Subject: Ireland trip report (long) Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 From: Dru Organization: none to speak of To: mcgrawja@unm.edu OK, here is as much as I (Dru) can remember of the Ireland trip. Disclaimer: this isn't an account of Ireland; rather, it's an account of what I remember of our trip there. Also, I use the term "American" to mean "U.S. derived". Thursday morning: stepped off the airplane in Dublin around 8 AM local time. We were herded through a series of small passageways which began to feel like a maze, and came to several counters with smartly dressed men behind them. Each of us in turn showed our passports and answered questions about the nature and length of our visit. They kindly stamped our passports with 30 day tourist visas. We then picked up the keys to the rental car and headed out of the airport toward the Avis lot, and found our green right hand drive Opal Astra on the lot - a nice smallish car with about 14,000 miles on it, and proceeded to drive it the wrong way on the lot. Finally, I admitted defeat and asked a lot attendant how to get the car into reverse (you have to pull up on a disk under the gear shift knob). Having made it out of the parking lot, we set out to find our hotel, braved our first round-about, and headed down the M1 motorway. The left lane is the slow lane, but this makes sense in a mirror image sort of way. We found the hotel without difficulty, but it was way too early to get a room so we set out to find an ATM to get some local currency. After many misses and turn arounds on side streets, we found one and our Superior Federal ATM card worked just fine to secure 100 Irish Punt which everyone just called pounds anyway. Next stop - Aston Quay, downtown Dublin, parked in a 1 hour slot, broke a 20 pound note at a coffee shop, and paid 1 pound for the parking spot. Crossed the river Liffey to the Temple Bar area, which is a pedestrian only area with all sorts of little shops, restaurants and bars. After wandering around a bit and finding a downtown parking deck, we fetched the car from the 1 hour slot and drove to the "car park" as any parking lot is called. A word about driving in downtown Dublin: The lane marks are just mild suggestions and sometimes completely absent, and people will park anywhere or pass you on any side at any time. The motorcycles observed no traffic rules whatsoever. The streets are poorly marked and some change names every block. All this in a right hand drive car for the first time, with a slightly different shift pattern, driving on the left. Take the bus downtown, it's worth the 80p fare one way and unhelpful bus drivers to not have to brave the traffic. So we wander around downtown and duck into a small cafe with two large tables. The food was good, and we meet a Dubliner who advises us to NOT go to Cork, as there is a jazz festival there and half the country is headed there. We learned later from several people that skipping Cork was a Good Thing. The young lady sitting next to us in the cafe is from California attending Trinity College, and offers to lead us to the Book of Kells exhibit at the campus. This was amazing! Here is the inspiration for most of the Celtic art in the country, an illustrated manuscript of the four gospels. The "Long Room" library at the campus is truly amazing to observe; it's lost on me how old it actually is but 400 years seems about right. Next we head back to the hotel to check in, park the car, and take the bus downtown. Dublin is quite an international city. We asked a man at the bus stop about bus routes, and his reply was "I don't know, I'm French!" After more wandering around and eating supper at the distinctly American feeling "Bad Ass Cafe", we found a cyber-cafe and sent an email home (pretty much without seeing what I was typing because of the delay on the international Internet lines), and headed back to the hotel to call it a day. Friday morning: The "Full Irish" breakfast was included in our hotel and B&B lodging each day. It basically is eggs, soft spicy sausage, lean salty bacon, and toast (white and course dense unsweet wheat bread), with the usual selection of butter, jams, juices, coffee and tea. It was excellent each day everywhere we stayed, and we certainly didn't lose any weight this trip. After buying a calling card which can be used in any card phone in the country (and they are all over the place), Lori called a bed and breakfast in Doolin on the west coast, and we set out driving that way. The trip across the countryside was beautiful; we stopped several times for photos. Around lunch we bought a loaf of brown bread and some dried fruit and bottled water, which served us for some lunches and snacks for the rest of the trip. We arrived at the B&B around 3:00 PM, and set out to see the local sights which include the Cliffs of Moher which are really quite spectacular. Around dark we head to downtown Doolin (which consists of several small shops, a pricey restaurant, and three pubs) to try out a pub. After sitting down at a long community style table and figuring out that orders are placed at the bar instead of through a wait person, Lori asks the barkeep for a menu and a couple of pints of Guinness. This is the quickest way to be accepted in the pubs - the locals all get quiet and stare at you until you go to the bar and ask for a pint, and then like a scene out of a corny western movie they all start chatting again as if you weren't there. We left around 9:00 PM, and as we were walking out the door a guy was getting out a guitar - we just didn't stay late enough. On hindsight, this was a Bad Thing, since that would have been our best chance at hearing some really good local music. Saturday morning: After a wonderful breakfast, we decide to stay in that B&B another night (the Atlantic Sunset House) and head up to Galway for the day, but first headed back to the cliffs for some more photos. The wind Saturday was so strong at the cliffs that water running down from the previous night's rain ran to the edge, and then straight up for maybe 100 feet in a spectacular upside-down waterfall. As we drove along the coast road to Galway, I was amazed at the number of church and castle ruins that remain in Ireland. Most have some intact walls but no roofs, and the ones that are accessible from the road are very fun to poke about. Most of the ruins are on private property out in someone's sheep pasture with a locked gate to keep the tourists out, but still very impressive from the road. Downtown Galway was a madhouse with the traffic and narrow roads typical of midsized towns, and we parked on the 5th level of a very tall and narrow car park. Galway was like a large Eureka Springs, geared at the tourist crowds and