The Parent Visit pt IV: Trim Castle and Hill of Tara

Woohoo! Finally catching up! This was the final weekend in Ireland for my mom. The following weekend we would be spending in England before she headed home. My dad had already headed home to return to work earlier in the week. It had been a pretty busy month of touristy stuff, so instead of going crazy and hitting the road for a third straight full weekend of tourist stuff, we decided to just go out for the Saturday and take it easy on the Sunday. So we headed out fairly close by to Dublin to see Trim castle, following that up with the nearby Hill of Tara.

Trim Castle is a tall imposing structure. It had been overgrown for quite some time before being reclaimed and restored. Seeing the keep itself was by guided tour only, and fortunately for us the next tour was starting just as we arrived. So we got shown around the castle. Due to its lengthy time being overgrown, the walls of the castle are stained green from the moss and other plants growing on the walls. It makes for quite an interesting green glow inside the castle.

On the main floor of the castle, the people who restored the castle also put up three small models of the castle at three different points in its history. They were actually really cool to see how the castle changed over history. After our tour, we walked around the grounds of the castle, enjoying the beautiful sunny weather.

Our next destination was the Hill of Tara -- not too far away from Trim Castle. Unlike a lot of the tourist attractions we've been to, the Hill of Tara is pretty unassuming. At least in comparison to all the fancy castles and amazing natural wonders we'd seen over the past few weeks. Still, the hill had a certain quiet grandeur that I couldn't quite place. There's a lot of history there -- the hill had been used thousands of years ago as a place to crown kings, and as a burial site as well.

The fields are quiet and calm, with sheep grazing on the grass. You kinda have to watch your step as you walk around the fields and on the hill itself -- the sheep have definitely been all over that field! There are actually quite a few hilled rings all over the place there, although the biggest ones are in the middle of the field where the "stone of destiny" is.

It was a nice peaceful walk around the area. Unfortunately, photos on the hills themselves were really hard to get. Any sort of sloped terrain is something that is notoriously hard to photograph without looking just like slightly rolly hills. Oh well - it was still quite pretty.

So it was a pretty nice relaxing day and we headed back fairly early to go continue relaxing at home. Up next! We head to England to visit some of my mom's friends from quite a few years back, and walk around the beautiful Sissinghurst gardens.

Morgan

The Parent Visit pt III: North Coast Trip

The weekend following the west coast trip, our plan was to head up North to check out the Giant's Causeway in particular, as well as some of the sights and attractions in that area. We got out of the apartment fairly late on Saturday morning, and started up the highway in the direction of Belfast. For whatever reason, we decided to pass on going into Belfast on this trip. It's been a little while now, so I can't remember exactly why. At any rate, we ended up at Carrickfergus Castle, which is not far out of Belfast. On this particular day, there was a fencing contest going on inside the castle -- what a cool place for a fencing competition! This particular castle has been kept in fairly good shape by restoration. We wandered in and around the castle for awhile before heading across the parking lot for lunch.

We hopped back into the car after lunch and took the coastal drive up towards the causeway. The coastal drive is a fair amount longer, but we had heard from trusted sources that it was worth it. That advice turned out to be true. The drive was beautiful, causing us to stop several times to take pictures and enjoy the scenery. It turned out to be a really good thing we did go up then rather than the next day since the weather was far superior on Saturday compared to the next day! But I get ahead of myself.

We passed the sign pointing the way to the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, and since it wasn't too late yet and the weather was still very nice out, we decided to head there first before heading to the B&B. The Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge connects Ireland to a small grassy and rocky island. In times past, the safety of crossing the bridge was a bit questionable, but what's in place today is a much safer incarnation. The walk up to the bridge is maybe a half hour hike with some truly spectacular views. The lovely weather, and the wonderful views made the walk well worth it, even without the bridge at the end!

The Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge itself was solidly built, and led the way over to a beautiful little island to walk around on. There was some cliffs to be a little careful of, but it was lovely and peaceful on the island. We took a bunch of pictures, and wandered around for awhile before returning to the bridge and the walk back to the car.

Our next stop was the B&B which was just outside of Bushmills. It was a lovely little place, and the lady there kindly directed us to the Smuggler's Inn for dinner when we asked for recommendations on a place to eat for dinner. So we headed there, and it was totally delicious! We got lucky and scored a table in the corner in what was basically a totally packed place. There was a pile of food, and potatoes done in a gazillion different ways, and some great atomsphere in there. Late in our meal, a couple of guys came in and started playing some traditional Irish music, and they were really quite good. So all in all it was a wonderful little evening.

