Although I only managed to count 28, we were told by a tour guide that there are 40 colors of green in the lush and scenic hillsides of Ireland. It truly is a beautiful country, and boasts such a thriving and fertile landscape – HOWEVER, that comes at the expense of it raining here all the time. We thought Scott and Amanda had scored by getting people to do a house exchange with them and take up living in their Arizona home for the summer (100 degrees there on a good day), but now we wonder who really got the good deal. In all honesty, the rain wasn’t that terrible, we just really had to take advantage of the dry hours during the day, and got used to constantly being damp.

Coming from the hustling city center of Dublin, to the slow and quiet suburbia of Cork was quite a change in pace, and a wonderful way to spend quality time with our family for 5 days. The area that makes up this county consists of small village-like settlements of which we managed to visit a few including Kinsale, Douglas and Carrolagan. Again, the uttering of words as cute and quaint were used in excess in these intimate little towns.

One of the highlights of the visit were first and foremost spending time with our niece Ari, who is certainly developing quite a personality – we were a little shell-shocked from some of her temper tantrums, but it certainly gave us some perspective on the whole parenting process. We did an overnight trip to the small town of Killarney, and stayed at Earl Court’s House Bed and Breakfast, which was adorable. This was our starting point for the 100 mile Ring of Kerry drive, which is part of the mystical & unspoilt region of Ireland. The guide on the tour bus literally did not stop talking for the 6 hour drive, which was a little distracting to the amazing scenery; however we managed to block it out by putting on some Radiohead on our mp3 player for the last half of the drive.

Our buggy ride through Killarney National Park the next day was so much fun, especially seeing how excited Ari got over the horsies – we got a lot of “neighing” practice in that afternoon. From Killarney we made our way to the Blarney Castle. This is known for boasting the mythical Blarney Stone that if kissed, will give the gift of eloquence for the rest of your life. We stood in line for 45 minutes to eventually get our chance to pucker up to the stone -- you had to lay down backwards on the top of the castle, then were lowered down to the stone that is about 200 feet above the ground -- it was a lot scarier than we thought it would be, but at least we’ll have the gift of eloquence for the rest of our lives!