our stay in Ireland, broken down

Added a few more list to the blog site to track our stay.

In our 11 months to date

• We have made it to 23 castles in Ireland and Europe so far 
• We have visited destinations in 12 counties (out of 32) which makes for 37%...
• We have been to atleast 8 houses/estates (this one is harder to track since some castles are actually houses , decorated to look like castles)
• We have been to 5 countries (or 3 if you count Wales and Northern Ireland as part of UK)
• We have been to 4  beaches (Skerries, Howth, Grange, Sintra (Portugal))

We will be starting or second 12 months with a trip to Barcelona in 2 weeks (beaches, castles, ...),  A trip to Kilkenny for a hurling challenge match (Maynooth U8 GAA hurling vs Black and White GAA in Kilkenny) (yet another county to the list)

Should count the number of pictures taken, that is probably quite a number...

until next time

Rob

Of Ice Cream Trucks and 99's

First, the 99.  It is the UK and Irish national treat as far as I can tell.  It is perfection.  It is ice cream. Specifically, a soft serve sweet cream flavored cone with a small chocolate bar called a "flake" sticking out of it.  A search for the origin of the rather odd name left me flummoxed.  But it is delicious.  It can be served with sprinkles or other bits and bobs on it, or it can be served with strawberry sauce drizzled all over it.  Any way you have it, it's lovely.

Now, on the Irish Ice Cream Van.  Just as in the US, it shows up in your area on any warm day with music blaring and temptation in it's wake.  It plays, here on the Emerald Isle, just one song.  La Cucaracha.  No others, just La Cucaracha.  Now I can't say what a song about a cockroach has to do with food products, but it seems to be the siren song of the Ice Cream Van driver nonetheless.  Here the ICV does have one distinct advantage over its US cousins.  When the Van approaches, the driver pulls into a safe spot - in our case along side the green space directly in front of our house, and stops.  The music of the cockroach continues for a minute or two, then the driver turns off the music.  He waits a few more minutes to see if the bait is going to be taken, and if no potential customers approach, he moves on. In silence.  So, a more judicial use of the music sets the Irish ICV on a pedestal high above the US equivalent.  

If I were a rich man...

turns out there is a website for historic properties
http://www.formerglory.ie/property-rathville-house.html (€595,000 )

http://www.formerglory.ie/property-ballindooleycastle.html(€599,000)

http://www.formerglory.ie/property-rathclare-house.html (€595,000)

http://www.formerglory.ie/property-creaghhouse.html (price on inquiry)

fixer uppers are a little cheaper

http://www.formerglory.ie/property-belvelly-castle.html

only €275,000...

a little out of my pocket change level, maybe after this years raise

Rob

What is a holiday?

What makes a holiday or vacation...
holiday: an extended period of leisure and recreation, especially one spent away from home or in travelling.
vacation: a period of time that a person spends away from home, school, or business usually in order to relax or travel
A little distinction between the 2 terms. For a holiday the goal is leisure and recreation. This would match up to a typical Irish holiday where they will often rent a self-catering cottage at the beach in ireland or in one of the easy sun countries (Spain, Portugal). I suppose that a vacation doesn't have to be leisurely, as long as you are away from work.
Also saw somewhere that holiday is a day off chosen by others (work, school , government) while a vacation is a day off chosen by you..

So far our holidays while living in Ireland have been focused on seeing things (tourism) .
We have been to UK (Wales and Northern Ireland), France and Portugal,also many sites in Ireland. A list of a few sites seen on holiday
Beaumaris Castle, Conwy castile, Penryn Castle, Caernafon Castle, Llechweld Slate Caverns, Belfast Castle, Giant's Causeway, Dunluce Castle, Carrick Fergus, Innis Oirr, Cliffs of Moher, Burren, Hook Head, Moors Castle, Pena Palace, Sao Jorge Castle, Monument of the Discoveries, Santa Justa Lift, Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, Athenry Castle, ...
The busy tourist calendar does not leave a lot of extra time for the relax and leisure components. Do we need a new term for time away from work spent touristing and educating kids?

