Ireland

Here are some pictures from a two-week summer trip to Ireland with Marjorie and River.

We started in Dublin for several days, complete with day trips to visit Glendalough, Knowth, and some other sites with somewhat old and very old ruins. After that we headed west to Galway. The Sky Road was a scenic drive. After Galway, we headed south to Doolin. The sites to see there were the Aran Islands — we visited Inishmore, the large island — and the Cliffs of Moher. The views and landscape here, as with elsewhere in the country, were amazing. The coastal cliffs are distinct in color and vegetation from the inland mountains, even though they're only twenty minutes' drive from each other. Following Doolin, we continued south to Killarney. Our rainiest day was a bus tour of the Ring of Kerry, which was designed to be fun regardless of the weather. Finally, we spent two days in Cork.

I didn't know much about Irish history before visiting, so it was exciting to learn about the neolithic people, the history with the Vikings and later the British, and small things like the fact that George Boole was the first mathematics professor at University College Cork or that famous wool sweaters come from the Aran Islands. The food was mostly excellent. Many of the sandwich shops and bakeries we visited served great food, and classics like mussels, fish & chips, and the full breakfast were as good as I'd hoped they'd be. It was a nice time seeing the historical, cultural, and natural sites with friends.