Our last full day started off a little bit slow, since to celebrate…Something or the other… we decided to make the previous night a late one.
We had started off the morning by going to see the old library and Book of Kells, which, despite the price, is very pretty and worth seeing. There is information about the work that goes into the vellum making process, the script writing (by the way, all these books are copies of the bible), the leather binding process, and, most famous, the decorating and artwork. In the final room before entering the library, you can actually see the Book open, and see the colors and the pictures… All the pretty pictures…
Anyway, the old library is also very pretty, but at this point, not very functional. It’s not a place that the public can actually utilize for book reading. It was also partially closed for renovation when I was there, so if you so plan to go, wait a little. Try to see the whole thing.
As for the late night, that’s what pub crawls do to you. Word to the wise, find your own pubs. The ones that they take you to, for tourists, are quite pricey even with the discounts. Yes, you get into a club for free, but you won’t be buzzed when you get there, which makes it pretty uncomfortable. Clubs are not places for sober people, especially when everyone else is not.
Also, foxes roam the streets of Dublin. They all party together at 2 in the morning.
Also, visit a burger shop called Ralph’s. Get the Mexican burger. It’s a bit more pricey, but it’s one of the best burgers you’ll ever have.
And so that gets us to Friday, my last full 24 hours in Dublin.
We woke up pretty late, had a large Irish breakfast, and headed over to the Jameson factory, where we got there just in time for a tour.
The factory can only be seen with a tour guide, and the tour includes a movie, a walk around the old buildings and machinery, and a sample of Jameson. I also got Matt involved in a tasting of three whiskeys, comparing best selling types from America, Scotland and Ireland. I’m so good, I know. All that for 10€ is quite alright, I think.
Anyway, then we went home and packed. So exciting, I know.
Cheers!
Ireland
Party at the Ring of Kerry!
I am a solemn, mature, stoic and adult 22 year olds, and from now on, I will act like one.
PSYCH I’m a flipping explorer, you can’t dim my fire, you can’t rain on my parade, etc.
And now with that out of the way, we get down to business!
On the morning of December 2nd, we checked out of our wonderful accommodation at the East Clare Golf Village, and headed on southward to Kilkenny, where we would first intersect the road that would take us round the Ring of Kerry.
Now, normally visitors head on a northwesterly direction along the ring road. Matt and I respectfully disagree, especially if you have a limited amount if light at your disposal. The road in the northern direction has much higher and denser amount of hedges, which are just as branchy and obtrusive the dark as they are in the light. The southern direction give you many more unobstructed views of mountains, valleys, and coastlines. It also gives you more opportunities to commune with our sheep brethren, which insist on sharing the road with the vehicles. Their parents raised them well, though, and the sheep are quite polite: they will be happy to run along the road single file, to make driver’s lives easier.
The first, and most lengthy, stop that we made was at the Muckross estate, which contains on its grounds an abbey, a cemetery, a mansion and farmland. The mansion and farmlands have an entry fee, but the Abbey, and the rest of the land in general is free to visit. We rationalized not visiting the inside if the mansion by the considering the limited amount of daylight, and although this was very true, we were also being a little bit cheap. We did take a nice 4 km walk though, and we enjoyed walking around the Abbey which, despite its lack of roof, was quite well preserved and mostly accessible. However, we couldn’t linger, and were soon on our way.
After that, it was a full day of taking in the sights. I am no master of imagery, nor am I a professional photographer, so the photographs I took will hardly do reality justice. I will say that it was amongst the just diverse scenery we saw on the trip. In a span of a few minutes we would drive through an archway of trees, which would then open up to reveal rolling hills topped with tufts of sheep, when suddenly one side would fall away into a valley. We followed a sign for an ominous sounding “black valley”, and a few minutes after driving past a pitch black lake, we saw the crystal blue waters of the coast.
It was beautiful. I really am glad that I got to spend my birthday in such a place.
We finished driving the ring in darkness, and headed on into Cork, where a wonderful human being (hint: his name was Matt) treated me to a delicious seafood dinner. The best part was when he remembered that he had tried to get his group of friends to eat at the place two years before, when he had lived in Ireland. He had thought the place looked really nice, and tasty. Turns out he was right.
Cheers!
Have some Guinness for breakfast!
Or in our case, lunch. Today we visited the Guinness storehouse, and it is filled with many opportunities to give yourself a good buzz on samples.
