Kiss Me I'm Irish xxx

---

This is another big one, so I don’t expect anyone to read it. I think this is now more about us having our own record of the trip than it is for keeping you all entertained, so we won’t be offended if you want to just look at the pictures. There are plenty of them too and they tell the story enough.

After Singapore we made a quick two night stop in London before heading off again, this time to Ireland. The flight from Singapore to London was interesting. I’d had my fingers crossed that we would be flying in one of Singapore Airlines new Airbus A380s, the world’s largest airliner. I was pretty happy when we turned up to our gate and saw the massive beast docked to the airbridge from our gate. We were seated at the rear of the plane on the lower deck and inside it doesn’t appear to be that much bigger than any other plane we’ve been on, until you walk to the back of the plane and up the stairs to the top deck we’re you realise it actually is quite large. The flight was cool, taking a route over Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Russia (and maybe a little of Iran and Kazakhstan), before we hit cloud cover going over Europe. India looked massive and dry and flat. It was interesting to follow the flight path on the GPS as we hit the Pakistani border and took a 45 degree turn and flew to the south of the country to the Afghan border where we took another 45 degree turn to the north to our original flight path. I wonder if this deviation had any thing to do with security? As you fly over the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan their peaks look surprisingly close and you start to wonder just what the range of a Rocket Propelled Grenade is (particularly when you’re watching a movie based on the Afghan conflict). But they were beautiful looking places, quite barren but spectacular. Turkmenistan had one of the weirdest landscapes I’ve ever seen. It was covered in crater like formations. It looked kinda like the moon. And boy was it sparse. Didn’t see any roads or cities. It just looked like a massive wasteland. Anyway, the plane was very spacious and comfortable and still had that new plane smell. In board entertainment was good, and as we didn’t want to sleep Emma managed to get through 6 movies. Not a bad effort. We were anticipating some questioning from the border officials at Heathrow as we only had a few months left on our visas, but again we were stamped straight through by our slightly racist border official, no questions asked. A plane from India had arrived at the same time as us so the hall was full with new immigrants. Our immigration officer commented that it seemed half of India had just arrived and they were difficult to process so he was stoked to get us normal kiwis instead who never gave him any trouble.

From the sunshine of NZ and the humidity of Singapore to the bitter cold of the UK. It was dark and cold when we arrived, but we actually found that to be quite refreshing. We made our way to Anna and Si’s place and had a few Kronenbourgs and quick catch up before collapsing into bed. The next day was spent readjusting to life in London and the UK, followed by an early night.

It was an early flight from Heathrow the next day so that meant a 4am start. Si and Anna were booked on the first flight of the day and we followed an hour later. By the time we made it to Dublin there were stacks of other flights landing from all over Europe so the place was busy. Dublin airport has a relatively small immigration area so the line stretched all the way back through to the gates. We were waiting for 45 mins before we got to the front of the queue where we then suffered the most difficult entry into a country so far (apart form maybe when we went to Vegas). The immigration officer seemed a little suspicious of us and asked us plenty of questions of our intentions in Ireland and what we were doing in the UK. She took mug shots of us, which didn’t happen to Si or Anna, or anyone else we could see, and then wrote numbers in the back of our passports. I have no idea what they were about. She finished by wishing us a pleasant Paddies Day in Dublin. Si and Anna had no queue when they landed and went through immigration untroubled so they had been waiting for us in arrivals for two hours. Poor buggers. We picked up the rental car and immediately headed north out of Dublin.

First stop was for some lunch at a town called Drogheda on the River Boyne. It was a pleasant little town but it was only after we left that we learned this was near the site of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 where the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic James II in a battle that ended James attempts to regain the British throne that he had lost to William, and ensured continued Protestant supremacy in Ireland.

From Drogheda we continued inland and north and eventually ended up in Londonderry at the top of Northern Ireland. At some point along the way we crossed the border and went from the Republic of Ireland into the British controlled Northern Ireland. We never saw anything to indicate that we’d crossed the border until the road signs began to use miles instead of kilometres and the gas stations and shops starting advertising things in pounds sterling rather than Euros. On the surface it appeared that it was essentially the same country so it was a bloody nuisance to have to put the Euro away already and start using the Pound again. Bloody British and their refusal to go to the Euro. We got to Derry and promptly got lost for half an hour before stumbling across our hostel. Once settled we did what every good Irishman does and headed straight for the pub. We spent a couple of hours there watching some six nations games, including Irelands narrow win of Scotland, and christened the road trip with a few creamy Guinness.

