Overall, it was a great trip, though I think we over did it a bit, underestimating the time it would take to drive between sites. We ended up driving (and walking for that matter!) all over the country!
We landed in Dublin, which ended up being much like any other big city in the world - crowded with tourists, lots of international influences, etc. So, when we rented our call in the morning, we jumped in the left lane (!!) and high-tailed it out of the city into the beautiful Irish countryside!
First day we headed to Kilkenny, which was a super cute town. Our B&B (Laurand House) was within walking distance of the city centre, so we explored quite a bit. The main highlight of the stop was Kilkenny Castle - didn't get to go inside, since it was too late, but we did wander the beautiful grounds. We also had our first "authentic pub experience" - there were 3 musicians who played everything from Johnny Cash to traditional Irish songs, encouraging the crowd to sing along, chatting with folks in between sets, and at one point the main singer even stole Hubby's hat to emphasize a story! Later that night we decided to check out some other pubs, and ended up chatting up some Irish locals who were celebrating a birthday. Hubby and one of the guys had quite an in-depth discussion about rugby, and Ireland's prospects vs South Africa's in the upcoming World Cup. Needless to say, they were drinking quite a bit more than we were that night, lol.
The next day we headed up to Dunmore Cave - it's a really neat cave system that was discovered when a field in the farmland collapsed, and exposed an entrance. They discovered over 40 individual human remains there, mostly women & children, and theorized that the cave was used to hide from invading Vikings, who then tried to smoke out the villagers, but killed them instead. So, lots of history inside that cave!
From there, we headed to the Rock of Cashel, which was a huge fort/castle (not a giant Rock as I was theorizing!). The irony of the fort was that it had survived a few sieges, only to fall during part of a massive storm. One interesting thing about Ireland over our other travels was how much ANCIENT history Ireland has in it's sites. It's pretty amazing to think about how many different civilizations walked the same ground we walked on, and imagine what life must have been like for them. After Cashel, it occured to us that the B&B's were starting to fill up, so rather than book day-to-day, we decided to book ahead. So, next in our road trip we decided to stay at a farmhouse (Ardfield Farmhouse) - complete with dogs, beautiful gardens, and award winning horses! There we discovered that one of the fun aspects to staying in B&B was chatting with other guests, and met an Australian couple who had moved to Germany a few years ago, but their visa expired, so were now traveling all over Europe, essentially homeless, until they were ready to head back to Australia. :-p Overall, the people in Ireland were VERY friendly, though Hubby thought he got a lot of stares. I blame the fact that he was considerably taller than most of the people we encountered. :-p Even the taxi drivers were friendly, which was a nice change from what we experienced back in the states, lol.
We then decided to head to the West coast! Along the way, we kept seeing signs for a toy soldier factory - so of course, by the time I finally saw the sign "turn here for the Toy Soldier Factory", I HAD to turn in. :-p And it turned out to be a bit of a ruse, because it was sooo not "close"; we drove for quite a distance seeing signs claiming "almost there!" before we finally made it, lol. There, we got a free demo of how they create the tin figures, and then decided to make and paint our own figures. Hubby did a little bunny, and I made a little Christmas tree ornament. Of course, us being us, we ended up spending quite a lot of time getting the details juuuust right, so what should've been a short visit took quite awhile! Once back on the road, our next stop was Killarney - specifically, Killarney National Park, and the Torc Waterfall! It was a beautiful sight, tucked away in a large forest of ivy & moss covered trees. We went on a short hike there, and really loved just walking through the Irish nature. It was like being in a storybook!
That night, we stayed at The Willows B&B in the city of Tralee. We got a pretty good variety of B&B's on this trip - countryside, suburbs, and then actually a block from the city centre. It was very interesting to see the different signs of a house that had been converted to a B&B - in this case, the shower had an individual little water heater mounted on the wall, presumably to help with the stress all those visitors must put on the water system.
And then... there was what shall always be known as The Dingle Fiasco. There are two incredibly picturesque peninsulas in Ireland that are promoted - the Ring of Kerry, which is more famous but tends to be overcome with tourist buses, and the Dingle Peninsula, which is smaller but has what is said to be the best views in the country, at "Shea Head". We only had a day to explore this part, and had to be on the road at 2pm in order to get to our next stop, so we got up extra early and headed down to the peninsula. It was a beautiful scenic drive, including a very narrow mountain pass (Connor Pass) that had my knuckles white from gripping the wheel so tight and Hubby shouting about being too close to the mountain (was was my preference to hitting the oncoming traffic on the narrow road!), but we made it to the starting point of the peninsula, the town called Dingle. The first sign of trouble was when we got re-directed due to a road closure. Turns out, there was a marathon going on, but the road should be open in an hour. Okay, no biggie... we'd just hang out, shop for souvenirs, maybe get some lunch. After an hour, we happened upon the Marathon finish line, and realized.... umm... they're not anywhere close to done yet. So, we asked, and were told there was a detour to get to Slea Head. Neat-o! Aaaannd, then we encountered another road closure. And finally got the whole story - they were only opening up the road in segments, and they weren't even going to open the final segment until at least 3:30p. WELL, that put a kink in our plans to hit the road by 2pm. So, sadly, we gave up Dingle, and headed up to Galway... which turned out to be a ridiculously long, not nearly as scenic drive. Hence, The Dingle Fiasco. :-p
Thankfully, Galway turned out to be an awesome city - it has a university, so the city centre is full of energy, particularly the Latin Quarter. There were street musicians, a contest challenging people to do a pull up for 2 minutes, and lots of pubs and restaurants. We even saw what I can only assume was a bachelor party dressed up as drunken priests (surprisingly sacrilegious given how religious I thought Ireland was!). And, the big win of the night was finding a place that sold meat pies, which is something that Hubby has really missed from South Africa. So, despite a bad start to the day, it ended rather nicely, and we finally crashed at our last B&B, Winacre Lodge.
