The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
- Oscar Wilde

(Pictured above – the Giant’s Causeway)

And then we headed North.  All the way to the coast of Northern Ireland, where we stayed a couple of fantastic nights at our friends’ caravan in Portballintrae.  From this quaint costal spot, we were a short walk from the town of Bushmills, featuring the oldest distillery on the island.  And we were also a volcanic stone’s throw away from the legendary Giant’s Causeway, which is just around the corner to the right of the pic above (stay tuned tomorrow for a shot of its incredible volcanic columns).

Our trip to Ireland was more of a working vacation, and the work part of the equation was my filming a music video for Duke Special’s “Sweet Sweet Kisses.”  I thought it would be fun for the video to feature loads and loads of people kissing, so we commissioned a kissing booth to be built, and we set it up in the lobby of Dublin’s National Concert Hall for Duke Special’s gig with the RTÉ Orchestra.  I could be wrong, but I’m fairly certain it’s the first time the National Concert Hall had ever had a kissing booth on the premises.

Anyway, the concert was absolutely amazing, and afterwards, we had over a hundred thirty Irish folks come through the booth and kiss on camera.  It was a quite a scene.  We had this incredible line of people waiting to participate, with Kim and our friend Angela running around trying to get everyone to sign release forms.  And it being the end of the night, more than a few of the volunteers were well on their merry way, so there was a lot of showboating and some pretty hard core making-out sessions in the booth.  Probably the strangest “shoot” I’ve ever been a part of, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless.

After Galway, we drove back across the island and spent a night at a quaint B&B in Glendalough, complete with a gorgeous meal at, of all places, The Hollywood Inn.  The next day, on our way to Dublin, we drove through the amazing Wicklow Gap, a 16 mile long stretch of road that traverses the Wicklow Mountains.  As if the scenery wasn’t already spectacular enough, the mountains were covered in Heather, and its pink blossoms were in full bloom.

May the Irish hills caress you.
May her lakes and rivers bless you.
May the luck of the Irish enfold you.
May the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you.

- Traditional Irish Blessing

And here’s my “Where’s Waldo/Kylmore Abbey?” pic.  We ended up not going inside the place, balking at the price of admission.  We figured, why pay to go in when it looks this great from the outside.  That, and I hate paying to see old mansions.

For day 2 we took a drive up to Connemara via the breathtaking route along Sky Road.  The above pic is my “Where’s Waldo/Kim?” shot of the trip.

Today marks six years of being married to my beautiful wife, Kim.  While tradition says that I’m supposed to mark the occassion by giving her a gift of candy or iron (or perhaps a candy iron?), I instead decided to have a book printed up of photos from our trip to Ireland this time last year.  So all this week, I’ll be featuring pics from our adventures on the Emerald Isle with the above being from our first stop on the tour…Galway.

Happy Anniversary, my love!