Irish Memories

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Carl and I maxed out our three days in Dublin. We arrived at 8am and spent the first day wandering the streets. Dropped our stuff off at a dodgy hostel. We headed straight for the temple bar district and had a look around, saw the 'Book of Kells' at Trinity College, and took the Guinness Tour (while the tour was so so, the view from the 7th floor and the Guinness was worth the full price). We had lunch there too. We ended up back in the temple bar district and did a mini pub crawl to hit the most places and finished up in the original Temple Bar for some live music. Mostly tourists around that night.

The next day we headed into the countryside on a bus tour. It was fantastic to get out of the city and see the rolling hills, waterfalls, lochs and ruins. We went to Glendalough which was an ancient religious retreat and I highly recommend if you're ever in Ireland. Perhaps the best part of this trip was the company, I was in a bit of a funk when the bus showed up late and there was a problem with seating but when the three ladies got on at the next stop, I cheered right up. At the end of the day, Carl and I invited two of the girls (Kelli and Jordan) for dinner and we had a great night out with more traditional live music and more locals at the pub. The girls left around midnight and Carl and I hit the next pub. We met up with a couple and her sister from Bellingham across the street. We also met this old couple, Shamus and Margaret, who had been married for 47 years. They were telling us all sorts of funny stories about the old days. Then we danced to some Irish jigs a couple doors down. The place was mostly older locals but there were a couple tourists to dance with too.

Carl and I had a little trouble getting to the Dublin Airport because our day passes did not work on the night buses, but we ended up splurging for a taxi. We had a great last day in Ireland. We used the dart train to get out to the farthest reaches of Dublin. We went over to a peninsula that the tour guide pointed out from the hills outside Dublin. We got off in a fishing village called Howth and had a great hike around the tip of the peninsula. We were lucky to escape the rapidly changing Irish weather. We had just finished the open portion of our hike around the coast when we saw grey thunderstorm clouds and a wall of water heading our way. We were fortunate to duck into an abandoned building with another couple. After the storm passed in 15 minutes, we met up with a not so lucky couple that were drenched from head to toe. Unfortunately, we couldn’t help but chuckle. We visited a small castle with probably 100 acres of surrounding grounds in Meredith, then caught the dart all the way to other end, to Bray station south of Dublin. We didn’t arrive until 8pm but we started on a hike up to the top of a hill with a cross on it, but kinda got lost in the dark on the way back. We managed to get the last dart back to Dublin only to find that the information lady had given us the wrong time for the last bus to the airport. She told us it was 11:30pm but that was the last one leaving from the airport, not to it. Oh well. We found another pub with Irish music and waited till the wee hours to get to the airport instead. We stayed at the airport that night for our early flight.

Back in London, we met up with Anna and Ryan (a high school chum) for more gallivanting around the town. We had an interesting time goofing off at the Tate Modern and then wandering all over town. Carl bumped into Txell (pronounced ‘shell’) in one of the clubs too. We all crashed at Chris's place before our flight home the next day.

I think this trip has just given me a taste of Ireland and I’ll definitely have to go back to see the rest of the country.



2016 Update - The time has come! Ann, Riley and I are heading to Ireland for a three week trip in February 2017. We'll also get to visit our plots of land.

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