less Irish feeling than I would have liked. After some wandering around, stopping in an arcade with internet-connected computers for a quick email, and a healthy portion of fish and chips at a fish house, we headed back toward Doolin for even more amazing Irish country road scenery and some hills that resemble a moonscape called the Burren. That evening we tried a different pub, which had HUGE plates of stuffed lamb or stuff chicken and ham with vegetables and chips (fries), heaping deliciousness for 5 pounds. At first we were determined to wait around for the music to start, but as the pub became more crowded we noticed more Boston accents than Irish. It was easy to see how Americans get their image as loud, inconsiderate, overweight, self-centered, etc. I was not proud to be an American at that point, and we headed back to the B&B. Sunday morning: Our gracious B&B hostess phoned ahead for a spot in Killarny for the Mystical Rose B&B, and we set out south. More beautiful countryside with the sheep, pasture, and rock walls that seem to go on forever. Just after noon, we parked in Killarny and walked downtown for some great soup at an upstairs bistro. We drove most of the rest of the day, stopping many times in the "Ring of Kerry" for photos. The sheep just wandered the roads and mountains, identified I think by colored paint spots. Seeing as how the map shows a through road, we drive through the Gap of Dunloe which turns out to be a mistake. The road is so narrow that if two cars meet, one has to pull completely off to let the other pass. The gap is a popular walking road, and we felt the stares of many walkers (not many Americans, it seems - sigh) as they had to step off the road to let the car pass. Our only solace is the knowledge that we weren't the only ones fooled by the lines on the map. We do make it through, and back to Killarny to park the car at the B&B and walk downtown for some shop hopping and a pint. We notice that in the pub matches are only 10 pence a box, with colorful Irish sayings translated to English and a little picture of somewhere in Ireland, and so we get about 10 to distribute to coworkers upon our return to the States. After the pint we feel much better and call it a night. Monday morning: After yet another breakfast that couldn't be beat, we arranged with a local tour operator for a ride out to one side of the Gap of Dunloe, a boat from the other side of the gap down a 14 mile waterway to Ross Castle, and finally a ride back to the B&B. After arriving at the gap, we rented a couple of ponies from an outfit at the base of the gap. Lori had been talking about ponies since the plane landed, and I had agreed to go riding. After a very short time on the pony, it was clear that this was for me a Bad Thing since I can't ride worth a flip and the pony guys were herding us along at a good trot, staying behind us with a small cart carrying four London residents pulled by another pony. About one fifth of the way through, I was ready to walk and let the pony guys take care of their own, but a wonderful London resident who was luckily another horse nut offered to switch places with me and allowed me to rest my already bruised butt on the cart for the rest of the journey. I'm still a little bit sore from that, and here it is Thursday. We get back to Killarny about 3:30 PM, and set out for our next stop, Cashel. More majestic scenery, rainbows every 20 minutes, green pasture, etc. Lori made the comment "Sometimes you want to just slap this place around a little - I wish it would knock off the cliche rainbows." In Cashel, we take the advice of the B&B hostess and hit a small downtown pub / restaurant. This place was pretty American feeling, but we had some good quiche (with chips and vinegar and a pint) there anyway. Not feeling satisfied that we had seen enough of the real Irish culture this day, we decide to hit a pub on a small side street. This was the real deal, with the silence on entry and the chatting resuming after we ordered a pint. The barkeep was experienced, and had cleverly crafted a shamrock outline in the head of our Guinness as he poured it. The locals were drunk, since Monday had been a day off for them (October day - bank holiday and general excuse to party), and had already started in some off-key choruses of "Danny Boy" and some other traditional Irish pub tunes, which were a delight to listen to after realizing that these people were much too drunk to beat us up. Tuesday morning: This is our travel day; the goal is to make it to Dublin sometime this evening and see as much as possible along the way. We pretty much killed the morning at the Rock of Cashel, a complex of churches and castles built from the 12th to the 14th centuries. Most of the walls were intact, and the roofs of some of the buildings had been restored. You can read more about it on the Internet: http://www.dynasty.net/users/jmoats/castles/rcashel.html is a nice page. The afternoon was spent driving to Dublin via Waterford and the southeast coast, with more mountains, sheep, walls, green, etc. We had a bit of a scare in Ferns; there is a castle there that I wanted to see, and when we got out of the car Lori thought I had the key and I thought she did - it was locked on the center console. After about 5 minutes of trying to pry the window down or the sunroof up, I gave up and asked in a local post office if there was a locksmith in town. The lady said "I'll call Aiden, he's good at that sort of crack". About 3 minutes later, Aiden had the door unlocked with a think coat hanger type wire, and we gave him the price of a pint and got back on the road. Although we tried to miss downtown Dublin (the hotel is on the north end and we were coming from the south), we completely failed and had to go through the city center after dark. The compass came in handy again, guiding us to the right general area of the city, and with some creative uses of round-abouts we managed to get back to the hotel. In Dublin we hopped a bus downtown again to the Bad Ass Cafe, had a pint of Murphy's and some wonderful soup, touched the hotel that Bono was rumored to be staying in, stopped in the cyber cafe for one last email check, and headed back to the hotel. Wednesday morning: After another wonderful breakfast, we mailed about 8 postcards to various family and friends in the States and headed for the rental return lot. They ignored that I had scraped the left front hubcap on a curb; we suspect most cars come back with some sort of major damage given the size of the roads and the speeds on which they are driven. Airport security, 8 hour flight to Atlanta, US customs, 4 hour layover, 30 minutes waiting to take off, 1 hour flight back to Little Rock. And that's not the half of it.