Last post for the trip (hopefully)

Sitting at Heathrow waiting to board our flight, most of the flights tonight are canceled so here's hoping ours ends up taking off! It's looking good, only problem seems to be that the cabin crew are stuck in traffic trying to get to the airport.
I just updated the London photo post before this one so have a look, there are some good photos of our snow man (I'm a bit proud of him) and make sure to leave me lots of comments to read when i get back to Australia in about 30 hours!!!!
By the way I've ended up with over 5000 views so thanks everyone!!!

London Baby!

Hey Guys, our last 10 days in London will be shown to you on this photo post so keep checking back, I'll update it every few days.

Our very first night back in London some moron tried to break into our locker, this is what it looked like after he had his attempt and knocked off the handle and then the manager had to smash it with a hammer so we could get inside it. Luckily he didnt get anything from the locker but he did steal Ewen's phone which stupidly we had left out to charge while we left the room.

On Sunday morning we went out bright and early to speakers corner where (apparantly) people gather to make speeches on their soap boxes ever sunday. sadly no one was there but ewen still said his bit...

Me with a big statue of a horse head just near Marble Arch

Ewen browsing at Spittlefields Market

Me at Abbey Road (this one's for you Dad)

The view out over London from the top of Primrose Hill

Ewen at Hyde Park Winter wonderland, he has quite a pained look on his face so obviously i dragged him here :-)

Me at Hyde Park Winter Wonderland... this was just before i accidentally spent 8 pounds on lollies!! woops!

This is where we went ice skating, underneath The Tower of London at night (by night i mean about 5pm when it looks like it should be midnight)

At the Natural History Museum in Kensington

Me playing with squirrels in the snow

The snowman we made!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some carolers at South Kensington tube station

Ewen at Windsor Castle

St Pauls Cathedral & a Christmas tree all covered in snow

Ewen excited about our black taxi ride

All covered in snow after only crossing from one side of the street to the other

Dublin again

Dublin was our last stop in Ireland. We spent 3 nights in the same hostel as our first stay in Dublin. We spent our first day getting things like washing and shopping done. Then on our second day we did some actual sight seeing, we went to the Christ Church Cathedral which still had a fair bit of snow outside of it.

Ewen out the front of the cathedral

We had a look inside the church which was huge and had some interesting parts but the best part by far was down in the crypt where they had a dead cat and mouse on display. they had been found dead in one of the organ pipes and someone had decided to put them on display. very strange people the Irish.

 After finishing in the church we went across the street where they had a Viking museum attached to the other side of the cathedral (the church has a bridge over a road that connects its two buildings. The Viking museum was pretty interesting and had a few costumes you could try on which was fun, the helmets were so heavy on your head! I'm surprised all vikings didn't have slightly flat heads from wearing the helmets all the time. The museum also had an archeology section and a little bit of history about medieval Dublin.After the museum we walked around the city for a few hours picking up some presents and souviners before going back to the hostel to cook an early bird dinner (we tried to only eat 2 meals a day while in Dublin that meant breakfast and an early dinner to save money) and watch movies.

Me with a crazy busker

 Our last day in Ireland we slept in and then had a nice lazy day wandering around the city, Ewen got a haircut so now I've lost my scruffy Ewen. He asked them to just tidy up the back and they cut pretty much all his hair he's been working so hard to grow for the past 8 months. We found a frozen lake (half frozen) and watched some ducks struggling to walk along the top of the ice. That was pretty much all we did that day, apart from going in and out of every single tourist shop looking for this picture of a lobster with a pint of Guinness and the writing says 'Lobsters love Guinness too' it is the best Guinness thing by far but we cant find it anywhere.
We celebrated our last night in Dublin with pizzas and 'The Social Network' movie which turned out to be pretty interesting. The next morning we got the bus to the airport headed for London.

The half frozen lake

Drogheda

We only had one night in Drogheda but i wish we had longer, i loved it! The people were all really nice, it has a giant church with a head in it (yep! the head of Oliver Plunkett he was an Irish archbishop who was hanged and his head is on display in the church), there were lots of shops, our hostel had excellent heating, Ewen got 2 free beers for breaking into our hostel when the front door wouldn't open, we went sledding with some Irish kids on flattened plastic traffic cones and we got to see a lot of snow! Oh and Ewen built a little snowman in the multi-story carpark. What's not to love about this town?!

