Ireland: North and South

Dublin, Ireland – the Emerald Isle. We flew in to Dublin from Amsterdam and arrived in warm blue sky conditions. A bus ride (6 Euros each) brought us in to the central city and we struggled through the crowds and the heat of the afternoon, through Temple Bar tourism focused area, to our Lord Edward Street Hotel almost directly across the road from City Hall. Because it was warm and because the days are long (it’s not getting dark until around 9.30pm) we embarked on a walking tour of the Liffey (River) area (the Custom House, the Bank of Ireland and former Parliament Building, O’Connell Street and the Law Courts) ending up at the Pro-Cathedral for Mass. This was followed by a traditional Irish dinner in the Arlington Hotel with loads of diddly-dee potatoes accompanied by traditional Irish music. On our return trip to our hotel we wandered through a crowd heading into a concert in Dublin Castle – just over the road from our hotel. We had arrived on a Bank Holiday and the whole city centre anyway was in festive mode. The warm weather just added to the festive feeling. As we walked into the hotel there was more music emanating from the breakfast bar area: Clive stuck his nose in to find out what was going on only to be turned away – the music (which Shelley had earlier described as ‘awful’) was coming from a private function: a wake! So no entry!!
We booked next morning for two trips – one to County Wicklow and another to the Giants Causeway via Belfast in Northern Ireland – and then headed off for a guided tour of Trinity College which took us into the Long Room (a library of 3 million odd texts) and into a rather crowded tour of the Book of Kells. An interesting three hours later and a bit more of our own self-guided tour this time going to some of the quieter places of Dublin like a jam-packed St Stephen’s Green with sun-seekers lapping up the sun and 22˚ temps. It was snowing not too far away from here a couple of weeks ago. Then onto the less populated Merron Square ‘watched over’ in one corner by a rather laid-back Oscar Wild. We headed back to the hotel to get some rest. Later we did another self guided tour through Viking and Medieval Dublin: St Werburgh’s Church, St Patrick’s Cathedral and Christ Church Cathedral past the Brazen Head Pub (the oldest Pub in Dublin) and eventually, we ended up again at the Arlington Hotel for Dinner. (We also stayed for the show and tapped along with the rest of the Pub to the sounds of Live Traditional Irish music.) Dinner and song was followed by traditional Irish Dancing, very accomplished but not up to Riverdance standard. But hey, the music and dance was free. Good value entertainment. But because of an early start scheduled for the next day (we were going to The Giant’s Causeway) leaving the hotel at 5.15am we left the ‘party’ around 10.00.
The alarm next morning was a rude awakening. But we responded quite quickly even if with a bit of shut eye still and walked the 15 mins to catch the bus. There was no record of our having booked and they wouldn’t take us: guess who was annoyed?? So rather agitatedly we walked back to the hotel and with a bit of luck and gerrymandering we swapped our trips: instead of going to The Giant’s Causeway we went on the Wicklow trip and were impressed by the green of the country (along with the Lochs, the Bogs, the source of Guiness water) and less impressed by the splendour of the yellow gorse. But images of the Glencree Valley were very much a reminder of New Zealand ; we passed through areas where several films (eg Braveheart, Michael Collins) have been shot – Sally Gap, Lough Tay and the bogs of the Wicklow Mountains (the peat bogs which give the Liffey its brown colour) and on to the monastic ruins of Glendalough (dominated by the Round Tower and Celtic Cross). From Glendalough our bus took us into Avoca Valley, where Ballykissangel had been shot past the Meeting of the Waters and back to Dublin city. An informative and long day and well worth the money we spent. The next day we at last made the trip to Northern Ireland and the Giant’s Causeway. Well only just! Paddywagons (the company we were going with us had a note to say we probably wouldn’t show). But two and a half hours after our 6.00am departure we arrived on the tail of Belfast’s morning rush hour. Eventually we made it to the bus station and again eventually we were picked up and taken northwards through Belfast to the northern coast. We were rewarded with another beautifully fine day and some sea mist (does it ever rain in Ireland??) and spectacular cliff views and being the daring young explorers we are we took on the rope bridge (aka swing bridge) at the old salmon fishing place of Carrick-a Rede. From there another 20 minute bus ride took us to the Giant’s Causeway (laid down either by a volcanic flow of basalt or by a love struck Irish Giant, Finn MacCool – the latter sounds like a good story!) and from there back to the former Troubles city of Derry (or Londonderry, depending on who you are talking to,) A whistle stop tour and insiders explanation of events that led up to The Troubles and events that occurred in the city around the Bloody Sunday massacre (January 2001) followed and from there it was back to the bus for the return trip to Dublin (via Belfast of course). All in all a long day: wake up 4.30am; bed time 10.00pm.