Lush Ireland

A little windy on the Cliffs of Moher!

October2...continued: We arrived to the Dublin airport about 8:20pm, collected our bags and then tried to figure out where to find the bus to the city center. After about 25 minutes of asking and searching, we found bus 41 and needed to wait 20 minutes until the next one arrived.

The directions to our hotel were terrible. In fact, I had to inquire twice to them to get some that we're mediocre at best. All we knew was we were supposed to take bus 41 to the last stop and they were "a three-minute walk from there."

Well the bus driver was a jerk and when we asked if he stopped at a specific street, he responded with "obviously." Ok then, not off to the best start, and I forgot to mention it was raining. We got on the bus and noticed that there was no bus route sign or anything, so we were a little worried as to how we would know when the last stop was. I was able to ask a woman behind me who showed more manners than the mean driver.

We got off the bus and were left to decide which "three-minute" walk we would choose at this fork in the road, literally. Thankfully we chose correctly and made it to The Abbott Lodge Inn. We booked this place based off of reviews and proximity to the city center.

I can safely say, it's the worst place we've stayed to date. Here is a rundown of our first 30 minutes:

-Walked the four flights to room 126

-Reeked like barf

-Smell confirmed by the still wet trash can in the corner, no joke.

-Got our room changed to the first floor, room 104.  Only room with no Wi-fi...great.

-Windowless, no fan, so musty it was hard to breathe. But it was bigger than the barf room

-Put our bags down. Noticed two boogies stuck to the wall. One was bloody.

-Grin and barred it. I took a shower.

-Water pressure good.

-Blew dry my hair with THEIR hair dryer. Started smoking like crazy. Now the room smelled of smoke and must. No fan or windows to air out.

-Andrew uses the bathroom. Steps on a SLUG! Not joking, a slug on the floor!

-We got in bed at 11:45pm and squinted to see the 13inch mounted box tv; circa 2000.

October3: Woke up to another rainy day. Ventured out to explore the Guinness Brewery. We ended up spending three hours there! One of the coolest tours I've ever been on. It was so modern and well done, just amazing! It's self guided but everything is interactive using huge tvs with motion activated software explaining how they brew their beer. It's really quite hard to explain, I'm hoping some of my photos can do it justice.

Room with talking frames

One of the coolest rooms was filled with about ten talking picture frames. High definition tvs that were 'portraits' of people from different eras talking about Arthur Guinness, the founder. When you stepped in front of them, they came to life in almost 3D likeness. Really clever and super interesting.

They had a taste testing room where they activated all of your senses. Very Willy Wonka like in an all white room. We were given a shot glass of Guinness and then told to walk into the next room without drinking it. This time, an all black room, the guide told us how to taste all the flavors based on the sipping technique. Just really cool!

We then went to the fourth floor, Guinness Acadamy, and learned how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness. After we all poured our own, we entered our name into an iPad and a certificate printed out! Cool! They snapped a group photo and if we entered our email address into the iPad, we were immediately emailed the group photo. Just a great way to use current technology to please your customers, well done!

Andrew pouring.

We then took our beers up to the seventh floor where we enjoyed a 360 degree view of Dublin. We just really enjoyed ourselves and it was one of the few entry fees we paid that we felt we got our money's worth.

We left the brewhouse, walked around a few shops in the city center before we were tired of getting rained on. We went back to our lovely abode to book some things for the coming days which was a relief when we finished! We headed to a local pub for drinks, an appetizer and a dessert! Pretty successful (despite the rain) first full day in Ireland!

October 4: After another lovely night in our wonderful hotel, we woke up refreshed and ready to go. Ha! We walked about thirty minutes to check out Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Saint Patrick is said to have baptized converts to Christianity at a well that once existed in the park just next to the Cathedral. Due to this association, a church has been there since the fifth century. The current cathedral (after a few rebuilds) has been there since the thirteenth century!

The alter at Saint Patrick's Cathedral

It was a really beautiful church. Odd to have been charged an admission price to visit an active cathedral, but I guess they have to get the restoration money from somewhere, and we were glad to contribute! After admiring the stained glass for a while, we left to check out Trinity College; the oldest and most famous university in Ireland.

Being in no rush, we decided to check out Shop Street. A bustling commercial district filled with shops, cafés and street performers. We were luck to catch a local band called ‘Keywest’ and the five members were so talented! We ended up buying a few over cds as well as an original. It was a really nice little break to enjoy some fabulous local Dublin talent!

