Thursday was spent shopping, shopping, shopping. The deals were much better here with the better exchange rate. The stores were small and the people very friendly. Heather showed us all of the great places to shop on Nassau and Grafton Streets. Irish wools, irish lace, irish whiskey - all were wonderful. After shopping we had lunch at a great cafe. It was called the Lemmon Co. and served crepes fixed with any ingredients you could imagine. It had started to...

Wednesday was travel day from Scotland to Ireland. Unfortunately most of the day was spent in buses and airports. However upon arrival in Ireland, a bus picked us up and drove us to the Wicklow Mountains. The weather was rainy and dark and the trip was not as much fun as the Highalnd trip. Once you have seen the Highlands, the others pale to comparison. The driver was inexperienced but it was still worth seeing. There was a great old hotel/restaurant at th...

We played hookie from class and visited the Scottish National Museum. It was wonderful. Clint was able to guess all of the machines in the historical part without looking at the tags. After we left the museum, we decided to jump on random buses and go to different parts of the city. At each stop we met different people and then would jump back on and go back into the city. It was great. We then walked down Rose Street (the street with the pubs and shopping)...

On Saturday we took an open air bus tour of the city on a double-decker bus. You could get off at several stops and then jump back on. It was great. The weather was great. We then did some sourvenir shopping and headed off for a nap. We just can't get on schedule. Saturday evening we went Pub Hopping after eating dinner at an outside cafe (Mussels Inn - we thought of Charles as you could order Mussels by the Kilo). Clint got caught up in the middle of several bac...

Our visit to the Edinburgh Castle was phenomenal. We got to hear the cannon blast at 1 pm. They don't shoot the cannon off at noon so they can save 11 rounds of ammunition -- those Scotts always conserving. We also visited the crown jewels -- no pictures allowed. What a sight. After we left the castle, we went on a tour of the Scottish Parliament. It was interesting to see such a new regime after coming from our 200+ year history. They were very concerned about m...