The land of the green
It has been a LONG time since I've blogged, but I am not going to start by giving a synopsis of what we've been up to for the past year. I intend to write about some of it, but today is not that day. Instead, I will start with where we are now - Ireland.
We began planning this trip more than a year ago. In fact, we still had the RV (Livvy) when I began making reservations. Needless to say, we have been looking forward to this for a long time.
This marked the first time we have flown anything but United in quite a while. Aer Lingus flies direct from Cleveland which made the travel experience much easier. The flight was wonderful and thankfully uneventful. However, Karen and I (being in the very good mood to travel again) opted for perhaps a bit too much "celebrating" at CLE before boarding the plane. That celebration continued in the air, until after the meal was served. We then slept, albeit not well, for the remainder of the overnight flight. Arriving in Dublin at 8:30am local time, it is fair to say we did not feel our best.
We caught a cab from the airport to our hotel which was not a long distance. But Dublin traffic sucks. Like Washington DC traffic sucks, except everyone here drives on the stupid side of the road. No wonder traffic builds up. That did not give us a great comfort level for our upcoming self-driving tour around Ireland.
Our hotel had a room available, even though it was only 11:30 when we arrived. Thank God they did because we went upstairs and crashed for 2 hours. We needed the rest and had to charge our batteries as much as we could in order to get to Guinness by 4:15 for our tour. It worked, somewhat, and we were able to hit the town.
We walked to the Temple Bar District (very close to our hotel) and had a pint in the Temple Bar itself. Suffice it to say it is not going to be our favorite thing we do on this trip. It is a tourist trap, and reminded me very much of The French Quarter or Key West. Certainly good music, but frequented by every overenthusiastic overdrinker in the city. I'm glad I saw it, but I need never go back.
The Guinness tour was definitely worth it, if for no other reason than seeing our faces on foam! Plus, drinking a pint at the Gravity Bar with a 360-degree view of Dublin doesn't suck. And now that Karen is a full-fledged beer drinker, she was able to better enjoy the spoils. The tour itself was fun and just informative enough to not be boring. Very well done indeed.
After a good night's sleep in our very comfortable room, we got up the next day to walk to some sights. It's Ireland, so of course it rained on and off nearly the entire walk. No matter, we threw on our rain coats and saw some gorgeous places. Christchurch, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and St. Stephen's Green were all wonderful. The architecture of Christchurch is simply astounding. To be honest, however, the areas surrounding these are just not very nice. Not in an unsafe way, just in an unappealing way.
We had a tour at Jameson scheduled for 5:30, so we waited until about 3:30 to have our first beer, this time at the Brazen Head. The bar purports to be the oldest pub in Ireland, although I believe Sean's is older. It was, nonetheless, the oldest in Dublin and a great place for a pint. We then headed across the river to Church Cafe & Bar. This is an upscale restaurant and bar in a beautiful old church. And man do they make a great cocktail!! Great find by Karen as a pregame to Jameson.
The Jameson tour was so much fun! Unlike Guinness it is guided, and our guide was lovely! Great information and tastings of three different Jameson whiskeys, along with another drink before the tour even started! We chose to sit and enjoy the vibrant bar both before and after our tour. Overall we both tried a lot more than we thought we would and loved every minute of it. Great bookend for our Dublin time!
Tonight we find ourselves in Kenmare, about 4 hours southwest of Dublin. I will talk more about the drive and our day today when I write again. I will end by saying that Dublin was not somewhere I need to visit again. One time is more than enough. It's just far too crowded and far too hectic and is not what we want out of this trip. It is, however, a great place to fly in and out of, so I would do only that in the future. Looking forward to 2 weeks in this amazing country!
