Back from Ireland

I'm back from Ireland. I flew back Tuesday. The tour was very nice barring some disappointing hotels. Apparently, some hotels feel they don't need air conditioning. I beg to differ. Also, the Great Northern Hotel in Bundoran desperately needs a renovation. My room there was the worst of the hotels I stayed at during the trip. I'll have to post pictures I took of the peeling paint, stained wallpaper, cracked wall and shoebox size room.

Barring the hotel rooms, I enjoyed the tour. I saw lots of beautiful countryside, learned about Ireland and its people, feasted at an Irish medieval banquet, rode a jaunting car (it's like a wagon), clambered inside a mesolithic corridor burial mound, walked medieval walls in Derry, sang Irish songs in an Irish pub while drinking Irish ale, spent far too much money, met lots of wonderful people, took a fair amount of video and over 200 photos, and visited over 19 Irish towns and cities in 12 days. The tour covered a lot of territory. We drove over 1,100 miles.

The tour director Peter Dundon was outstanding. He really knew his stuff. He answered any question you could come up with on Ireland. Our driver Tony Dooley was a marvel. Some of the roads got pretty narrow but, he handled them with ease. Sometimes, there were some roads you didn't want to look down because they were a long way DOWN.

Overall, it was a good tour and, it reminded me how much I love to travel. While en-route home, I called my travel agent Joel Mills to start work on the next tour I'm going to take. That'll be Peru in mid-January 2011. It should be another awesome adventure. I can't wait. Stay tuned for some nice pictures of Ireland. Cheers all!