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Mooney's European Adventure

June - August 2022
Justin's 2022 sabbatical trip Read more
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  • Mooney's European Adventure
    Day 2

    At the airport waiting for the plane

    June 25, 2022 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    Well, first hurdle is through. We are at the airport and through security. Minor hiccup... Apparently you can't fill in that your kid's name is Dylan Money. The airport people get all picky because "his name doesn't match his passport". So 20 minutes to get that fixed and now we are actively waiting. Good thing we got here 4 hours early. There was no wait at all.... So... next up... the flight. Should be fun.Read more

  • Mooney's European Adventure
    Day 3

    Arrived in Dublin and getting settled

    June 26, 2022 in Ireland ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    The plane ride was smooth but the kids had trouble sleeping so they are pretty wiped right now. They feel asleep on the bus ride and now they fell asleep in the hotel room while we were getting settled. So now it's time to wake them up and head out to see the city. More fascinating posts to come.Read more

  • Mooney's European Adventure
    1
    Day 4

    Book of Kells and the Long Room

    June 27, 2022 in Ireland ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C

    First thing we did on the first full day here was head to Trinity College and take in the Book of Kells (a 1200 year old copy of the first 4 books of the New testament hand illustrated by monks on cow skin). Super interesting. Upstairs from that is the a room ingeniously named... "The Long Room" due to it's rather impressing length. Apparently they had a lot of books and they needed a place to store them. Then we wandered around Trinity College for a bit before hitting the open road.... or.... in our case... congested sidewalks. More to come later.Read more

  • Mooney's European Adventure
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    Day 4

    Ok.... Day 1 Summay Wrap Up

    June 27, 2022 in Ireland ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C

    So... I don't think anyone wants me to post after every little thing we do... so I think I will try and post just a daily summary and hit "my" highlights.... which I am sure is different from Jen's highlights that she posts on Facebook.

    So... Day 1. After Trinity College and The Book of Kells, we got on our walking horse and headed south. We tried to go to a museum but it was closed. So we went to a park... then left that park. Then we went on a wild emotional journey to find a bathroom which we eventually found but had to pay $0.25 for...so.... i dried my hands for an extra 10 seconds to get my monies worth.

    Then it was off to find lunch. The place we wanted to go opens at 11 but they didn't open their doors until 12 so we went to another place where my kids could eat chicken wings. Then it was off to a church we didn't go in and Dublinia... the Viking museum, where we took a video of a viking pooping. Then it was off to another church that we did go to but got kicked out of because they were "closing" for a service. Then it was a mad run to a store my kids wanted to go to because they had magic cards there but we didn't make it in time so now my kids were "disappointed". REALLY!!!! And then it was time to tackle the near impossible question... "where do we eat supper " which ended up getting answered with "a grocery store". Then it was back to the room where Liam fell right to sleep and our watches that record our steps were smoking and almost dead after recording over 23,000 steps.

    Whew....

    Tomorrow will be much more laid back.    Read more

  • Mooney's European Adventure
    Day 5

    A day with the cliffs

    June 28, 2022 in Ireland ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C

    Today was our day trip to the Cliff's of Moher. And by day trip, I mean we left Dublin around 8 am and didn't get back until 9pm. A very long but amazing day. Our tour guide was funny and shared lots of interesting facts. The trip made lots of stops to see small towns and have bathroom breaks. We stopped at Bunratty Castle which apparently hosts nights where you can dress up like nobility and eat ribs all night. I nearly left the tour right there. We ended up spending a couple of hours at the cliffs, then off for lunch in Doolin, then we went to the mini cliffs, and then are harrowing journey along the sea wall that had Jen turning green. Then back home and we call it a day. All the kids spent time sleeping on the bus so we continue to wear them out, which is good.Read more

  • Mooney's European Adventure
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    Day 6

    Day 3 Summary... and... parenting fail

    June 29, 2022 in Ireland ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    Day 3... wow.... time flies. Today is our last full day in Dublin... and we still had a list of things to do. So we started... nice and late. Everyone slept in till 10. We must still be jet lagging it a bit. So we decided to start off the day with a nice breakfast/lunch at Lemon Jelly, a fun little restaurant with amazing food. After that we were treking it on foot to the Guiness Storehouse for a tour through their museum. It was very well done.

    After that we walked briskly over to the Archeology Musem to search for an old chess queen that Evan saw a replica of and found out the queen was in Dublin while the other pieces are in Edinburgh and London. So... we thought it would be cool to find them all. But we couldn't find it and they eventually kicked us out. After that we went to the potatoe famine memorial which was super interseting, and then we made our way back to the hotel where we had supper and relaxed for a bit.

    And now... on to the parenting fail. I thought it would be fun and interesting to take the kids out a bit later and see the lights and the energy of the city. Jen warned me that may not be a good idea. I thought she was worrying over nothing and we would be fine... thinking her concerns were with safety. They were not. We headed down to the Temple Bar area because I wanted a picture of the historic bar all light up. And... I was looking forward to hearing some live Celtic bands as we merrily stroll through the streets. As it turns out, not only is there a very large amount of drunk people walking around at 10pm, but this is also the time companies start to put out their advertising for lap dances and steak dinners. So, after getting some Gelato at Cloud Nine, we walked around a little bit until we saw a couple of girls doing something inappropriate and then one drunk girl stole Liam's nose. Liam was traumatized and ran off and Caden had to run up and steal the imaginary nose back. What a hero. So, it was at that time I figured it was time to go.

