Today was a rushed and disastrous affair. Thankfully the lady running our B&B was super helpful, as was her husband. We set off to the airport to grab our rental. Drove back almost unscathed. Someone had left their vehicle halfway in the middle of the road with their flashers on. I had not adjusted to driving on the left, nor was I used to how small the roads actually are. I smacked the persons car with my side mirror. Thankfully they are retractable (which actually when you park the car it is advisable to push your mirror in on the road facing side) and there was no damage. We parked and loaded up our luggage and then set off to finally master the bus system and see the last bit of Dublin. Side note: we hadn't encountered any problems checking in our luggage on the way here on Aer Lingus but the B&B lady was shocked we were allowed to have such large luggage and so many pieces... I hope we don't have any trouble on our way out... It was actually sunny today and I was over dressed but we stopped by the Tourism Centre and bought the rubgy shirt I had my eye on and I changed into it and was much more comfortable. We then hopped on the bus heading for Killmainham jail (the place where Eamon de Valera, and other famous Irish politicos were imprisoned and where "In the Name of the Father" was filmed for those of you who don't know any famous Irish figures). Being that Steve is Steve and I'm really not that much better so far - we missed the stop because we didn't ask someone about it (I figured I'd see signs along the way...). We toured through much of the suburbs before we got up the courage to ask the driver and so we ended up hoping off at the next stop and catching a bus in the other direction. We arrived there and started the tour and it was the longest, driest tour ever. Good historical info, very good actually, but the guide rubbed me the wrong way and made it harder to listen to. Tour took WAY longer than I had anticipated and although we hopped on the bus right away to make our way to the Jamiesons Distillery - our little detour through the suburbs meant that we arrived at the place at 5:10 just as the cashier was putting the sign away and we were told it had just sold out. Oh well - I don't like whiskey anyways... We had a fairly plain dinner on Lower Abbey street. My lasagna was actually pretty good and Steve had fish and chips. I swear that on this trip I have now eaten more bread in the last few days than I have in the entirety of the year 2008 thus far. To put it politely my digestive system is currently in revolt - but for a person on the run that doesn't have the time or the choices available it is super hard to find anyway to eat.
The B&B lady's husband warned us about rush hour and drivers with Yellow license plates. Apparently on the Ireland stretch of the M1 highway they don't get demerits for speeding or anything so if you see a yellow plate coming up behind you just get out of the way. We left much later than we had originally intended in order to miss rush hour and at first the drive wasn't that bad - it seemed to go by super quickly actually. That is until we got just outside of Belfast around 8:15pm. Constructions signs everywhere but no one seemed to be slowing down. Wasn't sure what to do - tried slowing down to the posted 40km but hard to do when everyone else is blwoing by you at 80km. Made it to the outskirts of the city and then Hell began. When I get home I'm going to take the time to create a map of Belfast and diagram just exactly where we went but for now I guess I'll talk myself through it. We ended up way past city centre at a Port turn off - neither of us having seen the unmissable junction on which the tourism lady had indicated on our map. I turned off the M1 and pulled into a gas station and intended to use a pay phone and call the B&B and ask for directions. No pay phone... Anger rising. Drove all the way back to the beginning of the M1 city centre turnoffs. Construction EVERYWHERE along here - with men in the process of changing the cone patterns on the road as we are dirivng back and forth... Still not seeing this roundabout we are supposed to be using we turn onto Lisburn road and try and look at the map again together. Having back tracked Steve thinks he has found an alternate route we can try based on signs we passed that had streets we could find on the map. Went all the way back up the M1 to exit onto Divis Street which according to the map we should be able to take straight through. We get halfway up this road and encounter a dead end and a sign indicating that a new roadway has been created. We back track on the M1 on exit the next exit not under construction in hopes of finding a street on the map we can follow. At this point it is starting to get dark and between trying not to kill us and looking for road signs (which are very poorly marked if marked at all anywhere along the main streches), getting more and more frustrated, I pull over and tell Steve to get directions. He phones the B&B from a Chinese Take Out place and gets directions from where we currently are. Unfortunately the streets the lady has indicated fall off the map that we currently have to follow. We keep driving and I pull into another gas station and luckily a cabby overhears me asking for directions and tries to point us in the right way