Dublin Our Efforts

We had breakfast at the castle and began our journey eastbound toward Dublin, on the complete opposite side of the country. Although we kept getting stuck behind trucks and slowed down by traffic circles for our initial part of the drive, eventually we ended up on a proper highway and we made good time toward Dublin. It was unusual to be driving at such speed, or for that matter to see lots of cars. From my previous trip to Ireland, I recall lots of traffic in the Dublin area, so I consider us fortunate to have avoided the bulk of it, though we did take a ring rode around Dublin and ended up on a peninsula to the east in an area called Howth.  

 Nicole and I conferred and agreed that we didn’t really have anything we wanted to see or do in Dublin’s city center, so we decided to spend our time in Howth, a coastal community that appears to be very “well-heeled,” as the expression goes. We are staying in a B&B that seems like something out of Pride & Prejudice. The ceilings are very high, and the decorations are certainly from a different era (though in the case of our bathroom, that era is the 1970s). Our B&B is close to a coastal cliff walk, which loops around the peninsula. After we got settled into our room, we headed out on the cliff walk. Initially it was fine, but we rounded a corner and the wind was straight into our faces at perhaps 40mph. We braved it for a spell, but then agreed that it wasn’t worth continuing into the gale. We returned to the B&B to debate our next plan of action and decided upon tea and scones to warm up. I found a tea room in town a few minutes away and we parked on the side of the street nearby. What would have been two parking spots in the United States was somehow five here outside Dublin with one gentleman somehow creating a spot behind mine for his tiny hatchback.   

 We enjoyed our tea and scones (and warming up) before going on a short drive up the coast to look at another lighthouse from above. The sun was just beginning to set and it created very nice light on the area, but it was also insanely windy again, so we went back to the room to warm up again. After debating a place to eat, we settled on the Abbey Tavern down the street. I suggested we walk instead of drive, as I didn’t want to deal with the tight parallel parking on a hill with a manual car with right-hand drive. (But I would like a round of applause and appreciation for doing just that earlier in the afternoon) It was a bit chilly, but not nearly as windy as earlier. The crowd at the Abbey was discernibly older. That being said, we had initially been slightly concerned about being able to find a place to eat for Valentine’s Day, but while it is a holiday that is acknowledged here, it does not appear to be nearly as commercialized as back in the states. We got a table for two without incident.

    Nicole had another beef and Guinness pie (with Guinness to wash it down of course) whilst I had some fish and chips and Beamish stout. I now smell like fish and smoke. Every place we go, they have a real fireplace, and while it does create nice ambiance and a relaxing atmosphere, it does get quite smoky in the rooms. It has given me a bit of a cough as well. On our way back to the room, we stop at a small market to buy some bottles of water and a small container of chocolates (as I am quite the romantic).    We spent the rest of the evening relaxing and looking out the windows of our room at the coastal lights reflecting off the water.

The Slieve League

We had purchased some scones and bananas last night for our breakfast. We ate those along with a pot of tea and headed out for the day. It took us about 20 minutes of driving on some interesting roads before we got to the Slieve League. After giving way to a few sheep, and having to open and close a gate behind us (to prevent the sheep from wandering off) we made it to a lookout point. The wind nearly blew us over when we got out of the car. It died down a little bit when it got blocked by a hill around the corner, but it was still quite strong. The Slieve League are the highest sea cliffs in Europe (and more than 3x the height of the Cliffs of Moher thank you very much). There was a viewpoint not far from the carpark and a trail continued onward from there up some stone steps that blended well into the surrounding landscape. We took this trail to another viewpoint, and then decided to turn around due to the very strong winds. The trail gradually got more narrow and we did not want to blow over the side. I tried to do a few longer exposure shots that required a tripod, but that was pretty much a bust since the wind was so strong and the camera moved too much.

After opening and closing the gate, minding the sheep, and driving down some sketchy roads, we continued onward to the town of Donegal. Compared to where we have been thusfar, it was a bustling metropolis. We found some metered street parking and before our ticket ran out, we did some shopping, and stopped in a place called the Blueberry Tea Room for soup, salad, sandwich, and scone before continuing on our journey.

 We were on a fairly major road for some time (all the way up to 100kph!), and this was far too easy, so we exited to a narrow country road. We followed that for about 10 minutes through a valley of lush green mountains and a waterfall. We stopped briefly just to take it all in. At one point, we stopped the car in the middle of the road to get out and take pictures. We did not have to worry about any traffic, since we appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. From there we continued on through Sligo and ultimately to a place called Kilronan Castle, where we would spend the night.

