Finale (with pictures!)

We took advantage of our last full day in Ireland by trying one of the Wicklow Mountains bus tours that left from O'Connell St (main drag in Dublin) Our intent was to try the Grey Line option, but we ended up on a slightly cheaper one, hoping for the best. It turned out pretty well and the day was filled with sunshine, perfect for the ride we took.

We had some gorgeous views of the mountains, valley and Irish Sea...

















We were shown a famous lake that Paul McCartney walked around in a morning of 1962 and had a song come into his head that he called "Scrambled Eggs" (it was later renamed "Yesterday".) This lake was used in a Guinness commercial and because they wanted a beach to be used for the "head", sand was imported from France.
















We took a scenic walk through the monastic ruins and natural setting of Glendalough...
















It was an action packed day filled with many sites outside of the greater Dublin area. Our bus driver was a character, giving us a lot of interesting trivia about Dublin and Ireland. He pointed out neighborhoods where U2, Enya and the Chieftains lived. We drove through the home town of Daniel Day Louis as well.

After one last stroll through Grafton street and the Temple Bar area, along with dinner at The Boxty House (touristy, but very good actually), we decided to bring our fun to a close by gathering our belongings and heading out to the hotel we had reserved near the airport. It was the end of a fantastic trip that started in...

Galway...Here's a picture which illustrates why it may be called the Venice of Ireland
















Our stay in Galway and nearby Salthill included a great trip out to the Aran Islands, the highlight being a trip to Dún Aengus
















We then traveled on to Dingle, which included a stop at the Cliffs of Moher
















There were many highlights in Dingle, the best being the athletic activities

The bike ride around the peninsula




and Golf at Dingle Links




We traveled back east across Ireland to make stops at the Rock of Cashel

















We stayed in Kilkenny and visited a Victorian-aged castle

















then it was off to Dublin, which included some great sight seeing and nice walks through places like St. Steven's Green and through Grafton street
































We went on a fun musical pub crawl, which started at Gogarty's Bar and took us to the Ha' Penny Inn and Brannagan's across the river
















We squeezed about every ounce of fun that we could have out of this vacation, braving the elements when we had to
















but the weather gods were in our favor as we had much more sunshine to work with than rain
















And this is pretty much the end of the line for this blog. Here are the rest of the pictures from the trip, all 400 plus of them

Thank you to those who have read this blog. I hope it's been fun to read.


Cheers!