It's been a while since I've had a chance to sit down and write out everything that has been going on, but for all your procrastination needs, here is what I have been up to.
Since Tricia got out here we have been going pretty much non-stop, so in order to get the majority of things covered, I'll write things out in a semi-point form manner:
- Went to a few pubs and toured around the city the first couple of days while planning our trip around the country (left Dublin on the 4th)
Kilkenny
- ended up eating at a pub called "Paris Texas" and had the best lunch deal you can imagine (€5 sambo called The Kitchen Sink - a chicken breast, sliced ham, a huge slice of roast beef, coleslaw, tomato, onion, an egg and mayo squeezed between 3 slices of bread).
- did a tour of Kilkenny Castle, but had the most ridiculous tour guide. She had awkward, flailing arm gestures to accompany everything she was pointing out, got after a little kid for standing too close to a table (the kid was carried my the parents for the rest of the tour), was amazingly boring, and to top it all off she took a couple of big bows at the end like she just put on a grand performance of some sort.
- the owner of the hostel recommended that we check out Rothe House (a restored home from the 17th? century) . . . take a pass on it if you find yourself debating the €4 entry fee. It was a lot of old random odds and ends with no descriptions to say what the stuff actually was.
- tried to find the dog track, but the map that we had definitely wasn't accurate and we never managed to find it, so we went to a pub down the street from the hostel for a pint and to listen to a Trad session.
- also met a guy from the Comox Valley walking around in the town (having any sort of Canadian Maple Leaf/Flag on your person guarantees that you'll get stopped for a quick chat no matter where you go).
Cork/Blarney
- arrived in Cork first thing in the morning and immediately hopped on a bus to Blarney.
- Kissed the Blarney Stone (for a second time), ate lunch on the grounds, and wandered around a bunch (found a hobbit hole, fairy glade and "wishing stairs")
- back in the hostel that night a mother and daughter (Spanish) argued in the bunk below me for a solid hour before finally going to bed. Thankfully the daughter eventually got tired of yelling back and started up the silent treatment.
- tired to find a chipper in Cork, but could only find 'Trendy' Fish and Chip places, so settled for a lasagna from Dunnes instead.
Killarney
- such a cool city. Too bad it was Easter Long Weekend and you couldn't find drink anywhere - pubs were closed and not even Spar was selling cans of beer.
- Tricia went to an afternoon mass at the huge Cathedral in the town, then we made our way through Killarney Park (first National park in Ireland). Checked out the giant lake in the middle of the park, then walked out to Ross Castle through the forests. On the way out of the park we passed a guy with an awesome Irish Wolfhound - coolest dog ever.
- horse-drawn carriages everywhere in the town, giving tours through the park
- walked through he town, but most things were closed for the weekend, but there were a couple of dirty hippies playing bagpipes and a drum on the corner that we made fun of (they weren't the slightest bit Irish).
- we got a few groceries and ended up having the best dinner out of everyone else that was at the hostel that night (brie, French bread, salmon locks, pasta and a salad)- best €10 I've ever spent.
- hung out at the hostel in the evening and got killed at Crazy 8's by Tricia, but I battled back once we started playing Rummy.
- talked to our German roommate for a bit - little bit odd, but seemed nice enough . . . at first. To make a bit of a long story short, her and her French friend ended up bringing the hippies from the street corner back to the room with them that night. Thankfully I slept soundly through the night, but Tricia wasn't so fortunate (as the French girl and Dirty Hippie #1 were in the bunch below her)! Needless to say Trish wasn't the happiest in the morning, but at least it makes for a good story.
Ring of Kerry
- hopped on a tour bus first thing in the morning and saw the sights:
- The Kerry Bog Village (reconstruction of a traditional farmstead)
- Bog Ponies
- Dingle Bay
- Fairy Trees (These are protected trees that nobody dares to disturb for fear of wrath from the banshee, the "woman of the fairy mound" and "omen of death". During construction of the new motorway they spent an extra €2 million to divert the road around one of these trees).
- Ballinskelligs Bay (look-out point)
- Staigue (Ring) Fort (2000 years old - purpose: unknown)
- Sneem Village (fairy huts and a couple of pubs)
- Moll's Gap and Ladies View
It was almost a perfect tour . . . we had a GREAT driver/tour guide and it made all the difference. There were lots of jokes, lots of songs and a ton of information about the area. Unfortunately the couple sitting directly behind us brought along their 3-year-old kid with them. 15 minutes into the drive he was bored and started crying/screaming/running around. The parents didn't really do anything at all, but the rest of us had to suffer. The only bit of a break came when he was running through the aisle and the driver had to brake hard - the kid bailed to the floor and after a minute or two of sobbing, sat quietly for a half hour until he forgot about taking a fall and proceeded to go back to running around.
