A goal of ours for 2014 is to share more of our personal life and travel photos on our blog. We thought we would start with our 2012 trip to Ireland.

While staying just outside Dublin at the Louis Fitzgerald, Katie and I rented a car and took to the roads. Mind you it was the opposite side of the road and the stick for the manual car was in my left hand and the roads were nearly half the size as they are is the US, but we survived and have quite a few stories to tell.

At the time, Joren, now two, was just five months old and we weren’t about to leave him behind and miss out on all the fun, so we took him along much like our camera gear and he lived on our backs.

When we weren’t getting lost driving around in circles and listening to the nice British man’s voice on the GPS, we were taking in the view up and down the Irish coast. One of our favorite stops was in the Wicklow Forest – a place called Glendalough, meaning “glen of two lakes.” There a monastic settlement founded in the 6^th century by St. Kevin still stands alongside an aging cemetery filled with lichen covered Celtic Crosses.

Not far from Glendalough is Powerscourt Waterfall – the highest waterfall in Ireland at 121 meters high.  Water just so happens to be my element and I absolutely love photographing and playing in rivers. I really must invest in some underwater equipment at some point so these two loves of mine can come together.

On the west side of the Island we visited the city of Limerick in the province of Munster. There we toured King John’s Castle; I just so happen to be descended from John Lackland King of England – who truthfully wasn’t the greatest man to have ever lived. We also visited Galway where were saw the Cliffs of Moher. Katie captured a photo of Bunratty Castle in County Clare, Ireland as we drove by.

Being of Irish Ancestry and also a history buff, every turn felt like a new adventure, and looked like it was straight from the movie Braveheart (in fact some of the scenes were shot in the Wicklow Mountains). I was surprised to see so much open space and farmland there were sheep and beef cattle on nearly every field we saw. We were fascinated to discover that there were no mosquitoes on the island so residents would leave their windows open without screens.

 There is something about visiting a ruin that is older the United States itself that makes you realize how very short our time on earth is. One of the pubs we ate at was over 1000 years old! There are likely spots in Wisconsin that people have never stepped on before. If you haven’t guessed, Katie and I can’t wait to go back, however next time we hope to bring back many more photographs.

* All images were edited with the New VSCO Film 05 Presets