Galena is such a pretty town! Before leaving this monring we drove down to see Ulysses S. Grant’s home, perched on a hill overlooking the town. It’s in a lovely setting and he must have counted himself lucky as it was gifted to him by the grateful people of Galena…
We were able to indulge in a later start this morning as our first stop for the day didn’t open until 10.00am and it was only 20 minutes away – we set off for the Williamsburg Outlet stores! Woo Hoo! I love Outlet shopping in the USA, we always manage…
I slept like a log last night! At breakfast we shared the room with a favourite son of Winterset, John Wayne. he was born here and so our first stop after leaving the hotel was his home which is now, naturally, a museum. Along the front path was a series…
We’re back! After three long years we’re finally returned to the USA again to work on our 50 states mega-mission. The first part of our night-before indulgence stay at the Sydney Rydges Airport was wonderful …. to toast the upcoming trip with some bubbly and watch the evening flights come…
We have transited through Singapore Airport on several previous occasions but this time we decided to do a brief stopover. The flight from Helsinki to Singapore was ( thanks again to Frequent Flyer points) in Business Class. Nice to have the preliminary bubbles and the lie flat bed for an…
We had a lazier start this morning and an easy breakfast in the apartment. Nearby there were two lovely lakes so we set off at around 11am for a stroll around the lakes and then up to the Temppeliaukio Rock Church. Excavated directly into solid rock, the Temppeliaukio church , completed in…
Yesterday was just a transit day, one of those boring days that comes up now again when travelling. Our route from Dublin to Helsinki was via Stockholm with SAS. BOTH flights were delayed so it was quite late before we finally arrived in Helsinki ( in the pouring rain! There’s…
Before coming to Belfast I knew that I wanted to learn some more about the “Troubles”, that incredibly turbulent time in Northern Ireland history that had been such common news on the news broadcasts when I was a teenager. So I booked us on a tour this morning, Paddy Campbell’s…
Kippers! After two weeks of “Full Scottish” and “Full Irish” breakfast I was excited to see Kippers on the menu this morning.I haven’t eaten them for years, and very nice they were too. It ws drizzly again in the morning but as we approached the border with Northern Ireland the…
We had the breakfast room to ourselves this morning so the proprieter came over to chat with us is a friendly way. When we had our Pub Crawl tour in Dublin, the musician told us all that the Irish will always want to know all about you, they’re just naturally…
It took us several minutes to get over Killaloe Bridge this morning, waiting our turn while the complicated traffic light system funnels about 6 separate streets worth of traffic over the narrow bridge. However, eventually we were driving along the shore of Lough Derg, a little gobsmacked at the very…
When most people think of Ireland they think Dublin, Belfast, Killarney, Limerick etc, but not many think of Killaloe. However for me it was a must visit location in Ireland and I’m very excited to be staying the night in the town…more to come on that later… The B &…
