The Emerald Isle

After sorting through nearly 1,700 photos from our trip to Ireland, I was finally able to narrow my post down to ~100 photos. You've been warned. 

So about a year ago we had some friends move to Ireland. Never in my life did I think about traveling to Ireland. I always wanted to go to exotic places, but Ireland never crossed my mind. That all changed when our friends moved there and started posting all these amazing photos and adventures they were going on while living there. After seeing just a few photos I told Tyler we HAD to go. Some time passed and we started looking into travel plans and things we could do there. The list was endless. We decided to go ahead and get the boys their passports and then we pulled the trigger and bought our plane tickets. We began to make our itinerary, prepped the boys for the 12 hour flight and off we went to another country. Tyler and I went back and forth on weather we wanted to take the boys or not. We decided to take them because we wanted them to be included in on all the pictures and adventures we were going to have in another country. Taking them with us to Ireland was the best decision. It is so family friendly and with the endless rolling hills they had plenty of space to run and explore everywhere we went. The flight was overall pretty good, considering the ages of our kids and the length of the flight. We had a few layovers, in Houston and London, which was great for them to get out and run around. 

The 8 hour time difference was actually easier to adjust to than I thought considering we maybe got four hours of sleep on the plane ride, arriving about 2am our time. Our first day there consisted of figuring things out, such as driving on the wrong side of the car AND road and finding cellular stores for SIM cards so we could use our maps to get around the country. After finding our friends home in the country, we got settled in and explored the gorgeous ground and enjoyed the gorgeous weather. Having a place to stay with friends who were living there was super helpful, especially when it came to getting tips and tricks on places in the area. The boys really enjoyed having their kids to come back to play with at the end of the day as well. 

Our first day was spent exploring the grounds at the Powerscourt House and Garden. This was a huge Estate with the most beautiful grounds.

The watch tower that overlooked the land. Nixon thought it was awesome climbing to the top of this. He and Tyler pretended to shoot bow and arrows at all the bad guys down below. 

We had an extra little camera that we brought along on the trip and let Nixon run around with it. He loved taking photos of everything he saw. Seriously, everything. He did manage to capture a few great shots that were fun to look back at and see our trip through his eyes. 

This place was huge. The boys loved being able to run free and explore anywhere and everywhere they wanted to. 

And this was the pet cemetery located on the grounds.

You know you're rich when you have a cemetery for all your animals that have died.

The biggest and best rose garden I have ever seen was also here. Gorgeous flowers as big as my face. 

After Powerscourt Garden we picked up some sandwiches to enjoy a little picnic outside. I think this was one of the quickest meals we found on our whole trip. One thing we learned about Ireland is there's no fast food. Almost everything was cafes and pubs located in the small towns. Almost everywhere we went was picnic perfect and we took advantage at our next stop in Glendelough.

This is a wonderful spot formed by a glacier inside the Wicklow National Park.

It included a monastic city thats incredibly old with an awesome round tower and super old cemetery surrounding it.

We took about a mile long walk along the boardwalk that led us to the lake that was surrounded by gorgeous mountains.

Only in Ireland would there be signs like this:

The boys threw their shoes off and wasting no time skipping rocks.

Our drive back that evening was on the old military road. Tyler was taken back to his old video game race car driving days and had a blast cruising through the windiest, bumpiest road, that eventually had us stopped by sheep in the middle of the road. The streets in Ireland are nothing like the streets in the U.S. Their two lane roads are about the size of our one lane roads. The streets are lined with walls, trees and greenery, and it took me a while to get used to the car scraping up against the trees anytime there was an oncoming vehicle. 

The next day we headed off in search for some castles.

First stop: The Malahide Castle.

There are a ridiculous amount of castles in Ireland. This was one we didn't tour, but enjoyed walking around the grounds outside. 

This castle also had a super awesome park close by. Just one more thing Ireland has done right. Their parks are so cool and we all enjoyed running around and playing on them. 

