South-West - Truely Gorgeous

Following up on my traveling around Ireland series, this time we went to the South-West of Ireland. To read about previous road trips, check posts To The West and To North-West. The maps of our drive was as follows:

We first went to Limerick on the way to Dingle Peninsula, drove around peninsula, back to Dingle, towards Kilkee crossing river, following day to Cliffs of Moher and finally Galway and back to Dublin.

As I have said it in previous posts also, my love for Ireland just keeps growing everytime I visit anything outside Dublin :)

Some highlights of trip, if someone wanna do similar.

• Limerick was great, but it was raining so we cudn't manage to see much but still in between sun n rain patches, we managed to see the castle and church. The best part, food was way cheaper than Dublin and we enjoyed a wonderful cup of coffee and home made scones for less than 12 euros for 3 people.
• Normally, people go to Ring of Kerry. But we decided to go to Dingle Peninsula. The only thing I knew of it was the famous Dolphin called Fungie, which we off-course saw the next day.
• Dingle is just gorgeous, no words can explain it. It was not the best weather, but atleast it was not raining with some sun shining once in a while and we drove all along the peninsula, its probably one of the most beautiful drive in Ireland I have taken. Also lots of prehistoric sites to see, the landscape is out of world :) and also visited the west most point of Ireland, "The Basket Islands", which comprises of 7 islands. We went to the edge of one of the islands and it was soo soo coool. Unmissable.
• We then drove back to Dingle and passed Connor Pass, it was bit overcast by then, so we didn't stop but it looked very tempting to have a walk. But we needed to cross the river by ferry to go across and didn't wanted to take the long road route. So we had to hurry up and we drove to Tarbert and got the ferry to Woodview (see map here for more close up route)
• And drove to a small town of Kilkee.
• Following day, we had nice breakfast in Kilkee, nice sunny day, drove to Cliffs to Moher (second of the many time probably I will visit this spot).
  
• The last stop was Galway city, which was much much better than I expected. Nice, small town city like feeling. Def. not to miss.

And ah, don't worry about accommodation, there are so many B&B's and non-breakfast places, we never had to book anything, just go to one n spend the night.

I would be posting the pictures slowly on flickr, Have a look here.

Some collage shots:

Limerick n Irish Highways

Fungie, Dingle Peninsula

Drive along Dingle peninsula, Landscape

Flying High on the west most point in Ireland, The Basket Islands

Kilkee, Cliffs of Moher n Galway City

To North-West

We did another road trip (basically all trips in Ireland are road trips :D) to north-west of Ireland and Northern Ireland for the june bank holiday weekend. I like that in Ireland, pick the car, drive and we are on the other side of the country in few hours. We went to a surfing town called Bundoran (map below), unfortunately I didn't do surfing (next time), but it was still quite good for several other reasons ;) and also for the Rory Gallagher music festival in Ballyshannon and some site-seeing in North Ireland.

Enjoy the pics below :) (esp. the sunset shots, it was one of most beautiful sunsets I saw, just gorgeous)

Road Trip

Just a few pics, more on flickr ->

You shud know this :)

Milan Castle

As I mentioned earlier, the beautiful settings of Lake Como and Belagio. For recent ref., the latest Bond movie, was shot here, when he was recovering from enjuries :)

So what, if we cudn't skii, there was HOOOOTERS in Interlaken. We (not me) had like a 30 chicken wings at 1 AM in morning, after dinner n several beers. Jao is unbeatable in it.

Here is Jao, I bet he is unbeatable in eating Chicken Wings, I hav never seen anything like that. After dinner, and several beers, he had like 2 dozen chicken wings. And imp. thing - didn't throw up ;)
Once more Jao, somewhere along Lake Como, in summer this place wud be un-matchable

Small incident/accident in swiss, actually both are side view mirrors were hit by the time we finished the road trip :))

Thats it..

Woh Woh

its been so so long since I wrote something. I feel bad now :))
I do have somethings to tell all, but it has to wait a bit more, so in the mean time, I will say something about Italy.

During xmas, we made a road trip across Austria, Italy and Swiss. Italy was a welcome surprise, I just loved the place, architecture of the cities, culture, more so FOOD, COFFEE and SWEETS & ice cream (best i had). We visited Verona (of the Romeo Juliet fame), Venice (everything I say for this city would be less, Amazing, loved every moment I spent there, def. once again), Milan (highlight was the Leonardo DaVinci's original painting "The Last Supper", the feeling of being in the same room as DaVinci was ...), heading over to Lake Como and Belagio (beautiful settings of the alps and lake, a must visit in summer).

Not to leave, Interlaken and Zurich in Swiss (but no snow) and Innsbruck in Austria were great fun too.