ireland travelogue
So, I went to Ireland!
Ireland had always been pretty high on my list of places I want to visit. Ian had seen it, and wasn't dying to go back. Plus he only had two weeks off, and since he planned to go to Holland for my sister's wedding, and then to Belgium, he couldn't go to Ireland too. I, on the other hand, luxuriously had the summer off. When I found tickets to Dublin that were cheaper than tickets to Amsterdam, I decided to go for it--I would go a week or so early, and see Ireland at last!
My plan was to stay in Dublin for a few days with my friends Sasha and Fergal, and then rent a car and drive around to see some of the country. I was nervous about this plan, since driving on the left side of the road, in a foreign country, alone, seemed like something that could go horribly wrong. But it's my carpe diem year, so I decided to be brave.
Since I was alone on the trip, I was able to spend many evenings sitting in a pub with a pint of Guinness, reading a book and writing my travel journal. Thus, I can transcribe the trip for you! Interspersed with photos!
June 16th, arrive in Dublin, Bloomsday!
I arrived in the morning after an overnight flight with a stopover at JFK. The thrill of being in Ireland began at once when the passport control guy asked me if I was "on holiday" and then I heard someone say "eejit." I felt like I'd walked into a Father Ted episode (and not for the last time). There were also billboards in the airport for a nationwide Oscar Wilde book group, which I found cute. The customs process was funny: walk past a bored guy, sitting at a folding table, reading a newspaper. He did not look up. Well, that was easy!
Sasha was there to meet me, and right away I started paying attention to how driving on the left works, trying to visualize myself doing it. I told myself that I could handle it. "You've been driving for 20 years," I said to myself. "You're a good driver. You have your GPS. No problem." Sasha plied me with the traditional welcoming mimosa, and soon I decided that a nap would be advisable.
When I woke up, we went into Dublin for dinner at a tapas place, and met up with one of Sasha's friends who was doing a pub crawl. He's used to showing tourists around, and showed me the bullet holes in the GPO and the O'Connell monument (from the Easter Rising), the newspaper offices from Ulysses, and the O'Connell Street statues, and he took my picture on the ha'penny bridge (it used to cost one ha'penny to cross it) and with James Joyce. Seeing the river Liffey was exciting especially because it made me think of Finnegans Wake. Spend a year reading that book and you get James Joyce Stockholm Syndrome, it turns out. (Dublin Syndrome?)
On the pub crawl, I had my pint of Guinness in a pub in Dublin, an item that's been on my life list for years. We listened to traditional Irish music, met up with some other friends, chatted and argued and drank, and I bought my first round of drinks at a pub. A very Irish evening and a lovely welcome on Sasha's part. And finally, to sleep for real this time.
June 17th, Dublin
Sasha has a really awesome espresso machine I took to calling the George Clooney machine (he does the ads for the machine, I was informed). George makes an awesome latte. We went to Saint Patrick's first, where I'd promised to light a candle for my friend Richard. Then walked around a bit and had lunch at Taste (I had a delicious chicken Caesar salad). Sasha had to work, so I went to the National Gallery and the Dead Zoo. I particularly loved the National Portrait Gallery, with portraits by and of famous Irish people, including Bono and Mary Robinson and W.B. Yeats.
After that, I went a few doors down to the Dead Zoo, one of the places Annie said I must go. It's a museum full of taxidermied animals, vaguely creepy, yet fun. Then, tired from a few hours of walking around, I went and found a coffee shop where I could sit and read the paper. (I think it was the Sun, with lots of celebrity gossip and pictures of boobs. And World Cup news, of course, which was a big theme during my entire European vacation.)
I met back up with Sasha, and after a quick peek at the Oscar Wilde statue, went to the grocery store and then back to her place, where she cooked a really delicious meal of steak, potatoes, broccoli, and roast tomatoes. We sat in the backyard and ate, drank wine and chatted. Delightful.
June 18th, Belfast, Antrim Coast, Giant's Causeway
The next day, I had a tour scheduled. I wanted to go see the Giant's Causeway (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and in order to do so, I had to take the train to Belfast and join a tour group that would take us along the Antrim Coast to the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge and to the Causeway. The train left at 7 something in the morning, and my cab back to Sasha and Fergal's was close to 11 at night. So it was a long day.
The rope bridge was first, and we were warned that it was a semi-difficult hike down to the bridge and back up. I was worried about making the hike in time to catch the bus back, so I waffled a little on doing it. But I finally decided that I would really be annoyed with myself if I didn't just do it already, so I made it to the bridge. It is not that high, but a lot of people were scared to cross it, I guess because it's very wobbly. But I was so happy that I'd made the hike in time, I was like, man, crossing this bridge is no problem!
