June 2009

The beginning of June seems to be moving at shooting star pace; it's hard to believe it's already the 2nd week of June. The weather was absolutely fantastic during their stay; we had the sunshine for almost days and a heatwave of temps in the upper 70s! Many of the Irish were sunburnt the following day. We enjoyed having my grandparents here and were able to see parts of Ireland that we hadn't seen yet. Grandparents are so good for stories...especially the times when they both remember them slightly different. :)

With my grandparents we went to Galway and spent the afternoon/evening enjoying the Galway Volvo Ocean Race. Galway Volvo Ocean Race; The Volvo Ocean Race is the world's premier yacht race for professional racing crews and is the 10th running of this ocean marathon. Starting from Alicante in Spain the race spans some 37,000 nautical miles, stopping at 11 ports and taking nine months to complete. This is the first year that it stopped Ireland; the race occurs every 4 years.

Race details; stopping points: Alicante, 11 October 2008 Cape Town, 15 November 2008 Kochi (India), 13 December 2008 Singapore, 18 January 2009 Qingdao, 14 February 2009 Rio De Janeiro, 11 April 2009 Boston, 16 May 2009 Galway, 6 June 2009 Göteborg, 14 June 2009 Stockholm, 25 June 2009 St Petersburg, 27 June 2009.

From Galway we ventured over to Connemara, our new favourite part of Ireland...narrow, winding roads, sheep everywhere, green pastures...so picturesque and straight out of the Travel channel. Brian and I were back-seat passengers; my grandpa did all the driving and though at times his gear shifting was a little off, he did a fabulous job navigating the roads on the other side.
In Connemara we stayed in Clifden, a small, but cute town with pubs, boutiques, and good restaurants. We saw the Kylemore Abbey, drove to Westport in County Mayo, another cute, but larger town.

The Dublin Rebels continue their winning streak and are hoping to win all their games in Brussels at the end of the month when they go to play in the European Atlantic Cup. Unfortunately, Brian has been off the football field the last 3 weeks due to an injury at the May 21st game against the Rhinos. The verdict is that he has a partial tear on his right rotator cuff in his shoulder, so that's kept him sidelined but he's been working daily on strengthening it and doing physio exercises with high hopes of being able to play in Brussels.

June brings loads of festivals; we went to the Maritime festival the end of May which was celebrating all things 'maritime.' The liffey (the river) was lined up with booths of food, clothes, gifts, candles, etc. The weekend of June 19th Temple Bar will celebrate Midsummer--the longest day of the year--with music, food, movies outside, and all around good craic. That same weekend Dublin is hosting the Street Performance World Championship; this should be interesting...the streets will be full of magicians, mime, breakdancers, jugglers, clowns, etc. Stay tuned for pics and details.