Ireland #8 Muckross Estate

Remember to click on the pictures to see them larger.

Up and out fairly early to visit the 

Muckross Estate.

I saw this sign  on our way into Muckross Estate.

They sure are serious about that closing time.

Can you imagine having to call and pay to get out

if you run too late?!?!

Muckross House is huge!

Can you imagine living in a place this size?

We took a tour of the house and had a lovely girl as our guide.

Unfortunately, pictures aren't permitted inside the house, 

so I have nothing to show you, but believe me it is 

quite amazing.

This 65 room mansion was built in 1843,

in the 1850s a huge amount of time and money was spent

refurbishing and remodeling for the visit of Queen Victoria in 1861.

More than 3 years were spent on the preparation for the visit.

The queen spent 2 nights at Muckross House.

The Herbert family had a very elite social standing and were

counting on this visit to elevate their standing even more.

A knighthood was expected to be given to Mr. Herbert.

This never happened as just a short time after this visit,

Queen Victoria lost her husband and with his death

she went into mourning and apparently was never the same.
She withdrew and hence the knighthood never happened.

The Herberts lost much of their social standing as well as their 

financial stability.
The house was later sold to Arthur Guinness, who in turn sold it to

 William Bowers Bourn who made it a wedding gift to his beloved daughter

Maud and her husband.
After Maud's death at an fairly young age, 

the entire estate was gifted to 

The Republic of Ireland 

and it became the first national park of Ireland.

A beautiful view of the lake.

I thought this tree was pretty amazing, I have no idea how old

it is, but it is obviously very old and quite dramatic.

The gardens at Muckross are amazing,

had to have some pictures taken there.

Group shot of the "Celtic Adventurers"

Michael and Jane

Ed and Roxie

Unfortunately, the picture of Dave and me didn't turn out.

Can you imagine having a garden like this?

Just gorgeous.

(More about the flowers below.)

Then we were off to the Abbey and Cemetery.

The Abbey was built in 1448 by the Franciscans,

it has a violent history and was damaged

and reconstructed many times.  

The Friars were subjected to persecution and raids by marauding groups

The abbey is mostly roofless, and is a ruin, but it is

 fairly well preserved.

The Abbey from afar.

View from the cemetery.

Inside, the architecture is beautiful!

 There is a square courtyard with is surrounded by this vaulted cloister

There is a huge Yew in the courtyard that is 

as old as the abbey itself and is said to be the oldest living thing in 

Ireland, being over 500 yrs old.

There are loads of Celtic crosses in the cemetery at the Abbey.

Here are just a few 

Ed found some possible family and that was pretty exciting.

There is also a famous Gaelic poet named 

Geoffrey O'Donoghue

buried in this cemetery

Flowers of the Day

Muckross has some of the most beautiful hydrangeas I've ever seen

They have many different colors and many shades of each color as well.

 

 

There are long borders of hydrangea bushes 

with so many different colors that are all gorgeous!

They also have other types of flowers in their gardens.

It seemed that the red roses were just so saturated 

that I couldn't get a good defined picture of them.

I think that's enough for this post.

Thanks for stopping by and sticking with me till the end.

Next, the rest of our time at Muckross and Killarney.

Eureka! Stamps Challenge - Add Some Bling

It's Monday, so that means it's time for another 

Eureka! Stamps Challenge.

This weeks challenge is

"Add Some Bling"

I chose to use

"Lg Filagree Heart" (#24601) and

"Happy Anniversary" (#9004) both from

Eureka! Stamps

I stamped the heart and the sentiment onto

black card stock with VersaMark Ink 

and heat embossed them with 

white embossing powder.

I then trimmed them out, adhered them to some 

light purple vellum and cut around them leaving a

little border.

I then adhered them to the card base.

For the "bling" I added pearl accents in a

coordinating color.

I hope you'll pop over the 

Eureka! Stamps Blog

and check out all the particulars 

about the challenge.

I'm sad to announce that this will be my last 

challenge as a design team member,

I started on the QKR Stampede design team in 

October of 2010.

Since then I have been a member of sister companies

Eureka! Stamps,

QKR Stampede 

and

Biblical Impressions

Design Teams.

But the time has come for me to resign from the team.

Please continue to follow my blog as I have lots of fun things

coming along the way.

There will be scrapbooking, more about Ireland,

Silhouette projects and, of course stamping.

I'm hoping to try some new techniques

and I'll still be doing guest tutorials on 

Mashed Potatoes and Crafts.

Thanks for stopping by today,

I hope you'll come again soon and 

see what I'm up to.

Until next time, Happy Crafting!

Ireland #7 The Ring of Kerry

I want to note that if you click on the pictures you can see them larger.

Next we were off to
The Ring of Kerry.
We planned our day here a little differently than the
average tourists.
We decided this time to take a northern route, so
we took a ferry to
Valentia Island
The tour buses couldn't go there so we didn't have to deal
with them.  The Ring of Kerry is a very popular tourist
destination as it is just beautiful.
BUT it can be very crowded, not so when you travel it the
way we did.  My hubby is so smart to plan it this way.

Our first stop on Valentia was at a little coffee shop in 

Knightstown

where we all indulged

in something tasty.

One of our (Dave's and mine) favorite treats are the meringues.

OH MY GOSH!!! 

These were so good!

This shop had them with fresh berries and cream.

Pure Heaven!

Once we were done with our goodies
(the others had scones, croissants, and cakes)

we were off to explore this little town.

We found a delightful shop.

