Breakfast in the hotel is a bit more formal than other places we have been, with guests expected to wait to be seated and checked off the room list. There were plenty of choices including cooked-to-order eggs along with the buffet. We walked through St. Stephen's Green to Trinity College first for the tour of the Old Library and viewing of the Book of Kells and the Book of Armagh. We entered the college grounds from the south side gate and saw a huge line of peo...

We had a lot of places to see and still turn in the hire car by 4 p.m. so we were up for breakfast in the Vanilla Pod Restaurant early. We mapped out a day to visit ancient sites between Kells and Dublin stopping first at the Hill of Tara, a pagan sanctuary and one of the seats of the Gaelic kings, then moved on to Monasterboice, site of some of the most famous and oldest high crosses in Ireland. Our third stop was at the visitor centre of Newgrange and Knowth,...

Today, we planned way too much to do. We started, after an exceptional breakfast in the B&B, by driving first to the ruins of Dunluce Castle along the coast road. It was only seven miles away, but took about twenty minutes to get there. It rained most of the day today and had started by the time we got to the castle. Nevertheless, we paid for concession tickets, accepted the free audio guides, and went in. These audio guides were well done with just enough in...

I planned for us to take Paddy Campbell's Belfast Famous Black Cab Tour a long time ago by emailing Paddy and setting up the time and location. He sent Ciaran to be our driver and guide who picked us up a few minutes earlier than expected in the lobby of the Hilton. We had already eaten breakfast, checked out of the hotel and stored our luggage in the rental car by then. Ciaran started off by explaining the basics of the history of The Troubles, then he drove us...

We had breakfast and left the hotel with time to drive around the area some before our afternoon flight. We found a cute vacation community on Loch Lomond and took a walk around it. There were small lake homes that seemed to be mostly summer homes, but could be permanent residences, I suppose. The woman at the shop there said that the internet service is terribly slow so most people don't even bother with it. We drove back to Glasgow to return the car and make t...