Killarney or bust

We left our little bed and breakfast yesterday and found a little wifi hot spot at the steps of the court house.  We were able to push some photos to the gallery.

So we went down to bus station from there.  Took the bus from Cork to Killarney.  It was about a 2 hour drive.  We made it into town about 2:30 in the afternoon.  Caught a taxi to our campground about 1.5 killometers outside of the city center.  We got our tent set up grabbed a little lunch at a little cafe by our campground, and then walked into town.

On our way to the city center we came across this little park on the side of the road that went down by the river.  They had a little windy path through flowers and bushes that ended at a bench.

We headed the rest of the way into the city center which is jam-packed with shops and pubs.  There was a big game on tv not sure exactly what its called, but its a cross between rugby and soccer.  Really fun to watch. We stopped into a little pub to watch the end of the game.  Dublin was behind and then took the lead, and at the very end the game finished with a tie.

After the game was over we headed back out on the streets to look around town.  All of a sudden coming down the street was a line of tractors.  They were raising money for cancer research.  I guess they had traveled 260 K.  They were honking their horns and followed by people with buckets for the donations.

We explored around town for another couple hours and then headed back the long hike to our campground.  We ended up eating dinner at a little restaurant adjacent to our campground.

This morning we got up and headed back to the little cafe for breakfast.  Erin had a scone and some tea.

I had a “Full Irish Breakfast” minus the pudding because well thats really not very good.

After we finished breakfast we rented bikes.  Killarney is located right on the edge of a very large National Forest.  Our ride was about 12 K long and took us around a one of the lakes in the park.

The scenery was very beautiful.  The area is surrounded by mountains and lakes.   It looks like there are a lot of hiking and biking trails you can spend some time on.  Definitely a place to visit and spend a few days if you enjoy getting out for a hike.

We kept seeing signs to this waterfall and arrows pointing in the direction to find it.  So at one point we ditched our bikes and headed up a little trail that promised the waterfall at the end.  After about 15 minutes of hiking we were brought back to the road by which we left our bikes.  So we hiked back down the road the way we had come and picked up our bikes and then biked back the way we had walked.  After a little while more of biking and about three more signs claiming the falls were this way or that we came to the actual trail head to the falls.  We ditched our bikes once again and headed up the trail.

This time we had found the correct trail and found the falls just a few hundred yards/meters up the trail.

The forests are all very green and the trees are covered in moss or little vines that climb up to the top.  It is very pretty.

Since its been so sunny the last two days I am starting to get sun burned.  I had to buy a hat so the top of my head wouldn’t get burned to a crisp.  Unfortunately Nike was my best option at the moment.

Well Its our 2nd anniversary today, and we are going to go grab some dinner.  I need to get a shower taken and maybe find some “clean” clothes so I’m somewhat presentable at the dinner table.

There are more photos up in the Ireland area of Erin’s gallery if you’d like to see them.

Off to Cork

Erin and I packed up our backpacks hopped a taxi to the main bus station in Dublin and purchased two tickets to Cork.  Cost 10.50 Euro each.  This will come up later.  We immediately got in line for the bus which was rapidly getting longer.  Apparently it doesn’t matter if you have a ticket, its first come first serve for the seats.  So it pays to be in line early.

The bus was completely full. Our backpacks were put in a compartment under the bus.  The trip to Cork about 4 and half hours.  The bus ride was very nice.  The weather outside was beautiful and it was fun to see the countryside.

We made it into Cork just fine, grabbed our backpacks and picked up a taxi.  A short taxi ride through the city center with a very nice driver who gave us all kinds of information about what to do.  We arrived at the Crawford House.  A bed and breakfast we would be spending the next couple of nights at.

The place was very nice our room had its own bathroom and was just what we needed for our stay in cork.  Another interesting thing was the amount of bed and breakfasts that were on our street.  It seemed like the cool think to do.

We dropped off our stuff and headed out for a walk into the city center.

