So I guess I should blog about Kari and I's amazing 5 year anniversary trip to Ireland...
Starting off with travel... the
flights weren't that bad at all. I mean, they were 6-7 hours, but having my ipad and an exit row seat made everything much nicer. If you're ever going on a flight this long, try to get an exit row seat (but beware - exit row window seats do not recline all the way). Another quick international travel trip: bring a 3G iPad, buy prepaid 3G SIM cards wherever you go. This kept us connected without roaming and saved us a countless number of times with google maps, etc.
Day 1 - Kari's birthday
We landed in Dublin around 8:30am, caught a bus to Dublin city centre, found our hotel, checked in, and went to explore the town. The first order of business was to find an iPad SIM card then tour Guinness... both of which were accomplished.
The Guinness tour was kinda... meh. You don't actually tour the brewery, you basically go through this massive
museum style building that explains everything about Guinness, how it's made, etc. If you know anything about brewing beer, this was for the most part - boring. The advertisement and
history stuff was the most interesting part for me. Plus,
learning how to pour a perfect Guinness,
eating lunch, and having a pint in their
gravity bar was super awesome... food and beer consumption on Guinness grounds was definitely the best part.
After Guinness we napped for a bit then I took
Kari out for some fancy birthday dinner at a place called
Fire. Afterwards
we got a drink at
Cafe en Seine, which was a beautiful place containing both trendy music and trendy people.
Day 2
Grabbed
lunch at this nice little organic joint called The Farm, and spent the day walking around Dublin. First, we hit up Trinity College, which is Ireland's oldest University (and
puts Cornell's campus to shame). Here we spent quite a bit of time in Trinity's Library. I'm not really a library kind of dude, but it really is ridiculous. Firstly, it has the book of Kells inside (the 4 gospels of the new testament in super ornate print) from 800A.D. and secondly, it houses "the long room" which is a giant, open room containing the university's oldest books. It's the entire top 2 floors of
this photo. Unfortunately, photos aren't allowed of either, so
here's a panoramic of the library. After Trinity, I took Kari birthday shopping
around Grafton street,
had a pint in a random pub, and
walked around Stephen's green park.
That night
we hit up the
Temple bar area which is a pretty touristy part of town with some old cobbled streets and traditional pubs. It was quite fun.
Day 3 - from Dublin to Kilkenny
The day started out with Kari stressing about our upcoming foreign driving adventure. With that in mind, we made sure we were well nourished and had plenty of caffeine, then walked to Thrifty to
rent our Hyundai i10. Driving started off pretty bad, haha. The streets in Dublin are horribly marked, and most buildings don't even have legit street addresses. Combine this with driving on the wrong side of the street (
and car) and roads that wind all over the place... it took us 3 times as long to get out of town than it should have.
Once we got out of Dublin, things were
smooth sailing all the way to the
Abbeylodge Bed and Breakfast in Kilkenny. The hostess, Rosie was great. She pointed us to a nice cafe for lunch, great Indian for dinner, and an
old witches house-turned pub for music. In between,
we skyped,
walked around town, and
checked out the Kilkenny castle (again, no photos inside).
Day 4 - Kilkenny to Killarney
After breakfast we checked out
St Canice's cathedral, which
was quite pretty then headed toward Killarney. On the way to Killarney we were able to check out the
Rock of Cashel and
Cahir castle, which were both great spots. The size of the Rock of Cashel was out of control. This was definitely one of my favorite castles.
The drive to Killarney was great. The roads were all super
fun and curvy, I loved it. In fact, I think that driving was my favorite part of the whole vacation. The roads we drive on in America are straight up boring compared to the awesomeness in Ireland.
Once we got to Killarney we checked into the
Chelmsford House, grabbed some food, then
listened to traditional irish music at a great little pub called Sheehans.
Day 5 - Killarney
The goal for day 5 was just to drive the ring of Kerry, which is a 100 mile circular route around a peninsula in southwestern Ireland. Unfortunately it was
super foggy, but there was still plenty of
beautiful landscape to
take in. Plus, the roads were once again
super curvy and a blast to drive on. It was
an excellent way to spend the day.
After the ring of Kerry we decided to take a break from the stout and Irish food to just
have pizza and water in our room.
Day 6 - Killarney to Doolin
After breakfast we drove and
ferried toward Doolin, a tiny tiny town with nothing more than a few
pubs, a couple shops, and some bed and breakfasts. On the way to Doolin we were able to stop by the
Cliffs of Moher which are a group of 700 foot tall cliffs along the Atlantic ocean. It was seriously amazing. And was quite awesome to talk Kari into
breaking the rules to
explore a bit. For some reason we also decided to take 100
photos of ourselves while here.
After the Cliffs of Moher we continued onto Doolin and checked into the
Churchfield B&B (which had another excellent hostess named Maeve). Then, we spent the evening hanging out in the
Doolin pubs where we had dinner and tried to drink
like the Irish do... it was hard.
Day 7 - Doolin to Galway
Woke up and had an excellent Irish breakfast from Maeve, shopped, then
made our way toward Galway. On the way to Galway we stopped by the
Poulnabrone Dolmen, a tomb built some time around 3,500 B.C. It was pretty neat and in the middle of an area called The Burren, which is this huge
rocky landscape area that sorta looks like you're
on the moon.
After exploring the Burren a bit, we went to Galway where we checked into the
Marless house and then explored the city. Galway was a pretty big college town, so it didn't feel quite as Irish as the small towns... but it was definitely
a nice place that I could see myself living in. In Galway we basically just walked around, shopped,
snacked, and had an amazing dinner at a place called
Nimmos.
Day 8 - Galway to Boyne Valley
After breakfast we made our way toward the Boyne Valley. This was one of the longest drives of the trip, so we weren't able to accomplish a whole lot, but we did get to check out a ridiculous tomb called
Newgrange. This was another massive tomb built around 3000 B.C. The engineering of Newgrange was pretty crazy... The
rocks that made up the tomb were all brought in from 50-100km away (even the big ones), and was designed in a way that the interior tomb is flooded with light every year on the winter solstice... There are plenty more details that I won't bore you with.
After newgrange we checked into a fancy little B&B called
Athlumney Manor, got some Italian food, then had our last pint of the trip at a local pub.
Day 9
Woke up, drove to the airport, sampled a couple kinds of Jameson, and began the long
flight home.
All-in-all the trip was amazing. I think that my favorite parts were driving, the cliffs of moher, the Irish countryside, the whole pub experience, and of course being able to do all of that with my amazing wife, Kari. I'd definitely go back... but I'm packing
Mountain Dew next time.
The rest of my photos from the trip are
here.
comments
I was wondering how your trip went. It looks amazing. Kari - you are such a fashionista and an inspiration to me to actually brush my hair and wear something cute.
Juliet posted
Totally awesome.
Cedric posted