Trains, Planes, and Automobiles

Yesterday was a full day. We got up at 5:15 A.M. and caught a taxi to the Heuston train station. We had a little bit of a wait before we were to check in for our trip to Aran Islands.

After checking in we were taken off to our waiting train. We would be traveling for 3 hours on our way across the country to Galway located on the west coast of Ireland. There were a bunch of new fancy trains, but the one we ended up on seemed kinda old and run down. Ours is the one on the right side of this picture.

We piled into the train and got a little overview of our trip from Vincent our “tour guide”. We found out that Vincent would only be accompanying us on the west bound train portion of the trip. Our care changed hands quite a few times throughout the day.

The train ride was beautiful. The countryside is very green, and traveling from one side of the country to the other we saw the landscape transform from trees and hills to flat countrysides covered with rock fences. We did come across a few big churches that were very castle looking.

When we finally made it into Galway. We were taken to a little tour bus that would drive us the 17 miles along the coast to the airport where we would fly to the Aran Islands from. So we were handed off to the driver of the bus and we said good by to Vincent forever.

When we arrived at the airport Erin and I were feeling a bit like we had stepped into the Bering Air “terminal” in Unalakleet. We were asked to step on a scale to get our body weight, and how much our bags weighted, and then were asked to have a seat until our flight was ready. We were flying on a BN2 Islander a high wing plane with two engines allowing us to fly over the ocean.

We all were put in the plane which had 4 rows of seats behind the pilot, two seats per row. We lifted off and began our 15 minute flight over to the island. When we landed on the island we were taken into the “terminal” by the airport which doubled as the fire hall.

We were then put on another transport fan with a fellow speaking fluent Gaelic over his radio. We drove up into town and were transfered to another van with a different driver. He gave us a tour around town. The community is very compact. All of the houses are pretty much in the same general area. The country side as well as the road is lined with rock fences. Its like a patchwork quilt covering the land. Driving around was a little interesting since the road was very narrow, and when meeting oncoming vehicles you had to drive awfully close to the rock walls.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2007/05/driving.mov 320 260]

We were taken up to the entrence of the hike to Dun Aonghas fort located atop 300 foot cliffs on the Atlantic side of the island. It was raining out and a little chilly, but the hike to the top warmed us up. This is truly an amazing place. The cliffs are spectacular. It is weird getting that close to a cliff of that nature. The water swirling down below and a sheer drop strait down. I contemplated jumping, and Erin was quick enough to snap a picture before I changed my mind.

On our hike back down Erin tried to see what was inside a little house on the side of the trail. She was unable to get the door open, so we hiked back down to a little cafe strategically placed at the trail head where we each had a delicious bowl of homemade tomato soup, a piece of brown bread, and shared a piece of carrot cake. It was all very tasty and the soup was perfect after being out in the cold rain all day. After our little lunch they gave us plenty of time to look through the local shops. We then did the trip back to Dublin in reverse. Van back to the airport, plane back to the main land, van back to Galway, a short wait for our train to arrive. Then a three hour packed train ride back to Dublin. We both took little naps on the train. After our taxi ride back to the hotel we went down to the restaurant in the hotel and had a couple of drinks and appetizers. I had my first pint of Guinness which was okay, but something I’d need to drink more of if I planned to truly enjoy the experience. I was a tired kid by the end of that day and crashed hard when we got back to the room.

Jet Lag

Well, we made it into Dublin and our bags arrived safe and sound.  We made it to our hotel around 10:00 in the morning and our room wasn’t quite ready yet.  So we stored our bags at the desk, and headed to find the city center.  We hopped on Bus 41C a double decker which seems to be the standard mode of transportation for a majority of the Dublin residents.  We were pretty tired and didn’t know exactly what the city center looked like.  So we ended up riding the bus all the way through the city and out the other side.  We got some way out and the driver said last stop.  We stayed on and took the rout back into town.  It all worked out just fine since we were just trying to kill time any way.  We hopped off at the city center and walked around for a little while and then hopped on the 16A bus and headed back towards the hotel.  We weren’t exactly sure where our stop was, and after asking the driver he wasn’t sure where our stop was either.  We ended up getting off the bus about 3 blocks early.  We eventually made it back to our hotel, got checked in, and promptly went to bed.  We slept for a few hours.  Erin dragged me out of bed to go get some dinner.  We had a very nice dinner in our hotel, at a resturant that served asian food.  After dinner back to bed we went around 7:30 PM.  We got up this morning around 8:30.  So we must have really needed the sleep.

This morning we grabbed some food at the continental breakfast and then went for a walk through the park near our hotel.  These photos are on Erins blog as well.

After our walk we packed up our bags and hopped a bus into the city center.  We needed to get to our new hotel, once we got to the middle of town we came across the bus center and asked which bus we needed to take.  We were given a bus number and pointed in a direction to find it.  Well the point was not exactly the right direction.  So we ended up walking around for a while before we were able to track it down.  It was about a 30 min bus ride out to our new hotel.  We got checked in right away, and decided to go out for a walk to the mall near by.  I had to pick up a plug adapter so I could plug in the laptop and Erin needed something to carry her wallet in.  I found an adpter, but Erin didn’t have much luck on the carrying device.  We remembered we needed to call and confirm our trip for tomorrow.  We are doing a train and plane trip to the west side of the country.  We’ll fill you in on that tomorrow.  So back to the hotel we went.  I dropped off the plug and started the laptop charging and called the tour agency so we are good to go for the morning.  We rushed back to the mall to catch the 3:15 showing of spiderman 3.  After the movie we came back to the hotel and have kind of been relaxing.  We need to check in at the train station at 6:45 A.M. tomorrow, so we have an early morning on coming soon.  Its been fun so far.  I am looking forward to seeing a lot of the country side tomorrow.  More pictures and stories to come.

Ireland

Erin and I are on the ground in Shannon.  🙂

The year is done…

With a frantic last few days in Unalakleet, I keep feeling like I forgot something up north.  It was tough saying good by’s to the friends I’ve made over the last 4 years.  I am excited about our move down south.  It’ll be fun to have some new experiences.

I am sitting in the Anchorage airport right now waiting for my flight down to Minneapolis.  Erin will be meeting me there and we’ll be off to Ireland tomorrow.  Can’t wait for a little vacation.  Keep posted to the blog.  We are hoping to keep everyone updated, and post pictures to the gallery.

A little ride…

Erin and I went for a little honda ride this evening after work. It was really nice out today. The temperatures were in the upper 50s. We went out the road all the way past the bridge. Some snow crosing the road had us turning around. But it was a beautiful ride. Nice to get out and enjoy the time we have left here in Unalakleet. We are really looking forward to summer starting. I have 9 more days of work. Then we are off an running.

Here are some photos from our ride today…

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Ubuntu

Well with some help from a friend from work (Gary) I got the bug to install Linux on my computer.  I used boot camp to partition my hard drive so I can have both Mac OS and Linux on the same machine.  The flavor of Linux I used was Ubuntu specifically the latest release called Feisty Fawn.  After a few troubles and some time in the IRC chat channel for Ubuntu I am up and running.  In fact this post is being written in Ubutntu.

Erin and I have had a pretty nice weekend.  Really nice and relaxing today.  Josh has been hanging out with us a lot this weekend which is really nice.  Its fun to sit around and visit.  He came over this morning for some of Erin’s tasty roll-ups.  The rest of the day has been pretty much taking naps and eating anniversary chicken.