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TUNISIA, DAY 1: TUNIS, SIDI BOU SAID, HOTEL ROYAL VICTORIA
 March 20, 2024Tunisia was never on my list of Travel Dreams, but it has been on Bob's for a while.We have traveled in Morocco and Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, so I suppose it was time to hit a central...
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TUNISIA, DAY 2: KAIROUAN - AGHLABID BASINS AND THE GREAT MOSQUE
 March 21, 2014After a non-descript buffet breakfast in the hotel, our guide Feker picked us up at our hotel. This is the courtyard in front of our hotel, accessed by a wonderful stone gate.A sign on...
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TUNISIA, DAY 2 CONT.: KAIROUAN - MAUSOLEAM SIDI ABID AL-GHARIANI, ZAWIYA OF...
March 21, 2024As we walked deeper into the old town section of Kairouan, we came to the Mausoleum of Sidi Abid Al-Ghariani.This building was built as a madrasa (school for studying the Quran) in the...
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TUNISIA, DAY 3: TUNIS - THE BARDO MUSEUM
 March 22, 2024On our way to our next destination, we passed by the Tunisian Parliament building. Its style really seems to fit what we had seen of the country. I love it.Somewhere near there we...
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TUNISIA, DAY 3, CONT.: TUNIS - ST. VINCENT DE PAUL CATHEDRAL, FOOD MARKET,...
 March 22, 2024After breakfast, we took another walk down the Avenue Habib Bourguiba, the street with the promenade in the center that we had walked on the previous night on our way back to our hotel....
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TUNISIA, DAY 3, CONT.: NORTH AFRICA AMERICAN CEMETERY, CARTHAGE, THE ANTONIN...
 March 22, 2024We had two more destinations on our last day in Tunisia, three if you count dinner. The first was the North Africa American Cemetery, 27 acres dedicated in 1960 to hold 2,841 of our...
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ROME: THE ROME TEMPLE,
 March 23-24, 2024    Our return flights to the US went through Rome, where the shortest layover was something like ten hours, so we decided just to take a full day and enjoy some of the Eternal...
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IRELAND: HISTORY, MOVIES, BOOKS
I have long wanted to travel to Ireland, but it never rose to the top of my husband's list. This year we had trips scheduled in March and December, with nothing planned for the summer. Bob just...
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IRELAND: TRAVEL, ARRIVAL, AND EXPLORING KILKENNY
 July 3-4, 2024We left home at about 3:00 PM and made it through downtown LA and to our parking garage in about two hours. Not bad.We had an uneventful check-in for a non-stop flight to Dublin on Aer...
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IRELAND, DAY 2: ROCK OF CASHEL AND HORE ABBEY
 July 5, 2024We were hitting jet lag on the afternoon of our first full day in Ireland, so I picked up a Coke Zero at the gas station. I was intrigued by the ingenuity of the attached cap. That's a...
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IRELAND, DAY 2: CORK
 July 5, 2024Our next destination was Cork, located in (what else) County Cork, the largest and southernmost county of Ireland.With a population of about 225,000, Cork is the second largest city in...
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IRELAND, DAY 3: MINARD CASTLE, THE DINGLE PENINSULA, AND SLEA HEAD DRIVE
 July 6, 2024Our plan had been to start the day at Blarney Castle, but when we tried to get tickets online, they were sold out. That's okay--we didn't feel a great need to kiss the Blarney Stone and...
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IRELAND, DAY 4: DANIEL O'CONNELL MEMORIAL CHURCH
 July 7, 2024On our way to the scenic Ring of Kerry Drive, we passed through Cahersiveen, population 1,300. When we saw the Daniel O'Connell Memorial Church looming over the village, we decided to take...
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IRELAND, DAY 4: THE KERRY CLIFFS
 July 7, 2024After leaving the Daniel O'Connell Memorial Church, our goal for the day was to complete the Ring of Kerry Scenic Drive. We started by driving our car onto the Valentia Island Ferry, which...
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IRELAND, DAY 4: THE SKELLIG RING AND RING OF KERRY SCENIC DRIVES
 July 7, 2024It was 1:00 and we were hungry. We had bought some snacks at our last gas station stop and were ready to eat them.Bob found a grassy knoll where we could sit down and enjoy the cool...
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IRELAND, DAY 5: CLIFFS OF MOHER
 July 8, 2024A 2.25 hour drive got us from our hotel in Castleisland to the Cliffs of Moher, the #2 attraction in Ireland after the #1 Guiness Brewery Tour (which was not on our itinerary). In 2022,...
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IRELAND, DAY 5: SLIGO
 July 8, 2024Sligo, population 20,000, is located on the coast just west of Northern Ireland.As we drove into town, I spotted this mural, which I have since identified as the 1916 Easter Rising Mural....
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IRELAND, DAY 6: SLIGO'S YEATS TRAIL
July 9, 2024After I spent a few minutes with the statue of Yeats in Sligo, we got on the "Yeats Trail," which takes visitors to several sites around Sligo that are somehow connected to the famous...
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NORTHERN IRELAND: DERRY/LONDONDERRY, PART I (CITY WALLS, ST. COLUMB'S...
 July 9, 2024We drove from Drumcliffe Church outside of Sligo to Londonderry/Derry, Northern Ireland, actually part of the United Kingdom and therefore a different country than the Republic of Ireland....
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NORTHERN IRELAND: DERRY/LONDONDERRY, PART II (THE BOGSIDE)
 July 9, 2024We met our guide, whom Bob had booked through Derry Blue Badge Guide, at Guild Hall, a beautiful building originally used for tax collecting and as a town hall and now the seat of local...
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NORTHERN IRELAND: THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY
 July 10, 2024The Giant's Causeway is a geologic rock formation formed by an erupting volcano 50 or 60 million years ago. The molten basalt seeped through chalk beds to form a volcanic plateau, and as...
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NORTHERN IRELAND: BELFAST - C. S. LEWIS SQUARE AND CITY HALL
 July 10, 2024I was quite excited to go to Belfast, which to me--prior to this trip--had been the center of all the conflict that occurred in Northern Ireland. I remembered the terrible fighting that...
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NORTHERN IRELAND: BELFAST CITY TOUR - TWO SIDES
 July 10, 2024Friends who visited Northern Ireland a year or two ago recommended a tour they took in Belfast that was split into two parts. Half was led by an Irish Nationalist on the Catholic side of...
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NORTHERN IRELAND, BELFAST: THE TITANIC MUSEUM
 July 10, 2024After our two-part tour of Belfast, we decided to squeeze in a quick trip to the Titanic Museum. We only had an hour before it closed, but we had already been to the Titanic Museum and...
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NORTHERN IRELAND, BELFAST CITY TOUR PART II
 July 11, 2024We had one more day and one more city tour planned for Belfast. Bob had booked a street art tour, not realizing that a lot of the street art would be covered in the political "two sides"...
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