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Sep. 21st, 2006 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wildflowersoulI think a brief run down of the trip is in order. I took no pictures because I'm just not that into taking pictures; the ones I link to here are all from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
c_m_i. Except when they are obviously from other web pages that are not LJ Photo. But I'm sure cosmicserpent and starflow will have lots cool pictures up sometime.
So, we arrived into Dublin Friday morning exhausted but unable to get into our rooms until noon. I wonder if it would actually be worthwhile next time we red-eye into somewhere to have paid for a hotel room for the night we fly just to be able to get in and sleep when you want to. So we blearily trudged through Dublin, saw the Book of Kells and the very cool Trinity College library with massive walls of books. After a rejuvenating nap, I believe we then walked around some more, then commenced to drinkin'. Found an excellent microbrew pub that had the best strawberry Belgian beer in the entire world. Our second day in Dublin involved a trip to the Dublin Zoo (which had the best fed bunnies ever just hanging out with the best fed guinea pigs ever- so much cuteness in one place!), then went to the Guiness Storehouse. Guiness tasted good there! They are trying to develop a new kind of Guiness that Americans (read: people like me) will drink, and they certainly succeeded. I can only hope Toucan Brew makes its way over here sometime! After that, there was more drinkin', and a thwarted attempt to do a ghost tour. *sniff* No ghost tours! I am so dragging anyone I can to a ghost tour in Boston this fall.
After Dublin we headed to Kilkenny, a really cute little medieval-type city. Their Black Abbey was really cool (coffins from Black Plague victims lined up outside!), and their castle was pretty. Our pub run ended when the entire town lost power, so we went back to the B&B for some rest. The kindly B&B proprietress claimed this had never happened evar, but I highly doubt that's the case.
A trip to the Rock of Cashel followed the next morning. Very cool, if somewhat unpleasant from the torrential downpour we were caught in.
We then proceeded on to the saddest of sad cities, Cork. Ah, Cork. Our B&B was just as downtrodden as the city, which I guess was fitting. Well, we got ourselves good and drunk the first night. Took a daytrip to Kinsale the next day. Cute little fishing village! There was a fantastic little food market in the middle of town that day with all kinds of local, organic stuff. Back in Cork for the evening, we found a little microbrew place called The Fransican's Well that I later found out was Totally Haunted by the ghost of a monk.
The next day brought us to Blarney Castle. I did not kiss the stone, but a lot of old people sure did. The grounds for the castle were stunning, and included a really pretty/slightly spooky rock garden. No ghosts, though.
We continued on to Killarney, a very cute, if a bit touristy, town on the edge of the Ring of Kerry. The view from our windows in the B&B was awesome- big old mist-shrouded mountains. By this point I was starting to feel the bloat from too much beer and not enough healthy food take over, and in my search for something to drink that wasn't bubbly, I discovered Baby Guiness. Shot glass shaped like a Guiness glass, filled with Tia Maria and topped with Bailey's. Yum!
Started out bright and early the next morning on our trip to Limerick, with a side-trip to the Dingle peninsula. Heh, Dingle. I had the pleasure of driving that day and somehow managed to not crash the car off the side of a cliff into the ocean. That's always good. Which leads me to a side-rant: the roads in Ireland suck. Seriously. Tiny, narrow, windy roads. Driving on the left wasn't so bad, but having the driver's seat on the right-hand side of the car was the hard part, it requires a weird adjustment of your perception of the space and distance on the other side of the car. I'm so happy to be back to my pothole-ridden but wide roads. And the price of gas was outrageous. Coming home to find the prices here even lower than when we left makes me happy. Come to think of it, the prices for everything seemed really high. I'm sure part of that is the fact that we were in tourist-heavy spots for much of the trip, but it seemed like food in particular was super pricey, and the Euro's steady increase over the dollar doesn't help.
Ok, so, Dingle. We stopped at either the farthest point west in all of Europe, or a point that was very close to that particular point. In any event, it was the first of several spectacular views of standing on cliffs looking out over the Atlantic. We also stopped to see the beehive huts, some totally old stone huts from long, long ago. Went back through Dingle and stopped for lunch, then made our way toward Limerick (which, it happens, looks to be about as depressing as Cork, but our B&B was outside of the city, and we were too exhausted to explore that night). I made one friend on our trip, and I made that friend in Limerick. Our lovely B&B had some adorable dogs hanging about, but it also had a big cat that liked to sit on the roof. His name is Roof Cat. Roof Cat jumped into our room through the windown in the morning, but must not have liked me, because he jumped right back out. I then spent the rest of the trip coming up with songs to sing about Roof Cat.