The snowman Ewen built in the carpark (we could see it from the balcony from our hostel room)

Me sledding away

Ewen having a turn

The rest of Northern Ireland

So after leaving Enniskillen we drove to Portrush where we stayed for the night, we ended up been the only people staying in the hostel as everyone else canceled because of the weather. We were lucky and had had a pretty good run driving up, only a little bit of ice but we stayed on the main roads and didn't have any problems.
Now Mum stop worrying about us driving in the snow! You hardly ever have to drive on full on snow, usually the roads are cleared and there is just a little line of yukky brown slushy snow in the centre of the road. Ewen is been very careful so you dont need to worry :-)
We went to the Giants Causeway which was a lot of fun, although it is supposed to be a 20 minute walk and it took us close to an hour having to walk very slowly through the ice on the paths.
Legend has it that an irish warrior, Fionn built the causeway to walk to Scotland to fight another warrior, Benandonner. When Fionn saw how big Benandonner was he got scared so asked his wife to wrap him up and disguise him as a baby, When Benandonner saw the "baby" he assumed is was Fionn's son and if his son was that big how big must Fionn be! So he fled home in terror ripping up the causeway behind him so that Fionn couldn't follow.
I didnt tell that story very well, it's funny though, maybe look it up if your interested...
When you see the causeway it is amazing, the rocks are so perfectly shaped and so perfectly placed one on top of the other you have to wonder how the hell it came to be there.

The Giants Causeway

Giants Causeway

We spent a couple of nights in a little sea town called Portaferry. While there we went to an aquariam where we got to pet rays and sharks and starfish. they also had a seal hospital where seals get rehabilitated. One of them kept yelling and yelling and yelling, it sounded so much like it was saying "Mum" over and over again, the sign about it said that it had been found orphaned a few weeks before so maybe it was yelling for its mum. poor baby seal! We also went for a walk up to Windmill Hill to see the views over the water & the town. It was on the way back from this walk that i fell in the ice, flat down on the road. Luckily only Ewen was around to see that embarrassing fall! The next day we saw a guy fall not once but twice in a row in the ice, he looked like a cartoon character with his feet flying out from underneath him and rising higher than his shoulders in the air before he fell flat on his back, got up and then did the same thing again.

Ewen at the aquarium

Ewen on Windmill Hill

Our second day in Portaferry we took the car ferry across to Strangford and visited the Castle Ward Estate, here is an 18th century house that has a split personality. the front of the house was designed by the husband and is done in a classical style while the back of the house was designed in a Gothic style by the wife. The actual house was closed to the public for winter but we had a walk around the outside taking photos and jumping around in the deep snow around the house.
We then drove for about an hour to Loch Neagh to see the Ardboe High Cross in a cemetery just out of Cookstown. the cross was constructed in the 10th century and  is intricately decorated with scenes from both the old and new testaments.We spent only about 15 minutes looking at the cross and then sliding our way through the cemetery on all of the ice covering the paths.
It then took us about 6 hours to get home because we got stuck in a blizzard! The traffic was crawling along, it took us 4 hours to travel about 10 miles (about 16km). At first it was kind of fun watching the snow and we were just near a school so we could watch all the kids having snowball fights but then it got boring, very boring! Also the radio hosts here are shockingly boring! We spent the entire 6 hours listening to the same host babble on and on and on. We were very glad to finally get back to our hotel at about 7.30pm that night! We hadn't eaten since breakfast so we rushed to the first pub we found and had a massive delicious dinner of chicken and vegies and lots of potato chips!

