There will be many parts… there is 8 days of Ireland to write about. So I will break it u[p for your reading convenice. 🙂 After I posted my update bout the note coming soon David said, “Note or novel?” Haha. He knows how I can praddle on about stuff qand write for a very long time if I so choose.
We left for St.Louis Saturday night after the wedding ceremony was over. We got there around 11ish. (We ran into a few things on the way and it delayed our trip out there.) All day Sunday we did nothing. 🙂 We did wonder out to the arch which was only a block from our hotel and came across an Air Force Jazz band. It was a nice quiet day. Monday our flight for Newark, New Jersery left at 1:30pm. It was a 2&1/2 hour flight. We had a few hour lay over in NJ. We left Newark at 7pm and had a 6&1/2 hour flight to Shannon, Ireland. We arrived at 7ish am Ireland. So we flew all night technically. We sat in the airport drinking coffee after we landed both exhausted. David did not sleep at all on the flight and I slept only a bit of time. Between the 2 flights I probably slept only 3 hours. (I dozed for a little bit on the flight from St.Louis. We stopped and exchanged some money and went to the Hertz office at the airport to pick up or car. It was a little red car called a Leon that had heated bucket seats. 🙂 David and I thought that was pretty cool! The average temp in Ireland is around 50s this time of the year and it is very rainy. So we very much enjoyed our “butt warmers.” The first place we stayed was Dromoland Castle. It is a castle that was built back in the 1500s and added onto over time and eventually became a hotel. The grounds were gorgeous! We got there around 8/9 ish. The drive over there was very interesting. They drive on the left side of the road with the driver on the right side. It was different. I have video of David spazzing out saying something like, “I am driving a weird little car on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road! THIS IS WEIRD!” haha. We checked in, as a valet parked our car and retrieved our luggage. They told us that they had a room ready for us to check into right away BUT since we were on our honey moon they had a free upgrde for a better room, however they were occupied and would probably not be ready till after 2pm. They offered us a tour around the castle then said we were welcome to help ourselves to the breakfast buffet that was laid out over by the resturant. We got something to drink and went to rest in the ‘drawing room’. It was a beautiful room with paintings of the people that actually lived in the castle from the 1700s. After relaxing we walked around the grounds and went and toured the wall gardens. Those were my favorite part. Very colorful with a little bridge over a stream, and a various type of flowers and trees. After spending quite a bit of time touring the castle and grounds, around noon they told us that our room was ready. We went to our room and cleaned up and went back to the garderns to eat lunch at their country club. David and I had soup and tea. Every where in Ireland serves their tea with a bowl of sugar and a some pitcher of cream. At the Country Club resturant they served it with a bowl of brown sugar cubes and white sugar cubes. David and I looked at that and thought it was very interesting seeing that set up for the first time. Haha. 🙂 We decided to take a short nap… We slept for 4 hours. We slept the whole afternoon away. So we got dressed up and went to the Lounge that was only open during dinner hours. At night they serve a 5 course meal that took us almost 3 hours to complete. 🙂 We sat down and knew we were in for a treat. There was 4 forks at each plate. Very fancy room with the male waiters in tuxes and the female waiters in nice white blouses and black skirts. At first they served this ( hard to describe) tuna fish squares with a green veggie sauce (it tasted very similiar to gaucamole). Then we choose from a list of appitizes. I had a mushroom and crab stuffed cannoles. David choose an asparagus and duck slices for his. They then gave us ther choice for a our “middle course”. David and I both choose mixed berry sorbet. They serves us a single scoop of sorbert in the fancy little silver dish. For our main dish I choose Irish Beef with mash potatoes and a potato cake (corn bread type thing). David had Lamb with mixed veggies. They also came by and served pieces of steam potatos. Then for our dessert I choose a Lemon Souffle’ and David had an assorment of crackers and cheese. (That was common. I guess crackers and cheese is considered a very proper dessert. All the fancier places we ate had it listed as a dessert.) It was a very relaxing evening and a wonderful way to spend it. That night we had a hard time falling asleep.(Considering we slept so long in the afternoon.) We were hoping to get up early and do a few of the things around dromoland before we left… That did not happen. We wake up to someone knocking on the door. We are like “What in the world… Why is someone knocking on our door this early in the morning?” We looked at the clock… It was 11 AM!!!! WOOOOPPPPSSS! It was the cleaning lady seeing if we needed anything. Check out was at noon… We flew around the room getting ready. We called the front desk to let them know we just woke up and they said that was fine. After we got ready to go we checked out and headed on to Galway where we would be spending the next week. Galway was an hour away so we knew it was going to be quite the drive.