Ireland Day 8: Dublin

Today was one of my favorite days of the trip.  We woke up and went straight to the Old Jameson Distillery for a tour and whiskey tasting.  As you may have guessed, I had been look forward to this day since the trip was planned! 

Despite my high expectations, I was not disappointed.  I opened the front door and walked into heaven - a bar stocked with nothing but Jameson.  I'm never going back to America.

I loved the tour here, even though we couldn't see where they made the whiskey.  It was very educational, and our tour guide was so knowledgeable and passionate about whiskey, and the whiskey-making process, and he had a great personality.  After the tour, we got to do a whiskey tasting, comparing Scotch, American whiskey, and Irish whiskey (Jameson, of course).  The Irish whiskey was the best!  We even got diplomas, to prove we are now certified whiskey tasters.  We also got a free drink with Jameson in it - I tried cranberry and Jameson for the first time and, surprisingly, loved it!

After we were done, we got some free time to explore Dublin.  We decided to walk from the Old Jameson Distillery instead of take the van, so we could get out and see the city.  It was a bank holiday, so a lot of things weren't open.  We walked to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, but the exhibit wasn't open.  The campus was beautiful though.

The Dublin Marathon was also being run that day.  It was pretty cool seeing everyone run through the streets of Dublin, and cheering them on.

It was a pretty rainy afternoon, but we put on our raincoats and continued walking the city.  We are from Seattle after all - a little rain doesn't ruin our day.  We went in search of Christ Church Cathedral, one of the oldest cathedrals in Dublin.  It is believed that the cathedral was founded sometime shortly after 1028. It's stunning, and too large to fit in one good shot, especially while trying to protect a camera from rain, but here is my rainy attempt:

During our search for Christ Church Cathedral, we came across St. Audoen's Church, which was also pretty amazing.  It is another quite old church in Dublin; it was built between 1181 and 1212.

We got hungry for lunch, and decided to check out the chipper that our driver, Paddy, had recommended.  Leo Burdock has been serving fish and chips to Dubliners since 1916.  It's a tiny little chipper, with barely room inside for two people to place their order.  They throw handfuls of french fries onto a sheet of paper, plop fish down on top, cover everything with salt, pepper, and vinegar, wrap it all up in paper, and put it into a paperbag.  There isn't anywhere to sit inside, so you have to stand outside and eat.  The only problem was that it started absolutely pouring on us.  We hunched down in the doorway of the pub next door and ate one of the best lunches I ever had.  (It is the little doorway to the right in the picture below - just enough space to stand and keep our fish and chips dry!)  If you look closely, you can see Joe in there ordering our fish and chips.

After we got done eating, we ducked into the pub next door, named the Lord Edward, to have a pint and wait out the rain.  It was such a cozy little place.  Here's a picture of where we sat to relax and wait out the rain.

The rain let up a little, so we decided to head back to the hotel to get ready for the night's festivities.  We came across Occupy Dublin on our way:

Today also happened to be Halloween, which the Irish take very seriously.  I think it is even more popular there than it is here.  We honored the occasion by going on a haunted tour of Dublin.  We snuck around outside Christ Church Cathedral, and ended up inside the gates of St. Audeon's, where we heard many ghost stories.  I think I even caught an orb on film, where the ghost of the Green Lady lives!  She is believed to be the ghost of Darkey Kelly, who was executed for the murder of her unborn child.

We finished the night with a pint in, fittingly, a bar named Darkey Kelly's.

Good night Dublin!  Have to get some sleep tonight - tomorrow is our last full day in the city.  Sad!

Ireland Day 7: Straffan to Dublin, via Tullamore

Woke up in the castle this morning, and walked the grounds.  Beautiful morning.  After breakfast, we piled into the van and headed out for an exciting day - Tullamore Dew in the morning and the Guinness Brewery in the afternoon!  Our first stop was the town of Tullamore, located in County Offaly.  We got there a little bit early, so we walked around the small town for about half an hour.  It was a Sunday morning, and the town was quiet except for people walking to church, and the sound of church bells ringing.  It was nice.

We headed to the Tullamore Dew distillery.  I have a soft spot in my heart for Tullamore Dew - I used to drink it at the VFW in Carthage, NY when we lived there with a guy named Marty.  It was a really cool old distillery, and was founded in 1829. 

After the distillery, it was time to head to the holy grail - the Guinness Brewery.  I hate to say it but I was kind of disappointed when we got there.  Because of the laws in Ireland, you cannot tour the place where they actually make the beer.  This made me sad, because one of my favorite things about visiting breweries is the delicious smell of the malt and the barley.  Plus it was amazingly crowded.  Aside from that, it was pretty cool.  Our first order of business when we got there was to head straight away to the cafeteria to have some of what I heard was the best Guinness stew in the world.  And it was!