Tricia's camera died halfway through the tour, and the battery charger was sitting back at my place, so I was in charge of taking pics for the rest of this leg of the trip.
We decided that the Irish accent is a strange mix between Jamaican and East Indian . . .
The roads along the Ring of Kerry are shockingly narrow. If cars want to pass in opposite directions, one has to pull over into the ditch so that the other can pass. This is the main reason that it takes so long to get around anywhere (a 2-lane motorway in rural Ireland is about the width of a bike lane back home). It doesn't help that the road is frequented by bikes as well (and nobody wears a helmet). At one point the bus driver was having a bit of a laff and got super close to a guy on a bike. When the rider turned to check his shoulder she was looking straight into the grill of the bus and looked like he was about to lose control of all bodily functions.
Tralee
Because of the Easter Long Weekend Kilarney was all booked up, so we had to head to the next town to find a place to stay. I booked what I had thought was a regular, dorm-style room, but it turned out to be a pretty decent B&B (not bad for €20pp for the night). Had the best shower I've had in 6 months (there was actual water pressure and it was hot!), and enjoyed the fact that we had a full length (non-bunk) bed.
Tralee looked like a really quiet town on the walk through to the hostel, so we thought we would just play cards and have a few drinks. At around 10pm we heard drums in the street, so we finished our last hand/last drink, and went to check it out. When we got outside there was a full-blown parade streaming through the street. We followed along a bit, then stopped to ask a guy (who seemed to be a part of the festivities) what was going on. Turns out it was just a random community celebration of unity - "Stars in your Town" - all the kids were dressed up and the different social groups had made floats. We tagged along until we got to the central park where there was a fairly decent fireworks display (much more than the typical "sparklers and roman candles" we had expected).
Galway
In the morning we grabbed a train to Galway via Limerick, which the guidebook stated was going to be a 7 hour trip. Fortunately it was only 4 hours, and we had the entire afternoon to explore Galway. We stuck with out budget dining and just had chicken and chips from SPAR (Ireland's equivalent of 7-11), then had a pint outside on the patio along one of the main streets. We had to be up early again the next morning for another bus tour, and aside from waking up in the middle of the night hearing Tricia yell in her sleep, I got a full night of rest.
The water in Galway has been contaminated with criptospiridium for the past couple of weeks, so it was a bit inconvenient, but we didn't have it too bad off. We met a guy in the kitchen of the hostel who had been out drinking the night before, got back to his room (not knowing about the contamination) and proceeded to drink about 3L of water before passing out. In the morning his friends told him about the boil-water advisory. Apparently there is a 48-hour incubation period before you get sick, so he was going hard at the bar again that night, but was planning on being sick as a dog for the following few days. He was just hoping that maybe all the alcohol in his system would kill off any parasites, haha - not too likely.
Also in the kitchen that night we met a couple guys from Belfast that gave us a bit of a head-up on what we should do up North. After talking to us they started chatting up a few Italians and it was brought to everyones attention that the Irish guys were talking with heavy Italian accents (they said to make it easier to understand each other). In the end they were all speaking broken English, but it seemed to work out just fine.
The Burren and The Cliffs of Moher
This time the tour guide wasn't quite as light-hearted and fun as the last guy, but was still fairly decent. In short, this is what we did:
- Dunguaire Castle
- Mini Cliffs (just a pull off along the rocky shore)
- Look-out over the Aran Islands
- Doolin (stopped for lunch) - this was a really cool little town famous for their Trad music. I've seen all of the major sights around the country, but figure I'll head back to Doolin at some point to stay a few nights and catch a ferry out to the Aran Islands to bike around a bit.
- Cliffs of Moher - worth the trip to the West Coast for this alone. Tricia almost lost her Nalgene bottle over the edge, and I scared the crap out of myself trying to take a couple pictures along one of the outcrops of the cliff. We had about an hour to wander around, but the time flew by.
- The Burren - looks like a lunar surface of barren, rocky landscape. Definitely not what I was expecting to see along the Irish coast, but really cool to see nonetheless.
