Ireland Trip - Day One
Well, I’m typing this from the plane at the moment (although publishing it later). Five more hours to go until we reach LAX and I’ve just suffered through some random Cantonese movie playing on the plane (weird, right? I was on an Irish airline) so I figured maybe I’d start on my Ireland travelblog.
Ireland was awesome!!! Max and I had a blast. We were extremely fortunate that there was unusually good weather during our trip. Max actually got a sun burn, and I got tanner too. You’d think we went vacationing in Hawaii or something. Anyway, Ireland is a totally beautiful country and we got to visit a lot of really great attractions. Also, since we rented a car, we were able to go from city to city, so we got to roadtrip through the countryside, which was really fun. The countryside was just gorgeous. So green! I've never been anywhere as green as Ireland. Didn’t necessarily smell gorgeous at times, on account of the sheep and the cows all over the country, but it was certainly beautiful. I took a ton of pictures, and I will post most of them dutifully, even though some are not as interesting as others. And there are some great ones that Max thinks he looks bad , and some that I definitely look bad in, so those will remain unpublished.
Anyway, we left for Ireland last Saturday afternoon. We ran tons of errands in the morning, and made it to the airport with two hours to spare. We flew on Aer Lingus, which one of Ireland’s major airlines. However, at LAX it doesn’t have a true terminal and so we actually had to take a ten minute shuttle bus ride to get to the plane. I tried to get a picture of the adorable plane – solid green with a big clover on the tail of it – but it was hard to get it through this window. Oh well.
The flight was pretty good. We had expected it to be a ten hour direct flight, but somehow we got there in 9 hours so that was nice. Our first stop after getting our luggage was to pick up our rental car. Max was a real trooper about the whole rental car thing. First off, I really didn’t want to try to drive on the other side of the road, and secondly renting an automatic car in Europe is twice as expensive as renting a stickshift, so we just got a stickshift (Ford Focus) and Max drove the ENTIRE TIME. Awesome for me, as I got to just sit back and relax. Well, maybe relax is not the right word. I did doze off a lot, but at the same time had to help navigate (Ireland is a country of few road signs, and many of them very unclear). I also had to be the official Watch-er Out-er as in “Watch out for that pigeon/bush/guy trying to cross the street/rock/sheep” The country roads in Ireland are really narrow and winding and there were several times when I was convinced we’d either hit an oncoming car, or the rock wall along the left side of the road, especially as we came around a curve. Luckily, that never happened. We did get lost countless – and I do mean COUNTLESS times, but we always eventually figured our way out. Max seemed to prefer the “Well, let’s drive down this street for another ten minutes and see if that helps” method of finding our way around when we got lost but hell, I didn’t have to drive the whole time, so I didn't complain. Much.
Anyway, here are some random pics taken from our drive from the airport to Dublin – a drive that took us a ridiculous amount of time because of the confusing roads around the city.
Just in case you didn't notice the oncoming cars...
Everything looks so different!
Guess they like Guiness there. ;)
After wandering around lost in Dublin for over an hour, we finally pulled over and asked a taxi driver to point us to Drury Court – our hotel. The taxi driver was extremely kind and rather than giving us directions, which surely would have been very complicated, he told us to just follow him and he’d lead us to the hotel. Afterwards, we tried to tip him but he wouldn’t take our money so that was very nice of him.
Drury Court was a fairly inexpensive but clean hotel located within a 10 minute walk to the City Centre – the heart of the city.
Drury Court from the outside
Some views from our hotel room:
We couldn’t check in yet, because it was too early (I think it was about 1 p.m.) so we decided to kill time by heading to our very first pub for a late lunch, which was right across the street from our hotel.
Our very first Irish pub in Ireland - wish we had asked what the heck is a "hairy lemon."
Inside the Hairy Lemon.
The Hairy Lemon was filled with predominately elderly Irish men (some whose accent was so thick they were quite unintelligible to me) watching some sort of car race on tv. Go figure. Anyway, we each ordered, what else, a pint of Guiness and sat down to relax a bit after traveling for all day. I had started to feel sick which was totally annoying, since I was sick the last time I traveled out of the country, when I went to Shanghai last year. Also the jet lag was getting to me, and I was feeling dizzy (standard Sareet side effects from a long plane ride). I’ve taken pictures of all of my food in Ireland, like my mom did in Shanghai. Can't say I'm a huge fan of Irish food although we did have a few decent meals. Others (frankly, most) weren't so awesome. This meal was not one of the good ones, but here's a pic of it anyway. I ordered the Chicken Curry and Max had the Bangers and Mash. Oh - and not only is Irish food in general not very good, but it's very expensive - this lil meal of ours cost $35 US!
Our first pints!
After our late lunch, we finally checked into our hotel. I rested a bit while Max worked out whether or not to meet up with Pete, who was the groom of the wedding we were to attend in Ireland. Pete and a bunch of his friends were going to a hurling match (some Irish sport that looked a bit like hockey and loacrosse) but with me feeling sick, we decided to spend the afternoon quietly checking out Dublin. I felt a lot better after a hot shower and managed to pull myself together to go out. In the pictures, you'll see I'm wearing like five layers of clothing. It was fairly chilly that day – the only day where the weather was not so great.