Next we walked around the brewery on a self-guided tour.  Lots of interesting stuff. A couple of my favorite parts were the advertising section and the locate your ancestors section.  The advertising section had all the different advertisements Guinness has created over the years, including some really cool old commercials.

In the "locate your ancestors" section, there was a computer where you could look up your family name and see if any of them worked for the Guinness Brewery in Dublin.  I did find a "Peter Penrose" who worked there - only one Penrose.  I'm now on a mission on Ancestry.com to figure out if he was a relative of mine.  Oh how I hope he was!

I also found this quote painted on a wall in that section.  I fell in love with it instantly - I think it sums up how I feel about Ireland.

Next we headed up to the Gravity Bar, located at the top of the brewery with floor to ceiling windows, hoping to get our free pint.  But it was not to be - the Gravity Bar was packed with people - you could barely move in there.  We elbowed our way up to the windows and got our first real glimpse of Dublin.  Wow!  It was way bigger than I thought it was!  You could look out at the old Guinness Brewery, which was huge.  Past that was the city.

We moved downstairs to another bar and got our free pints of Guinness, and found a few moments of relative quiet in a table in the corner by a window with a nice view.

It had been a pretty long day so far, and after the brewery, we were definitely ready to head to our hotel and have some dinner.  We arrived at the Arlington Hotel, located by the O'Connell Bridge and the River Liffey, right in the heart of Dublin.  We ate dinner a pizza place beside the hotel.

We walked to a pub called the Brazen Head - Ireland's oldest pub, dating back to 1198.  It was a really neat pub, with several different rooms, and an Irish band playing, as well as seats outside.

Next we headed across the street to O'Sheas Merchant, a pub recommended by our driver, Paddy.  A friend of his from Kerry owns the bar, and there is a painting of his uncle on the outside of the bar.  They have really good traditional Irish music every night.  On this night, when the band took a break, they let Donal perform.  It was so cool seeing Donal perform in a real Irish pub in Dublin!  He even sang Fields of Athenry (one of my favorites)!

We walked back to the hotel.  On our way back, we went to McDonald's and had an Irish double cheeseburger (my favorite late night snack).  It was similar to, but not exactly the same as, an American double cheeze.  Still delicious!!  There was a club beneath our room, and the windows opened onto the alley where all the music and people were.  It was very loud, but we were really tired, so it didn't matter.  We drifted off to sleep to the sounds of 80's American music - Guns N' Roses, Cyndi Lauper, Belinda Carlisle, and Bon Jovi.  It was awesome.

Ireland Day 6: Derry to Straffan, via Ulster Folk Park and Newgrange

We woke up early this morning because I wanted to walk the Walls of Derry, and this was our last day here.  Derry is the last walled in city in Ireland - the city is entirely surround by a stone wall that was built during the period 1613-1619.  Derry was the location where Bloody Sunday occurred.  Derry is officially named Londonderry, but you have to be care what you call it depending on who you are talking to.  The nationalists (mostly Catholics) call it Derry.  Neighborhoods in the city are still divided by religion - there are Catholic streets and Protestant streets - there is even a place where the Catholic part and Protestant part is divided by a huge, tall wall with barbed wire on the top.  Many disputes and civil rights marches took place in Derry during the Troubles.  The Catholics were discriminated against, politically and economically.  Like in Belfast, you can see all of this by driving around the city.  It is amazing how recent all of this history is here, and how strongly people still feel.  (In case you can't read it, the writing on the red hand below says "IRA.")

In any event, we walked the Walls around Derry in the morning.  It wasn't super early - probably around 8:00 or 8:30, but no one was out yet and we practically had the place to ourselves.  As we started walking the wall, I heard someone whistling and saw a guy working in the street, carrying boxes into a restaurant or shop or something.  It was such a happy, cheery sound.  I'll never forget it.  I think people are just happier there.

The Walls are really cool - there are several cannons pointing out of the walls and the views back into the city were nice.

 

While walking on the Walls we came across St. Columb's Cathedral  - an absolutely beautiful church built between 1628 and 1633.  

 

 

 Very beautiful - definitely worth getting up early to walk the Walls.

