Our first stop in Dublin was the Guiness Brewery. We had 3 hours to full in there and the time went so fast. We lunched on Guiness irish stew, and started our tour thru the factory, all very interesting (ho hum) . As we had recently visited the Speights Brewery in Dunedin the process stuff was all very familiar. The factory is huge, it is set on 26 acres of land. On top of that, the Guiness Family built and gifted a number of large old apartments...

We set off (again in the rain) (and the mist) travelling thru some quaint irish villages. stopping for coffee at a town called Adare with its thatched houses, one of which had recently caught fire. I guess there is a reason we dont build too many houses these days with thatching for roofs, they tend to burn pretty good. Adare is famous for its geneology records. Managed to find the "lowry" name and brought my brother and my dad a "Lowry" key ring and i g...

The first day in Ireland is summed up on a t-shirt. The four seasons of Ireland, winter=rain, spring=rain, summer=rain, autumn=rain. It was cold and windy so it was lucky that we were enroute to the Waterford crystal factory. I had this visit pegged as boring but how wrong I was. The full sized hallclock greeted as at the entry, siting opposite a crystal glass taller than me. We were toured thru the factory and saw how labour intensive this craft is. Fro...

All the winter woolies out today. If feels like Methven here, the clouds were hanging metres from the ground and the air is thick and damp. We headed to Killarney where we were taking an optional jaunting ride (horse and carriage ride) into the town. Our tour guide had undersold it., he had simplyt said, its one of those things you should do, like taking a Gondola in Venice, you need to take a jaunting ride in Killarney. Starting with the fact that ou...