Ireland continued

We arrived at the castle that night just in time to catch the last half of the pub crawl the wedding party was having through the town of Sligo that night. (I have to admit I wasn't that bummed we missed the first half - 6+ hours of bar-hopping was a little much for me. I can only drink so many diet cokes.)

 

They had appetizers and food, and even their own personalized coasters all over the town of Sligo. Ryan and I snuck out a few times and even headed over to what had been deemed an "old people bar" by the wedding-goers to hear the traditional Irish music that was going on over there. We laughed that we felt more at home in the geriatric pub, but hey, they had good taste in music and it felt much more Irish.

I actually have no idea how that country can possibly support the number of pubs it has. There are seriously like 5 on every block. O'hara's, O'Malleys, O'Grady's...you name it. Towns with a population of 800 people will still have like 10-15 pubs in them!  Crazy. Guess that's what you do when it's always raining.

They had hired shuttles for the wedding guests all weekend taking them to and from events and around to their organized activities. Some went early morning golfing the next morning, but we took one they had arranged to take us sightseeing around the area.

 

And every time I saw sheep in Ireland I kept thinking these must be the happiest sheep in the whole world.  I'd be a happy little sheep living in a place like this.

 

Then we headed into Sligo town for some lunch on the waterfront.

That afternoon a shuttle took people over for a tour of Parke Castle - the namesake castle of the groom and the draw for the wedding to be done in the mother-land, so to speak. Weddings aren't done there, however, which is why another venue was used. They even located some of their Irish Parke ancestors and it was fun to have some locals among the wedding crowd. And to see them bust out hats and feathers when they were dressed in their finery.

Anyhow, I'll admit, I was a bit tired after red-eyes, late night pubs and jet-lag, and a nap sounded too inviting for me to pass up that afternoon, so mostly the boys went and toured the castle without us.

The Bascom Palmer Eye Institute boys: Will (the groom), Ryan, Justin and Dave - all third year residents.

(Doesn't Dave look like he's straight out of Miami Vice?  I love it. Stands out even better in a country that is so not diverse.  In fact one of the groomsmen was going to pick them up at the train station and asked Will how he was going to find this guy there. Will said, "Don't worry, I'm pretty sure he'll be the only Persian in Ireland.  :)

That night we were taken over to a beautiful hotel in town for the rehearsal dinner. I think they'd had an actual wedding rehearsal the night before with just the wedding party, but this was for all the guests (100 people came all the way to Ireland for the wedding - pretty impressive). The evening was full of great food, lots of amusing toasts and entertaining stories of both the bride and groom, and even some traditional Irish folk dancers (who move way to fast for any decent pictures).

 

I must say it was definitely a first for me to have to travel with a hanging bag full of  cocktail dresses, tuxes and evening gowns.  I could get used to it.  :)

Well, have to get back to my normal life again. Sorry, wedding will be next time!

IRELAND

AMAZING.  Amazing. Really, that's all I can say about our trip.  It did not disappoint. The country itself was even more charming than I had expected and every bit as beautiful as I had hoped. The wedding was straight out of a fairy tale, and I'm sure I'll never be to another wedding that spectacular in my life.  Where to begin?

The plane ride in caught me off-guard as being surprisingly beautiful:

Even through the airplane window I couldn't believe the shades of green there. And there were sheep on the sides of the runway. What could be more a more Irish welcome than that?  (Because, seriously, where weren't there sheep all over Ireland?)

We were SO so lucky that we had a good couple days of beautiful sunshine and perfect temperatures near the upper 60s. Seriously a blessing for a country notorious for it's lousy weather. So it was perfect that we flew in and were planning on sightseeing our way up the west side of the country until we reached the wedding destination.

First stop, Bunratty castle just outside of Shannon.

Also home of Durty Nelly's, the oldest pub in Ireland.


Excuse the grubby looks- this was just after getting off a red-eye and I don't know, a good 15 hours of traveling or so.









Stopped in Ennistymon for lunch and some meandering. I seriously could not get over how charming all the little towns were. Actually every town in the whole country that we saw looked like this.  All of them. I was so in love.

And seriously, if these two can't get you to drink a cup of Irish coffee, I don't know who can.

And the roads. Oh, the roads. I cannot adequately convey the fear I had for my life traveling on those roads.  Not only were we driving on the wrong side of the road, with a stick shift on the wrong side of your body, but they were the most narrow roads you can imagine!  I guess this are really the only pictures I have and they don't really do it much justice. Most of the time there are trees and bushes, maybe rock walls all within about 6 inches of the side of your car. And when you pass another car on the road there is seriously not a foot of extra room to spare. Not only that, but the roads are incredibly curvy and windy, and the speed limit on them is 60mph (100km/h)!!! We were dying. We're guessing that's why we never saw any cops out on the roads in the whole country - no one in their right mind would be speeding on those

roads.  We had discussed when we picked up the rental car in the airport that Ireland is apparently one of the top few most expensive places in the world to rent a car.  Within minutes of driving we knew exactly why. And then when we pulled up to the wedding next to another rental car and saw a demolished passenger side mirror and scrape marks all along the side of the car, we had nothing but sympathy for them. I seriously couldn't sit up in the front seat. Ryan did an amazing job driving, but every time I was hearing tree branches scraping the sides of the car I knew I was about 4 inches from death.

But the country is so beautiful. The whole country is amazing. All the houses are all well-kept and charming. There are planter boxes on houses and businesses everywhere. I could never quite figure it out.  We kept wondering, where's the ghetto?Where are the run-down houses with all the broken cars on the lawn? The projects?  None of it. We never got to Dublin or up north, maybe it's different there, but everywhere we went we couldn't believe how pleasant and aesthetically pleasing it was.

I know a lot of these are out-the-window-of-the-car shots, but I could hardly put my camera down everything was so pretty and almost unrealistically green.

Then we headed over to the famous and picturesque cliffs of Moher. Here is Ryan with our traveling buddies, Natalie and Justin, who also work with Will (the groom).

Ryan was in love with these stone fences. While I concede to their charm, I mostly just pity the poor person who has to build thousands and thousands of miles of these all over the country. That's how all their land is divided up. Seriously, how do they even build them without the whole thing toppling over?

Here we stopped to see some 5000 year old tomb/burial ground and the however-many ton stones they moved to erect this thing.

And then we finally made it (picture a long dusty road lined with sheep and green grass as we're driving in) to Markree Castle, the wedding destination where all of the wedding party and guests would stay.

I wasn't kidding when I said this wedding was straight out of a fairy tale.



Wow. I'm not even through day one yet!  This could take a while. There might even be more pictures of us on subsequent days when we actually showered. Well, more to come....