We left Derry and headed toward Ulster American Folk Park, located in Castletown, just outside Omagh, in County Tyrone.  Ulster American Folk Park is a museum about the Irish immigrating to America in the 18th and 19th Centuries.  It was pretty interesting.  There is a bunch of stuff inside, and outside there are many original buildings, such as jails, printing presses, school houses, and cottages.  Employees are dressed up in historically accurate clothing and teach you about life in that time period when you go to the different buildings, including having samples of food that would have been eaten.  I didn't take a lot of pictures because it was pouring rain when we were there.  I did take this one of a couple of black and white horses that I really like though:

We left Ulster American Folk Park and headed to Newgrange.  Newgrange is pretty crazy.  They don't really know a lot about it for sure.  It is a prehistoric monument located in County Meath.  They think it was built around 3200 BC. They think it may have been used as a burial because they have found burned human bone in there.  It is a huge mound of earth and stone with a very narrow passageway that leads back into a a cross-shaped area with three small chambers that form the shape of a cross.  Above the door is a slot that allows sunlight to reach back into the chamber only during the Winter Solstice (around December 21). Pretty crazy!  No daylight reaches into the tomb at any other time.  They re-create this with artificial light while you are in there.  Each year they have a lottery to see who is going to get to be in there during Winter Solstice to see the phenomenon.  Also, there are several Neolithic carvings in the rock, inside and out.  You are not allowed to take pictures inside, but here are some pictures of the outside.  You can see some of the carvings and the slot above the door that lets the light in.  There are several other mounds and stone structures around the main structure - they don't know what they were used for.

We left Newgrange and headed to Barberstown Castle in Straffan, County Kildare, where we were going to stay the night.  Yep - we're staying the night in a castle!!! Barberstown Castle was built in 1288.  It was once owned by Eric Clapton!  I was a little bit disappointed when we got there because there was only one room actually in the castle, and we didn't get to stay in it.  The rest of the hotel is actually built onto the castle.  We went into the castle while we were there though and it was really cool - dark stone walls, all cold and gloomy like you expect a castle to look like.  It was a pretty fancy place.

This is the view from our bedroom window.

It looked just like the gardens I imagine all the people in my favorite books to walk in with their loves - like Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky, or Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.

Tomorrow, it's off to Dublin!!

Ireland Day 5: Inishowen Peninsula and Malin Head

Today we woke up in Derry.  I was quite disappointed when I got to the breakfast bar and there wasn't any gravy boat full of Bushmills.  I settled for a cup of coffee and some juice.  The rest of the breakfast was quite delicious though, containing the standard Irish breakfast stuff - eggs, soda bread, mushrooms, baked beans, roasted tomatoes, sausages, rashers, pastries, cold cheese, ham, fresh-squeezed apple and orange juices, fruit, yogurt, and more.  I am really loving the baked beans with the sausages.

After breakfast we left Derry (and Northern Ireland) and drove up the Inishowen Peninsula, en route to Malin Head.  The Inishowen Peninsula is in County Donegal, and is the largest peninsula in Ireland.  It is pretty rural and we passed several thatched roof cottages that people still live in.

 Malin Head is the northernmost point in Ireland, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean.  Malin Head was chilly and extremely windy.  It was hard even to stand up when some of the gusts hit.  The coastline is beautiful, and almost reminds me of parts of the Oregon coast, or the coast in Northern California.

 After we left Malin Head, we stopped at Farren's - the northernmost pub in Ireland.  This place was cool.  There was only one local guy in there.  Donal, our fearless leader, brought his guitar into the pub and played guitar while some of the guys played pool and we all sat around and chatted with our driver, Paddy, and the bartender. 

The bartender was pretty great - he managed to write my name in my Guinness in a half-pint.  That's a lot of letters to fit in a half-pint.  Quite impressive!  Paddy told me that the best Guinness was in Dublin, because Guinness doesn't travel well.  I hadn't been to Dublin yet, but I couldn't imagine a Guinness tasting better than the one I was drinking right then - it was creamy and chocolaty and had my name written on top!

We drove back to Derry, stopping for a bathroom/pint break every half hour or so - whenever we happened to come upon another pub, it was time to stop for a pee and a pint!  When we got back to Derry, we had some time before dinner, so we wandered around and ended up in a pub called "Bound for Boston."  We talked to some local guy forever - he had just turned 30.  We played songs on the jukebox and talked about Americans, homeless people, music, surfing, motorcycles, healthcare, and just about anything else we could think of.  Both that guy and the bartender thought that the best Guinness could be found in whatever pub people drink it a lot at, because the lines and taps are fresh. The local guy we talked to hates U2 and the Dropkick Murphys, and just wanted us to play Placebo on the jukebox.

We eventually headed back to the hotel for dinner, and turned in early.  I really wanted to get up early the next morning - we were leaving Derry the next day, and I really wanted to walk the walls of Derry before we left.

