And Bob's yer Uncle!

Lucky for us, Uncle Bob had a conference in Dublin last weekend and had the time for a quick jaunt up the coast to see us in Belfast. We picked him up at the train station on Saturday morning, and after a short stop at Starbucks for a PSL we were on our way. We started with a tour of Queen's, and after a few hours, a 1.2 mile walk, some complaints from my stomach, and being turned away at Mourne's, we settled on Deane's Love Fish for lunch. It was amazing. After our late lunch / early dinner, we headed over to Belfast Castle for a hike up Cave Hill before we lost the light. We got a bit turned around on the way down, but a very helpful local pointed us in the right direction and then even drove us back into town!

 

We spent Sunday taking a long walk along the coast. We made it all the way to Helen's Bay on foot before getting the train back to Bangor for dinner at the Salty Dog. One new thing we discovered was an old WWII military fort along the way. It was built to defend the lough from enemies, and there's now a small museum there with a few remnants.

One of the best discoveries at the fort was these pamphlets, which have quite a few useful tips for how the locals should deal with Americans:

 

 

We capped off a wonderful weekend with a night of pinochle. I started off the evening with a bang, but in the end we had all won excellent games. It was an early morning on Monday to see UB off, back to Dublin and then homeward bound.

  

Check out all of the rest of our photos on flickr here.

Donegal

We were in Ireland two weeks ago with some friends (Ruth, Adam, Aisling, & Richard). Donegal seems to be everyone's favorite little weekend getaway spot. Everyone we know keeps telling us we have to go to Donegal. Now we've gone and I think we can agree it's a pretty great place for a quick holiday.

Ruth's mother has a rental house that was free for the weekend, so we got to enjoy a weekend on the north coast before the weather turned. We lucked out big time, as I think it broke seventy degrees! Also, there was no rain, which was great because we spent an idyllic Saturday at the beach. We relaxed in the sun, made a fire and ate hot dogs, and Andrew and I introduced everyone to s'mores, which were terrible. No graham crackers or Hershey's chocolate here, and the marshmallows were small and weird. Oh well, they didn't know the difference and it was such a nice afternoon I didn't care.

Believe it or not: Andrew found a few things to climb.

Needless to say, it was a great weekend. There are more photos on flickr, which you should definitely check out because Donegal is GORGEOUS.