Italy Route

Here's our route in Italy.


View Italy Trip in a larger map

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!  This will have to do in place of a holiday card.

I had wanted to spend our last day in Florence doing this bike tour that my friends Tera & Jake told me about, but I contacted several agencies and none were operating until the weekend.  Boo hoo!  So we went on a bus tour of the Chianti region instead.  This was still a lot of fun – we visited a couple of old towns before heading to the winery.  After probably five of our different tastings, Matt whispered “I think I’m getting drunk!!” so we’ve got to give some mad props to Jake & Tera for being able to bike back to Florence safely after that!  It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed the different wines from the region and learning about Chianti.

The bus stopped for a view over the Tuscan hills – it’s a bit misty though. This is all in the Chianti region.

The black rooster is the symbol of Chianti

Monteriggioni, one of the towns we visited

We packed up and headed to the small town of Assisi for Christmas Eve.  St Francis of Assisi is credited with giving us our modern day Christmas celebration, so I think we chose an excellent town for Christmas. We took a nice walk around town during the afternoon and toured the basilica and saw St Francis’ tomb as well.  Apparently he is Craig’s (Matt’s brother) confirmation saint – pretty cool!  We went to midnight mass – it was PACKED.  There were no taxis or buses running at 1:30am, so – fired up to run after both finishing Born to Run – we just hoofed it the mile or so back to our hotel in the middle of the night in a light drizzle.  It was actually a lot of fun and a great way to end the night.

A view of Assisi from below.  We stayed in a smaller town at the base of the hill that Assisi is situated on

Walking up to explore in the afternoon – I was pretty sweaty by the time we arrived at a little café for lunch

A nativity scene in the basilica

It’s Christmas Day now, so after raiding the hotel breakfast buffet, we’re on a train to Rome for a few more action packed days of sight seeing.  Eat some Christmas cookies for us! 

Italia

We’re in Italy!  We arrived in Pisa on Tuesday morning and accidentally knocked over a tower.

 

Yes, we took the classic tourist photos – I tried to resist but Matt made me do it.

We hung around Pisa for a bit before catching a train to Florence, where we had a delicious spaghetti and wine dinner (we were hoping for Lady and the Tramp style, but they brought us two bowls). 

The next morning, we had a full day.  We visited the Galleria de la Academica to catch a glimpse of David, and then we climbed the Dome.  The views from the top were outstanding!

       

After a quick bite to eat and a little down time, we took a walk across the Ponte Vecchio bridge on our way to the the Piazza Michelangelo where we saw one of the two David replicas. 

Ponte Veccio – this bridge is lined with jewelry shops.  .

 

Shortly past the piazza was the gorgeous Basilica di San Miniato al Monte and its cemetery.  The author of Pinocchio was buried here!

We caught the sunset over Florence on our walk down and the streets were all lit up.  It was a perfect day.

 

 

On Thursday, we caught the train to the medieval town of San Gimignano.  We were hoping to catch a wine tour leaving from here but it was pretty dead and we missed the one tour of the day by a few minutes.  That was a bummer and we kind of wasted a day with the trip out here, but it was still a neat little town. 

Just a note…wifi hasn’t been as readily available here in Italy, so keep that in mind if we don’t respond to you in a timely manner.  We probably won’t post for a few more days, so Merry Christmas to all!

Last Days in Ireland

 

We stayed in the town of Dingle on a sheep farm.  We went out our first night there and the town was pretty dead since it is the off-season for tourists.  So we just ate at the farmhouse and chatted with the friendly owners.  The lady of the house, Jan, was from Missouri, but the man, Seamus, is Irish.  The next morning Seamus took us out to help feed the sheep, then on a hike in the pasture hills overlooking the valley.  We got to see his Border Collie, Kipper, in action as he rounded up sheep from way down a hill.  That was the highlight of the day for me.

We stopped for a look at the nearby Gallarus Oratory, an early church. After that, we headed out and drove the Slea Head loop at the end of the peninsula, which is Europe’s westernmost point.  Lots of big waves and nice beaches, although it was pretty cold.  We saw two dead baby seals that had washed ashore.  Sad…  But on the plus side I found a sheep skull.

Also stopped to look at some old stone “beehive” huts dated to around 2000 BC that were guarded by some sheep.

Great views along the coast.  Then we drove over some mountains via Copper Pass and made our way to spend the night in Adare.  The pub we went to happened to have a wedding after party, so it was pretty lively.  I took Stevi down in darts.  Twice.  Pretty bad.