- Poulnabrone Dolmen - ancient burial site marked by massive stones set upon one another to form little shelters. Again, not what I would have expected in this area, but amazing to see just sitting next to the road after thousands of years.
- Aillwee Caves - Under the Burren there are hundreds of caves that have been carved out by water flowing to the coast. One of the caves has been further dug out to become an attraction showing off stalagmites, stalactites and underground waterfalls. The walk-through was only half an hour, but was worth the extra €4 admission.
We got back to Galway at 5:20pm, ran to the bus station and managed to get the second bus back to Dublin at 5:30pm. A short 4 hours later we were back at my flat to relax for a day or two.
Dublin
Not slowing down any, once we were back in Dublin we still had a lot of local sights to take in. The first day back we went to the Dublin Historical Museum to see the "Bog Bodies" (very cool), the Natural History Museum (basically a zoo of stuffed, dead animals), and the National Art Gallery of Ireland.
Day two consisted of a trip to Howth (8km north of Dublin) to hike, take pictures, but most of all, to buy seafood. After scouting out the best buy we settled on getting about 3kg of Irish Mussels - this worked out to 7 pints, as you can see in the pictures (Mmmmmm). Having plenty to cook we decided to have them a few different ways:
- white wine and butter
- beer and garlic
- Thai sweet chili
- tomato sauce over pasta
All were delicious.
The next day we were on the road again by 6:45am, this time heading north to Derry. I was a bit surprized to find that it a completely open border between the North and the Republic. We had brought along our passports, but didn't need them at all. The only indication I saw that we had crossed a border was that the speed limits were now posted in MPH and signs stated that we were heading toward "Londonderry" rather than "Derry" as it is called in the Republic. I guess there are only customs checks when you leave the IOI (Island of Ireland), although even then it seems to be fairly lax. When I originally came to Ireland there was nobody at customs on this side and I never got a landing stamp in my passport. This caused a bit of confusion for the Garda Immigration when I finally registered, but luckily there were no problems (once they saw that I was Canadian I breezed through).
Surprisingly, once I noticed that we were in the UK other things started to stand out too. The fields weren't filled with rocks, lawns were manicured, houses were single unattached and looked like back home (rather than little attached duplexes everywhere). Also, once we got out and walked around the people were SO much more friendly. At the grocery store the check-out girl actually had great customer service (something completely foreign to people in Dublin).
Derry/Londonderry
The city center is completely encircled by a huge wall where the old-city used to be. We walked around the top of the wall and saw most of the town (old and new) from above. After touring through the Richmond Centre (not quite the same as home . . .) and checking into the hostel (they had a sweet statue of Tin Tin from Thailand), we made out way around the side streets to take pictures of the murals.
Inside the city center it was a bit shocking to see the amount of random graffiti mixed in with the professionally painted murals. Also, there was a ton of trash around everywhere, and very few refuse bins. Later, back at the hostel, we overheard a conversation on the same topic and it turns out that they don't have many bins around because they have always been a place that bombs were hidden by the IRA. A few years have gone by, but everyone is in the habit of just tossing rubbish to the side of the street.
The murals were amazing to see - separated on either side of the river (Catholic/Unionist on the West and Protestant/Loyalist on the East). There is a definite difference in theme between the two types of murals, but I'll comment on that a bit later on when I get to MORE murals that we saw in Belfast.
Giant's Causeway/Bushmills
Got up early again the next morning and caught the first train/bus to the Giant's Causeway. We were really the only ones out there for the first bit, but by the time we made it to the half-way point on the trail, more and more people started showing up. The rock formations were way cooler than I had expected and it was great to be able to climb all over them. The cliff trail was closed because of a rock slide, but 3 hours of walking around was just about enough. There was no bus back into town for a little over an hour, but it was only a 4km walk along the road to Bushmills, so we opted for the latter. Catching the next train from there we got into Belfast by dinner and had lots of time to check out the South of the city where the University and Museums are.
Belfast
This part of the city was nothing like what I was expecting. It was clean, incredibly friendly and everyone seemed to be in a great mood. As we were walking up the main street we stopped to checkout one of the billboard maps on the corner - we must have looked like huge tourists, because right away a guy came over asking if we needed any help finding out way around. His inquiry turned into a lecture of the city's history and a full 10 minutes later we had been given a full itinerary of things to do. By the end of his spiel the guy was starting to seem a little bit off his rocker, but was nice enough. We browsed around town for a while longer, made our plans for the next day and called it a night.