We then stopped for lunch at the Giant's Causeway Hotel, where I had literally the worst fish and chips I've ever tasted in my life. I barely ate anything, which was too bad, since it was basically the only meal of the day. But it was dry and inedible. I was excited to find myself having lunch with three retired nuns, though! I enjoy nuns.
After that, we went to the Causeway, which is a series of unique rock formations supposedly built by the giant Finn MacCool. (Here is someone else's picture, much better than any of mine. Just this once.)
It was a fun day, but very long. And while the Antrim Coast was beautiful (where else can you see a church that's been covered by rising water) I realized it wasn't, in my opinion, exponentially more beautiful than the California coast. Beautiful, certainly. But so is where I live. And it wasn't meant as an insult to Ireland, at all. It was just, like, wow, I really do live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. It just made me appreciative, you know?
June 19th, Dublin to Sligo
Sasha was nice enough to drive me back to the Dublin airport to pick up my rental car, and introduced me to Irish radio, which would soon become a familiar friend. She said that there was one show where people would call in with the most mundane problems, and the host would be ridiculously sympathetic. While we were driving, we heard a woman call in about ants in her dishwasher. And sure enough, the host cared very deeply. “Oh Jaysus, Mary. How are you holding up? Are you sleeping at all?” Irish radio is very charming.
When I got to the rental agency (Europcar, I believe) they told me that the person who had “my car” (an automatic transmission) had extended their rental a day, so they didn’t have my car. I said “oh,” and then just kind of stared at them, because I didn’t see how this was my problem. The agent was like, “well, are you sure you can’t drive a stick shift?” I haven’t even attempted to drive a stick shift in 10 years, and I wasn’t about to start in Dublin, on the left side of the road, shifting with my left hand. So I said, “no.” Then they were like, “Can you just drive it for one day, and we’ll switch the cars tomorrow?” No. “Can you just drive to this other random city where we have an airport? You can switch cars there?” No. “But it’s mostly highway driving once you get out of Dublin.” It’s the “get out of Dublin” part that is the problem in the first place! No. “Can you meet them halfway?” No. You will notice that all of these plans involved me driving a stick shift, which I assured them at the very beginning of the conversation that I couldn’t do. So what the hell?
I thought I was going to have to wait around for four hours for “my car” to come back, but finally when the agent saw that I was going to hold firm on the whole “I can’t drive a stick” thing, they sent me to another agency (Sixt) which honored my reserved price. It was a pain though, because I had to take the shuttle back to the airport, rent the car, and then take the shuttle back once again to the rental car place. But at least I had my car! I also got an “upgrade” to a Kia. I was surprised a Kia was an upgrade of anything, but it did have air conditioning, which turned out to be awesome. And I had my TomTom from home, all Irished up, which I knew I couldn’t leave home without. So I was all set.
My destination for the first day was Sligo, which I chose because A) Yeats is buried there, and B) it isn’t too far a drive from Dublin, so I could get used to driving on the left. It wasn’t too bad (and by the end of the trip I was feeling pretty comfortable about it) except that I wasn’t used to having the steering wheel on the right side of the car, so on lanes with no lines, I kept drifting over to the left. I hit a few bits of shrubbery on some of the narrower country roads. But ultimately, it was fine-and actually fun. When I finally got to Holland, the cars on the right looked really bizarre.
So I listened to Irish radio and drove to Sligo, crossing over the river Liffey once again. I stayed at the absolute cutest B&B ever, which was sad since I was only there one night! It’s the Pearse Lodge, and I could not recommend it more highly. Kieran and Mary are the proprietors, and such nice people. They had a little room with books and games and wine glasses, so you could go across the street and buy “a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates” (which was Kieran’s suggestion) and sit in the little garden room and sip wine and read and write in your travel journal, which I did.
The other thing I did (before I started drinking wine-unlike the Irish, I did not drink and drive in Ireland*) was visit Yeats’s grave, in a pretty little churchyard in the shade of Benbulben. And I took some artsy pictures, and took a little rock as a souvenir, and recited “The Second Coming” in my head. Then planned the next day’s drive to Connemara.
*One of the big news items on Irish radio was that they were lowering the drunk driving limit. So now it was, instead of drinking three pints and driving, you could only drink one pint and drive! And people were up in arms about this law, because it would “destroy pub culture.” Ah, Ireland.
June 20th, Connemara
I had a delicious breakfast at the B&B, with fresh fruit and jam, homemade banana French toast, and more George Clooney coffee. I spent the day driving-lots and lots of driving.
