Snapshots of Ireland, Part 1

by Alex in Ireland, In Transit

When we first arrived in Ireland in February, we had our job in Killarney already lined up. After briefly (and I mean briefly) passing through Dublin and taking a week to chill out (read: barely leave the hostel) in Cork, we headed straight for the hostel that would be our job and our home for the next 6 months.

While it was great working in a lovely small town, we didn't really get the chance to go anywhere and see anything else of Ireland during that time. Fortunately for us, however, at the same time that we were finishing our work in Killarney, my mum came over from Australia to visit us.

I know, it's almost like we planned it or something! Anyway, by this point, none of us had managed to see much of Ireland, so we decided to go on a whirlwind road trip of the entire country (and beyond!) before we had to start our next job in the Connemara. So we packed up our bags, left our hostel, and jumped into mum's rental car, determined to see as much as possible in the 2 weeks that we had. First stop:

Blarney Castle:

Kissing the Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle is one of the most iconic things a tourist can do in Ireland. After getting to the castle grounds, you make your way up to the remains of the castle, climb a narrow spiral staircase to the top, and queue up along the battlements. If I have one piece of advice, it's this - come early. We arrived at Blarney first thing in the morning, so we were at the front of the queue - in fact, we were the first people to kiss the stone that day. On busy days, however, the queue can extend along the walls, down the staircase and back out to the castle grounds. All for the experience of dangling from the roof of a massive castle, hanging into the abyss to plant your lips on a stone that thousands upon thousands of people before you have kissed. Totally worth it though.

Look at that rock. What a hussy.

Once you've done the deed, be sure to hang around for a while. Blarney Castle itself is one of the most intact castles in Ireland, and you can wander off the queue to get into all the little nooks and crannies, which is pretty awesome in itself. Also at the base of the castle is the poison garden, which is exactly what it sounds like - a botanical garden full of plants that are just aching to kill you in some way. All the usual suspects are there - hemlock, tobacco, nightshade - as well as a few surprises, like rhubarb. Well, I was surprised.

Horrifying fun for all the family!

Cobh:

We were only in Cobh for the day, and we were there for 2 things. Firstly, the Titanic Experience. Cobh (Queenstown at the time) was the final port of call for the RMS Titanic before she set sail for North America and never made it. Tash has a weird fascination with ill-fated cruise liners, specifically the Titanic and Luisitania, which I find adorable, if not a little creepy. While the Titanic normally isn't my thing, I'm now down for any kind of attraction that's an 'Experience' - it's a similar setup to the Doctor Who experience in Cardiff, but with no Daleks, which is sad. You get given a ticket when you board, with the name of someone who boarded Titanic at Queenstown. After a couple of recreation rooms and a couple of audio-visual presentations, you can find out if you survived or not. Tash survived. I didn't.

Second port of call was the Lusitania memorial, pictured above. If you don't know about the Lusitania, you can read all about it here (cliff notes - passenger liner hit by a U-boat torpedo and sunk within 18 minutes - killing almost everyone onboard). We were expecting to need to search for the memorial, which was a pain with our limited time, but it turned out to be coincidentally and conveniently right outside the front door of the Titanic experience. The memorial statue was sad, understated and dignified. Tash was happy.

Ardmore:

Unfortunately we only stopped in Ardmore for around an hour. Not that there's really that much to see - it's a very small seaside town, and we only really knew it was there because one of Tash's favourite book series is set there. We did go up into the medieval cemetery and see the ruined cathedral and round tower. Apparently, the monks who lived in the Cathedral used to retreat into the tower whenever Vikings attacked the town. Being peaceful men of God, literally the only defense they had was to pull the ladder up behind them and lock the door - a fact which Tash found absolutely hilarious. There was no word on what they did if the invaders also had a ladder.

Also, the view from the cliffs were pretty incredible

Kilkenny:

Kilkenny is a much larger city than Killarney, bigger than I expected it to be. We were only here for one night, but it was awesome. Something about the city was very reminiscent of Edinburgh, in the best way. We did go into Kilkenny castle, which was thoroughly underwhelming. The outside is impressive and the park built on the grounds is great, but the inside is all a reconstruction from the 1970s-90s.

The outside is very pretty, though.

 Some of it is pretty, and whoever was in charge of recreating the rooms from old photographs did a really good job, but frankly it all felt like a museum piece. It was too sterile, and felt fake - not like the ruined abbeys and castles that we've been to in the last few days.