Ireland Day 4: Belfast to Derry, via Bushmills and the Giant's Causeway

Day 4 - I woke up feeling a little rough today from last night's adventures at Fibber Magees, but it was worth it.  First stop of the day - the Bushmills Distillery in Bushmills, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.  Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Bushmills.  It smells and tastes too sweet for me. (Short side story - close your eyes for this part mom - I drank a bottle of whiskey with my best friend when I was 15 and I puked for hours and hours.  The plus is that I had absolutely zero interest in drinking after that and didn't drink again at all until college.  The bad part is that still, to this day, if I smell most whiskeys, particularly if they have that sickeningly sweet smell, I gag and almost throw up in my mouth.  Bushmills smells too much like this for me to be able to stomach it.  I prefer Jameson.)  But back to Day 4.

The tour of the Bushmills Distillery was awesome!  In Northern Ireland (unlike in the Republic of Ireland), you can actually go into the distillery where the product is being made.  Despite the hangover, it smelled AWESOME in there!  We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the distillery, but I did take some outside.

Now on to the free whiskey!  At the end of the tour we each got a free whiskey.  You could choose from all the different whiskeys they make there.  I got a hot whiskey (which I had never tried before).  I managed to choke down my free whiskey with no incidents. It was actually really good, and I will definitely be replacing hot chocolate or hot tea as my drink of choice on a chilly winter night, or when I am sick.  Whiskey was originally called "uisce beatha", meaning "the water of life," and used for medicinal purposes by the monks.  Who am I to argue with the monks?  Next time I am sick, hot whiskey it is!

After finishing our free Bushmills, we piled into the van and headed to the Giant's Causeway.  The Giant's Causeway is located in County Antrim on the northeast coast of Ireland, very close to Bushmills.  It is a World Heritage Site and was named as the fourth greatest natural wonder in the UK.  (Side note:  for those of you who don't know, Northern Ireland is actually part of the UK.  I am not trying to insult anyone's intelligence by including this fact here.  I am including it because I'm not sure it is common knowledge - I did not realize this until we went on this trip - I had some vague knowledge about the whole Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, the Troubles thing, but did not know that Northern Ireland is actually part of the UK.  When we were there, my cell phone said "Belfast, UK" which really surprised me.  Also, their currency is the pound sterling.)

Back to the Giant's Causeway.  I know I am overusing this word, but it was amazing!  It is on the coast of the Irish Sea, and consists of a bunch of columns and stepping stones that are almost all the same size and shape.

The boring explanation for this is that about 50-60 million years ago, there was some volcanic activity in this area.  The better explanation is that an Irish warrior, a giant named Fionn MacCool, built the causeway to get to Scotland, to fight his nemesis Angus, another giant in Scotland.  Fionn fell asleep before he got to Scotland. When he didn't show up, the Scottish giant, who was much larger than Fionn, crossed the bridge looking for him. To protect Fionn, his wife Oonagh laid a blanket over him and he pretended to be their baby son.  When Angus saw the size of the baby, he assumed the father, Fionn, must be ginormous. Angus fled home in terror, ripping up the Causeway so that Fionn couldn't follow him.

Need some proof that the second story is the true one?  Here is a picture of Fionn's boot:

 Volcano my arse!  It was built by giants.

We left the Giant's Causeway and headed toward our final destination of the day - Derry (aka Londonderry - be careful which one you call it, depending on who you are talking to - loyalists, mostly Protestants, call it Londonderry - nationalists, mostly Catholics, call it Derry).  On our way there, we drove past the Dunluce Castle, also located in County Antrim.  The castle was built in the 13th Century on cliffs overlooking the sea.  Part of it fell into the sea - the story is that the owners knew that it was going to crumble into the sea, and they moved their servants' quarters into that part of the castle.  When that part collapsed into the sea, supposedly only one young kitchen boy survived.

We arrived at the Tower Hotel in Derry and took a much-needed nap.  We ate dinner at the hotel - I had the traditional roast beef dinner, which came with champ and brown gravy and Yorkshire pudding.  I'm mentioning this because I never had Yorkshire pudding before - I am leery of any Irish or English food that is called "pudding" because in my experience it usually consists of animal blood and some kind of other gross stuff.  Yorkshire pudding is delicious though - it is a pastry-type bread product (kind of the texture of a croissant) that is cooked under the meat so the drippings of the meat fall into it while it is cooking.  YUM!  I didn't go out this night - I had a half pint in the hotel bar, then went to the room to write postcards and note about our trip so far. 

Derry is the last walled-in city in Ireland, and is located along the bank of the River Foyle.  I'll talk more about Derry on my Day 6 post, because we got up early that morning and walked the walls of the city and saw a bunch of cool stuff.