Ireland is a great country. I've loved it ever since I spent a semester studying in the north while I was in college. I've been to the Republic of Ireland (the south) on three separate occasions, the most recent just last week, so while I'm more familiar with Northern Ireland, I'll save that for another time.
Sometimes living abroad can get lonely especially when you don't have that many friends in your new city and you are too busy wasting your life away with a soul-sucking job to make any, and when that's the case, you can imagine how exciting it is when one of your closest friends moves not only to the same continent as you, but the country right next door! So when one of my best friends from high school, Jackie, decided to move back to Dublin to work again, I booked flights to visit her right away.
She is an actuary, which means she does lots of math for businesses and gets paid a bunch of money (probably because nobody else wants to do math for a living), and she had spent a year or two working in Dublin and then London a few years ago. She clearly loved Ireland as much as I did, because she and her boyfriend (also an actuary) decided to move back. There was a small window of time between her last actuarial exam and her starting work, so I made plans to come over that weekend, although that did unfortunately mean leaving Lewis at home since he had his own exams to take. On the other hand, having not visited home in 8 months, I was in dire need of friend time.
Day 1
Dublin
I've been to Dublin twice before, so I was already somewhat familiar with the city. I paid a little more to get my flights out of Inverness (they would have been over 50 pounds cheaper from Edinburgh but I seriously did not have the patience for the three hour train ride) and landed in Dublin after just one terrifying hour on my first Flybe flight. I had never flown on a Flybe plane before and may never have done so if I had known just how tiny they are. I also have never been on a propeller plane and nearly had a heart attack when we began our descent and the plane started halting as the propellers slowed down. However, they did offer a free drink service and snacks which is basically unheard of on short flights these days, so maybe I will consider them again in the future.
I caught both my buses to get to Jackie's residential area, found her near the stop, and we went to her house. It's three stories and has a little back patio area- a lot of space for living in a capital city! After dropping my things, we headed into town. Our first stop was the Jameson distillery.
It was open until 6, and we arrived at 4 only to find out they had already been booked full for tours for the rest of the day. On a Thursday! Jackie has done the tour before though and says that they don't actually distill the whiskey there anyway, plus since I live in Scotland I can do a real distillery tour anytime, so it wasn't the biggest letdown. They had their bar downstairs at any rate, so we had some Jameson cocktails.
We still had time to see one of the cathedrals before its closing time of 7, so we headed to Christ Church. We were not, however, having the best of luck and were told when we tried to enter at 5:20 that they were closing for the day. Apparently there was some sort of inconveniently timed choir practice on.
At this point, the right decision seemed to be giving up and hitting the pubs. We went to the Lord Edward followed by the Brazen Head, the oldest pub in Dublin. That one was cute with a little outdoor courtyard.
The Lord Edward
Jackie's boyfriend Derek came to meet us after work and they really nicely treated me to dinner at an awesome tapas place called The Port House Pintxo. This was my first experience with tapas, and we ordered about three separate times and got maybe 15 dishes overall to share plus a pitcher of sangria. There were sauteed mushrooms in egg yolk, salted grilled asparagus with garlic mayo, and fried cheese cubes in honey to name a few of my favorites. The food was great and even the bathrooms were worth a trip to see!
Dublin- Bonus Trips
Since I had already done some of the big tourist spots in the past but don't plan to write a separate entry about them, I will quickly include them here. My other two trips were both in 2010. The first was a full day out around the city for St. Patrick's Day.
Dublin is the place to be on St. Paddy's! A bunch of us international students took two buses down early in the morning and were drinking from 7 AM until the time we caught the bus back up north at 1 AM. We luckily had really nice weather that day. The city is packed, there is a parade, and you may struggle to move in the more popular bars but the atmosphere is worth it. We had such a large group that we were constantly losing and gaining people throughout the day as we all split up and reunited at random pubs. What a fun day.
My other trip was later that winter which is when I did most of my actual sightseeing. First and foremost, there is, of course, the Guinness Factory. It's seven floors full of props and antiques and things to look at. I was shocked to find out that Jackie doesn't actually like it since the building you see isn't actually the one where they make the beer, but I'm a sucker for touristy attractions and flashy exhibits so I really enjoyed it.
The first floor has all the machinery and ingredients used to make the beer. There was a huge sandbox of barley, glass cases of hops, and even a waterfall! (To represent water, of course.)
There is a Guinness Taste Experience with small samples, a floor full of old advertising campaigns, and another with transportation methods. There's a lot to see.
The seventh floor, the top, is the Galaxy Bar. It's a gorgeous circular bar with glass walls overlooking the whole city. You get a free pint of Guinness at the bar in the middle and can enjoy it on the cushioned benches and seats next to the windows enjoying the views. (Sorry, I didn't take many photos up there- my camera was dying.)
Another very popular spot is Temple Bar. A little confusingly, the whole cultural area is called Temple Bar with many busy nightlife spots, but then there is also the actual Temple Bar, which is a cool but very crowded pub.
The Dublin Zoo, while I wouldn't say has the best animal habitats, does have some great animals such as sea lions, snow leopards, and lots of monkeys, to name a few.
These poor elephants are probably wondering why they didn't get sent to a zoo near the equator.
Finally, I've been to the National War Museum, which is actually located in the military barracks that were used by the Irish Army. The highlight for me was a dark room with life-size replicas of the massive Celtic crosses found around Ireland. They were all lit up and some were gigantic- the tallest were something like 23 feet. Unfortunately you weren't able to take pictures, but it was awesome. There is also a lot of interesting history in the museum about the Easter Rising and subsequent war for independence from Britain.
