Our trip to Ireland 2013

On July 21, 2013 Howard and I left for our trip of a lifetime to Scotland and Ireland! It was a 2 week bus tour with 35 friends from the US! Yes, we were the only Canadians on the bus! We had wonderful bus drivers and tour guides. I hope some of our American friends will join the blog and post their comments. Following are the pictures from Day 1 of our trip!

We arrive...........Can't believe we are here!

Our hotel for the first two nights!

Another view of our hotel!

Stirling Castle

Part of an old ruin as seen from Stirling Castle

WOW! what a handsome hunk! oh I was distracted! WOW! What a view!

A very animated tour guide for Stirling Castle!

Amazing Architecture!

Samples of the foods they ate!

Another view from Stirling Castle

A fantastic wall for defence!

A dungeon cell!

Our first, of two great bus drivers, Peter!

This is a watch-tower in a cemetery to keep the grave robbers away!

Edinburgh Castle

I was amazed at all the chimneys 

You saw this a lot in the skyline!

I believe this is part of the Royal Mile

Quite often you would see a bush or a flower growing out of the side, or on the top of a building like this!

This was our tour guide for our ghost walk in Edinburg

Had to get a pic of this! 

Just some of the homes

Narrow street and just stone buildings everywhere!

Edinburgh Castle

This is the restaurant where we had our first meal together as a group!

A sample of the many, many good dishes we had while in Scotland and |Ireland!

Couldn't resist taking pics of this unique ladies restroom!

And YES, they are urinals!!

Pat and Henry

Brenda and  Howard

The end of our first day and we gathered for a welcome drink from our bus driver. We were suppose to have it before we went out to supper but a fire alarm got pulled in our hotel and the hotel had to be evacuated! People were coming out with towel on their heads as this was the first opportunity we had to get cleaned up since the morning before, as most of us had traveled overnight from North Ameria!! By the time we got back into the hotel it was time to leave for supper.

If you look close you can see a shamrock shape on the top of this Guinness Beer