Next morning we woke up, checked out and set off on a walking tour of Derry. Our guide took us from the hostel and along the wall around the city that was built in 1613 to protect the planted Protestant English and Scottish settlers from Irish insurgents who did not like the occupation of their country. We followed the wall along to the Bogside, a Catholic area of the city that was scene of Bloody Sunday and many other violent events between catholic republicans, protestant loyalists and British security forces over the last few decades. Our guide was a Catholic dude who had grown up in the area in the ‘70s and ‘80s during the heart of the troubles and had thrown many a stone at the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and British security forces, and seen plenty of violence. He told us the story of Bloody Sunday where 27 Civil Rights protestors, all of whom were unarmed were shot by British soldiers during a civil rights march, killing 14. He also explained to us the background and the build up to ‘the Troubles’ and the Battle of The Bogside that kicked it all off in 1969. During the late ‘60s there was growing unrest in the predominantly Catholic Derry at the discrimination and persecution of Catholics by the controlling Protestant minority. This led to the formation of action groups like the Derry Citizens Defence Association, and a number of protest marches that often ended in riots and were soon banned. In ’69 a march along the city walls by the Apprentice Boys of Derry commemorating the Protestant victory over Catholics at the Siege of Derry in 1689 provoked the cities Catholic community and tensions between the two religions grew and eventually lead to confrontation between the two sides and the RUC. The Catholics were pushed back into the Bogside where they set up barricades to keep the RUC out and three days of rioting followed. The RUC eventually became exhausted from three days of fighting with little in the way of reinforcement or replacement and were eventually relieved by soldiers of the British Army. And so began decades of British Army occupation in Northern Ireland, and decades of unrest, violence and killing between the two opposing religions and British security forces. We wandered around The Bogside looking at all the memorials and murals depicting the areas events and struggles. Our guide was very informative and it was interesting to hear from someone who had a direct connection to the place and had lived the conflict day to day.

From Derry we headed east following the spectacular coast along the Sea of Moyle. Along the way we stopped off the ruins of the Downhill Estate, the home of a former Bishop of Derry and Earl of Bristol. The remains of the estate includes the Mussenden Temple right on the egde of a cliff with spectacular views of the coast, a walled garden, pigeon and ice house and Downhill House. After a pleasant stroll around the grounds of the former estate we continued east stopping off for a quick look at the Bushmills Whiskey Distillery, and then on to the Giant’s Causeway.

The Giant’s Causeway is one of Irelands top tourist attractions. Its basically an area on the coast where rapid cooling of molten lava lead to the creation of a unique geological formation. I don’t really understand all the science behind it, but it is pretty impressive to look at. Before science came along and ruined everything by providing a logical explanation for the intriguing rock formations, it was said to have been part of a causeway between Ireland and Scotland that was built by a giant in Ireland called Finn McCool so he could go to Scotland and smash a rival giant called Benandonner. Anyway, McCool fell asleep when he’d finally finished the causeway so sneaky old Benandonner came across to Ireland to fight him. When McCool and his giant wife saw that Benandonner was much bigger and would waste McCool in a fight, they played a trick on him that scared the shit out of him and he ran back to Scotland, destroying the causeway as he retreated so McCool couldn’t follow him. And that’s how the Giants Causeway became what it is today. I much prefer that explanation to boring volcanic activity.

After a couple of hours exploring the Causeway we continued along the coast, eventually arriving in Belfast. Again we got lost, and if it weren’t for eagle eyed Emma we might never have found our hostel. We dumped our shit then headed out for a feed and a wander round the city centre. Next morning we checked out and organised a Black Cab tour of West Belfast. Before we go any further it is probably worthwhile having a wee history lesson so we all know the background to ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland.

