Kingston Ave..

Over Christmas some of friends asked us if we could take more pictures of the street we live on and our neighborhood. It was hard to describe to people how many houses are on our street and how there are no trees on our street either. The pictures still don't capture it.

The view from right outside our house

Looking the other way down the street

 We are lucky that we have local shops that sell a small amount of food, drinks and household products if we run low. This store is about a 2 minute walk away from our house and has the nicest man working there.

We live in the neighborhood of Wigston. This is a picture of the shopping area, where we usually buy our groceries.

The William Wygston is a local pub that has some yummy pub food and drinks. We don't go often, but we like taking vistors here. 

We also have a really nice park around a 5 minute walk from our house. We spend a lot of days there when the sun is out, having ice cream from the ice cream truck, running or walking through or having picnics. It is a nice place to feel like we are back in nature a little bit.

Here are pictures of Knighton Park from the height of the summer.

in the winter

I thought I take some pictures of downtown Leicester also. This is a shopping area called the Lanes. There are a lot of shops and restaurants in the lanes.

This picture is the main center area of Leicester

Another shopping area

I hope this helps give everyone a little more insight into our neighborhood and downtown Leicester.

Last day in ireland

On our last day in Dublin, I had planned to see all of the Cathedrals and the Dublin Castle. Well that didn't work out as planned, since both St. Patricks Cathedral and Christ Church Cathedral were closed that day. The Castle only had scheduled times you could tour it and the next one was three hours form when we got there, so we decided not to go to that. We did have a nice time just walking around and seeing the outside of them though.

St. Patricks Cathedral

view of the street outside of St. Patricks Cathedral

The plaque below says:

Near here is the reputed site of the well where St. Patrick baptized many of the local inhabitants in 5th Century

A view from the gardens out side of the Cathedral

James Joyce who wrote Ulysses, live in Dublin for many years. you can visit some of the same places he did when we lived there.

Nick and I outside of St. Patricks Cathedral

Dublin Castle which is now used as a conference center and is where Dignitaries will stay when they visit Dublin. 

Not sure what this part of the Castle is but it was across from the garden of the castle. 

Kit got me being silly.

We thought this was a nice play to take a picture.

A pub that Kit thought was funny.

St. Stephen's Green Park 

We walked down Grafton Street which is a shopping area, but also has many musician's playing. I though it was great that this guy brought out a piano to play. He was good too.

If I haven't sad before one our our favorite things about Dublin was the music. We all loved listening to the traditional Irish Music. By the last night we new a lot of the songs and could sing along with them. One song that was popular was a song about Molly Malone, who sold cockles and mussels out of a cart in Dublin. It is the unofficial anthem of Dublin. 

There is a statue up of her in Dublin and is below.

 here are the lyrics to the song:

In Dublin's fair city,

Where the girls are so pretty,

I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone,

As she wheeled her wheel-barrow,

Through streets broad and narrow,

Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!"

"Alive, alive, oh,

Alive, alive, oh",

Crying "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh".

She was a fishmonger,

But sure 'twas no wonder,

For so were her father and mother before,

And they each wheeled their barrow,

Through streets broad and narrow,

Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!"

(chorus)

She died of a fever,

And no one could save her,

And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone.

Now her ghost wheels her barrow,

Through streets broad and narrow,

Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!"

(chorus)^[7]

Last Guinness' of the trip.

We had a fantastic time and we were so happy that Nick came to visit us. We loved Ireland and I think all of us would go back for sure. Thank you Nick for making the trip across the pond! Come back anytime!

Irish countryside

We didn't have the time to explore Ireland as we all would have liked. Since we only had three full days in Ireland and we really wanted to see the Irish Countryside, we took the train to Dun Laoghaire, a costal town outside of Dublin. Then we rented a car and drove to Wicklow Mountains. It was a misty, rainy day but we had a great time. We kept thinking it was crappy weather and the guy at the rental car agency said, how it was such nice weather they were having. I guess we aren't use to Irish weather!


We walked down the pier in Dun Laoghaire, it was really beautiful.

The marina

This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip, for some reason it just looks so Irish to me.

As most of you know, Kit and I love the ocean. It was nice to be next to one again, even if it was just for a short time.

The rocks were very slippery and Kit almost fell on his butt right after I took this picture.

Nick looking at the tidal pools

We drove to Glendalough an old monastery ruins.

Here is some information about it from the Wicklow Website:

Glendalough (or Gleann Da Loch, meaning ‘The Glen of the Two Lakes’) is situated in the heart of the Wicklow Mountains National Park, which has over one million visitors every year.

The ancient monastery on the site is a fascinating site, having been founded in the 6th century by St. Kevin. Set in a glaciated valley with two lakes, the monastic remains include a superb round tower, stone churches and decorated crosses. The round tower is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the area. The site also includes a Celtic high cross, St. Mary’s Church and St. Kevin’s Church. The remains of three stone crosses and a stone fort are also to be found between the upper and lower lakes. 

While we were here, we saw some people walking by with some dogs and we saw Bosky's twin. He look exactly like him. I tried to get a picture but they were moving to fast. 

Can you see Nick in this picture?

We wanted to walk to the Lakes but it started rain sideways so we went inside the restaurant and some lunch. After lunch it was still raining pretty hard so we decided to drive to Sally Gap to see some of the countryside.

The drive through Sally Gap was fantastic. We saw only four other cars for about an hour.

The pictures don't do it justice. It was so beautiful. the brownish purplish color is the Heather. If you have ever seen PS I love you, Wicklow Mountains is where they met.

As you can tell from this picture it was very windy and foggy. We regretted that you couldn't see more, but it did give it a Mystical feel.

Overall, we don't recommend driving in Ireland with out a GPS. Enterprise found a road atlas for us, (without we would have never made it out of Dun Loaghaire.) The roads are not well marked in Ireland and we got lost for about 40 minutes trying to get back to the Enterprise shop. We finally figured it out and we had driven by the road to turn off twice! It was a great adventure though and a fantastic day!