Ireland, Land of the Guinness

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Day One: Arrival into Ireland

We are starting to realize that over here in Europe, things just usually don’t go as planned, that’s just how it is. For instance, our flight with Ryan Air was supposed to depart around 5:30pm out of Gatwick Airport, so Mitch and I arrive about 2 hours before to compensate for traffic or anything of that sort. Check in went smoothly, but Ryan Air doesn’t give the actual gate number because they post it on the monitors about an hour before boarding. Naturally, Mitch and I decide to go through the shops to kill time. Well we kill time..and more time..and more, they have yet to post our gate at 5:30 when we were supposed to be departing. So, we are staring at the electronic screen waiting when all of sudden the times start changing and rather than a time one word is displayed: CANCELLED. No explanation just flat out cancelled. This happened for about 10 of the flights on the board, but luckily none of them were ours. Pure mayhem broke out in the airport as people began to realize that their flight had just been cancelled and they were stranded in the Gatwick Airport as there were no way to reschedule on an airline such as Easyjet or Ryan Air (the dirt cheap, broke, piece of crap, unsafe airlines that we have booked all our trips through). At this point, a man on a speaker comes on and informs the crowds of unhappy passengers that there has been a glitch in the Gatwick control center and no flights are coming in or out of Gatwick airport. Great. Mitch and I are no dummies and realize that we are either going to be on a bus back to Oxford or sitting in Gatwick for the next 3 hours, so we decide that the next best plan of action is to…go to McDonalds. McDonalds has become our place of refuge, a home outside of home as we order our cheeseburger, fries, and a nugget. We are thinking of applying to be spokespeople for the commercials as we truly are “lovin’ it”. Anyway, three or four cheeseburgers, 2 large fries, a big mac, and nuggets later we board our flight around 8:30. Not too bad. Our flight into Ireland was typical except for the craziness that comes with flying such an economical and budget airline. Mitch and I were not about to sit apart in the plane so we strapped our back packs on and made a mad rush for the plane as the seats were first come first serve. You better believe we were the “first come first serve” as we knocked over small elderly ladies and crushed small children with each stride we took towards the plane. No but really, it was crazy but we got sit together. It was a bumpy flight and we got into Ireland and jumped aboard the city bus towards our hostel. Dublin at night appears to be the typical European city with its bright lights and crowded streets. There is a big river in the middle of the city that flows between two of the biggest parts of town, and our hostel was positioned in the most opportune spot right in the city center on the river. The river at night was beautiful with the reflection from the lights the cars and lamps. Our hostel, Abigails, was quite a surprise as it was very well run and extremely clean for such a cheap accommodation. Mitch and I had signed up for the community dorm deal where we have 4 other roommates in a tiny room where we all share one even tinier toilet and shower...after our experiences in Munich, we were not too excited. However, we were pleasantly surprised as we turned out to have 4 really nice and quiet roommates. 2 of them were from Germany and turned out to be gay as we unfortunately found out one night…the other was an Aussie who was traveling the globe trying to find his purpose…and the last man was oh a FIFTY FIVE year old 6’7 dad who was here to see his daughter but saw nothing wrong with walking around the hostel in his whitey tighties. Our hostel was right near Temple Bar which is the big party/tourist spot of Dublin. Temple Bar is home to the Hard Rock and a few other cliché places but also the actual Temple Bar which is pretty awesome. The street that runs through Temple Bar is extremely crowded with people drinking and carrying on, but the best part was the street music. We heard some of the best Irish music on that street and would usually end the night with a few songs. That night we went to Temple Bar and had a few pints. The beer on tap there was amazing, and Mitch and I both found a new obsession with the dark thick Irish beer: Guinness. It was just exquisite. After a pint or two we headed back to the hostel because we had a big few days coming up…

