Thursday, August 6th was our last full day in Ireland, as we had to spend Friday traveling. We got off to a slow start, having a lazy breakfast, chatting with Chris and Jane, who own The Tudor Lodge. (Aside: I paused here and went to leave a review for them at one of the travel websites - something we said we would do during that conversation. I think I'll probably leave several, on all the major travel websites I can find. We had that much fun, and they were that nice.)
When we finally left the lodge, we drove to the Upper Lake and walked out to the old Miner's Village. The trail was mostly through woodland, but once in a while you got a really lovely view of the lake.
I climbed around a lot on the rocks, because I just really enjoy doing that. Always have. The mine was a much more recent ruin than all the others we'd seen - it was open into the early 1900's. Jane, our hostess, was the daughter of the only man ever killed while working there - he was in charge of dynamite. She wasn't in the room when her husband recommended that we walk up that way. She was only three, and her brother was younger. :(
There was also a waterfall out there, but we didn't have time to keep walking up to it. It's a three hour trip all the way around the lake, and some of it is nearly vertical. The path looks very scary.
After we'd crawled around that ruin for a short time, we went back to the hotel and got cleaned up for dinner. We ate at a very nice restaurant in Laragh, and had a really lovely time. Michelle, the Romanian woman who makes breakfast and cleans the rooms at our B&B, works there in the evenings, so we made sure to get a table in her section. And she, in turn, treated us like gold - as she had all week. When our dessert arrived, there was a sparkler in it, and she wished us Happy Anniversary. Really sweet and thoughtful girl. She said she'd been waiting all week to do it, and was starting to worry that we weren't really going to come there for dinner at all.
We went to bed reasonably early, and got up early to go to the airport. And then we spent the day traveling. We finally got to our house at 12:30AM on Saturday morning (today). And today I should have spent doing laundry, but I've mostly been catching up on these posts. The internet at the B&B went down just after I got sick, so I've had to post everything since then today.
We've got everyone's souvenirs out on the dining room table, and we're trying to remember which things we bought for which folks. Lol! I didn't realize we'd bought so many souvenirs! And there are several things we got for ourselves, too. Lynn has a Celtic Knot pinky ring that's very nice, and a car tag that he'll probably put up in the TV room that says WICKLOW, and another that says EIRE for his truck, as well as several tee-shirts. I got my sheeps wool scarf, a necklace made of Connemara-mined marble, another necklace of a fairy holding a dangly shamrock, and a gorgeous emerald claddaugh ring. And, of course, we both have the 3500 pictures we took. *winks*
A selection of the pictures can be found in my scrapbook, this includes but is not limited to the images I've been including in posts. If you haven't been clicking on the pictures to take you to the scrapbook, after reading, then now is the time. There are 80 pictures there, right now, and I tried to caption each one with info that maybe wasn't in the post for that day. I think I've posted most of my favorites, but there may be more later (though it's kind of a pain to put things in the right order when posting them after the fact).
So, thank you, everyone, for following along. I'm going to go back and answer comments here shortly. Perhaps right after I order this pizza. ;) But it was really fun sharing with everyone all the fun we've had.
When we finally left the lodge, we drove to the Upper Lake and walked out to the old Miner's Village. The trail was mostly through woodland, but once in a while you got a really lovely view of the lake.
I climbed around a lot on the rocks, because I just really enjoy doing that. Always have. The mine was a much more recent ruin than all the others we'd seen - it was open into the early 1900's. Jane, our hostess, was the daughter of the only man ever killed while working there - he was in charge of dynamite. She wasn't in the room when her husband recommended that we walk up that way. She was only three, and her brother was younger. :(
There was also a waterfall out there, but we didn't have time to keep walking up to it. It's a three hour trip all the way around the lake, and some of it is nearly vertical. The path looks very scary.
After we'd crawled around that ruin for a short time, we went back to the hotel and got cleaned up for dinner. We ate at a very nice restaurant in Laragh, and had a really lovely time. Michelle, the Romanian woman who makes breakfast and cleans the rooms at our B&B, works there in the evenings, so we made sure to get a table in her section. And she, in turn, treated us like gold - as she had all week. When our dessert arrived, there was a sparkler in it, and she wished us Happy Anniversary. Really sweet and thoughtful girl. She said she'd been waiting all week to do it, and was starting to worry that we weren't really going to come there for dinner at all.
We went to bed reasonably early, and got up early to go to the airport. And then we spent the day traveling. We finally got to our house at 12:30AM on Saturday morning (today). And today I should have spent doing laundry, but I've mostly been catching up on these posts. The internet at the B&B went down just after I got sick, so I've had to post everything since then today.
We've got everyone's souvenirs out on the dining room table, and we're trying to remember which things we bought for which folks. Lol! I didn't realize we'd bought so many souvenirs! And there are several things we got for ourselves, too. Lynn has a Celtic Knot pinky ring that's very nice, and a car tag that he'll probably put up in the TV room that says WICKLOW, and another that says EIRE for his truck, as well as several tee-shirts. I got my sheeps wool scarf, a necklace made of Connemara-mined marble, another necklace of a fairy holding a dangly shamrock, and a gorgeous emerald claddaugh ring. And, of course, we both have the 3500 pictures we took. *winks*
A selection of the pictures can be found in my scrapbook, this includes but is not limited to the images I've been including in posts. If you haven't been clicking on the pictures to take you to the scrapbook, after reading, then now is the time. There are 80 pictures there, right now, and I tried to caption each one with info that maybe wasn't in the post for that day. I think I've posted most of my favorites, but there may be more later (though it's kind of a pain to put things in the right order when posting them after the fact).
So, thank you, everyone, for following along. I'm going to go back and answer comments here shortly. Perhaps right after I order this pizza. ;) But it was really fun sharing with everyone all the fun we've had.
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