Ireland

Hello blog friends.

I know I usually only post crafty things on my blog,

but I'm taking a bit of a turn here for a bit.

Yes, I'll still have my craft projects up,

but I'm going to be posting about my recent trip to 

Ireland.

I've been to Ireland 3 times now and it is

by far my favorite foreign country.

My husband, Dave is a photographer, he sells at art festivals

as well as through our website and he needed some new pictures.

He has wanted to lead tours for a while, but hasn't had the chance to do so,

until NOW.

A couple other artist friends, Jane and Roxie, approached him

 and told him they wanted to go to Ireland and that he was the one

 they wanted to take them.

So, he made it happen.

This was a new venture for us, and
Jane and Michael and

Roxie and Ed

were going to be our guinea pigs.

All the planning was done,

 the plane tickets were purchased 

and the big day was here.

On August 11th Dave and I drove to New Jersey where we

spent the night at Jane and Michael's home.

Dave has known them for about 15 yrs and has stayed with them before,

but I had never met them.

With a little trepidation I had agreed to travel with 4 other people that I didn't know.

No need for me to worry,

Jane and Michael have a lovely old home where 

I was welcomed with open arms.

Now I knew we would have a wonderful trip!

This is Dave, always the planner, working on our 

itinerary for Ireland.

So happy to be going on our trip.

Here I am with Dave, hours before our flight.

On our way to the airport I got to see the 

New York City skyline for the first time.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get a picture while we were 

driving along the expressway, but it was impressive.

Meet Michael and Jane!

This picture is at the Newark airport, just before boarding our plane.

Then we were off, winging it across the pond to the 

Republic of Ireland!

After flying about 3200 miles at somewhere around

30,000 feet, we arrived at Shannon Airport

at about 7:30 a.m. local time, which means it was 

2:30 a.m. at home.

I'm a night owl, so this was no problem for me.

Rented our car and a mobile hot spot and we were on our way.

I have to tell you, the mobile hot spot was one of the smartest things

we could have had!

With this little device, we could access the internet without having to 

use our data and be charged roaming charges.

We had wifi where ever we went.

It only cost us 5 Euro a day (about $7.50) and it was so worth it.

It's a compact little unit that can plug into the car jack and be recharged at night.

I would highly recommend this while traveling anywhere

you would have to pay roaming charges.

Turn off your data on the phone, turn on the wifi and you are set.

Need to look up information?
Need to use GPS on your phone?

Want to post to facebook?

Want to do anything on the internet?

You are all set!

We're in Ireland!

Can't wait to start our adventure!

Here we are, a couple of nerds, happy to be traveling.

Michael, Jane, and Dave

I think Jane was excited to be in Ireland, what do you think?

Once we got situated with the car, Dave had to get used to driving 

on the "wrong side" of the road from the "wrong side" of the car.

He really does very well with this.

This time we had an automatic car rather than standard,

so that made things easier.

But it was a much larger car, 

a Renault, Trafic

which is a 9 seater, much larger than any car he's ever driven

on the narrow Irish roads.

Our other 2 travelers, Roxie and Ed, weren't arriving until about 11:30,

so we had some time to kill until we had to come back and pick them up.

Ennis sounded like a good place to visit,

so off we went.