The following day we went to the most visited sight in Ireland—the Cliffs of Moher.  These were really stunning and were my favorite sight of all that we saw.  We got a nice sunny day for this, and the wind was strong so there was an updraft along the walls--it would bring water from the crashing waves up and over the edge where we were so that it was raining upside down.  That alone was pretty fun to watch.  One wave below the cliffs has been recorded as Ireland’s largest and apparently has been surfed already by big wave hunters. 

We then drove on along the coast and stopped to explore the coastline in Doolin, a small area known for its music.  This coastline had some smaller cliffs and very rocky terrain—my favorite area to explore thus far.  I spotted a bottlenose dolphin just off of shore.  The crashing waves were huge and would spray up over the cliff edges, so I got soaked real good one time. 

Then we continued driving the shore to Galway, one of Ireland’s larger cities.   We grabbed some dinner and went to a highly rated pub for some live music and brews, walked some of the coastline the next morning and took off across the country for Dublin.  We stopped on our way at the 5th century Clonmacnois Monastery which was interesting. 

After arriving in Dublin, we first went on a tour of Kilmainham Gaol, a now closed prison.  The tour actually provided a good history lesson on Ireland and its famous prisoners.  The main doors were the site of many past public hangings.  Quite a few movies have been filmed here.

We went for dinner at the highly rated O’Neills pub, which was a good time.  Today we visited the oldest pub in Ireland, which is dated to around 1100.  One last fish n’ chips meal (my favorite) and a Guiness and we’re heading out early tomorrow for Italy.

Route

This is our driving route, with one night at each placemark. We are now in Dublin and will have our final two nights here.


View Ireland Trip in a larger map

Cobh, Killarney, & Dingle

Guys – we did it. We traveled an ENTIRE DAY without getting lost. Not once! We completely changed courses about twenty minutes into the drive, but that’s it. Matt is rocking our Nissan Micro and I am rocking as co-pilot. But I digress…before I get into our Wednesday, let me just say that we slept in the absolute coldest room of our lives on Tuesday night in Kinsale. I’m pretty sure that I have frostbite on my nose. Poor us – wasting away at a freezing cold B&B in Ireland! Despite the chill, Kinsale was Matt's favorite town so far. Anyway, we started the day heading to Killarney to check out some sites. Shortly into the drive, we remembered that we wanted to hit up this wild animal park in Fota, so we headed back East towards Cork and found it without any problems. Unfortunately the rain was insane, we were still freezing from our night in an igloo, and it cost twice as much as we originally had thought. Neither of us really wanted to suffer through the freezing rain/sleet, so we passed and headed to the town of Cobh (pronounced “Cove”). Previously named Queenstown, this is the port town that built the Titanic and its sister ship Olympic, and it was the last port of the Titanic. There’s a neat museum in town that gives a ton of Ireland mariner history in general – the convicts that were sent to Australia, the many emigrants during the famine, etc. It was interesting, but we both wished there were some more artifacts. One thing that really stuck out to both of us was a note from a young man who died on the Titanic that was found in a bottle a few years after the wreck. He had written a note that said something like, “From the Titanic: Goodbye to All” and he put it in was one that his mother had given him filled with holy water before going on his journey. Very somber. We also checked out a neat cathedral in Cobh.

After Cobh, we finally headed to Killarney. We made it to the Muckross House and were the last tour of the day. The grounds are stunning – 11,000 acres were donated along with the house, and the country has eventually bought up another 10,000+ acres to make up the Killarney National Park. It was of course raining so we didn’t get to explore as much as we’d like, but the house itself was neat. Queen Victoria stayed there in 1871 or so and the family who built the house went all out in preparation for her visit. This eventually led them to some hard financial times, so someone from the Guiness family bought it and rented it to hunters. After that, a Californian couple bought the house for their daughter, whose husband donated it to Ireland on her death. Only two families ever really lived there. Kind of a waste! We stayed at another B&B in Killarney – our best accommodations so far (but no Daisy!). We hit up a pub for dinner and went to a pub that was recommended by our Muckross House tour guide for some traditional irish music. An older man came in shortly into the set and busted out some Irish tap dancing – so cool and a great end to an otherwise bleak day!

We woke up on Thursday to MUCH better weather. We decided to head back to Muckross House to check out Torc Waterfall, which is a 20 minute hike from the house. The waterfall was pretty neat. We took a detour on the way back to the house. That was my favorite hike in my entire life – I felt like I was in fern gully. Moss was growing along everything – so pretty.

