Christmas in Ireland

Our first Christmas in Ireland....won't be in Ireland.

Because we didn't have room to store much here, the holiday decorations were one of the things that got kicked to the curb before the move.  The only things that were saved were a few handmade wood decorations my brother made about 20 years ago, and my Hallmark snowmen!  I have all 11 in this series (some I had to hunt down on Ebay), including this year's, thanks to a wonderful surprise from my BFF.  They all dance and sing and I just love them.  So, even though they take up a lot of space, they were coming with us!  There is really only one spot where they are safe from the cats, the top of the bookshelf.  So all of our Christmas cheer is all crammed into one tiny spot, but dang it, we have some!

Knowing that we wouldn't be decorating for Christmas was one of the reasons we decided to go away for the holiday.  The other is that I thought it would be the perfect time to go to Germany, which has been the top of my travel wish list for 20 years.  I have heard great things about the Christmas markets, so why not take my trip while I can also see the markets? This trip is our gift to each other, so hubby had to get something out of it too (as he's already been to Germany).  He wanted to snowboard, so we will be a few days in Munich, and a week in Austria in ski country. Not long in Germany, but long enough for me to hit some markets, go to Neuschwanstein Castle, and the Hofbräuhaus.  And now I can check it off my list :)

Meanwhile, back in Dublin, we've been seeing Christmas tree lots pop up. The first lot we saw had some little trees (like 4-5 feet tall) out front, and a few larger ones inside, but they still seemed puny compared to what we could get in the states.

Hardly taller than the shopping carts it is next to.

Often, when I was growing up, we would go to a tree farm and get the biggest tree on the farm.  One year we cut it down and then had to have it drug to our car by a pickup truck because it was so heavy.  We would have to strap them to the stair rail leading to the second story so it wouldn't topple over (wish I could find pics of this now).  In my mind these trees were 20 feet tall, but they were probably closer to 10.  Still a monster next to these guys.  We thought maybe this lot was just unusual, but the next lot was pretty much the same.

I think these were 5 feet tall at the most.

Since about mid November (since there is no Thanksgiving for them to wait for), the shopping centers have been hanging out their beautiful lights.  Our favorite is Grafton Street, a popular pedestrian shopping area in the heart of Dublin.

I was recently at an event where Christmas crackers were set out for each person.  I had seen these before in movies, but at first didn't know what they were, and had never experienced one first hand.

Hugh Grant wears his crown much better than I do!

They are not food, but named for the sound they make when you pull them apart.  Imagine putting a tissue paper crown, a riddle on a little piece of paper, and another prize in a toilet paper tube, then wrapping it to look like a giant candy, and you have the idea.  Two people grab one end each then pull, like a wishbone, and the person with the bigger end gets the prize.  I got the bigger end on my first try!  My prize was a little snowman sticker, my paper crown (which I couldn't get to fit quite right, since I have a giant head), and a really bad joke (and I usually like these kinds of jokes): What do you call a horse wearing pajamas?  A Zebra.  Yea, I didn't get it either.  But I was excited to take part in this tradition, it felt like a big step in my journey to become more Irish.

Eating mince pies was another tradition I had to try. Little pies filled with dried fruits and spices, and pretty yummy. I have not yet had a fruitcake, but here they are a special treat, and not a joke like they are in the US.  I assume here they are actually edible.

Maybe next year we will be in a house where we have more storage, and I'll start re-buying decorations and make the place look festive enough for us to want to stay at home. But for now, I am going to enjoy my travels.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Oh, and by the way, since sending international mail to my entire Christmas card list would be prohibitively expensive, please view this card I made and just pretend I sent it to you :)

Thanksgiving in Ireland

No, they don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Ireland, but they do celebrate great friends!

Anne and her roommates in the dinner aftermath.
Left to right: Anne, Grace, Amy, Ally, Emma.

I am lucky enough to have met a wonderful girl at church named Anne.  As soon as I open my mouth, people know I'm American.  On my first visit to the church, some of the members were welcoming me and said, "You have to meet our other American, Anne!" It didn't take long before she was talking to me about a possible Thanksgiving celebration.  Apparently she and the other 4 girls in her house tried to do one last year, but didn't get it quite right.  They were up for the challenge again this year and wanted to get it just right, just for Anne (because she's that awesome).  They also invited Hubby and I, as well as 6 other guests, some of whom were also American.