The city center seems to always be busstling with people.  There are stores lined up and down the street, with one side being full of French shops and the other well not being French shops.  It was fun to walk around and see all the different stores.  It was a bit overwhelming to have all those people swarming around.

There is a place just off main street called the English Market that seems to be under a whole city block.  There is a maze of walkways through little butcher shops, cheese shops, olive shops, chocolate shops, everything that you can think of.  They aren’t seperated by walls, they each have their own tables set up.  A very fun place to watch people interact and if you lived in the area to find a good deal on the evenings meal.

The next day we went out looking for the movie theater because thats what we do on vacation.  We had ran across it the day before and since it was raining today seemed like a good idea.  So we walked all over town unable to find it again.  We stumbled across a little street market that had fresh pastries, olives, cheese, and other tasty treats.

We finally found the theater and went to see Pirates of the Caribbean which wasn’t the greatest movie I have ever seen.  Erin really seemed to enjoy it though  ;)  j/k.  It was almost 3 hours long which seemed like an eternity.  After the movie finally finished we stopped off at a little tea and coffee shop for some tea, scones, and croissants.

For dinner that night (last night) we went to this little wine bar situated right on a river.  There were a few swans swimming around and fish touching the surface making ripples all around.

We had a very nice dinner and a tasty bottle of Malbec.

Today we bought bus tickets to Killarney which were 15 euro each.  Crazy right?  The trip from Dublin to Cork was over 4 hours.  This one will probably be less than one, and the price is way more.  Oh well.  Well be staying at the Flesk Caravan and Camping Park.  We’ll keep you posted on how that experience treats us.

Check our Erin’s gallery for all of our Ireland pictures.

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.

NYO in KKA

Last weekend I was sitting in the Koyuk school gym working with students from the school to broadcast the Native Youth Olympics tournament. Its fun to watch the different events. Yesterday we had the Alaskan High Kick and the Indian Stick Pull. This morning we started off with Two Foot High Kick, moved on to the Wrist Carry. Your probably a little confused what these events are. Let me show you how they go. First off a couple cool photos..

So here we go with the demo videos….

Alaskan High Kick

[QUICKTIME http://media.bssd.org/media/nyo/alaskan_one_foot.mov 320 260]

Canadian One Foot High Kick

[QUICKTIME http://media.bssd.org/media/nyo/canadian_one_foot.mov 320 260]

Indian Stick Pull

[QUICKTIME http://media.bssd.org/media/nyo/indian_stick_pull.mov 320 260]

Kneel Jump

[QUICKTIME http://media.bssd.org/media/nyo/kneel_jump.mov 320 260]

One Hand Reach

[QUICKTIME http://media.bssd.org/media/nyo/one_hand_reach.mov 320 260]

Seal Hop

[QUICKTIME http://media.bssd.org/media/nyo/seal_hop.mov 320 260]

Stick Pull

[QUICKTIME http://media.bssd.org/media/nyo/stick_pull.mov 320 260]

Toe Kick

[QUICKTIME http://media.bssd.org/media/nyo/toe_kick.mov 320 260]

Two Foot High Kick

[QUICKTIME http://media.bssd.org/media/nyo/two_foot_high.mov 320 260]

Wrist Carry

[QUICKTIME http://media.bssd.org/media/nyo/wrist_carry.mov 320 260]

Its really amazing what these kids are able to do. The athleticism it takes for many of these events is astounding. The Student Broadcasting Team will be traveling to Anchorage this weekend to broadcast the State NYO tournament. Check out www.bssd.org for information on how to watch the live coverage.

Wayki

Was stumbling along and found this pretty cool site. It looks like its using Google Maps API. We in BSSD use it a little bit for our mushing wiki. Anyway. I put a marker at Eaten Station on the Unalakleet River. If you’d like to check it out try this link. http://www.wayki.com/?item=1177490566 Post a cool place you like on there and paste the link in a comment them to this posting. Then I can check them out.