I'm Baaaaack

I hope all my Irish and non-Irish Friends and family alike had a fantastic St. Paddy's day last weekend. Peadar and I sure did, escaping to the west of Ireland in beautiful Connemara.  Today, however, is apocalyptic.  There are umbrella carcasses littering the streets. I hope we aren't in for a flood of October 2011 all over again!!

I realize it has been months since I've posted last (Nov. 11th to be exact) but I have had the busiest time of my life recently. A new job, lots of travel and new club activities have been taking up an incredible amount of my time. But as Peadar said to me "We have done so much amazing stuff since you blogged last, you have to get on it ASAP!". 

So here goes...

Pad and I aren't big Valentine's Day people. The last few years we have both had sports practice on, or something or other. I think it's romantic if I get flowers. But St. Paddys day, now that is a holiday. Surprisingly enough we didn't stay in Dublin with the big parade and tourist central, but we did manage to have a very Irish St. Patrick's Day. I'm not a huge fan of people who post ecards on Facebook every day to express their feelings, but in the case below, I had to make an exception. Pad's friend Philip "20 Pints" Daly posted the following ecard:

St. Patrick's day is like Valentine's day for people who love Jameson and bad decisions. Like us. 

So on St. Paddy's day we decided to head down to the Delphi Mountain Resort in beautiful Connemara. I had been as far west as Galway, but hadn't gone so far out into the mountainous country as Delphi. There is literally no mobile service, no wifi, no TV's in the rooms at the hotel, etc. But it is beautiful and you can go hiking and adventure type activities and most importantly, chill out in the spa.

Connemara is also a land of bogs. Have you ever heard of blog snorkeling? Yeah, I didn't think so. National sport of Ireland ;)

So on the drive up, we passed through a bunch of little towns like Moycullen, and got to see their St. Patrick's day parades, which was great. We even came across this car that was dressed up like a sheep!

There are loads and loads of sheep in the west of Ireland. It's all sheep farms and some dairy farms, because the soil to too rocky for farming. The sheep wander the roads so you have to look out for them!

Once at the resort, we had a healthy morning walk! There was actually snow on the mountain tops, we have had a pretty cold spring.

In keeping with the tradition of this blog, it wouldn't be a good post unless I put up a funny picture of the Padman.  

So happy, freezing cold Spring to you all. Hopefully as the saying goes, March will be "in like a lion and out like a lamb."  Peadar and I are headed to Belfast this evening for a water polo game of mine, staying at my favorite hotel, the Merchant.

We were also up North at the beginning of the year when all the flag controversy craziness was happening, so you will hear about that in my next post, which I think will be all about Belfast!  

Have a good week this week,

Amanda