Day six- Cliffs of Moher on the way to Annascaul, County Kerry

Hi all,
OMG what a day it was the sun was out all day -it was a perfect day. And finally some outside photos of us without our jackest on cause it was warm enough and their was no rain.

Again I am sorry I have not got the name of this castle, but it is a great shot of me and Alison with the castle in the background. alsion has a great shot with just the castle and the refection in the lake to show you all when we get back. She is still in bed as it is now 5.30am and i have been going for 2 hours to get blog up to date.

Here is Simon in the Leprechan house looking into the wishing well.

Mark our tour guide- now while it does look like he has had enough of us and looking for desperate measures to escape- not so. This is his favourite spot in Ireland (well his fav today on this drive). A couple others ventued out to get their photo taken on the ledge as well.

The sun is out- so a picnic is in order. Picnic Ireland mid autumn style, on rocks over looking the water. Yah we are outside in sunshine and not getting wet- we love it

Cliffs of Moher. Five of us opted to do the cliff walk- which includes climbing over bard wire fences. This is a shot from this side half way to the top.

In front of the rock nearly at the top.

Katie and Kyra at the top of the cliffs.

Me and Kyra starting to walk towards the other side of the cliffs.

Cliffs of Moher the otherside - have walked the length. The path is narrow slippery and close to the edge with no barriers not for the fainthearted

The Cliffs of Moher crew from left- Kyra, Karen, Katie, Freddy, Lyndon. After we had finished the walk in great time (back 40 minutes early) power walking.

Okay it doesn't show so well but we passed this beach and there were about 20-30 people surfing - yes surfing.

Dinner tonight at the hostel pub- four days to go and we all still look like we are up for anything right- NOT

Went to the local bar called the South Pole in Annascaul, County Kerry. It was owned by Tom Crean who was a famous adveturer. Tom Crean figured prominently in three of the four major British expeditions to the Antarctic. Crean spent more time in the South than either Scott or Shackleton - and he outlived them both! See link below to find out more about him- he was a fasinating man and incrediable brave in the expediations- truly inspiring stories.
http://website.lineone.net/~polar.publishing/tomcreanunsunghero.htm

So that is it for now- might try and grab a couple hours sleep before we head off- clocks go back an hour today \9well \i already did that so it is 6am.Wait no didn't change my watch only my phone- yah it is only 5am and \i don't need to eb up till 8am.

We have 2 days in the next town so should be able to get those done each day if not on the 2nd day.
Miss you from here
Karen and Alison

Day five - What we did on our way to Galway

Hi all
Well it was a funny night with lots of bad jokes told by Kyra and I to Alison and Freddy- the others and Mark could here us laughing and were not so impressed with the keeping them awake. Ahh when it is a bad funny joke what else can you do but laugh.

Crap just realised I have downloaded this photo and I don't know where it is- Sorry but it looks pretty right. We voted not to do a 2 hour hike- pouring rain and hail were on the menu for today's weather.

St Patrick- he was Welsh and was kidnapped and forced into slavery. He became a christian at 16 and began to preach to all. Famous for his miracle of expelling all snakes from Ireland. He also has the fright to sit at the gates of heaven and judge all Irish on their entry instead of St Peter.

Ok 2 things- this is on the bus need to let you see that we have other clothing aside from our coats. 2nd and this is kind of sad, the scarf was bought in Germany and it has now found a new home after it got left behind at the pub after dinner in the evening. Colour looks great on you Alison- you will always have this photo to remind you of it.

Mark stopped the bus and challenged the boys to catch one of the roaming sheep. This is Lyndon chasing it. Yes the NZ jokes are being made- the sheep got away.

Ahhh lets return to the Quiet Man. There is a little cottage where they have the manikins  of the four main characters. It is very run down. But Mark felt that we deserved to see it given how much we went on about it last night and all day today. This is Freddy with the John Wayne manikins 



Quiet Man again- we get to |Galway and there on the wall near the hostel is a painting on the wall from the movie- but for some reason the painting depicts them under water- absolutely no idea why


Well the Quiet Man is big in this part, as you can tell from all the photo opportunities we had. Really not anything else you can say about this.
Miss you all from here
Karen & Alison

Day four- What we did on our way to stay at Cong

Hi all,
Well this was Alison's idea - cause she had done it on her last trip- a relaxing and revitalising seaweed bath. No photos of me in it but took a shot before I got in. You have individual rooms, with a shower which is also a steam room. Shower and steam then get in the bath. You have 50 minutes. Looks like dirty tea water with seaweed- but it was great. Keep in mind it was raining raining raining outside and we did this and all left with wet hair.

