B&B's and Miscellaneous



Ashdene House by Avoca.  Jolene's favorite of the trip.




We saw quite a few houses with the door knob in the middle of the door.




Our rooms either had two twins or a twin and a double bed.  No queen beds to be found.




Dining room at Ashdene.




View from our window at Hilltop House by Killarney.



Duinin House.  My favorite of the B&B's.  It's by Dingle.



Saw lots of large yuccas on the Dingle Peninsula.  This on the front yard of Duinin House.




Duinin House had a glass conservatory that was half dining room and half lounge area  There were also regular rooms for dining and lounging.




Other side of the conservatory.





We saw a lot of young girls dressed in tights and shortss.  Sometimes the shorts were quite short.




Bought these at one store.  Absolutely yummy!!!!

Corofin Country House B&B.



Our room at Corofin Country House




Breakfast at Corofin Country House



The last B&B we stayed at.  It was rated a 4 star but it was the one I liked the least.  Definitely didn't have parking for all the vehicles.



The grocery store we went into.  I wouldn't call it a supermarket and I think the stores didn't get any bigger.

 

Ireland Trip - Car and Roads

The speed limit signs looked a little different than we are used to.





On the motorway headed out of Dublin.  Speed limit was 100 kph.  About 60 mph.




There were three signs like this for each exit off the motorway.  The first one had three slashes, the second had two and the third had three.  Don't know what exactly them meant.   Just an indication of the upcoming exit, I guess.



The 2012 Ford Focus we rented with Jolene in the driver's seat.  Yep, she was driving a manual transmission vehicle on the wrong side of the road while driving from the wrong side of the vehicle.   A challenge but she did a great job!!!  Better than I did as a navigator! The picture above it is one of the many different kinds of vehicles we saw on the road.  There were lots of these Toyota pickups/SUV/???

 

In the states, green indicates diesel and black is unleaded.  Had to be careful to put the right fuel in the car.  It was a diesel.



Look Ma, no fuel cap.  Yup, you just stuck the nozzle in and started pumping.  Wonderful.  Much better than misplacing gas caps.



Typical N road (national road).  There's M roads (motorways), N roads (National), R Roads (regional) and L roads (local).  Width and condition degrated with each lowering of the designation.  Notice the two tour buses.  It was real interesting when two big vehicles met. 

Over a bridge where the road got even narrower.



Tunnel of trees were common.



Following a semi through a small town.  Most times there were cars parked on both sides of the street.

RV's in Ireland aren't very big.  This is typical.

We saw lots of car makes that aren't seen on the streets in the USA.

Colorful small town but only one car at a time when there were cars parked on both sides of the street.

The curves didn't have speed limit signs.  Just SLOW, SLOWER or VERY SLOW painted on the pavement.  This photo was in the one of the Gaelic speaking areas so, I think this is SLOW in Irish.  I didn't even notice that when I took the photo.  I was trying to show the red-flowering bushes on each side of the road.

A typical curve sign.  The road really wasn't as curvy as this sign shows but we did go down Corkscrew Hill and it as a series of switchbacks.

I bet the semis were only about 60' long but they all had a Long Vehicle sign.

All the semis were cabovers too.  It's apparent why once you get out on the roads in Ireland.  The bushes grow up to the edge of the pavement and it's difficult to see if it is save to emerge from an intersection.

Traffic calming sign.  We just figured this was a reduced speed sign.  

We saw a few large, power-generating windmills in the country.

Thru a tunnel



Typical exit sign.



The towns were listed in the reverse order that you see in the states.  The town the furthest away was listed first.

Another make you don't see in the states.

There were a lot of roads that had stone fences on each side but most of the time there were covered in vegetation so you couldn't see them.



We saw lots of Flagger Ahead signs but this is the only flagger we saw.



Ireland Trip - Cliffs of Moher



 

As described in Wikipedia:  The Cliffs of Moher (Irish: Aillte an Mhothair) are located at the southwestern edge of the Burren region in County Clare, Ireland. They rise 120 metres (390 ft) above the Atlantic Ocean at Hag's Head, and reach their maximum height of 214 metres (702 ft) just north of O'Brien's Tower, eight kilometres to the north. The cliffs receive almost one million visitors a year.  

The cliffs take their name from an old fort called Moher that once stood on Hag's Head, the southernmost point of the cliffs



Jolene climbed the hill via these stairs while I crutched up the path alongside it.

 

O'Brien's Tower is a round stone tower near the midpoint of the cliffs built in 1835 by Sir Cornelius O'Brien to impress female visitors.





Most of the rock fences we saw in Ireland had rocks placed horizonily like this one but there weren't always capped with rocks like this.



The visitor center was built into the side of a hill.







There were also shops built into the hill.