    So... lessons learned. Put the kids to bed at 8 don't let them out at night. And always listen to your wife when she tells you something is a bad idea. Liam keeps reaching up to check if his nose is really back. Poor kid. Tomorrow it is on to Killarney. Should be fun.

    p.s. We also set a new personal best of 26,522 steps. Woo Hoo.

    p.s.s On top of all that, I still didn't get to hear any celtic music. All the bands we could hear were all playing modern music. Stupid modern society.    Read more

  • Mooney's European Adventure
    1
    Day 8

    Day 4 and 5 Summary

    July 1, 2022 in Ireland ⋅ 🌧 12 °C

    I didn't post a summary yesterday as there wasn't much to say. After waking up early in Dublin to get packed up and out the door, we got groceries to do breakfast and lunch and got on the bus to Killarney. Again, the country is beautiful and we got to Killarney around 5. It is a 2 km walk to our place and it is a little out of town, so we got here, got settled, and then decided to order food instead of walking back into town. We watched some TV to have some down time and went to bed.

    See..... uneventful.

    Today, we got up and walked into town to get some breakfast at a great little Cafe called Mannas. I had some beautiful meat sandwich. Then we caught our PaddyWagon tour bus through the Ring of Kerry. I can't say this enough. Absolutely beautiful. The tour was great and the Irish driver talked the entire time about everything. Informative and funny. Lots of stops in small towns, a stop at a waterfall, and breathtaking views. Amazing.

    After arriving back in Killarney, we got a bunch of groceries and made the trek back to our place. We are madly doing laundry and made some Penne and Sauce for supper and now Jen and I are just recording our trip. Tomorrow we are doing a low key wander around Killarney day so I will pay some of the cool pictures of Killarney then. I only get 20 pictures on a post so I think I will use up all my spots with Ring of Kerry pictures.

    Until tomorrow....    Read more

  • Mooney's European Adventure
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    Day 9

    Day 6 Summary

    July 2, 2022 in Ireland ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

    Today was our last day in Killarney. It was "supposed" to be a laid back day. So we decided to walk FOREVER!!! We started off making breakfast at the hotelly place, and then started on our way to Muckross House. We ended up taking the very long way through an off the beaten path which was the right decision. The house was cool and the gardens were amazing.

    Then on the way back we stopped off at the Muckross Abbey, took a bunch of pictures, and then walked back to the hotel. After eating supper together we walked into town to walk around. Today was also the Ring Of Kerry Charity Bike event which brings in around 6000 bicyclists. So it was cool watching all the bikers coming back and cheering for them.

    We walked around downtown Killarney and ended with a trip to Celtic Donuts for a sweet treat. Then back to the hotel to eat supper and do a pre final cleanup so we can hit the road to Belfast via Dublin via Cork early.

    So... what was supposed to be a laid back day ended up being a 30,748 Step Day. The most walking yet. We really need to stop using our laid back days to walk a mini marathon.

    So... big travel day tomorrow and then starts our Belfast adventure.    Read more

  • Mooney's European Adventure
    1
    Day 10

    On to Belfast

    July 3, 2022 in Northern Ireland ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

    Today was a travel day. And our most complicated travel day. The trick was trying to get to Dublin to catch the train to Belfast that would get us here early enough in the day to get to our place and go out of we wanted to. In order to do that, we started by taking a bus from Killarney at 9:30 to Cork. We had about an hour to walk from the bus station to the train station and print off our tickets. No real rush but when you are dealing with so many firsts, you don't know what to expect. But we made our train and enjoyed a nice ride across the country to Dublin. When we got there, that is when things got tricky. We arrived at the Heuston station where we had 30 minutes to catch a train that was outside the station that world take us to the Connoly station. From there we had 10 minutes to find and board our train to Belfast. We got lucky and caught an earlier train to Connolly which gave us more time to find our Belfast train. And we needed it.

    Once we managed to find our train, it turns out our seats weren't our seats. They were given to someone else. And it appears that this happened to a bunch of people. The conductor guy just said to make our way down to the dining car and when the train starts, just go find some empty seats. So on our way we were seeing enough empty seats that we figured we would be fine. And in the end it turned out fine. The kids got to sit together and we were right behind them. So... we were good. It is still weird though.

    Anyway, we arrived in Belfast around 6:30pm. By the time we walked to our place and got settled, we were tired so we ordered food again and just relaxed for the evening. Tomorrow we are doing a hop on hop off bus tour and hopefully do the titanic museum. Weather is supposed to be good so cross your fingers.

    Ok. Off to bed. Check ya later.

    p.s. For those who care I only had a measly 12,025 steps today. Feels like I was slacking off...    Read more

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