Seeing these girls together made me miss my college days where I was living with a bunch of girls, and they did up this dinner like only girls can do.  Not only was the dining table gorgeous next to the roaring fire, but it was also filled with details like decorated place cards (Hubby and I didn't get to sit together, but it made for great conversations), napkins folded like turkeys and roses, candlesticks everywhere, and pre-warmed plates so our food wouldn't get cold.  I wish I had taken more pictures.

They did a lot of work on the food, including making 2 turkeys, and enough gravy that it had to be served in a pitcher!  All the food tasted very authentic and delicious, even though they were unsure about some of it.  This was the first time Amy made, or event tasted I believe, a pecan pie, but it was perfect!  Grace couldn't understand why anyone would put marshmallows on a casserole (which I've heard from other Irish people as well), so left them off of the sweet potatoes, but they didn't even need it because she pre-roasted the potatoes.  Like a typical Thanksgiving, we eventually left clutching our full stomachs and waddling out to the car.

We didn't eat all the meat off of two turkeys, but not for lack of trying.  This is after they picked off all the leftovers.

We decided to go around the table and say a few things we were thankful for, but we weren't allowed to repeat something already said.  It took us a while to get going because we were all a little self-conscious about it, and felt the pressure of coming up with something original, but when we finally got going you almost couldn't get us to stop (partly because it got derailed into a should we/shouldn't we get a puppy for the house debate).  I have to say, I have never ever laughed so hard while giving thanks...but in a good way :)  We had a fabulous time, and are so thankful to have been included in this celebration!

Seeing the Sea

We finally went to the Sea today!  Even though I keep ceiling it the Ocean, it is actually the Irish Sea.

Making things fit in the new apartment meant having to donate some of the stuff I've been hanging on to.  The nearest place for us to donate, only about a 25 minute drive, was in Dun Laoghaire (sounds like Dun Leery), and just happened to be about a block from the Sea, so of course we had to go check out the water!

It was a beautiful day, but being late November and all, the ocean "breeze" was pretty chilly, and Hubby wasn't prepared for it.  We mostly walked along the harbor, but did get a peek of the coastline before he was just too cold and we had to head back.

We were able to see some shoreline where the water was very clear, but mostly it was just covered in kelp.  This picture is attempting to show the eerie opaque greenish-blue of the water in the harbor, it was kinda cool, but looked unnatural.

I hope we get to go back in the summer, with our windbreakers, and spend a bit more time walking along the shore.  I do love hearing the waves crash!

Marlay Park

Marlay Park is a wonderful place about a mile from my apartment, and is the primary destination for Molly Dog and I on our walks.  It's hard to have a bad day when you are walking through the park, unless it starts to rain on you, which happens, but even then it's not that bad.

The park has lots to offer, including a dog park, which we don't use much because Molly Dog gets intimidated by too much attention, and a walled garden, which we haven't seen because you have to go through a cafe to enter, and I don't think they want dogs in the cafe.  I have only actually seen about 1/3 of the park.  There is a whole section I've never ventured into and apparently has a huge playground, but I think this little one is still cool.

Part of the reason I haven't seen more of the park is because I am so happy with the parts I am familiar with.  The other is that I keep getting lost in there.  Hubby wonders how I can get lost, but he clearly hasn't been at an intersection under tree canopy (where you can't see any landmarks), and come across this super helpful sign.

I mostly stick on the "hiking" trails, which I think is gorgeous.

There are lots of cool bridges, both stone and more modern.

Usually plenty of birds: seagulls, ducks, heron, swans...

Then there is this surprise.

I am told that the decorations on this Fairy Tree are a combination of folklore, mainly leaving wishes for the fairies to grant, and leaving pacifiers (soothers), bottles, and other things behind for the fairies to use once the children have grown out of them.   I was shocked the first time I ran into it.  I was scanning the ground looking for spaces that would inspire a fairy home, and saw an actual little door carved into the tree.  Wasn't expecting that!

There is also the restored Marlay House, which has some craft shops in the courtyard, also the location of a weekend lunch market.  Not sure if you can go into the house on a tour or not, but I have yet to take the tour, if there is one.

Bonus: I get to walk through this other park on the way there, and we are usually by ourselves, so Molly Dog gets to run around a bit!

If you come to visit, I am definitely taking you on a "hike" though Marlay park!

Making Progress!