A car dealership covered in snow (me taking photos out the car window to entertain myself while we were stuck in traffic)

Enniskillen

Enniskillen was our first foray into Northern Ireland. Their are a couple of obvious differences between Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland; firstly the speed changes from km to miles which was a bit difficult for Ewen at first because our car only had km listed. the second difference is that they use pounds instead of euros like the republic of Ireland. Another difference is that the Republic of Ireland is it's own country while Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. Pretty much all you notice is the currency change & the road signs change, there are no borders anymore so most of the time it isnt even obvious when you cross over the border from one part of Ireland to the other.
Enniskillen was a really nice little town, we stayed in a new hostel which had a good kitchen so we saved heaps of money cooking most nights we were there. We went to Enniksillen Castle which is more of a collection of buildings now, the fancy most castle like part is actually a water gate (i think that's what it was anyway). We went on a few walks through the town. we had lunch in the Buttermarket (an old market) where i had the most delicious strawberry smoothie! We went to a really old pub Ewen had read about, it had a Gothic style bar and you got to sit in little private booth things if you wanted to, their was even a door on each one that you could close if you wanted. We got a bit excited because they made a clover shape in the top of Ewen's Guinness.

Enniskillen castle

We spent a full day driving around to different areas just near Enniskillen, firstly we wanted to go to an island that had a monk tower on it (a tall tower that monks used to live in) but when we got to the pier we discovered the lake was frozen so no boats were running to the island. we spent ages throwing rocks onto the ice and testing the ice to see how long you could stand on it before it cracked. You can see Ewen been a little braver than me in the photo below.

Ewen testing the frozen lake from the snow covered jetty

Carved heat stone on Boa Island, 2000 years old

We also drove out to Boa Island (this one had a bridge) to go to a famous cemetery, it dates back from 400AD. In it are two carved stones, one if called the Lustymore Figure and the other is called Boa Island Figure. The Boa Island Figure is also called the Janus stone because it has two faces, this is the stone in the photo. Ewen got a bit frazzled with me because i was roughly brushing all the snow off it to take a photo and he seemed to think you shouldn't do this to a 2000 year old stone. It was a bit difficult to see anything in this cemetery because everything was covered in calf deep snow.
We went to a few other places in Enniskillen and on our drive around but these were the most interesting.
After Enniskillen we headed further up to Portrush.

Cashel

We arrived into Cashel in the afternoon and luckily found somewhere to stay straight away (we hadn't had the internet and our phone wasn't working so we couldn't book anywhere in advance). We stayed in a 8 bed dorm room in a hostel, we were lucky to get the room to ourselves because we needed all the blankets it was so cold!!! That night we watched movies huddled into one bunk bed wearing our scarves, beanies and gloves. The next morning was the greatest morning of the entire trip, when i woke up it was snowing!!!!!! I'd never seen snow before so i quickly got dressed and ran out into the street  to take photos and try to catch it. it wasn't very heavy but an hour later when up in our room it got much heavier so we managed to get some good photos...

Snow outside our bedroom window

After checking out and defrosting our car we drove up the hill to the Rock of Cashel, we spent about 10 minutes trying to work out how to get in before finding the sign saying it was closed due to the weather conditions. This was really annoying because we had taken a big detour to go and stay in Cashel purely to go and visit this castle.
We had a walk around the town & breakfast in a bakery cafe and then started the long drive to Enniskillen.

The town of Cashel blanketed in snow

Milltown Mawby

We were only in Milltown Mawby for one night, we stayed in a hotel which turned out to be quite fancy which we didn't expect. We had dinner in the bar at our hotel and then watched out new favourite tvshow; XFactor. It's very British to watch reality TV shows so we're just trying to fit in :-)
The next morning before we left we went to the beach (which was right next to the hotel) to explore the frozen water on the rocks. It has to be pretty dam cold for running water to freeze! We got a bit excited and spent a lot of time exploring the beach remarking at all the frozen water. This was a bit more impressive than the frozen puddles we had played with the day before.

Ewen testing frozen water at the beach

From Milltown Mawby we drove to Cashel. Ewen had read about a castle called the Rock of Cashel that was supposed to be steeped in awesomeness so we went there to see that.

Dingle

After leaving Killarney we spent half a day driving along the coastal road of Dingle. Our first stop along the route was at some Beehive huts also called ringforts. They have been there for over 4000 years which is hard to believe as they look pretty precarious, like one good storm would just knock them over. People lived in the huts from anicent times until about 1200 AD. Whoever built them was pretty clever, they are built with the stones piled down and outwards so the rain runs off them and wont go inside the little huts.