tellings us we are "almost there" - we head back the way we came looking for Park Lane. It is now very dark and Steve can barely see. He thinks we have missed it as we go over a bridge that he tells me isn't on the map (it was). I pull over to look at the map and show him the bridge to which he replies that compared to the drawing it didn't seem big enough to be the same river and bridge on the map. We turn around yet again and head back to where he thinks Park Lane is and turn down it only to find part way that the road has been torn entirely up. Backtrack again and try and turn down a different street to get to Ravenshill Road. We find it but Steve still can't see anything and it is hard for me to pay attention to driving and make out the road signs. We get to the end of the road and have to turn back again as it is clear we have missed it. We stop at a pub and ask for directions and head off again. We turn after the church on the road and now we are on some random lane - not the right place and I have to do what I think must've been the 6th or 7th 4 point turn probably against traffic direction. We finally pull up and I park the car, turn off the engine and promptly burst into tears. The tears come at 11:45pm. A glass of wine would've been nice at this point but A) no corkscrew B) pubs close at midnight and C) we didn't know when we booked but the Maranthe House is a non-alcoholic establishment. Who needs to start drinking at midnight anyway. The room was nice although the pillows were overly soft and not comfortable. At least we made it!
Saturday, May 24, 2008
May 22nd
We were both hungover today after the pub crawl and were fairly slow to get going. Check out time was noon and we didn't get out of there much earlier. They let us store our bags so we could see a bit more of Dublin before moving to our first B&B. We made an attempt to upload some of our photos to Flickr but our internet time ran out before we could get the batch loaded. We managed to get one single one up - one of me looking tired "La Med." We ended up forgetting the camera cord in that room at this point and that is why you are getting all these posts without any photos. We also at this point still hadn't figured out how the power converters worked... We set out after our failed photo upload attempt and hit Trinity College. Steve wanted to go on the tour, I didn't really. We took it anyway and it was actually very well done. The tour guide was an undergrad at the college and was very very humorous. The personal annecdotes she added to the history lesson made it all that much better! Turn out Trinity College was built on a river/swamp by absentee architects who had neither been to Ireland nor knew the climate. Most buildings had to be replaced at least once if not twice. The highlight of the tour is for most the Book of Kells. The book was pretty fascinating even though it was a bible. Can't say much for the scripture but the illustrations in it were amazing - especially considering the ingredients that were used for each color and from how far all around the world they had to be imported. One particular color for the book can only be obtained from a certain type of beetle and ONLY when they are pregnant (guess this means a lot of bored monks had to sort through beetles to find the special ones - what a job!). I think what Steve mostly wanted to see what the original Harp that is the basis of the symbol for Guinness. We weren't allowed to take pictures but it was stored in the upper part of the Old Library. Interesting to me is that the library was initially built on stilts to protect the manuscripts from the damp climate. Also very interesting to know is that the books in the library aren't sorted by any sort of system ressembling the Dewey Decimal, nor even by alphabet or numerically... the books at that time were sorted by breadth, width and length. So the big ones on the bottom and the teeny tiny ones on the top and unless you know those three specifications - good luck checking the right one out.
Our next stop of the day was the Guinness Storehouse. We walked here as well and made it inside just before it started pouring rain. Steve took photos of absolutely everything so prepare yourself for an "interesting" slideshow." The fellow at the front asked why we were visitng and we told him it was our honeymoon so he loaded us up with free drink tickets as you get a complimentary drink at the very top of the structure and the end of the exploration tour. The Gravity Bar is the highest point we will ever be at in Dublin. Unfortunately for me all they serve at the Gravity Bar at the top is... Guinness. The view was spectacular but was spoiled by the rain and clouds and some of the viewing points weren't visible. We brought sandwiches today but not umbrellas so we were lucky it stopped raining by the time we were done. In the interest of getting to our B&B somewhat on time we took the bus back into the city. The moving of our luggage to the new place was only moderately painful. We arrived at our new place the Autumn Leaf B&B without getting lost at all. Our new hostess suggested some places we could walk to for dinner but we decided to eat our leftover sandwiches instead and then to take a nap. The nap turned into us sleeping the whole night. We still don't seem to be adjusted to the new time.