The Vikings began launching raids on Ireland in 795 and were a menacing presence right up until the Normans invaded in the 12th Century. The Norman invasion was the beginning of English involvement in Ireland, with King Henry VIII finally gaining complete control of the country in the 16th Century in order to protect England from an invasion from the west. As the ruling English tried to convert the Catholic Irish to the Protestant religion by rather brutal means, the Irish began to get quite pissed off. In response to growing unrest from the Irish, the British introduced a process of colonisation known as Plantation (especially in Ulster) where English and Scottish settlers were relocated to Ireland where they were identifiably British and Protestant and would become the ruling class of Ireland in order to end the Catholic threat to the British Crown. Part of the Plantation included the introduction of a series of Penal Laws which discriminated against Catholics. Not surprisingly the shit hit the fan and a Catholic rebellion in 1641 lead to the slaughter of thousands of Protestant settlers. Oliver Cromwell eventually put down the rebellion and re conquered Ireland in 1649, but about 40 years after that, the Catholic King James II abdicated the English throne and went to Ireland to try and reverse the Penal Laws and the discrimination of Catholics. The Protestants then called in William of Orange from Holland who took over as King of England when James II abdicated (and also happened to be married to James’s daughter), and defeated James II at the Battle of Boyne in 1690, reaffirming Protestant rule of the predominantly Catholic Ireland.

For the next couple of hundred years the persecution of the Catholic majority continued and various uprisings occurred, culminating in the Easter Rising in 1916 and the War of Independence from 1919 to 1921 which ended with most of Ireland gaining independence from Britain. Only Ulster in the north which, due to its strong links to Britain as a result of Plantation, was kept as British. And so Northern Ireland was created, and the Catholics living within the boundaries of Northern Ireland found they were still British, even though they considered themselves free Irish. The Protestants considered themselves British and superior to the Irish Catholics and so did not want to become part of the independent Ireland and wanted to retain the links with the British. And so over the next 50 years tensions between the Republican Catholics and Protestant Loyalists in Northern Ireland grew and grew, and during the 1960s, a time where political movements promoting civil liberties and freedom of speech etc were strengthening, things came to a head at the Battle of the Bogside in Derry, and so the Troubles began.

Soon after trouble broke out in Derry things also kicked off in West Belfast where relatively poor Catholics and Protestants had neighbourhoods side by side. When the trouble started the Protestants began attacking the Catholic neighbourhood, burning down houses along Bombay Street near the border between the two communities. Barricades were set up and there were regular skirmishes along the border. The British Army came in to restore peace and a massive iron wall was erected along the border to separate the two communities, kinda like the Berlin Wall. To the north of the wall is the Loyalist neighbourhood where the religion is Protestant and the people want to retain their British links. The main road through this area is Shankill Road so the area is known as the Shankhill. To the south is the Republican neighbourhood where the religion is Catholic and the people are fighting for Northern Ireland to become part of a united Ireland. The main road through this area is Falls Road so the area is known as the Lower Falls. Caught in between are the British security forces which comprise the RUC, the Army and the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). Both sides of the conflict have their own paramilitary organisations, eg the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and the Real IRA (RIRA) on the republican side and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) on the Loyalist side. These organisations were generally well armed and well organised and undertook campaigns of brutal murder and terrorism in the name of their cause. Over the period of 30 years from 1969 thousands of people were killed from both sides of the conflict, including paramilitaries, politicians and innocent civilians, as well as plenty of Police Officers and Soldiers.