Entry cost us a discounted 13€ each, but for that amount of money we got access to give floors of museum, the gravity bar on the 7th floor, the taste lounge, and a food tastings held from 1 pm to 3 pm on the hour. The food tastings each come with their own sample of both Foreign Extra and Extra Stout, and as long as supplies last, you can keep taking the 6 oz size sample cups. The Tasting Lab is one of the newest experiences in the museum, and it allows you to first smell all the separate components of Guinness, one at a time, then teaches you the proper way of drinking Guinness. Apparently, that means keeping your eyes looking at the horizon, and taking a nice big gulp, which prevents you from getting only the nitrogen induced foam at the top, and getting a very bitter taste. At another point, you also learn how to pour the perfect glad of Guinness, which involves giving it 119.5 seconds to settle before topping it off. For those who prefer to drink without the use of a stopwatch, feel free to eyeball it as two minutes instead. You won’t make it to Guinness heaven, but at least your life will be much less stressful.
The museum is very well laid out, and directs you through 5 levels of Guinness history without letting you get lost, dazed, or even confused, before depositing you in the Gravity Lounge to have a pint while looking at a panoramic view of Dublin City. I thought I could see my home from there.
One more cool tidbit: there is a glass column going through the center of the storehouse, ending with the lounge, that is shaped like a giant Guinness glass. If the glass were filled, it would contain more liters of beer than residents of Ireland. I think… Don’t quote me.
Anyway, if you plan to visit the storehouse, set aside a large chunk of the day. You actually want to have time to enjoy the history and the beer.
When in Ireland… Cheers!
In Dublin, and it feels bittersweet
Getting here this early afternoon has reminded me how little time is left here. Combined with a sad song, it makes me feel quite emotional indeed. I don’t want to leave.
This is especially true combined with the past few days, which have been absolutely wonderful. The day we left Galway, which, I believe, was on Friday, we headed south towards the Cliffs of Moher. These are humongous cliffs, spanning, from what I remember, 5 km, and at some points a kilometer high. It might not actually be those numbers, but hats what it looked and felt like. At some points of the walk along the cliffs, you could get right up close and personal with the edge. We even dangled our feet over the water below. Matt was the more cautious one. Half the time he was holding on to the back of my jacket while I was craning over to get a look. He worries a lot, but he does know I am quite clumsy, and I do appreciate it…I should probably have followed his lead, but I quite like heights. In any case, it was quite thrilling to look over the edge, and see a drop down to surprisingly bright blue waves crashing up against the rocks. There is quite a strong wind coming up from below, a strength that we saw being tested by a trio of loud and obnoxious American guys (yes, they were American for sure). Once guy stripped down to his care torso, and they started throwing his shirt over the edge. No matter how far out they threw it, as long as they through it high enough, it would always be spit back at them. Being the scientists that they were, they started throwing the shirt lower and lower, and it kept working less and less well until… It just didn’t come back. I was quite glad that the guy was left shirtless, they had been making stupid jokes for quite a while, so it served him quite right. And that, kids, is how the seagulls get shirts to stay warm for winter.
Speaking of seagulls, there were a ton of them there. Not sitting on the cliffs, but coasting on the sea winds hitting against the rock face. It’s a swirl of turbulence down there, something that base jumpers won’t brave unless it is completely still, but… You could tell that the seagulls were doing it for fun. They were turning figure eights, corkscrews, circles, weaving in and out of each other, and barely stopping for a rest. There was no evidence of hunting, and it was probably too windy for them to make nests there. It was almost hypnotizing watching them, and we spent a good 15 minutes just standing by the edge and observing.
To top it off, on our way back to the car after walking for a few hours, we came upon a basset hound running along the edge, stopping every once in a while to take a sniff and maybe take a wee over the edge. We had come to the point in the cliffs where you have to cross back behind the fence to get into the pavement at the same time he did, and he seemed to look to us for help in accomplishing this. It took quite a bit of finagling, because of his stubby legs, but it was finally accomplished, and he continued on his merry way. When we told the park rangers that there was a beautiful, friendly, and ownerless dog running alarmingly close to the cliff edge, and asked if someone should look into this, they said what amounted to “oh, it’s that dog again. Yeah, we’ll call it in.” We meet a local!
That night we made our way to a place called the East Clare Golf Village, where we checked into what was, in all seriousness, a two bedroom cabin. It was actually a place where time shares through RCI are available, and during the summer seasons, the complexes probably go for more than 100 € a night. We got it for all of 20 €, total. It was so wonderful, we immediately booked another night. We’ve been having wonderful luck with these things.
I just looked back at how long this post was, and I definitely do not want to let Limerick, the Ring of Kerry, and Cork to get lost in the writing. The cities are easy enough, although I did notice something interesting about Limerick. But the Ring deserves a part unique from one about the Cliffs, especially since it was visited on my birthday. So that will be done tomorrow.