Seaweed bath- looks suspect but was awesome.

Ashford Castle near Cong. This is an expensive hotel roughly €495 per night- and this doesn't include breakfast. This is also the location for the the filming of the John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara's movie the Quiet Man. (This movie became a theme whilst there- Mark made us watch it) In the movie John and Maureen don't have the best relationship - and the quote of the movie according to Mark was 'Here is a stick to beat your lovely lady'. Watch it to understand the dated values and the rain scene where Johns white shirt is so see through it looks like plastic so that you can see his muscles.

Alison and I outside the expensive castle- very blowy as you can tell by our hair.,

Freddy in the background, Kyra in the hat and Rachel beside her, Alison's arm- this is us watching the quiet man- we were not quiet and commented through out the movie- Mark put the subtitles on so he could still follow the movie. Very detailed subtitles like - Bar is quiet.

Next morning at the hostel we had a fry up breakfast- Alison was one of the chefs. Renee is putting food in her mouth and that is Simon with the baked beans he has cooked.



Our breakfast- looks great, the knife is pointing to black pudding- which tasted like a bland sausage. We all ate it and ignored the pigs blood concept of the food.



So that was our afternoon in Cong followed by our morning.
Miss you from here
Karen  & Alison



Day Three- What we did on our way to Return to Derry

Hi All,
Sorry re the delay for 3 days- but it has been full on and with limited time to access internet- or too difficult or expensive to do so. I know that you have all missed the updates and are hanging out to see what we have been doing. We have seperated from Belfast from people doing 3 days and a 6 day tour to a small group of just 10 peoples with a new driver.

On our trip is Katie and Lyndon (engaged from NZ) doing a big trip before the wedding. Natalie and Simon (meet on Contiki trip 2 years ago) he is from NZ she is from OZ. Renee is OZ but living and teaching in London, Rachel is from OZ a nurse on holidays, Freddy is on a gap year and teaching sport at a high school outside London and Kyra is from OZ touring for 5 months. Our new drivers name is Mark.

Firstly it is 4.30am here, people snoring in the room and way too difficult to sleep so have decided to spend my time wisely and use the free computer and internet access whilst it is really free. I have just spent 45 minutes downloading photos. Hope you like them.



This taken of the lake outside Glenveagh Castle in Lough Veagh. It was built in the 19th Century by John George Adair. He had the castle designed to resemble Balmoral- Queen Victoria's Scottish highland residence. The tiling on the left was a pool that was added - it was heated and looks over the lake- how great is that.

You can not really tell but it is bloody cold and the wind is freezing- yet we still manager to smile for the camera.

Aaahhhh Yeats- a poet even in death (an old Irish saying).

So that is a brief tour of some of the things we did on this day on our way back to Derry for the night.

The rest of the night has no photos- well by us but we may appear somewhere else. Mark our driver asked if we wanted to go to a talk - which we were all keen to do. The talk was given by former members of the IRA who were involved with the hunger strike back in the late 1970's early 80's. One of the men was the 7 original hunger strikers who went without food for 53 days. Mary was one of the 3 female hunger strikers. They were on it for about 20 days. And the last guy was the one who organised the 2nd round of hunger strikes when the agreement by the British government was not honoured.
Sadly 10 men died on the hunger strikes before the government signed a new agreement and honoured it.
The feelings are still strong here in Northern Ireland and to hear the history by those who were there was very humbling. A unique experience that I will always remember.

We then went to the pub and drank a few ales- well cider and got home around 2am.
Miss you from here.
Karen and Alison.

Tour day two- Belfast

Well we all knew that last night was going to big - just not as big as it was. So we have maybe 4 hours sleep and we are back on the bus. One of the little American lasses threw up on the bus- once not long after we started and the second many hours later on our way into Belfast- ahh young naivety of drinking multiple kinds of drinks and heaps and heaps of them thinking you will be okay.

Alison and I surviving the night before and back on the road

Finn McCool's steps- which he built to walk to Scotland to get a bride- how romantic

Northern Ireland Beach- beautiful isn't it. They say that is cause no people go to them- only cows

Alison and I at the beach in Northern Ireland

Alison on our version of the swing bridge

Once in Belfast we went to both sides of the fence. I took one photo of a mural as I still felt a little uncomfortable doing this

So that ends today tour. We went to dinner at an Italian restaurant and them came back to the hostel- we are all shattered. Luckily Kara who is sharing a room with us has lent me her computer to update blog and photos- Thank you Kara.

