Photos by Nanci Blog

Rock of Cashel  October 24, 2021 Looks like the rain has stopped this morning.  We're up and ready for breakfast at The West Cork Hotel in Skibbereen. It's a sad day, our last day in Ireland with Vagabond Small Group Tours of Ireland . This 8 Day Wild Irish Rover Tour flew by. After breakfast we meet outside the hotel to load up the van. Looks like it's going to be a beautiful day to explore the Blarney Castle and Gardens   and the   Rock of Cashel . If we drove from the West Cork Hotel in Skibbereen to the Grand Canal Hotel in Dublin it would be about four hours in the van. We're going to make two stops along the way for some more sightseeing and to break up this long drive. First to Blarney Castle (and NO I'm not going to kiss the Blarney Stone-YUK!) about 1.5 hours away, then a stop at the Rock of Cashel about another hour drive, then on to Dublin. It's Sunday morning so traffic is pretty light. We're very early to the castle and almost no one is visi...

Uragh Stone Circle October 22, 2021 Last night before our carpet picnic, we walked around Kenmare where they were ready for Halloween. Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. Towns in Ireland are now embracing this tradition. Saturday morning we wake up early. 5:30 a.m., and grab an early Full Irish breakfast at 8:30 then load up the van at 10 a.m. It's a rainy, raw day in Kenmar...