Might be time for a relax, leisure holiday.... though as Sarah say that is a little more challenging with 2 little people in tow

Rob

Where have we been, where are we going

Summer is upon us, the Irish holiday season. The last day of primary school (elementary school for the americans out there) is today.The summer break for the kids is shorter here , only 2 months, end of June to end of August. Most of the Irish will take their holidays in the summer when the kids are out, usually week or 2 week long trips. Portugal is one popular choice

What will we do this summer?...We have lots of camps scheduled- hurling/camogie, gaelic football, football (soccer), art, etc... Camps are usually 10-2 so not all day affairs like they would be in the U.S. We will probably do 1-2 day trips around  Ireland and maybe UK on the weekends. We are also planning to do a barge trip though ironically some recent good weather (almost 2 weeks of sun 60s-70s) may make that not work due to too many weeds in canal.

The map below red represents some of the places still on our to do list. The blue represents places we have already been. We will see if we can make the Ireland map more blue.

For the big picture, here is Europe. The blue is where we have been so far, Red are some of the to do's.
Still need to add some more red targets , such as Italy, Greece, Germany, etc... Will tackle some of these in the fall and spring

that's all for now...

Rob

Crime in Ireland , a dichotomy

As some of you may have "heard" on facebook we got robbed the other  week.

Our neighbor said this is the 4th time this house has been robbed, a nice little tidbit that would have had us more diligent.
The house does have an alarm which we hadn't been using. It turns out that most houses in ireland have alarms .I would say over 80% of the Irish  houses have alarms for sure. This is start contrast to the US where alarms are a rarity . The alarm systems are usually sound only.
According to the garda even with the noise as a deterrent the criminals may still go on just due to these incidental alarms making people not care.


as to the dichotomy
The irish may lock the door during the day at all times, but they still feel comfortable letting their kids walk into town. We have seen various neighbours letting their kids walk into town:
family 1- 2 girls (10)
family 2- boy 7, girl 10
Not uncommon to see young kids unsupervised hanging around the town.
so they may not feel their house is safe but they trust the people


Rob

Genealogy 101

So one of the side projects here in Ireland is family trees...
On my side my mom did some great work developing here family tree using Ancestry.com. The software is nice enough but they do charge for access to records and what not. More over US based is one fee, UK/Ireland another, worldwide another.
I did find a free website Wikitree that can take file from Ancestry as input. Using this I was able to find the missing link in my Dad's moms tree which is a name change from Hirrell to Harol when moving from Ireland to the U.S.
This led to finding that my grandmother Thompson's family hailed from Donegal, Ireland. We did a scouting trip during Christmas and likely met some distant cousins.

Recently, I got hold of Sarah's family tree. With the help of Ancestry.com I was able to link Sarah's tree with others and others... This led to over 28 generations of ancestors on her side.

The observations from this research
Ireland ancestry is hard to track- whether due to bad records, the turnover from English rule, name changes, it is unclear but it is hard to go very many generations back. I see 2-3 on my dads side, 3-4 on my moms side , 1-2 on Sarah's side before trail runs cold.

Canadians do great job with Ancestry, this led to tracking Sarah's ancestry to mainland Europe. Well over 6 generations of French on Sarah's side

We have turned out to visit many of the countries of Sarah's ancestors- Wales, Portugal, Ireland ... Will need to knock England off the list. Due to the lengthy tree for Sarah there are quite a few nobles (counts, countesses) and possibly the King of England. Quite entertaining stuff

Some stats to stew on

Rob's tree
Oldest American
Oliver Leonard 1749, Springfield ,Mass

States
Ohio, Kansas, Tennessee, Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Illinois, California, Florida, South Carolina,Oregon, Virginia, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kentucky,

Oldest non-American
Daniel Joseph 1709
Yorkshire, England

Countries
Canada 2, German 5, England 8.France 1, Ireland 7.

>5 generations

Sarah's tree
Oldest American relative
John Davis 1643 , Massachusetts

States
Connecticut, Massachusetts, California

Oldest non-american  relative
Ega Leutharius
 Alsace, France  B 565

Countries
Belgium 13, approx 110 canada, England 22, Germany 20, Ireland 10
Italy 4, Netherlands 2, Portugal 31, Scotland 7, Spain 5, France approx 190
, Switzerland 4,Wales 1

>28 generations

Even more fun when we actually get to meet some of these distant cousins...

Rob