Well we are heading back to Derry tomorrow after being out and about.
Miss you from here
Karen & Alison

Tour Day One - Derry

Hi all, - Firstly Jacqui I did say that there maybe some difficulty over the next 10 days updating due to access the computer regularly so don't panic if there are a few days with nothing.
So we started yesterday, with some difficulty with some people running late and us having to wait for them at aservo- but all good.
We had a great day- and a much better night of partying with all the people on the bus. Just a few photos of our day and night.

St Peter's church which had the skull of the Catholic bishop that was hung drawn and quartered for promoting the catholic religion.  (I didn't get a photo of it it was too hard to make out as was in class case)

My photo of the stain class window- Alison's was better but this has already taken ages to do and I can not be bothered to upload her photos as well - sorry.

Alison and my first day and first photo on the bus- look how happy we are- and we are tired load nite at the hostel so we didn't get much sleep.

Another church- the name escapes me at this time as it is 10.30pm and I am really tired (do have it written some where- sorry x 2

I looked surprised that we are out drinking given the lack of sleep from the night before. This is in the shebeen at thew hostel we are staying at - round 8pm - party has been going for 2 hours.

Didn't matter what i did I just couldn't get a photo that showed how small and how many people. There was about 50 people in the shebeen

Looking happier many drinks later finally got to real Irish pub with real live music (and some ciders have helped)

This is the bar we are in- still having issue with the flaring of night light with the camera.

So Although we did the walking tour of Derry and looked at the murals etc I  felt a little odd taking photos of areas of such violence so I choose not to. Will down load some from the net to remind me and add to blog at a later time. It was a very somber and sad tour to say the very least.

Well bye and miss you from here.
Karen and Alison

Our first awake day in Ireland

Hi all,
 you will see a marked improvement in our well being after we slept from 3pm till 9am- catching up on that lost night sleep. As I said before we found an O'Neill and O'Donoghue pub in the say street. We had lunch at the O'Donoghue's very nice- fish and chips and bangers and mash.

Alison and I at O'Donoghue's pub Dublin

This is a half pint in the O'Donoghue's pub-that's what we ordered (these look like full pints to the untrained eye)

Fish and chips and bangers and mash- sorry we were really hungry and thought we would share our joy of food.

This is my pub where we had lunch and half pints are served as full pints

This is Alison's pub only 4 shops away and we went in for a drink to play fair 

 So that is the end of our first awake day. We are on tour tomorrow so will try to get to cafe and update as we go but it maybe more spaced than this last week has been. 

Miss you all from here

Karen & Alison

Ryan Air/ No sllep and drinking at the pub- things that don't mix

Hi all a sad sad talt to the end of our time in Germany:

Okay in case you are wondering what happens to two Ozzies that stay out till 2.30am drinking and then go home.  But figure no point in going to bed to get any sleep.
Add to this the fact that they need to get the 5.20 am bus to Frankfurt Hahn to get a Ryan Air flight.And that the flight was not so cheap being a friday for starters ( why bother with the cheap out of the way airports and airlines).
Then add to this the made scrambble to get our luggage under 20 kilos each so not to pay 20 euro per kilo. Then add that we had to pay 40 Euro's each to print out boarding passes cause we hadn't printed them our selves- by a girl who looked liked we had completely inconvinenced her (we are the ones paying).
Then add to this 40 over enthuastic teenagers on a school trip.
One last thing the plane is late cause it had ice on its windows at Heathrow

And this is what girls look like after all that:

We are struggling

Best rally up we can do- this took me 4 photos to achieve this - our best look.

So let me tell you so you know how crazy we are we are considering Ryan Air again to get the Scotland but we are much much wiser- and will not pull an all nighter before hand.
Miss you from here
Karen and Alison

Last night in Heildelberg

Hello all how are you going in OZ and toher lands. Well as promised photos of our last night in Heidelberg. We had dinner at one of the brewery's the photo is blurry- cause I am having trouble adjusting the camera to all the glowing lights. Oh well |I think you will get the happiness of the group.

Alison, Karen, Juan Carlos (Renamed Wayne Carl as an honoury Ozzie for the evening), Brother Sean all at dinner at the brewery. The food was awesome.

After dinner Brother Sean went home cause he was flying to San Fran the next day. Alison and |I went out with Nigel and Juan Carlos (Wayne Carl) to the Cave bar

Still smiling after a yegamister

Alison and Juan Carlos after one yegamister

Me and Alison after 2nd Yeagamister- we look so good right

Nigel and |Juan Carlos after 2 yeagmisters and trying to convince the bar staff to play Peter Allen 'I still call Australia home' Which they didn't have.

Just so you can get a feel of the |Cave bar- it really is cave live and in the basement.

Well that is the photo diary of our last night out with the boys in Heidelberg.
Miss you from here.
Karen & Alison