They see me rolling, to the pub...

As I told you before, we are heading back to Dublin, (since that is where the flight takes off).
We didn’t really know what to do, because this was our last day and we arrived in Dublin sometime in the afternoon, I think it was like 4 o’clock. So there wasn’t really much time to do stuff. Anyways we decided to go to a restaurant and use all opportunity’s to taste all the stuff we could.

We spent a lot of money on a restaurant named Roly’s. Jo took the roast breast of free range Chicken stuffed with Black pudding with colcannon creamed Potato and chicken Jus.
I ate the traditional Kerry lamb pie with roasted parsnips and thyme. I didn’t really like it so I also ordered the char-grilled rib eye of Irish Hereford beef with fondant potato and pepper sauce.
I know, how do I remember all the stuff? I’m a pro you know, no just kidding, I took a photo of the menu.

We were quite full after those dishes so we waited a while, but we were determined to order dessert as well.

After almost one hour of chatting and resting we were finally ready to order some dessert. I took the Chocolate brownie ice cream sundae, jummy, and Jo took Roly’s pie without knowing what was in it… It looked nice however.

We couldn’t leave Ireland without testing some off the pubs. Why? You just can’t!
We went to O'Donoghue's “The Big Daddy of Folk Music” As we are big fans of Folk music, not… I have no idea how we managed to walk after all that food, but we did somehow. The pub got crowded after an hour or so, because there was a live performance by some guys with guitars and accordions. Everyone was cheering and singing along, well trying, while I just sat there looking at them with no emotions what so ever. Jo on the other hand was dancing like a crazy bastard. I tried to pretend I didn’t know him, but he kept talking to me and shouting for me to come dance with him. He was so drunk I had to carry him out to the taxi when he passed out.

The pub thing wasn’t the best idea considering we had to catch the plane at 8 the next morning. All I can say is that it wasn’t a great experience to fly home with a hangover…

Powercourt estate

Since we don’t have that much time left in Ireland we have to start our trip back to Dublin. Just because that’s where the plane takes off. We didn’t really think about that when we ordered the tickets, but anyways…

We decided to visit Powercourt Estate before we left. So we took a bus to Enniskerry village in Wicklow, bus 44 if you want to know. And after that we had to walk for approximately 25 minutes to get to Powerscourt Estate. Lots of names and stuff to keep track on, I know…
Anyway, the reason we went here issss…..  the highest  waterfall in Ireland!!!
It´s 398 ft. (or 121 m if you prefer the metric system).  It looks a little like a mixture between a waterfall and a small brock, but very steep of course.

You couldn’t imagine how lovely the sound from the waterfall sounded when you heard it from a distance. It was almost like we were in a fairytale. But then it was ruined by all the tourists…
If it wasn’t for all the loud talking from everywhere it would have been perfect.

Standing quite close to the waterfall and looking up at it you could feel the water kind of splashing to your face. I wanted to climb up that mountain so badly. I wanted to see where the waterfall started. I imagined some kind of water source with smooth movements by the wind and the water sparkling in the sun like a harmonic picture. 

I suggested the idea of climbing the mountain too Jo, but he started whining about how badly his feet hurt after the long walk. It wasn’t that long, but I agree now afterwards, it wasn’t a great idea, considering it started to rain about half an hour later, and I probably would have been disappointed when I found out my picture off the source wasn’t like I imagine… Well well, that’s life.

The rest of the court was also nice, we didn’t play golf though. There were some statues and flower arrangements but it definitely didn’t beat the waterfall. According to the brochure it would take approximately an hour to walk through the whole area. We made it in 46 minutes, ha! 

Creepy place

So, now the time has come for us to go home.

On our way back we decided to take a little roundabout and visit some more places.

One of them was a little town, near the Thurles. 

Tell you what, it was a creepy little town with the big stoned church in the middle, empty streets, and no living spirit.

As usual the first thing we did was to try find a hotel. Surprisingly most of the hotels were closed.. So we walked around trying to find a place to rest. Finally we met some old guy who guided us to a place he knew we could sleep over. 

It was a big stoned castle, with the long vining grass growing on the walls.

We stepped inside, surprisingly it was actually a hotel. It was an old castle, a bit remade but basically in the same style ass 300 year ago. The receptionist was a small girl with a nice smile and old styled close, I looked at her eyes and got a bit of an uneasy feeling there.. She had a dark eyes, near black would I say..

Anyways, we got up in our room, it was cold, it had old pictures on the walls, an empty fireplace, small windows, but high ceilings so that made me feel better, otherwise I would rather sleep outside on the doormat then in the creepy claustrophobic hotel room.. 

