Dublin (Ireland Part 2)

When we got back to Dublin we met up with Jenny & Chris at the hotel.  We'd read about a place nearby that served some of it's own beers, and were intrigued.  When we got there we had dinner and their beers were pretty good.  They had a home made Pale Ale that was delicious.  Next up was the famous Church bar.  It's named that because it actually used to be a church.  And not just any church...it was where Arthur Guinness was married in 1761.  Now it's been converted into a giant bar.  It was over priced, but worth a drink or two to say we'd been there.  It's funny how we've gotten used to cheap beer (price, not quality) in Germany.  The average price for a half liter glass is 2-3 Euros in Germany.  In Ireland, the average price was double that at 5-6 Euros.

We walked around for a little bit more after that, but since it'd been a long day for all of us, we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.

The next morning we got up and ate breakfast at the hotel.  It was a decent sized buffet, and cheap compared to some prices.  Some hotels we've stayed at charge anywhere from 20-30 Euros for the breakfast buffet.  This one was only 8 Euros, and was more then filling.  After breakfast we headed down to the City Hall area to start the tour.  The lady who took us through was VERY knowledgable.  We started off at the Dublin Castle, which looked more like a palace then a castle.  The original Dublin Castle was built around the 1100's, but due to war & fires, was mostly demolished and replaced with what's today known as the castle.  Until the Irish independence in 1922 it was used by the British for their local government.  There is one tower that still remains from the original Castle.  It's interesting, but definitely looks out of place.  The back part of the castle is a pretty green lawn now, but used to be a swamp.  It's waters were so murky & black that the local Vikings called it "Dubhlinn", meaning black pool.  Over the years the spelling was changed a bit, until it became what we know today as Dublin.  Through out the tour we stopped at Christchurch Cathedral, nicknamed the Whiskey Church because Jameson Distillery helped fund the majority of the renovations over the years.  Our tour guide told us the story of the Cat & the Rat, whose mummified bodies are on display in the crypt of the church.  One day the organ player was testing the organ and he noticed that when he hit a particular key, the organ didn't play any chime.  They took it apart, and found a mummified cat inside.  The organ was in the lower part of the church, where the air is very dry, which is why it mummified.  They put the organ back to together, but that key still wouldn't play any music.  They took it apart again, and this time further up the pipe found the mummified remains of a rat...presumably the one the cat had chased up there.  For some reason, instead of burying or disposing of the animals, the priest at the time decided to preserve and display the animals.

From there we headed to Trinity College, a university that has been there for hundreds of years.  It was a beautiful campus.  The tour ended in the local gardens that used to be private, but are now opened to the public.  It's also where the Irish resistance in 1922 during the uprising holed up.  They stayed there for awhile until British snipers started picking them off from the surrounding buildings.

After the tour we were hungry, so we headed over to the Jameson Distillery for lunch.  The food wasn't bad, but was over priced.  The dessert Shanna & I shared was good though...we even had an Irish Coffee to go with it.  After lunch I walked down to the bar area and tried a 15 year old bottle of Jamesons..it was AMAZING.  The neat part was the bar area had a glass floor that was situated over the remains of the original distillery.

At this point we'd been walking around all day and we were beat.  We weren't far from our hotel, and didn't have any plans for a few hours, so we went back & took a nap.

That evening we headed to the Workman's Bar in the Temple Bar district area.  The tour we had taken earlier in the day sponsored a pub crawl through out pubs in the area.  The first bar started you off with a complimentary pint of Guinness.  We hit five pubs between 7:30pm and midnight, and had a great time talking with our pub guide.  She was about 5 foot tall, had a thick Irish accent, and just talked & talked all night.  But it was a lot of fun...it's great spending time with friends, but one part of travelling we both love is talking with the people who live where ever we are visiting.  At the end of the pub crawl we cabbed it back to the hotel and called it a night.

The next morning, after breakfast, we had a few things planned.  That morning we wanted to see a few things in town, then later that afternoon we were heading to the nearby coastal village of Howth.  We first walked to St. Patrick's Cathedral.  It was a pretty cathedral from the outside, but really neat from the inside. One thing I learned was that Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels, is buried there.  There was also all kinds of plaques & memorials in there.  One plaque I thought was really interesting, it was dedicated to a guy who was killed in action in Afghanistan.  I assumed it was a recent plaque until I noticed the date...1842.  Remember how Christchurch Cathedral was nicknamed the Whiskey Church?  Well St. Patrick's is nicknamed the Beer Church because the Guinness Brewery put a large amount of money into restoring it.

From there we headed to the Christchurch Cathedral that we had stopped at the day before on the tour.  This time we were able to walk in, as well as go down into the crypt area and see the Cat & the Rat mentioned earlier.  They also had some of the set costumes from the show The Tudors.  Apparently they filmed at the church all the time.

Now it was time to head to Howth.  We hopped a bus to the train station, then took a quick train ride there. It's too bad the weather was overcast, because it was pretty enough as it was, but on a clear day it would have been amazing.  We walked around the dock area for a bit, then headed over to a row of seafood restaurants for lunch.  They are all lined up right where the fishing boats dock, so they would unload their catches that day and they go right into the restaurant.  The place we ate at served them "tapas" style, so we ordered a bunch of plates and just shared them.  The food was outstanding.

