Lisbon, Portugal

At the end of September our friends Chris & Christine came to visit all the way from California.  They stayed with us for 5 days then went on to Madrid for 3 days and then we met them in Lisbon, Portugal.  This was our first time in Portugal and we had a blast.  We arrived Friday night and left Sunday evening, it was a quick trip as Jeff was busy at the office. Instead of staying at a hotel we opted to rent an apartment in Lisbon as it was the same cost as one hotel room.  The apartment was 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, kitchen, laundry, living area, etc.  It was very roomy...much larger than our apartment here in Spain. 

Friday night we walked around a bit and had dinner.

Lisbon is very hilly as you can see here.  There many sets of staircases to climb in order to get around town.  In the background you can see St. George's castle.

 Train station.

 Plaza near our apartment, in the background is St. George's castle.

Saturday we decided to take the hop on hop off bus that goes around the city.  This is the 25th of April bridge, which looks like the golden gate bridge right?  It is, it was designed/constructed by the same company that erected the golden gate bridge.

Tower of Belem.  We were able to climb to the top, but it took awhile as there was only 1 spiral staircase to go up and down. 

The ground floor in the Tower of Belem.

Here is the bridge again from the Tower, you can see the Christ statue on the right.

 Christine & Chris

I will continue the rest of our trip in another post.

Dublin, Ireland: Part 2

We have so many pictures from our time in Dublin so I thought it was best to break-up the post.  We really enjoyed Dublin, although, it could have been a little warmer.  We would like to go back to go through the countryside next time.  I guess one of us will need to learn how to drive a manual car in the mean time.

This is the monument of light, it is right off the river liffey.

Trinity College to see the book of Kells. We took a tour given by one of the students.

A huge Oregon maple on the campus.

Marion Square row houses. 

St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Waiting for the bus, cold and wet.

Dublin, Ireland-Part 1

After our road trip along the Irish countryside we made our way to Dublin.  Jeff and I spent the next few days there and Nick and Rachel went to Germany for Oktoberfest.  

Entrance to Dublin Castle.

The cathedral at Dublin castle.

The living quarters at Dublin castle.

Christ Church cathedral.

The oldest pub in Dublin.  We ended up having lunch here, it was lovely.

Jeff had Guinness stew...I had pot roast, no picture of that since it didn't look as good as Jeff's stew.

Jeff and I toured this church, St. Michan's.  The draw is that the tour is of the crypt and there are a few instances you can see a few mummified corpses.  Below the church is limestone, which caused the corpses to mummified since it is so dry down there.  The church doesn't maintain the crypts so there were a few bodies that were out of their coffins.  Jeff actually touched one of them, I guess it is suppose to give you good luck for 1 year.  I passed.

 It was difficult to down there.

Our trip to the Jameson Distillery.

The post office, which is suppose to have bullet holes in the facade.