Arrival in Ireland

Using up those miles, we flew from San Francisco to Dublin, with a long layover in Chicago.  Three hours of that came from a delay for equipment availability.  But we made it safely to Ireland, and all our luggage showed up on the baggage carousel.

If you haven’t been to the Dublin Airport lately, the new terminal is open.  The older one is much smaller, and more like a regional airport than one meant for large numbers of transoceanic flights.  Now it is better organized, but be prepared to walk longer distances.

We got the rental car okay, as our reservation was in their system.  (This has been a problem in other places.)  Getting out of the airport seemed easier than it was the last time, although I had to concentrate on keeping to the left.  The car is a stick shift, and so far I have only once started rolling down the window when I meant to shift gears!  I was tired and so we stopped in Cashel for coffee and shepherd’s pie.  All things went pretty well, and we only made one wrong turn getting down to Kinsale.  The small roads are well signposted, so we just kept following the signs.

Boland House in Kinsale is just great.  Tony and Colette Boland live next door and they are as friendly as can be.  The house is right by the harborfront, and around the corner from the old town square.  There is a Norman church, built 1190, and in its graveyard are a few victims of the RMS Lusitania sinking in 1915.  We have been “chilling out” all week long.  I joined the fitness facility at the Acton Hotel down the street, and it feels good to be back in the exercise mode.  Penny does her power walks, and with the hills surrounding the harbor inlet, that is very good too.  The grocery store, the post office, the pubs around the corner…it is all right here in walking distance and the car hasn’t moved since we got here.  That will change today, because we are going up to Cobh (pronounced “cove”) today for the Lusitania memorial activities.  The sinking took place off Old Kinsale Head 96 years ago.  Most of the victims are buried up in Cobh.

Kinsale seems to have plenty of activities to bring in visitors.  Last weekend was some sort of rugby tournament, and many people came here to watch the action in pubs on televisions.  Rugby fans are quite sharp dressers, as you can see below:

This weekend brought a car rally.  I can't add any words of value to these photos, so...