We walked from there, along the dock, to the tourist information center.  Inside the center a local artist had a small shop set up.  Shanna fell in love with a watercolor print of the local light house, and it was reasonably priced, so we picked it up.  The artist was really nice, and gave us his contact info.  He asked us to send him a picture once Shanna had it framed and hung in our house.  While walking to the local bus stop, we saw a dog that I had to get a picture of...he was the same breed as Murphy, and was even sitting with his legs crossed, the same way Murphy does.

The bus wasn't going to be there for another 45 minutes, so we took a cab up to the summit area.  The view from up there was amazing.  You could see way out into the ocean, as well as the local lighthouse.

We walked around the summit area for awhile, then were lucky enough to catch a bus that went all the way to Dublin.  It was neat riding on the upper level of the bus and seeing the country side.  It was also strange riding on the left side of the road.  That would take a long time to get used to.

When we got back to Dublin, we walked around shopping for awhile, then headed back to the hotel and ate dinner there.

The next morning we got up early, headed to the airport, and flew home.  One neat thing I saw while in the air was some mountains.  We were way above the cloud layer, but these mountains were so tall the peaks broke through the cloud layer!  I took a picture of it and it's on the pictures page.

So that was it...over all we had a great time, and now more then ever I want to go visit Scotland.  The people in Ireland were so friendly, and the country side is stunning.

The blog will most likely be quiet for awhile...our next planned trip isn't until the end of May when we go to Paris & Normandy for Memorial Day Weekend.  Then in June Shanna's Mom is bring her niece & nephew out for a few weeks, then in July we fly back home for a week!  So it'll be quiet until May, but then there'll be lots of posts between then & mid July.

To see pictures, click here or any picture above.

Belfast (Ireland Part 1)

A few months ago our friends Jenny & Chris mentioned doing Ireland in March.  They were looking at spending a Sunday - Wednesday there, but we decided to go a few days before them, then meet up when they arrived.

We got a good deal on direct flights, so it was nice not have to change over anywhere.  When we landed in Dublin, we couldn't help but notice the same thing immediately...English was everywhere!  You get used to not being able to read every sign, or having to pick out words you know to get the over all meaning.  But for the next six days, we wouldn't have to worry about speaking or reading anything but English.  It was a quick trip through Passport control, then we got our baggage and hopped a cab to the hotel.  On the drive there I noticed the cabbie was driving the speed limit, and sitting in the left lane.  I thought that was a jerk move, but then I thought about it...I knew they drove on the left side of the road, then it occurred to me that maybe that meant their left lane was the cruising lane and they passed on the right side.  Sure enough, I saw cars pass him on the right, then get right back in the left lane.  That would be hard to get used to if we lived there.

We got to the hotel, checked in, then hit the town.  Both of us were tired, so we didn't stay out too late, but we did head to a pub for dinner and a few drinks.  The first thing we noticed when we walked into the pub was how friendly everyone was.  The bartender said hello, and talked with us for a few minutes before seating us, and all through out the evening, everyone who worked there was really nice.  I had a delicious dinner of chicken, wrapped in bacon and stuffed with herbs.

After we were done there, we headed back to the hotel and called it an early night.  It was nice being able to flip through the TV channels and have every one of them be in English.

The next morning came quickly because we had to be at the train station by 7:30 to meet up with our tour. We got there on time, got our tickets from our tour guide, then hopped on the train to Belfast.  Our tour guide was really nice, and on the 2 hour train ride would move from group to group talking with people.  The country side was BEAUTIFUL.  It had rained the night before and was sunny now, so the whole country side looked like someone had hosed it all down and cleaned it.  It was bright, shiny, and most of all, GREEN.

Before we knew it we had arrived in Belfast.  The interesting thing about Belfast, which I didn't know prior to our trip, was that it's the capital of Northern Ireland, which is a different country from the Republic of Ireland.  The southern part of the country is called the Republic of Ireland, and is it's own independent country.  It's part of the EU and uses the Euro for currency, but has it's own government.  Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, and uses the Pound for currency.  The hotel we were staying at was right outside the train station, so we were able to quickly check in & drop our bags off, then hop on the tour bus that was going to take us all around the northern part of the country that day.  On the way to our first stop, we saw a full rainbow!  I thought that was neat, seeing a rainbow in Ireland.  Our first stop was Carrickfergus Castle.  Because we had a lot of places to visit, we didn't actually go in the castle, we just stopped for about 10 minutes outside the castle to stretch our legs and take pictures.

After that it was back on the bus.  The drive to the rope bridge was going to take approximately 2 hours, so we stopped at a rest stop along the way in a little village.  I only mention this because we took some pictures there, including one of a plaque I thought was interesting talking about Paddy, a carrier pigeon used shortly after D-Day to send information to troops in France.  It flew there and back in just under 5 hours, which was a record time.

