What a week! I had my first visitor in town for a few days. Julie arrived as I finished work last Wednesday. We had fish and chips for dinner and poor, tired Julie managed to keep from falling asleep as we ate. I had to work on Thursday, so she was on her own to explore the city centre a little bit. I called her at 2 and she was having a nice pub lunch. I was jealous. We met at my place after I left work and headed to the Leeson Lounge to meet up with our ‘Quiz Night’ team. We had a blast at the quiz, even though we didn’t come close to winning. At 11 or so, the quiz ended and we went home to get a good night’s sleep before our tour of Dublin on Friday.
Up to Steven’s Green on the LUAS, we rounded the corner of the park on foot and caught the Hop On Hop Off city tour bus as the rain fell. We decided to tour Kilmainham Gaol (jail) first, and we both enjoyed the tour very much. Back on the bus, next we were off to the Jameson Distillery. We had paninis at a little café across from the distillery and then wandered around the gift shop while we waited for the tour to start. The tour, again, was very informative, and we even got to taste the whiskey at the end. Finally, although we’d hoped to squeeze a few more tours in, we finished our day with a walk to Guinness for the self-guided tour through the Storehouse. And of course, we enjoyed a nice pint from the Gravity Bar at the top of the 8-story building as we admired the great views of the city.
We had a lovely bangers and mash dinner at the Quays restaurant, then met up with some friends in Temple Bar. We had a great evening of people watching, live music and good craic. Our pub tour landed us in several interesting places, including the Clarence, which is the hotel owned by Bono and the Edge from U2, a Russian bar called Pravda just on the north side of the river Liffey by the Ha’Penny Bridge and the Porterhouse, a 4-story pub which had a lively blues guitarist and singer performing. After getting some great video footage of some goof ball dancing to the music, we got in a taxi and headed home. On the way there, we encountered a road block where the Garda (cops) were stopping cars to make sure everyone was buckled in. It was scary, because the taxi driver was saying “hurry up and put your seat belts on!” so we struggled to find our seat belts and get them locked before it was our turn. We barely made it in time for the flashlights to find our buckled belts.
The next morning, we picked up our rental car and headed off to the west coast, making MANY stops in the Burren to take pictures of beautiful lakes, ruined castles and abbeys. We got a little lost a few times, but found our way with the help of the Burren Centre, where a nice lady told us exactly how to get to all the places we had missed so far, including the megalithic tombs and the Aillwee Cave. Our final stop was the Cliffs of Moher, which amazed us and nearly froze us to death. We left the Cliffs and made our way toward Galway, nearly running out of gas on the way. We stopped at I think three closed gas stations and even tried unsuccessfully to steal some at one very panicked moment. We pulled in to a very strange pub with Ireland’s strangest clientele and found out the nearest gas station was almost in Galway, and crossed our fingers we would make it. Much to our relief, we found the station and finally filled up the tank.
We found our way to the hotel in Galway at about ten, and went off in search of dinner. We found a Papa John’s pizza and brought it back to the hotel to eat it. Not very Irish, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
The next morning, we had our breakfast at the hotel, then tried to find the sights in Galway. We had no luck with the search and got on the road to Clifden in Connemara, where we would take a beautiful drive on the ‘Sky Road.’ The driving was quite precarious but the views were worth it. We even saw several sheep walking on the road, which both of us found extremely funny. We ended our tour of the Connemara region at the Kylemore Abbey, which is sitting at the bottom of a beautiful hill on a lake. It was gorgeous – fairy tale stuff. Just a bit up the hill, we saw a Gothic church that looked like a small cathedral. We got some sandwiches and started back toward Dublin. We had a long ride home, which seemed even longer since we were both exhausted from all we’d seen and done over the past few days. Fish and chips (again!) for dinner and then off to bed. I got Julie to the airport on time this morning and got to work on time, myself. What a great long weekend!
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