Today we got into Dublin city at around 1pm, and checked into our hostel, Jacob’s Inn. We didn’t stay for long, but rather went out for an adventure to check out Matt’s old house, and to visit an old favorite of his, a place called Dicey’s.
It’s actually quite funny, what happened while we were there. The place has a special on Tuesday: shots, burgers, and beers all for 2.50 € each. We got there around 4:30 pm, and got a booth and a beer right away. We followed with a burger and another beer, then another burger (rather, I attempted another burger, then gave more than half of it to Matt). Time slipped by, and the place started to fill up. By 7:30, it had gotten pretty full, and I couldn’t eat or drink another bite or sip. Since we plan to have a full day tomorrow, and because beer make quarter hourly bathroom trips a requirement for me, I convinced Matt to call it an early day. He was a bit hesitant, since while he lived in Dublin, he would stay there until the early hours of the morning, but he changed his tune as soon as we stepped outside. There was a line for the place that spanned three blocks. Three blocks in the longer direction. There were hundreds of people. If we had stayed much longer, the place would have been wall to wall packed, and neither of us were prepared for that. Guess it had gotten even more popular while he was gone!
Anyway, for now it’s bedtime. Tomorrow, Ring of Kerry, Limerick, Cork, and whatever we do here in Dublin. For now, cheers!
Our bus driver owns a mini tank
Rather, the one that guided our tour to the Giant’s Causeway yesterday does. I elaborate since, right now, we’re on a different bus, one that is currently on a trajectory towards Dublin Airport.
I apologize for not writing the post few days. We were remarkably occupied while visiting Belfast and it’s surrounding areas, and came home each night tired, yet still in need of planning. At that time, writing did not take priority over sleep.
There are really only two days of note on our Belfast adventure, and they are Monday and Tuesday. On the first day, we went exploring around the city, which meant visiting the City Hall and the Continental Market in front of it, seeing the Titanic Quarter, and walking around the city center in general. While in the City Hall, we managed to unintentionally get a security guard in trouble when he failed to tell us we weren’t allowed to go into a restricted area that wasn’t marked off in any way. It wasn’t our fault. Really. He looked right at us as we went up a giant staircase.
Shame, mister security man. Shame.
The Continental Market was also a fun experience, though come armed with cash if you plan to buy anything. There were offerings of hot food, dry sausages, clothes, leather notebooks (which I loved)… All for more expensive than elsewhere, but pretty and fun in any case.
The Titanic Quarter amounted to nothing more than a nice walk, though they did have many signs up recounting the history of the ship’s construction, the people involved, and it’s demise. The Titanic studios building was took expensive to enter and see what it was all about, but from what I understand, they have the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones there. If your willing to spend 18 GBP to see that, go for it.
Slight amendment to the setting of the real time story. We have moved from a bus headed to Dublin, and are now in a car bound for Galway. We ran the numbers, and it turns out that public transport is so expensive in the Republic of Ireland, that it’s worth it to rent a car. Go figure.
Back to Belfast. On Tuesday, we bought two bus tour tickets through our hostel, which meant we got a special rate of 16 GBP for a full day. We were picked up from the front door of the hostel, and set off almost straightaway, with one or two stops to pick up more people before leaving Belfast. Or guys drove us around of the few touristy places, including a castle, a location where some scenes from Game if Thrones are filmed, and Bushmill’s Distillery (which is the oldest licensed distiller of Irish whiskey in the world. Also, we learned that the major difference between types of whiskey is number of distillations. American, once; Scottish, twice; Irish, thrice). We ended the day at the Giant’s Causeway, a large rock plateau, consisting of hexagonal columns that make it look like honeycomb. It looks like the landscape on a computer game with very bad resolution. The scientific reason behind it has something to do with volcanoes, but the Irish will have you believe that giants had everything to do with it. Look it up, boys and girls, it’s amusing.
Final amendment to real time location. We are now in Kinlay House Galway, our hostel for the next three nights. It’s shaping up to look really nice, though updates will follow.
Our last hostel, Arnie’s Backpackers, was a bit small and very cozy, but those are two of the reasons we really enjoyed it. Yesterday I got to meet Arnie’s dogs, who reminded me if my own doggy, Frodo, and made me miss home a little bit. We also made friends with some of the longtimers and hostel workers, and had a very enjoyable time over a Guinness last night. The hostel was warm, clean and affordable, which is all I can ask. Definitely recommended for anyone in Belfast looking for a proper hostel experience.
For now, though, we’re off to figure out this new city and, now that I think about it, new country. Cheers!
Wandering Owl 