The Black Cabs have had a important role to play during the Troubles by providing a vital public transport service in the Lower Falls and the Shankill where regular buses would not operate due to the risks involved. The cabs operate in a similar way to the buses, whereby they drive along the route and pick up people who wave them down and drop them off when they get to where they want to go. They have also played an important role in transporting arms, terrorist, murderers and corpses around the district, usually after being hijacked by paramilitaries. Since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 things have been much more peaceful in the area and the Black Cabs have found a new line of business in taking tourists around the area. Our guide was awesome. He was Catholic and was very passionate about the area, the history of Northern Ireland, the conflict and the reasons for it. Although he had made it clear to us that he was Catholic he was very good at making sure he just gave us the facts and left us to make up our own mind on things, rather than pushing the republican cause on us. Although in saying that I’m sure there would have been significant differences in the ‘facts’ we were being given if it was coming from a Loyalist cabbie. The tour took us down the Falls Road past Divis Tower where the Army had an observation post on the top floor, past various republican murals, into Sinn Fein headquarters to look at some of the literature on the struggle, to Bombay Street where the houses were burned and where the wall separates the two communities today, up Springfield Rd past the RUC barracks and to various memorials and sites of bombings, murders and other such events. After changing the signs in the front of the taxi (8 cabbies have been murdered over the years so it helps to make sure you’re not an easy target) we then went across to the Loyalist side and down the Shankill where again we were shown loyalist murals and more bombing sites etc. Not surprisingly our tour of the Shankill was quite brief and every time the driver got out of the car and came round to speak to us he would keep the engine running and make sure he kept low and was undercover. I couldn’t help but wonder how much of this over cautious approach was put on for the benefit of us tourists to try and make it feel a bit more real. However I am sure there was some truth behind it because, quite coincidently, violence had flared up again in the previous week resulting in the murder of two British soldiers and a Police Officer at the hands of the RIRA. The driver said he wasn’t taking any chances and reckoned that if there was one more murder then the Loyalist paramilitaries would retaliate, and Catholic cabbies in Protestant areas are one of the easiest targets. Comforting! The tour finished with a drive by of the Crumlin Road Gaol and Courthouse then back into the centre of Belfast. The tour was an hour and a half long and only cost 50 quid for the four of us. Its got to be one of the best value and most interesting tours I’ve ever done and I highly recommend it. The driver was an average middle age Irishman and a really good bloke, and that’s what I find fascinating and hard to understand about Northern Ireland. Generally the conflicts we hear about these days are in Africa, the Middle East, Asia or Eastern Europe etc, not western countries. Coming from a western society and having lived in the UK, Northern Ireland is a country that we can identify with and relate to and a place that seems quite familiar and comfortable and safe. But then when you get into west Belfast you see the wall, the flags, the murals and the memorials etc and you learn about what has happened there and you suddenly realise you’re in the middle of a (recent) war zone, and that the people who live there, normal everyday people, have been through a lot. Its quite hard to comprehend.

And this is what we were contemplating as we sat down in our snug at the Crown Liquor Saloon for another Guinness and some hearty Irish Stew. After lunch we had another wander around the city centre and then took a ride on the large Ferris Wheel next to the Town Hall. Then it was off to Dublin, a two hour drive to the south, leaving behind Northern Ireland and once again welcoming the Republic of Ireland.

Once again our first hour in Dublin was spent driving around the city centre trying to find our hotel. Since we’d left home we spent every night so far in cramped hostel accommodation or on a mattress on Si and Anna’s floor so we decided to splash out and spend our two nights in Dublin in a hotel. It wasn’t an overly luxurious hotel but it was sooooooooo nice to have all the comforts of a hotel room for two nights, especially when recovering from a St Paddies Day hangover. Si and Anna were booked into another hotel so we split up for a couple of hours to chill out in our rooms for a while before meeting up in Temple Bar for a meal and a few Guinness. Temple Bar is the main entertainment district of Dublin with plenty of pubs to choose from, all full with people beginning the St Paddies Day festivities early. Soon enough the tiredness began to catch up with us and we made our way back to our hotels for the night.

Next morning we met up in Temple Bar again and made our way to the Guinness brewery. What better way to start St Paddies Day than with a tour of the Guinness brewery with a couple of early morning tasters. Once you’ve done one brewery tour you’ve pretty much done them all, but the Guinness tour was slightly more interesting as it was self guided and outlined how the Guinness product and brand developed into the massive worldwide success it is today. We were also taught the proper technique for pouring the perfect Guinness, and had a drink in the bar at the top of the brewery overlooking Dublin.

After getting the first couple of Guinness under our belt we headed back towards the city centre and found a spot on the parade route to watch the famous St Paddies Day Parade. The route was lined with banks of people 10 people deep, with people also on roofs, hanging out apartment windows and clinging to fences and walls. I’ve never seen so many people at a parade, and I think the quality of the floats in the parade is also better than I’ve seen anywhere else. The only downside, and it was a big downside in my opinion, was that because there were so many people we were clinging to the side of a fence to get a good view, and the length of time between the first float and the last was huge, and the floats weren’t evenly spaced. As a result we were at times getting quite bored and by the finish we were aching and well over it. So we headed back to our hotel to rest our aching bodies for a while, then grabbed a late lunch before heading back to Temple Bar for a fun evening in the pubs celebrating St Paddies Day in the time honoured tradition of getting sloshed. Actually, to be completely honest I think we were beginning to all grow slightly road weary (after only 4 days of the trip!) so we were surprisingly restrained in our revelry. We had a good night in any case and really enjoyed the atmosphere of Temple Bar packed with thousands of Guinness worshippers on Ireland’s national day.

