We have very limited Wifi, so I will skip the pictures to give you this update. Tonight I will take the time to add a bunch of pictures.
To start with, we have heard about Brussels and are nowhere near there. Furthermore, there is no credible threat to any of our destinations, and we are traveling by private coach. We know it's hard not to worry as a parent watching the news, but rest assured that the kids took the news in stride and are still busy having the time of their lives.
So here's the recap so far:
So after a hearty breakfast on Monday we boarded the bus for our tour of the Ring of Kerry. This started with a stop at Killarney, where we wandered around and saw everything from cute chocolate shops (yeah!) to fun hostels. We came by the beautifully decorated Catholic church, which held the skull of a saint murdered by Oliver Cromwell's soldiers. There were horse drawn carriages and adorable storefronts in abundance. We then drove along Dingle Bay.
We stopped briefly at an overlook and again at a seaside town called Waterville. This town was a favorite vacation spot of Charlie Chaplin, so there is a statue of him and a home still owned by the Chaplain family. There is a beach here, so Molly and Gabe taught some of the others to skip stones. Molly found a crab. Some of the Connecticut kids took off their shoes to wade, but our kids were too sensible to get cold, wet, sandy feet early in the day. The fresh Atlantic ocean breeze and the cool but mild weather were a treat. We drove past a view of Skellig Michael, the island used in the final scenes of the new Star Wars movie where Luke has been hiding out. It was like a ship in the fog because it is pretty far out, but we saw it. We stopped at another overlook where a guy had some lambs people could pet (though we were told not to actually pet them) and where the kids could run around a bit exploring the wild hillside. Then it was off to lunch.
We had great views at the restaurant. The area can best be described as rugged. It is windswept, and the cottages that dot the landscape belong mostly to sheep farmers. We have seen so many lambs we have lost count, and it seems almost everybody owns a border collie. The pastures are mostly defined by gorse bush (which is starting to bloom yellow) and those iconic stone walls. We even saw a farmer and his dog driving his flock in. This drive is absolutely stunning and a must-do for visitors to Ireland. There are abandoned churches which fell apart after Cromwell's persecution of the Catholics in the 1600s as well as towers and monasteries and even prehistoric stone monoliths.
After lunch we continued to a village called Sneem, where students saw an old graveyard, enjoyed ice cream, and climbed down to a creek. We also saw the world's largest "gall-stone". This joke doesn't work in writing as the stone is a memorial to Charles de Gaulle, so it is a Gaulle stone. It was in Sneem that de Gaulle first met Eisenhower to begin planning the D-Day invasions. Hannah bought an Irish whistle here.
Our final stop of the day was Kilmare, where we saw the Stone Ring. Since we were disappointed not to see Stonehenge on this tour, David took us here--a circle of stones that dates from the same era, has a similar purpose (or so people speculate), and though much smaller in terms of the size of the stones, was still impressive and fascinating. We may have reenacted human sacrifice on the center stone, an option not available to us at Stonehenge.
Our bus dropped most of us off in downtown Macroom, allowing us to see Macroom Castle, the boyhood home of William Penn (for whom Pennsylvania is named) before walking the mile back to the hotel. We were understandably exhausted (as evidenced by Audrey's really bad "jokes") and slept well!
Tuesday was a bit mellower. We left Macroom for Blarney, where we spent a few hours exploring the castle, kissing the Blarney stone, checking out the poison gardens, the badger cave, the dungeon, and some of the biggest shopping opportunities in Ireland. What a beautiful area! We had lunch here. Then it was onward to the Rock of Cashel. When the devil was hungry he grabbed a mouthful of rock. He was forced to drop the rock, and upon it the Christians built a church complex. Erika met a cat here and made a lifelong friend. Then it was on to Dublin. We may have taken naps on the bus after the exhausting day yesterday. Our hotel is lovely and a bit outside the city near the village of Eniskerry. Our dinner at the hotel was fantastic, and afterwards a bunch of us sat around telling stories for another two hours before we crashed again! Gus and I even sat with the bus driver for our group and the other EF group in our hotel (a group from Canby, OR!). Frank, their bus driver, is a lover of Irish poetry, so I will be bringing some of that back to our curriculum. Our hotel is inside the swanky suburban area known as the Pale. It is from Dublin that our expression "beyond the pale" comes. The things you learn on tour!
We are still having fun, and today (Wednesday) will include downtown Dublin and Trinity College. I hope to have enough internet for pictures tonight!
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