Weekend in Kinsale... & my 1st week in Ireland!

So I finally got to Dublin last Tuesday and spent a few days settling in, trying to learn the city, etc. It's really cool so far, definitely a little different than the States even though everyone looks like me and and everyone has the same names as they do in Boston hehe. We got super lucky with the location of our apartment too. It's definitely not glamorous but it's right in downtown Dublin and 5mins from this amazing beautiful park (Phoenix park....pics don't do it justice) but we're really lucky so far!

Anyways I had a meeting with my new boss on Thursday and Brayden had bball that night so on Friday morning we left for our first weekend trip. We had planed to go to Dingle on the West coast but since one of us doesn't fit well on buses... we decided to forgo the 9hr ride to Dingle for a 4.5hr ride South to Cork. We got to Cork Friday early evening, walked around the downtown (not too too much to see but it's nice), dinner, and stayed the night there. The rest of the weekend we spent in this adorable, brilliant little town on the coast called Kinsale.

Saturday we took an early short bus to Kinsale and it was maybe the cutest little town I've ever seen! We had a good breakfast (it's also the 'gourmet food capital of Ireland') which we didn't know but the food was great! Then we spent the whole day bike riding along the coast (it was unexpectedly really hilly!) Brayden took like 20 pictures of cows, I tried to climb over an old castle wall. Overall it was great! Unfortunately this ghost tour I wanted to do wasn't being held that night, but we had a really really awesome din and desert. Oh, also I found a lot of evidence of my name-sake in this little fishing town... among a few things there was a "Cotter Real Estate"!

Sunday we got up early and went to Blarney Castle. Although Rick Steves seriously disses Blarney in his newest Ireland book we both really liked it. The grounds were really pretty and despite me going in with no intention to kiss the Blarney Stone we both ended up doing it... uggg. But hopefully we'll have a lucky year!