 To be fair, the castle has been very much upgraded and is equipped with all the modern conveniences. There was a small loop walking trail that went by a nearby lake from the castle that we walked along just as the sun went down. We had dinner in the drawing room where we acquired Guinness and Smithwicks — both which taste like butter in Ireland, and somehow nothing like their American counterparts. We returned to our room to relax and unwind before a long day’s drive tomorrow.

Derry and Donegal

I had set an alarm just to be safe so we wouldn’t miss the breakfast downstairs. The alarm was needed. We were the last people to arrive for breakfast. After another hearty Irish breakfast, we packed up our things and got back on the road toward the southwest. After a 25 minute drive or so, we stopped off at Benone Beach just to break up the driving a bit. We were one of two cars in the carpark. Whilst the other two ladies ran along the beach with their dog, we were blown away by the wind. Many of these communities in the north become quite popular in the summer evidently, but not today. The temperature was actually the warmest it’s been thusfar, high 40’s. That being said, the wind did quite a number on us, and our time at the beach was brief.

 We continued on until we got to the city of Derry, or Londonderry, whichever side you support I suppose. Derry is the only place in Northern Ireland I had previously visited when I came with my family back in 2002. Back then, there were military helicopters and multiple police checkpoints with armored cars. A large radio mast stood over the old city walls. When I was there this time around, none of that existed. The whole city was quite sleepy looking in fact. Not that many people were out. We parked along the street near the bogside, the same location that is known for the “Sunday Bloody Sunday” massacre back in the 70s when British troops fired upon civilian protesters. Large murals still canvas the buildings and numerous. From there we walked up the hill toward the city center and walked along the old city walls for a while before turning back. It seemed like all the shops were closed and not a lot was going on. Despite the two sides being at peace for some time now, their loyalties are still very clear. Curbs along the streets are painted red, white, band blue if favorable to the United Kingdom, and green, white, and orange if they favor unification with the Republic of Ireland. Graffiti promoting the IRA is nearly everywhere, despite it pretty much falling into irrelevance. To be fair, anxieties are a bit heightened as of late due to Brexit; and a recent car bomb last month led some to believe that it could spiral into a renewed conflict. From what I gather however, neither side has any desire for that to happen again.

 After Derry, we drove to County Donegal. I didn’t notice we had crossed any sort of country border until I saw a sign that was in kilometers per hour. Northern Ireland posts in miles per hour you see. Perhaps this may change in the future, but as of right now, it was one of the most fluid borders I’ve ever crossed. There is more of a checkpoint between Arizona and California than between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It was some difficult driving through Donegal with very winding and often narrow roads. Whereas previously I would say that all of Ireland can be summarized be green rolling fields and sheep, the landscape suddenly changed to nothing I had ever seen in Ireland before. There were mountains on either side of us and large pine tree forests flanked the road. It was almost like driving through Germany or Austria. We reached our cottage, an entire house that Nicole found on Air BnB around 4pm. We are in a very isolated area with very spotty cell service and no wifi. The houses are few. Our neighbors on one side are a family that knits sweaters and our neighbors to the other side are sheep. Our hosts who greeted us with tea and buttered bread told us that Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker recently bought a house. We walked down to a nearby beach from our cottage and could see a large house looming above on the nearby hills. We assumed it was theirs. It must sure be a lot of effort for them to get here, but the scenery is pretty amazing.

 County Donegal is known as being the “forgotten county” of Ireland. Tour groups don’t seem to come here, and at the same time, I think it would be impossible. The roads we took to get where we are now only have space for one car, though they are meant for two-way traffic. Luckily there wasn’t much traffic, but it does get a bit awkward when you see an oncoming car and there’s a cliff to your left and a giant stone hedge to your right. There is no such thing as a shoulder. For a bus it would be impossible. In our tiny Toyota Aygo hatchback, we still barely had the turning radius to make it around some of the sharp turns, so I can’t envision any buses coming through here any time soon.   As the sun continued to go down, I recalled seeing a good viewpoing a few kilometers back up the road that had a good view overlooking the peninsula. Now, it didn’t have a formal viewpoint as it was on the aforementioned road, but there was a slightly warn area in the grass to one side of the road that was just wide enough to be off the road. We “parked” there. From this spot, I set my little tripod up on top of our car and was able to take some pictures of the fantastic landscape laid our before us. Perhaps the most remarkable part about it all was the total lack of other tourists. We continued down the road a short ways until we got to a place called Muckros Head, where people would normally hike, climb, or have a picnic, but it was deserted. From there we watched the waves and sea spray crash into the nearby peninsula. It was an enjoyable reward for all of the stressful driving.