You can't tell, but this slide was huge. Even I was nervous to go down it. 

And we can't forget about the ziplines either! 

Our second castle was Castletown. We took a tour through this beautifully restored Castle and it was so neat learning all the history behind it and seeing what it would have looked like back in the day. A fifteen year old girl married into this family and went to town decorating the place. I couldn't even imagine what it would be like to own and decorate a place this size at the age of fifteen. 

Oh, and this was also the place where we shared with everyone that we were expecting our third baby! 

After the castle we took a stroll around the town and stopped in to get some sweets. The boys were often found double decking it in the stroller because we did a ton of walking every day. They were troopers through it all.  

Tyler did some searching on his google maps and found this hidden little gem off the beating path. It marks the northern most barrier of the original Castletown estate that we visited earlier in the day. 

It was an architectural folly that was built during the famine and is called The Wonderful Roundtower.

It really was a wonderful roundtower and I really wish we could have gone in to explore and climb those winding stairs but it was all closed up. We did spot some teenagers sneaking in to chill at the top though. If I were a teenage living in Ireland I'm sure I would sneak into a place like this as well to chill with friends. 

After spending some time here, we loaded up the boys and headed back down the little dirt driveway to find we had been locked in! There was only one entrance and it was in the middle of no where. I began to get very nervous because I had no idea how we would get out. We headed back up the street to the round tower where there was a small community garden and luckily the man with the key was still there to let us out. Just a part of adventuring in Ireland. 

After staying with the McFarlane's the first few nights, we took off to drive around the country some more and stay in a few bed and breakfasts.

On our way to our first to our first hotel, we stopped in and spent the day exploring the Medieval town of Kilkenny and the Kilkenny Castle. We also took a tour through this one which was restored very similarly to Castletown. 

Every town we passed through looked very similar to this. Colorful, quaint and beautiful. 

One item that is on Tyler's bucket list is to stay a night in a castle. We figured Ireland would be the perfect place to check that off his list. While we didn't sleep right inside the Waterford Castle Hotel because there were a limited amount of rooms, our room was just outside of it in the grounds. This castle was located on it's own Island. To get to it we drove our car onto a ferry and rode across the river. Nixon thought that was the coolest thing, of course. 

We took a nice long stroll around the little island and, of course, it was all beautiful. 

The next day we wanted to find some awesome abandoned ruins we had heard about. We left our castle hotel and as we were driving to find them we came around a corner and BAM, another huge castle. This was very normal in Ireland. You'd be driving around and there would be a huge castles right around the corner. Some were broken down and some are still well taken care of. This was the Lismore Castle. We hadn't planned on stopping here, but went ahead and decided to pull over because we were so blown away by it when we drove around the corner. A short walk down the street from this castle was a park, so we of course stopped to let the boys play for a bit.

We took the walk down the driveway and were stopped before entering the grounds to learn that people still live here! My mind was blown to learn that there is a family living in this huge castle today. 

After exploring this town, we found our original stop we went hunting for in the first place: The Ballysgatamore towers. This place was probably one of all of our favorite places. We took a quick hike through a forest and came to what would have been the entrance to the castle. We learned that this castle was being built by the brother and sister-in-law of those that lived in the Lismore Castle, where we had previously stopped. The sister-in-law was jealous of her husbands brothers huge castle and wanted her own castle, but bigger and better. The couple ran out of money and never finished building their dream castle. This would have been the entrance to the castle. The boys had fun running through all the  rooms and pretending they were knights.  

We continued on the path to circle around to the exit when we came across this bridge in the middle of the forest. This was the bridge that would have led to the castle. It was all so beautiful and fun to explore. It also wasn't a big tourist attraction which made it that much more fun since we were the only ones there running around. 

We left the towers and headed over to the famous Blarney Castle. The grounds at this place were huge and beautiful as well.