Beehive shaped houses

We stopped at a couple of lookouts to take photos, at one of these we saw a mountain sheep scale the cliff up to the road, jump the barrier, cross the road to lick a frozen puddle and then scale the cliff face on the other side of the road. Pretty impressive on a normal day but that day their was ice and snow everywhere so we were very impressed!
At one point we took a little side road that said it went to a lookout and we somehow managed to drive practically out onto the sand on the beach.

Our car nearly on the beach

We went on a walk to the top of a little mountain, the views were amazing but the thing that entertained us the most was when we discovered that the puddles were frozen, we spent a lot of time throwing rocks into the larger puddles trying to get them to skip along, then boring of this we found larger rocks and tried to smash holes in the ice. it was funny just how entertaining it was to throw rocks at a frozen puddle.

on top of a mountain

At about 2pm we decided to start driving to Milltown Mawby where we were staying for the night. I'll write about that in the next post.

Ring of Kerry

We spent two nights in Killarney and used our full day to drive around the Ring of Kerry. This is a tourist route that takes you partly through towns, mountains and along coastal roads. We spent 7 and a half hours traveling around the ring and we only stopped in about half of the places you can. The scenery was amazing, we knew it was going to be a good day when this was one of the first things we saw...

Snow at the beginning of the Ring of Kerry drive

We saw a few ruins, lots of snow, went on a couple of walks to some look-outs, did a lot of driving, had scones with jam and cream, saw some more snow and had some trouble driving on the ice. It was a freezing cold but amazing day. The scenery covered in a light dusting of snow was one of the most incredible things i have seen on this trip (and i know i keep saying this but each time it's true).

Snow (technically this is probably ice) on the walk to the ruined castle you can see

A poor horse in the icy paddock

Ewen skipping stones

A lake just before sunset

We took over 200 photos on this day so it was really difficult to select only a couple to put up here.

Blarney Castle

Blarney Castle - we kissed the stone - end of story.

Cork

We spent most of our time in Cork wandering around the town, it was a lot bigger than we thought it would be, but it had some nice pedestrian only shopping streets and i found my dream store of random housey stuff and pretty jewelry and lots of chandeliers so i had a bit of an internal struggle not to spent the remainder of our money in there. We went to a cathedral (i forget what it was called) that has a statue of a gold angel holding a horn. legend has it that right before the apocalypse starts this angel will blow her horn to warn everyone. It was a pretty nice cathedral but when we were there it was closed for lunch. We also went to another church (i remember the name of this one) called St. Ann's where you could pay to climb up the tower and ring the church bells. we played Watlzing Matilda, it was very cool, you got to pull on these cables (one for each bell) to make out the tunes and as you pulled the whole town could hear the church bells. It must get really annoying for the locals especially in summer when the bells must be constantly ringing. The views from the top of the tower were great but to get up there you had to literally climb around the pigeon poo covered bells which wasn't too much fun. we were pretty lucky though, on our way down two guys were in the pigeon poo area and ended up having to huddle under one of the poo bells while we passed them. glad that wasn't me! The only other thing of note that we did in Cork was go to the English Market which is a permanent food market that has been around since 1788. it had lots of butchers and cheese stores, a couple of chocolate shops and then a few other random stores thrown in, this is also the building where i found my favourite store. We had lunch one day in a restaurant up above the English Market so we could look down at all the shoppers and stores while we ate.

Me on a bridge in Cork

Curracloe & Kilkenny

We spent 3 nights in Curracloe and honestly didn't do very much. We went to a wildlife reserve (which seemed to only have geese, lots and lots of geese), to the beach (which was freezing cold), out for lunch each day (once at the pub attached to our hotel and twice we drove into Wexford), we explored the town of Wexford and that was about it for Curracloe.

