Overdue

It's not that I'm getting lazier or less interested, just haven't been getting the blog job done, so here's a start. We're in Ireland and it is decidedly more Irish than I expected. In the sense of less English. Yes, everyone speaks English, but the road signs are often in Irish which doesn't match up to what you might be looking for; there seems to be little connection between Irish spelling and English phonics. We've been touring for a week and now are settled into our house exchange location in Navan, near Dublin. The only negative we've encountered, at all at all, was landing at Dublin airport. I won't go into it but it took 2 hours to clear immigration and get our car.
Applause, applause for the GPS or we might still be going in circles and certainly we would have been more stressed.  Mind you there were some moments when we weren't sure if we were on real roads or in someone's lane-way. Our host, Tim, left us a bottle of wine appropriately called "Lost Sheep". The road designations seem to be M(motorway), N(national highway), R(rural road), L(local lane) and the more important the road the fewer numbers they seem to have: M8, N72, R171, L4305. N roads are not necessarily any batter than Rs. If I'm focusing too much on the road system it's because I am the designated wrong-side-of-the-road driver so I've been hyper-alert. Happily I can report that we managed 1500 kms without any dings or scratches and the only near misses were caused by other people.
We started in Galway, and travelled the southern perimeter. So far my favourite area would be the Dingle Peninsula  and then Kinsale, but if we were looking for another exchange Galway might be the spot. We've warmed up to Navan, a lot, having first thought it a bit tired and underwhelming.
All that said, I'll do a few posts, chronologically, and tease you with some photos and a few stories.

Kylemore Abbey, home of the Irish Benedictine nuns. We decided they're unfriendly despite the spectacular location.

Dipped and ready for something, the sheep just wander, including on the road.

The first of many bar photos.

In Salthill, and this was a landmark that alerted me that we were going the wrong direction.

On the "Prom" in Salthill, an adjunct to Galway and where we stayed for 2 nights.

An L road! We were on our way to a ferry across the Shannon River. This 'road' was so untraveled the grass scraped the bottom of the car.
More to come....