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Published: June 12th 2011
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This was Ireland in a nutshell: Kilkenny->Rock of Cashel->Ring of Kerry->Dingle Penninsula->Cliffs of Moher->Dublin
After meeting my parents at the airport, we went to Kilkenny where we saw a castle.
Rock of Cashel is the sight of the earliest church and monastery, set up high on a rock.
Ring of Kerry is basically a loop of really scenic sights. The general scenery in Ireland is green cliffs and hills towering over an ocean that is as blue and clear as the Caribbean. We were in rural Ireland so we saw a lot of sheeps and cows and stone walls marking agricultural plots. We also saw stone forts from the Bronze and Iron age (BC and early AD), and were able to climb atop them since there were impressively built stairs all the way up to the top. We also saw a stone circle, marking Ireland’s history with Celtic and Pagan culture (Ireland and Scotland are similar that way). As in Scotland, the street signs were in Gaelic.
The scenery of the Dingle Peninsula is very similar to the Ring of Kerry. During the Dingle Peninsula, we stopped at a thatched cottage that showed what peasant life was
like during the Potato Famine. We also went to a museum that talked about the isolated life on the Arran Islands when they were inhabited and bought some Arran Island chocolate.
The Cliffs of Moher is a famous site. It’s pretty much the same deal, with towering cliffs over the ocean but these cliffs are MASSIVE and it’s a few of them bunched together. We had a really nice B & B that night, where we had a view of the ocean and were so close that we could even hear the waves. We stayed at B &Bs throughout, many with very good views.
Dublin was next. On the first night, we did a musical pub crawl. This is a good segue into talking about the music aspect of our trip. We went to many pubs at night and listened to some great traditional music while sampling different Irish ales. The style of traditional music is another thing Ireland and Scotland have in common. The style and musical instruments are basically the same. I have grown to love the rich and usually upbeat sound of the fiddle often combined with some version of a flute or pipe, acoustic
guitar, and the occasional accordion. Ireland even has its own version of the bagpipes. A harp is another instrument that the two countries share, although it is obviously played in a different, more mellow setting, not in pubs and celidh dances that feature jigs and reels. The Dublin pub crawl was run by two musicians who took us to three pubs and played some tunes while explaining the history behind the styles, tunes, and instruments as well as the going-ons of a typical Irish "session" (an informal performance with musicians playing for their own enjoyment rather than for money, which we experienced in Edinburgh). The next day, we did a 2-hour history walk that highlighted all the significant places in Dublin, including Trinity College, Old Parliament, and Dublin castle as well as some less-known places that have a connection to important Irish history. We learned a lot about Ireland’s fight for independence and the different political divisions within Ireland itself. It has a long history of war with Britain as well as Civil war, but today, the Republic of Ireland has achieved peace. Northern Ireland seems to be doing much better as well although it is still a little divided.
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