After the serenade, we made our way over to the college. Now, walking around the college is free, so we did that for a bit and then checked out their gift shop. A famous exhibition was going on to see ‘The Book of Kells,” an elaborately designed gospel created by monks on the Scottish isle of Iona around 800ad. They copied the books, word for word in Latin, of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John from the New Testament. We really didn’t know much about it and we thought nine-Euro a piece to see it seemed a little much so we decided to pass.

In the Long Room (where we weren't supposed to be)

After moseying around the gift shop, we found ourselves walking up some stairs in the shop not knowing what they lead to. We found our selves in the magnificent ‘Long Room’ library. Built between 1712 and 1732, it contains four million titles! It is really beautiful and the sight of some of these old books was just really stunning. It even had the ‘old book’ smell! We made our way down the opposite side stairs thinking it would lead us back to the gift shop. Well, we were actually in the Book of Kells exhibition hall! So confused (and clearly someone wasn’t doing their job if we just mindlessly ended up in the hall for FREE) we took a look around. It was neat to see how the monks created the book, and the book itself was pretty. But I was glad we didn’t pay the eighteen Euro for it. And just like that, we walked out.

I felt a little bad for not paying, but it wasn’t done out of malicious intent, we honestly didn’t know where we were going. If we weren’t allowed to go that way don’t you think someone should have been there? Oh, well. It was a lovely little mistake!

We left the college and headed to the famous Temple Bar district for some lunch in a typical Irish Pub. The streets were lined with them. We kind of just picked one thinking that they really all kind of served the same things. After our late lunch, we decided to just walk around the streets a little more, enjoying our last day in Dublin. Tomorrow we would be hitting the road for a three-day rental car road trip around the beautiful Green Isle.

October 5: And we’re mobile! After a bit of a frustrating morning, the guy at the front desk of our awful hotel did not know what the heck he was talking about when it came to which bus we needed to take. We ended up just taking a taxi for the first time since we have left Korea. Is that nuts?!

Andrew and our sweet ride!

We decided to pick up the rental car at the airport since it seemed like the easiest way. We booked the car through lastminutedeals.com with Enterprise, so it was ready for us when we got there. Renting the car was a lot more than in the states, but I had read that in our travel guide. It has something to do with the insurance the government mandates you to purchase with the rental and it’s pretty steep. But it’s a piece of mind I guess. The first car we inspected actually had a nail in the tire, which I was so happy the enterprise guy caught, so we were given another. The car is an automatic Nissan Micra! I was a little nervous for Andrew as it’s been over a year since he has driven and it’s on the opposite side of the road. But he did a great job with the driving when we were in New Zealand, that I knew he’s do a great job!

And we’re off, shades on, windows down, and our new Irish band cd blasting through the speakers! Our first stop is Galway. A city about two and a half hours west of Dublin and on the west coast. We booked a hotel there, Galway Oyster, for the night to give us a chance to explore. 

Just enjoying the view!

Well, there isn’t a whole lot to do in Galway, so after checking in and getting something to eat, we headed 50km southwest to check out the Cliffs of Moher. WOAH! The lush green, gorgeous Ireland I’m sure you are picturing is exactly what we saw out our windows on the drive to the cliffs. It was like a movie! It’s obvious how Ireland get the name, the Green Isle. We made it to the cliffs via a super narrow country road with no shoulder (I was a nervous wreck) and saw that we had to pay six euro a piece to park! What?! I have to pay to park in this big open lot? Not okay. We turned around in search of another option. Bingo! We saw some people walking down the way and noticed a few cars parked in the side of the road and people walking up a path to the cliffs. So that’s what we did.

After parking the car, we made the trek up the steep hill where we would eventually meet up with the people that paid to park. Same gorgeous view for FREE! The views were breathtaking! There isn’t much more to say other than that. I’ll just include a few photos below and you can see for yourself! We left just before dark to avoid the narrow roads without streetlights. That would have been scary! Great first day of the road trip!

October 6: Today, we woke up, filled our bellies with the complimentary breakfast and hit the road for Cork. Unfortunately, the unusually beautiful weather we had yesterday did stretch itself any further and we woke up to more rain. This kind of puts a damper in our plans of stopping along to way to see sites or just take pictures of the beautiful scenery. The drive was only about two hours, but it rained the entire time. We made one detour through the town of Limerick to see what was there and to get some gas. Pretty much everything was closed because it was Sunday, so we just filled up. And let me tell you, I have no right to complain about gas prices in the US anymore! We still had little more than a quarter tank in this tiny Micra car, and it still cost us $60!!! That is crazy to me! No wonder they all drive itty-bitty cars.