Day Two: The City of Dublin

We awoke to the supposedly one of the most beautiful days in Ireland that year. It was gorgeous and sunny, the kind of weather just warm enough for a light jacket and scarf. While we were in Oxford, we had purchased an all day bus tour for today, so we woke up early and wasted no time starting our day of exploring Dublin. The bus pass was amazing as it took you to all the major sight seeing spots in Dublin which spared us walking miles and miles aimlessly trying to find the best parts of the city. There was also a live guide who told you many interesting facts about the city. Guess where we want first…The Guinness Factory at 10 am. Never too early for a Guinness, right? I am going to give you the Tara/Mitch account of what we remember from the actual tour of the factory: Guinness is a legend in Ireland as it started here a long time ago by some guy named Arthur who had 21 children. That’s right, 21 children. That fact is part of history behind the whole “it puts hair on your chest” or “real men drink Guinness because it makes you strong.” The factory itself was enormous and the inside of it was in the shape of a pint of Guinness. We learned how Guinness is made and the defining factor in Guinness beer is simply the water. The water is why Guinness tastes different in the United States as opposed to Ireland. The factory was about 5 stories high, and by the time we reached the top, we cashed in our complimentary Guinness coupon. The sky bar was at the top and we had a panoramic view of all of Dublin and it was wonderful on such a beautiful day. We have figured out that one of our favorite parts of the trip in general is going to the gift shops and picking up dorky souvenirs and postcards. Once again, I am not at liberty to say what has been purchased for the following: 1. I don’t want my dad to look at my credit card bill. 2. I don’t want to look at the credit card bill. And 3. We may have bought something for someone other than ourselves. ☺ After we had tackled the Guinness gift store, we headed towards to our little bus stop to go to our next destination: the Jailhouse. The jailhouse in Dublin is one of the coolest spots in the whole city as nothing has really been done to renovate it…it is how it was. That’s the way Mitch and I like too see things: as they are, not how they should be. The jailhouse looked like an old medieval castle with its high stonewalls and iron fence. It was truly frightening to be inside of as so many people were either killed or trapped in there for months . The jail came with a free tour in which we learned many interesting yet scary things about the infamous jail. The jailhouse had so many rooms in which men, women, and children were confined for weeks on end for something as simple as stealing a vegetable to keep from starving. The jail cells themselves were tiny, damp, and dark and the guide told us that there often 10 or 11 people in each cell which should have held 1 or 2 people. It was terrible to imagine what so many people probably went through in the very room we were standing in with our cameras and backpacks. It was a bit surreal. The jailhouse is also famous because it is the site of so many movies such as the Italian Job and most recently No Country For Old Men. Mitch and I hung out in the back of the group as we waited for the “perfect photo” without tourists in it to try and capture the horror and eeriness of each and every inch of that jailhouse. It was quite the experience for both of us as we had never really seen anything like that before. After the tour of the jailhouse, we decided to, or should I say Mitch, decided to head to the Jameson Whiskey Factory. The Jameson Whiskey Factory produces some of the best whiskey in all of Ireland and ultimately the world. (Previous to this visit, Mitch and I were diehard Jack Daniels followers). I must admit that I was not too excited to go on a tour of some whiskey factory, but after the tour I was pleasantly surprised with how much I really enjoyed it. Our guide took us step by step through the whiskey making process which were things that mitch and I had absoulteluy no idea about. For instance, the Jameson whiskey is distilled three times while Jack Daniels is distilled only once. Half way through the tour they asked for girl and guy volunteers to do a whiskey tasting at the end of the tour…guess who volunteered? You got it. The traveling two, the dynamic duo, Bonnie and Clyde, Louise and Clark, Eric and Ariel, Ricky and Lucy…AKA: The Tara and Mitch. I mean it was free whiskey why not? The tasting was awesome. We got to try Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker Black Label, and the Jameson Whiskey. Both of us agreed without a doubt that the best tasting was Jameson…it was extremely smooth. It broke my heart to admit that my Jack lost, but either they messed with the whiskey and it wasn’t Jack or Jameson was just truly a whole hell of a lot better. Regardless, Mitch is now a die-hard fan and his whiskey passion is just a bit out of control. I had to restrain him from buying bottles and bottles of Jameson for the ride back to Oxford. Oh the wonders of traveling with Mitch. By the time we ended our little whiskey escapade it was nearing 5 o’clock and we thought it was high time to hit the pub and get some food. Dublin’s prices are ridiculous and are in fact higher than London. It was absurd. In order for us to eat a meal of say fish and chips it ran us about 15 euro. We tried to eat only really once a day: dinner, while the rest of the day we survived off our free breakfast at the hostel and a possible sandwich. Let me just say something about the free breakfast. Ok, so as it is Mitch and I are consuming enormous amounts of carbs with all the pastries and sandwiches etc. So, our hostel offered for breakfast a basket of bread and cereal. By bread I mean, slices of plain white bread, and by cereal I mean unflavored flakes. Since Mitch and I are broke everywhere we go and can’t even force ourselves to spend 7 Euros on breakfast, we load up on anything we can that falls into the free category. By the time breakfast is over, I am so overloaded with carbs that if I walk outside the hostel and Mitch holds onto my scarf I will float over Dublin like one of those oversized blimps at the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. Damn exchange rate. Anyway, that night we went to a pub in Temple Bar for a wonderful dinner of fish and chips for myself and chicken baguette and vegetables for Mitch. It was the best food we had eaten in weeks. We enjoyed some live music and then headed back to the hostel..little did we know that World War III was about to happen outside our window. We got back to the hostel and got ready for bed, keep in mind that our hostel is right next to Temple Bar and our window looks into a small dark alley. We left our windows open because it was quite warm and stuffy in our little room, too bad by the time morning had come I would rather have suffocated from lack of air then have kept that window open. That alley window overlooks happens to be the number one spot to do drugs and hang out in all over Dublin. There were bums constantly circulating throughout the alley either snorting cocaine, shooting up on heroine, or smoking pot. It was ridiculous. I know it sounds like we were really in an unsafe area, but we really weren’t, that alley just happened to be bad news. Mitch and I are going to start a new section in the blog called “Mitch actually writes something…” It’s a new idea, so it may not work but Mitch is going to give you his interpretation of the alley and how difficult it was to get a night’s rest in our war zone…

