Monthly Archives: May 2014

INORE Symposium La Vega Spain

On the way to the symposium I got to spend a half day at the beach in Santander

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The symposium was in a small village about 1.5 hours by bus from Santander.  Here is the hostel we stayed in for the week.

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Some views from the town of La Vega where we were staying.

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We had a game night where we played a local version of bowling

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One afternoon we went for a hike with spectacular views

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Another day we went to tour a massive wave tank located in Santander

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Impromptu games of cricket broke out sporadically throughout the week

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The Oregon State University alumni

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Final feast… quite a spread

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All in all a great symposium.

Kim and Rocky come to town!!!

Kim and Rocky came to visit over the past weekend and we had a great time. We took them to many of our favourite restaurants and watering holes including the winebar below.

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The following morning we took off towards Killarney and made a couple of stops on the way.
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Emily’s favourite tree!!
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The next day we decided to go for a hike and boat ride in the national park.
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It started out fairly miserable.

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You can hire a horse drawn trap, and driver but we decided to walk it.

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The Gap of Dunloe is a narrow mountain pass between Macgillycuddy’s Reeks and Purple mountain.
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After hiking through the gap one ends up at Lord Brandon’s Cottage where we had a coffee and prepared for our boat ride.  It was pouring for the start of the ride.

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Rocky wasn’t too happy about it!DSC_0897

Our boat guide told us that people had been doing the trip that we were doing for over 200 years.  He said that up until 1980 the guides rowed the boats by hand but luckily we had a small outboard to get us through the three lakes.

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The end of the  boat ride took us to Ross Castle,  built in the late 15th century.

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We then left Killarney for Schull.  This was the view of a couple of the lakes as we drove away.DSC_0939

In Schull we stayed at a very nice Bed and Breakfast and then went for a tour of the most south point in Ireland.  On the way we found our own private beach.DSC_0968DSC_0960

I was playing around with the kaleidoscope function on my camera.

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We then got lost trying to find a stone circle and ended up going down an extremely narrow road to a graveyard.  We eventually found the circle however.

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A great weekend all in all!!!