In the morning we went to the City Hall for the last day of a week-long Titanic exhibit. Watched a pretty decent movie about the re-discovery of the ship, saw some of the relics that have been recovered, then walked out of the city a bit to see more of the murals. On one of the street corners we saw a menu advertising a Full Ulster Breakfast (which Tricia had been wanting to try), so we stopped in. It consisted of 2 rashers (bacon), 2 bangers (sausage), an egg, soda bread and potato bread - all of this was deep-fried, even the bread. It was pretty good, but definitely not something I could have eaten everyday.
This area of the city was more reminiscent of East Vancouver - lots of abandoned, closed-up businesses, garbage on the streets, tons of graffiti, people drinking in the street and wandering around in large groups yelling. Although, considering the fact that the streets we pretty much a war zone only a few years ago, things weren't half-bad. There are still walls/gates and high fences separating the north (Loyalist) and south (Unionist) areas of the city in many spots (they are still closed off every night at 5pm until dawn - has outlasted the Berlin Wall), and the sidewalks are painted their respective colors so that you can be sure what part of the city you are in. Another thing I noticed is that almost all the men I saw over the age of 30 had their forearms tattooed, showing support for their side.
We found that the Protestant/Loyalist/UK murals almost always depicted scenes of violence (men with weapons and slogans of fighting to the death for the Crown). The Catholic/Unionist/Republican murals were usually images of those who had served and died in the "Troubles". Some of the newer paintings were very politically themed (US/Iraq and Israel/Palestine), but seemed to fit well with the rest of the local surroundings.
By that afternoon Tricia and I were both exhausted and decided just to get back to Dublin (only a 2 hour bus ride away).
Total Days = 14
Total time spent on buses and train = 40 hours
Approximate distance traveled = 2250km
Being back in Dublin we didn't have much planning other than sleeping, a bit of shopping around and maybe a "sensible pint or two". We still managed to get out to a pub for an Irish breakfast and we convinced each other to eat the Black and White Pudding. She liked the black, and I preferred the white, but it was nothing that I would rush out to buy and make at home. As far as we can tell the only difference between the two types is that black pudding has hemoglobin and white does not. It was mostly just like a sausage, but the thought of eating blood puts you off it a bit. We fit in one last Trad Session and wandered through Temple Bar (Tricia got kicked in the ass by a Gardai on horse back) as we walked through the crowds. Then on the last night we went on the Literary Pub Crawl with my flatmates. I wasn't really expecting much, as I am not really interested in the writer's that have come from Dublin, but the 2 actors that took us from pub to pub were great. They acted out scenes from a few notable authors, and made stops along the way to talk about a bit of Dublin's history. They only give you 20 minutes in each pub, and with a quick bathroom break, a wait in line and the 2 minutes it takes to pour a pint, that doesn't leave much time for actual drinking at a leisurely pace. We still managed to go through our share of drink and had a great time. I'm not sure I would have wanted to be the one spending the next day on the plane home the next day, but Tricia was up and good-to-go.
It was "brilliant/grand" having her out here and can't wait for my next visitor . . . hint, hint - this is an open invitation, there is always a couch to surf here.
I just got in touch with my old boss at Guinness today and found out that my prospective new boss is away until next Monday, so I guess I'm on holidays until at least that point. For the time being I'm going to do some more reading, catch a few movies and enjoy this freakish weather we've been having (we haven't had a drop of rain in 3 weeks and the forecast is for clear skies until the end of the week).
As I mentioned before, I think I'll head back to the West Coast of Ireland at least once more to check out Doolin and the Aran Islands. Aside from that I'd like to get out to more gaelic football and hurling matches. If you look at my Travel Map you can see that I have pretty much covered the country and will probably start trying to plan more trips abroad.
Congrats if you managed to finish this in one sitting - it took me about 5 attempts to write it all the way through. Tricia and I took just over 1000 pics in the past 2 weeks and I have picked out about 100 that I'm trying to put up on the site (as usual, it's a slow process, but I'll get it done soon).
Hope all is well with everyone.
Good luck with exams for those who are writing them.
I'd love to hear how thing are going back home and what everyone's plans are for post-grad/the summer.
Cheers,
Trev
Rich Franklin vs. 
Martin Kampmann
Jason MacDonald vs. 
