My private garden at the Bantry House in Ireland

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” – Oscar Wilde

And what a great place for a quote from this famous Irish author. I heard lotsa stories about this chap during my trek thru the beauty that they call Ireland. You know, I covered so much territory on that trip that the country is still on the bucket list. The list that never ends right?

Before I left the states, I had no real plan or itinerary. Even up to a week before my flight, I had absolutely NO idea where my journey was going to take me. I kinda like it that way as I am sure you might know by now. The great thing about the internet though is all it takes is a mention on Twitter or Facebook to get you started. Enter my friend Fiona Murphy (although we have never actually met). In what seemed like a couple of short days later, a detailed recommendation of what to see and where to stay ends up in my inbox. Not sure if I every thanked you enough for that Fiona…..but…THANKS! Your travel tips and recommendations rocked! Now if you could just do something about that “drive on the left hand side of the road thaang’…..but that’s another story for another blog post someday 🙂

One of her cool and secret locations was this place called the Bantry House. It was a very intriguing place to explore. My comfortable little room overlooked this formal garden. Although the place had its normal procession of tour busses during the day, the place was all mine at night. Literally! I think I was the only person the first night I was there. Kind of a cool place to have to yourself ….. in a sorta Shining Movie way.

On my second night there, after a long day exploring the are with my Nikon, I was a little relieved to be in the company of a couple more travelers that bumbled into my humble little getaway. After a quick bite down in the village (where the common folk were hanging out), we headed back to the mansion and found a kooky little billiard room and played a few games of pool on a table that was the size of Vermont. This thing was HUGE and had about 32 billiard balls. We obviously had NO idea what we were doing, but had a good time making up a few rules as we enjoyed a few drinks from the “Honor Bar” that was in the room. Good times 🙂