I was a little underwhelmed by the Connemara peninsula, except for one sight: Kylemore Abbey. I just ran across it as I was driving, and decided I just had to get out of the car and take some pictures. Then I found out, by pure serendipity, that it was a house of Benedictine nuns. One of my favorite books of all time is about Benedictine nuns, and I have read it probably 50 times at least, and as a result I know a lot of trivia about the Benedictine order. So I have always wanted to visit some Benedictines. This is weird, I know, since I’m not religious, but it’s a longstanding thing. I even have been known to Google Benedictine monasteries, hoping one day to be able to visit one where the nuns still wear the habits and sing the Divine Office in Latin.
So imagine my excitement when I walked into the abbey church and there were the nuns, singing the Divine Office and everything! I even recognized the Latin lyrics from my reading! This was totally an “expectations” thing too, because had I known this existed, I probably would have envisioned something more exciting than six elderly nuns sitting in folding chairs. However, as it was, it felt like total serendipity, and it was definitely one of my favorite moments of the trip.
Plus, I finally got a travel photo I liked, which was the shot of the Abbey. It was kind of frustrating to be driving around with my camera, because often I’d see something awesome, but there was no place to safely pull over, and by the time I did, the scenery had changed. I kept trying to get a picture of a magpie. They are cute black and white birds who were often in the road, and they would flutter up out of the way when they heard my car coming. I found them so charming and wanted to remember them, but every time I’d stop and pull over, the magpie would be gone. I swear I tried for a week to get a magpie picture, and the best I could do was some blurry rendition of a magpie tail in the distance. (I finally got an awesome shot of a magpie at Chris’s house in Almere, so it all worked out in the end.)
I also have lots of notes about Irish radio in my notebook; names of songs to download, and the fact that they had a full hour of Green Day songs. It was fun and a little surreal to drive through Ireland and listen to a band that’s from Oakland. I also wrote “lots of roundabouts!” in my notes, and it’s true; the Irish are big on the roundabouts. But they were super easy to navigate, once I got some practice.
Originally uploaded by mo pie
I ended up at a B&B in the town of Ennistymon, chosen because it seemed to be in a pretty central location to a lot of things, and because my travel book said it was cute. Well… it was authentic, anyway. The B&B had dirty walls in the bedroom, a Hello magazine from 2003 as the reading material, and really steep steps that I had to lug my bags up and down. But it could’ve been worse; the guy who worked there was nice, the food was decent, and the sheets were clean.
If I had it to do all over again I wouldn’t have spent three nights there, but I thought it might be a nice waypoint to stop and see some things. I did see some things, such as, very drunk Irishmen with no teeth. I was reading Dubliners, which is full of such drunk Irishmen with no teeth, so I had a whole new appreciation for Joyce. But really, it was a “real” Irish town, not touristy at all, and that was cool. Plus, it did have some charm!
The best thing about Ennistymon was Eugene’s Pub, which is where the cast and crew of Father Ted used to go drinking. I sat in Dermot Morgan’s seat and checked out the Father Ted corner, with autographs and cast photos from when they filmed inside the pub. And it was a really cheerful little pub, with friendly (drunken, toothless) patrons, and a lovely spot to sit and read my book and have a pint or two before I turned in for the night.
June 21th, Doolin, the Burren, the Cliffs of Moher
I had breakfast at the B&B, and I was the only person in the dining room, which made me think I was probably the only person staying there. But the owner was nice, and the food was good, and I ordered a breakfast including "black and white pudding" before realizing this involves PIG'S BLOOD. As in, the BLOOD of PIGS. Still, it was not bad!
I then went on my quest to find the Craggy Island Parochial House from Father Ted. I needed to get directions at a tourist office, because it's kind of impossible to find. (It's six miles up from the ruined church, past the donkey.) And there were cars parked in front of it, probably because people, like, live there. But it was so cool to see!
Then I went to the famous Cliffs of Moher, which were gorgeous but really frustrating, because there are all these walls that block you from getting a good view (and thus, a good photograph). I had to lean over walls, and I even climbed O'Brien's Tower but the tower itself is in the way. I did learn that a polarizing filter is great for daytime scenes of sky and water. I also learned I should have brought one of those pointy things that sticks out of the end of your camera to block the light. The camera visor-type thing. That thing.
But anyway, the cliffs themselves (and even the view away from the cliffs) were spectacular, and it was too bad I didn't have time to take a boat ride around them.
