This time last year...

I was having lunch on Tuesday with a friend at Burgoo on Main (yum, yum - love the tomato soup and grilled cheese - very 'back to school') and when she ordered Irish Stew the wafting aroma reminded me very distinctly that this exact time last year we were on our honeymoon in Ireland. Actually, today in particular, we were driving the Antrim coast, spending a couple days in Northern Ireland before heading back down south for a few weeks.

Posing at Dunluce Castle, the most delighful old wreck.

I never did post all the photos anyplace in particular - I took so many and I hadn't ever really organized or whittled them down at all. Gotta get rid of the blurry ones, the ones where Jamie has that look of smiling for 12 seconds because I left the self timer on and the few - very few - where I look pained and am giving him the mock-finger for one reason or another. But I'm close. Soon I'll put a bunch up on Flickr I think. Baby ones too! That is the goal, anyway... :-) I've been sentimental about our trip lately and am waiting for Jamie to come home today with black & white enlargements of a few favourite photos for our living room. He has strick instructions not to bend them or let them get wet! Gotta do something with the frames I bought, oh, a two months ago.

So what is this - a post about randomness? Kind of... I'm doing NaBloPoMo, or trying to. Never heard of it? I don't blame you - I actually read about it on another rad blog that I'm addicted to. It's National Blog Posting Month, and the goal is to post every day during the lovely month of November. Seven for seven so far. I don't know if a blog post about blog posts (and soup! and Ireland!) counts, but I'll have another up later today anyway about Cole... The best thing about it - other than having a reason to blab out whatever randomness I feel like - is the name. Now Jamie knows whenever something even potentially, barely, remotely interesting happens, I will say "nablopomo!" with a slightly insane laugh and shake my finger in the air...

Anyway, to round out this post, here are a couple of random shots of exactly one year ago today, when we were in Northern Ireland, driving along the Irish sea.

Speeding along the route north in our Peugot.

The view westward from Dunluce Castle, of rocky coastline and pounding waves.

More eloquence than ever!

So, I've been very slow in putting up photos from Ireland... It takes a long time to go through the zillion photos I took, and with the move our computers were out of commission for a little while... Jamie has gotten me all set up with a fancy new situation so that I can get back at looking at the photos, and our Pubespot website will be live again shortly and soon we'll have more photos than you ever wanted to see!

In the meantime, here are some interesting shots taken at Blarney Castle, just a short distance from Cork. The castle itself is quite amazing, and you can walk throughout the entire place; up spiral stone staircases, along the battlements at the top and through some lovely gardens, including a druid stone circle. The history of the place is pretty amazing too - the first castle on the site was built in the 10th century, and the current castle is nearly 600 years old and was taken by Cromwell's armies back in the 1600's.

Of course, there are many castles in Ireland that share a similar history and style - what makes Blarney popular with tourists is the famous Stone of Eloquence - the Blarney Stone. It's located up beneath the battlements at the top of the castle, and to kiss it you have to lie on your back on the castle roof and you hold an iron rail while a man helps lower you through a hole, so that you're upside down and kissing behind you... Here are some "terrific" photos that show us in the act of kissing the stone. I kissed twice - once for me and once for PJs!

Thumbs Up!

Visited the doctor today for my check-up and all is well, I am happy to report! This month the check-up was mainly to follow-up on my blood tests from last month and check my general health. Got the thumbs up too on traveling - apparently I should walk around a lot on the plane, but that was the only warning I got!

Speaking of Ireland, we booked our flights yesterday. We tweaked the departure date by 2 days to accommodate Jamie's hectic work schedule, and I rescheduled the hotels too. The best part about rescheduling is that we've actually got better departure times and we ended up with an extra day over there, craftily, and buffered weekends on both ends of the trip to get ready/decompress. Still have to book our car and also our hotel in N.Ireland, but we have everything else booked now, which is a relief! And the best part - the tickets were an even better deal than the ones that Orbitz screwed us on!

Holiday planning

Am preoccupied today with travel planning for our Irish honeymoon! I had already booked our accommodations a while back in Dublin and Cork, and I'm ready to book our nights in Antrim, outside Belfast, at the 17th century Ballygally Castle - reportedly haunted by a friendly ghost! It was hard to figure out where to stay in N. Ireland - they're on the GBP of course (Euro down south), so it's quite expensive everywhere. Luckily, I am a wizard at using points whenever possible!

Next up - booking the flights! It's still an age away but Jamie and I are both really excited... We'll rent a car for the Northern Ireland/Cork portions of the trip - it's recommended so that you can get off the beaten path. Our favourite! That is as far as a plan goes, for me - I like to know where we will be sleeping, and how we are going to get home, but after that there are no plans! But... I may continue perusing my Ireland Travel guide!

PS - Was going to post a leprechaun pic, but I couldn't find one that wasn't clip-art atrocity, and thought a map might be more helpful anyway!