The night came. I heard someone passing by our room several times sometime at midnight. That disturbed me cause I´m the kind of type who cant stand small sounds. So I got up walked slowly to the door, and tried to open it. It was closed, I tried harder, still, the door didn’t open, I panicked for a moment but then I heard the footsteps coming, it came closer and stopped behind the door. Suddenly, i fellt someone gently putting the key into the door! My brain froze, I backed away, and jumped into the bed, pretending to sleep. Someone opened the door, looked quietly for a moment, and closed it again. Couldn´t close my eyes the rest of the night.

Next morning the door was open, and nothing seemed to be weird anymore. When we got downstairs the girl was still standing there, we farewelled and was about to go out when I looked into her eyes, they were still black. o_O

Cozy.

Near the blue

The day after the rain walking experience, we decided to take it easy. So I spent the whole day sitting on the sofa and surfing on internet. By random searching I found an article about the most beautiful places in Europe. And surprisingly we were like 11 miles away from one of them, having no idea about it! So next day we caught the buss and went straight to that place.

Maybe you’re not as retarded as we are and already know what I´m talking about -

Cliffs of Moher.

One more time: A m a z i n g. 

The cliffs of Moher are located at the southwest edge of the Burren region. It’s like those big, big stones rising 120 meters above the Atlantic Ocean and reach their maximum height of 214 metres. Power of nature.

The cliffs consist of sandstone and some other shit I don’t remember the name of. Some say you can see 300 million years old river channels cutting through the base of cliffs, well I couldn´t see those, but I could totally see the view surrounding me…

The O´Brien´s Tower located near the midpoint of the cliffs is a stone tower built in 1835 by Sir Cornelius O´Brien. From the top of the watch tower you could see the Aran Islands in Galway Bay, the Twelve Pins mountain ranges to the north and Loop Head to the south.

And in front –an almighty view, one step forward and you are gone in the blue. Anyways, this place receive about one million visitors a year, and that makes me feel even more retarded…

The name of the cliffs came from an old fort called Moher that once stood on the southernmost point of the cliffs. It was demolished in 1808 because of the alien adoption... So it is a very nice place to visit if you want to feel the power of the wind and a bit of mad curiosity forcing you to jump down those cliffs.

Back to the hotel today.

I have woken my mate up by pulling him out of the bed, and said that we are going to wander in the beautiful nature of Ireland this afternoon.

Breakfast. Have heard about eggs an bacon before, but never actually thought about eating lunch or even dinner at breakfast. Well, as you know UK and Ireland are known by this meal of the day. So Jojo forced me to order it. Could barely breeth after that breakfast, got upstairs and laid down for 30 min. just tried to make that big stomach disappear by lying on it (didn´t help).

Like eating healthy. 

We skipped the lunch (because of the breakfast) and started our journey to the center of the earth (no) just discovering new places around the hotel. 

Packed a bag with some biscuits & tea and headed on.

Only one word: A m a z i n g , you could feel God´s breath in those mountains, hills, rivers, fields, shadows of the rocks, sun rays..

The weather was absolutely great, sun shining, blue sky. Flowers and tries moving by winds tone, I could feel the gravity so clear, I was the only object on this huge landscape moving by its own will. Felt a great desire to lie down on that smooth grass and wallow like a baby… smell the grain blended with flower extract..  Hielooooooowww!!

That was Jo, he came from the back and destroyed the whole euphoria feeling by screaming into my ear.

    After a wild wandering from place to place I felt a drop on my chin. First thought in my head:  “No, you don´t.. ” .. ow yes it did. After a sec the rain was pouring all over us, it got on so quickly we barely reacted and just started running towards somewhere. We got lost. Happily I had my bag with me, we could taste some wet cookies and cold tea.

 How we got home I´m not gonna tell you. But the most importing thing´s that we actually did gett home..

Feel the power. 

We decided to go west towards Galway. You´l find it one way or another if you turn like  90^o from  Dublin and just go straight (should reach it in some weeks if you walk..)  Bu I didn´t really felt like walking so we jumped on the train and reached the side of the country in about 3 hours.

Today morning I woke up from the sound. Have never heard the sound before, I kinda froze for a moment (as we all do when something is not as it use to be) and listened quietly..  Then stood up (Jo was still sleeping, sleepy head.. ) walked around, heard a noise again, looked out of the window and there was it!

 A whole bunch of sheep standing just down the rode besides the hotel. Some man with a car tried to scare them off the rode, but as it seemed sheep didn´t really got the situation going on, and kept bleating loudly in response.

As I´m raised in the city, I have never heard that sound before (in reality), quiet annoying sound actually..

