For my graduation present I gave myself a trip to Ireland. Why Ireland? Why not? I've never been off the North American Continent and thought that it's about time that I had. And what better place to visit than Ireland?
Going to give you an overview of our Ireland holiday in this post then for those who care or just for my own entertainment I'll blog a few posts with more detail.
This is my google map of our itinerary, we stuck to it for the most part. The problem is that we didn't have google on the road and I didn't get around to print the maps so we looked at it in the morning when we could and did the best we could to remember where we wanted to go. A great help was that we used an Irish travel agency - Exploring Ireland. The main reason we went with a travel agency is that we did not have the time to research where we wanted to visit and to find hotels and Bed & Breakfasts. We gave Explore Ireland an idea of what we wanted to see and do while we were there and how long we were going to be there and they found our rooms, a car and gave us a suggested itinerary. We were thrilled with Exploring Ireland - all of the hotels and B&Bs they sent us to were great, we didn't have a problem with any of them or the car rental. The best part was that we paid Exploring Ireland and they gave us vouchers, so we didn't have to worry about paying each hotel/B&B some of which wanted cash, so we didn't want to carry around extra cash.
We spent the first 5 days in Dublin. The first night we spent at the Fitzpatrick Castle in Dalkey, which I think they built the castle with the idea of turning it into a hotel the minute it was done. It didn't seem like much of a castle. This was about a half hour south of Dublin and to get there we took the crazy taxi, thought for sure we were going to die! The first day is a blur - seemed like two minutes after the sun set it was rising again and I cannot sleep on planes.
I love Dublin! It felt like an American city. I compare it to Washington DC because both cities are the capitals with government buildings and memorials and both are low rise, no tall buildings but still very densely populated. There is so much to see and do in Dublin that we should have spent more time there. One interesting thing is that the whole country shuts down at 6pm except pubs. There was nothing to do after 6pm, even some of the parks shut down, except go to pubs and since we don't do much of that we just roomed around the streets.
After Dublin we got a rental car with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car and the driving on the wrong side of the road and no GPS. The first day of driving was kinda nerve racking- everyone drives 50-60mph on skinny winding roads and trying to remember to stay on the left side. Their sign system is difficult to figure out (when there are signs) and it takes a bit to get use to all the round-a-bouts. But after two days of driving it got kinda fun and I actually miss the round-a-bouts, much more efficient. They are in the process of building a freeway system, some of which has round-a-bouts, think about that, driving on I-15 and coming to a round-a-bout to get onto I-80. The freeways we did drive on were very new and most of the time we were the only ones on it.
The greatest thing we did besides the Hop on Hop off bus to tour Dublin, that gave us three days of using their tour buses, any city bus and the airport bus (that we used to get our rental car) was purchasing the Heritage card. Everything we went to cost money, 1 euro to 15 euro each, that adds up and makes the decision of what we wanted to visit. The Heritage card gave us access to all nationally owned heritage sites. We more than used what the card cost us and went to many sites that we wouldn't have gone to with out the card. We ended up focusing our site seeing on what sites were listed in the heritage book which we should have done in the first place.
We loved Ireland. Around every corner was another breath taking view. We have hundreds of pictures of scenery most of which T took while driving past. We would have needed another two weeks at the least to stop at every picturesque opportunity. T's favorite was the Muckross House and the Ring of Kerry. I would have to say my favorite was Dublin and the history of the whole country.