Ewen with his crab sand drawing

From Curracloe we went to Kilkenny for one night. In Kilkenny we went to the Rothe House which is a 17th century merchants house that has been turned into a bit of a museum. We walked around the town and had a look around the gardens and the outside of the Kilkenny Castle. We went to a couple of cathedrals but didn't go inside any of them, just looked around the outside. We had a delicious dinner in a pub sitting by the fire (which was very welcome after our freezing day walking around the town) and Ewen discovered a beer which is now one of his favourites, i think it was called Smithwick. The next day we left for Cork.

Just a heads up Dad, this is what the door on my house is going to look like...

Dublin

We only spent one full day in Dublin this time but after our road trip around Ireland we are coming back to Dublin for a couple of days. We flew in from London and arrived at about 1pm we spent our first day going to see the Book of Kells at Trinity college and then walking around the town.

 The next day we went to the Guinness factory (which i think is the real reason Ewen wanted to come to Ireland in the first place). The factory was really good and a lot more interesting than i thought it was going to be. It was more of a gallery/museum than a factory, you didn't actually get to see the machinery going and the bottles been filled etc it consisted more of different displays. their were about four floors of displays, they had a room full of barley, it was basically a room sized sandpit full of barley that you could touch and pick up if you wanted to. Then they had a couple of short movies you could watch, a display of the lease that Arthur Guinness signed for use of the brewery. Ewen tried a Guinness muffin but he wasn't very impressed, i suppose Guinness should stick with what they're good at. My favourite display was of all of the advertising posters and merchandise and the adds you could watch dating back from the 1950s. They had posters dating back even earlier than this, the best poster was of a lobster that was holding a pint of Guinness and the slogan read 'Lobsters love Guinness'. In one of the bars Ewen learnt how to pour his own pint and got a certificate stating he had mastered the art of pouring the perfect Guinness pint.

 We had lunch in the Guinness restaurant (they serve you Guinness bread) and then headed upstairs to the Gravity Bar where you get a free pint and can enjoy 360 degree views of the city of Dublin. By the time we got up there it was pretty packed and quite overcast outside but we still got some nice photos. It ended up taking us pretty much all day to do the Guinness factory so by the time we left it was nearly dark. We walked back to our hostel through the city centre and had a relaxing night watching movies and eating pizza.

4 days in London

We were back in London for 4 days before flying to Dublin.
Day # 1
We went back to Camden Market. We walked along the canal to get there which is a really nice walk, trying to see into all the houseboats (they are annoyingly persistent with keeping their curtains closed) and watching all the other fishermen (one who had caught a shoe and when we walked past it was still attached to his fishing rod). We spent a couple of hours wandering around the market but eventually the cold and rain got to us. I dont think Ewen got anything but i got a tshirt with pictures of those paper-dolls on it (Riki will know what I'm talking about). That night me and Ewen cooked up massive plates of vegies for our dinner feeling a little unhealthy after our couple of weeks of take away/pub food every night.
Day # 2
Me and Ewen got the tube to Oxford street in the morning to get a suitcase, i chose a beautiful zebra print one. We are going to fill the suitcase with all the presents and souvenirs we have gotten and Ewen's uncle Andrew is going to look after it while we are in Ireland. We were running short of time (we had to meet James at 12pm in Trafalgar square) so Ewen went to meet James while i took the suitcase back to Simon & Nell's, luckily at that time the tube was nice and quiet and i didn't have any problems. I met up with James and Ewen an hour or so later in Trafalgar square and we went out for lunch at a nearby pub. I tried some mulled wine (trying to get into the British festive spirit) which was weird and lets face it kind of disgusting. After lunch we went for a walk towards Westminster stopping to have a look at the horse-guards and snap some photos in red phone boxes. We spent a while having a look outside Westminster Abbey at all of the memorials laid out for Armistices day (called Remembrance Day in Australia). After a while i got frustrated with all the tourists smiling in front of the memorials to get photos taken like it was some kind of tourist attraction so we left. We kept walking down towards the London Eye and while James went on me and Ewen sat around in the cold, spending as much time as we could in a nice warm souvenir shop. we had some snacks in Leicester Square and then i went off to go and see the Legally Blonde musical while Ewen and James went to see Bill Bailey. Legally Blonde was pretty good, i was impressed that they used real dogs to play Bruiser and the hairdressers dog (cant remember her name or her dogs name) but the costumes and songs were no where near as good as Priscilla! I was spoiled seeing Priscilla at the start of my West End experience. We have booked tickets to see War Horse when we get back from Ireland so hopefully that is good!
Day # 3
We met James at Millennium Bridge for lunch and then we were supposed to be going to St Pauls Cathedral. Sadly at lunch i managed to pour an entire cup of orange tea (which was red?!) onto my myself soaking the bottom of my jumper and the top of my jeans. I decided to go home and change and get my clothes in the wash so they would have time to dry before we leave for Ireland. The boys decided to wait until the next day to see St Pauls so i could go with them. Instead they went to the Tate Modern to see the sunflower seed display and then to the Bank of England museum. We met up at Harrods later that afternoon and did way too much shopping. We had dinner at a Chinese cafe (more of a cafe than a restaurant) and then found an incredible bookshop. I got three brand new books for 6 pounds.
Day # 4
Finally we got to go to St Pauls Cathedral! We spent probably two hours looking around the cathedral and spending time climbing the 350 or so steps to the lookout at the top of the dome. After St Pauls we went back to Simon and Nells to get our suitcase (we had packed it the night before and it weighed 30kilos to begin with, we managed to get it down to 24 kilos so wish us lots of luck when we have to pack it and our backpacks to come home) and then took it on the tube to meet Andrew at his work.  We had lunch with Andrew and then while James went to do some more sightseeing me and Ewen went back to Simon and Nell's to pack up our stuff and organised last minute things for our Ireland trip.

