Our Ireland trip
I had in mind to write this absolutely fabulous post about our trip to Ireland, but the problems with my computer made me loose two whole days, so now you have to be satiesfied with a post written in a hurry.
We started with a seightseeing tour in Dublin - Irelands capital, with a local guide. She told us a lot of local things that we wouldn’t have known otherwise. Some personal views of things too, which always is nice.
Dublins castle built in the georgian time era were quite interesting with historical portraits and absolutely fantastic furniture. Then we thought we were going to Guinness museum to learn about and taste the famous dark brew, but hah where we cheated on that one… They’ve taken that out of the schedule for some reason. Bummer. But we were compensated in the evening, which we spent with the other travellers with a dinner and a fabulous Irish cabaré. The Irish dance is truly amazing. How on earth do they do it, their legs is working fast in some kind of mix of ballet, folk dance and stepping. There also performed a very fun wellknown Irish comedian, which name we’ve forgot. He use to travel to the U.S. too with his act. He gave us a lot of laughs. He defenitely had that extra twinkle in his eyes, having fun himself.
Next day we left Dublin to get out in the countryside. We made a stop close to Cashel to taste homebaked scones and drinking tea at a farm, where the owner demonstrated driving the heard of sheep with his sheep dogs. Just outside Cork we visited Blarney Castle where we got the oppertunity to achieve the gift of eloquent by kissing the well known stone in the area but we didn’t kissed it. We thought that we’re already have that gift. Maybe. *lol*. After dinner we visited one of Killarneys well known pubs that is characterized of music and singing. We love how happy the irish folks are when they’re singing.
The third day we first took a ride in horse carts early in the morning. The coachman were a real irish man who looked like he were going to fell asleep all the time. Most likely he came directly from the nightly singing in the pub, because he looked as blurry as the weather…. Then we took a guided tour in the 19th century Muckross House along the beach of Muckross Lake. Then on to one of Irelands most spectacular areas - The Ring of Kerry - with Irelands highest mountain, Macgillycuddy´s Reeks. But we wouldn’t really know, because guess what??! YES, you guessed right! My bad weather curse strucked again… The weather conditions were the worst thinkable, rainy, windy and with such a thick fog that we couldn’t even see that we were high up on the mountain!!! The path was passing through Glenbeigh with palmtrees and beutiful beaches - so they said, we didn’t see anything… Driving towards the offside Waterville and the colorful village Sneem.
The fourth day we were travelling towards Tarbert to take the ferry over the river Shannon. Continued along the coast line of Clare to Cliffs of Mother - the rocks with the height of 700 feet over the atlantic ocean -and the weather were still bad at first. But our experienced and very serviceminded driver took us to our lunch first instead so that hopefully the weather cleared up - and it did, so we could actually see the cliffs! Wooohooo! This evening dinner was the medevial banquet with memorable entertainment in Bunratty Castle.
Comment: We did wear our Medevial outfits at the banquet in the evening! Every one complimented us for our very suitable outfit. It was so fun that we wanted it to last longer, but the time schedule striked again…
The fifth day we continued from Shannon region to Dublin area again. We almost missed out one of the main reason for why we chosen this tour: The National Stud in Kildare - the famous stud with Irish horses in Kildare. They have taken away that from the schedule too! But our so serviceminded driver arranged a visit there anyway and also managed to make the entrance fee lower for us. Now, do you think that the weather were with us there? Nope. Rainy and very cold. Not many horses to see either, which surprised us a lot. Nothing much to take photos of, because the stallions in the paddocks were to far away and The Japanese garden - well, it was rainy and cold and made our hands stiff…
The last evening we spent on our own in Dublin at a pub that showed the soccer game between Sweden and England. Surprisingly enough, the irish folks were cheering every time Sweden did good! Together with us. I saw a whole game from beginning to the end for the very first time in my life! And I have to say that I think Sweden only played good soccer the last 5 minutes or so. They played too defensive, just dragging out the time.
Summarizing our experience of the trip:
- Never go on a bus tour like that if you don’t like to go up real early in the morning, at 05.30… It was such a stressing schedule. We were spending the whole tour trying to stay awake on the bus. We often failed and slept on the bus. Probably snoring too :-)
- Ireland is a beautiful country, but not as green and hilly as we expected it to be. Maybe we were on the wrong places, but this was a tour in the southern Ireland. If it is any Irish men here: Sorry to say it, but Scotland beat Ireland thousands times around.
- The Irish people is very nice fellows, they seems to be more cheerful than the Scottish people, so I guess it’s scored 1-1 between Ireland - Scotland on if you count that fact :-) But they are both very friendly.
- Despite the fact that we were on a bus with a rather high middle age, we must.. uhum… admit that even the 90 year old man with his 88 year old wife were more lively than we were. They were FANTASTIC. I do wish that we will be like that in that age! (Which I doubt).
- The Irish Guiness. Ahhhh. What can we say: it’s truly divine. The Guiness served here in Sweden is not even close to that one. Even the English men said that it were better there than in England. So we drank a lot of Guiness during the tour.
Cheers to the Irish Guiness :-)
NOTE: Have a look at our photos from Ireland, but be aware of the fact that we had difficulties like sitting on the bus all the time and… uhum…the weather conditions… which stopped us from photographing many times during the trip.
