Monthly Archives: September 2013

Dublin, Ireland – Day 2

Today we went on a tour to Tara and Newgrange. Tara was the place for the high kings of Ireland. There are no structures now, but archeologists have been able to determine what it would have been like. First pic is at Tara. We continued on to Newgrange which is the site of a passage tomb. The burial tomb is based on the winter solstice. We were able to go inside the tomb and there was a demonstration of what it would be like on the solstice. This was fascinating. Newgrange predates Stonehedge by 500 years. We went on a Mary Gibbons tour and apparently there is a lot if information on her website as well as on www.newgrangetours.com. This is all to complicated to explain here. We passed through The Village
of Slane – a town of historical significance but more importantly the hometown of Pierce Brosnan.
When we got back to Dublin we went to the Jameson Distillery for a tour. This was also fun. On the way to the distillery we passed the Dublin Spire. See pic. We then went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. We both had burritos for dinner. Yes I know we are in Ireland and had Mexican food. Crazy thing is the food was really good.

Dublin, Ireland

We made it to Dublin just fine. We went out walking to see the town. There are pics of Trinity college (of course more pics on my camera. We took a historical tour of Dublin and Ireland given by a professor at Trinity college. I sure am learning a lot on this trip. We had an early dinner because we signed up for another tour. The restaurant had a menu of small portions which suited us fine. Marsha had vegetable stir fry with rice and profiteroles for dessert. I had a really good salad is shepherds pir and vegetables. My pic did not turn out. Then we went on the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl. That was great fun and we met a lot of nice people o. This tour.

Veitsch, Austria to Bristol, England

We took a train from Veitsch to Vienna. In Vienna we boarded an Austrian overnight train to Frankfurt. Nice train and we shared the compartment with 3 very nice women. The conductor woke us up and brought us breakfast. Breakfast was a piece of bread, a croissant, butter, jam and tea or coffee. We changed trains in Frankfurt to go to Brussels. In Brussels we got the Chunnel Train to London via Lille, France.(Recap of countries- Austria, Germany, Belgium, France and England.). Once we were in London we had to take the subway to the train station that would take us to Bath, England.
But I got ahead of myself. We had about 6 hours to spend in Vienna. We had prepaid for a hotel so we checked in for a few hours. Naturally we went walking around and found a mall – see pic. We also decided to eat because we knew we would be traveling for a long time. See pic of our last meal in Vienna.
Back to Bath, England. When we got to Bath we could not find a place to stay for the night. Apparently there was some Jane Austen celebration going on and it was packed. We then got a bus and traveled on to Bristol, England. We found a place to stay and went to look for food since we were tired and hungry. We lucked out again. We fond an Italian restaurant that had really good food. Marsha had bruschetta and I had pâté for appetizers. Marsha had spinach and ricotta ravioli and I had penne with spicy sausage. See pics.
In the morning we went back to the bus station to explore our options of getting to Ireland. Again we were lucky! We could take a 10pm bus (that includes the ferry) and arrive in Dublin at 10:30am. That left us with the whole day in Bristol. We headed out to see the town. See pics. After we walked the entire downtown we decided to have an early dinner since we would have a long night of travel. We went to a restaurant called “Slug and Lettuce”. Marsha had a veggie burger and I had Thai tikka chicken. All was good. We are now in the hotel lobby after retrieving our luggage waiting to go on the short walk to the bus station.
I almost forgot!!! I had my first English breakfast at the hotel in Bristol. It had toast, croissants, muffins, crumpets, baked beans, baked tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms, scrambled eggs, sunny side up eggs, ham, sausages(bangers), various cereals, yogurt, 2 kinds of fruit salad, coffee, tea and juice. I had my first crumpet and banger here in Bristol.
Also, as we were walking around Bristol we came upon a 5 lane bowling alley. Of course we had to bowl a game. The lanes are much shorter than the ones in the US.
It is now 2;45am and we are on the Irish ferry headed to Ireland from Wales. The ferry has wifi so I can send this message.

Salzburg-Graz-Veitsch

We woke up to pouring rain and cold. We decided to go to Veitsch, Austria since Marsha worked with a woman who grew up there. We did a bit of backtracking and went to Graz since we were not exactly sure how to get to Veitsch. From Graz we took a train to Mitterdorf which is very close to Veitsch. We spent most of the day on trains which was OK since it was still rainy and cold. When we got to Mitterdorf we had to take a bus to Veitsch. Veitsch is a very small town and is known for it’s hiking trails and skiing. Since it was still raining we went into a store where the bus stopped to ask if the woman there is she could direct us to a place where we could stay for the night. She was so helpful – she called about 5 places and they were full. Just as we thought we would be homeless again the next place had a room for us. The wan who runs the pension came and picked us up! She then asked if we had eaten. We we didn’t Nd she told us she only did breakfast but she would take us to the corner store to get some food. We went to the little store and got sandwiches, drinks and snacks. She then took us to the pension and showed us our room. Again we really were lucky. The place was nice and homey. In the morning the rain stopped for a little while and we walked up the road a little just to see some of the town I took a few pics including one of the place we stayed. This whole place must be on Heidi alert all the time. For that matter, most of Austria must be on the Heidi alert too. We had a lovely breakfast at the pension The woman from the pension drove us to the Mitterdorf train station and we are now on a train to Vienna. We will take an overnight train (leaves at 8pm) to Frankfurt then change trains to go to Brussels then take the Chunnel train to London. We do not know until we get to London what we will do in the UK before we go to Ireland. Remember we had to change our itinerary because we needed to leave the Schengen countries. I had no wifi in Veitsch and when I can connect I’ll send this post.

Salzburg, Austria

OMG – we woke up to cold and rain. We went to a coffee shop for breakfast and by that time the rain let up. During the day it was either cloudy, windy and cold – 9 or 10 degrees C (45 to 50 degrees) or sunny and nice. We took a “Sound of Music” tour in the afternoon and it was terrific! First we went to the Mirabelle Gardens – see pics ( many more on my camera).

We then walked around the Old Town, but it was intermittent rain and tough to take pics. Them we went to the tour. Pics of scenery from the movie and the church where Maria married Captain von Trapp in the movie.

After we saw the church we stopped in a cafe for a coffee and tea and apple strudel with vanilla sauce. See pic.

We returned to town and went to a restaurant founded on 803 for dinner. They brought us bread and butter – the different breads and three butters were really good. I had boiled beef with creamed spinach and something similar stuffing. Marsha had pears with honey, lavender and goat cheese. See pics of restaurant and food.

We walked back to the hotel which helped because we were stuffed. We don’t know where we are going tomorrow. We will probably decide after we get to the train station and look at the schedules.