My Favorite Ireland Photo

 

 Ireland 2011. The End.

Ireland Tips and Such

This post is for anyone planning a trip to Ireland. It's my tips for a good trip. Eventually, on my Recommendations page, I'll add in our top recommendations for hotels, restaurants, and pubs.

• Absolutely get a good driving map. The rental car one freebie is dead useless.
• If you're arriving at the Dublin airport, take the extra time to get your map and SIM card before leaving the airport. It's easy, efficient, and saves time later on.
• Consider getting a Heritage Card and/or the Heritage Island Explorer Guide - they give discounted or free entry to loads of sites. The Heritage Cards were 21euros apiece. If the Heritage Card wasn't accepted, the Heritage Island Explorer Guide usually was. The 2nd one isn't a card at all, but rather a booklet costing 6euros and covering both of us.
• If you're a scaredy-cat driver or doubt you can manage driving on the left side of the road, don't even try it. But, your own car is the absolute best way to see Ireland outside the tour bus route. Pay the extra money to reduce your deductible. The full coverage insurance (required) has a deductible of about 1400euros (which is over $2000!). We paid 55euros more for the week to reduce our deductible down to 100euros. Well worth the peace of mind.
• Stay at B&Bs. Ireland's are phenomenal. The rooms are sometimes a bit like Grandma's house, but so are the breakfasts. And we all know how good Grandma's breakfasts are. B&B owners are a treasure of Ireland. Without fail, we got the best dinner recommendations, pub music recommendation, and driving route tips for the next leg of our journey (usually not the route we'd planned to take, either).
• If you like to stand around a crowded bar, jostling elbows with the masses, just go out to any old pub and have a blast. If you want to relax and enjoy the traditional music, narrow in on your target bar (ask any and all locals for their fav) and stop in before dinner to find out what time the music will start. Then show up about an hour early, grab your first pint, and enjoy the company of your companion at your front row table (don't forget to check with the bar staff to find out where the musicians set up; otherwise, you could find yourself in their chairs, relegating you to the back of the crowded room when they show up to play).
• Don't like beer? Order a cider. Ireland is home to delicious, Bulmer's Cider, on tap at every pub.
• We visited in August, Ireland's busiest tourism month. And yet, we didn't feel crowded. Except at Cliffs of Moher (see that blog post). Frankly, if you've seen big cliffs before, the Cliffs of Moher are no different. If you cannot leave Ireland without seeing those Cliffs, here's a little tip we found as we left the required, 8euro parking lot and headed north: There is a side road a few kilometers north where you can park. Then there is a trail across the street and between two fences that leads straight to the ocean. Take that and then hang a left - looks like there was a trail along the water. By our best estimation (we didn't actually do it as we were sick of the Cliffs of Moher by then), this trail should head south and eventually join up with the official Cliffs of Moher. Get the views without the crowds. But this is at your own risk, since I doubt there's any sort of fence or railing to keep you from plunging over the side.
• Visiting Dublin and it's raining? Head to the Archaeology Museum. It's free with fascinating exhibits and no crowds.
• Most well done "site" in Dublin has to be the Guinness Storehouse. It's one of the most well done sites I've visited as far as crowd control, mixing in interactive exhibits, and just keeping your interest.
• Just buy the Rick Steves book. And the newest one, too. Really, break down and do it. It doesn't matter that you hate following a guidebook. You don't have to use it for your hotels and food. But if you want to do something like drive the Ring of Kerry, his guides are the best on the market. Otherwise, you're just going to drive around the country and not know what the heck you're looking at. In fact, the book is worth it just for the Ring of Kerry and Dingle Peninsula drives by themselves.

ENJOY!

Written In My Heart

"When I die Dublin will be written in my heart."

James Joyce

We loved Dublin. The city holds the best that a big city can offer - an attractive city center with pedestrian zones for comfortable walking, cosmopolitan restaurants, pubs playing traditional music, a prestigious university, quality museums, efficient public transportation, a large public park...the list goes on and on. Our vacation was drawing to a close, so our last few days were all about relaxing. To that end, we booked into a fabulous, luxurious hotel (the Westbury) and spent our days walking the city center. Our hotel was right off of Grafton Street, a clean, pretty pedestrian zone linking Trinity College with St. Stephen's Green, a large, city park.

