Tuesday, May 28, Day 3

Tuesday, another wonderful day on the Emerald Isle. Breakfast was your usual continental breakfast - cereal, juice, milk, toast, etc, until they brought out the scrambled eggs and the excellent tea and coffee.

Weather started cool and rainy, and rained almost ever time we got on the bus.  The good news - it seemed to stop as we got to each new location.  We have a lucky person traveling with us who prays for these weather breaks so we can enjoy the trip.  Seems to be working.

We left Killarney about 7:30 am and headed toward Blarney Castle and Waterford, driving over many small, tree-lined highways and seemingly just barely missing colliding with other buses or trucks.  Our driver Dani is superb!.

Blarney was beautiful.  Many people climbed to the top of the tower to kiss the Blarney Stone.

Blarney Castle

The grounds were very nice, even the Poison Garden. Much shopping in the Blarney Store was done.  We picked up some sandwiches to eat while we were traveling over lunch time to Waterford.

The history of Waterford Crystal Company is very interesting.  They got purchased by a conglomerate in 2010 which is trying to continue the level of production previously enjoyed by Waterford.  The town itself is nice and historic. We had a nice tour of the factory where we observed the artisans creating their products.  The have to be very skilled in working with glass/crystal to produce their remarkable pieces.  Here are a couple of examples in their showroom...

This bear, although standing 3 ft high, lists for 30,000 Euros (26,000 about if shipped to US and the tax removed...)  But this one is something else..

This Cinderella pumpkin carriage and horses lists for 40,000 Euros - that's about $52,000 !!!  Wow.

During the tour, our tour guide introduced our 2 Scout leaders to the head of the Girl Guides for the Waterford area, Caroline.  She invited us back to camp with them.

We had a 2 hour drive headed to Dublin.  Noticed lots of school children in the towns, all dressed in their school uniforms.  All the primary schools in Ireland have uniforms.  Saw lots of cattle and sheep in the fields.  All the sheep still had all their wool.  Great hills and valleys.

We made it into Dublin this evening, had a good dinner and watched some Irish dancing and listened to some Irish singing.  Most headed to the hotel (where it's late and storming outside, again.) and a few stayed for an Irish show.   The Irish show after dinner was really cool.  One of our adults actually got to help sing and one of  the boys was taken up onto the dance floor to dance.  Was a very enjoyable evening.