Saturday, July 2, 2011

Ireland Trip Part 1---Skelligs and Dingle

So to say I've been slacking on the blog thing is probably the understatement of the year. Its been almost a year since I posted. I can't believe it. Time just flies.

Anyway, so what have we been up to this year you may be wondering... Not too much really. Guess we are just kinda boring. We did get back recently from an amazing vacation to Ireland.

My husband posted his favorites and his disappointments on his site and I thought maybe I would share a few of mine.

I would have to say that one of the highlights of the trip for me was seeing the puffins in their natural habitat. I've always thought these were the cutest birds and I have always wanted to see one in real life. I spent a summer in Maine one year and they have puffins there but I never got to see one.



We went on a day trip out to the Skellig Islands off the southern coast of Ireland on our third day there and I finally got to see the puffins. They didn't disappoint. The Skelligs are home to thousands of birds. The country has established these islands as a nature reserve and they only allow so many people to visit per day. It was a 45 minute boat ride out to Skellig Michael. This is the larger of the two and they only one that they allow people to visit. There is a monastery at the top of the island that was founded in the 7th century by Christian monks. The huts are very well preserved and it was definitely worth the trip out and the climb up the 600 stone steps.



These are some of the huts at the top of Skellig Michael.

And yes, we climbed up 600 of these steps to make it to the top. Definitely know now just how out of shape I am.



Here I am with some puffins. We were able to get pretty close to them before they would fly off. There were hundreds out that day. The weather was amazing. I guess we were lucky because prior to our trip, Ireland had had horrible weather for like a month or so.




We left out of Portmagee for the Skelligs and on our drive into town we saw this amazing rainbow. I didn't get a picture of the whole thing but we could be exactly where the rainbow started and stopped. It was beautiful. We saw about 8 or 9 rainbows during out stay.



Another favorite part was simply the driving through the countryside. The views are beautiful. The next couple of pictures are from our drive down the Dingle Peninsula. If you ever make it over to Ireland, definitely do the drive to Dingle. Definitely one of the best parts of our trip. I know most people will drive the Ring of Kerry and we did this drive too. It had some wonderful towns and beautiful scenery but in my opinion, it didn't live up to the drive to Dingle. Stunning.








For the sake of not making this post forever long, I'll split up our trip and leave it at this for today.

Happy 4th!!!!