When we got to the rope bridge area, you couldn't help but be in awe of the cliff sides and small islands.  It was a 1 kilometer walk from the parking lot to the rope bridge, but it took us awhile to walk it because we kept stopping to take pictures.  The rope bridge was HIGH up...several hundred meters above a rocky area with the ocean flowing beneath us.  You'll see it in the pictures, it would have been a long way down.  It didn't help that it was windy and the bridge was swinging.

There wasn't much on the other side of the rope bridge, just an area on the rock outcropping to take pictures and look around.  We then crossed back over the bridge and headed back to the bus.

The next stop was lunch at the Bushmill's Distillery.  It's the oldest licensed distillery in Ireland, with it's license being issued in 1608.  They had been distilling on that site since the 1100's, but in the 1600's they were required to get a license to continue.  The food there was pretty good, I had a cottage pie, which was basically hamburger meat and vegetables with a baked mashed potato like topping.  We also might have picked up a few bottles of the whiskey from the gift shop. :)

Before the last stop, the bus driver pulled over to the side of the road so we could get out & take pictures.  From there we could see an amazing sight...castle ruins built on top of the cliffs looking out over the water.  The pictures of it are some of my favorites that we took during the trip.

The next stop was the last one, and the main reason for the trip...the Giant's Causeway.  It's a natural rock formation that's unique because of it's shape...hexagons.  It was due to volcanic eruptions, but in typical Irish fashion, they have a different reason.  They like to say that a giant named Finn McCool used to live there (hence the name), and it had a problem with the giant who lived across the Irish Sea, in Scotland.  They would throw rocks at each other, and that's how part of it formed.  They also say some of the strange formations of rocks in the area were used by the Finn.  They have the Giants Chair, the Giants Chimney, the Giant's musical Organ, etc...  You'll see some of them in the pictures.  We got there before sunset, but the sun was lower in the sky and it was beautiful.

After we'd walked around there for a bit we got back on the bus and headed back to Belfast.  Once we got back there, the rest of the tour got back on the train and headed back to Dublin, but Shanna & I had arranged to have our return tickets dated for the following day since we were staying the night in Belfast.  We went back to the hotel and dropped our stuff off, then walked around town.  The first pub we walked into was neat, it had a bunch of guys dressed up in kilts and other guys dressed in green watching the Ireland Vs. Scotland Rugby match.  Neither Shanna nor I had ever watched a game before and knew nothing about it.  This was another example of Irish hospitality...the bartender, in between serving drinks, sat and explained the rules to us while we watched.  Once we had a rough idea of what was going on, it was actually a lot of fun to watch.  Ireland won the match.  We wondered around town after that, and found a good pub to eat dinner at.  After dinner we stopped back in the first bar for a few more drinks, then called it a night.

The next morning we got up and hit the town.  It was around 9am, and we were scheduled to meet our tour guide at noon.  We found a great place to eat that had a traditional Irish breakfast, consisting of eggs, bacon, sausage, baked beans, toast, and these things that had the consistency of pancakes, but were not served with syrup.  I'm not sure what they were, but they weren't bad.  After breakfast we came across a few neat landmarks.  First was the Europa Hotel, which is famous because it was the most bombed hotel by the IRA during the 70's and 80's.  Across the street from it was the Crown Bar.  It had a giant crown on the ground at the entrance, and we were told that if you were Catholic you stepped on the crown as you walked in, and if you were Protestant you stepped over the crown.  We also passed by the Grand Opera House, which was a beautiful building.

The nice thing about Belfast was, in contrast to Dublin, it was quiet.  We walked around that morning and barely saw anyone.  At one point while we were reading a tourist sign, a guy walked up and asked if we wanted to sign up for a tour.  We told him thanks, but we already had a tour lined up.  He said ok, then asked if there was anything he could help us with or any questions we might have.  We talked with him for a few minutes, then he wished us a good day, and headed off.  It was that kind of friendliness from people that was unexpected, but we saw it our entire trip.

Eventually noon rolled around and we met our tour guide in front of City Hall.  The guy I had set the tour up through had told me ahead of time that he couldn't do it on Sunday due to a prior committment, but his friend was a professor at Queen's University in Belfast.  He was really nice, but had a THICK Irish accent. Most people we talked with were easy to understand, but I had to listen hard to this guy to understand everything he said.  The tour billed itself as "Hidden Belfast", and he took us through all sorts of back alleys and areas where you never would have known had historical value.  He showed us where the old Linen factory used to be, where members of the IRA would gather in secret, and other historical places.  We ended the tour at the oldest pub in Belfast.  From there we walked with the tour guide to St. George's Market, which was near our hotel.  It's a large indoor market where vendors from all over the city come to sell their goods.  They also had food, so we ate lunch there.  There's a video I posted in the pictures that is from the market.  They were playing Irish music as we walked through.  Finally it was time to head to the train station and hop the train back to Dublin.

Since between the two cities there's a LOT to write about, I'm breaking the post up into two, one for Belfast and one for Dublin.

To see the pictures, click here or any picture above.

To head on to the Dublin post, click here.