The night ended abruptly when Simon accidently ate a prawn Won Ton while getting some late night Chinese takeaway. Being allergic to seafood he had to rush outside to the street to empty the contents of his stomach in the gutter, and sat down feeling sorry for himself. Given the location and the celebrations that were continuing on around us, and the state of some of the other people in the area, he didn’t look at all out of place. Si and Anna flagged down a cab, who didn’t at all believe he was suffering from a food allergy, and headed back to their hotel. We too walked back to our hotel and finished the night off with a couple more Guinness at the hotel bar with Seamus the friendly bartender. The hangover the next morning was relatively minor, so after some brekkie we jumped on an open top tour bus to check out the sites of Dublin that we hadn’t yet had a chance to see. We really enjoyed the tour and I would have to say that Dublin is right up there as one my favourite cities so far.

That afternoon we hit the road again and drove 3 hours across the country from the east coast to the west coast and the city of Galway. Galway is a pleasant University city at the mouth of the River Corrib. It is the third largest city in Ireland in terms of population (72000), and is the country’s fastest growing city. We got there mid afternoon and had a wander around the city centre and along the water fornt where there were hundreds of youngsters/students hanging out enjoying the late afternoon sun on what was a pleasantly mild spring afternoon. We headed to one of the pubs in town in the hope of catching one of the traditional Irish music sessions but it didn’t work out. Not to worry, we still had another pleasant evening with more Guinness and more Irish Stew. Next morning we had a scrummy Crepe breakfast in town and then started on our way to Limerick.

Limerick is only an hour and a half south of Galway so we headed inland to make a stop off at a go kart track to kill an hour or so and get our motorsport fix. I hadn’t been go karting since Si and I went on the Gold Coast more than two years earlier. That’s a long time between races. It was quite a weird situation. The track was about as in the middle of nowhere as you can get in west Ireland, and as it was mid morning in the middle of the week there was no one around. We almost felt a bit guilty making the guys open the place up for us, but they had advertised that they were open so tough shit. The track was a good sized outdoor track, if a little rough and a little dirty in places. It was a crisp clear morning and we had a blast racing each other around for 20mins. Once again Si got the better of me, but I’m putting that down to a significant weight advantage. After 20 mins we were pretty knackered and I couldn’t really feel my fingers so we were happy to finishing playing round like little boys and hit the road again.

We’d managed to find the kart track alright but it didn’t take us long to lose our way again on the way to Limerick. We eventually got there and as often happens when travelling with Emma and Anna we soon found ourselves outside a Castle. The Castle was King Johns Castle on the banks of the River Shannon. It was quite an impressive looking castle but we decided that the price of admission was a little more than our budget would allow for. Instead we had a quick look through a little museum and antique store next door, then headed out in search of more Castles. We found two. The first one was Bunratty Castle just off the main road from Limerick to Shannon. Its quite a small but impressive castle and includes a folk park in the grounds surrounding it. It was all a bit touristy for us, but even if we had wanted to go in our budget wouldn’t allow for it. So we carried on down the back country lanes and came across another random castle. Can’t remember the name of this one, and by this stage they were all beginning to look the same. We headed back into town and for once managed to find our accommodation without any trouble. Due to a lack of budget accommodation availability in Limerick we had splashed out a got a two bedroom apartment for the night. Again feeling a little road weary, and having such a nice comfortable place for the night we decided to get take away and spent the night in front of the tv. It was nice.

It was an early start the next morning for Si and I as Si had to be at Shannon Airport to catch a flight back to London for a job interview that he had scored after he’d already booked the Ireland trip. After dropping him off I returned to the hotel to find Emma in tears having just heard the news that her beloved pet cat Tabitha had been put down. Tabitha was an affectionate, pretty, charismatic little ball of fur that had been with Emma since childhood. She lived to the grand old age of 21 (almost as old as Emma - well 4 years younger) and we were surprised that she was still round when we went home at Christmas time. She didn’t look too bad when we last saw her, but was looking a little frail and apparently had been having some bad days. We think that she somehow knew that we were coming home and held on to make sure she saw us one more time. I say us because she was always pretty affectionate towards me, even though she apparently hated men. She was a very cool little cat and will be sadly missed by Emma and I. Given the bad news we decided to take it easy that morning and made sure we enjoyed the comfort of our hotel that little bit longer. We eventually checked out and headed into the town centre for a look. We weren’t that impressed with Limerick so had some breakfast and pretty much left.

