Last October Leah and I went to Ireland for a work trip and stayed a few extra days to enjoy the country together. We were in Dublin for 4 days and went to the Cliffs of Moher for a day. Overall, Ireland was great and has made the very short list of countries I would be willing to live in that I have visited...coming in just after Canada for the third and final spot.
We visited the oldest pub in Dublin "The Brazen Head", toured the Guinness storehouse, saw Brooke Fraser in concert with Cary Brothers and basically walked around enjoying hearing words that formed understandable sentences in a language we could speak. The people seemed incredibly friendly, especially to be from a larger city. We had a car for a few days, which was a nice change from how we were and still are living in Switzerland. For those that don't know, they drive on the left which added an extra level of excitement to driving in a foreign country and for the first time in over a year. However, the stress was certainly worth it. I felt as though we had endless power to go where we wanted when we wanted.
I also learned a very important lesson about Leah. She is willing to risk death to see the sites. This is not a joke. In fact, I am going to weigh this little tidbit into future vacation plans accordingly. We were on our way to see the Cliffs of Moher on our second to last day before returning to Switzerland and some new highway had been constructed our GPS was unaware of. So instead of following the printed directions, we went with our little guiding black box's (lovingly named Spell Check) ideas for the previous route. And it has become very clear why the new highway was built...the old one was down right frightening. I would call it a single lane road, however; the oncoming traffic does not even hint at letting off the gas. Sometimes I think they just close there eyes and speed up. So while playing repeated rounds of chicken for 3-4 hours on a road which I would describe at best as being 'janky' and going around hairpin turns at tire screeching break-neck speeds, my eager-to-see-the-cliffs wife (or her maker) was hanging out the window snapping pictures of the country side in between popping her head back into the car to encourage me to speed up, and nervously muttering to herself how we were doing to miss a great once in a lifetime sunset over the cliffs. Interestingly enough, we were never speeding. The speedlimit was posted as 100 kph on this road...and I would have needed an indy car to reach that speed with as many corners as there were. We did make it for the final moments of the sunset:
All pictures are brought to you directly from Behind a Lens.
We visited the oldest pub in Dublin "The Brazen Head", toured the Guinness storehouse, saw Brooke Fraser in concert with Cary Brothers and basically walked around enjoying hearing words that formed understandable sentences in a language we could speak. The people seemed incredibly friendly, especially to be from a larger city. We had a car for a few days, which was a nice change from how we were and still are living in Switzerland. For those that don't know, they drive on the left which added an extra level of excitement to driving in a foreign country and for the first time in over a year. However, the stress was certainly worth it. I felt as though we had endless power to go where we wanted when we wanted.
I also learned a very important lesson about Leah. She is willing to risk death to see the sites. This is not a joke. In fact, I am going to weigh this little tidbit into future vacation plans accordingly. We were on our way to see the Cliffs of Moher on our second to last day before returning to Switzerland and some new highway had been constructed our GPS was unaware of. So instead of following the printed directions, we went with our little guiding black box's (lovingly named Spell Check) ideas for the previous route. And it has become very clear why the new highway was built...the old one was down right frightening. I would call it a single lane road, however; the oncoming traffic does not even hint at letting off the gas. Sometimes I think they just close there eyes and speed up. So while playing repeated rounds of chicken for 3-4 hours on a road which I would describe at best as being 'janky' and going around hairpin turns at tire screeching break-neck speeds, my eager-to-see-the-cliffs wife (or her maker) was hanging out the window snapping pictures of the country side in between popping her head back into the car to encourage me to speed up, and nervously muttering to herself how we were doing to miss a great once in a lifetime sunset over the cliffs. Interestingly enough, we were never speeding. The speedlimit was posted as 100 kph on this road...and I would have needed an indy car to reach that speed with as many corners as there were. We did make it for the final moments of the sunset:
Maybe it was worth it...
OK, so it was.
And here is a shot of the country side Leah grabbed while traveling at the speed of sound.
Oh yeah, we stayed in this castle too :p
Proud that your Indy car driver skills got us safely (and quickly) to The Cliffs for a very memorable sunset. You never let your (wild) wife down. :)
ReplyDeleteC'mon, Jared - 20 kph is hardly speeding. ;^> Julia
ReplyDelete