By the end of each day, Tara and I had probably walked, on average, about 5-7 miles. By the time we get back into the room, all we want to do is pass out in our little extra small, twin sized beds. We knew by sleeping in the dorm style hostel room that it was going to be loud inside the room, but we were completely unaware that World War III was starting outside our room. If it wasn’t the drug dealers arguing over who was going to snort their drugs first, it was the horse shoes grinding against the ground from the carriage pulling tourists for a romantic night. Why would you pull tourist into a dark long alley at night? We still couldn’t figure that one out. Right when we thought things were calming down at about one or two in the morning, a waterfall of glass clashing into the giant recycling bins would echo through the alley straight into our ear drums, forcing our hesitant eye lids to explode back into our heads. This would happen about two times a night. We were always on edge in our separate beds, tossing and turning in between the drunken fights, the cops busting the drug dealers shooting up heroine, and the live music from the bars in the distance. I finally managed to find a place that sold earplugs, but they ended up being worthless because they fell out halfway through the night. They obviously couldn’t handle the resonance created from the emerging War outside. But of course, that was only half of it. The noise inside the room was almost worse than the war outside. All it took was someone to just move their pinky finger to make the steel beds creek like nails on a chalk board. Everyone was obviously constantly moving around switching sides due to the annoyance from the war outside. The most annoying part is when you finally manage to fall asleep and your roommate just barges in the room. It doesn’t matter if they try to be quite or not because every little move made noise. The act of undressing to go to bed was equivalent to someone shaking a towel in your ear. This was followed by the person climbing to the top bunk bed which, once again, sounded like a ten 18 wheeler trucks were slamming on their breaks with not brake pads. We just couldn’t stand it. The whole experience makes great stories to tell, but in the end it is not worth it. Private Twin Ensuite…Yes Please!!!

There you have it, uncensored and straight from the fingertips of Mitch Folk, a night at the Abigail Hostel.

