...And We're Home!

After an adventurous 4 weeks of frollicking around Egypt, Greece, Italy, and Switzerland, along with a final stop in Dublin, we're back home and relearning driving on the right side of the road and how to use your strange currency. We took over 1,000 photos on our trip, so I spent some grueling hours narrowing them down and putting up some captions so you're not totally confused with where we are and what we're doing. Here's the link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/skynyrd13/Backpacking2008

Now we're in the process of finding an apartment, me finding a job, Melissa getting ready for the new school year where she'll teach Kindergarten (!!), and us both getting ready for another semester towards our Masters at Montclair State. Was Dublin really a dream? Ask us again in a month and a half!

I'm not really sure what else we'll have to post here, but I guess saying this is the final post would make our trip pretty much over, which we don't want to do! So, until next time....

And We're Off!

We're busy right now packing away the last year of our lives from here in Dublin. Before we run out of time I wanted to upload some of the newer pics we had from the last month or so. Enjoy! I know most of these pics are hard to follow unless we have captions for them, but time is short! Here's a quick rundown: Melissa's going away party given by her coworkers at Scoil Assaim, our trip with Keith to the Aran Islands (Inishmore) and Galway and Riverstown and Birr (Fennell's and Keogh's inquire within - this is where it all started. This should get a post in itself), Melissa's school trip to Manchester, then her school night out before the last day of school, then finally our dinner party from just last night.

http://picasaweb.google.com/skynyrd13/June2008

Tomorrow we head to the airport for our flight to Cairo to start our 3+ weeks of travelling, beginning with the 8 day adventure tour of Egypt. We're really looking forward to it and we'll try and check in once we have some free moments and find an internet cafe. It may not be until we get to Athens, but in the meantime send us an email and let us know how you all are! Cheers! Happy 4th of July!

The Last Days of Brilissa in Dublin

I had real good intentions of posting a bunch of new pictures tonight, but I just realized that Melissa has the camera and she's currently on a school trip to Manchester, England until tomorrow night. I guess I can only say that we're sadly nearing the end of our time in the penthouse suite of 17 Harrington Street. It's crazy how fast this year has gone by, and even though we're really excited to travel to Egypt, Greece, Italy, and Switzerland, we know that once we leave our apartment next Friday we'll only be coming back to Dublin for a few days at the end of July before we head back home for good. Irish time apparently only happens when you need something to get done because it didn't slow this year down any!

In other news: Keith left a few days ago to wrap up our visitors for the year, my tattoo has healed nicely, our last days of work are this Friday, the Mets are still mediocre, and Dublin summers are only summer by name. But at least it stays light out until after 11pm!

Donegal Pics

I uploaded a lot of Donegal pics. I only left out some of them because we had such great weather that most of the pics came out pretty good. Enjoy!

(Apparently there is something wrong with Picasa Web Albums and you may not be able to access the pictures right now. Hopefully it will be working soon!)
http://picasaweb.google.com/skynyrd13/Donegal

Funny story from Donegal: We were driving around one day through a little town and I pulled over to the side of the road for a second just so we could take a look at the map. Lo and behold the left front tire ended up going down into this little narrow ditch that you couldn't see and we were stuck. We couldn't do anything on our own to get it out but the citizens of Glencolumbkille came to our rescue. A car pulled up and a guy gets out and asks if we need any help. Sure do, so he went to go to the people's house that lived right there because he said they have a tractor. Then a truck pulls up, and he stops to help, and another truck stops with some rope and another person stops and within a few minutes we have a whole cavalry assembled. We pulled it out a few minutes later and everybody just hopped right back into their vehicles and moved along. This had to have been record response time in Ireland. And I'm sure we made for a good story at the pub that night, or maybe a few minutes later.

Inked!

I said I was going to get a tattoo while here in Ireland, so here it is! I think it came out really well, but I'm sure my parents will be the ultimate judge of that.

We're a little behind getting those Donegal pics up, but they should be up before the weekend is over.

Here's my Celtic shamrock:

Off to Donegal!

Another weekend, another adventure in Irish car rentals as tomorrow we are off to the very Northwest of Ireland to take advantage of the bank holiday on Monday. They say the roads in County Donegal are among the worst in Ireland, so it's sure to be a good time zipping down the one-lane roads.

I must be a good Mets fan - I stayed up until 4am last night watching the game because it went 12 innings and I couldn't pull myself away to go to sleep. Tough life this Dublin.

We'll let you know how the trip went when we get back and we'll put up a few pics (only if it doesn't rain the whole time).

New Pictures

We put off putting up new pics since we've been taking pictures constantly (or at least it sounds like a solid excuse) but I just put up some for your enjoyment. It starts off with my parents trip to Dublin, which my mom thinks I didn't write enough about. I figured I was doing my parents a solid favor, instead of recounting night after night of carrying them out of bars and their 3 am kebab binging habits. In all seriousness, we had a great time and they brought terrific weather with them. And then they even got a chance to visit England and Scotland!

The rest of the pics include a visit from our friends Tim and Tom, then Julie and Renessa, then Amanda, and now Susan who will be here until Saturday. We've been quite the weekend warriors, making trips to Cork, Kinsale, Cobh, Clonakilty, and Cashel, and then last weekend out to Galway again where we did the tour of Connemara and saw Kylemore Abbey. Enjoy the pics! I'm off to watch the Champions League Final between Manchester United and Chelsea.

http://picasaweb.google.com/skynyrd13/VisitorsGalore