We are in Ireland, and I don't have much time, so this will be brief; but I just want to say that Ireland is pretty much great. We're in a pretty small town, Portstewart, which is kind of a resort town. There are lots of golf courses around, right on the sea, that are just lovely. There's some sort of festival going on this week, we missed a free folk orchestra concert last night because it was cancelled, as well as a sand-castle-building contest that was over by the time we arrived; but we are at the library now where we have had no trouble hearing the karaoke...
I really like Ireland and wish we could have more time here. We leave tomorrow; of our "four" days in Ireland, we've spent one and a half days, probably, travelling. Not quite so fun... and tomorrow is an almost-all-day travel day as well. But the scenery here is so beautiful that it's hard not to enjoy just sitting on the bus and looking around. We went to the Giant's Causeway today (in my opinion, a nice hike, but really not all it's cracked up to be. Better than the Mona Lisa, though!). We have had no trouble finding anything here because the people are so incredibly helpful. Several bus drivers have made sure we were getting to where we needed to go; one older man at the bus station just came up to us and told us all about the buses and how to get around; and everyone is just so friendly and helpful and great. It's a refreshing change from the generally indifferent people in France. I guess it's been more than a week since we left there, so maybe that's a bad contrast. People in Bath and the Cotswolds and Wales were nice enough, but they don't come near how nice everyone here is. We're off to Scotland tomorrow, but I do hope to come back to Ireland someday--with a car! Trains and buses have their charms, but they can only get us so far.
We will be home now in less than a week, and we're getting more and more excited. I think we'll both be able to appreciate home better, now that we realize how much we miss it. We are both really enjoying our time here, especially being able to speak to people! The only problem is that often people have such thick accents that we can't understand what they're saying--we know they're trying to talk to us, but it often takes quite a while to figure it out!
Love to all~