From Limerick we headed an hour and a half south over a very pleasant road where we finally saw some proper mountains and eventually ended up in the popular tourist town of Killarney. Killarney is a very pretty little town that has become a main tourist stop due to its proximity to some of the most scenic parts of Ireland, namely the Ring of Kerry, Dingle Peninsula and Killarney National Park. Unfortunately we hadn’t allowed ourselves enough time to do the Ring of Kerry or the Dingle, so we had to make to with a short afternoon stroll in the outskirts of Killarney National Park. It was a fantastically clear Spring day so we wandered from the town centre down passed St Mary’s Cathedral and into The Demesne. We had a pleasant walk through The Demesne, watching brave little doggies chasing herds of deer, and eventually came to Ross Castle on the shores of Lough Leane. There we spent a little time watching the swans on the Lake and taking in the magnificent scenery. Unfortunately it was only a quick visit to Killarney as we had to get to Cork airport to meet Simon’s return flight so as soon as we made it back into town we were on the road again to make the hour and a half trip east to Cork, Ireland’s second largest city.

Once we’d picked Simon up from the airport we headed into the city centre and again got very lost, eventually finding our hostel an hour or so later. It was dinner time by the time we’d got settled in at our hostel so we headed into town and had a fun meal at Eddie Rockets, part of a chain of 1950s American Diner style restaurants. This was followed by another pub and more Guinness.

The next morning we headed out to Blarney Castle, just outside the city, to kiss the famous Blarney Stone. However, when we got there and saw the price we had to pay to kiss a crusty old piece of stone at the risk catching whatever diseases the thousands of other tourists who had been there before us had left behind suddenly didn’t sound like terribly good value, so we gave it in and headed back into the city centre and had a wander round. It’s a nice enough city and had a busy, bustling vibe to it, possibly something to do with the excitement that was in the air due to the big rugby match later that night. We then meet up with Paddy, our Irish friend that we met while watching the Tri nations in an Irish pub in Vancouver and have kept in touch with since. Paddy is a Cork native so it was good to catch up with him and discuss our Irish adventures with him. After lunch we headed out of Cork towards Kilkenny, just over two hours to the north and our last stop of the trip.

Kilkenny is quite a small town but is a popular weekend spot for boozers from Cork and Dublin so has a bit of a reputation as a party place. This time we found our hostel with only mild difficulty, and headed up the high street to find a pub to watch the big game. For a reputation as a party town I didn’t think the pubs were up to much. There were plenty of them, and they were quite charming places to have a drink and watch a game, but they’re not what you’d expect would be popular for stag parties etc. Anyway we found a nice little place full of people in Irish jerseys watching the game on one medium size screen at the far end of the pub. At the other end of the pub the staff had brought down an old tv from the flat upstairs and propped it up on the bar, so we congregated around that and had a great evening watching Irish rugby history being made. It was a big game. It was the final match of the 6 Nations and if Ireland won they would win the tournament, the Triple Crown (by beating England, Scotland and Wales) and the Grand Slam (by beating all other teams in the other competition). It was only Ireland’s second Grand Slam win in over 120 years and their first since 1948. What’s more their opposition for the game was Wales, last years tournament winners and Grand Slam champions. The game lived up to the hype and was only decided when Welsh flyhalf Stephen Jones missed a penalty goal in the final play of the game. The pub went nuts and it was great to be part of it.

After all the excitement of the game we made our way back to the hostel and headed straight to bed. We were woken a few hours later by a group of Irish youngsters who were boozed to the eyeballs and had no realisation that there were other people in the building trying to sleep. There was a lot of door slamming, shouting and singing (and other stuff) going on but eventually we got some sleep. I am so over sleeping in hostels. I must be getting old.

