Day 5 Ireland Vacation

Well today is the big day.  Off to Ireland. 

Jason called a car service in their neighborhood last night to arrange a car for me to JFK.  I got picked up at 2 pm, so I spend the morning repacking my suitcase and lounging.

Today the weather was much cooler, of course now that I'm leaving.  I am ar the airport 2 hours early.  Unfortunately Bonnie was delayed 3 hours getting out of Atlanta so she missed our flight.  She had to catch a later flight.  Something stupid about the flight, or maybe not.  For the first time I was able to fly without a belt extender.  Guess that 4 months of working out and dieting has it's benefits.  Also used a bathroom for the first time on a plane.  It wasn't nearly so small as I had always imagined.

At the airport in Dublin we were met by our bus drivers.  Bonnie's group on the right, Eleanor Burns's group on the left.  Met my roommate, Mickey Donahue, for the first time.

Then I started to not feel well.  When I was putting my medications in my pill containers I must have gotten distracted and forgot one of my blood pressure meds.  Wasn't sure if that was the problem, but I headed to the restroom.  By the time I got back the bulk of the ladies has left to walk to the bus.  We lost sight of them and were a bit worried, but eventually we found the group.

We had a short orientation drive around Dublin and then headed for Galway where we would be until Sunday.

Since our flight had come in soo early, the driver took us by Galway Cathedral so we could spend some time until our rooms were ready at the Menlo Park Hotel.

 

 

Today, since the quilt show hasn't started yet, we had a couple of tours.  We went to Celtic Crystal Factory.  We got to see a lot of beautiful crystal and heard the story of how Mary was the first woman head of a crystal company.  They were set up specifically to export their crystal, so if you don't buy it at the factory you can't buy it anywhere else in Ireland.  Didn't buy any crystal as I see too much unused crystal at estate sales.

Then we went to Connemara Marble Factory and showroom.  We were shown all the different colors of marble that they mine in Connemara. From the rare red to black with sea shells imbedded in it to the traditional green. Here I did buy a pendant that had a great variegation of dark green, grass green and white in one stone.