On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
Today, pictures from valued commenter piratedan.
As a graduation present for our eldest when we were flush financially was to take him on a trip of his choosing and he chose Ireland, what follows is a smattering of items that we took snaps of while we were there in the early summer of 07. We elected to do it on our own, so after a couple of days in a Dublin hotel, we took a train to Galway, spent a night there and then rented a car to head to a central location which was a townhome in a more or less central location and in American fashion drove around the country to see what we could see in day trips. We visited The Burrens, Dingle, Cork, Waterford, Kilkenny and spent a good amount of time actually seeing the country. Awesome experience….
because we needed at least one flower picture to balance out all of the grey stone, here’s a splash of color…
Looks like a great trip! I vaguely remember visiting Dublin (even saw Pirates of Penzance at some great theatre!) between Christmas and New Year’s. It was cold, damp, cold, dark, cold, but I did get to kiss the Blarney Stone, reinforcing my gift of the gab. I was 14, and we left the theatre around 10 on New Year’s eve, and my mother was wearing her prize fur coat. Two older teenage Irish girls were repulsed by it, and unbeknownst to her, sprayed some pink shaving cream on her back. I stood there and grinned at these cute animal activists (a cause I then and still do support!) while not defending my mother. Not my finest moment…
Thank you so much piratedan, do send us more when you can.
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email
J R in WV
Nice photos. What’s the story that goes with Pic#4, the COM Visitor Center, which looks like it’s built under a landslide?
Ireland is very pretty, and all the photos come out well.
G’ mornin’ All~! from me who’s up with insomnia, past even the mediction helping, drat it. I’ll make my third swing at catching some sleep here in another little while…
Mary G
Another place in my bucket list. I tried to Google the COM center but no luck; I’m also curious about what it is. And Alain, you are a rascal. Did it come off?
raven
Awesome!
debbie
All of the photos are beautiful, but where is that “bit of perspective”?
Alain the site fixer
@Mary G: yes. And I plan to turn that coat into a blanket for col winter nights. I still carry the shame of not defending her/
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
Gorgeous; thanks for sharing these.
satby
COM= Cliffs of Moher visitor center. It’s cut into the back of a ridge so as not to despoil the silhouette of the cliffs.
Lovely pictures piratedan!
Lee
How hard was it to drive on the other side ?
Waratah
My great great grandparents were Irish and your lovely photos have moved Ireland up on my bucket list.
rikyrah
The pictures are beautiful ??
Quinerly
??
JPL
What wonderful pictures and thanks again to Alain for setting up our very own travelogue.
Ohio Mom
I have a hand-me-down fur coat too that I do not know what to do with. I haven’t any ocassion or reason to wear it. It is very warm, maybe too warm for southern Ohio.
Having fur was the thing back in the post war years, most of the women in my mother’s generation seemed to have one when I was very young. Or at the least, a stole.
Among the dads, there were one or two furriers; in fact, back in Europe, my paternal grandfather was apprenticed to a furrier before he snuck off to America (“Apprentice!” my mother would sneer, “He was an indentured servant.”).
I think what I am trying to say, fur is one of those anachronisms. You can’t judge people in the past for not having the same values we do today (though I think you can hold it against people today for not evolving).
cosima
Lovely photos. It’s been 30+ years since I’ve been to Ireland. Guess it’s time to go back!
Elizabelle
@Ohio Mom: I think have a cover made for it, and wear it warmly; can leave it open if it’s too warm.
I wonder if Etsy would throw a merchant off, if the product was “slipcovers” for fur coats, so they can be worn. These are decades ago murders of mink …
Or a mink throw, as Alain is thinking of … and that sounds most luxurious and frequently used.
Maybe you can have Mnemosyne knit you a camouflage cover for the mink …
piratedan
just waking up out here in the west…. a couple of answers/notes…
the Visitor center is actually burrowed down into the cliffs themselves, which I thought was a bit of nifty engineering and they even have a “window” where the vista is generated from “inside” the cliffs themselves, albeit a few hundred feet down…
the bit of perspective shot was to get the arches and the sheep below and yet I also managed to catch the hills and a distant “range” in the background, so it actually had some horizon in it which for some reason I enjoy…
as for driving on the other side, the spouse elected to handle the chauffeur duties and we only had to stop for sheep once… we picked a cottage around Dromineer to stay for a week and on each day a different destination… Waterford, Kilkenney, Cork, Dingle etc was a great way to see the actual country…
Tazj
Beautiful pictures, I regret not taking the opportunity to go to Ireland with my sister and her friends years ago.
PAM Dirac
@Lee: When I was in County Clare I found that most of the roads were not much bigger than one lane, so regardless of which “side” you were on, when another car was coming you had to slow down and work it out. The locals also made it easy, it was very laid back. If you started to go the wrong way in a traffic circle they would just laugh and point you in the right direction. Not a single horn honk in the week I was there. Driving from Ennis out to Doolin going 35-40mph made you feel like you were the most reckless driver in the world. A local would come up behind you, follow at a sensible distance and when there finally was a little room so you could pull over and let them pass, they would just give a friendly wave and zoom off at 60-65 mph. It’s been too long since I’ve been there. Luckily I retire in a few months :-)
Origuy
@PAM Dirac: In Scotland there are rules about what to do on single tracks; I was given a brochure from the local council when I went there the last time. If you see someone approaching near a layby (a wide spot for passing), the first to reach the layby stops at the layby. If the layby is on their left, they pull to the left into it; if the layby is on their right, they pull as far to the right as possible and wait for the other car to drive around in the layby. They have the laybys fairly often; they are usually marked either by a sign or a black and white post.
I suspect Ireland has a similar system, as does northern England. I don’t remember who backs up if there is no nearby layby.
MoeLarryAndJesus
BTW, it’s the Burren, not the Burrens.
I strongly suggest that anyone passing through County Galway stop at Yeats’ Tower, which is near the town of Gort. It’s a much better use of your time than that frigging Blarney Stone.
eclare
Beautiful photos