2019 Ireland & Scotland

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All photos for this trip can be found in our
2019 Ireland/Scotland Photo Album
Some are also shown in our weekly blogs.

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This was our first ever visit to Ireland and our second to Scotland.  This trip had these main objectives:

1. See what we think of Air Canada's direct Vancouver to Dublin flight as a way to get to Europe without going through London Heathrow.
2. See some of Ireland to get a taste of it. 
3. See more of northern Scotland while revisiting the Outer Hebrides, Orkneys and Shetlands.
4. Visit, in Aberdeen, with friends Ann and Andy who we connected with two years ago.
5. Return to Shetland for this year's 10th anniversary of Wool Week and for Kris to see more of Shetland.

We accomplished all.

After spending a few days in Dublin we embarked on our short tour of Ireland. We spent about 10 days in Ireland and Northern Ireland before flying to Glasgow from Belfast. This map shows the general route from Dublin west across Ireland then north to Londonderry and Southeast to Belfast...

Despite a tad too much rain, it was an interesting time. The Book of Kells at Trinity College in Dublin was pretty cool to see (we had seen it many years ago in San Francisco).  In Doolin, we experienced great Irish pubs along with the scenic Aran Islands. Londonderry, with it's murals was an eye-opener and Belfast seemed that if Brexit goes awry, things there could get pretty tense again with possible relapse into more of "The Troubles".

From Belfast we flew to Glasgow, picked up our rental car and  headed, in the continuing rain, to Oban on the west coast, out to the Outer Hebrides, back across the Isle of Skye then north through the highlands to Orkney's, south to Dundee and St Andrews, north to Aberdeen and on to the Shetlands by ferry. Our general route across Scotland covered 21 days and about 2000 miles...

In Aberdeen we met up with friends Ann and Andy as planned. We had a great dinner together and they took us on a couple of tours outside of Aberdeen. Foggy and rainy weather were a bit of a bugger but we had a really nice time. Thank you Ann and Andy :-)

From Aberdeen we took the overnight ferry to Lerwick on Shetland. Wool Week was a lot of fun again and, this year being the 10th anniversay, there were so many more exhibits, shows and many more attendees this year than two years ago. This year Kris took fewer classes so we had more time to visit exhibits and explore around Shetland.

At the end of Wool Week we flew to Edinburgh for a few days when we did a stop at Scotland's People to do a bit of family history research. No big finds but some interesting info.  Then we flew to Dublin for a couple of days before catching our return flight to Vancouver and home.

Although we had a lot of rain, all in all, we had a pretty darn good time.

The direct flights from Vancouver to Dublin, return, were handy given that we avoided Heathrow but we did run into some hassles on the smaller regional air flight from Belfast to Glasgow. We'll have to think about what to do if there is another Wool Week in our future.

Here's our weekly breakdown of our trip...

Week 1: Courtenay BC to Doolin, Ireland
Week 2: Doolin to Belfast, Northern Ireland
Week 3: Belfast to Lochmaddy, North Uist, Scotland
Week 4: Lochmaddy to Crask Inn, Lairg, Scotland
Week 5: Crask Inn to Dundee, Scotland
Week 6: Dundee to Lerwick, Shetland, Scotland
Week 7: Lerwick to Edinburgh, Scotland
Week 8: Edinburgh to Courtenay, BC