The next day we got up relatively early for breakfast and then headed up to the Giant's Causeway -- a natural formation that I've wanted to see since I saw some of my sister's pictures from when she was there. Unforunately, the weather didn't cooperate with us, and it was misty with a bit of a rain. Still, the causeway is definitely a beautiful area. The area consists of a couple of kilometers of walks along the coast and cliffs. Down on the coast there's a series of pentagon and hexagonal stones at many different heights. It is a pretty crazy looking thing -- definitely worth seeing!

We spent a couple hours walking around the causeway and taking pictures before hopping back in the car and heading further along the northern coast to Dunluce castle. Unlike Carrickfergus which is in pretty good shape, Dunluce castle is a ruined castle. Apparently, part of the castle fell off the cliff into the ocean while people were living in it! They've since stabilized the cliffs, and the castle is pretty cool to explore in its ruined state.

From there, we continued down the road to Portrush beach, where despite the mist was quite a nice place. There was a big sandy beach and we even saw some people heading out into the water to go surfing!

After all this sight seeing is was definitely time to head back to Dublin. It was a very good weekend trip!

Morgan

One Year in Dublin!

Wow, I almost missed it. Thank you blog sidebar-counter! It's really hard to believe that we've been in Dublin for a year already. The time is just flying by us, and it's hard to keep up. The company has been a great place to work thus far, with all kinds of perks. We've been to some pretty incredible company-thrown parties, as well as some pretty awesome private parties. We've hung out with Howard Lederer, and Chris Ferguson. And we've made a lot of friends who've kept the fun agenda busy! We've seen some concert acts including a huge show by U2 just recently.

Regretably, we haven't actually done that much in the way of travelling. Something that will have to be rectified soon. That said, we've been to Salzburg, Linz, and Vienna in Austria, Budapest in Hungary, Brighton in England, as well as numerous Irish towns, castles, and coasts.

It's been immensely rewarding thus far, and there's still a lot of room to do tons more. So here's to one year in Dublin, and hopefully the next year will be as fun as the last!

Morgan

The Parent Visit pt II: West Coast Trip

Life isn't standing still here, and it's becoming hard to get the motivation to finish these posts. But I can do it! A week after my parents arrived in Dublin, we undertook the first road trip in Ireland where our car was the vehicle (past trips were thanks to Darse and Xan's car). On this particular trip, we took our car West with the aim of seeing the Cliffs of Moher. So we packed up some provisions and some overnight gear and got going relatively early on Saturday morning.

The start of the journey out of Dublin was on some nice dual carriageways (that's what they call divided highways here), but once you get a certain distance out from Dublin, the roads start to get narrow. Driving becomes interesting on these roads, and it's a little hard to get used to.

At any rate, we neared the area known as the Burren, which is a very distinctive rocky area near the west coast of Ireland. In the vicinity of the town of Gort, we took a bit of a wrong turn and ended up on some *really* narrow roads. Just about the time we were thinking of turning around and retracing our steps though, we came across some ruins. Having been driving for awhile, it seemed like a good place to stop and stretch our legs. Apparently we had run across Kilmacduagh - the ruins of an Irish monastery. It's still a bit hard to get used to being in a country where you can just drive by ruins of significance at random ...

At any rate, we decided to brave the tiny roads and continue along our path. We hadn't actually planned the weekend out very well, which turned out to be a good thing -- because if we had, we might not have made it in time for any bookings. Still, we kind of were in a mood to "see stuff". In the Burren there were a ton of signs pointing out various things to see. One thing that caught my mom's eye was the Burren Perfumery, which apparently is something of note. So we followed those signs into a quiet little area where there was a house and tea cottage. There was a very nice video with some stunning photos of the Burren area, which was pretty enjoyable.

Back in the car, we headed towards the town of Lisdoonvarna where we had booked a bed and breakfast for the night. When we entered the town, great big signs proclaimed Lisdoonvarna as the matchmaking capital of Europe. Huh, who knew? Anyway, we found our B&B and dropped off our bags before persuing some local food. After some quick pub grub we headed down to the coastal town of Doolin which was a short drive away. Our aim was to scout out the terrain to see if we could find where we could catch a boat to take us to see the Cliffs of Moher from the sea.