Our hotel's turn down service included crystal water glasses and slippers by the bed.

We couldn't skip all the tourist sites though. The Book of Kells, written and illuminated in the late 700s, was an absolute must. While seeing the pages (only two are on display) was worthwhile, the exhibit and the way it is set up is absolutely horrendous. Initially, it seemed the entrance guards were doing crowd control and limiting the number of people going in, but the time between entries was only about 5 minutes. With all the pre-viewing exhibits set up in one, tiny antechamber - and at least a half  hour's worth of exhibits to study - we quickly found ourselves battling for space among huge tour groups. Thankfully, living in Italy has prepared us for what it took to actually see the Book of Kells pages themselves. The illuminated manuscript pages were beautiful, but I have to admit that my favorite was a page out of the Book of Durrows, a book I'd never even heard of and created about 100 years before the Book of Kells.

We also visited Dublin National Museum of Archaeology, an incredibly well done museum. Marble, mosaic floors, ornate and brightly colored tile door surrounds, and iron filigree buttresses holding up the roof made the building itself almost as interesting as the exhibits displayed.

Our final stop on the tourist track was the Guinness Storehouse. I don't even like beer, and I found the Storehouse fascinating. We spent hours and hours there, checking out each of the five floors that wind around a central lobby shaped like a pint glass - ingenious! In 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a 9000 year lease for a four-acre brewery at a cost of 100 pounds down and 45 pounds per year...including water rights. Clever, clever man. Whoever manages the Book of Kells exhibit should take a trip to the Guinness Storehouse. There must have been thousands of people there, and yet flow was excellent and felt uncrowded. Every display is interesting, made so by interactive exhibits, huge barrels visitors walk through with funky ads or videos displayed on the walls, a huge waterfall, screens with headphones to watch old Guinness commercials - every single aspect of the "museum" has been well thought out and presented. The crowning glory is the Gravity Bar at the top (the foam of the pint glass, so to speak), with a 360 degree view of Dublin, enjoyed while downing the Guinness pint that's included with entry fee. Guinness tastes different here.

In Dublin, we just spent a lot of time walking, enjoying the architecture and sampling the huge variety of food available to us. Dublin is definitely on our "watch" list now since there is a direct flight from Naples to Dublin in only two hours - an easy and enjoyable weekend trip!

Neolithic Tombs, Megalithic Art

Our final day  before turning in the rental car and hoofing it around Dublin, we stopped in at Bru na Boinne, located about 45 minutes north of Dublin. In one word, phenomenal! Bru na Boinne is an area of Neolithic mounds, thought to be burial tombs, but no one really knows. As our guide for one of the mounds pointed out, people were buried in cathedrals up until fairly recently, but cathedrals aren't burial structures. So these places could have been burial mounds, or worship centers, or calendars, since they're aligned with the sun, or some other use we can't imagine.

The Boyne Valley surrounding Bru na Boinne is home to over 40 of these mounds, of which visitors can tour two. The fantastic Visitor's Center is where all must begin. Visits are by guided tour only, and entry is limited, so we left Galway early in order to make sure we got tickets, this being August and all, and visions of the Cliffs of Moher dancing in our heads.

Our first tour was to Knowth (rhymes with mouth), the largest of the mounds, dating to 3000-2000 BC, and built with 127 carved stones (called kerbstones) at it's base. These stones represent 1/3 of Western Europe's megalithic (big stone) art, and in 5000 years, only three of the stones have gone missing. Only three! Combining the carved stones around the rest of the Boyne Valley, and 2/3 of Western Europe's megalithic art is right here. Knowth has a bunch of smaller mounds surrounding it, but the main mound has two passageways thought to have once been aligned with the spring and fall equinoxes. The sun would have lit the passageways, ending at separate burial chambers where basins held cremated, human remains. The site was later used for Celtic burials, then fell into disuse for a couple of thousand years, before becoming a settlement first by early Christians, then the Normans. The passageways became altered over all that time. At Knowth, we were able only to walk into a room created near the edge of the great mound, where we could glimpse down one of it's main passageways. Visitors, can however, walk on top of the mound and get a great view of the smaller mounds surrounding it.

A peek down one of Knowth's passageways

The slab over the kerbstones is modern, installed to protect the megalithic art.

