Well I have been out of the country for awhile and my posts therefore  have been lacking. Now I will have to update you on what has been going on.

My first accomplishment was to finally get my HAM radio license. Hartley has been an amateur radio operator since he was about 16 and has always encouraged me to get my license (but you had to learn Morse Code and I wasn’t interested.) Now you can do it without the code!! It is very helpful to have a license when you are sailing as in the anchorages that is how the various cruisers communicate. My new license is KK6TPE. The best part of getting the license was that the test site was at a GOOGLE facility. If you have seen the movie “The Internship” it looks just like that! There are colored bicycles and rooms with climbing walls and rooms for dance , a bowling alley etc. ! They even had padded, HEATED, toilet seats complete with a warm water bidet ( which you could chose to have spray the back or the front!!!!)

After the testing for my license on Saturday, I left on vacation to Ireland and Scotland with my Mom on Monday.  She is 88 and in great shape so we had a wonderful time visiting lots of interesting places.

The first challenge was driving on the left side of the road.  I must say I did pretty well staying on the correct side of the street. My biggest mistake was when I was in a parking lot (no middle line) and I drove down the wrong side, not too bad. Another challenge with driving are the round-abouts (traffic circles). It is a trick knowing when it is your to enter the round-about and if you are leaving at the 3rd exit should you be driving on the inner ring or the outer and when  you should  change. The navigation systems in the car was essential but sometimes added to the confusion at the round-abouts as it would say to get off at the 2nd exit but wouldn’t count  an exit that was really small or was a deadend. I only ended going round and round a couple of times. The first time it happened I went around 4x because after the first time around  Mom and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t concentrate to figure out where we needed to go.

Okay, now for a brief travelog.

We arrived in Dublin and spent two days there viewing the city sites. Here is a picture of me and the famous Molly Malone (selling cockles and mussels alive alive oh.)****

From there we drove to Kilkenny and went to a bar for some great traditional Irish music. As you will see there were lots of castles so here are some pictures of the first one with the castle and beautiful gardens. The castle of Kilkenny.

My Mom at Kilkenny Castle

 

My Mom in the gardens at Kilkenny Castle

From there we went off to Killarney, the step off point to the the beautifully scenic drives, the Loop of Kerry and the Ring of Dingle.

For the Loop of Kerry I decided to give the driving a break  and we took a bus tour. We got to see a sheep dog demonstration. Truly amazing. The dogs with just simple voice commands or whistles would herd the sheep and make them do whatever the sheep herder wanted with out any obvious effort.

The weather was dramatic with rain and sun and rain and sun (and some hail too.)

I had to take a picture of a harbor in Dingle.

 

From there it was off to the Cliffs of Mohr ,after taking a trip on the ferry across the Shannon River (more on ferries later).

From there it was on to Dromoland Castle where we stayed for the night and got treated like royalty.

Lifting your hand to pour some more wine was not allowed!! The waiter was at your service and it was his job to do that little thing for you!

After a night of luxury we headed back to Dublin to catch our plane to Scotland. On the way we stopped at the Irish National Stud Farm and saw some beautiful horses and 3  new foals born the night before.

More later but I am getting complaints that I haven’t posted since I got back so here is the first installment.