St. Patrick's Cathedral
Me at St. Patrick's Cathedral
Ireland's oldest pub, dating from the 1600's.
Another shot of Brazen Head
Max at, as the sign says, the Dublin City Wall and Gates, built in 1240 AD
Some friar's church (don't remember now...)
Christ Church Cathedral
Extension of the Christ Church?
Typical architecture - no shutters, super symmetrical
Temple Bar area
Stephen's Green Shopping Center where we spotted...
TKMaxx??? Wha? Incidentally, later we also spotted an "Eddie Rockets"
One of the many nice things about Ireland is that the days are very long. It was bright until at least 10 p.m. and even after that it didn’t get very dark until after midnight. After we’d seen most of the major attractions in about three hours, we decided it was time for dinner. We chose a place called Oliver St. John Gogarty Restaurant. It seemed incredibly fun and packed in the heart of the Temple Bar district, which is this one street filled with bars and restaurants and people. There was music playing on the lower level, more bar space on the second level, and a warm cozy restaurant on the third level. Unfortunately the service was pretty poor there – I plan on writing a blistering review of it on TripAdvisor but for now, I will just leave it at that. The place served traditional irish food and the menu including dishes that dated back to the 1700’s. Which sort of amazed us once we tasted it – surely someone would have found a way to improve the recipes over the hundreds of years??!!
Oliver St. John Gogarty
Warm and cute on the inside
Patiently waiting for food.
I had the Sackville Street Chicken Casserole (closest to camera) and Max had Uncle Arthur's Beef Casserole.
After dinner we headed back for the hotel. We popped into a pub called the Long Bar for a nightcap of Irish coffee. The pub claimed to have the longest bar in Dublin. I didn’t take any pictures of it because it was most definitely filled with locals, and unlike any bar I’d been to before. First off, it was pretty bright and secondly there was no music or tv on – guess it was a real locals bar. I didn’t want to be touristy so I refrained from snapping away.
We were exhausted by the time we got back to the hotel, so after planning out the next day’s itinerary and arranging an early wake up call of about 7 a.m. (which was the case for most of the trip – I can’t believe I woke up earlier on vacation than I normally do on a work day) we were out like babies.
Until I woke up at around 2:00 a.m. – damn that jet lag! Luckily half an hour of reading one of Agatha Christie’s lesser works put me straight back to sleep again.
And that was Day One.
Ireland was awesome!!! Max and I had a blast. We were extremely fortunate that there was unusually good weather during our trip. Max actually got a sun burn, and I got tanner too. You’d think we went vacationing in Hawaii or something. Anyway, Ireland is a totally beautiful country and we got to visit a lot of really great attractions. Also, since we rented a car, we were able to go from city to city, so we got to roadtrip through the countryside, which was really fun. The countryside was just gorgeous. So green! I've never been anywhere as green as Ireland. Didn’t necessarily smell gorgeous at times, on account of the sheep and the cows all over the country, but it was certainly beautiful. I took a ton of pictures, and I will post most of them dutifully, even though some are not as interesting as others. And there are some great ones that Max thinks he looks bad , and some that I definitely look bad in, so those will remain unpublished.
Anyway, we left for Ireland last Saturday afternoon. We ran tons of errands in the morning, and made it to the airport with two hours to spare. We flew on Aer Lingus, which one of Ireland’s major airlines. However, at LAX it doesn’t have a true terminal and so we actually had to take a ten minute shuttle bus ride to get to the plane. I tried to get a picture of the adorable plane – solid green with a big clover on the tail of it – but it was hard to get it through this window. Oh well.
The flight was pretty good. We had expected it to be a ten hour direct flight, but somehow we got there in 9 hours so that was nice. Our first stop after getting our luggage was to pick up our rental car. Max was a real trooper about the whole rental car thing. First off, I really didn’t want to try to drive on the other side of the road, and secondly renting an automatic car in Europe is twice as expensive as renting a stickshift, so we just got a stickshift (Ford Focus) and Max drove the ENTIRE TIME. Awesome for me, as I got to just sit back and relax. Well, maybe relax is not the right word. I did doze off a lot, but at the same time had to help navigate (Ireland is a country of few road signs, and many of them very unclear). I also had to be the official Watch-er Out-er as in “Watch out for that pigeon/bush/guy trying to cross the street/rock/sheep” The country roads in Ireland are really narrow and winding and there were several times when I was convinced we’d either hit an oncoming car, or the rock wall along the left side of the road, especially as we came around a curve. Luckily, that never happened. We did get lost countless – and I do mean COUNTLESS times, but we always eventually figured our way out. Max seemed to prefer the “Well, let’s drive down this street for another ten minutes and see if that helps” method of finding our way around when we got lost but hell, I didn’t have to drive the whole time, so I didn't complain. Much.
Anyway, here are some random pics taken from our drive from the airport to Dublin – a drive that took us a ridiculous amount of time because of the confusing roads around the city.
Just in case you didn't notice the oncoming cars...