Next up was our visit to Newgrange, built 5000 years ago, 500 years before the Egyptian pyramids and 1000 before Stonehenge. It was then the largest man-made structure in Ireland for the next 4000 years. Newgrange's mound has a white quartz stone decoration on the front of it (which has been restored), an impressive, carved stone at it's entrance, and visitors get to walk into the mound and down the passageway, which is aligned with the sun on the winter solstice. On that day, the sunbeam stops exactly at the central chamber, which has three recesses where stone basins are located. A standing stone circle once encircled Newgrange, with dimensions that exactly match other stone circles in Scotland and Great Britain. I found all these fun facts so interesting - how many years did these early people watch and measure the sun's movement before building the mounds? With an average lifespan of 26-29 (for women and men, respectively), did it take generations? Did the carved symbols mean something, or was it just something to doodle, like I used to do on my Trapper Keeper? Were those cremated remains sacrifices, natural deaths, enemies? So many questions, and clearly, so much knowledge they had, especially in engineering. My final fun fact is pretty impressive: The mounds are so well constructed that in 5000 years, no water leaked inside them. Now that's building something to last!

Entrance to Newgrange's passage

Standing at Newgrange and looking out over the countryside, two more mounds are in view, just sitting in the midst of farming fields.

Galway and Connemara

I think we would have loved Galway. Except it rained our entire 40 hours. And not just the misty type rain that is merely annoying, but full on, pavement pounding rain. Do you know what doesn't keep that kind of rain out? A collapsible, travel umbrella that only cost 6 euros and an only slightly more expensive jacket in a packet. In an effort to not break our streak of nightly pub music, we did shuttle off to a yummy dinner (at Ard Bia, highly recommend it!) and then a pub, where we lasted about 20 minutes. We did not walk through the romantic streets, down the pedestrian pathways, or take in the city park. But I'm sure the city is lovely. Just sure of it.

We'd originally planned a huge driving day throughout the entire region, but since we'd had several big driving days in a row, our new plan was to just enjoy Galway. One look out the window and a quick check of the weather forecast, and it was back to a modified Plan A. We decided to head through the Connemara region up to Kylemore Abbey, mainly because we heard it had a nice, little cafeteria with tea and scones. Don't tea and scones sound wonderful for a gray, rainy day? Kylemore Abbey did not disappoint, and the gray skies only added atmosphere to the Gothic architecture. It was perfect...not really, but I tried to make the best of weather conditions to which I am not suited.

The drive around the region was beautiful - remote, quiet, full of lakes and waterfalls spilling down the hills.

Where Did All These People Come From!

You can't actually see all the people in my photos. They really were there, really.

 From beautiful, relaxing, tranquil Dingle, we drove straight into what seemed like a Florida beach during Spring Break. There were more people just on the Cliffs of Moher (pronounced like the word "more") walkway than we saw for our first seven days in country. Sure, the Cliffs were neat and all, but for us, this became a get in/get out situation. After so many days of having Ring Forts and Stone Circles and Beehive Huts and Cliff Walks all to ourselves, being around the crowds overloaded our senses, and when just stopping to try to enjoy the view meant knocking elbows with someone, we quickly decided to head out. There is a trail to the south, off the official pathway and through a hole cut in the barbed wire fence, but we decided to skip it. Off the north end of the path is a stone wall blocking further walking and a big sign stating, "Private Property, No Trespassing." Tourists have conveniently figured out a way to climb over the stone wall and as we stood there for about five minutes, we observed probably 80% of the visitors heading past this Private Property, conveniently ignoring it - despite the fact that they had to step around it and off the small path to continue on. With no more wall between walkers and a 400ft drop into the sea, and the trail skirting right on the cliff edge (since it's not an actual trail and rather, just a path worn by the tread of many feet), and hordes upon hordes of people walking and jockeying for position, I wasn't about to join in the madness.

DANGER - No walking on fire while birds are around.

