In the ten day span of May 21st through May 31st, 2019 my life experience peaked. Ireland was the first stop and it was a dream. After a rocky start to our travels, ¾ of us landed in Dublin Thursday night and were welcomed by the amazingly friendly locals.
We only had two nights in Dublin but we tried to pack in as much as we could. The city is great and much resembles Boston, MA. The Guinness Museum was one tourist thing we made sure to see, and this place was huge. I actually learned a lot about the brewing process and it was neat that we got to learn how to properly pour a Guinness from the tap. (45 degree angle). We also saw Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, ate at Dublin’s oldest pub, swooned over Trinity College’s campus and saw much more by walking around the city. We were lucky enough to meet some great people in Dublin and it was definitely the best way to start out our trip!
Come Saturday morning, we were tired but excited for the next step: our rental car! None of us had ever driven on the left side of the road before, or in a car with the steering wheel on the right hand side for that matter. Needless to say, we made the smart decision to spend a bit more cash in order to book an automatic. To our pleasant surprise, it was actually very easy to adjust to driving on the opposite side. The only thing that caused anxiety was the speed at which everyone travels on such narrow and windy roads! We only thought we were going to get squashed by big busses or trucks traveling in the opposite direction a couple handfuls of times...it was fine, we lived, and with no damage done to the car! :)
The couple hour drive from Dublin to the Cliffs of Moher served us all the green cites we craved. The farmland scenery also gave me hints of home, but Irish version. When we got to the Cliffs we were blown away by the views. Shocker. All the locals we chatted with later on in our trip kept telling us how lucky we got that we were able to go along the walking paths because it often gets so cloudy, rainy, and windy there that they have to close it. But we had a mix of sunshine and clouds!
In Shannon we stayed at our first airbnb, who gave us a ton of free snacks, and headed further south on Sunday. We hit Adare, which is a cute little town that reminded me of Galena, IL (if you know you know), but smaller than Galena and with thatched roofs, a castle, and a luxury golf course, no big deal. We arrived in Killarney which has a beautiful national park that we hiked around. The park was free entrance and there were so many families out and about, it was refreshing to see so many people spending an afternoon like that together. In Florence there are not large open parks like this. Open space is something I crave when I’m in the city!
From there we started our way to Greystones. On our way we stopped in Blarney to go to the castle and gardens. Yes we kissed the Blarney stone, the same one that thousands of others over the past century have kissed. But I am not going to think about the germs because now we have the gift of eloquence while simultaneously strengthening our immune systems. The gardens surrounding the castle ruins were phenomenal. There were so many different sections of the grounds to be explored and each time we came upon a new clearing, I felt like I was in a whole different world. And with it being spring, many flowers were in bloom and made everywhere surrounding fragrant. I could have easily spent an entire afternoon there. However, after we had gawked at the majority of the grounds we had to move on.
Our host in Greystones also blew us away with her hospitality. She even gave us a quick tour around town in her car and dropped us off at a great restaurant within walking distance of her house. The next morning we woke up early to look at Greystones’ bay before we headed up to Dublin for our flight. Safe to say us three all had mixed feelings about Ireland. We did not want to leave the beautiful green gem, but we were looking forward to all Scotland had to offer us! Needless to say, Scotland did not disappoint.