This very medieval castle was so crazy to explore. We climbed through the dark, wet dungeon and up the very narrow winding stairs that led to the top of the castle. This castle is what kids imagine castles like; ceepy old stairs, block walls and floors, tiny windows without railings that small children can fall out of and little crawl spaces with none of it being refinished, giving you that exact medieval feel.  

We made our way to top to kiss the famous Blarney Stone. Because that's what they do there. Apprently if you do this, you will be blessed with ability to talk smoothly. 

There was also a place here that was called the poisonous garden. After reading a few signs that were next to some of these caged plants, we figured we better get our kids out of there before they touched one of them and started foaming at the mouth. 

The Blarney House, that was later built to live in instead of the Castle. 

And Tyler, scaling towers and trying to get us kicked out. But seriously, we should have been kicked out because after realizing we hadn't seen any other people in quite some time, we figured out that the grounds had closed on us and we were the last ones in the place. We were good at getting locked into places by the end of our trip.

We stayed in two more Bed and Breakfasts on our journey around Ireland and I'm so sad I didn't take any pictures while we were there. Probably because we got in late each night and left early the next morning after breakfast. It was our first experience staying at one and it was so fun. I was so impressed with how friendly everyone is in Ireland. Every home we drove past in Ireland was nice. The people just seem to care so much about their homes and the beauty of their country. They take such good care of everything. 

After leaving our first bed and breakfast, we headed to Muckross Farms. The boys had so much fun exploring this place and seeing all the animals roaming around. This place was set up exactly the way a traditional working farm would have been back in the day. We walked from large to small farms chatting with the working women in the house who were usually churning butter or making bread inside by the wood fireplace. The rooms were set up just like they used to with their animals roaming around outside.  

The piglets were a hit.

And this was the "friendly" goat that rammed Nixon in the stomach with its one horn. 

After exploring all the farms we headed over to The Muckross House where there were horse and carriages that gave us a ride around the land and up to a waterfall. 

After Muckross was nap time. This was perfect because we were about to take a two hour drive to enjoy the beautiful views around the Ring of Kerry. The boys took naps almost every time we got in the car, which was great since we learned that Nixon got carsick on the narrow winding roads of Ireland. 

Our final Bed and Breakfast was just up the street from the Bunratty castle. 

This castle was much like Blarney, but was restored to it's original look. 

And much like Muckross Farms, located around the Blarney Castle was a traditional town to explore. 

After the castle we went to walk along the Cliffs of Moher. The views at this place we absolutely breathtaking.  Walking on a path alongside a cliff that drops straight down hundreds of feet to the ocean with children was beyond nerve racking though. Levi never left my hip and Nixon never let go of Tyler's hand. 

And then this happened and I nearly had a panic attack. They crawled to the edge to look down to the ocean together. 

Our final destination on our last full day exploring in Ireland was the Ashford Castle. This place is actually a hotel and known to be one of the nicest in all of Europe. Tyler originally booked us a room to stay here....buuuuuut then we bought a house and decided we should probably downgrade to another castle. The entrance to the castle was about a two miles long drive of luscious grass and trees with a bridge leading to the front doors. It overlooked a massive lake that had a few tiny islands in the middle. This place was nothing short of spectacular. We explored the grounds and stumbled across hidden stairways and small towers to explore. 

After the Ashford Castle we made the drive back to our friends house for our final night. They were the best hosts ever and we were so beyond grateful for their hospitality. I was so pleased with the amount of places we were able to go see and things we were able to do during our week long stay. We could have easily spent a few more weeks and packed our days full of more places to see and explore. There is just so much to do there. We enjoyed this trip so much and are so glad our boys were able to join us. It makes me so happy to hear Nixon still talk about our trip to Ireland and the fun he had while traveling around. 

Lessons learned: We live in a beautiful world. Make travel a priority. Take the kids. You'll never forget the memories made.
And now for your viewing pleasure, a short film from our trip. 

Exploring the Emerald Isle from Farnsworth Studios on Vimeo.