Wales

We spent an afternoon in Chester walking along the walls that surround the city centre and then having lunch in town.

Main street in Chester

Cathedral in Chester

Walls in Chester

 We drove to Ann's house (Ann is my Nans best friend) and stayed with her for a night. Ann lives in Buckley which is just over the border in Wales. She took us out for dinner at a pub up in the hills and told us stories about her and Nan growing up in Buckley. The next day Ann showed us where my Nan used to live (two houses, one which is now a carpet store) along with other places Nan used to go to. We were also lucky enough to see one of Nans old boyfriends and even managed to take a sneaky photo! We met Ann's daughter, Tracey, who took our photo because her son wanted to see what 'real' Australians looked like. I think he would have been a bit disappointed in our lack of board-shorts, akubras and bluies.

Me & Ann out the front of Nan's old house

After leaving Ann and Tracey we drove further into Wales to Penmaenmawr (don't worry we dont know how to pronounce it either). This is where Ewens Grandad grew up before moving to Australia. It was a sleepy little town with several closed shops. we had some lunch and a walk around the town taking lots of photos.

The main street of Penmaenmawr

Ewen at Penmaenmawr beach

We walked down to the beach and then decided to drive to Conwy to have a look at the castle there. The castle was pretty amazing, it was still in relatively good condition considering how old it is (Ewen thinks it was built in the 1200s). It no longer has a roof but most of the walls were still in good condition and their were about 8 (maybe more) towers you could climb to get views out over the ocean and also to get a birds eye view of the rest of the castle.

Conwy Castle

We stayed in a B&B in Conwy which the information centre found for us. Had a delicious fish & chip dinner and then the next morning had a walk around the town and along the water looking at the boats and the seagulls. The seagulls are massive here, at least 3 times the size of Australian seagulls. they are also clever, they were flying with mussels in their mouths and then dropping them on the concrete to smash the shells before swooping down and eating the insides of the mussels.

A street in Conwy

We drove to Manchester and met James at Hatters Hostel at about 1pm and then while the boys went to the soccer i went to a Vintage Fair which was pretty good, although not as big as i had thought it would be. i only got one thing, a ginormous ring which i will probably only ever wear once but its very pretty and i couldn't resist! We couldn't find any accommodation in Manchester for that night so we decided to drive back to London a day early and dropped off the car at Luton Airport. by the time we got back to Simon & Nell's it was after midnight and we were wrecked.
The Scotland road trip was a lot of fun and we saw some amazing places, the highlights for me were definitely Oban and seeing the snow on our drive from Inverness to Spittle on Glenshee.