Adventures in the Land of Potatos and Leprechauns

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My Ireland trip ended up starting in a similar fashion to my adventure in the UK and Europe, it was barely planned. I had no idea where or when I would go and no idea when I would be back. I booked my flights a few days before leaving and my hostel in Dublin a few hours before my flight. I hardly had any idea of how to actually reach my hostel when I got there. My lack of planning didn’t sit too well when I arrived to customs, and answering that I had no idea when I was going to leave raised a few suspicions from the customs officer. After a bit of a chat, mentioning how long I roughly planned to stay in Ireland and proving I had a credit card he let me on my way. Not a great start to my Ireland trip.

I walked in to Dublin with not much of an idea of it, except people had told me that it’s great for nightlife. I left Dublin almost vowing never to go back. It’s not like it was exactly a bad city, it just seemed to really lack any personality or even respect for itself I guess. I can’t pin point it exactly, but it definitely lacks something that really makes it attractive. I didn’t do a lot of sightseeing, at least at the major attractions. I did the three hour long walking tour which is always good for getting a good introduction and history of a city. But even in the stories and tales told, it still seemed to be lacking something of substance with the city seemingly built on misfortune and bad decisions. The local government having decided to move city hall to a new location dug up a spot and uncovered an ancient Viking ruins. So instead of preserving and embracing this part of their history they promptly destroyed the ruins and built the new city hall. This I guess is what I mean it lacks respect for itself. It felt to me outside of the Temple Bar area there wasn’t a whole lot to enjoy in the city itself.

So I spent a fair bit of time in Temple Bar, mainly on pub crawls which for the most part were pretty cool because I was getting drunk. I think it there was one night that I didn’t do a crawl, where I played some drinking games at the hostel with a few new American mates and another Aussie girl. Surprisingly I only spent one night out of the five not drinking though I came pretty close to going the whole way. I promised myself on my last day that I wouldn’t blow anymore cash on booze (I’d spent close to €250 at this stage) but the whole gang went to a sports bar to watch College Football. Paul promised to buy everyone shots if his team Georgia went up by three touchdowns, and they got close. But unfortunately the other team Auburn clawed their way back and killed off that dream. Still despite not having a single drink it was a pretty cool night. I got to learn about American Football and not only was it fairly easy to follow it was pretty exciting at times.

And it may shock you all to know that I didn’t make my way down to the Guinness and Jameson distilleries while in Dublin, because let’s face it we all know I like a drink. Well I’d been to distilleries before and faced the same spiel on how alcohol is made and what not, so I mainly figured that I’d just be getting an expensive pint or dram out of the tours. And I’m not too fussed to be honest but I’m sure there are one or two people out there that will be smacking their heads at me missing out on the Jameson’s tour.

Drinking was pretty much the only thing besides walking that I had done in Dublin. I don’t think I paid to go and see any attraction. I did go outside of the main city to a town called Howth, right on the east coast and a great place for walking. I was fully expecting a rough and windy time of it out there, considering it was like that in the city. Imagine my surprise at the calm on the coast, hardly a breeze, no rain and even the ocean was serenely calm. It was good to get out for a bit and do a bit of walking along the coast. Unfortunately the maps provided for Howth are massive piles of shit and are incredibly unclear, so the track I wanted to walk to get back to the main town was pretty much impossible to find and I settled to take a main road back in. It was a cool little town, and definitely worth a trip outside of Dublin for a few hours.

Next stop was heading directly west to a city called Galway. Now Galway is quite small and from a tourists point of view can pretty much be done in a day. There isn’t a great deal to see, but it isn’t really the reason why people come here. It’s full of great pubs and is a hub for live music, whether traditional or contemporary. Though don’t be surprised if you get lost in this town the first time you set foot in it, there are a lot of roads that run around in different angles. I certainly got lost as soon as I stepped foot in Galway, but I will blame part of this problem on Google maps though. Google maps put me on a point that was slightly different to where I had actually gotten off the bus (on the corner of the adjacent street). So what should have been a five minute walk turned into a 45 minute walk. It also didn’t help that I was dying for a piss and the bus had no toilets and the bus terminal toilets were out of order. Needless to say I was in a bit of a rush to get to my hostel which only added to the confusion. I was lucky enough to find a public toilet thank god, but now my bearings were completely out of wack, and eventually found the hostel with a bit of luck. Things turned pretty good as the day wore on. I met an Aussie guy named Reece and we hit the pubs that night and after a few pints my Irish mate Majella called for a meet up (who I’d met two years prior in Thailand and hadn’t seen since). Needless to say the night was only going to get better, and there were many pints shared. Some parts got a little blurry, but somehow ended up in all of us (except Reece who had already piked) going back to Majella’s mate Aidan’s flat, where we kept going on wine. And yes the wine was shit, but I was already drunk and it’s pointless to refuse alcohol when you’re drunk.