Day Three: The Wicklow Mountains

We woke up extra early this morning as this was the day that both of us had been looking forward to the whole trip. We had planed in Oxford to spend a day or two outside of the city exploring the countryside and we found a great tour company that was affordable that took an excursion to the Wicklow Mountains. The Wicklow Mountains are south of Dublin and are absolutely breathtaking. They are not the snow capped, jagged peaks you would think, but instead they are almost like huge rolling hills that have some of the most beautiful glacier lakes and ancient cities in the whole world. The countryside of Ireland is just beyond words, and Mitch and I were so excited to get on the bus for our all day excursion. The tour began at 9 am and we headed off to the mountains, our tour guide was a wonderful little Irish man that truly cared about giving us the best tour possible. It was amazing. Once outside the city, we stopped at an adorable little shop for some tea and scones. The shop was owned by the classic Irish couple who scurried around getting the tea and scones together for their guests. The scone was unbelievable and the tea was just the icing on the cake. It was a glorious morning thus far as the shop sat in the foothills of the mountains and was surrounded by a small river and rocky bridge that had been there since the eleven hundreds. After tea, we headed to one of the most beautiful and ancient cities in all of Ireland: Glendalock. Glendalock is about half way up the Wicklow Mountains and consists of a few pubs and eateries in one of the many glacial valleys. Glendlelock is home to one of the most ancient monastic cities in Ireland. It was incredible. The ruins were completely untouched and were humbling to look at it. The area was mostly covered in ancient gravestones with two buildings towering above. One is an ancient tower that the Monks used to store their precious manuscripts in and the other was the actual church. Both of them had suffered serious damages through the years from the weather and time but still were incredibly intact…the little city was beautiful and Mitch and I just pottered around checking out all the different gravestones and etchings in the towers. Perhaps one of the most amazing parts of the whole thing was the entrance. The entrance to the Monastic Site consisted of two giant rock archways that once had giant wooden doors that were rarely opened. The place was a sacred site and the monks were extremely particular as to who could venture inside to pray and take part within. On one of the rock walls right inside the archways there is the most important cross in all of Glendalock. It is called the Cross of Glendalock and it is etched into the stone. It is a simple cross, there is nothing real special about it, but it is the most important cross within the ancient city. It derives its signifance because it was carved into the entrance gateway of the sacred site. Many people overlook it because it is not that obvious to a tourist’s eye, but luckily our tour guide pointed it out to us. The ruins were at the bottom of these enormous hills that rose on all sides of the city protecting it from the outside world. There were two beautiful glacier lakes outside of the city but still inside of the hills and from above it looked like two water drops in a dark crevice. It was breathtaking and Mitch and I had the most amazing time exploring. This excursion had quickly become the highlight of our Europe trip thus far. We stopped off at one of the pubs for a quick lunch and began our journey up into the actual Wicklow Mountains. The drive was along windy, tiny roads and we often got held up behind a tractor making its way to harvest the many fields that surrounded us. It was the picture of country life with the horses and little cottages dotting the hillside. Mitch and I were all smiles and sat at the very front of the bus on the edge of our seat trying to see it all. Once we made our way into the actual mountains, the scenery changed drastically from the deep green to a wave of endless red and brown. The hills are made of peat moss which makes them extremely unstable, and the peat is also burned for warmth in most fireplaces. The peat was really interesting as it was thick and dark thick slates underneath the brown and red grass. Our tour guide told us that the ground is incredibly unstable and it doesn’t support the weight of a human. They have found perfectly intact remain of humans and animals beneath the layers of peat. It preserves whatever gets trapped in it perfectly well to the point where you can see the stomach contents of the victim from hundreds of years ago. At the very top of the Wicklow Mountains at the Sally Gap, we got out of the bus made our way over for a panoramic view. It was glorious. I don’t think its possible, but let me try and relate to you what we saw: The wind was roaring so we walked arm in arm to the edge and were surrounded on three sides by giant smooth mountains. At their feet sat an enormous dark as night glacier lake with a white beach. The lake was in the shape of a pint and the deep color was signature of the infamous Guinness. The white sand gave the illusion of the frothy lip of a cold pint. The sand turned into grass which led to a beautiful mansion tucked into the bottom of the mountains. Wild white sheep were scattered throughout the green grass, and the whole scene was quite breathtaking. Interestingly, the estate was owned by Mr. Arthur Guinness and it is now a Guinness estate…it costs 30,000 Euro a week to rent. Mr. Tiger Woods was there a few months ago as was Mr. Michael Jackson. It was amazing how much the lake resembled a pint of Guinness, and then to find out that it was an actual Guinness estate was ridiculous. I mean, wow. We drove the mountains a bit more and then made our way back to Dublin around 5:30. It had been such a successful and wonderful day for Mitch and I. We were starving though, and we decided to go to The Brazen Head Pub which is the oldest pub in all of Ireland. It was built in 1198 by the Vikings and there are still etchings in the glass from their inhabitance. The food was delicious, and the beer was equally as good. The day was more than Mitch and I could handle, and when we finally got back to the hostel we were just overwhelmed and so very thankful to be so very blessed. We were going to try and go to bed despite the WWIII that was taking place in the alley outside our window.

