave, but the kids loved it. Then we headed toward Killarney to visit the Muckross House. Apparently, Queen Victoria stayed here for two nights, after giving the owners a six-year [...]

Ireland – Day 4

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Finn McCool

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Day 4 was boat tour day! We set out on a boat from the tiny town of Ventry. We were headed out towards Blasket Island and possibly spot some aquatic life. We saw some Gannets, a glimpse of a couple porpoises, and some friendly seals. We missed the humpback whales that were spotted earlier in the morning by our wildlife guide. She said that she had seen them earlier from her telescope on the tip of Dingle Peninsula. It was definitely a day to wear our caps to keep the [...]

Ireland – Day 3

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Me kissing the Blarney Stone

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On day 3, We left County Kerry for County Clare. Our mission: To kiss the Blarney Stone. We stopped just outside of Cork at the Blarney Castle, were tourists wait their turn to kiss the stone that is famous for it’s gift of gab. Gavin did not want to leave Ireland without doing this. Plus, we just had to see what all this Blarney was about. We snaked our way up through the castle. As we neared our turn, Gavin started to get a little anxious. He was a trooper [...]

Ireland – Day 2

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Colorful Dingle

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On day 2, we headed back toward the town of Dingle where we walked around in the rain for quite a while. The rain stopped sometime during our walk around time. Dingle is such a picturesque village with no shortage of pubs. There is even a pub that doubles as a hardware store. This makes me wonder which came first: the pub or the hardware store? We ate lunch at a place called The Diner, which is supposed to be like an American Diner, but much more expensive. I ordered [...]

Ireland

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At the B & B

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Living in Europe has given us the opportunity to visit many sites and experience many new things. This year we had the amazing privilege to travel to Ireland for a week. We thought it best to go prepared. We watched a Rick Steves’ video on Ireland and poured over many guidebooks from the library. We decided to spend our time in the southwestern area of the country. Thankfully, Matt is a details kind of guy and he made all the travel arrangements (thanks honey!). We also decided to ditch the [...]

Santorini

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Santorini-39As a combination graduation/birthday/belated honeymoon (I really get my money’s worth!), I took Ginger and the boys to Santorini from May 21st through the 24th. It started out as a very early morning drive on the 21st from our home near Chania to Iraklion to catch the ferry to Santorini. After finding our way to the port and getting on the boat, I think the earliness of the morning started to settle in as we sat in the comfortable seats for the 2 1/2 hour ferry ride. Unfortunately, the boys weren’t as tired as we were, so we took quite a few walks around and outside the ferry instead of sleeping. Go figure! Continue reading →

Athens trip – Part II

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Following where I left off at the first post, we finished up at the museum and headed back to the hotel to wait for Harry to arrive. Once he got in (after going through the exact same fiasco we did with the train!), we walked up the street and hopped on the metro headed towards the Parthenon. Now, generally when people think of Greece, they either think of one of two things – the island of Santorini with it’s white washed buildings with blue roofs and doors (hopefully we’ll get there this summer) or they think of the Parthenon. After all, the Parthenon is something most, if not all of us learned a little about in school. So getting back to our adventure, it was pretty exciting to be on a metro in Athens heading down to the Parthenon!

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Athens trip – Part I

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A couple of weeks ago, we took a 4 day trip to the Greek mainland with our friends Harry and Kristie Hansen. On Friday morning, Ginger, the boys and I flew up to Athens and hopped on a train to take us downtown to our hotel. The lady at the ticket counter explained something about getting off at one point and transferring to another train. I wasn’t too sure of what she said (very thick accent), but we headed off to the platform anyways.

After about 8 stops, I just knew that the next stop was going to be the one we needed to get off at and transfer trains. So, the stop comes up and… we keep on going. The train doesn’t stop because the stop I wanted to get off at was currently being built. Oh well – off to the next stop! We get off at the next stop and waited for about 30 minutes for the next train to come in on the other side and hoping that was the train we needed to get on, we hopped aboard. We knew we needed to get to the “Larissa Station”, but that was about it. The train went deeper and deeper into Athens and we really had no idea if we were on the right train or not, but since none of us was interested in hopping off a moving train, we stayed on and enjoyed the ride. When the train finally stopped, we looked out at the train station and didn’t see any signs other than “Athens”. We decided it was a good time to get off and get our bearings.

We crossed the tracks and went into the train station. After looking around a little bit, I finally found a sign for Information and quickly headed in that direction. I asked the guy how to get to the Larissa Station and he gave me a strange look and said I was standing in it. Okay, so I definitely felt like the dumb tourist, but we were where we wanted to be so I got over that quickly.

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