This morning started with blue sky and even the weather app on my Iphoe didn’t warn me that it could change. So we planned to drive to John F. Kennedy Memorial park to enjoy the sunny day, summer feeling and the last day at the seaside home. But the weather was not our friend today, so just a bit after getting started, the big grey clouds turned up and hid the sun and very soon it started to pour rain. We didn’t turn around but hoped that it will pass and so we reached to the park with totally heavy rain and wetness all around. As it seemed to clear up a little, we left the car and went to look for the tickets and then Sean’s sister came to a genial plan – we took the horse and carriage and got a horseman who was a real hobby botanist and gave us a good overview of all the trees that we passed.
Ireland is rich of US presidents who in some odd ways seem to descend from here or are connected through some relatives. JFK is not an exception. His roots go back to Dunganstown and his great-grandfather left Ireland in 1848. Probably for the same reason as all the others, to escape from poverty and look for a better life. JFK visited Ireland in 1963 when he visited his family farm and went to see his relatives. the John F Kennedy’s Memorial Park is dedicated to his memory. It’s a huge area with a collection of over 4500 trees and shrubs. The rain stopped when we were driving in the carriage and everything was so green and fresh and smelled so well. All the photos are taken from the carriage when it was driving 🙂
When our horse ride was over the rain was over too and we enjoyed some tea and cakes and watched the local children’s’ party on the playground and just wandered around.
Before going back I was taken to Heaven. We drove up and up and again up and reached almost to the top of the world where you could see almost the whole Ireland. Ok, I am exaggerating a bit but it was very high and the view was unbelievably beautiful and I guess it was possible to see almost the whole County around you. If there’s a real Heaven somewhere, I’d really want to imagine that I could sit there on the edge of the cloud and look at the whole Ireland for ages 🙂 I am not going to write that it started to rain again, and the wind went quite wild, and my summer dress, which could have been a right thing to wear on the photos of such an amazing place, wanted to fly away and I had to run back to the car, taking the photos on my run and staring around to catch a bit more of that beauty.
When getting nearer to Connemara, there were already more sheep than cows and none of them was lying. They all looked very colourful, of course, their real colour was white, but their heads were black and they all had painted red or blue stripes on their backs and they all had horns, even the girls 🙂 Estonian sheep never have horns, at least I have never seen them. The painted stripes have different meanings as our guide told us – they can mark the owner or if the sheep is sheared or not and probably something more that only the real sheep owners can understand.
I cannot leave out the fact that after our lunch we were given the free vouchers for the Castle tour and were welcomed back any time. The 
Our tour guide is named John and he promises to speak as a real Dubliner and so he does all through the tour. He has thousands of jokes, stories and competitions, he predicts the weather, sings Galway girl, teaches us to swear politely and in an Irish way, using the word “feck”, which really doesn’t sound too rude, but a bit funny. And the least but not the last, at the same time he drives the big green Paddywagon bus with joyful elegance through all these narrow roads, and never loses his positive spirit, even not when we lose a couple on the Baby Cliffs. Ok, they just sat on the wrong bus and met us at the next stop, which means that at the same time there were more than one Paddywagon buses, to be honest, there were three.
The landscape is green, so green and even greener, with some rocks and lambs, cows and small houses, sprinkled over all that greenness that make up the Emerald Island. The name Emerald Island is the perfect match to Ireland, if you haven’t seen it, you will never believe how many different shades of green are possible to find there. The stone fences seem to be here as popular as on Estonian Islands, so I am pretty sure about our same Viking ancestors.
After twirling on the crooked roads that go up and down, back and forth, we end at the ruins of Corcomroe Abbey, a place where the Cistercian monks used to live in the 13th century. The abbey is located in Cleare County and is made of limestones, again something familiar. The views under the abbey vaults are nice, green and bumpy, but the big dark clouds are following us and when we are running on the bus it rains already. One of the Irish kings was buried under the abbey and lots of other noble and not so noble persons into the small graveyard that surrounded the abbey. Someone asked the guide if nowadays the graveyard was used and in which reasons you could be buried there. The guide answered that the only reason for that was to be dead (and of course preferably local, I guess).
With a rainy day, we visited the most haunted house in Ireland – the Loftushall. It is said that the Devil himself had visited that place and put a hex on a daughter so that her ghost hasn’t found peace till now and haunts in the house. In the 90-s one boldfaced man started to run a hotel in the house but on one night all the guests and staff ran away without any explanations and left all their belongings into the house and never came back to take away a thing. After that, the house has been abandoned and no one had wanted to come to live there. Nowadays it’s a tourist place, where they make guided tours with ghosts jumping from around the corners and spooking the poor tourists who have willingly paid for getting scared. But it is said that the house decides on its own who can stay there and for how long time. It seemed that our stay was quite accepted because we didn’t meet any real ghosts but of course, we did our tour and went quickly away. Maybe the ghost has got used to the crowds and stays still in some hidden place 🙂
Tintern Abbey was founded in 1200 by Count William of Marshall and it got its name after the bigger namesake in Wales.
One of the vainest family members let to build such kind of a bridge, just only because its decorative and beautiful appearance. And especially decorative it looks seen through the upper window of the Abbey where our tour guide tells us stories about the Colclough family’s history. Yes, we are having a guided tour, so smart. The tour guide makes the place more alive, especially that she knows a lot about the characters and habits of every single person who has lived there.
That’s how they built the walls during the old times – the blend between the lattice was made from so many different ingredients that the restoration workers of nowadays were not able to catch up on it. But at least they tried! And it’s possible to see the wall building process in different stages. The guide says that this filling made the walls warm keeping and let the stone breathe. Probably it will make sense for our school’s construction department 🙂
The little road that goes through the wood takes you to the Colclough Walled Gardens, which have been restored and trimmed recently and look quite nice. You need to buy a ticket again when entering the gardens, but I think they are collecting money for some more restoration work. The gardens are nice, full of flowers and there’s also an orchard part with vegetables and scarecrow which looks huge and decorative, probably not so decorative for the crows. In Estonia, we call these things not Scarecrows, but Scarepeas, instead, although they are meant to scare the crows, not the peas 🙂
A trip to whiskey factory, that was meant to be a year before, was carried out now. I guess it was one of the rainiest weathers and so we had to pick something that will take us indoors. In that place, you again have to take a guided tour and at the end of the tour, when it’s possible to taste different whiskeys, you could get a Jameson Irish 
Congratulations! You toured, you tasted, and now you can tell the world. Thanks for visiting the home of Jameson and toasting over 230 years of history. Enjoy your Jameson Irish 
Dublin Accent 