While in town, we stopped in to the Black Abbey, a church famous for the largest stained glass window in all of Ireland. The stained glass was really awesome, but the whole experience became somewhat awkward when they were getting ready to start Mass, and we had to leave.

All around Ireland, there are heaps of ancient churches which are still in use - which must be frustrating for the congregation who must put up with disrespectful tourists. It got me thinking how much it would suck if people wouldn't leave me alone at my place of worship - if they kept poking their heads into my refrigerator and taking photographs (okay, worship isn't really my thing). If anything, it reminded me of the slightly awkward feeling I got at Wat Phnom and similar temples in Thailand - seeing locals come in to pray and pay their respects, contrasted with the (minority of) tourists getting angry and abusive because they're not allowed to wear thongs and bikini tops to see the Sleeping Buddha.

Limerick/Clare:

Apart from King Johns Castle (which was surprisingly cool), Limerick was a jump off point for us to visit nearby County Clare and all it's natural geological wonders. First up was the epic Cliffs of Moher which thousands of tourists flock to everyday.

The viewing platform for the cliffs was nice, but if you followed the cliffs themselves a few kilometres - you were able to walk unimpeded along the cliff edge. Which was terrifying as there were so safeguards, we were definitely high up, and I had a minor heart attack when I turned around and saw Tash right on the edge as the wind kicked up.

Tash... what are you doing? Tash... stop! ...No! Don't go closer! ...Stop poking your tongue out at me!!!

On our way back, we drove around the Burren, which was awesome! We explored (read: I played on) the stone flats, stopped at a Neolithic tomb and saw - let me get this right - a "glacial erratic". It looked to me like a big rock in a field, but it made mum absolutely lose her shit. To each their own, I guess.

A "glacial erratic" - aka, big rock in a field. Exciting!

We also went out to the Aran Islands, specifically to the largest island, Inishmor. We only had a few hours on the island, so we decided to take a bus tour up to Dun Anghus, a ruined hill fort on top of the cliffs. Our driver on the tour became a source of continual in-jokes for the rest of our road trip, continually repeating the same commentary over and over and over.

"See here how there are no trees, no trees here on the island. That's soil erosion, too many rocks. Means there's no trees here on the island."

His contribution to the tour ended up being to drop us off in a small village, pointing at the fort up on the hill, and telling us he'd meet us there in 2 hours - so we had to walk across half the island up a hill to get back to the dock. It was alright for the three of us, but I felt sorry for the two young women who'd decided to wear high heels for their day out. But when we reached the top - the view was pretty awesome.

Here is the view from the... Dammit Tash, get away from there!

Galway:

While we were in Galway city, we stayed in student accomodation, which was great - it reminded me exactly why I like not staying in student accomodation. Between the loud music at all hours of the night, the frankly appalling state of the kitchen and bathroom, and the odd smell coming out from under one guy's door, it gave me a whole new appreciation for staying in hostels. Sure, you can still get people snoring or coming back to the room drunk, but I'll take backpackers over students any day.

We spent our days in Galway exploring the city - strolling down Shop Street and the Latin Quarter, stopping to listen to some of the multitude of buskers and street performers, and lingering just a little too long outside any second-hand bookstores we found, like a small child outside a toy store in a Charles Dickens story. Except without anyone dying at the end. We also found ourselves adrift one afternoon with substantially less to do than we expected. 

Why yes, that is a guy busking as a living-statue-snake-charmer.

After chilling out on the grass in Eyre Square (an absolutely adorable little park right in the middle of the city) for a while, we decided to look up the nearest cinema and see if there was anything on that we particularly wanted to see. And wouldn't you know it, there just so happened to be a cinema around the corner! And they just so happened to be showing the premiere of the new season of Doctor Who when it aired! And... holy crap! It was airing at about 7pm that very day!! With no further ado, we rushed around the corner, phoned mum to tell her the news, bought our tickets and were in the cinema before you could say "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow"!

...what? I never said we weren't massive nerds!!

We also discovered a small, hole-in-the-wall pizza parlour selling individual slices, and oh my god, it was hands down the best pizza I've had since leaving Australia, if not longer. Galway is a gorgeous city - so nice, in fact, that we ended up coming back and spending more time there a few months later... but that's a story for another time.

Galway also has a... whatever this is. For some reason.

For now, I'll just say that after we left Galway, we still had over a solid week of roadtripping ahead of us... so stay tuned for Part 2 of our Snapshots of Ireland, next time!

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