But anyways Irish are connected with sheep. In 17th century the wool industry in Ireland grew dramatically, one country after another (especially in west) started opening factories with the successful high quality wool industry. The export of wool also became current in time.

In 18^th century  wool  industry declined and in 19th it stagnated. Now days the sheep is kept for more simple reason – meat. The wool industry is on but mostly only in between country lines.  Irish sheep population today  is about 3,5 million.

Some people keep them privately, and those sheep sometimes wander a bit to far from home.

why are they blue?

Dublin Castle

Just to get some history in to this trip we visited the castle of Dublin. It has a 700 years long story to tell so I was ready to listen to the guide for hours. Fortunately it wasn’t too long actually.  The guided tour was just a little bit over an hour and then we were free to wander the castle as we wanted, almost…

Once upon a time the British ruled Ireland from this castle and throughout time it has survived a whole lot, Vikings, explosions, trading and fires. Today it’s mostly a tourist attraction. Talk about retiring… Apparently it also represents 700 years of feud between Ireland and England, according to some at least.
Except being a tourist attraction it’s a police museum, has a library and sometimes they arrange meetings for state affaires in it. Now we are talking about a castle with multiple uses…

The castle has been upgraded a little bit and been repaired over time of course. Because, as I said, it has been through a lot, but you still get a feeling like you are traveling through time when you walk along the corridors and look up on the huge walls.

Before we left the castle we took a quick look at the old treasure chamber, according to me that was one of the coolest things in the castle. My friend however liked the library better.
Well, do you know how many books you could buy with all the money they could fit in that chamber? Ok, I don’t know either… But it wasn’t really the amount of money they could fit in the chamber that amazed me, more the cave like feeling I got when I was there. The smell however was a bit too much after a while.

It feels like we could need some more time here in Dublin, but we have more places to visit and new things too see. So see you at the next stop.

Remember how I told you about the National concert hall and so? Today we found some tickets to a concert, last minute luck or something I guess. We didn’t get the best seats but it didn’t matter actually. The concert was awesome, and the sound was heard all over the hall. They played some music I’ve never heard before created by John Field. He was an Irish composer born in Dublin in 1782. He was taught by Muzio Clementi and except being a composer he was also a concert pianist and teacher.

I can’t help myself but laugh some when the musicians get carried away by the music they are playing and start to swing back and forth in their seats. At first it looks hilarious, but when you get used to it, it looks more professional.

The concert lasted for 2 and a half hours and after that we ate some at a pub.
We tried out some beer and they told us about hops flowers used in beer which gives it some of the flavor. I didn’t know it meant so much in the production of beer, but apparently it does. You can use all kind of hops flowers to give it flavor, but I can’t remember all the names, most of them where in Latin like Hopelopus fopelosus… weird language… Can’t they give those flowers a name in English as well? Is it too much to ask? Just kidding

Anyway, we didn’t do much after that. We went shopping in a souvenir store and bought a cup each, one with a print saying I love Dublin and one with a picture of the city. I wanted to by a sweater, but they didn’t look to nice considering the price, so I guess I can wait with that… 

Ireland, here we come!!

Today we are heading down to Ireland. We left the house at 6 am because the plane was taking of at 7.30.
The ride was ok, the funniest part is taking off and landing. The rest of the planeride was just cloudy and sleepy.
On the plane they offered some buns and coffee or tea. The bun is nothing to recommend but the tea was ok.

On the plane I read a small brochure about Ireland. It became an island shortly after the last ice age and because of that there are not that many animals. There are only 26 native land mammals, but they have more than 400 spices of different birds. Omg! Hope I remembered to bring an umbrella…

We arrived just in time for lunch at the hotel. The hotel wasn’t big but it was really cozy. It´s called Glenogra Guesthouse and lies more or less centrally. One of the cool things is that it lies very close to some embassies. The one closest is the UK or maybe the American embassy, it’s hard to tell on the map. The hotel is also close to the national concert hall.
Hope we can find some play to watch, that would be cool!

In our room we dropped our bags at the floor and went straight out to the closest restaurant.
We were starving!!
We found a great restaurant almost on Merrion Road called Lobster pot. As you may have guessed, they serve sea-food. Unfortunately it was a little pricey, otherwise I think I could have eaten three more plates.
We didn’t order dessert after all, it was too expensive and we wanted to be able to eat the rest days of the trip as well.
After lunch we gather all the brochures we could find and tried to plan how to see as much as possible in Dublin before we went to the next place.

Well, that’s all for today
Have a nice one!

This is the blog about my journey together with one off my friends to Ireland.

The trip will last till the end of week 8 and hopefully both you and me will have learned some about the country Ireland.

Hope you enjoy reading :)