Our next stop of the day was the Guinness Storehouse. We walked here as well and made it inside just before it started pouring rain. Steve took photos of absolutely everything so prepare yourself for an "interesting" slideshow." The fellow at the front asked why we were visitng and we told him it was our honeymoon so he loaded us up with free drink tickets as you get a complimentary drink at the very top of the structure and the end of the exploration tour. The Gravity Bar is the highest point we will ever be at in Dublin. Unfortunately for me all they serve at the Gravity Bar at the top is... Guinness. The view was spectacular but was spoiled by the rain and clouds and some of the viewing points weren't visible. We brought sandwiches today but not umbrellas so we were lucky it stopped raining by the time we were done. In the interest of getting to our B&B somewhat on time we took the bus back into the city. The moving of our luggage to the new place was only moderately painful. We arrived at our new place the Autumn Leaf B&B without getting lost at all. Our new hostess suggested some places we could walk to for dinner but we decided to eat our leftover sandwiches instead and then to take a nap. The nap turned into us sleeping the whole night. We still don't seem to be adjusted to the new time.
May 21st Part 2
After booking all of our stay I chilled out a little bit and stopped being a stress ball and we decided to try and do Steve's U2 sites of interest. A ton of walking to a bunch of places that didn't mean anything to me and weren't all that exciting but I'm sure Steve will tell you all about them and what they mean. We walked all the way to the end of the quay in Dublin and took pics of what we thought was going to be the U2 Tower once construction was done but that area was blocked off and turns out we took pictures of some kind of mall or entertainment venue. Couldn't wait to get off my feet for a bit. Earlier in the day we stopped at "Nude," a little wrap/smoothie joint that Bono's brother apparently owns. Food was more reasonably priced by a bit and it was really good. We stopped at a grocery store and picked up some food to make breakfast and lunch for the next day and ended up reheating our dinner from the night before and eating that for dinner again. I had more of my couscous and still couldn't finish the portion! After a tiny nap we headed off for the Literary Pub Crawl which Steve's aunt and uncle suggested we would enjoy. The actor's were very amusing despite the fact that I know nothing of Irish writers. How did I miss them all after so many years of school and university? Guess if I ever go on Jeopardy I will have to add Irish Writers to my list of things to brush up on (along with American History, President's, oh hell anything "American," and Religion.) The best part of the Pub Crawl was that along the way in between excepts of famous literature we got to watch the Champions League final between Man United and Chelsea. This felt close to what it might be like watching the World Cup finals in England with England having made it to the final. OK maybe not quite that intense but it was very cool. I was cheering for Man U and was still able to point out players to Steve despite not following soccer anymore for many many years now (who wants to get up at 6am on Saturday morning to watch highlights on Soccer Saturday? You know it isn't me...!). The game went in to penalty kicks after overtime play and it looked like Chelsea was going to win it but their captain slipped as he went to take his place kick and that left the door open for Man U to steal the win. After the game we went back to the Temple Bar area in which our hotel is and went to one of the pubs along the way and had another pint before heading home for the night. I was drinking Carlsberg and Steve was sticking with Guinness (ew).
May 21st Part One
It was 4 am when the first alarm started going off outside. This alarm stayed on at least for 20 mins. In being woken up 4 am I also discovered that there was no power in our hotel room... There is a device at the entrance whereby you have to place a card in the card slot to have any power at all in the room. At first I thought perhaps Steve had taken his card out of the slot for some reason. So I got up my courage and went down the pitch black hallway and there was the card in its slot. What the Heck! Opened the curtains and looked outside and other people were up and had candles lit so looks like we have a little power outage on our hands. Steve was kind enough to hold the hallway door open for me so there was enough light for me to fumble my way to the bathroom. Let's try one more time to get some sleep...
