Day 2 in Dublin

I didn't realize how exhausted we were from the previous two days and getting up at 6am to catch a taxi to Dublin. We slept right through the night and when we awoke we already missed breakfast. Mind you at Globetrotter Hostel you would have had to pay €7 for a full breakfast which is €2 more than what you would have to pay at a cafeteria type place. We missed it both days since we didn't want to pay that much and headed out to the grocery store to just pick up food and fruit for €2 instead. Thrifty is the way to go.

First thing we did was head straight to the Natural History Museum since that was what I wanted to visit the day before instead we spent a lot of our time at the Trinity Library. When we arrived to the Museum it was closed it opened for three hours on Sunday from 2-5pm. Took a quick look around the park and saw all the local artists around Dublin setting up along the outer circumference of the park with all styles of art for sale. Remember if you want to see this it only happens during the weekend.

Oscar Wilde.

So we hopped back on the bus to head to the Guinness Storehouse where 3 million pints of Guinness are made per day! We bought our tickets online saving 10% and we got to cue jump, I definitely would recommend buying the tickets in advance.€14.85 online or €16.50 at the door and lining up, totally worth it. There were 7 floors to explore all the way from how you make Guinness,Arthur Guinness's life, how it grew throughout the world, general knowledge,adverts and finally the tasting of Guinness. There was an area where you would learn how to pour a pint of Guinness but we skipped that since Danny and I already know how. :P

Here is us at the top of the Guinness Storehouse 360 degree gravity bar, having our free pint of Guinness.

Hours later we finally made it out of the building through the vast gift shop and back out into the real world. I was super tired and again it was too late to head to the Natural History Museum, we will try again tomorrow. So I made the decision that I needed a nap before heading out again.

I awoke with a hunger and what better place than Temple bar area to grab a bite to eat, I couldn't decide where to eat in the end we went to a buffet for a more varied and economical dinner. A lot of what we have ate since we arrived in Ireland has been fried food so a Thai food buffet seemed like a great idea plus the price was right. €9.95 is pretty good since a burger without drinks is going to cost you about €12 a dish. The place we went to was called PANDA.

From there it was time to grab a drink! There were many places with live Irish music to pick from and we settled on Gogarty's. Got to watch some live Irish music and traditional dancing as well, even though I missed it since I was on the phone with peeps back home.

Back at the hostel we very coincidentally ran into around new found friends Sam from Amnesty. A fine day in Dublin!

Day 1 in Dublin

We arrived very early into Dublin, where I thought that I would get a stamp in my passport. I was wrong there wasn’t any security off the train and we walked right into the Republic of Ireland, it was as easy as that. Walked straight for O’connelly street since it was the high street and it is always best to get to know your bearings from the centre of the city if possible. It was too early to check in so we bought another bus tour ticket where we could hop on and hop off so it served as a tour and a bus to all the sights like the one in Belfast. There was the city sightseeing bus tour in Dublin but we went local and got the green bus.

The green bus came in two forms, the live commentary and a multilingual bus with recorded commentary and headphone sockets to play it in various languages. Although these multilingual buses were according to the timetables half as common as the main buses, we seemed to get one every time early on. Our first bus took us across the river Liffey to Trinity College, the oldest university off mainland Europe which was ordered by Elizabeth I because she was sick of her brightest students being shipped off to colleges in Europe and coming back with ideas about heathen practises and such. The college is really old and has a massive old library room, where the main treasure is the Book of Kells. This is an ancient, annotated and beautifully decorative edition of the gospels; we had heard of it from the film ‘The Secret of Kells’ which we absolutely recommend watching, so it was cool to see in person. It costs 9 Euro to get into the library, but you can get a walking tour with library ticket included for 10 Euro, which we did and learnt all sorts of history about the college, such as how the main on-campus accommodation is the worst student housing in history ever, or the story of the students who had a shoot-out with their teacher after a few drinks one night. Definitely worth 1 Euro. You do still have to queue to enter the library though.

Who stacks their books from largest to smallest?

Leaving Trinity College the weather turned to a massive hailstorm, so we got back on the first green bus and rode it around to Temple Bar. This area used to be old docklands but was regenerated about 20 years ago and is now a hub for music and culture in Dublin. We wandered around for a bit and met a nice guy called Sam that worked for Amnesty.