Everything looks so different!
Guess they like Guiness there. ;)
After wandering around lost in Dublin for over an hour, we finally pulled over and asked a taxi driver to point us to Drury Court – our hotel. The taxi driver was extremely kind and rather than giving us directions, which surely would have been very complicated, he told us to just follow him and he’d lead us to the hotel. Afterwards, we tried to tip him but he wouldn’t take our money so that was very nice of him.
Drury Court was a fairly inexpensive but clean hotel located within a 10 minute walk to the City Centre – the heart of the city.
Drury Court from the outside
Some views from our hotel room:
We couldn’t check in yet, because it was too early (I think it was about 1 p.m.) so we decided to kill time by heading to our very first pub for a late lunch, which was right across the street from our hotel.
Our very first Irish pub in Ireland - wish we had asked what the heck is a "hairy lemon."
Inside the Hairy Lemon.
The Hairy Lemon was filled with predominately elderly Irish men (some whose accent was so thick they were quite unintelligible to me) watching some sort of car race on tv. Go figure. Anyway, we each ordered, what else, a pint of Guiness and sat down to relax a bit after traveling for all day. I had started to feel sick which was totally annoying, since I was sick the last time I traveled out of the country, when I went to Shanghai last year. Also the jet lag was getting to me, and I was feeling dizzy (standard Sareet side effects from a long plane ride). I’ve taken pictures of all of my food in Ireland, like my mom did in Shanghai. Can't say I'm a huge fan of Irish food although we did have a few decent meals. Others (frankly, most) weren't so awesome. This meal was not one of the good ones, but here's a pic of it anyway. I ordered the Chicken Curry and Max had the Bangers and Mash. Oh - and not only is Irish food in general not very good, but it's very expensive - this lil meal of ours cost $35 US!
Our first pints!
After our late lunch, we finally checked into our hotel. I rested a bit while Max worked out whether or not to meet up with Pete, who was the groom of the wedding we were to attend in Ireland. Pete and a bunch of his friends were going to a hurling match (some Irish sport that looked a bit like hockey and loacrosse) but with me feeling sick, we decided to spend the afternoon quietly checking out Dublin. I felt a lot better after a hot shower and managed to pull myself together to go out. In the pictures, you'll see I'm wearing like five layers of clothing. It was fairly chilly that day – the only day where the weather was not so great.
St. Patrick's Cathedral
Me at St. Patrick's Cathedral
Ireland's oldest pub, dating from the 1600's.
Another shot of Brazen Head
Max at, as the sign says, the Dublin City Wall and Gates, built in 1240 AD
Some friar's church (don't remember now...)
Christ Church Cathedral
Extension of the Christ Church?
Typical architecture - no shutters, super symmetrical
Temple Bar area
Stephen's Green Shopping Center where we spotted...
TKMaxx??? Wha? Incidentally, later we also spotted an "Eddie Rockets"
One of the many nice things about Ireland is that the days are very long. It was bright until at least 10 p.m. and even after that it didn’t get very dark until after midnight. After we’d seen most of the major attractions in about three hours, we decided it was time for dinner. We chose a place called Oliver St. John Gogarty Restaurant. It seemed incredibly fun and packed in the heart of the Temple Bar district, which is this one street filled with bars and restaurants and people. There was music playing on the lower level, more bar space on the second level, and a warm cozy restaurant on the third level. Unfortunately the service was pretty poor there – I plan on writing a blistering review of it on TripAdvisor but for now, I will just leave it at that. The place served traditional irish food and the menu including dishes that dated back to the 1700’s. Which sort of amazed us once we tasted it – surely someone would have found a way to improve the recipes over the hundreds of years??!!
Oliver St. John Gogarty
Warm and cute on the inside
Patiently waiting for food.
I had the Sackville Street Chicken Casserole (closest to camera) and Max had Uncle Arthur's Beef Casserole.
After dinner we headed back for the hotel. We popped into a pub called the Long Bar for a nightcap of Irish coffee. The pub claimed to have the longest bar in Dublin. I didn’t take any pictures of it because it was most definitely filled with locals, and unlike any bar I’d been to before. First off, it was pretty bright and secondly there was no music or tv on – guess it was a real locals bar. I didn’t want to be touristy so I refrained from snapping away.
We were exhausted by the time we got back to the hotel, so after planning out the next day’s itinerary and arranging an early wake up call of about 7 a.m. (which was the case for most of the trip – I can’t believe I woke up earlier on vacation than I normally do on a work day) we were out like babies.
Until I woke up at around 2:00 a.m. – damn that jet lag! Luckily half an hour of reading one of Agatha Christie’s lesser works put me straight back to sleep again.
And that was Day One.
posted by S at 3:25 PM
2 Comments:
Welcome Back!!! I'm soo jealous. Ireland looked like it was a ton of fun! The food looks yummy, too bad it didn't taste too good. Anyway, I can't wait for your next post!
-"Rudy"
:) Thanks. I enjoy blogging about the trip - it can be tedious though, especially because something seems to wrong with blogger and the pictures only upload properly one out of every four tries.
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