Ireland July 10-July 13

Well, we had one day on the ship between Scotland and Ireland, it makes for one heck of a crazy day for everyone, students and faculty running their classes, us getting ready for preport and other admin business.  And to top it off, for some reason Ireland blocks the satellite signal, so no internet for five days.  I have to say, I did a great preport, used a powerpoint presentation with a family feud game (thanks Jenn).  We had one of our theatre instructors play the game show host and he rocked.  It was a much more interesting way to give out the safety and health tips for the port.

We hit Ireland and again rented a car.   Andy drove, this time he had a stick, and not only are you driving on the left side, but your stick is on the left side.  He handled it like a pro, but again we went from the Scotland video game of Frogger to Ireland, I would yell-sheep, bike, person, roundabout, wide right, hedge, stone wall, giant tour bus, etc.  And of course the roads all change names about ten times making following a map pretty challenging.  Before we left, Grandma Alice arrived at the ship, we barely gave her ten minutes before we dragged her off on the adventure.

We spent two nights in a rental home near Gallway where there were 15 of us together- 3 families and 1 couple.   It was great, people came and went their own directions.  We followed some folks into the countryside where we went to a beautiful mountain castle/abbey (see photo).  Of course, the kids favorite thing in Ireland was the little park we took them to that was near the house, it had a decent park sized zipline.  That will be their memory of Ireland after all the effort to get them to the castle.  we played games one night, and went to a great pub with live music the other.

After Gallway, we went back to Dublin where we had a day in town before the ship headed out. We rode the hop-on/hop-off double decker bus.  We went through a medieval museum, ate fish and chips, Liam had his first beer :)  , see photo, and went to the National Leprechaun museum which had fascinating story telling.

After the ship sailed we had a couple of days at sea and are now docked in Bergen, Norway waiting for the ship to clear at 18:00.