Aug - Ireland Part 2

After the game, Jeff and I stayed a few more days in Ireland to see the beautiful countryside together. Up first was a special splurge. . . .staying a night in a castle, Adare Manor!! The castle dates back to the mid 1800's. The Dunraven family built and lived here until 1982. They sold it five years later to a family from Florida (of all places) that came in to fully restore the entire property. Then turned into a hotel and golf course. I wish we had been able to stay there a few more nights and really enjoy it, but glad we got the chance. It was definitely a great experience!!

This is the castle where we stayed, Adare Manor. 

The view from our room; we had the room right in the middle!
There was also a gorgeous golf course built on the grounds around the castle.

Check out our room!! It was huge and beautifully decorated!!
Jeff is standing in the huge bay window to take this picture.

There were ruins of an old abbey on the grounds of the castle, so we went to check it out.

We walked through the old church and it was so cool and a little eery all at the same time!!

You can see how this building was at least 2-3 floors high. There is a fireplace on what would have been the first floor and then one on the right for the second floor.
Do you see the hare?? =) (Hint: look through the door)

The Drawing Room inside the castle with the bar at the far end

This little nook is off the main dining room and where we had breakfast.

The grand "lobby" of the castle

Staying a night in a castle. . . . bucket list check!!

So much of visiting Ireland is finding a great pub with good food and a pint to wash it down!

Next up was more driving and taking in the countryside. We unfortunately had a fair amount of rain and clouds for a day so that was a bit disappointing, but it could have been much worse. Our next stop was the tiny town of Doonbeg. Jeff found another amazing hotel. . .this time a huge lodge on the coast. It also had a beautiful golf course. I think he was really dreaming of golfing when he booked all our stays for this trip. Maybe someday we'll get to go back and have time to golf!

Here's the view as you drive up to the property of the lodge where we stayed in Doonbeg.

View of the coastline from Doonbeg. We were just south of the Cliffs of Moher.
If you look into the distance of this picture you can see the start of the cliffs.

Another view of the coastline the other direction

After we checked out in Doonbeg, we were off to see the Cliffs of Moher. We were in luck because the weather was beautiful that day!! I have so many amazing pictures that it was hard to just pick a few! The cliffs are absolutely breathtaking and there really is no amount of pictures I could take to do them justice! We spent a couple hours just walking the coastline taking in the view at every turn!

Oh the beautiful beautiful Cliffs of Moher!!

To avoid disrupting the beautiful landscape they built the entire Visitor Center underground!!
Hard to tell, but they were flying the American flag here. We had seen it a couple other places so I finally asked about it. . . .they were doing it as a welcome to all the Americans tourists that were there for the football game.

Here you can see that it was low tide and all the exposed rocks along the base of the cliff.

The last stop on the trip wasn't about sight seeing famous locations. It was about finding where my ancestors originated. My heritage is mostly German, but my mom's mother was Irish. About ten years ago my great aunt and some of her cousins were doing a lot of family history research to put together a family tree. Some of my relatives went over to Ireland and actually found the cemetery where some of our ancestors are buried. I had never really heard much about it, but my Great Aunt Kathleen gave me the name of the little town and a picture of what the headstone looked like. Well after four wrong cemeteries, we finally found the right one just before the sun set and we lost all our daylight! I learned my lesson the hard way on the importance of the correct county when typing an address into the GPS. Apparently numerous city names are repeated across Ireland so you have to know in which county the city being searched for lies. . .minor detail!! =) By the time we finally found the headstone we were running short on time to get back to Dublin to catch our flight, but it was still really amazing to find it! It's pretty surreal to stand there and think that this is where your family came from decades before you!! It definitely sparked an interest in learning more about my ancestors.

That's the tombstone there in the front, but you can tell from the background
 that this is definitely a cemetery that's been around for awhile.

After several wrong cemeteries I started saying a few prayers to my Grandma to help us find the right place. She came through and we were able to snap this picture just before the sun dipped below the horizon. Thanks Grandma!!

Ireland was such a treat!! Definitely a place I would love to go back and spend lots more time there!!