1st Day in Dublin, Ireland (Day 8)

The day after returning to Ireland, we got on a bus to go north from Limerick to the capital, Dublin.

The train ride took about 2.5 hours and we really enjoyed it. We got to sit at a table and a snack cart came through with some delicious treats. (Have I mentioned how INCREDIBLE the chocolate was on this entire trip!!!)

The train made several stops and here is one of the workers showing a green flag to tell the conductor it is safe to continue our journey.


In Dublin, we stayed across the street from Christ Church.

We toured the cathedral that first night. The architecture was, again, amazing. I loved this pipe organ. You have to climb a spiral staircase to get up to the keyboard to play it!

This is a photo of Dublin Castle. We didn't go into it -we just walked by.

Above is one of the images from outside of Dublin Castle.

I thought it was funny seeing this cat lying next to this "no dogs" sign. I stopped to pet him and he seemed friendly. I told Alex it was OK to pet him and, yikes!, the cat hissed and scratched her! I felt so bad. I think I've learned my lesson about petting stray animals!

This is what Dublin looked like. I was surprised it was so different from Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. We stayed and watched this street performer for awhile.

And, this guy was playing a neat percussion instrument. I'm not sure what it is, but I enjoyed listening to his music.

I was surprised at how graphic this sign was! And, you could be fined 150 to 3,000 euros for not cleaning up after your dog!

And this adorable video is of my nephew learning to walk... in a pub! When we started the trip, he could take a few steps at a time, but preferred to crawl. While we were in Scotland, he started taking a few more steps. But, this night, he just decided he was ready to walk! (And, in Scotland & Irelan, pubs are much more kid-friendly. We had a wonderful meal here!)

Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh (Day 7)

For our last morning in Scotland, we hiked up Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano. We enjoyed both the view and the nature on this hike!


There are 3 lakes (or lochs) on this hill. We spent quite a bit of time watching the birds in this loch. There were a family of swans - the parents and 3 fairly large gray babies. As you can see in this photo, Alex is taking off (or putting on?) her pullover. We all had jackets or pullovers and we took them on and off multiple times every day. It would get cooler or hotter, depending on if it had clouded up for another rain or was sunny.

At first, we thought something was wrong with this baby swan's leg... but then saw the mommy doing the same thing. Our guess is that they rest their legs this way.

An unidentified butterfly on some thistle.

This is a view of the castle from Arthur's Seat. You can see it was built at a high point - it is on top of what is called Castle Rock. In fact, the street from the castle to the palace is called High Street. (It is also called the Royal Mile and is approximately one Scotish mile.) They did build their castles on "high" places and they also named their streets for the obvious, thus "High Street." Most "main streets" in the UK are called High Street.

A cute little red-breasted bird.

We saw LOTS of these caterpillars. I really wish I'd bought a book to help me identify some of these creatures!

A pair of beautiful little butterflies... or moths...

The "hike" was more of a walke up this easy path. But, it did go very close to the edge which was a steep drop off at times! These "cliffs" are called Salisbury Crags - Wikipedia defines a crag as "a steep rugged mass of rock projecting upward or outward, especially a cliff or vertical rock exposure in the north of England or in Scotland."

We saw LOTS of these large black slugs. This one has "squished" itself up as Alex put her finger near it to show how big it was. So, actually, it was quite a bit longer. I loved how "velvety" they look!

And, we saw LOTS of these snails along the side of the path.

I wondered what all of these white tents were and later found out they were setting up for the Scotish games... the next weekend!!! Oh, how I wish we could have seen those!

And, a photo of Alex in front of Edinburgh, Scotland. After this, we hopped back on a plane to Ireland. I LOVED Scotland and would love to go back. It was just beautiful, friendly, there was great food and so much to see and do. How I miss it!

Hop On, Hop Off Bus Tour of Edinburgh (Day 6)

On our 2nd full day in Edinburgh, Scotland, we decided to do a hop on, hop off bus tour. Along with the bus tour, we had tickets to 3 main attractions - Brittania (the queen's retired yacht), Holyrood Palace (where the queen lives when she visits), and the Edinburgh Castle.

Here's a man playing the bagpipes. We saw many people playing instruments for money... and we gave them money. It was really a pleasure to listen to them. We saw this man's shift end and a younger guy took his place.

Here's Alex & I on the top of the double decker bus. Alex was thrilled to be riding these double deckers! And, this is a good time to point out that I didn't have mousse or hair spray during most of our trip. AND, we usually got caught in the rain several times a day! This is early in the day, so I'm not looking too bad yet.

This is a photo I took from the top of the bus. All of the cars were so small! (These are mainly taxis.) Even the "minivan" we rented was itty bitty like these. (I drive an SUV, so these seem really small!)

A photo of Holyrood Palace from the bus.

This is on The Royal Yacht Britannia. Many famous people besides the Queen have stayed aboard this yacht. It was first launched in1953 and retired after 44 years.

The formal dining room on the yacht.

The Holyrood Palace. This is the official royal palace in Scotland and the Queen spends one week here at the beginning of every summer. My favorite part was seeing the rooms that were lived in by Mary, Queen of Scots.

Attached to Holyrood Palace are the ruins of Holyrood Abbey, an Augustine Abbey. The architecture was amazing!

Another photo of Holyrood Abbey.

From the bus, we had to walk several blocks to Edinburgh Castle... in a downpour. We got soaked, but I eventually stopped and bought a couple of umbrellas. (Yes, it took us awhile to learn to ALWAYS have an umbrella or hood available!) That's the corner of one of our Scotish umbrellas.

Alex in front of part of the castle. This castle was HUGE with many buildings.