It was a beautiful evening, so it was also well worth the walk to see what we could find. On the way, we found a little pitch-and-putt golf course right next to the ocean. I really can't think of a more picturesque place for such a thing, and it was enough to pull us in to play a round. Well, let me tell you, we're not very good at golf! The 18(!) holes of golf took us entirely too long to play. The poor guy who rented out our clubs was waiting for us to finally finish up so he could go home. Still, it was well worth it!

The shops at the dock had all closed already, but I was able to take a few names back to the B&B to look up and see what the rates were. It had been a fairly long day on the road, so we returned back to the B&B to rest up!

The next morning, after a full Irish breakfast at the B&B, we headed back down to the coast where we signed up for the first boat at noon that day. It turned out we were a bit early, so for the next couple hours we spent some time walking around on the coast. My mom and Diane headed into Doolin to check out some shops, while my dad and I walked around and enjoyed the sunshine and the scenery. I was quite happy with the photos I took while walking around!

Reconvening at the docks, we boarded a boat which took us over to the cliffs. About 5 minutes into the journey though, I got a red-alert phone call from work. Whoops, talk about bad timing! I wasn't able to help out when I could barely hear the guy on the other end of the phone, so I apologized and promised to call in when I got back to land. So with that rather unfortunate downer, the boat took us off to see some rather magnificent looking cliffs. It's too bad the sun didn't stick around for our little tour -- annoyingly it clouded over just for that bit. Still, some of the pictures turned out!

The boat takes you fairly close to the cliffs, although not very close -- since there's some danger of falling rocks. It did take us quite close An Bhreannán Mór -- a pillar separated away from the cliffs. Both this pillar of rock and the cliffs make excellent bird nesting sites, and boy were there a lot of them! We got close enough to catch a whiff. Yeah, birds are pretty stinky! Seriously!

Back ashore, I called into work, but they had sorted out the issue so it was back to being a tourist for me! We hopped back in the car and headed north in the general direction of Galway. It was my intention to take a quick look in Galway and find some food before heading home. But we kind of got sidetracked with some of the sights along the coast. It's quite a beautiful drive there, and we stopped several times to take photos and walk around the rocky terrain of the Burren. So it was well into the afternoon and we hadn't even made it near Galway yet, so stopped in a cafe in a little town for lunch before heading home.

I'd say it was a decently successful weekend, even if it was a bit disorganized!

Morgan

The Parent Visit: Arrival, Malahide Castle

My parents flew in from Austria on June 6, late in the evening. After getting them home from the airport, we caught up a bit before turning in to sleep (it was late, after all!). The next morning, the weather didn't appear to be too bad so we formulated a plan to go see something. Malahide castle is not too far away from the Dublin area, so it seemed like a likely candidate. We decided to drive down to Bray (a town just south of Dublin) and hop on the Dart train and take it all the way up the coast and through the city centre all the way up to the castle. It turns out that this was quite a bit longer a trip than we thought ... and with less coastal views than we rememebered. The Dart train isn't really something we take on a regular basis. Oh well.

Still, we made it to Malahide and wandered around the grounds for awhile trying to find the castle itself. There's a fairly sizeable park there, with a lot of trails, playgrounds, sports pitches and general grassy fields. It was a nice day though so we enjoyed a bit of a walk until we came across the castle itself. For some reason though, we came across it from the back entrance which was slightly confusing.

There was a guided tour starting right away, so we got in on that. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed inside (seems like too many places these days have a no photography policy). The tour was actually quite interesting -- It's pretty cool to hear about a building that has so much history. I'm not too sure how much I can remember from the tour, except for just a couple of details. The first being that in one of the rooms, there was an amazing marble table in one corner. The table's surface had several colours of stone inlaid like a mosaic, and it was incredibly beautiful. According to our audio tour, no one's been able to figure out how the person accomplished it ... The second thing I remember from the tour was a portrait in the stairwell of the castle. The portrait depicts a child wearing red shoes being held by her mother Mrs Talbot. The child would grow up to be the woman who sold the castle to the Irish State.

After the tour, we stopped in the cafe there for a quick lunch and then wandered back out onto the grounds for a bit. Eventually we returned back to the dart station and headed home.

That evening, we headed into the city centre on the LUAS and headed in for some dinner at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen. It had been on our list of places to go try, since several people had recommended it. Turns out it was actually quite good!

So that's how we spent the first full day my parents were here. Throughout the week, I went to work, so the next stuff I saw with them would be on the next weekend: our trip to the Irish West Coast.

Morgan