As an added bonus to my trip to Galway I found out Matt Berry (Dr Lucien Sanchez from Darkplace, Douglas Renholm from IT Crowd, Dixon Bainbridge from The Mighty Boosh) was coming out and doing a gig! Now mainly by trade he’s a comedian, but if you’re familiar with his work on some of his TV shows he’s dabbled into some music. So this gig was just him playing some of his songs from the shows, and off his couple albums he’s made. Jen had come down for the weekend and I got us tickets to the gig and had an absolute blast! Really didn’t disappoint at all, even though I hadn’t really heard any of his music from his albums.

So Jen had come down for the weekend after a bit of persuasion and the fact that I had hired a car and was going to spend a few days in Connemara, Jen’s old stomping grounds. Connemara is an area just north west of Galway that is mainly a large national park. Jen used to live and work around Clifden and was extremely excited to be coming back to see it all again, but unfortunately was left pretty bitterly disappointed. As it turns out, Clifden was affected by the big economic boom and so went through a phase of big development projects. It had been a pretty little town, so I had been told and Jen had found out that all the development had pretty much turned off tourists. There used to have been some great restaurants too but with the tourism falling, even that had been negatively impacted. So Clifden kinda sucked, but I guess it was still a nice area and the main advantage it does have is that it’s the biggest town in Connemara that’s closest to Galway.

On our last day in Connemara Jen and I had been determined to give Croagh Patrick a climb. Now for those of you that don’t know, Croagh Patrick is the mountain that St. Patrick is said to have climbed and cast away all the snakes from Ireland. It was also said he had done it bare foot. Now St. Pat must have been pretty skint or is full of shit because only crazy religious types on annual pilgrimages would do this, which is exactly what these catholic nuts do over here. I was struggling to do this thing with half decent shoes (though they weren’t really made for hiking at all) as the path up the mountain is mainly just loose rocks and it does get quite steep. We’d made it up to the shoulder of the mountain before giving up, but it still gave us some great views of the area and some sense of pride in our effort. Our last stop before heading back into Galway was a town not too far from Croagh Patrick called Westport and if any of you do think of coming out to Connemara this is definitely the place to stay. It’s a gorgeous little harbour town, maybe around 80km from Galway but it has a lot of pride in itself and looked to have quite a good few pubs and restaurants around. After all that effort climbing three quarters of a mountain we were due a good meal and stopped at a pub called The Towers on the harbour. It would have been great to get a seat outside to eat and even though the day was beautifully sunny, it was also insanely cold and a seat next to a fireplace was definitely on the cards. After a great meal, a pint and a bit of football we waved goodbye to Connemara. And I can’t complete this blog with at least one rant about roads. Now for some stupid reason the coastal road towards Clifden which were newish, flat and fairly wide even though one lane each way, and the speed limit was set at around 50km/h each way. That in itself was ridiculous. But then a lot of the smaller (some being pretty much a one car road), narrower, incredibly bumpy roads had speed limits ranging from 80km/h to 100km/h! I couldn’t believe it, and there was absolutely no way you could come anywhere close to doing those speeds on those roads. Damn backwards Irish.

Next stop on the list was down south in Cork. Now Cork is the second biggest city in Ireland but definitely the pick over Dublin. The shape of it seems to have been heavily influenced by an industrial boom, and after doing a self guided walking tour (provided by Cork tourism) many of the landmark buildings would have been built around that time. It’s got a welcoming and unpretentious feel about it, and lots of little laneways that reminded me a fair bit of Melbourne. It’s not too big in size and easy to navigate around. What surprised me the most about Cork is that there didn’t seem to be a ridiculous amount of pubs around. Don’t get me wrong there were quite a few, but considering I had just been in the much smaller town of Galway that seemed to have a pub every fifty metres it was both refreshing and disappointing at the same time. Even still the few pubs I did walk into had that same great pub feel you find almost anywhere in the UK and Ireland. Most pubs here do feel very homely and welcoming, which is due to great decor and fireplaces to stave off the cold. It’s really no wonder why people around here and the UK spend so much time in pubs, you know besides the fact that they’re alcoholics.

