Ireland the 1st

Our trip to Ireland has been considerably more beautiful than I expected, its covered green rolling hills and playful streams and golden beaches and treacherous cliffs. Each part of it is extremely local, kind and unique. For this reason Ireland is a special and gets a mention in this blog
Here's what I'm trying to cover

1. Cork and the ring of Kerry.
2. Horse riding along a stunning broome style beach.
3. Dingle and surrounding
4. "The scenic way".
5. The cliffs of moh'or (Mordor)
6. The rubber ducky race.
7. Currarevagh house.

Driving ahead:

 

As we pulled into cork airport we all had mixed feelings, one thing however we all shared and knew: We were exhausted, tired and probably all ready to kill each other. However, we had a while still to travel and I think the thought of that weighed us down.
We rented our car, a smooth deasel powered Audi A3, only a month old and hit the road to Glenbeigh as seen on the map above

we sung all the way there and that ment that every part of our body ached physically and mentally I guess we were all glad that the lady who ran our B+B was so kind and understanding. her name was Maureen and she did all the work for her guests and family. she was lovely, and I recommend her to anyone staying in Ireland.
on day 1 we decided to drive the ring of kerry, one of the 3 penisulas in Ireland in the south, south and little west of Ireland.

 

the towns have cute names and the peninsula is one of the remaining places where people speak Gallic or the old Irish language, upon reading up about this i found out that the Gallic language doesn't have a word for yes and no, (thank horrible history's for this info), how difficult that must be to understand!

the italics above the writing are in Gallic

 

the total drive time (including stops) took the whole day but it was totally worth it!
here's the ring of kerry in pictures...

for once feel sorry for drew, death by tickle is a long and hard way to go

 

after a long hard day driving (liking my sense of irony : D) we headed to the recently installed Glenbeigh beach, we stayed there for 2 hours, it has a long,long sandy stretch and really shallow water so you can almost walk to the next peninsula without Getting your shorts wet. I learnt to throw the discus (like rock) and we were thoroughly tired when we arrived, still laughing at our B+B.

its probably good we were tired as the next day mum had a surprise for us, we went...

horse riding!!!!!

 

how fun it was, (if a bit sore on the old behind) and what a great feeling, its like being king of the world and everyone else are your subjects

 

London - more

Gosh!
London has been sooooooooo jampacked full of stuff.
Here's some of the stuff we did

• Hampton court palace
• Thames lock
• Camden town markets
• Tower of London - best day ever
• Plays - Charlie and Matilda
• Natural history museum
• Hamleys toy store

Wow!
Here's a summary in pictures and videos

Harry potter and the 3 half wits

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ahh! ahhhh!

Suck him uppppp!

Drew look at the camera for once in your life!

Horrible history says one day!

 

 

Camden markets:

Drew, that is disgusting

 

 

Hyde Park

You would've thought squirrels would be popular pets, no?

Sorry, didn't see this kind of squirrel, wonder how we got the photo? ;)

 

The Tower of London

One day that'll all be mine!

Wonder if those bear skin hats are itchy?

New musical, hilarious!

We went to see the new play Matilda as well, brilliant I'll put some music at the bottom,my 3 favourite songs

Dad found a new friend

 

 

Hamleys

Sooooo! Fluffy!

All of these floors had toys in them! Yessssssss!

It's made in Lego, no kidding

 

 

London has been through some pretty tough stages in history: It went thought the Black Death - killed thousands and reduced population by a quarter of what it was once; the Tudors killed you if your religion wasn't right, however right can be very hard to distinguish from wrong and the right changed quite a lot and thousands died for what they believed in. Even in the days of great Brittish empire when people looked for new life in new places, a roaring slave trade started in London and those fellow human beings died in slavery from disease and poverty.
All of these things look bad but most of them had some good outcomes in the long run. The hierarchy in the time of the Black Death had grown so much that a landlord could practically murder peasants legally, so when the Black Death hit, and most of the peasants died, the remaining peasants were offered a wage just to stay on an owner's land. When religion switched everyone got a turn to speak their minds and when James II tried to switch the religion of Brittain from Protestant to Catholic he was rejected - if not they might of had catholic Brittain to this day. And slavery told the Brittains all about terrible conditions and made them feel lucky for what we had.
I suppose history has its ups and downs
When the 1960's through to 70's hit however, London's hard times gave way and a better more stable lifestyle was fitted in its place. People stormed to London to try to get a bit of life you couldn't get anywhere else - fun, free and happy.
I think the thing that makes London so different is that they learnt from their past. All the dying was never in vain, because the people of London know what it was like in those harsh times and now it makes them happy for what and where they are...
I hope they never forget.

 

 

Hoping to hear from you soon
Zoe

 

London day 1

 

 

 

 

We arrived from the train at Euro Disney and we

1. Stayed one night at the "premier inn" b+b- got lost in the network of stairs
2. Took a cap to our apt. the next day seeing all the highlights of near us - we have a great location, (Notting-hill to be exact).
3. Had a quick lunch and took a red bus tour, like the one in Dubai except with better music and more to see, total trip time was about three hours. Did not do the "big ben and parliament roundabout" however, also, it rained.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Made egg cheesies for dinner

 

The big bus tour was good, here are some things we did on the ride

• The tower of London
• Big Ben and parliament

 

 

 

 

 

• Piccadilly Circus - a roundabout, not a real circus
• The London eye, the biggest ferris wheel in the world
• Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes lived
• Madame Tussaud's, the famous wax museum
• Fleet Street (we didn't run into Sweeney tod), now a commercial street
• The London dungeons, some very famous villains hideouts
• Trafalger square, watched over by Nelson on his column and the lions
• Mayfair, monopoly
• Harrods, most famous shop in the UK
• Hamleys, massive 250 year old toy shop

And then it started to rain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trafalgar Lion

 

 

 

We will DEFINITELY be going here again

 

 

 

Sign of the London subway

 

 

 

 

 

Now we've seen all of this stuff we just have to pick the bits we want to explore!!!

Missing you

Zoe

 

Swe of the mar