Day Four: The Coastline from Kiliney to Howth

After a really crappy night’s sleep, we woke up with messy hair and blood shot eyes but ready to take on another day in Ireland. We were itching to get out and explore the coast some more to we bought a 7 euro train ticket that gave us unlimited travel up and down the coast. We took the train leaving from Tara Station down to Kiliney and Dorkey. Dorkey is home to Bone, Enya, and Van Morrison and it is a quaint little town with an ancient castle. The coastline was beautiful, quite different from the West Coast in California. The water was so clear and the coast was made up of jagged cliffs and mounds of rocks underneath lush green grass. We wandered around Kiliney for a bit exploring the coastline until we got back on the train and made our way up to the fisherman village of Howth. Howth was beautiful as is all of Ireland, but Howth was made up of really nice houses throughout the cliffs and hillside that sat on top of this adorable little harbor. It was a working harbor, and there were huge, old and rusty fishing boats that had clearly taken a beating or two in the Irish Sea. Seals were lazily floating in the harbor and the sun was blazing down on us. We hiked around and had lunch at a wonderful little fisherman’s pub. We then made our way about 5 miles on foot through to the other side of the island that had full panoramic views of the city of Dublin and the south coast. There was a beautiful little lighthouse perched on the fingertip of one of the jutting cliffs, and we made this our stopping point as our little legs were begging to sit down. It had been a long day and the walk back was quite daunting as we both just wanted an ice cream and to catch the bus back. BUT. We were broke and neither of those were an option so we trekked it back to the train station. I fell asleep in the train and by the time we were back in Dublin I was ready for bed. However, I had planned to meet up with some friends of my good friend Steven, so sleep was not an option at the moment. I am really glad I didn’t sleep because Mitch and I had an awesome night with Rachel and Steven at one of the local pubs. Rachel was a beautiful Chinese woman who was engaged to this little bruiser of Irish man. They were so much fun and we exchanged stories over a few beers. Rachel recommended Mitch try a hot whiskey which was the beginning to another addiction for Mitch. Hot whiskey is perfect for a chilly day. It is a shot of whiskey with some boiling water, a lemon wedge, and cloves. It is delicious and so soothing on your chest and throat. The perfect remedy for a cold or at least that’s what the Irish think. It was such a great day, but by the time midnight rolled around Mitch and I had to call it a night as we had to catch a flight in the morning.

Day Five: Departure and Evaluation

Our flight went smooth and we got back to Oxford around 9:30 pm. Ireland was a complete and total success. Mitch and I have decided that we are going to rate each and every city we visit over the next few month. Ireland specifically Dublin receives an 8 out of 10. The Wicklow Mountains and the seaside get a 10 out of 10 because there was just nothing you could possibly find wrong with it. Utter beauty. We are trying to plan one more trip to Ireland except to the west coast as we just can’t seem to get enough of this Irish Beauty…

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Comments

[WazzaSof]

I feel thirsty
I loved the pictures, guys. It seems that you had good weather too. Definitely recommend getting outside Dublin region - I would heartily recommend Donegal in the North West, off the beaten track and AMAZING beaches, cliffs, mountains and villages. Galway too has it's charms. Have fun wherever you end up.