Hook Head lighthouse, Waterford Crystal, Tramore

Ok, I loaded all these picture in reverse order, so it will make more sense if you scroll down to the bottom and then read to the top, then it will be in order!! now I will go to the bottom and start telling you about everything.

Our place to stay for the night was in the Cliff Hotel. Five star accomodations (that means they have hair conditioner in the bathroom, a big deal for someone with hair like mine). At the head of the bed is a beautiful glass art piece that when lit up was so nice to look at. We ate like kings here that night, a real privilege.

Just a pretty viewpoint

In Tramore, Chris went surfing and I went shoppping in the shops. He looks way cool here with his hang ten hand sign eh?

A crystal celtic cross, VERY heavy too.

Above again, each cut you see in a crystal piece is individually cut by a master glass cutter who trained for 8 years to do his job. All Waterford crystal is hand cut and designed. You can see the left over grid marks that the cutter uses to put the desin on. NExt time you see crystal, take a close look and you will find that it is not uniform, there are small irregularities since it is hand done.

Here, above, you see the glass makers making one of their wine glasses, made out three seperate pieces of crystal molten stuff (the orange glob). They are putting on the stem.

Next up we have the New Waterford Crystal factory where they don't make waterford crystal. they only make specialty pieces here, the rest is outsourced to Indonesia, or Germany or wherever. This clock is totally made out of crystal and is likely many tens of thousands of Euro in value.

Look, Hook Head Lighthouse!

Next above, we have an old cemetary (duh!) on the way to Hook Head Lighthouse. The drive was so pretty we ended up stopping loads of times to take photos.

We stayed in Wexford, June 28th. Above, are photos from that night in the pub. there was a trio of men playing accordion, guitar, banjo and the booley or something, it looks like the madolin. For the most part, while I played my Uke, likely 50 percent of the time, I was scrambling to try and figure out what chords were in their reels (an Irish instrumental song thats very upbeat and changes key a few times however the force moves the musicians)