Out front there was this wagon filled with flowers.

My pictures aren't as good as Dave's, but you can see 

what a lovely building/shop this is, so colorful!

Dave took LOTS of pictures of this one!

I thought these windows were lovely, 

a little too modern for Dave, but beautiful just the same.

On the way out of this little town, I saw this sign and just loved it.

Had to take a picture to remember it.

And we were off for more adventuring.

Is this just gorgeous or what?

 These next few pictures were what we saw as we drove around
 the island.

We were headed to a light house.

The light house was nice, but not fantastic.

The scenery in the area though was gorgeous!

The drive around this area was quite treacherous,

but Dave drove it like a pro as the rest of us took in the scenery

and the flowers along the road side.

(More about those flowers below.)

A little more driving on the crazy roads and we came

 upon the most incredible sights at 

Fogher Cliff, it was gorgeous,

but it got even better!

We all decided to take the 1 mile long loop hike up and around the hilltop.  

We were so happy that we did, as it was more amazing than we could have

imagined.  The views were unbelievable

 Gotta have my selfies!

Words can't describe how gorgeous these views were.

I can't even explain the immensity of what we were seeing.

It was clear enough for us to see for miles in 

all directions, and the farther around the loop we

hiked, the more amazing it was.

This is the rock I brought home from 

The Ring of Kerry and the hike at Fogher Cliff.

I chose it, not for it's beauty, but because this is what

is indigenous to that area.

Some of you may not know that I have fibromyalgia, 

so hiking, and sometimes just walking any distance is

difficult for me.

I was worried when I saw that it was a 1 mile hike up and 

around this loop, but I wanted so badly to do it.

So I did, Dave was patient with me when I had to go slow or 

stop for a minute and I made it with no problem.

I was so happy and proud that I did so well.

So, I took another selfie.  LOL!

Then we were off to Port Maghee

A lovely little fishing village across the bay from 

Valentia Island where we had lunch at 

The Bridge Bar.

Even the bars have these lovely windows!

Dave and I both had the special of the day,

Bangers and Mash,

which is sausage (pork and leek with onion gravy) and potatoes, 

boy were they good!

I do love the food in Ireland!

Then we were off to see more sights.

As we drove we saw some signs that said

"The Most Beautiful Cliffs On The Ring Of Kerry"

So that's where we went.  

How could we not see the most beautiful cliffs?

It was quite a walk out to them, but it was well worth it.

On the way out to the cliffs was this little display.

Unfortunately, the birds on top are not real and we didn't 

have the chance to see any of the birds indigenous to the cliffs, 

other than some common sea gulls, which I can see daily around

the Buffalo area, where I live.

I found these huts quite interesting.

Skellig Michael, mentioned on this plaque,

is an island that was inhabited by monks as

far back as the 6th century.

We would love to visit on our next trip.

 

Here are a few pictures of the cliffs,

they are beautiful as well as treacherous and a bit scary.

It was very, very windy up here.

One funny thing was that Roxie and I were walking along and we

heard a sound almost like music.

It was kind of a haunting whistling sound and we

wondered if it was the wind in the caves.

Suddenly we realized that it wasn't the caves or the rocks or the

cliffs at all. It was my cane!

When I walk any distance, especially if I'm tired,

I use a cane as I become a bit unsteady at times.

My cane is aluminum and hollow, there are holes down the 

side of it, to adjust the height.

The wind was blowing through the holes in my cane

producing the haunting whistling music that we were hearing.

Boy did we feel silly when we figured it out!

 

See those 2 tiny islands way out along the horizon?

One is Skellig Michael (or Great Skellig), the other is Little Skellig

Can you imagine the monks building a monastery out there

around the 6th century?

Flowers of the Day

The flowers today start with a couple beautiful roses from 

Knightstown when we first got onto Valentia Island.

 I thought the color was just gorgeous!

And these flowers below were from that same town.

They weren't quite as bright as they appear in this picture,

but they were lovely.

 

While we were driving along we saw these orange flowers

growing wild along the side of the road.

They are just beautiful,

I don't feel I ever really captured their beauty.

They are called Montbretia
(scientific name Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora  and 

Irish name Fealeastram dearg please don't ask me how to say this

Irish name!)

I was hoping to find a field of these beautiful flowers,

but we never did.  I just love them!

We also saw a lot of Fuchsia

growing wild along the roads in

County Kerry and they were gorgeous.

The only thing that rivaled these flowers was the hydrangea.

And the day still wasn't over.

We went on to Killarny for dinner.

We ate at Mac's Restaurant and had a lovely meal.

For me it was 

"Mac's Cottage Pie"

Much like a Shepard's Pie

with meat and gravy covered with potatoes

and cheese.  It was delicious!!

Then we went on to hear some Irish music at Murphy's Pub.

Now I'm not much for the bar scene and it was very crowded

but I have to say I did enjoy the music.

We didn't stay long, and that was fine for me.

It had been a long day and we were all on the tired side.

I've never put a video into a post before, so I hope this works.

If not my apologies.

This isn't the best video, but it gives you a little idea

of the music in the pubs.

Keeping my fingers crossed that it works.

The music in Irish Pubs is interesting.

Players don't perform on a stage of any kind most of the time.

They just walk in and sit down at a table,

customers will sit around them 

and they play and drink beers.

Very informal, very friendly and very entertaining.

Thanks for stopping by and making it to the end of this long post.

It was quite a day filled with wonderful sights and memories.

Next I'll tell you about

Muckross Estate.