 We ate dinner in “town” (15 minute drive away) at a pub. I had the usual fish-and-chips washed down with a pint of Guinness. There is something markedly different about the way it is poured here and it’s like drinking an entirely different beer than a Guinness one would order back in the U.S. After dinner, we grabbed some items for breakfast at a small market, drove back to our cottage on the pitch black roads, threw some logs into our fireplace, and enjoyed the rest of our evening without Wi-Fi. 

The Land of Giants

We set our alarm this morning so that we could go see Giant’s Causeway before the influx of tourists. We had read that the day tours from Belfast or Dublin start arriving around 11am, so we wanted to make sure we had seen the bulk of it by then. As it turns out, this may not have been necessary. Despite being perhaps the most popular tourist site in Northern Ireland, we encountered a grand total of less than 20 people from start to finish. The parking situation was a bit confusing, which I had read about online ahead of time. The National Trust built a visitor’s centre at the entrance to the Giant’s Causeway and charge some crazy fee for people to go into the Visitor’s Center. The Giant’s Causeway itself is free, and a gentleman from the National Trust handed us a brochure as we drove in telling us just that. The problem is that they will strongly try and encourage you to pay and insinuate that paying the fee is required to park, but it is not . . .   Anyway, after our free parking, we walked down the hill to the first point of interest — the Grand Causeway. This is perhaps the most recognizable part of the causeway as it has the strange rock formations that you’ve probably seen in someone else’s pictures. It is quite bizarre to see in person because they are so perfectly shaped that it is like the National Trust smoothed the rocks out to create a perfect walking path out onto the formations. Shockingly, all of the formations are naturally formed (so they tell me). Initially it was just Nicole, myself, and 2-3 other people walking around. After a few minutes, a bus arrived and a large family of Chinese tourists disembarked. We took that as our queue to continue on the path to a quieter area. The path continued by some other rock formations before ascending agressively up the side of a cliff and after 160-something steps, we reached the top of the cliffs and made our way back to the car park. It is a smaller area than I would have expected, but this made it easier to explore in its entirety.  

 After leaving the causeway, we drove to a place called “The Dark Hedges.” It is essentially a road flanked on both sides by ominous looking trees. It has been used in various movies and tv shows, and is now closed off to vehicle traffic. This didn’t necessarily stop some tourists from ignoring this rule, but after we parked next to a nearby Inn and walked in, we found it mostly empty. This was somewhat surprising to us because in the Instagram day and age, the site is primed for folks taking dramatic selfies with the overhanging trees. Perhaps the timing of our visit in the middle of winter has been helping us on this leg of the trip thusfar.

After getting back in the car, we drove to Dunluce Castle, or the ruins of the castle at least. I had seen some pictures of it online and thought it looked interesting because the ruins of the caslte are perched on the side of a cliff next to the ocean. To go inside the castle (or what remains of it) required the purchase of a ticket, which we didn’t find necessary. We walked on the outside and along paths that went up and down the coast and that was more than enough. There was a small building next to the carpark that would normally have had tea and scones, but it was unfortunately closed. I was very much looking forward to tea and scones, so we made it our next mission to acquire these items.  

We returned back to the town of Bushmills, and after some deliberation, decided to get tea and scones at our own Inn. They were quite sizable and delicious, so I think we made a good decision. It was now after 3pm, however, and the last tour of the Bushmills distillery was at 330pm, so we rushed over to get in before it closed. Bushmills is the oldest distillery in the world, and every bottle of Bushmills comes from this distillery. We went on the tour of the facility. It was full of interesting odors and temperature variations. Our guide explained the whole process, but I’ve already forgotten most of it. I wouldn’t normally seek out a whiskey as my drink-of-choice, so explanations of one whiskey versus another didn’t really resonate because I don’t have the palate to recognize the difference. As expected, the end of the tour came with some samples of whiskey. We had Redbush, Original, and 12-year. While there were some discernible differences, I don’t think I could justify buying the much more expensive aged barrel batches over the most basic variant. And that’s all I know about whiskey. We staggered back to the Inn for dinner by the fire and called it a night.