6:45 am and another alarm goes off - loud - in our room. The alarm rang for about 20 seconds and then stopped. Steve suggests it is merely an announcement that the lights are back on. I'm doubting this... A) it was LOUD and B) still no power. A few minutes later it sounds again - and then again a little sooner. I throw my shoes on and go for a little spin around the hallway. See many people making their way down the stairs and march back to the room to collect Steve. By now the alarm is going continuously. We find out eventually that someone stacked a giant pile of wood and newspaper up against one of the alley facing doors to the hotel and decided to have a little marshmallow toast or something. On our little walk to see what the firedepartment was hosing down we discovered the Golden Cat Tattoo Parlour and some posh looking gym right next to the hotel. The prices here for food are a little crazy and we may inadvertantly ended up buying what we thought was a complimentary breakfast with the hotel for what amounts to about 25$ per person.
By the time we were allowed to return to our rooms and get ready for the day I was still cranky. Stressed quite a bit by the fact we had no further accomodations. Steve's Uncle Glenn actually gave us the tip that lead to us booking all the rest of our accomodations super quickly and painlessly. I initially thought Steve was brilliant for knowing this insider info but it turns out Glenn must've told us a million times the story of how they were trapped on a Bank holiday without a place to stay and the Dublin Tourism Centre saved the day. Glenn, I apologize, I obviously wasn't listening... Between the Dublin Tourism Centre and the Northern Ireland Tourism Centre we got to look at all available accomodations, their location, a listing of B&B's by price and amenities. There was a 4 Euro per booking cost at the Dublin Centre but the Northern Ireland Centre booked ours for free. Regardless of the fee it was well worth and and a million times faster to do it that way than the way I was trying to do it. Note: we are actually staying at a place in Northern Ireland I was going to book for us anyway. Funny note again pertaining to Glenn. The lady doing our bookings at the Northen Ireland Centre has a brother who lives in Edson who is also an actor and asked for Glenn's name to inquire as to whether he and Glenn had ever crossed professional paths. The lady had also recently visited both Edson and Edmonton (the mall of course) and commiserated with me over why in the world he would leave anywhere to move to Edson of all places.
6:45 am and another alarm goes off - loud - in our room. The alarm rang for about 20 seconds and then stopped. Steve suggests it is merely an announcement that the lights are back on. I'm doubting this... A) it was LOUD and B) still no power. A few minutes later it sounds again - and then again a little sooner. I throw my shoes on and go for a little spin around the hallway. See many people making their way down the stairs and march back to the room to collect Steve. By now the alarm is going continuously. We find out eventually that someone stacked a giant pile of wood and newspaper up against one of the alley facing doors to the hotel and decided to have a little marshmallow toast or something. On our little walk to see what the firedepartment was hosing down we discovered the Golden Cat Tattoo Parlour and some posh looking gym right next to the hotel. The prices here for food are a little crazy and we may inadvertantly ended up buying what we thought was a complimentary breakfast with the hotel for what amounts to about 25$ per person.
By the time we were allowed to return to our rooms and get ready for the day I was still cranky. Stressed quite a bit by the fact we had no further accomodations. Steve's Uncle Glenn actually gave us the tip that lead to us booking all the rest of our accomodations super quickly and painlessly. I initially thought Steve was brilliant for knowing this insider info but it turns out Glenn must've told us a million times the story of how they were trapped on a Bank holiday without a place to stay and the Dublin Tourism Centre saved the day. Glenn, I apologize, I obviously wasn't listening... Between the Dublin Tourism Centre and the Northern Ireland Tourism Centre we got to look at all available accomodations, their location, a listing of B&B's by price and amenities. There was a 4 Euro per booking cost at the Dublin Centre but the Northern Ireland Centre booked ours for free. Regardless of the fee it was well worth and and a million times faster to do it that way than the way I was trying to do it. Note: we are actually staying at a place in Northern Ireland I was going to book for us anyway. Funny note again pertaining to Glenn. The lady doing our bookings at the Northen Ireland Centre has a brother who lives in Edson who is also an actor and asked for Glenn's name to inquire as to whether he and Glenn had ever crossed professional paths. The lady had also recently visited both Edson and Edmonton (the mall of course) and commiserated with me over why in the world he would leave anywhere to move to Edson of all places.
