Ireland 2010

So I guess I should blog about Kari and I's amazing 5 year anniversary trip to Ireland...

Starting off with travel... the flights weren't that bad at all. I mean, they were 6-7 hours, but having my ipad and an exit row seat made everything much nicer. If you're ever going on a flight this long, try to get an exit row seat (but beware - exit row window seats do not recline all the way). Another quick international travel trip: bring a 3G iPad, buy prepaid 3G SIM cards wherever you go. This kept us connected without roaming and saved us a countless number of times with google maps, etc.

Day 1 - Kari's birthday
We landed in Dublin around 8:30am, caught a bus to Dublin city centre, found our hotel, checked in, and went to explore the town. The first order of business was to find an iPad SIM card then tour Guinness... both of which were accomplished.

The Guinness tour was kinda... meh. You don't actually tour the brewery, you basically go through this massive museum style building that explains everything about Guinness, how it's made, etc. If you know anything about brewing beer, this was for the most part - boring. The advertisement and history stuff was the most interesting part for me. Plus, learning how to pour a perfect Guinness, eating lunch, and having a pint in their gravity bar was super awesome... food and beer consumption on Guinness grounds was definitely the best part.

After Guinness we napped for a bit then I took Kari out for some fancy birthday dinner at a place called Fire. Afterwards we got a drink at Cafe en Seine, which was a beautiful place containing both trendy music and trendy people.

Day 2
Grabbed lunch at this nice little organic joint called The Farm, and spent the day walking around Dublin. First, we hit up Trinity College, which is Ireland's oldest University (and puts Cornell's campus to shame). Here we spent quite a bit of time in Trinity's Library. I'm not really a library kind of dude, but it really is ridiculous. Firstly, it has the book of Kells inside (the 4 gospels of the new testament in super ornate print) from 800A.D. and secondly, it houses "the long room" which is a giant, open room containing the university's oldest books. It's the entire top 2 floors of this photo. Unfortunately, photos aren't allowed of either, so here's a panoramic of the library. After Trinity, I took Kari birthday shopping around Grafton street, had a pint in a random pub, and walked around Stephen's green park.

That night we hit up the Temple bar area which is a pretty touristy part of town with some old cobbled streets and traditional pubs. It was quite fun.

Day 3 - from Dublin to Kilkenny
The day started out with Kari stressing about our upcoming foreign driving adventure. With that in mind, we made sure we were well nourished and had plenty of caffeine, then walked to Thrifty to rent our Hyundai i10. Driving started off pretty bad, haha. The streets in Dublin are horribly marked, and most buildings don't even have legit street addresses. Combine this with driving on the wrong side of the street (and car) and roads that wind all over the place... it took us 3 times as long to get out of town than it should have.

Once we got out of Dublin, things were smooth sailing all the way to the Abbeylodge Bed and Breakfast in Kilkenny. The hostess, Rosie was great. She pointed us to a nice cafe for lunch, great Indian for dinner, and an old witches house-turned pub for music. In between, we skyped, walked around town, and checked out the Kilkenny castle (again, no photos inside).

Day 4 - Kilkenny to Killarney
After breakfast we checked out St Canice's cathedral, which was quite pretty then headed toward Killarney. On the way to Killarney we were able to check out the Rock of Cashel and Cahir castle, which were both great spots. The size of the Rock of Cashel was out of control. This was definitely one of my favorite castles.

The drive to Killarney was great. The roads were all super fun and curvy, I loved it. In fact, I think that driving was my favorite part of the whole vacation. The roads we drive on in America are straight up boring compared to the awesomeness in Ireland.

Once we got to Killarney we checked into the Chelmsford House, grabbed some food, then listened to traditional irish music at a great little pub called Sheehans.

Day 5 - Killarney
The goal for day 5 was just to drive the ring of Kerry, which is a 100 mile circular route around a peninsula in southwestern Ireland. Unfortunately it was super foggy, but there was still plenty of beautiful landscape to take in. Plus, the roads were once again super curvy and a blast to drive on. It was an excellent way to spend the day.

After the ring of Kerry we decided to take a break from the stout and Irish food to just have pizza and water in our room.

Day 6 - Killarney to Doolin
After breakfast we drove and ferried toward Doolin, a tiny tiny town with nothing more than a few pubs, a couple shops, and some bed and breakfasts. On the way to Doolin we were able to stop by the Cliffs of Moher which are a group of 700 foot tall cliffs along the Atlantic ocean. It was seriously amazing. And was quite awesome to talk Kari into breaking the rules to explore a bit. For some reason we also decided to take 100 photos of ourselves while here.

After the Cliffs of Moher we continued onto Doolin and checked into the Churchfield B&B (which had another excellent hostess named Maeve). Then, we spent the evening hanging out in the Doolin pubs where we had dinner and tried to drink like the Irish do... it was hard.

Day 7 - Doolin to Galway

Woke up and had an excellent Irish breakfast from Maeve, shopped, then made our way toward Galway. On the way to Galway we stopped by the Poulnabrone Dolmen, a tomb built some time around 3,500 B.C. It was pretty neat and in the middle of an area called The Burren, which is this huge rocky landscape area that sorta looks like you're on the moon.

After exploring the Burren a bit, we went to Galway where we checked into the Marless house and then explored the city. Galway was a pretty big college town, so it didn't feel quite as Irish as the small towns... but it was definitely a nice place that I could see myself living in. In Galway we basically just walked around, shopped, snacked, and had an amazing dinner at a place called Nimmos.

Day 8 - Galway to Boyne Valley

After breakfast we made our way toward the Boyne Valley. This was one of the longest drives of the trip, so we weren't able to accomplish a whole lot, but we did get to check out a ridiculous tomb called Newgrange. This was another massive tomb built around 3000 B.C. The engineering of Newgrange was pretty crazy... The rocks that made up the tomb were all brought in from 50-100km away (even the big ones), and was designed in a way that the interior tomb is flooded with light every year on the winter solstice... There are plenty more details that I won't bore you with.

After newgrange we checked into a fancy little B&B called Athlumney Manor, got some Italian food, then had our last pint of the trip at a local pub.

Day 9
Woke up, drove to the airport, sampled a couple kinds of Jameson, and began the long flight home.

All-in-all the trip was amazing. I think that my favorite parts were driving, the cliffs of moher, the Irish countryside, the whole pub experience, and of course being able to do all of that with my amazing wife, Kari. I'd definitely go back... but I'm packing Mountain Dew next time. The rest of my photos from the trip are here.