After the castle, we went into this kilt making store. It had a museum in it showing how they made the tartans. We were so tired, I just barely looked at it. But, they also had an area where you could put on real Scotish clothing and have your photo taken! I was so excited! I thought this might be our favorite memory from Scotland. I went to sign up, though, and we were 5 minutes too late! They'd stopped taking reservations for the day and we would be leaving in the morning. Too bad!

As we walked around looking for dinner, we saw this DOUBLE rainbow! I hadn't realized how many rainbows there would be in Ireland (thus all of the tales about leprechauns and rainbows!) and Scotland!And, for our last evening meal in Edinburgh, we went back to this restaurant we LOVED so much! As you can see, it is called Filling Station. I guess it is more an American restaurant - they played American music and had American memorabilia on the walls. Alex and I had incredible pizza and garlic "bread" (like pizza) both nights. We also had incredible desserts the first night! (We were too full this night.) Alex loved a Scotish "kid's drink" they call a juice (but it's a soda) called Irn Bru. It tastes kind of like Cream Soda.

The Nature of Scotland (Day 5)

Hopefully, we are now back home to stay for awhile! My mom lives about 4 hours away and she's been watching our dog for about 5 weeks - while we traveled to Las Vegas, then Scotland & Ireland, and then camp in Galveston. Whew!

I thought I'd write my journal entry first and then post photos with descriptions. I'm afraid I might be making my posts confusing by mixing the two. So, here is my journal from Day 5...

I got up at 6:50 this morning so I guess I've adjusted to the time change. (One of us) got up at 4:50 for a trip to the bathroom and it was already light out! (I looked it up online and they had "twilight" from 3:50 am until 10:46 pm that day! On the same day, Houston had twilight from 6:04 until 8:51. It was really strange to see so much daylight!)

We had breakfast here at the B&B. Mainly, I had fruit and croissants. I tried two bites of haggis - it was OK. It kind of tasted like meat loaf though the texture was different -softer. I also tried black pudding. It was kind of like jello but tasted gross. (From Wikipedia: Haggis is an offal dish containing sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with onion, otameal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally boiled in the animal's stomach for approximately three hours. Black pudding or blood pudding is a type of sausage made by cooking blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled.)

We went about 30 miles away to the Sea Center. We spent a couple of hours climbing the rocks and looking in the tide pools. We mainly saw periwinkles and limpets. We saw a couple of small red anenomes and small fish.

Alex waded in a cement enclosed pool and said it was very cold. Some of the children were wearing wet suits. There were tons of periwinkles in the pool! We collected quite a few shells from the beach.

We toured the museum and got to see live cameras out on the islands that we could control. We watched two movies - one about gannets and one about puffins.

Then, we took a fast boat out to the 2 islands to see the birds and the seals. It is nesting season for the gannets and we saw quite a few baby birds. We got to see a few puffins. Bass Rock is the largest single rock rookery in the world!

We went to a castle ruin and it started pouring, but we had fun anyway. We ended the day with a wonderful dinner and walked around Edinburgh.


Alex in her suit to go out on the boat. I thought these suits were to protect us from the rain. Both in Ireland & Scotland we would get rained on 2-3 times a day. But, we later found out these suits protect you from the bird "droppings!"


This photo is from the first island we went to on the boat. These black & white birds are called guillmots. Both the Sea Center with the live cameras and the boat ride can be found at this site.

The cormarant on the left is not as black and it's a baby. I got a great series of about 4 photos showing this adult feeding the baby! In this photo, you can see the baby's head is actually in it's parent's mouth and it's beak is practically poking through the other side!

These are grey seals. Breeding season was already over, but there were a handful of adult and (large) baby seals still hanging around.

This is a photo of Bass Rock. During the height of the rookery season, it houses about 140,000 gannets!!! (And, yes this was prime season!) Sir David Attenborough describes Bass Rock as "one of the wildlife wonders of the world." It was an incredible site!

These birds are gannets. There were many babies scattered among the adults. If you've seen the IMAX film Wild Ocean (or other ocean shows), you might have seen the gannets when they are diving for sardines. They "fly" underwater!

These 2 gannets are doing a typical gannet behavior where they use their beaks kind of like swords. You can see their baby directly to their right.

This is a familiy of Kittiwakes of the gull family. Isn't the baby precious?

Here is the lighthouse & part of the castle on Bass Rock. The castle was eventually used as a prison and our tour guids said it was their "Alcatraz." The lighthouse was designed by a cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson. In one of his books, Catriona, the sequel to Kidnapped, one of the charcters is imprisoned at Bass Rock.

Here's a photo of Bass Rock as we were leaving it. All of those white spots are birds! (Well, and some droppings.)

This is a photo of Alex & I on the boat. We were thankful for these beautiful suits with their hoods... Alex, Nana & Papa all got a little present from the thousands of birds, so these suits were protecting their regular clothes! (I don't know how I was spared as I was sitting between Alex & Nana!)

These next photos were taken at Tantallon Castle in Scotland. It was built in 1350 and was resided in for over 300 years. It was pouring as we toured the castle and it is a ruin so we got very wet. But, we had a lot of fun exploring this old castle!

More of the castle. You can see Bass Rock from this castle - it faces the lighthouse & castle on that island.

More of the castle ruin.

Back to Edinburgh for the evening and dinner. I believe this might be the Holyrood Palace that we toured later.

This is Alex in a close, which is kind of like an alley though most of them have stairs. They are found between lots of buildings.

This is what the streets of Edinburgh look like. I thought it was so beautiful!

Isn't the architecture amazing?

No, this wasn't our hotel (we stayed at a B&B and I didn't photograph it... oops!). But, isn't this amazing for a hotel? All of the hotels in downtown Edinburgh looked like this. Oh, and in case you didn't know, Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland.