Hurricane Irene.

Sorry for my lack of updates. It's all Hurricane Irene's fault :(

Thankfully, our house is safe -- although our plum tree in the front yard completely uprooted and is now laying horizontally in the grass.

We'd been without power since Sunday around 8AM. Again, thankfully, we got it back around 2PM today (my parents still don't have it!). So that's about 50 hours without electricity, water, hot showers (!), cold drinks, hot food, AC... etc. Obviously, more of an inconvenience than anything else but not fun nonetheless.

Every street around looks like this:


Trees are down everywhere... sometimes on top of people's cars... or houses. :(

Luckily, things are starting to normalize again and we're safe.

By the way, the sound of trees/branches cracking, breaking and falling to the ground might be the scariest sound I've ever heard.

*My honeymoon recaps will start back up tomorrow.

Honeymoon - day six.

On the sixth day of our honeymoon, which was actually the last real day we were in Ireland -- we spent time back in Dublin at THE ZOO. :)

We love the zoo and try to go whenever we're in a city with one. We were going to go to the one in Belfast also, but I told you we wanted to leave that area.... so we decided on the Dublin zoo.

It was so much fun! I'm not going to post pictures of all the animals - trust me, there's lots. But this photo is one of my favorites:


I didn't realize giraffes sat like that? But this little guy was learning how to stand/walk :)

After, we drove along the coast and stopped for a drink here:




And scoped out a nearby castle:



And finally had dinner at a restaurant right by the water:



:)

Honeymoon - day five.

On Friday, we woke up to this view:

And we drove toward Northern Ireland.

The views of the ocean and the land were amazing and worth seeing.

We really wanted to see the Giant's Causeway:

And after, we continued driving along the coast.

Unfortunately, we didn't enjoy our stay in Belfast. We thought it was very different than the other places we had stayed and we weren't prepared for how much of a city it actually was. Dublin is a city but people were still friendly -- in Belfast, not so much :(

Of course, we were only there for about 24 hours and I'm sure we missed a lot because of the short time frame and there's probably things there that we would have enjoyed. But in the morning when we woke up -- we were very excited [& relieved!] to drive back to Ireland and be back in Dublin :)

Honeymoon - day four.

On Thursday (which happened to be my favorite day!) we started out by driving north to our B&B in Donegal.

In the lobby of the Ashford Castle, I saw a brochure for a place that shows you how they teach dogs how to herd sheep. So clearly, I had to see this. On the way, we entered sheep county:

They were everywhere! And they come right up to the car!

When we got to the farm we were greeted by puppies!

After, we heard all about how the dogs learn to listen and herd the sheep (and we were assured these sheep aren't for eating... just sheering). At this farm the dogs aren't supposed to EVER touch the sheep so that keeps all the animals safe. It was pretty amazing & the farm had the most beautiful view!

We had also been wondering why all the sheep we had seen had paint on their backs and apparently it's a marking system so that farmers know whose sheep is whose.

The farm and one of his dogs was also in the movie, Marley & Me, so he had pictures with Jennifer Anniston around the house. It was neat and a great way to spend the morning!

Next, we drove further north to Westport to buy our wedding bands (that will be a whole other post!)

And finally got to our B&B which was my favorite one of the trip!

It was a perfect day!

Honeymoon - day three.

On Wednesday, we started to drive south to Doolin for a 1-hour cruise to see the Cliffs of Moher.


Unfortunately, the weather wasn't cooperating and the water was a little okay, VERY MUCH dangerous. So our cruise was canceled :(


We still saw the Cliffs from the land though, and the whole thing was pretty amazing. Definitely a must see.

And, even though the water looked like that and it was raining and I looked like this:


Sean looked like this:


Apparently, he wasn't cold? :)

In the afternoon, we drove back north to Galway.


It was beautiful! I never got tired to seeing cows or sheep. We saw lots of sheep! Especially on Thursday!

More on that later!

Honeymoon - day two.

On Tuesday, we woke up and after breakfast began to drive west to the Ashford Castle. Driving in Ireland is amazing because of all the scenic views.


It's neat because you see things that you just know are really old -- probably.


It's pretty cool to be able to see your NEW last name all over the place:


But... driving in Ireland is scary because a road like this:


...is considered a TWO-WAY street. Whhhatt? And when someone comes and you meet head-on -- one of you has to back up (usually pretty far) to find a pull-off and let the other car pass. Scary. Oh, and the speed limit is fast.

When we got to the castle, we took lots of pictures:



We found out that we could go anywhere inside the castle that we wanted! So after dinner we looked all over the place:


Until I got creeped out because it was so old... :)

The castle was beautiful and so neat and had so much to do. We didn't actually do much since we were only there for a night but if we ever got a chance to go back we both think we'd take up more of the amenities. They have things like falconry, and horseback riding and lots more. They also had tons of restaurants and something called The Dungeon Bar. Pretty neat!

Honeymoon - day one.

We left for our honeymoon on a Sunday - about 3 weeks after our wedding. It turned out being a good amount of time between the wedding and the honeymoon because I had time to write and mail out all of our thank you cards before we left and we had plenty of time to pack.

We had an overnight flight from Boston to Dublin which meant we arrived in Ireland at 5AM (but really midnight for us). We were very excited!

After getting our luggage, we took a shuttle to the car rental place and picked up our car. We were worried that the car would be like the one in "Just Married". It was pretty close...


I've never been anywhere where people drive on the left side of the road. And it was so scary to me. I thought I was going to die. Everywhere we went. Every day. For real.

When we got our car we drove to our hotel, which was really close, thankfully -- since I really thought we were going to crash on the way...

When we arrived our room wasn't ready so we had breakfast and decided we didn't want to waste anytime and we wanted to get out and see stuff!... without having to drive that is!

So, we booked a Hop on/Hop off tour. It was really fun and a pretty neat idea. Basically you get on this bus with a ticket and the bus makes certain stops. You can get off at any stop... and when you're finished in that area you're able to get back on the bus (probably a different one than the one that dropped you off - they pass every 10 minutes, no matter where you are!) and then you continue on the tour. It was great, and easy and I'd recommend it because you get to sit back and take everything in.


We sat on the top deck. It rained on us... a little. We only got off twice -- we were exhausted by this time since weren't able to go to sleep on the plane and we literally hit the ground running once we landed.

We stopped to see the Viking Museum & the Guinness Storehouse.


I'm not a drinker by any means and I absolutely hate beer. But I have to admit the Guinness factory was pretty amazing. It reminded us of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was 8(?) floors about how they perfect Guinness. And, someone loved every single moment.

In one of the rooms they give you a sample:


And since this was my facial expression before it even touched my lips...


Sean was super excited to have two samples in his possession. :)


On the top floor they have something they call the Gravity Bar and with your admission ticket you can get a free pint of Guinness while overlooking all of Dublin.


When we got back to our hotel, it was around 2PM and we had officially been awake for longer than anybody should be and so we took a long nap. We were so exhausted!

When we woke up we wanted food and were surprised to find lots of the nearby pubs were closed or that they were only serving alcohol, no food. It was weird to us since around here... you can go into most bars and order food until last call. We thought we were going to starve... well I thought we were going to starve -- but we ended up eating at the hotel. I think I'll need an entire post about the food in Ireland. :)

Tomorrow I'll tell you about the castle we stayed at. Oh yeah, we stayed at a castle.