Following that we got back on the bus and got a live commentary at last and got a full tour of Dublin. We learnt about the history of some of the people who are now buried in Christchurch and St. Patrick’s cathedrals (namely a douche called Strongbow and Jonathon Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels), passed the Guinness Storehouse which we had decided to save until tomorrow, saw the old city gaol and went out to Pheonix Park, the biggest enclosed park in Europe. The bus was massively held up in traffic and so running very late, our driver took out his frustrations about this on the roundabout in the park, going around it twice and holding up the red bus. It was as hilarious as his commentary.

After the park we passed by the Jamesons distillery and a couple of museums before successfully completing the loop around back to O’Connelly Street. Now we were able to go and check in at Globetrotters Hostel, much to the surprise of the man at the reception desk who had no idea we were coming. Apparently the lady who answers the emails (we booked with Hostelbookers) had not been in, and so we got a free upgrade to a private double room for our first night. Can’t complain there (though we could grumble about the lack of hot water, nasty coffee and non-functional TV, but they’re only mini grumbles). Time to rest since we had such a long day.

Irish Food & Randalstown

News of the day, Soda bread is not made of bread dipped in soda.

Today we started off with a traditional fry up 'Ulster Fry', since we had such a huge conversation at it at the pub on our first night out it has to be done.Sausages, fried egg, bacon, pancakes, grilled tomato, potato bread, soda bread, veggie roll. It was quite a meal!! I ate it so quickly that I forgot to take a photo for my blog.

This one has black pudding in it and the one we had in Dublin had black and white pudding. Also mushrooms, beans can be added to this meal.

Irish potato bread is yummy, but I do love tattie scones from Scotland and Potato pancakes from Poland.

Gemma’s mum dropped us off in town were we grabbed a drink at the local pub meet up with Sinead. From there we hit up a charity shop and picked up from groceries, I was all up for getting to know the local cuisine. So they suggested that I try some Irish munchies.

Oh yes yesterday we had champ with our steak and Guinness pie.

Mash with spring onion, simple yet effective.

Dan and I got a quick tour of the viaduct and bridge in Randalstown from Gemma and Sinead. For dinner we picked up pasties since Gemma has been mentioning it since our arrival. I thought it was like pasties in England but it is not.They are battered deep fried mash potatoes with minced pork served with chips and vinegar, we picked it up from a take away for a whole supper it was only £4.80.

Time to catch the train to Belfast from Antrim so we can make our super early train to Dublin. The train from Belfast to Antrim cost us £11 one way and our tickets from Belfast to Dublin was £25 each for a return so it wasn't too bad. Cept for to make the best of our time we decided to catch the 6:50am. We walked to Sinead’s place from the train station had a very relaxing evening drinking wine, liquored coffee and watching Breaking Bad. Wish there was more we could have done to repay her for her wonderful hospitality.  

Ireland - Causeway Coast

Bright and early on a murky Belfast morning, we taxied through the commuting hordes to find our tour bus. Having never been so overtly touristy as to take a couch tour before, we didn't know what to expect.

What we got was an incredibly dull etymology tour, our driver monotonously explaining the meaning behind the names of every glen and town we passed on our way north to the major sights. Danny usually is a sucker for this kind of stuff but even he couldn't enjoy the entire journey like this. Darren our bus driver put me to sleep and Gemma into apoplectic rage with his dulcet tones and sayings.

We experienced the worst weather of the trip during our brief stop at Carrickfergus castle. Here, ocean winds were blasting spray in our faces and we did not linger long. I quickly layered up for the suspension bridge. After Darren our bus driver told us many times how much money we would save by buying the rope bridge, causeway visitor centre and audio tour. (£10 for the two saving us a total of £4.10) We also adopted Lawrence a Chinese adventurer studying in Durham.

Carrick-A-rede was our first proper stop, after lots and lots of ill-delivered exposition. The weather eased off a bit crossing was still dramatic, courtesy of a howling wind on the cliffs. The island remains mostly closed off, leaving the wonderful views and experience of the rope bridge as the main draw.

