Well guys, sorry for the delays in posting up the pictures and story of our Ireland adventure...here you go.
The purpose of the trip was to take Linda's mum over for her 80th birthday...Linda had spent months tracing her mums (and her) ancestry back to the Freshford in county Kilkenny. So we stayed near Freshford in Clomantagh castle along with our UK family and Linda's sister and family from Florida who came over for the occasion, so the whole clan. We found and visited the exact little church in the tiny village of Tulla where their ancestors were married and children baptized and looked through the official record books dating their family back to the 1800's! Her mum was made up that it had all been arranged for her by her daughters.
What was also cool was my American brother in law Ed also traced his ancestry back to Clonislee not far from county Kilkenny so we went there too and found the original now ruined church and graveyard where his ancestry were buried...we had no idea when we turned up in Clonislee and the local butcher and primary school head master who happened to be in the shop told us where it was lying hidden.
For me what is the most amazing part is that Ed, born and bred in the USA, met Linda's sister whilst over here on a stop over in the 80's, hit it off, and she went back to America with him and started a family....so what would the odds be that when they individually traced back their ancestors, they came from neighbouring counties in Ireland!
Anyway...we got two hire cars given to us when we landed in Dublin..one just happened to be the new Peugeot 508, and also a Citroen Picasso

So French all the way...I was loving it. I drove both cars and the Peugeot was clinically boring and seats like concrete...the citroen however was great...felt floaty like it was on spheres....they certainly have got the ride quality right....and an automatic box and column shift on the top like the old DS...fantastic design
Here are some pictures of where we stayed (we had the whole place to ourselves as there were 10 of us) but if your wondering what ireland looks like....it was pretty much all like this, and the weather was glorious for the whole 4 days we were there for
And these were the panoramic view from the castle and its grounds....the ruined church was on the outer wall of the grounds.
The emerald isle...it most certainly is
