Jeff and Sharon's Travel Blog

Sharon and I had mutually decided to take the 9:05AM bus to Kilkenny. There was a 7:05AM bus but we were much too exhausted to take it. So we headed out at 8AM. We checked out of Lancaster Lodge and went to the Mardyke bus stop. I had routed our journey through Google with the least amount of walking. We caught the 208 bus and asked the driver to take us to St. Patrick Quay (pronounced Key). I was following the route on my phone and after about 3 stops the driver said we should get out as this was our stop.

We walked across the bridge and several blocks later we spotted the unmistakeable green Dublin Coach bus. It was parked on a street away from its usual spot on St. Patrick’s Quay due to water pipe installations. Our driver was onboard but taking his time opening the doors. He did finally open his doors and we showed him our ticket on the phone. We had a slight panic moments before because I could not find the ticket PDF on my phone. But we were able to connect to the int

We left our hotel in Cork at 8:00 this morning and walked to the bus stop to catch a ride…

We had decided to visit the enormous Rock of Cashel today. This involved a 90 minute bus ride from Cork Bus station to Cashel on Bus Erieann’s X8 service. It was an express bus meaning it made less stops and got there faster.

This involved catching the earliest bus departing at 8AM. So we got up and left at around 7AM to make it from our hotel room in time. We caught a 220 bus from our Mandyke bus stop and got off with a bit further walk to the bus station. (Shouldn’t all buses eventually go to the bus station? Not this one!)

While we were walking I spotted a bakery and suggested we get breakfast there. We had not had breakfast at the hotel because we had left so early. I got a chocolate muffin and OJ while sharon got a croissant with chocolate and a citrus drink. The attendant offered to give us ice in cups. This is somewhat of a novelty as ice is

We had an early start this morning to catch a bus to catch the bus to the Rock of Cashel,…

Today was a big driving day, and our last day with our car. I got up at around 7AM and started packing. Sharon got up some minutes later and we headed down to breakfast. Sharon followed my lead and got a cheese omelette along with some Irish Bacon (Ham). I had the same but with sausage. Our server was just as down home and chatty as yesterday.
Afterwards we headed out with our bags and on to Killarney. I pulled out ever so slightly in front of a car, but luckily the driver saw me and no harm was done.
It was a rainy day and we saw a lot of fog on the horizon. Once we saw what looked to be a large white cloud covering up most everything to the right of us. But then we found out it was the sea and the fog had drifted in.
We drove in and out of small Irish towns with just a bar and gas station and school. Mostly accessible roads, but I always had to keep a lookout and remind myself when turning to take the left lane instead of the right (by habit).
After a

I had a fitful night’s sleep and woke with my left eye swollen nearly shut. I think it was from…

Out of habit I woke up early – at 5AM. I snoozed for a little bit, but eventually got up and wrote yesterday’s blog post. It got to be about 8AM and Sharon was stirring so I told her it was 8AM and it’ll be a good idea to get ready.

I had my cameras charged and my GoPro’s suction cup for the car window ready. Sharon and I went downstairs to the dining room for breakfast. As with many hotel dining rooms in Europe, it was small and seating was limited. We grabbed a table near the breakfast bar which helped with refills of OJ and Apple Juice. The cups were one pint, about one step up from a shot glass – or about equal in size to the cups served on airplanes. I’ve never really understood European drink serving sizes. Obviously they have bigger cups for beer. Why not have these sizes available for other non alcoholic drinks?

We had two breakfast options – Irish Breakfast for 10 EURO or continental breakfast for 6 EURO. We didn’t really want to go all out with an Irish breakfast,

At long last, we had an easy day today. We slept until around 8 and got ready for breakfast. The…

I had to come to Ireland of all places to get the worst sunburn I’ve ever had. My nose is…

Our ferry to Doolin was at 11:30AM, so we slept in until around 8AM. While Sharon was getting ready I decided to see if I could get boarding passes for the ferry. I lurked around the pier but there was no Doolin Ferry office. So I went back to the room.

The magic time this morning was 10AM. That was when the Spar Grocery Store opened (so I could get a deli sandwich for lunch) and it was when the tourist information booth opened so I could ask about the boarding passes.

While we waited on these things to open Sharon and I decided to get breakfast. We decided on the full Irish breakfast – egg sunny side up, black pudding, sausage, baked beans, toast, hash brown, tomato (neither of us ate that), and Irish bacon (Americans would call this ham). I tried most everything, but really only ate the ham, toast and eggs. Sharon was more liberal in her choices, trying the ham, toast, hash brown and baked beans. Geraldine had another lady helping serve us. Later one we saw this lady helping to cle