Advertisement
Published: March 31st 2007
Easter holidays. Before we embark on our tour of the world beginning in July, we had to go to the Republic of Ireland and do a bit of a tour.
We arrived in Dublin and picked up our hire car. A black Vauxhall Corsa!!
First night we drove to a small town called Tramore - an Irish version of Brighton Pier (for all of you been to England), a very much carnival town in summer time, as they were setting up Ferris wheels etc. Not sure what there would be to see and do at any other time during the year. We met up with Justin and Sarah in a pub that was supposedly the best pub in the world. They were heading around Ireland and Scotland in their "Paddy Wagon" giving it a good old test run before van tour begins for them later in the year. We watched the locals go head to head with visitors to the pub in the fantastic spectacle of darts. So much passion, so many beers, a good look into the local’s lifestyle in a small Irish town.
From there we drove to Cork and Blarney. We were hoping to catch
a game of hurling or Gaelic football, but it wasn't to be as the local side was playing away. This is where our bad luck sort of started. We drove to Blarney, 10 km from Cork to a B & B. Went to Blarney Castle, kissed the stone, made some wishes on the wishing steps, had a few more beers, or Irish stout.
From Blarney we hit the road on to Kilarney. It’s a very big tourist town due to it being in close proximity to the famous Ring of Kerry. In the low season it has a population of around 10,000. It has over 700 B & B's so it must be a bit of a fight to keep their heads above water. We stayed in a nice hostel in Kilarney, right in the centre of town. We were on a mission to find a mini golf course, but they proved to be elusive here as well as it wasn't open.
Next morning we got on the road nice and early and drove the Ring of Kerry. It was raved about in all the guide books but we were a bit disappointed in it. The scenery was
Kissing the Stone
Kristyn kissing the Blarney stone. Not sure what sort of germs and diseases are floating around on that stone!!OK, but nothing like the road from Loch Lomand to Fort William in Scotland. From there we carried on up towards Galway via a ferry crossing at Tarbet to Knock which cut over an hour off a drive around the coast.
We spent two nights in a B & B in Galway. We did a day trip to the Cliffs of Moher which were a pretty cool natural sight.
Trip back to London was a spot interesting. We boarded the plane in Dublin and within 15 minutes of each other Kristyn and I started to feel really ill. Kris vomited on the tarmac in London, and we both vomited for the remainder of the night. We think it was food poisoning from the B & B dodgy bacon at breakfast.
The Irish have a great thing with signs. Many times we were caught short with where we exactly had to go. Many times there were signs pointing towards peoples houses, into paddocks and other times no signs at all. For all the tourist things that there were to see in Ireland, there we hardly answers signs with which to follow. So take a map, a very very
detailed map.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.106s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0522s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
anonymous
non-member comment
Did you drink any of the tap water in Galway?! They are having a problem with the water there which can make you sick if you drink it. It's all over the papers and there's warning notices everywhere! Hope you're better now!