Outside the museum with a poster of the Irish declaration of freedom.
So now that I feel satisfied with my coverage of Dublin, I'll get back to the trip at hand.
Day 2
Galway
On day 2, we packed up and Derek drove us three hours west to Galway. This has been at the top of my list to visit in Ireland for ages now and I was so excited to go see it. I had visions in my head of dancing in some old wooden pub to Galway Girl, which I am very sad to say did not happen. (Not only that, but I came home to find out that Lewis actually had requested and danced to Galway Girl at a pub in Aberdeen and was living out my dream while I was away.)
Galway was so cute and full of culture. We were staying at the Jurys Inn using my staff rate for a 30 pound stay, and that was at the very bottom of Quay Street right next to everything.
Just across the street from the hotel was the Spanish Arch, which was hardly worth being pointed out on all the maps! It was built in 1584, so I suppose it's historical, but it really is just a stone archway.
The museum is next to that, and it's small but free. They had some history of Galway, a photo exhibit of 100 residents from the ages of 1-100 for their centennial, artifacts, and a sea life exhibit. I was slightly disappointed to find out that the "Galway hooker" on display was just an old fishing boat. It only took about 20 minutes to walk around the museum.
We headed through the Latin Quarter afterwards, and this has the atmosphere I love about Ireland. From Quay Street, it just continues down long pedestrian road full of old pubs, restaurants, Irish banners and flags, gift shops, and people on the streets playing Irish music.
There's also an old medieval church called St. Nicholas with stone pillars and arches.
We wandered all the way down until we came to a park called Eyre Square, crossed that, and went a little further down another street where we came across a place called the Jungle Cafe with a long outdoor seating area full of palm plants, bright colors, a paned ceiling, and cushioned wooden furniture. I loved the vibe of it so we got coffees (with smiley foam faces) and enjoyed that for a little bit.
We walked back towards Quay Street afterwards because there were two pubs that had traditional music on at 5:30 and 6. The first one was very crowded, so we decided to head to the other one just across the street, Tig Coili. I had a Guinness and we waited awhile longer than 6 before the music started.
Our dinner reservations were at 7, so we left the pub and stopped at a bookstore Jackie had wanted to see, then we went to our adorable little restaurant, Ard Bia at Nimmos.
It was really nice (although kind of pricey). We got a little nook room all to ourselves, there was bread with this awesome seaweed & herb butter they gave us to start, and I had an Irish sour ale and a wild mushroom boxty (like a potato pancake) for dinner.
After getting changed back at the hotel, we went just across the bridge to a beer bar called Salthouse. It was totally packed, but they had a decent sized menu of beer, and we tried a couple before grabbing a taxi down towards Salthill (the beach area). We had met a guy from Cork at the cafe earlier who had recommended this pub O'Connor's as his absolute favorite in Ireland, so I thought it was worth seeing!
The pub was fairly large with knickknacks all over the walls, couches, fireplaces, and a group playing live acoustic covers. When I say that there is live music in Irish pubs, by the way, it's not like a band on a stage. It's literally a group of people just sitting in a corner of the pub in a little circle playing their instruments and sometimes singing. The atmosphere was really good, and we stood quite awhile until a table near us had been vacated, and we hung out probably until about 1 AM before getting a cab back again.
Day 3
Galway, Dunguaire Castle, & the Cliffs of Moher
After having breakfast at the hotel and running back down Quay Street to pick up some things I had wanted to buy the day before, we got back in the car and drove over to the Galway cathedral, St. Nicholas (not to be confused with the church of the same name we had visited the day before).
It was really pretty! I loved all the stone and arches and the mosaic work.
We started making our way down towards the Cliffs of Moher after that, about an hour's drive, but we stopped halfway at Dunguaire Castle for a little break.
It was small, being that it was a residential tower house rather than a military fortification, but very "castle-y" as Jackie kept saying. You could easily picture being there in the 1500s. There were only four stories- the ground floor with gift shop, first floor with banquet room, second floor with dining area, and top floor which was the cutest cozy attic room. That was refurnished in the 50s so looks more modern than the lower floors.
I also broke my vow not to spend any more money while at the gift shop on the way out. Irish souvenir shops kill me. I honestly once spent over 100 pounds at a souvenir shop in Belfast- so much that they gave me a free CD. I need to just avoid them altogether. But look, it's a fairy jar!
We made it to the Cliffs of Moher not long after that. Of course, this was the only grey, cold, and rainy day that we had on the trip. The cliffs are very scenic with the peaks all staggered off into the distance.
We headed up the north side first past the small castle.
There were a few rocks out in the water that were totally full of puffins! It was almost impossible to see them from as far away as we were, but with the zoom on my camera we could see them moving around and even their little faces.
The cliffs themselves were cool too. I had every intention of getting near the edge for a photo, but to be honest, every time I got within four feet of the massive drop to the water my brain went "nope." This was the closest I got comfortable. It probably didn't help that everything was slippery and wet from rain.
We went up to the first peak of the south side as well before calling it quits, but we'd spent about an hour or two there overall and I had really enjoyed myself even despite the weather.
The drive back to Dublin was a long three hours, and we were pretty beat, only venturing out for dinner in the Rathmines near Jackie's for some Middle Eastern at a place called Little Jerusalem.
It was a very nice few days that went by too quickly! Ireland is fantastic and full of fun and friendly people and good times. Also a massive thanks to Jackie and Derek for this most recent trip. At least now I have some next door neighbors to visit! Not that anyone should need an excuse.