Next morning we made the 2 hour journey north back to Dublin. Rather than going straight to the city centre we headed around the outskirts and found a magic little road up the Dublin Mountains to Glencullen where we had planned to have lunch at a famous little pub called Johnnie Fox’s. This has got to be one of the coolest pubs I’ve ever been to and is a well liked spot due to being one of the countries oldest and most traditional pubs and being the highest pub in the country in a marvellous location. It also does a traditional music session on Sunday afternoons but unfortunately we had other plans so could only stay for lunch. The food was as brilliant as the pub and we had an enjoyable drive back down the mountain feeling well satisfied.

We had planned to go to a hurling match that afternoon, but go so very lost that we never found the park and unfortunately missed the match, which is a real shame. On later investigation it turned out that we had been very close to the park where the match was, which is a minor miracle considering the extreme lack of direction and information we had to go on. Even though we didn’t get there in the end, I think we actually did pretty well to get as close as we did. So instead we headed back into the centre of town to have a closer look at some of the sights we’d seen on the bus tour. We also stumbled across the home coming for the victorious Irish rugby team, and having thoroughly enjoyed the match the night before we decided we’d join in the celebrations as well. After the homecoming we headed out to the airport and the end of our trip to Ireland, only to be hit with a nasty surprise from the rental car agency who charged us ridiculous amounts of money for some tire damage which was probably caused more by general wear and tear rather than our driving. Anyway, after a short fight with the rental company we gave in and headed off to board our flight.

Ireland is a brilliant place. Not too big and overcrowded, easy to get around (with some really fun back roads), with amazing history, fantastically friendly people and some absolutely stunning scenery. We spent 8 days there and had a blast. We covered most of the country but didn’t get to explore some places as much as we had hoped. You could easily do another week in Ireland, if not more, so its definitely somewhere we hope to get back to. Big ups Ireland!

---

Photos

Derry, Ireland
Hanging at the hostel

Derry, Ireland
First Guinness of the trip and the start of a love affair (with Guinness that is, not the hairy beast beside me)

Derry, Ireland
Anna and I hanging out at pub in Derry.

Derry, Ireland
Our hostel in Derry, Paddy's Palace

Derry, Ireland
Wall around Derry. 1613, built as a defence for English and Scotish settlers against Irish insurgents pissed of at the Plantation of protestant settlers in Catholic Ireland.

Derry, Ireland
Guildhall - 1862.

Derry, Ireland
On the wall, during our walking tour of Derry.

Derry, Ireland
Walking tour group.

Derry, Ireland
Bogside, part of Free Derry. It was in the neighbourhood where 'Bloody Sunday' took place.

Derry, Ireland
Derry Mural, depicting the events between the Protestants and the Catholics.

Derry, Ireland
Mural

Derry
Murals

Derry, Ireland
Sign painted in Bogside 1969, around the time 'the troubles' started.

Derry
Republican graffiti

Derry
Murals

Derry
Republican graffiti

Derry
Memorial to the 13 victims of Bloody Sunday

Derry, Ireland
Memorial to Sean Keenan, Chairman of the Derry Citizens Defence Association who was key in setting up Free Derry. Keenan spent 15 years in jail depite never being convicted of an offence (Internment), and was a Sinn Fein member.

Northern Ireland
Pigeon and ice-house, Downhill Demesne

Northern Ireland
Mussenden Temple

Northern Ireland
Beautiful Irish coast

Northern Ireland
The girls pausing to pose for the camera during a stroll along the coast

Northern Ireland
All looking at something very interesting, i'm sure ...

Northern Ireland
Downhill House

Northern Ireland
Us

Northern Ireland
ruins

Northern Ireland
Exploring the ruins

Northern Ireland
Bushmills Whiskey distillery

Northern Ireland
Coast

Northern Ireland
Coastal rail tunnel

Northern Ireland
Old Abbey

Northern Ireland
Old Abbey

Northern Ireland
Emma posing

Northern Ireland
Gaz posing

Giants Causeway, Northern Ireland
View from our walk

Giants Causeway, Northern Ireland
Very interesting rock formations, hexagon shapes. Caused by an ancient volcanic eruption.

Comments

[Adam]

Tanks for the history lesson
Hey Gaz and Emma, I managed to read through the whole blog, thanks for the very informative history leeson, have definately learnt something new today. Looks like you had a wonderful time which is awesome