I have been talking about visiting Ireland since we arrived in Italy 2 years ago. I finally convinced Nick to go. He'd been gone for a couple months, and what better way to get reunited than to travel around a beautiful island together.
After a rough start (which may or may not have included my husband forgetting his passport, forgetting to lock the front door after retrieving his passport, forgetting to get gas in the car the night before, not being able to get gas because no gas stations were open, telling me that the tires on our car were absolutely not drivable anymore, and finding out that nearly all parking lots around the airport were full)...we made it to the airport unscathed, but a little grumpy. Phew!
While we were waiting for our flight we met an Irish family including: Noel, Teresa, Harry, and Charlie. They were so kind! They told us everything they knew about Ireland, and even gave us their home phone number in Cork to call if we needed anything. I was so grateful for their kindness I could have cried. I was already convinced I wanted to live in Ireland, and I hadn't even seen any of it yet. Our flight was quick (bumpy) but easy, and we were off...
Our round trip bus ticket to and from the airport was 10 Euro each (yikes), but dropped us right near Hotel Kelly where we'd be staying the night. Our hotel was so fun and unique. There were stairs everywhere.
We set our bags down and we headed out to tour the town. The weather was perfect and cool! We walked to Grafton street first. It's a pedestrian street with lots of fun shops and street performers.
I had Italian tourists pointing at my hair. They must have thought I was from Ireland. Haha!
Just around the corner from us was a little place selling boba drinks. They are usually cold drinks with tapioca balls. I haven't had one since I was in St. Louis years ago. It was such a treat!
Nick skipped out on the boba and started getting hAngry, so we walked back to a restaurant we spotted earlier called Coppinger Row. The menu looked decent. The food was AMAZING! I had eggplant stuffed with moroccan spices, mint yogurt, pickled cabbage and steak. I love stumbling upon great restaurants.
We walked back to Grafton to start our walking tour led by 'moi!'
We pulled out some change from our pockets to give to some of the street performers. (which we never do, but thought it would be fun) They were all gone!! They must have all gone on break at the same time. Darn!
We were led to St. Stephens Green through this grand arch.
I had never seen so many seagulls in a park before. I didn't see any other type of bird! I never imagined screeching seagulls being a part of the sound track in Dublin.
The doors on the buildings surrounding the park were all brightly colored.
This was my favorite!
We walked to Marrion Square to visit the statue of Oscar Wilde. This was steeper than it looked. All of the other tourists were a little scared Nick would fall. Haha!
That's as close as I needed to get.
As we walked to the gates of Trinity college we spotted a little bakery. We had to stop for a quick, sweet snack. We both ordered delicious cafe mochas.
I bought a jar of "Big Red" jam!
I turned to Nick and said, "Hey, that's my jam!" He started straining his ears to listen to a song. I pointed to the jam. Haha!
Nick bought this *tiny* treat.
And we were off to explore the rest of the city.
Dublin is very easy to get around and it's really not that big. It's a miniature London with very friendly people that speak my language! I loved it! Nick and I both kept saying we could easily live here.
We walked past Grafton street again and up to Trinity College. We opted out of a walking tour of the college to see the rest of Dublin. I think we made the right choice.
On our way to the north side of Dublin we crossed the river Liffey.
Nick got to enjoy his snack with a view on O'Connell Bridge. What you can't see are all the crumbs flying off his mouth and hitting me. Haha!
We walked farther down O'Connell street to what I call "statue row." Here's Daniel O' Connell leading the way.
This pic was taken in front of the General Post office where the Easter Uprising started in 1916. We're facing the Millennium Spire. It's 390 feet tall and was finished in 2003. Apparently, it has no real meaning. Dubliners have dubbed it the "tallest waste of 5 million Euro in all of Europe." One of it's other nicknames is "stiletto in the ghetto." That was one of the nicer nicknames.
There were plenty more statues, but none really worth mentioning.
I walked back toward the Liffey to the Millennium walk. I couldn't believe how many people were in Dublin! There were so many people at one point, Nick and I were walking single file. An old man looked at me as he passed and said in a thick Irish accent, "I like your hat....I shoulda married ya." Haha! Nick got a big kick out of it too. :)
Nick found a door with his name on it!
510 - "Rule!"
I thought these bike signals were cute. We kept having to remind ourselves of which way to look before crossing the street. Luckily, most crosswalks tell you which way you need to look before crossing.
Ha' Penney Bridge.
We blinked and practically missed the "Millennium walk." There were a few restaurants and that was it!
Next we stumbled upon the Temple Bar district. We didn't spend much time there because we were coming back at 7:30pm for a Pub Crawl Tour.
