Spring Break Part Two: Ireland

Early on Tuesday, March 22, Julia and I headed to the airport to catch our flight from London to Dublin. We were lucky to get seats near the front of the plane and we even checked our bags for free. We landed in Dublin at 10:30 in the morning and made our way to our hostel. We were staying around the corner from the Jameson whiskey distillery, which was pretty cool. I hate whiskey, so I didn't have much interest in actually visiting the distillery, but I liked being near it.

Our hostel was a little bit outside of the downtown of Dublin and our first order of business was to visit Trinity College's library, which was on the opposite of downtown Dublin, so we walked there first thing. My favorite thing about Dublin was how small it was. We were able to comfortably walk from one end of the commercial center to the other in about half an hour. Having just been in London, which is just sprawling and huge, it was a nice change of pace.

We went to Trinity College first because we wanted to see the Book of Kells. Trinity's campus is really beautiful, and the book was pretty cool too. It's always humbling to be in close proximity to something that old (Experts believe it was created around 800 A.D.). But my favorite part was visiting the famous Long Room. When you think of a library, the Long Room is that picture in your mind.

Trinity College

Spiral staircase in the Long Room

The Long Room

I probably could have lived here happily

After a quick lunch, we planned to join a walking tour of downtown Dublin but Julia was feeling a bit lazy, so we decided to do a bus tour instead. But first, we visited the Dublin Castle on foot.

Dublin Castle

I had wanted to take the walking tour, but I have to admit that the bus tour did give us a good feel for the layout of the city, and the tour even went out to Kilmainham Gaol, the prison on the outskirts of the city where the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising were imprisoned and executed. Being that we were in Ireland for the centennial celebration of the Rising, we had hoped to visit the Gaol, but it was sold out by the time we got there. I'm glad we went to see it regardless.

Kilmainham Gaol

Memorial to the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising

We took the bus back into the center of Dublin and walked around near the cathedrals and in the Temple Bar area. We also visited a special exhibit that went in depth about the 1916 Rising, so we learned a lot about it even without visiting Kilmainham Gaol. We ended up having dinner right near the Ha'Penny Bridge in a pub with great music (and I may have developed a small crush on the guy who was performing). 

St. Patrick's Cathedral

The grounds next to the cathedral

Christ Church Cathedral

Temple Bar

Ha'Penny Bridge

I was a little excited about drinking my first pint of Guinness in Ireland

The next day, we joined a tour group that was going from Dublin down the southwestern coast and would bring us back to Dublin in four days. We met with our group at the Molly Malone statue, which made me very happy because I'd been singing the song loudly during the entire previous day.

In Dublin's fair city, where girls are so pretty, I first set me eyes on sweet Molly Malone 

The first stop on our tour was in Cong, a small town in County Mayo (the county where the Hegartys are originally from) made famous by the John Wayne movie The Quiet Man. Julia is weird and The Quiet Man is one of her favorite movies, so she was extremely excited to be there.

Apparently something important happens at this bar in the movie

Mildly excited about visiting

Cong also has a pretty, old and crumbly monastery and, like the rest of Ireland, it was just sort of absurdly picturesque. 

Gaelic phone booth

Bridge near the monastery

The Cong River splits County Galway and County Mayo

I want to live in this house

After we left Cong, we drove through lovely Connemarra to get to Galway, where we spent the night. I loved Galway; the music, the shops, the lovely views of the sea. We wandered into a café to get warm and ended up talking to the proprietor for almost an hour. Ireland is just full of the nicest people. In the morning, the tour left pretty early to go to the Cliffs of Moher. I was really excited about visiting the Cliffs not only because they're supposedly one of the most beautiful things in Ireland, but also because they're the setting of the Cliffs of Insanity from my favorite movie, The Princess Bride. Between visiting the Harry Potter studio in London, Cong for The Quiet Man for Jule, and then this for me, it was a good trip for us movie buffs.

The Cliffs of Moher

The Cliffs of Insanity!

It was only a little bit windy

I actually half did my hair for once, and this is my reward

I knew that the Cliffs would be windy, but I just simply was not prepared for just how windy. And that ended up being a theme of the week. Oh well. Now I know, when you go to Ireland in March, don't bother with your hair. Julia really knew what she was doing. Our next stop was actually the Blarney Castle. I'd heard that the castle is just a silly tourist trap, but I'd wanted to visit ever since I did a presentation about the Blarney Stone when I was in second grade. As it turned out, the castle was a little cheesy but the gardens around it made me feel like I was living in a fairy tale, so we both loved it. And now I have the gift of gab for the next seven years, so look out, world. Also, Julia took a photo of my kissing the stone solely so that I could share it with all of my faithful readers. It's a lovely photo of me, so you're welcome in advance.

The World's Most Unflattering Photo, 2016

The Poison Garden

The Bog Garden

I'm actually in this photo. Where's Clare?

Blarney Castle

We spent the night in Killarney, which was a lovely little town and again, full of nice people. In the morning, we went on a horse and cart ride through Killarney National Park, which was just absolutely gorgeous. It has two lakes just in the park, as well as Ireland's only native herd of red deer (which we actually saw, from a distance!).

Our horse, Rose (our driver's name was Patrick, unsurprisingly)

One of the Lakes of Killarney

Killarney National Park

In the cart

We then drove on down to the Dingle Peninsula. Our first stop was Inch Beach, which was in the top five of most beautiful beaches I've ever seen. It's surrounded by mountains and there's even a mountain in the distance, seemingly sticking up from the sea itself.

