Day #22, #23 - Viking Splash, Grafton Street, Photo Shoot, and Trim Castle

Hello readers!

So, let's start with yesterday, shall we?

We started the day by driving over to Dublin.  There, we would soon meet our buddies Cathy and Shannon, along with their Spanish friend, Paola, at the Viking Splash Tour.

You see, this wasn't any normal, boring bus tour; this bus was a boat, too!  Driving straight into the water was the weirdest thing.  The tour guide said that it "goes against every natural instinct" to do that, and I see why!

After that, my mum and I couldn't resist visiting Grafton Street one last time!

When we bought way more stuff that we should have, we went to a nice place for dinner with Shane, Colette, and Cathy called Mario's in Sandymount.  We all agreed that the food was fantastic!

Once our stomachs were nice and full, we headed over to our friend Agata's photo studio, Dlight Studios, for our very first family photo shoot!

Although some say that modeling is hard work, to us it was just a lot of fun!

Today, we said farewell to our home away from home in Blainroe.  It was so kind of Colette to let us stay in her house.  (Thank you!)  After that, we were on the road, headed to Trim Castle.  Trivia fact: The movie Braveheart was filmed there in 1994.

We didn't have enough time to go on the tour, but just walking around and looking at the ruins was incredible!

A couple of hours later, we checked into the Hilton Hotel (which, as I learned today, is owned by Paris Hilton's father).  We will only be staying here for one night, and tomorrow morning we will be waking up at 6:00 sharp to catch the shuttle to the airport.

I am so sad that we are leaving; Ireland is so amazing!  I'm sure that getting back home will be a big relief for all of us, though.

By the way, I probably won't have time to post again tomorrow, with all of the chaos with airports and flights and such.  (In case any of you were wondering, we are taking an 8-hour flight from Dublin to Chicago, Illinois, then another 4-hour flight from Chicago to San Francisco.)  In that case, this may be the last O'Eldredges blog post!  How tragic!  You know, this blog has really grown on me.  I will have to think about the "Keeping Up with the Eldrashians" blog, Lori!

Thank you all so much for reading the blog and making the whole concept so fun!  You are all super-supportive, and I'm really glad that most of you enjoyed reading it.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you:  We have driven exactly 3,618 kilometers overall during our trip.  For those of you in America, I'll leave it to you to convert that into miles.

Well, I will see a lot of you back home in California, which we are all looking forward to.  But for now, have a great rest of your day!

Slan go foill!  Tabhair aire!

Slainte!


-Megan

Day #21 - Avoca and Sugarloaf Mountain

Hi everyone!

Hey, would someone do my a favor and comment and tell me whether that post that I tried to publish earlier posted?  I would really appreciate it, because I can see it, but I'm not sure if everybody else can.  Thank you!

Anyway, today we drove down to a store/restaurant called Avoca Hand Weavers.  Colette also met up with us there, so it was wonderful to see her.

After we had some tea and snacks from the food section, we walked around the actual store.  It was huge!  They had home appliances, men and women's clothes, jewelry, books, a kids' section, a garden section, and more!  We spent a lot of time in the garden; Jack especially liked the hydrangeas.

We soon said farewell and parted with Colette.  Once we did, we headed to Sugarloaf Mountain!

It was quite a climb, but the incredible view from the peak was definitely worth it.

When we finally reached flat ground again, we were starved and drove back to Wicklow to grab some dinner from Apache Pizza.  We were so hungry that we wolfed down the pizza without taking any pictures (sorry!).

We promised Jack that we would play tennis afterwards, so we arrived at the court and had only been there for two minutes when we lost our only tennis ball.  Oops.

Luckily, we found a playground nearby, so the visit wasn't a complete waste!

Holden rocking the springy thing while I am practicing my ninja moves in the background

I got stuck in this (for real) and Jack tried to get me out

That's all, folks!  Thanks for reading, and check back for more soon!


-Megan

Day #20 - The Dublin Zoo

Dia duit!  

Ugh, Blogger is being annoying again.  I tried to post this last night but it didn't work, so every time I say "today" I really mean "yesterday".  I hope that makes sense...

Today, we went all the way to Dublin to visit the Dublin Zoo.

There was an impressive amount of animals there, and we saw nearly every one of them!  Shane also joined us later on, so we had an even better time with him.  We took lots of pictures, but most of them didn't turn out so great, so I'll only post the best ones:

Tiger

Snow Leopard

Orangoutangs

Some kind of lemur

Hmmm...I wonder why they were moved...

Flamingos

The cutest red panda ever

We came all the way to Dublin to see California Sea Lions

Scary ostrich

Giraffes

Absolutely the most adorable thing I have seen all day: the little baby rhino in the middle

SO CUTE!

A mother gorilla breastfeeding her baby

The silverback of the band

We are proud to say that we did all of these things! (just kidding)

And...these?

A female peacock

Some sheep

And finally, these strange, strange animals

Afterwards, we drove back to Wicklow, the town a few minutes away from Blainroe, where we found a nice little restaurant called Wynne's.  They even had live music!  It was very relaxing and the perfect end to our exciting day.

Our drinks

Holden and Jack got popcorn chicken with fries (left),  my mum and I ordered the salmon (middle) and dad got sausage with leeks mashed potatoes.  Yum!

Today was a very fun day, but I have a feeling that the last three days of our trip are going to be just as great, if not better!  

Thanks for reading!  Check for another post later today if you can.  

Bye for now!

-Megan

Day #19 - The Irish Open

Hello again!  Today my dad and I went all the way to Carton House Resort to attend the Irish Open.

The rest of the family, who didn't want to go, enjoyed a "lazy day" at home and around town.

But back to the Open!  After getting lost twice on the way there, we finally made it.  We parked right by this neat little castle:

The entrance was pretty cool to walk through, too.  Each sign has a different fact about Ireland on it:

Once we got in, we bought some food and drinks and began wandering around.  We decided to stand at the 16th hole's tee box and watch each player tee off.

It was amazing to see so many famous golfers so close-up!  (Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take any pictures of the golfers whatsoever, so that's why this post will have so few photos.)

We were walking along when we saw an iPod lying on the ground.  Random!  We picked it up, of course, but to our disappointment it had a passcode.  Whoever set the wallpaper probably wasn't expecting anybody else to see it, though...

We decided to be good people and turned it into the Lost and Found, which gave all of the people in charge of that booth a good laugh.



Just before we left, I got a picture with Rory McIlroy, who, although he didn't make the cut, I was lucky enough to meet.

When we returned to Blainroe, we found Holden, Jack, and Jen all playing tennis on a nearby court.  After joining them, we ate a nice dinner at Apache Pizza in Wicklow and came home, where I am currently sitting here typing at the computer.

And that was our day!  Thanks for reading, and I will write more in the near future.

Slan go foill!


-Megan