Before we stopped back at our hotel for a break we trekked down to the Dublin Castle.
I loved the cobblestone everyone. It wasn't easy to walk on after 6 hours, but it sure was pretty!
They had a sand-art exhibit inside the castle courtyard.
Every piece had at least one whole through the center. I'd love to know how they did that!
I wanted to peek at the Christ Church Cathedral, but Nick was done at that point. This was as close as I got.
Done face.
This street was just around the corner from our hotel. I loved that we saw American flags everywhere in Dublin. (And later in other towns as well!) Really made it feel a little more like home.
After a quick snooze, we hit the pavement again. There was a Molly Malone statue that is apparently one of THE most photographed statues in Dublin. When I looked at the map, I realized we must have walked right past it on our walk earlier. We doubled back to see it before our Pub Crawl. Turned out they had moved the statue to a quieter place! But we found it!
Here's Nick being a gentleman.
It was easy to see why she was the most photographed statue. :)
We quickly made our way back to the Temple Bar district. We started at The Oliver St. John Gogarty Pub. There were two gentlemen that led the tour. They told us a bit of history about Irish music. One man played the banjo and the other played the guitar. They tried to engage us by having us all sing the chorus line of their songs. I hadn't heard of any of the songs before, but they were fun to sing and listen to.
One of the first things they told us was that Irish music did not have drinking songs. They had songs ABOUT drinking and the effects of it, but they didn't have any drinking songs. They also informed us that a real jig was always random and never ending. The longer the night went on the better it would get and the more musicians there would be.
Next we walked to The Ha' Penney Bridge Pub.
Walking the streets of Temple Bar District.. follow the man with the guitar.
There were about 30 people on the tour, and somehow we all managed to stay together. About 2/3 of our group were American.
After about 45 minutes at the Ha' Penney Bar we walked over past O'Connell street to our last bar of the evening.
I saw a woman taking a picture of some orange graffiti, so I decided to snap a photo as well. I didn't realize until later that it was a memorial for Robin Williams. Several people on our trip brought the subject up, and they had so many good things to say about him and the laughter that he shared. He really touched so many lives.
We wound up at a bar near the Millineum Spire on the north side of Dublin. At each pub we had the top floor all to ourselves. These guys really let it rip at the last pub. It was so much fun getting a lesson in Irish music and getting to see other parts of Dublin. I would highly recommend it! It set us up well for the rest of our trip.
We got back to our hotel around 11:30 in the rain. We didn't realize it during the day, but there was a bar below our room. The party was still gong strong on a Wednesday night! Eesh! Luckily, the music died down at midnight.
Thursday, August 14th - Day 2
The next morning we realized that we didn't bring the right adaptors. Ireland has plugs that are similar to England; they're big 3 pronged plugs. Doh! We had no way to charge our electronics. My phone had died overnight, and Nick didn't have much battery left on his.
We both woke up to street noise early in the morning. Nick looked at his watch; it was 6am. I couldn't go back to sleep because I kept thinking that we would oversleep. I tossed and turned and then got up and looked at his phone. It was already 8:08! How did 2 hours go by so quickly?! I started rushing around getting ready and packing my things. Nick got up as well, and was taking his time. I looked at his phone again...8:35am. Nick threw his things together and we walked downstairs to get breakfast. It had opened at 8am. I was hoping to get there right when it opened so we could get on with our day. As we walked down the stairs I became puzzled. The breakfast room wasn't even close to being ready! Nick looked at me and said, "That's because it's only 7:30." I was SO confused. Nick's phone hadn't changed time zones. It was still on Italy time, so it was an hour ahead. His WATCH on his wrist WAS on the right time zone. Doh!!! We got up an hour early for no reason. I felt so bad. Now I realized why Nick had been taking his time.
We walked outside to kill some time, and to look for some plugs. Just outside our hotel were the empty kegs from the bar below us. I'd like to think this was a weeks supply ready to be picked up, and not just from the night before. It made for a good photo op either way!
I loved the street we were on. There was artsy graffiti everywhere. We walked down a block to Dunnes supermarket. They were one of the only places open at the time. Unfortunately, they didn't have the plugs we needed, but they did have a lot of really yummy snacks for us to take on our road trip! We stocked up on Jammie Dodgers (Nick's fav), gourmet cookies, salty/crunchy things, and a few drinks. Yum!
By that time, breakfast was nearly open.