Inch Beach

I liked the beach a tiny bit

We then continued on to Dingle itself, a lovely, Gaelic-speaking town where we had some of the best ice cream I've ever had. What is it with beach towns and delicious ice cream, anyway? We had the opportunity to go on a boat cruise to meet Fungie the Dolphin, a friendly dolphin who interacts with humans regularly, but we opted out because our time in Dingle was limited. However, there was a statue of Fungie with which I of course posed for a photo.

Fungie and me

Dingle

Dingle Harbor

After our lunch break in Dingle, we got back in the bus to tour the Dingle peninsula. The peninsula is breathtaking, but the wind here was even worse than at the Cliffs of Moher. Thankfully, my hair was braided that day.

Dingle Peninsula

Almost got blown over when I stepped off the bus

Supposedly, the next Star Wars movie is filming on the hill behind me in the photo above, so we were hopeful that we might run into someone famous. Unfortunately, we had no such luck. Maybe next time! We spent the night in Annascaul, a tiny village on the peninsula, before motoring back to Dublin the next day. Our tour ended with a visit to the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin. I know that the Guinness Storehouse is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Dublin, but I was honestly a little underwhelmed by it. To be fair, it was painfully crowded because the parade to commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising was the following day, Easter Sunday.  Julia and I dropped our stuff in a hostel and headed over to The Brazen Head, the oldest pub in Dublin and a place my aunt Erin recommended, for dinner. However, when we got there, it was filled to the rafters (again, the parade was the next day, so basically the entire city of Dublin was crowded). So instead, we ended up eating in a different pub across the street. We didn't get to eat there, but at least we got to see inside the oldest pub in Dublin! We called it an early night because we were pretty tired from our busy week, and Julia was flying home the next day. I was spending an extra day in Ireland by myself because I didn't have to worry about jet lag, so I was taking a trip to Northern Ireland by myself on Easter Sunday. I probably should have stayed in Dublin for the parade but truthfully, it's my opinion that if you've seen one parade, you've seen them all. So off to Northern Ireland I went. The first stop on my day trip was the Dark Hedges, which is famous for being the Kingsroad that runs from Castle Black to King's Landing in Game of Thrones. I was crazy fortunate because for most of my day in Northern Ireland, the sun was shining, which was the best part of the whole day.

Brb, just heading to King's Landing

We then went to the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, which connects the mainland to Carrickarede island. Fishermen have been building bridges out to the island for hundreds of years, but they turned it into a tourist attraction back in 2008. I paid the money to be able to cross the bridge, but honestly, the walk just to get to the bridge was probably the most breathtaking stretch of land and sea that I've ever seen.

On the way to the bridge

The water made me feel like I was in the Carribbean

Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge

Not made of planks, thank God

View from the island

View on the way back

I was nervous about crossing the bridge because I'd been imagining planks of wood like in a movie, but as you can see above, it's not actually that scary. So I wasn't scared about crossing it, but when I was actually on it, I realized how bouncy it was. Literally it was almost like a small trampoline, and the closer to the middle I got, the worse it was, so I was eager to get across to the island. Then, in typical Clare fashion, I climbed to the top of the island and fell in the mud about two seconds after I took the photo above. The worst part was that I was by myself, so I didn't even have anyone to laugh with about the fact that my one leg was filthy. After I picked myself up and was trying to brush off as much of the mud as I could, a mother said to her daughter, "See honey? That's why we need to be careful," and openly pointed at me. Glad I could help be a lesson in safety to a young child. Thankfully, my crossing back over the bridge was uneventful, although my mud-covered pants did draw some attention. It's really fun to be me sometimes. We got back on the bus and went to Giant's Causeway, the highlight of the tour. Giant's Causeway is actually the remains of ancient volcanic rock, but it's Ireland, so of course it has it's own legend. According to legend, Irish giant Finn MacCool was challenged to a fight by Scottish giant Benandonner, and he built the causeway across the sea to Scotland so that they two of them could meet. However, Finn saw Benandonner and it turned out he was much bigger than Finn, so Finn fled back to his wife, who dressed him up as a baby and tucked him in a cradle. When Benandonner came to Ireland and saw Finn's "baby," he realized that if that's the size of the baby, then its father must be a giant among giants, so he fled back to Scotland, destroying the causeway in his haste. Nobody can tell a good story like the Irish, can they?

Rainbow over Giant's Causeway

Giant's Causeway

The sun was shining! What a beautiful day. 

After we had our fill of giants and volcanic rocks, we got in the bus to head over to our last stop, Belfast. On our way, we stopped for a photo stop at Dunluce Castle, which is also steeped in legend. According to legend, part of the kitchen collapsed into the sea, killing the whole kitchen staff except one boy. Now, it's haunted by the lost souls of the kitchen staff. Also, my iPhone's battery died, so forgive me for the low quality photos.

Dunluce Castle

After the photo stop, we continued onto Belfast. We only had about an hour in the city, just to grab a snack or use the restroom, but I was shocked by how much the area around city hall reminded me of the courthouse square in Scranton. But I don't have any good photos that really portray it, so you'll have to take my word for it. I used my hour in Belfast to wander around Donegall Square, visiting the Titanic Memorial (because the Titanic was built in and left from Belfast), and going to the top of the Victoria Square Shopping Centre for the views it afforded of the city.

Belfast City Hall

Titanic Memorial

View from Victoria Square Shopping Centre

Donegall Square

We left Belfast and headed back to Dublin for the last time. I had a quiet night because I had a flight out of Dublin at 6:15 in the morning, which meant I had to leave my hostel in the middle of the night. The nice part was that I landed in Madrid at 9:55 with the time change, so I was back in Quintanar at 2:30 in the afternoon. All together it was nearly 12 hours of traveling, but it gave me the whole afternoon/evening to rest and recoup for school the next day.