After that, I went back to Ennistymon and for a change of pace, walked over to the Falls Hotel to have a glass of wine and watch the World Cup in their bar. It was a really pretty view, too--at the end of that picture you can see kind of where my B&B was. On the street with that orange building, a few buildings to the left. On the walk over, I took a bunch of pictures of the buildings in the town.
I went back to Byrnes and had dinner, which was expensive but good, although I can't remember for the life of me what it consisted of, and went to bed early, so I could get up and go to the Aran Islands the next day. One bonus of doing so much walking around and being so relaxed in general is that I fell right asleep at the end of each day. No insomnia! Glorious.
June 22th, Aran Islands
The Aran Islands, I found to be a little anticlimactic. I went to Inisheer, which might have been the problem, because Inishmor looks more exciting. But anyway, Inisheer is the one you can get to most easily from Doolin. Once you ride around the island and see the ruins and the shipwreck and have a bowl of soup, you're kind of done.
It was also frustrating, photography-wise, because we had this great horse-cart ride all through the weird stone walls, and the entire time, I had my camera on the wrong setting. Which meant the foreground in all the pictures came out blurry. Gah! So I didn't really get a picture showing how cool and weird all these little walls were. here you can see one of the other carts going up the hill ahead of us. And you can kind of get a sense of it if you click through that little batch.
I took a ferry back early and was a little seasick, so I ended up heading to another cute pub and watching the World Cup match. I loved the Irish commentators so much, and by this point I was really addicted to the World Cup! I also realized I shouldn't have spent an extra night in Ennistymon, but should have moved on. Because from here on out the trip was a little rushed and Ennistymon itself just wasn't that exciting. Plus, in hindsight, I should have just been getting to the Dingle peninsula ASAP, because it ended up being my favorite.
Oh, when I got back to the room, Murder She Wrote was on, and it was an episode set in a convent. More nuns!
June 23th,Dingle!
I absolutely fell in love with the Dingle peninsula, starting with the drive. I hadn't been truly blown away by Ireland until I got there, and suddenly there was all this amazing scenery and I kept having to pull over and my jaw just fell on the ground. Like Inch Beach, or this little white house perched on a cliff. And suddenly there were all these awesome things to take pictures of, and I was just dazzled by everything. Even just the land. And Slea Head, oh my god. It is the most beautiful place I've ever seen. Pictures don't even come close to doing it justice. It was a cosmic, religious experience. Everyone, go there!
(And now that I've said that, you'll have the same underwhelming experience that I had at some of the other places I visited that people told me were so magical! I guess you can never predict what's going to be magical for another person. But Slea Head was magical for me.)
So, like I said, Dingle was my absolute favorite. There was nothing I didn't love about the town and the peninsula, and I was kind of sad that I'd accidentally booked a B&B in Annascaul, which is a short drive away, because it would have been really fun to be in the town center.
Plus, I could have had more than one glass of wine with dinner, which was ama-a-a-a-azing. There's a little seafood restaurant where the menu changes daily based on the fresh catch, and if they don't catch anything the chef likes, they don't open. It's called Out of the Blue. The menu changes so much that it's just a giant chalkboard they carry over to you and prop up in a chair facing your table. I had salmon, a beetroot salad with poppy-seed dressing, and seared scallops with cognac and herb butter. Oh my god, those scallops.
I was a little bummed at this point that I hadn't done two nights in Dingle, because I would have absolutely come back to Out of the Blue the next night. And driven around the peninsula exploring it for the, um, third time. But I guess "this place I am lucky enough to be visiting is just TOO AWESOME" is a nice problem to have.
I chatted with a woman from Virginia who was having her own personal midlife-crisis getaway in Dingle. (As she described it.) She said she'd always loved it, and left her husband and college-age kids at home to have some alone time with herself and do some work (she was some kind of researcher). She said that flying into the Shannon airport and renting a car from there is great. It was nice to meet another American woman who had rented a car and was driving around alone! But also, I would love to do that, so I can see everything I missed, like Cork and Wexford and, and, and...
June 24th, Kilkenny
This was my last day driving around Ireland. I noted that next time I do this (and oh, I hope there's a next time) I'm going to pay attention to where my lodgings are vis a vis the city center. I would have had so much more fun in pubs within walking distance of my hotels if my hotels had been nearer to cute pubs! Once again, this town had a super cute city center (and a crowded one; it was easily the most people I saw in any city other than Dublin) but my hotel was a million miles away.
