Monday, 7th. Left Galway to head down to Cork, Ireland's second largest city. Primary reason for going to Cork is to visit Blarney Castle. However, Cork itself has proved to be a destination in its own right. A very vibrant, cosmopolitan city with a large student component. Our first night was spent at a B&B, the Blarney Stone Guesthouse. We only stayed one night (check out the photos on the website). That's not to say it was a bad place to stay. The owne...

We left Dublin on Sunday to drive across to Galway, about a 2 hour drive to the western coast of Ireland. Galway is a real gem. A mix of old and new. Bookstores, pubs, cafes, more pubs, and more pubs. The weather has turned to the miserable side of the weather vane. Wet and windy. But not as cold as we thought it would be - about 10C. After a turn around the city area, we found a great little pub to have some lunch in. Julie had a beef and Guinness stew whil...

On to Ireland. First stop Dublin. A bit of a change to our itinerary. Instead of spending a couple of days in Dublin, we've decided to hire a car and do a mini tour of Ireland (Galway, Cork, Kilkenny etc). We spent the evening doing a bit of exploring around the city area of Dublin - lovely place. Lots of cobbled streets, old pubs and bars. Tomorrow we'll head west across the country for a visit to Galway. We're loving Ireland already.

Well, we made it to Paris in one piece (7 hour drive). Even negotiated the craziness of driving around the Arc de Triomphe (12 lanes, 12 exits, nil lanes marked) to our hotel for the night. Ahhhhhh, Paris. What can you say? Ropme was great. Florence was magnificent. Milan was wonderful. But Paris, well, Paris is Paris. It's like no other city. In the evening we caught the Metro to the Saint Germaine area for supper. On the way we passed the Louvre and Notre D...

And so on to Chamonix and Mont Blanc. Landed in Lyon ok. In fact we were 20 minutes early. Collected our luggage (more on luggage later), and found our way to the Hertz car rental office to pick up our car. They gave us a Peugeot 5008, the same one we had last year, so we were familiar with how it worked, especially the navigation system. By the time we got on the road, it was late afternoon and getting dark. Raining as well. Looked up BBC weather before we l...