Ireland - Day 1

Just a quick note to say we are back on tour. Our flight from Canada was uneventful. We had a good sleep last night so we should all be adjusted to the five hour time difference today. Kate really needed a good night sleep, as she had a sleep over the night before we left and didn't get much sleep then or on the plane.

We are in Dublin for two days before travelling out to the south-west coast area to stay in the community of Dingle. Through Kate's protess that she was too tired, we were able to do a bit of site seeing yesterday. We had a tour of an old church which has a crypt under it with mummified bodies on display. We happened to be on the tour with a group of pre-school aged children. One of the four bodies is called "The Crusader" and is it suppose to be good luck to touch his hand. The pre-school kids seemed intrigued by the idea of touching a dead body, and out of eyesight of the tour leader proceeded to do more of full body rub down of all the bodies rather than just touch the hand of "The Crusader".

We also took the tour of the original Jameson Irish Whisky factory. The Irish point out that it was their monks who invented the process for making whiskey and taught the Scots. They claim their whiskey is smoother than all others because they triple distill it, use a smokeless fire to roast the malted barley (Scots use peat which often gives their Scotch a smokey taste) and they always used previously used barrels to age the product (Burbon,Sherry and Port barrels that buy second hand). Jameson Irish Whiskey has been made with the same process for 229 years, although they have an updated factory in Cork, and they say they have never had a bad batch.

We ate at a restuarant in the Temple Bar area not far from our hotel called the Elephant and Castle. The food was good, the wine not such much. I think this is another country where it is best to drink beer rather than wine. It is expensive here, with most things priced in Euro's about the same as they are price back home in Canadian Dollars, making them 1.7 times more expensive. I expect we will find that all through out Europe. Their economy has also been hit by the recession, with new housing developments all but stoppng. Two years ago when I was here on business it was a booming economy.

Cheers for now

Ian

Ireland

PS - We have left Dublin and have driven to Cork which is about 230 Kms south west of Dublin