In order to make up for The Dingle Fiasco, we decided to take a boat to the Aran Islands, which would take us to the smallest island Inisheer, and also take us past the famous Cliffs of Moher (featured in The Princess Bride & Harry Potter movies). Inisheer was a 30 minute boat ride off the coast, and was a super small town. It was almost like the town had been forgotten by time, and would continue to remain the same no matter what happened in the rest of the world. There were tons of rock walls all over the island, we assumed were built by generations past, but I could totally see teens being forced to build then rock by rock as punishment, or a way to keep them out of trouble! :-p
Apparently they were built without mortar partially to allow the strong winds to blow through without knocking them down, and partially so that they could be taken down if the cows/sheep needed to be moved from field to field. We spent a good 3 hours exploring the islands before heading back to the boat. And then, we finally got to see the Cliffs of Moher! It was truly stunning - they rise over 700ft above the ocean, and make a striking scene. After we got back to shore, we ended up driving to the top of the Cliffs, so were able to see them both looking up from the ocean, and looking down from the top.
We even joined the tourist tradition of jumping the fence and peering over the edge - it was nerve wracking! Especially since we'd heard stories about tourists falling off the Cliffs because they got too close and the ground gave away. There was even a memorial at the top. But we didn't fall, and we got some great pictures, lol. Also, random of random - we ran into the Australian couple again at the Cliffs. Small world!
So, after an amazing tourist experience, we got in the car for the loooong drive across Ireland back towards Dublin to stay at Cabra Castle for the last leg of our journey. And wow, was it a drive... we ended up getting lost, and skipped dinner as a result because we were running so late. Arrived rather cranky, only to discover we couldn't even find the lobby to check in. Finally made it into the lobby, only to discover that the kitchen just closed. UGH, pretty sure there were no restaurants hiding in the dark for at least the past 2 hours of driving, so it was not looking well. And then, a beautiful angel by the name of Emmy asked us if we'd like some sandwiches, if we had an allergies, and then promptly picked up the phone and requested the kitchen deliver 2 ham & cheese sandwiches to our room. Okay, that helped the mood a bit. Finally made it to our room, and both of us were looking forward to vegging. Opened the door - and HOLY COW, we're staying in a freaking castle, and LOOK AT OUR ROOM! There was even an old fashioned bathtub in the corner, complete with bubble bath gel, that fit two exhausted travelers quite well!
After we checked out (soooo sad to leave!), we headed towards Dublin, but first decided to take a detour at the Newgrange & Knowth tombs. Essentially, these are hills that were created as tombs, as well as for other unknown reasons, and are older than even Stonehenge. We had a hilarious tour guide, who explained: "well, we don't exactly know why they did it or what it means, but it's obvious that they went through a lot of bother, so it must be important!".
After viewing such a stunning ancient site, we headed to our last hotel - Clontarf Castle, which really, after our previous Castle experience, wasn't really a Castle as it had been recently modernized (our room even had neon lights embedded into the headboard!). A bit of a shock to go from an ancient site to a super modern one, lol. But, it was very close to the airport, and that's why we picked it! :-p
Overall, a fantastic trip! In terms of logistics - it wasn't nearly as cold or wet as we were worried about (okay, I was worried about, Hubby loves both the rain and the cold, crazy man!). We only had mist and a small bit of rain on the first two days, and the rest of it was pretty dry. We mostly wore a jacket every day, but there were even occasions where we just walked around in a sweater.
The food consisted of a lot of beef, lamb, and fish. There was some Indian influence (chicken curry was a common menu item), and we saw plenty of Chinese & Italian places, as well as Mexican, which was rather odd. And french fries - oh my goodness, french fries (aka "chips") with everything - a side of fries even came with my lasagna one night! The other big meal seems to be breakfast - each of our hotels & B&B's offered a "traditional Irish breakfast" which was rather hearty and consisted of eggs, toast, bacon (which is more like a thin slice of ham than American style bacon), a grilled tomato, sausage, and white or black pudding (which doesn't actually look like pudding at all, but rather is a sausage-type thing that apparently consists of lots of gross pig innards, but doesn't taste bad at all!). They're also quite big tea drinkers, so I appreciated that quite a bit while Hubby enjoyed his coffee.
Driving on the left side was definitely a challenge, so I'm glad that we spent the extra money and got an automatic - one less thing to deal with while trying to focus on staying on the left side of the road. Though, driving left wasn't a huge issue as much as trying to adjust to the new spatial cues for the car - I kept drifting into the shoulder. Only hit 3 curbs and 1 bush though, so I think that's a pretty good record! The roads were extremely narrow there, so it was very disconcerting to see cars whizzing towards you, missing your side mirror by what felt like inches, but was probably more like a foot or two.
As much as it was a great trip, we definitely tried to squeeze too much into a short time, and drove way more than I'd prefer. If we go again, we'll focus more on the West coast, and stay in one place for a few days, instead of changing B&B's every night. Oh, and a longer castle stay!!
So yeah, that's our trip in a nutshell!
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