From the pictures I had saw online I was thinking that the bridge was going to be much larger or should I say longer. However, when you are standing on the bridge being blasted by wind holding onto a rope that is literally pushing you to one side whilst looking down you can why this bridge makes your knees quake. Hold on tight and keep walking. After hitting the sign that tells you that you cannot go any further we headed back for a cup of hot chocolate and tea.

Next stop Bushmills distillery for lunch, we hand an hour to head in decide what we wanted to eat and give a taster to the whiskey if we so choose. We all had steak and Guinness pie in the café and tried some whiskey at the bar. Danny had a moment at the bar where he bought a bottle of 16 year, a very nice treat.

After briefly stopping at Dunluce Castle for a very short photo-op, we made it to our final stop, Giant’s causeway. The visitor centre is a far cry from when last Danny was there, apparently it was a whole new building hollowed out of the ground. We picked up our audio guide and began our trek to sea level alongside our new friend Chris from Seattle.

I thought that it was going to much larger when I arrived maybe because in my mind the giants would be massive. Even though it wasn't as huge as I had hyped it up in my mind the structural formation is very unique unlike anywhere else in the world. Plus the story of how the Giant’s causeway came to be has a very interesting story.

The audio tour was totally new to me I always knew that you could get a little voice guiding you around and telling you the history about what you were looking at. This was my first time using one of these devices and I did look for things that I wouldn't have which was neat.

We all split up climbing around the stones walking up to the ocean side, sitting on the rocks and taking photos. A wonderful place to some epic panoramic photographs. Lastly before heading back to the visitor centre we stopped to see the Giant’s organ. Gemma spoke with the bus driver beforehand and found out that he would he would be able to drop us off in Antrim which is near where Gemma lives. We got picked up at the bus stop for a lovely homemade stew supper.

Belfast Tour

In  the morning we caught a ride with Gemma's brother to Gemma's cousins in the city, had a quick coffee and hopped on a bus into town centre. First act of the day find where we get on the tour bus, it was nice and simple since we took the City Sightseeing Tour bus (the red one you see everywhere) there were guys wearing the red jackets everywhere.

We started Prince Albert's wonky clock, it sank partly into the baggy ground (Belfast's leaning clock tower) they had the opportunity to fix the lean bus decided it gave it some character. We passed the big fish, legend says that if you kiss the big fish that you will gain knowledge. Others says that it will steal your knowledge.

We saw the shipyard where the Titanic was built and the shiny white star centre (Titanic Museum) The legend goes that the Irish response to the unsinkable sinking was that it was fine when it left Belfast. English captain, Scottish navigator and one Canadian iceberg -not our fault!

During the tour we passed some relics of a past age, the big shipbuilding thingies called Sampson and Goliath . Near here was the studio for the first season of Game of Thrones the room with iron throne.  From there we cruised out the docklands to the east to see the (Storment) parliament building and grounds. Coming back into the city our guide gave us a brief overview of the Troubles. 

Basically, it was separatists pushing for free NI vs. unionists who were happy being part of the UK...for 30 years after the good Friday agreement in 1998 both sides put down their arms and things are better, but the great 'peace walls' that were erected to separate the opposing sides still remain to this day.

We saw more when the bus delved into areas that suffered the Troubles and took us along its length. It was heavily decorated, as are many areas with murals. There murals serve as remembrance, a demonstration of outrage or even just marking the territory. Flown flags and painted curbs also serve the latter purpose. Wandering in the wrong parts of Ireland was dangerous business for a long time.I'd like to say that this is no longer the case, but some wounds run deep enough to need generations to fix. 

Hopping off in the university district and went through the botanical gardens to check out the Ulster Museum.  There were a few dinosaurs and we read up on the events and history of the Troubles. 

The University.

Decided against walking through the botanical gardens and headed into the city centre to go up to Victoria City Square Viewing Dome, where we got some panoramic pictures of the cloudy city. It did not wobble like a lily pad. Back on ground level we met up with Gemma's cousin Robert and started on a slow pub crawl to Filthy McNastys. Gemma wants to point out the hottie at McHughes Pub, if you are ever there say hi for Gemma. :P We had a great time and did a group drawing of random assortments of things and I was educated on a full Irish breakfast.