Taking the Long Way

After a hearty Irish breakfast of sausages, egg, and soda bread, we left our hotel to begin our road trip. Our first stop was a district of Belfast that was/is a border between catholic/protestant neighborhoods. There are large “peace” walls that have been erected with the intention of keeping these communities from fighting each other. While, passage between them is much more fluid today post-“Troubles,” the walls still stand as a reminder of the violent fighting that once occurred and crippled this city. While peace exists today, the walls have been covered with murals that are heavily political in nature. We parked our car on a residential street on one side of the wall. The first murals commemorated past Irish battles for independence. Others depicted various left-leaning political leaders. Another voiced its support for Palestine against the Israeli occupation. Eventually we reached some large metal gates. They were now open to allow smooth passage between the two neighborhoods, but the murals changed pretty drastically. Without knowing anything about these two communities or which was which, I had no difficulty in determining who was unionist and who was loyalist. The new set of murals commemorated past British military officers, voiced solidarity with Israel, and had a panel about Irish volunteers who fought in the Battle of Britain. It was interesting to see this little piece of history. The first of the “peace” walls was dismantled and removed just recently, and the others are slated to follow in the couple years. While this is kind of seen as a way toward progress, I would suggest the city retain at least one of the walls as a sort of memorial of what happened — much like the Berlin Wall is today.  

 After the walls, we drove to the port area to check out the Titanic Museum. It is a very modern structure built on the site that built the Titanic back in the day. It focused on the time period in which it was built, the construction, and of course the sinking. It was very crowded, and I found myself bypassing entire exhibits just because I felt like I was getting penned in by the masses of people. It was a very elaborate space, however, that even included a sit-down Disneyland-like ride at one point that went through an early 20th century Belfast shipyard that ended with narration talking about (and I’m not making this up) all the dock workers going to the pub after the launch of the ship. We walked outside the museum, only briefly, to check out the dock area, but the wind was quite biting even though the sun was surprisingly out.  

 From Belfast, we elected to take the coastal route instead of the most direct roads to continue our drive north. I had planned to make a brief stop in Carrickfergus, but in the short time it took us to drive there, it had started raining quite hard. We stopped in a car park for a spell thinking that the rain might stop, but it was clear that this was not going to happen. We decided to keep driving north. After 90 mins or so, we stopped at Tor Head, the closest point to Scotland, at only 12 miles away. There was a trail that led up to an old observation station, but as it had been raining, we elected not to take the muddy trail. The sun was now poking out again, and lit up the nearby fields and sheep. The roads we had been driving on were very narrow. Fortunately, there were very few vehicles we encountered as the space was very rarely wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other at the same time.

   From Tor Head, we continued to Carrick-a-Rede, where we hiked for 1km along the cliffs until we reached a rope bridge that was strung over the water to a nearby island. For £9, you could cross the bridge. I was willing to do this, but the ticket booth had stopped selling as it was later in the day and the two National Trust employees working the bridge had “closing time” on their mind and weren’t keen on letting me cross. Just as well. I saved my money, and I mostly just wanted pictures anyway. The problem with taking pictures, however, was that I couldn’t manipulate the camera buttons without removing my gloves and the biting wind was wreaking havoc on my fingers. It was a relief to get back in our small Toyota hatchback which retained a little bit of heat.  

 We spent the rest of the evening at Bushmill’s Inn, a 400 year old building converted into a restaurant and inn. Nicole and I had beef and guinness pies with (naturally) Irish brews to wash it down. It is a very relaxing place. They lit fires to aid in keeping people warm and we did our best to thaw out from the chilly weather.

Off to Northern Ireland

After a long flight from LAX to Amsterdam, we went on a wee flight from there to Dublin where we rented a very wee car and made the 2 and a half hour drive up the motorway to Belfast. Fortunately we didn’t have to negotiate any complicated windy, narrow roads between the two major cities because I was quite tired and couldn’t be bothered with dodging sheep. The drive actually went by fairly quickly, and we were able to find parking on the street by our hotel without too much incident. Belfast is a very industrial looking city and brick is the building material of choice. Our hotel room features of close-up view of it as well. After taking an hour nap, we walked to a nearby pub called Darcy’s. I had the pub staple of fish-and-chips and tried a red ale that was named after a local dog. It had an interesting flavor — something like red wine combined with cider. It was not the best red ale I’ve had in my life. The meal was quite good, though. And one thing Nicole and I have noticed about Ireland so far is the food’s ability to retain heat. 20 mins into our meal, we were still burning the roofs of our mouths. It was uncanny. Anyway, that was about as exciting as our day was going to be after a long day and a half of straight traveling. Tomorrow we drive further up the coast in Northern Ireland.