From the Cliffs of Moher, we drove north and then cut inland to take a drive through The Burren area. Burren sounds a lot like "barren," and that's what the landscape seems at first glance. Burren actually comes from the Irish word for rocky country or great rock, Boireann. The ground is limestone with huge fissures in it, and in between the fissures, grass and/or wildflowers grow. The area has over 500 stone forts from the iron Age, 90 megalithic tombs, and in total, more than 2000 historical sites - in an area of about 100 sq miles, or roughly, the size of Charleston, South Carolina. The only stop we made was at Poulnabrone Dolmen, a portal tomb built 5000 years ago. Only excavated in the last 25 years, 33 people from Neolithic period (in Ireland, this was about 4500-1700 BC) were found buried in it.

The Burren itself is a wild landscape, with gray stones stretching as far as the eye can see. As the clouds rolled in, and we continued our drive back towards the coastline, we became surrounded by gray - land, sea, and sky. This marked a change in the weather that followed us for the next couple of days as we continued on to explore Galway and the Connemara region.

More Photos of Dingle Peninsula

Writeup on Dingle is in post below. Here are the photos from our Dingle Peninsula Loop drive.

Beehive Huts dot the landscape. They date to the Early Christian period, and were generally farmsteads - fence enclosures kept livestock in, and a number of huts operated as family homes, farm buildings, and storage huts.

Just past the fencepost, the grass is a little darker green - and in the shape of a circle. This is an unexcavated remnant of a ringfort dating to 500 B.C.

Gallarus Oratory, an early Christian church, built 1200-1300 years ago

One of our favorite things we did - pulled off on a scenic overlook, noticed a trail heading to the rocks on the clifftop, and went for a short trail-hike to what we think is Ireland's westernmost point (other than a few small islands off the coast) - next stop, Newfoundland.

View of the Blasket Islands

Kilmalkedar Church, built in the 1100s. The post in the foreground (with the hole in the top of it) is an Ogham stone, a post inscribed using early Irish language. The stone pre-dates the church by 700 or more years.

Hanging in An Daingean

The next leg of our journey was our favorite - we spent two nights slowing down, staying in the town of Dingle and exploring the Dingle Peninsula. The region is a Gaeltacht area, a place with heavy emphasis on the Gaelic language and traditions with government subsidies to help with the preservation. As such, road signs are in Gaelic, shop signs as well, and the Gaelic language is alive and well. This area was a favorite of ours, and our two night stay was all too brief. Dingle town has a lovely bay, several streets filled with colorful shops and restaurants, a number of artisans plying their trade, and the Dingle Peninsula, which is crowded with historical ruins. We spent half a day driving around looking like bobble heads as we came upon one spectacular view after another.

View from our Guesthouse's front yard

The rest of the day we spent enjoying the town, shopping for presents, having afternoon tea, strolling along the harbor, and in general, just enjoying being on vacation. Spending one day driving the Ring of Kerry and the next driving the Dingle Peninsula gave me such an appreciate of how the environment shapes my moods. I don't know that I've ever been so aware of this concept as I was in this region. The Ring of Kerry was full of steep hills, turbulent waters, and sharp curves around the cliffs, and I found my mood reflecting all that, full of tension and up and down emotions, a general sense of feeling unsettled. In contrast, the Dingle Peninsula is one of gentle, rounded hills, rolling green to the calm blue waters, the road curves softly through the hills, and my mood mirrored this landscape with tranquility and calmness. What a lovely chance to unwind and relax.

In the pub; we particularly liked the guy sleeping in the corner.

Just one of many interesting shopfront decorations

View of Dingle town from the marina

It's Peat, Y'all!

Who hasn't wondered what the heck peat looks like. Here you go:

Could You Drive This?

Extreme kudos go to Nathan. He was an awesome driver. He did need my help, whether he admits it or not. After all, who doesn't drive better when they have a passenger screaming in their ear? You may have thought I've been exaggerating about the Irish roads. I have not. I have pictures to prove it.

This is the main road around the Dingle Peninsula.

Main road on the Skellig Michael Ring of the Ring of Kerry (thankfully, this is one of the roads tour buses do not drive)

An actual road, not a driveway.

What you don't want to be stuck behind. Nathan actually managed to pass him...without tearing off any mirrors.

The intrepid driver himself and our trusty, little Clio.

Ring Forts of the Ring of Kerry

Photos of the amazing Ring Forts of the Ring of Kerry. For the blog text on our drive of the Ring, scroll down to the next post. There are no records of the Ring Forts original uses, prevailing theory is that they were used as a defensive retreat - as in, bring in the animals and the women (probably in that order) to protect against marauders. But maybe they were homes of powerful chieftans...or maybe ceremonial...or maybe storehouses.