Feeling a little better after a quick cup o' Jo. :)
After breakfast we walked to our busstop to go back to the airport and rent our car. We stood at the busstop for about 10 minutes. We finally saw our green bus approaching, but it stopped about 200 yards short. We both sprinted. It only stopped for about 10 seconds - definitely not long enough for us to catch it. We ran out into traffic to see if the bus driver would open the door. He just shook his head. Dang! Nick spotted a green bus across the busy 6-lanes of traffic. He bolted across the street. I jogged as quickly as I could. Luckily, there was a long line of people waiting to get on the bus, so it gave us enough time to catch it. We also realized it was a good thing we caught that bus because it was heading to the airport. The other bus would have taken us MUCH longer because it was heading in the opposite direction. PHEW!
At the airport, we walked right up to the rental car desk and got our car. It didn't take long at all!
I had brought along our GPS, so I just plugged in the address to our next stop - Blarney Castle. I was happy as a clam. Nick however was practically having a nervous breakdown driving on the opposite side. Haha! The only time I got nervous was when he would get REALLY close to a wall or bushes on my side of the car.
We made it to Blarney Castle! This little restaurant was next to the parking lot. We stopped for a quick bite. Nick had tuna and sweet corn sandwich. I still don't understand that combination of food.
After lunch we toured the castle. There is SO much history here. I'm not about to write it all. My favorite story was when St. Patrick baptized King Aengus and accidentally speared the kings foot with the tip of his staff. The king held his tongue because he thought it was part of the painful process to becoming a Christian. Haha!
I love the look of the Celtic crosses.
It's hard to believe that it ever rains in Ireland with days like these!
The area around the castle used to be forested land, but over the centuries people used the wood and Ireland now has become the most deforested country in the EU.
We waited here for a tour group to start. The tour was free with admission.
One of the first things we learned was that this chunk of the castle came crumbling down in a strong wind storm.
Legend has it that if your fingers can touch on the other side of the cross while hugging it, you will never have a tooth ache again. It also means you have incredibly long arms. Nick couldn't quite get it. My fingers definitely did. Haha! I have monkey arms!
We got bored pretty quickly with the tour because most of the information we heard was already in the Rick Steves book. So we went off on our own again for some photo ops.
We loved Rock of Cashel...but now onto Blarney castle to kiss the Blarney stone. (eeew)
For some reason I thought the castle would be standing alone similar to the Rock of Cashel, but the Blarney castle has 60 acres of gardens around it. On our stroll over to the castle from the main entrance we spotted some yarn-art on the trees!
This was my fav. Nick didn't want me posting his photo because he thought it was a little girly to stand next to a yarn covered tree. Haha!
There it is! Blarney Castle. I was pleasantly surprised by the Blarney Caslte. I thought it would be cheesy, but the gardens and area were really beautiful.
If you look closely you can see a little light coming through the wall above the fourth window. THAT is where everyone is lined up to kiss the Blarney Stone. Up four flights of stairs!
The line started on the first floor! We thought about not doing it at all, but we couldn't think of the next time we'd be there so we stayed. Luckily it moved pretty quickly.
There was a teeny, tiny, winding staircase that led to the top. It was THE steepest staircase I had ever seen. At the top, the wind was howling. I was just grateful it wasn't raining! That could have made things interesting.
We noticed there were people of all ages kissing the Blarney Stone. Some were probably in their 80s and there was a group of young kids in line behind us.
As I stood here in line watching others kiss the stone, I realized I had chosen to wear a skirt on the wrong day. One wrong move and I could flash the entire line of people behind me.
Once it was our turn Nick stood in front of me to block everyone's view. :) Phew! I was grateful that I was distracted by holding my skirt down instead of thinking about the 4-story drop below me when I kissed the stone.
They say that if you kiss the stone you'll be given the gift of gab. Maybe it just hasn't kicked in for me yet. :)
Nick and I were laughing at the thought of what we had just done. We just kissed a stone that hundreds of others had just kissed. Eeew. It was cold, sticky and salty. Glad we got to cross that off our bucket list. I don't think I need to do that again.
We thought we'd take a walk around the gardens since we still had some time to kill before heading to Killarney. We found these huge trees! Perfect for climbing!
On our way to Killarney, our GPS took us on some narrow backroads. We passed field after field of cows, so I had to stop and take a pic. Unfortunately, the roads were so small that when we passed a big truck we scrapped the side of the car. Luckily, it was just the side mirror, and it looked like someone else had already hit it. Phew! Dodged that bullet.
We found Guaire House B & B after searching for about 15 minutes once we were in town. The family greeted us as we walked in. They all said I looked like their niece. That made me so happy! I can practically fool the Irish into thinking I'm Irish! Haha! The couple was very kind. They gave us great tips on where to eat that night for dinner. We chose to eat at the local Indian restaurant. It was delicious. It was so nice to have something other than Italian food!
It was an exciting and beautiful second day in Ireland. We couldn't wait to see what day 3 would bring!...
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