Ah, vacation!

Well, we're here in Ireland. It's green and rains a lot - we love it! We're staying at Megan's apartment in Cork city. It's a pretty fun area to live - it's right downtown where all of the shops and pubs are. The night life is pretty crazy here, and it's loud until late at night with lots of drunk people running around. But Megan's got tons of friends that stop in at night which makes it fun.

We've been driving around County Cork, visiting a lot of the small towns. When we first got here we went to Kinsale, a small harbor town. The streets are pretty tight in the small towns and hard to navigate. It was a cute town that lives off of tourists. After we visited there, we went to Charles Fort which was Britain's biggest star-shaped fort. The fort protects the town of Kinsale, and was occupied by the British until 1922 when the Irish achieved their independence. It was a very cool fort!

We went to Portugal last week, and it was fabulous! When we first got there we drove out to Cape Sagres - where Prince Henry's navigator school was. Vasco de Gama, Ferdinand Magellan, and Christopher Columbus all studied there. When you stand at the tip of the cape, it really does look like the world is flat. It's pretty neat. Our hotel was right on the beach, and it was beautiful. At night these fishermen would come out and stand out on the rocks when it was low tide. It just added to the ambience of Portugal.

We went to a small town in the middle of the country called Evora. We loved that town! It had so much character, and a lot of the shop owners didn't speak English, so Alex got to try his Portuguese out on them. The area is known for their cork, and they had the coolest souvenirs and trinkets made out of cork - journals, shoes, umbrellas, cowboy hats, bags. We also stopped at a flea market in the town we stayed in and Alex got to try out his bartering skills for something we wanted. It was pretty fun! The small towns were definitely the best because they have tried to preserve their traditional charm. We would recommend Portugal to anyone!

We've been back in Ireland for a few days now. We've been doing a lot of stuff with people from Megan's branch. Saturday night there was a big party at a member's house, and the young adults got a rousing game of monopoly going. As the Irish would say, "the craic was mighty!" We went over to a member's house for dinner on Sunday and then we were taken on a tour of some ruins of the oldest powdermill in Ireland.

We were going to go surfing today, but the ocean was as flat as a lake. Here's a picture of Alex and Megan in front of the ocean. We drove out to the beach, and then went exploring in some small towns. We went to the Dromberg stone circle, like a mini replica of Stonehenge, and the country was beautiful there. We stopped in at a pub for some lunch and there were these old men sitting outside with their pints of guinness speaking gaelic. Ah, Ireland!