Author Archives: suzanne.bowness@gmail.com

This is the final post in a blog about Ireland, where I spent July 20-31, 2019 on vacation on a bus tour and then in Belfast and Dublin with my mother. The header photo here is a view in the … Continue reading →

Back to Dublin in the morning and Mom wanted to visit the iconic Old Library of Trinity College Dublin with its long room and the illustrated manuscript the Book of Kells https://www.tcd.ie/visitors/book-of-kells/. I’d already seen it last visit so I … Continue reading →

In the morning we took the bus back to Dublin, which was not particularly eventful. What was eventful was arriving at our hotel, which I’d booked somewhat last minute when we decided to switch around the order of our post-tour … Continue reading →

On our last day in Belfast, we decided to tour the city. First, we went to the impressive City Hall https://www.belfastcity.gov.uk/tourism-venues/cityhall/cityhallhistory.aspx , which had a decent museum about the history of the city and its people (helpful because it was … Continue reading →

Besides learning more about northern Ireland, another reason we wanted to come up to Belfast was for its proximity to the Giants Causeway https://www.ireland.com/en-ca/amazing-places/giants-causeway, a UNESCO world heritage site with 40,000 hexagonal-shaped basalt pillars created by volcanoes 60 million years … Continue reading →

After saying farewell to the last of our fellow travelers on the tour, Mom and I took a taxi to the train station and headed north to Belfast. The train ride was only two hours, although work on the tracks … Continue reading →

Our final official day of the bus tour began with further travel on the hop on hop off bus and then a visit to Dublin’s newest museum (opened in 2016) called EPIC the Irish Emigration Museum https://epicchq.com/. I had thought … Continue reading →

As we began to wind our way east again to Dublin, we stopped at a whiskey distillery called Kilbeggan https://www.kilbegganwhiskey.com/ and learned about the whiskey making process (yes the tour did end with a wee tasting). I also bought some … Continue reading →

The highlight of Day 5 was yet another natural wonder, the Cliffs of Moher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliffs_of_Moher in the Burren region in County Clare. These stretch for 14 km and rise 215 metres at their height above the Atlantic Ocean. We took … Continue reading →

Today we travelled to the southwest county Kerry, stopping at a cute market town called Macroom and landing in Killarney for a lunch of vegetable soup and a walk around the town. Besides pointing out the sights, our tour guide … Continue reading →

On day three of our tour, questions were answered when I learned that Cobh is really pronounced “cove” (it’s spelled in the Irish) and renamed from the original Queenston, the name of the town when it was fatefully the Titanic’s … Continue reading →

Our first full day on the bus tour started with a proper Irish breakfast, which I could (and would, after a week of it) get used to: plenty of bacon (British bacon, or I guess Irish too, my favourite!). Afterwards … Continue reading →

I feel like each trip begins with steeling myself for the longest flight ever, but one trip set a new record because we started on our bus tour directly after arriving at Dublin airport. Our flight was just over 6 … Continue reading →