Greetings from sunny Ireland!

Hi everyone!
Ok, here's the scoop. We flew from SFO to JFK. Jeff and I had never been to New York before; now we have. We tried to look for icons of the city but that airport takes up the whole view; plus it was nighttime. The flight was great and the people at Delta were superb. We slept on our flight from NY to Dublin and have so far not felt any jet lag. We are even sleeping at normal Ireland times.

We are staying in the town of Leixlip. We arrived at our hotel to find that we have a premier room. It's large and very nice. Breakfast comes with the room and it's quite a feast. Seems that almost any breakfast you order comes with sauteed mushrooms and either black pudding, white pudding or both. Black pudding is made from dried pigs blood. We haven't found out what's in the white pudding.

This shows Leixlip's main street and shops. You can see Jeff at one of the three HUGE windows in our room. Also, the pix of the tables with covers and a mirrored fireplace is where we eat our complimentary breakfast.




Jeff has already had a walk through with Intel on Friday making sure everything for the class was set.

On Saturday we took the Wild Wicklow bus tour that came highly recommended. We were able to see all different areas of Ireland. It was a wonderful tour with the highlight being a 6th Century Monastic settlement in Glendalough. Oh, and by the way, Ireland is having flooding in the counties of Cork and Galway; they haven't had this type of natural disaster in over 2.5 decades. On our tour, we stood on top of a hill while the winds gusted around us at gale force and higher (See top pix). Seriously, that wind could have easily taken anyone too close to the edge, right over it. My yellow poncho turned into a sail and was pulling me along. It was great!










The remains of the church had ruins as old as the 600's and we were there! It was amazing.



Tour ends back in Dublin and we had to find our way back home to Leixlip, which is about a half hour away by bus. We went back to the same bus stop we had been dropped off but found out that to catch the bus back, we needed to be two blocks over. We found it and were able to get home. The public transportation is great. Driving in Dublin would be a nightmare if on our own.