Staigue Ring Fort, our first and the most dramatic, set in such a remote place

Staigue Ring Fort from the inside - I especially liked how the curve of the stone coincidentally mirrored the curve of the surrounding hills

Ring Fort Cahergall

A bonus with Cahergall and Leacanabuaile was we could walk on top of the walls - views of the sea, castle ruins (the one from the Coke machine picture), and another ring fort, what a neat experience

Ring Fort Leacanabuaile - this one has an underground passage

Ring of Kerry

We were traveling with a Rick Steves' guidebook, as we often do. His guidebooks have great walking and site tours in them, which are generally spot on. Everything we'd read from all sorts of sources talked about the challenges of driving the Ring of Kerry with all the tour buses. I can't emphasize enough how narrow a lot of the roads are (in fact, I think I'll do a separate blog post on it), and with the Ring of Kerry being a top item on every tour coach itinerary, and with just enough driving under our belt to be terrified (me only, Nathan actually seemed pretty calm), I wanted to follow Rick's advice and leave Kenmare by 8:30am. The idea is to drive the ring in the opposite direction as all the tour buses (which drive it counter-clockwise), get to the halfway point by 10:30am and turn off the main road onto a smaller ring road going to the tip of the peninsula. By spending a few hours in this area, on roads too small for the large buses, all those buses pass by the midpoint and get to the section you've already driven, leaving the upper part of the ring free and clear. You may wonder why all the tour buses drive in the same direction? Because the roads are too narrow for two buses to pass one another, so they all have to drive in the same direction, one behind the other, just like Mary's little lambs. I am here to tell you that yet again, "Ricky," as we like to call him, was dead right. We left our B&B late by 20 minutes (remember, we stayed at the pub until 1am listening to totally awesome music) and made a couple of extra stops. Sure enough, we ran into tour buses coming from the opposite direction when we were still 30 minutes from our turn off. Darn that Ricky. Why is he always right? We had a harrowing half hour, and I have a vague recollection of the final five minutes spent in out loud prayer. But I've blocked out as much as possible of that part of our trip.

The Ring of Kerry is wild and sharp, and the day we drove it, the weather mirrored the landscape. Clouds rolled in and out, water frothed at the base of jagged cliffs, hills really are the color of emeralds, and we clambered around large, ring forts built approximately 2000 years ago (actual time of construction estimates have an 800 year swing). The ring forts are impressive, and in a marked break from our general appreciation of Ricky, we much preferred Staigue Ring Fort, the closest one to Kenmare. First of all, we were the first visitors of the day and had the entire place to ourselves. Second, it was the least reconstructed of the three we visited, and I enjoy seeing how these places weather time and nature. Third, it was early enough in the day that we weren't jaded yet on impressive views. I'm adding the photos of the Ring Forts as a separate post rather than in this one because I wanted to share several pics.

Off the tip of the Ring of Kerry, or the edge of the world, as it was known up until just a few centuries ago,  is the steep, jagged island of Skellig Michael. Here, sometime in the 600s (AD), and for the next 500 or so years, a very small community of monks lived in relative isolation in order to grow closer to God. They ate sea birds and fish, lived in stone beehive huts they built (look like teepees, only built of stacked stone), chiseled steps into the steep, cliff face reaching 600 feet from sea to tip (where their huts were), and managed to fend off Viking invaders for a couple of centuries. While there was much about Ireland that captured my attention and gave me a desire to return, none more so than the chance to visit Skellig Michael one day. The trip depends heavily on the weather and requires at least one overnight in a tiny town with little to offer, so we skipped it this time, but, as has become my constant refrain, we'll have to return to visit.

St. Finan's Bay, with Skellig Michael in the distance

Ring of Kerry views - easy to see why Ireland is called the Emerald Isle

You may have to enlarge photo to see what's so cool about it - castle ruins in the backyard and Coke machine in the front.

Right in center of photo, you can make out a Ring Fort (don't know the name of it)

On the advice of our B&B proprietor, we took the turn off for the beautiful, Derrynane Beach...came across this fantastic house.