It may be hard to tell, but I am actually making progress on unpacking.  The movers had 164 items on their inventory, and I am down to 15 boxes that need unpacking.  Some of those may never get unpacked, the kinds of things you would keep in the garage or attic.  I do still have a lot of stuff that has been unpacked but still not necessarily found a home, and lots of pictures still to hang up, but I think it's going pretty well.

Once I was able to find all the stuff I needed and we could move around freely, I kind of ran out of steam and started working on all the other things I was putting off while I was unpacking.  But soon....soon it will be done.  That's what I keep telling myself.

In the mean time our biggest problem is the packing paper.  They went nuts with the paper!  Do you really need two full sheets of packing paper to wrap one shot glass?  It's all been stuffed into some of the empty boxes and put in the only place it was semi-out of the way: the hallway.  Of course, that comes with other problems.

See Hubby approaching the hallway?  It's not an optical illusion, he is wider than opening between the wall and the boxes.  He has to hunch his shoulders or turn sideways to get through,and he is still rubbing up against the boxes and the wall the whole way.  I finally uncovered my bike, but I still can't use it because I can't get it through the hallway!  Luckily there is a special trash pickup tomorrow that will take the boxes, because they won't fit in the recycle bins.  Freedom is so close!

Glendalough trail

This weekend I took my first trip outside of County Dublin, and got to see some of the famous Irish sheep!

See those little white dots, those are sheep!!!!

They take their sheep very seriously!!

I swear this is a sheep right near the road, but she refused to look up from eating.

We didn’t go too far, only to Glendalough which is about an hour’s drive away, but I found out that is far enough to see a whole new world.  Since we live kind of on the edge of the suburbs and the mountains, it doesn’t take long.  Not only did I see a lot of new vegetation, but I found out that it is far enough to have a completely different weather system.   According to the race photographer, Glendalough has crazy weather due to the surrounding mountains.  This explains why I left home thinking it was a beautiful day for a hike, but was soaking wet by the time we were finished.  Oh well, great day anyway. 

Views like this made it look like a totally different climate from the lush green I am used to seeing.

And not far from it were streams and waterfalls.

We participated in a fundraising event for the group Fighting Blindness, and you could either do a 15.5K trail run or the 10K walk.  We chose the 10K walk (6.2 miles), and even that was being optimistic.  Two weekends ago we ended up walking 10K, but that was not all in one shot, was flat, and we were still pooped afterward.  But that’s okay, we could do this, right???  After we signed we got an email saying it was actually 10.8K, plus a little walk to the start line, and oh by the way, it is pretty challenging. We tracked it with apps on our phones, and it ended up being a bit longer than even the 10.8K, plus the little walk to the start line ended up being 1.4 miles each way, so in the end, we ended up going about 9.7 miles, which is 54% longer than the originally advertised 10K (6.2 miles). It was definitely a challenge for us, especially since there were some very steep inclines, and a lot of uphill overall.  The start line was at an elevation of 448 feet, and at the highest point we were at 1,096 feet, and there were lots of ups and downs along the way.

   

This is what the tower looked like from the start line.

This is what the start line looked like from the trail, and this wasn't even the highest point.

Although we both made it, we both struggled at some point, and were totally pooped afterward.  Hubby was having a hard time at the beginning, especially because his feet kept going numb!  We stopped many times to adjust shoe laces, take water breaks, and drink some energy goo.  I was doing fine but we wanted to stick together.  Plus these breaks gave me a chance to take a few pictures.

These are from the first half, when I had all the energy:

(and yes, I was too cheap to by the photos, so these still have the watermarks)

 

We tried to jog some of the downhill portions to make up for the time we lost taking those breaks, but one of the hills tweaked my knees.  At that point, Hubby had his second wind and his feet were finally back to normal, but I was hurting.  Then Hubby wanted to run ahead but stayed with me anyways, and he did do a bit of dragging as we jogged across the finish line.

On the walk back to the car it was pouring down rain, but we didn’t mind too much because it was cooling us down, and because we had dry clothes waiting for us in the car.  Plus, we got to see more sheep and this deer right by the side of the road!!!!!

The phone camera isn’t great, we didn’t have a lot of chances to stop and take pics, and the weather started to turn bad, but I wanted to share more views with you anyway.  You can see better pics on the official website.  

This is yet another place that I said to myself, when people come to visit, I have to take them here!  Of course, this one will be limited to the really fit people, and we will probably take our time and picnic and whatnot next time, but it is just an amazing place to see!  Hope you get to come see it soon. :)