Ireland and Northern Ireland

Ah Ireland.  Home of leprechauns, four leaf clovers and Guinness.  I caught on a quick Aer Lingus flight from Bath England to Dublin Ireland.  The plane had a four leaf clover on the tail section...awesome.  Oh and guess what colour they used to stamp my passport upon arrival?

As green as the Ninja Turtles baby

Arrived at my hostel, dropped off my bags and got down to business....

There are more pubs in Dublin then people I swear, it’s insane.  I asked the women working at the hostel where the closest pub was, she just laughed and told me to walk in any direction to find one.  So I asked her where this any direction was....she didn’t get it.

Dublin isn’t the prettiest of cities, but it definitely has character and things to do.  First stop, the most important building in Dublin....my birthplace....the Guinness Storehouse brewery.

This place is massive and very modern, I was impressed from the get-go.

Arthur Guinness signed a 9000 year lease in 1759 for 45 pounds per year...I think he got a deal

Model of surrounding area - most of the coloured buildings are on the Guinness property

See Mom!  SEE!

Some retro advertising campaigns from over the years

A very important part of the grand tour is pouring your very own pint of Guinness.  Now a lot of people don’t know this, but pouring a Guinness in an art form in itself.  You can’t pour it like other beers or you will go straight to hell...do not pass go, do not collect $200 dollars.

How it's done...

Focused on the task at hand...

It takes roughly 2 minutes to 'surge' - which is letting the gases mix and settle

Your new iPhone background.... (although it's still not ready to drink, you should wait until it's fully mixed and settled)

I'm hanging this bad boy on the fridge!

Probably the most amazing fact I heard during the tour was that the factory pumps out 4 million pints of Guinness per day.  3 million of which are exported around the world, and 1 million stay in Ireland and are consumed by a population of 4.5 million.  That's right, 4.5 million people consume 1 million pints of Guinness EVERY SINGLE DAY....the Irish really do love to drink.

The rest of that afternoon was obviously a complete write off, but the next day I managed to check out a few other sites around the city such as the Dublin castle.

Castle gardens

Statue of Justice

I'm a sucker for statues with lions....they're just so bad ass

There’s an area in the heart of Dublin called temple bar which has something like 140 bars within a 2km radius or something, it’s awesome.  And at the centre of this area is the bar called Temple Bar which plays authentic Irish tunes and pours some of the finest Guinness around.

Oh and I also met an Aussie at the hostel who had been to 109 countries over his lifetime....crazy!

Too many people come to Ireland and just see Dublin, these people are missing out on the real Ireland let me tell you.  After Dublin I took a 2-day tour of the west coast of Ireland including Galway and the Cliffs of Moher. Leading the tour was Patty, a local tour guide. 

Can you get a more authentic experience?  An Irish guy named Patty leading our tour aboard a green bus with a giant leprechaun on the side.  Wait there's something strange about this photo...oh right he’s sipping a TIM HORTON’S COFFEE WTF!!!  I lost my mind when I saw this, apparently Tim Horton’s are everywhere in Ireland....amazing.  And yes the coffee is crap, just like it is back home.

We stopped at a few small towns along the way to soak in the true Irish experience including the town of Cong, where they filmed the movie The Quiet Man

Cong town cemetery

Ruins of a dilapidated church that was destroyed by Oliver Cromwell in the 1800's

I think this was an old fishing hut...I can't remember the details

Leaving the town we stopped for some pictures from time to time

The real Ireland baby....lush rolling green hills, slate grey skies and icy black water

Kylamore Estate - beautiful home built in 1866 by a wealthy family who loved vacationing here - 15 pound to enter though so no pics closer then this

Cliffs plunging into the deep, cold Atlantic Ocean

And finally, the cliffs of Moher....230m above sea level at their highest point

Me trying to look cool as I get my face ripped off by the high winds and rain that smash the coast.  They had to put up a wall after a few people were blown over the cliffs by high winds.

Highest point of the cliffs

You can see the castle in the distance from the last picture

Ok I have to hijack this blog for one second for a poll.  What do you think is worse while flying from Edinburgh to Paris trying to write your blog (keep note I forgot my ear phones in my checked bag):

A baby screaming his/her face off 2 row’s up while their parents do nothing OR, a giant gargoyle of man snoring so loud I'm afraid the glass in the window beside him is going to shatter and I'll be sucked out.  He sounds like a veloci raptor from Jurassic Park...how is a human capable of making such sounds, I have no idea.  It's marvelous yet terrifying at the same time.

And to wrap up Ireland, let’s play everybody’s favourite game – What does this sign mean?  In Poland we had a “No Charleston shuffle area”, so what this time?

My best guess is “while doing the robot, do not stand in fire or poke seagulls” - leave a comment if you can think one up!

After a disastrous bus ride north with multiple people suffering from motion sickness I finally found myself in Northern Ireland’s capital, Belfast.  After a quick hose-off off I made it to my hostel just in time to hop on a black taxi tour of Belfast.  These tours are a great way to learn about the historical (and on-going) struggles that Belfast and Northern Ireland have gone through.  Belfast was once lumped in as one of the 4 B's (Beirut, Bagdad and Bosnia), a short list of cities that travelers should avoid.  But those days are mostly in the past as Belfast hasn’t seen any significant issues in years. 

It’s immediately apparent that this is still a city torn between two cultures and two religions (Catholic and Protestant) and although the city has improved significantly in the last few years, it’s obvious there is still tension.

UFF or Ulster Freedom Fighter depicted in this mural in a Protestant neighbourhood - also flying the British flag vs  Northern Ireland flag in Catholic neighbourhoods.

These murals came as a shock to me showing so much violence...

The Peace Wall - divides the Catholic from the Protestant neighbourhoods - still guarded and much needed today

"Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values" - Dalai Lama

Memorials are everywhere, and many houses like this one that are close to the wall still require protective cages from the occasional rock that is tossed over.

At night the checkpoint gates within the wall are closed and you need to travel 1-2km's around if you want to cross between neighbourhoods.

Murals depicting events that have happened over the years to try and end the violence such as hunger strikes.

It’s one thing to visit a city that once had major political or civil issues, but to see the wall that is still much in use today was quite something to see.

The next day I took a day-trip to the causeway coast, and more specifically the Giant’s Causeway.

It was a 2 hour bus ride with a few small stops for picturesque views:

Remains of a castle that was smashed by a fierce storm sometime in the 1800's

In myth, the Giant’s Causeway was built by the Irish giant Finn McCool so he could cross the Irish sea to fight the Scottish giant Benandonner.  But in reality the oddly shaped pillars of igneous rock were formed thousands of years ago by cooling magma flows.  Whatever version of the story you believe in, we can all agree that the anomaly is something to be seen.

Rock formations up close and my foot for scale

The second part of the causeway tour was a visit to Carrick’s rope bridge - a rope bridge used by fisherman that dangles 30m above the crashing sea.  The area that it was in had some of the nicest landscape I’ve seen in Ireland thus far.

It swayed quite a bit...especially when I jumped up and down bahaha

The Cliffs of Moher have some competition! 

A fantastic day tour to end my Irish experience!  But it was time to trade in my pint of Guinness for some scotch as I'm off to Scotland!

*I'm several countries behind in my blog....trying to get caught up isn't easy when you're on the French Riviera!