We hit the road again and arrived at our Cork hotel, the Best Western. The hotel is really nice and the town is built within these killer walking hills. We dropped our stuff off and headed into town to get something to eat. We decided not to drive because we knew parking would be a pain so we just walked….in the rain…boo. The walk down wasn’t bad, but when we finished eating, we had to walk the 15 minutes up hill; not fun at all. We took the rest of the rainy afternoon to look up the last few activities we would do to fill our last two days!

Gorgeous grounds around the castle.

October 7: Boo....more rain! Our plan was to head the eight kilometers from Cork, to Blarney, to visit the famous Blarney Stone, the castle it's set in as well as the beautiful gardens. But of course, that's no fun in the rain, so we decided to head there in search of a lunch spot and wait for the rain to let up. A huge tourist attraction set in the tower of the castle in 1446, it is said that anyone who kisses the Blarney Stone endows the kisser with the gift of eloquence; so of course we had to kiss it! 

The rain let up so we headed to the castle. The castle itself is not that impressive, but the beautiful, lush gardens around it are worth the visit. We walked along the tourist friendly path taking pictures of the gorgeous grounds around us and reading all the little 'legend' markers along the way telling us about the  witch the used to live there; kind of fun. After about an hour, we made our way to the castle and to take our turn at kissing the stone. The castle is really nothing to talk about. The steps to get to the stone however, are. Talk about tiny spaces! The stairs were so narrow and the spiral staircase is not for the anyone remotely claustrophobic. It was even smaller than the stairs leading the top of the Notre Dame tower in Paris. 

Andrew kissing the stone!

We made it to the top and prepared to kiss the stone. It's actually quite awkward to tell you the truth. You have to lay on your back, grabbing these two iron posts while this old man that worked there helped to lean uncomfortable far back, like a back bend, as you kiss the stone upside down looking at the gardens quite far down below you. Not a fan of kissing something thousands of people ahead of me have; I got to go right after I watched him sanitize it! Whew! 

After gaining our 'gift of eloquence,' it started raining again so we had to head back.

October 8: Our last full day of this incredible trip! We got in the rental car and drove about an hour and fifteen minutes to the city of Waterford. Know where this is going?! Yes, we were going to tour the Waterford Crystal factory! So exciting! We pulled in, ate a quick lunch and then headed to the store. Stunning of course! A whole factory filled with all different types of beautifully cut crystal just sparkling in the perfectly positioned lighting...love!

We bought out tickets for the tour; a behind the scenes look at the mast craftsmen at work. We got to see how the molded, blew, shaped, cut, and shined the pieces from start to finish. The apprenticeship these men go through last up to ten years!! It is so amazing how they make all those perfect cut lines by hand; pretty incredible. We even got to hold a replica of the NCAA College football championship trophy so that we neat! The tour lasted about an hour and it gave us some great insight to this super skilled trade; it made us look at the pieces in the showroom that much closer and with that much more respect. Having not really bought any souvenirs on this trip, we splurged and bought ourselves a truly gorgeous bowl that was made at and exclusively for this factory store, so that's pretty special.

We left Waterford and headed back to Dublin to return the car and check into our airport hotel. I can't believe this trip is over. This journey really. It all started back in December of 2011 when Andrew and I talked about how much we missed living abroad and how much we wanted to travel Europe. Returning to Korea was again, such an amazing experience in itself but it helped us to ultimately get to our end goal of Europe. Traveling Europe is not cheap compared to Asia, and we knew that. Having that year to just work and save in Korea made all of this possible.

In a matter of fourteen months we traveled and experienced: Korea, Philippines, Hong Kong, Turkey, Italy, France, Austria, Germany, England, Scotland, and Ireland. At the tender age of 27, Andrew and I have had so many travel opportunities that we know we are so blessed to have had. We set a goal, worked for it and accomplished it. I'm so proud, and yet, so excited for all of the goals in our future that we will work for and attain together! Bless Andrew's heart for putting up with me; Lord knows I can be a bit of a high-strung traveler!

Thanks for all the love and prayers and for following our journey! Can't wait to get back to the good 'ole USofA!