Now we were on the last leg of our trip! To Galway! We went to Galway via The Cliffs of Mohr and The Burren (not to confused with that Other Burren). The Cliffs were just spectacular. In fact, all of Ireland (aside from Cork) looks like a postcard. The Burren was neat to drive through, but not as fantastic as I thought it would be. If we had parked and walked around for a while in it I'm sure it would have been cool, but I'm just as happy that we drove through it and continued on. We did make a stop off the side of the road to eat lunch and marvel at just how quiet it was out there.
So we arrived in Galway, to the best B&B of our entire trip. Comfier beds! An actual menu to choose something other than Irish Breakfast for breakfast! Nice proprietor! So that was very nice. Galway turns out to be flooded with college students and dirty hippies backpacking through Europe. Hippies aside, though, it's a lovely city, and is tied for first place of my favorite places in Ireland (tied with the Dingle peninsula, that place is just so pretty). So, tired of stouts and heavy beers, we sought out a place mentioned in the Let's Go book as having international beers, and we were duly rewarded. The Bierhaus had lots of excellent Belgians and other beers of the non-stouty variety, and had good music and a good vibe. Loved it!
The next day we trekked out to the Aran Islands (specifically, Inis Mor). It was rainy and dreary, but that seemed to be the right weather for being on such a beautiful but desolate island.c_m_i and I hopped into a minivan for a "tour" of the island, saw the ruins of an 8th century church and the ruins of a big old fort on the top of a cliff. The view of the ocean surrounded by mist up there was even more fantastic than the view from the Cliffs of Mohr. Just lovely. Returned to Galway on a ferry packed with pretentious art school students and more hippie backpackers.
Our last day involved driving across the country to, looking at Trim Castle, and then settling in to drink and watch some Irish football. Our room had a fantastic view.
Finally, we returned to the Dublin airport for a very long flight home. Stopping in Shannon to go through US immigration and customs was pretty annoying at the time, but I was glad to bypass the line for that in Boston once we landed.
One thing I could not get over was just how incredibly green it is. Everyone says that, but you don't really believe it until you see it.
So that's that. It was an excellent trip, but the exhausting kind of vacation that leaves you feeling very glad to be home and vegging out in front of the tv for a few days. Of course, I returned to work today to find that my instructions for Bad Coworker on what to do for me in my absence were poorly interpreted, and I spent most of the day fixing her weird and unnecessary cataloging changes. Seriously, if you don't have a degree in library science you are not allowed to make up titles and call numbers because you will do it wrong!
c_m_i. Except when they are obviously from other web pages that are not LJ Photo. But I'm sure cosmicserpent and starflow will have lots cool pictures up sometime.So, we arrived into Dublin Friday morning exhausted but unable to get into our rooms until noon. I wonder if it would actually be worthwhile next time we red-eye into somewhere to have paid for a hotel room for the night we fly just to be able to get in and sleep when you want to. So we blearily trudged through Dublin, saw the Book of Kells and the very cool Trinity College library with massive walls of books. After a rejuvenating nap, I believe we then walked around some more, then commenced to drinkin'. Found an excellent microbrew pub that had the best strawberry Belgian beer in the entire world. Our second day in Dublin involved a trip to the Dublin Zoo (which had the best fed bunnies ever just hanging out with the best fed guinea pigs ever- so much cuteness in one place!), then went to the Guiness Storehouse. Guiness tasted good there! They are trying to develop a new kind of Guiness that Americans (read: people like me) will drink, and they certainly succeeded. I can only hope Toucan Brew makes its way over here sometime! After that, there was more drinkin', and a thwarted attempt to do a ghost tour. *sniff* No ghost tours! I am so dragging anyone I can to a ghost tour in Boston this fall.
After Dublin we headed to Kilkenny, a really cute little medieval-type city. Their Black Abbey was really cool (coffins from Black Plague victims lined up outside!), and their castle was pretty. Our pub run ended when the entire town lost power, so we went back to the B&B for some rest. The kindly B&B proprietress claimed this had never happened evar, but I highly doubt that's the case.
A trip to the Rock of Cashel followed the next morning. Very cool, if somewhat unpleasant from the torrential downpour we were caught in.
We then proceeded on to the saddest of sad cities, Cork. Ah, Cork. Our B&B was just as downtrodden as the city, which I guess was fitting. Well, we got ourselves good and drunk the first night. Took a daytrip to Kinsale the next day. Cute little fishing village! There was a fantastic little food market in the middle of town that day with all kinds of local, organic stuff. Back in Cork for the evening, we found a little microbrew place called The Fransican's Well that I later found out was Totally Haunted by the ghost of a monk.
The next day brought us to Blarney Castle. I did not kiss the stone, but a lot of old people sure did. The grounds for the castle were stunning, and included a really pretty/slightly spooky rock garden. No ghosts, though.