I went and saw the Rock of Cashel, and enjoyed the tour as well as the gorgeous view from up there. Then I walked around Kilkenny a bit, then headed to the hotel and had a drink and watched the World Cup in the hotel bar. Then some Irish guy tried to pick me up. "What are the rooms like here?" "You should come outside with me and get some air." etc. Talk to the wedding ring, Irish guy. Plus, who hangs out in a hotel bar if he's not staying in the hotel? I did borrow his laptop so I could look up my hotel information for the next day though.
I ended up going to bed early since I had to get up super early, drive to Dublin, return my rental car, fly to Amsterdam, take the train, find our hotel, meet up with Ian, and then probably go eat things. And basically, I was out of time in Ireland, at least for a while. I was excited to go to Holland and see Ian and the fam, and hear people speaking Dutch. But still. Sad I missed out on the southern coast of Ireland. Next time.
June 25th, Leaving...
I got up ridiculously early so I could take my time driving to the airport. It was funny, too, because I was feeling pretty comfortable with the driving by this point, and I was on the highway, and there were no cars on the road. There were two lanes, a divider, and two other lanes. I was in the leftmost lane. Suddenly a car drove by in the lane next to me--going the other way. And then another. And then another.
I was so panicked that I'd finally screwed up and was driving the wrong way on the highway. I was like "okay, I'm supposed to drive on the left. This is the left." I made the little L with my hand to confirm that left was left. I noticed I could read road signs (as in, they were facing me and not backward). But what the hell was going on?
Eventually, I figured it out, as right past an off ramp was a concrete divider, blocking the road. No signs. No warning. Just a giant concrete divider, blocking off the freeway. So I made the same U-turn that everyone else obviously had made, and carefully got off on the previous exit. (I was grateful that there was no traffic, as it was 7 AM or something like that.) Then I took a roundabout and got right back on the freeway, right after the divider. There was no reason whatsoever that I could see for this divider, except to CONFUSE ME.
And then the next thing I see is a freeway overpass, and crossing it from one side of the freeway to the other are about 50 black-and-white cows. I was like, oh, obviously, I have begun to hallucinate.
So it was a pretty funny ending to my driving experience, like the final level of some weirdo Irish driving video game. But I made it to the rental car return and onto my plane with plenty of time to spare.
July 7th and 8th, Dublin
After Holland and Belgium, I spent two more days in Dublin. This time I rented a hotel room just off O'Connell Street, right across the street from stop #1 of the hop-on, hop-off bus. And that was my plan: to spend a day seeing the city from the bus. It was really really fun. I did the circuit twice, once with the recording (where I hopped on and off) and once with a live guide.
I went to the Dublin Writers' museum and saw James Joyce's piano. I went to Davy Byrne's of Ulysses fame for lunch. I saw Phoenix Park. I saw the Book of Kells. By far the highlight was the Long Room in the Trinity College library. (No pictures allowed, tragically. here is someone else's picture.) That is the sexiest room I've ever been in in my life.
The other highlight was the mummies. There was a throwaway quote in the tour book about the church having "mummified corpses" on display, and I enjoy gruesome stuff like that, so I was like, okay, that sounds like it's worth a little walk from the bus stop! And it was. The mummies were in this underground cavern that you have to fold yourself in half to climb down into, and they aren't behind glass or anything. There are all these rooms of dusty coffins and then the room of mummies. It's apparently illegal to open coffins, but these opened by accident, which is why the mummies were found and are on display.
We had a total ham of a tour guide, who explained that the mummies have been there for centuries (Bram Stoker reportedly visited them) and that people used to "shake the hand" of one of the mummies for luck, and had broken off his finger. Then he told us we could climb into the crypt and climb over the first three mummies to touch the hand of that mummy! And get a really good view of his tortured mummy face! And I did it! And a fellow tourist took a horrible picture of it!
I have no idea how they're able to let people do this, as I could have easily tripped and fallen and CRUSHED A 600-YEAR-OLD MUMMY INTO DUST. Anyway, it was really cool, and I was so glad I didn't miss out on mummy handling!
I met Sasha and Fergal for dinner at the Winding Stair, and then delightful cocktails up the street, and that was the end of Dublin, and the end of my trip.
Overall
As you can probably tell, it was a fantastic trip. Like I said, I wish I'd planned things a bit differently and seen less of the west and more of the south. But still, you plan your trip the best you can, and I think overall I saw a lot and did a pretty good job. Plus, I managed to drive on the left side of the road without any mishaps! I think of all the vacations I've ever taken, traveling through Ireland solo has been one of the biggest adventures. It was really a memorable trip, and I felt so lucky to be able to make it happen.
And if you read this far and/or checked out my vacation pictures, THANK YOU! A trip like this is way more fun if you have someone to tell the stories to.
THE END