After our awesome hike, we grabbed lunch in town and headed to the Dingle Penninsula. We stopped by a beach on the way – snapped a few photos and watched some surfers – and then we arrived in the town of Dingle where we’re staying on a sheep farm! The owners have about 400 sheep. We’ve chatted with them a bit tonight and are going to ask some more sheep questions tomorrow. Sheep are all OVER Ireland, so this is pretty cool!

We’re having a ball!

Aaaand we’re off!

I’ve lost a lot of sleep at night while trying to come up with the best opening line for my first blog – Matt thinks I should be saying “Dear Diary, Matt is so awesome. I think I like-like him. He’s so preppy, like Dawson from Dawson’s Creek” while I’m leaning more towards “hello, world.” So let’s just skip that altogether Our good friend Brad dropped us off at the bus stop shortly before 8am on Saturday, December 10th (Thanks Brad!) and we arrived without any hiccups (after a layover in NJ) a little before 7am in Dublin on Sunday, December 11th. We grabbed our rental car (after paying 4x as much for it as we’d originally thought we would), freaked out about the left-hand driving (and the left-hand shifting), and headed for Kilkenny, Ireland. We enjoyed an Irish breakfast (bacon, sausage, black + white “pudding” which isn’t pudding at all, tomatoes, mushrooms, an egg, and toast), walked around Kilkenny for a bit, went to mass, and then hit up the Kilkenny Castle. This castle was pretty neat – the grounds were amazing, and the art gallery was especially cool. There was a cute little holiday fair going on in town shortly down the road fro the castle, and I grabbed some hot cider to warm up as we walked around some more. We found a place to stay, grabbed some dinner at Matt the Miller’s pub (super good fish & chips), and then conked out for thirteen (13!!) hours since we were running on empty.

On day 2, we tried to find some big cathedral in town but after driving around for a solid hour and getting lost again and again (Kilkenny is not big at all, mind you), we gave up and headed to a few sights that Matt had picked out. The first stop was Kells Priory (we got lost on the way to this, too). It was pretty cool – basically a lot of ruins in the countryside. Across the river from the priory were some old mills with some neat riverside views. After that, we grabbed some lunch and headed to Jerpoint Abbey.

We got lost again – yay. When we finally found it, we asked the lady working the desk tons of questions about Ireland and the various sights – she was super helpful and, armed with her information and directions, we decided to forgo the rest of the plans we had for the day and head to Cahir to check out a more authentic castle than Kilkenny Castle, which was awesome but it was really more of a residence than a fortress. We got lost on the way to Cahir (are you detecting a pattern?) but eventually made it. We got there 15 minutes after the last entrance time for the Castle so we ended up heading up to Cashel for the night since we’d be heading up there in the morning anyway.

We stayed at an awesome bed and breakfast – Peggy O'Neals B&B. Jim (the owner) was awesome, but Daisy was the real charmer – their year old boxer. Usually Matt is the favorite amongst our four-legged friends, but Daisy LOVED me. Even when Matt was petting her, she still had her eyes on me. Totally fun dog – she made our night, since we're already missing Hans & Indy (who are having a GREAT time with our friend Maegan & Jason - thanks again guys!)

The next morning began Day 3 of the ‘mooner. Jim cooked us up the best Irish breakfast we’d had so far, and he was great company – very friendly. He was a retired member of the Garda (police) and told us how he looked after a few different US presidents during his time – Clinton and Bush for sure. After we gave Daisy & Jim our goodbyes, we headed to the Rock of Cashel. It was pretty cool, but soooo coooold. The wind was really picking up and it started snowing. Jim had JUST told us that it doesn’t snow in Ireland…guess we brought it with us! We booked it for the car, and then headed back to Cahir for the Cahir Castle. This was cool – we definitely both liked it better than Kilkenny Castle. It was more of what you think of when you think of a castle – rock stairways, rock walls, no frills. If you look closely at the photo on the right, you can see a cannonball embedded in the stone!

After that, we grabbed lunch in Cahir and headed for Kinsale – an awesome coastal town just southwest of Cork. We checked out Charles Fort – a 17th century star-shaped fort on the coast – before finding a place to stay and then heading to Dino’s for some great fish & chips. We’re currently hanging out at a random bar, enjoying some hot cocoa and baileys while figuring out our next move