We continued on to Killarney, a very cute, if a bit touristy, town on the edge of the Ring of Kerry. The view from our windows in the B&B was awesome- big old mist-shrouded mountains. By this point I was starting to feel the bloat from too much beer and not enough healthy food take over, and in my search for something to drink that wasn't bubbly, I discovered Baby Guiness. Shot glass shaped like a Guiness glass, filled with Tia Maria and topped with Bailey's. Yum!
Started out bright and early the next morning on our trip to Limerick, with a side-trip to the Dingle peninsula. Heh, Dingle. I had the pleasure of driving that day and somehow managed to not crash the car off the side of a cliff into the ocean. That's always good. Which leads me to a side-rant: the roads in Ireland suck. Seriously. Tiny, narrow, windy roads. Driving on the left wasn't so bad, but having the driver's seat on the right-hand side of the car was the hard part, it requires a weird adjustment of your perception of the space and distance on the other side of the car. I'm so happy to be back to my pothole-ridden but wide roads. And the price of gas was outrageous. Coming home to find the prices here even lower than when we left makes me happy. Come to think of it, the prices for everything seemed really high. I'm sure part of that is the fact that we were in tourist-heavy spots for much of the trip, but it seemed like food in particular was super pricey, and the Euro's steady increase over the dollar doesn't help.
Ok, so, Dingle. We stopped at either the farthest point west in all of Europe, or a point that was very close to that particular point. In any event, it was the first of several spectacular views of standing on cliffs looking out over the Atlantic. We also stopped to see the beehive huts, some totally old stone huts from long, long ago. Went back through Dingle and stopped for lunch, then made our way toward Limerick (which, it happens, looks to be about as depressing as Cork, but our B&B was outside of the city, and we were too exhausted to explore that night). I made one friend on our trip, and I made that friend in Limerick. Our lovely B&B had some adorable dogs hanging about, but it also had a big cat that liked to sit on the roof. His name is Roof Cat. Roof Cat jumped into our room through the windown in the morning, but must not have liked me, because he jumped right back out. I then spent the rest of the trip coming up with songs to sing about Roof Cat.
Now we were on the last leg of our trip! To Galway! We went to Galway via The Cliffs of Mohr and The Burren (not to confused with that Other Burren). The Cliffs were just spectacular. In fact, all of Ireland (aside from Cork) looks like a postcard. The Burren was neat to drive through, but not as fantastic as I thought it would be. If we had parked and walked around for a while in it I'm sure it would have been cool, but I'm just as happy that we drove through it and continued on. We did make a stop off the side of the road to eat lunch and marvel at just how quiet it was out there.
So we arrived in Galway, to the best B&B of our entire trip. Comfier beds! An actual menu to choose something other than Irish Breakfast for breakfast! Nice proprietor! So that was very nice. Galway turns out to be flooded with college students and dirty hippies backpacking through Europe. Hippies aside, though, it's a lovely city, and is tied for first place of my favorite places in Ireland (tied with the Dingle peninsula, that place is just so pretty). So, tired of stouts and heavy beers, we sought out a place mentioned in the Let's Go book as having international beers, and we were duly rewarded. The Bierhaus had lots of excellent Belgians and other beers of the non-stouty variety, and had good music and a good vibe. Loved it!
The next day we trekked out to the Aran Islands (specifically, Inis Mor). It was rainy and dreary, but that seemed to be the right weather for being on such a beautiful but desolate island.
c_m_i and I hopped into a minivan for a "tour" of the island, saw the ruins of an 8th century church and the ruins of a big old fort on the top of a cliff. The view of the ocean surrounded by mist up there was even more fantastic than the view from the Cliffs of Mohr. Just lovely. Returned to Galway on a ferry packed with pretentious art school students and more hippie backpackers. Our last day involved driving across the country to, looking at Trim Castle, and then settling in to drink and watch some Irish football. Our room had a fantastic view.
Finally, we returned to the Dublin airport for a very long flight home. Stopping in Shannon to go through US immigration and customs was pretty annoying at the time, but I was glad to bypass the line for that in Boston once we landed.
One thing I could not get over was just how incredibly green it is. Everyone says that, but you don't really believe it until you see it.
So that's that. It was an excellent trip, but the exhausting kind of vacation that leaves you feeling very glad to be home and vegging out in front of the tv for a few days. Of course, I returned to work today to find that my instructions for Bad Coworker on what to do for me in my absence were poorly interpreted, and I spent most of the day fixing her weird and unnecessary cataloging changes. Seriously, if you don't have a degree in library science you are not allowed to make up titles and call numbers because you will do it wrong!