The hostel I was staying at had a promotion going that if anyone stayed for three nights or more you would get a free day tour of Cobh, Kinsale and the Blarney castle, even including free entry to the castle! It was pretty much the deal breaker for staying at the hostel and it turned out pretty good. I met a group of Americans named Erin, Hillary, Ann and Duane and they turned out to be pretty cool company. The one thing I hate about organised tours is that you hardly get enough time in places to get a good look or feel for it. We got to spend about an hour each in Cobh and Kinsale, with both being pretty seaside towns. Cobh was the smaller of the two towns and is mostly renowned for its links with sea travel, and notably the last port that the Titanic embarked from. Kinsale was larger and looked a great little spot, which the newly formed gang couldn’t explore because we were busy eating in a pub. Last stop was the Blarney castle, which actually surprised me on how good a sight it was. I’d seen quite a few castles now and I expected that the whole Blarney stone was just a tourist trap to make it more exciting, but it was still reasonably intact and great to walk around. Sure some of the floors were missing, but you could grasp an overall feel for the castle. And yeah I did kiss the Blarney stone, and no it hasn’t helped me talk more shit!

Now, at this point I thought that I couldn’t really justify going to Ireland and not going to the Jameson distillery. The current Jameson distillery is based near cork, and the one that had recently closed is sitting right next to it. The old distillery is where the Jameson tour is based so I set about on my last day in Cork to check it out. It did pretty much turn out to be what I expected it to be, I did learn a few facts though and got a bit more whiskey than I thought I would. But part of the tour also seemed to be based about how Irish whiskey is better than Scottish whisky, and the tour guide also fed some false facts about the Scottish stuff that kinda annoyed me. Still, at least I can say I’d visited the distillery and probably not disappointed some of you guys back home.

My last stop in Ireland was in Killarney, a small yet beautiful little town to the north of Cork, which is based next to a mountain range and a set of lakes. As I was rolling into town from Cork I noticed along the way that along the sides of the roads it had changed from frost to snow, and it had indeed snowed in this town the night before I turned up. I got in a little too early to check into the hostel so I set my bags down and set about hiring a bike. I rode throughout the national park here and the snow made the whole place absolutely gorgeous. The day was incredibly chilly, yet the sky was clear and the sun was out. It really couldn’t have been any more picturesque, and the snow’s effect made it all the more amazing, considering that Australia pretty much has none. I rode out to the Ross castle, and around to the Muckross estate, which is cornered in by a lake and Mount Torc. I got up to the Torc waterfalls, but I was way too cold to attempt a climb up the mountain. It was a shame really, I heard it had some great views but my legs were absolutely frozen and it was a struggle enough just to pedal on flat ground.

There are quite a few things to do around here during summer and there were a few day tours still going on, but considering how cold it was in the area I decided to give it all a miss. I’d been doing a lot of touring of country sides and a few small day tours I instead took time to just chill out in this little town. I spent a fair bit of time wandering around checking out a few of the different pubs and restaurants around the town. I’d always heard out west and down south towards Cork there was a great food culture, but being in the main cities I was never really game enough to try local food, mainly because I had no idea where were good places to eat. But I got talking to a local that worked at the hostel, and she got me on to a few good places. And it really didn’t disappoint, having some traditional Irish stew, a bacon and cabbage dish, and potato cakes filled with chicken and bacon topped off with a creamy mushroom sauce. It was just a great way to finish off my trip, even though I had a few doubts that I would actually leave the country. Most of the UK and Ireland had an unexpected bout of snowfall, and quite a few flights had been cancelled from Edinburgh and Cork in the days before I was due out. But it was almost lucky that it had snowed before and not after I left, at least both airports had enough time to get their act together to clear it all up.

So overall Ireland had been a really nice place to go, but it may be more suited to the summer seasons. Dublin should be avoided and if you’re given a choice go to Cork, it really is just an expensive city and not much more. And in truth I haven’t met too many people that have liked it either. I had an absolute ball in Galway, and as an added bonus for you guys, my keen observations found that the city has a lot more girls around than guys and most of them range from cute to gorgeous. Summer is definitely the time to go to Galway, as I’ve been told it’s pretty much a season long festival. But either way you’ll still be able to come at any time of the year and have fun in this little town. Killarney and Connemara are great places for those of you that like nature.

By the way, congratulations to you guys that made it to the end of this. I know it’s been incredibly long and I did think about breaking it all up but I had pretty much written it all and couldn’t be fucked changing it. I know I would have read the first paragraph, scrolled to the end, seen how long it was and then given up.

*I ended up adding a shit load of photos to make reading this blog seem less annoying.

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Photos

Dublin Castle
The tower is the only original bit that remains, they rebuilt the castle in the 1800's ish and it basically looks like a normal red bricked building.