Ireland Post Finally
Warning - Steve and I will possibly be blogging on similar things but in a different order so things might get a little confused. Also Steve misplaced the camera cord to upload photos shortly after we got here so we wont be able to add any until we get to London and can borrow Dave's. Having said that here is my take on the flight, etc.
The flight itself wasn't bad - especially when you can pick what you want to watch the whole way. Unfortunately instead of watching "27 Dresses" and "Book of Secrets" I should've been trying to get some sleep. We arrived in Heathrow and collected our luggage and had a fair walk to get to Terminal 1 to catch our Aer Lingus flight. Didn't have any trouble dropping off our luggage this time... but we will address that later. Had pretty much a three hour wait in Heathrow for our next flight as we ended up getting in early. Steve didn't want me to nap but Catherine was super cranky and went anyway and found a bench to curl up on. The flight to Ireland was quick and we had only a short wait to hop the bus into the City Centre and almost directly on the doorstep of the Morgan Hotel. I had a long shower and felt a little better. Our hotel was pretty over the top. The amount of light that came into our rooms was awesome but the lighting in the bathroom was almost non-existant and so I had to do my hair, etc in the giant wall mirror in the kitchen area.
We ended up deciding on a little restaurant near our hotel called "La Med" which was a combination of Irish, Meditaranian, Italian and some other style, I think maybe French. I ordered the vegetarian couscous as not much else appealed to me and I was pleasantly surprised with how good it was. Steve had the Irish stew and it barely looked like he had eaten any by the end. I don't think people do doggy bags here because when we asked to take the rest with us he gave us a funny look and then said all he had to wrap it up in was tinfoil and would that be OK? As we were walking back some street performers were play Johnny Cash's Burning Ring of Fire... We came to Dublin to hear that? On a cooler note the next street performer was actually playing classic violin behind his back and it sounded fantastic - wow! So tired after dinner we went back to the hotel and ended up watching a bit of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" UK version - blah.
The flight itself wasn't bad - especially when you can pick what you want to watch the whole way. Unfortunately instead of watching "27 Dresses" and "Book of Secrets" I should've been trying to get some sleep. We arrived in Heathrow and collected our luggage and had a fair walk to get to Terminal 1 to catch our Aer Lingus flight. Didn't have any trouble dropping off our luggage this time... but we will address that later. Had pretty much a three hour wait in Heathrow for our next flight as we ended up getting in early. Steve didn't want me to nap but Catherine was super cranky and went anyway and found a bench to curl up on. The flight to Ireland was quick and we had only a short wait to hop the bus into the City Centre and almost directly on the doorstep of the Morgan Hotel. I had a long shower and felt a little better. Our hotel was pretty over the top. The amount of light that came into our rooms was awesome but the lighting in the bathroom was almost non-existant and so I had to do my hair, etc in the giant wall mirror in the kitchen area.
We ended up deciding on a little restaurant near our hotel called "La Med" which was a combination of Irish, Meditaranian, Italian and some other style, I think maybe French. I ordered the vegetarian couscous as not much else appealed to me and I was pleasantly surprised with how good it was. Steve had the Irish stew and it barely looked like he had eaten any by the end. I don't think people do doggy bags here because when we asked to take the rest with us he gave us a funny look and then said all he had to wrap it up in was tinfoil and would that be OK? As we were walking back some street performers were play Johnny Cash's Burning Ring of Fire... We came to Dublin to hear that? On a cooler note the next street performer was actually playing classic violin behind his back and it sounded fantastic - wow! So tired after dinner we went back to the hotel and ended up watching a bit of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" UK version - blah.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Northern Ireland
Researching Northern Ireland tonight. There are a lot of things that look amazing that we will visit:
- Carnfunnock Country Park: features a giant maze the shape of Northern Ireland.
- Glenarm Castle: Looks like you are walking into a castle from a fairy tale.
- The Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge: I'm scared of heights but I would try crossing this just for fun.
- The Giant's Causeway: The main reason we are visiting Northern Ireland.
- Old Bushmills - The oldest bushmill in the world.
There is a lot more on the map here but the places above are the ones that stuck out the most to us.
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