Day 5 - Giants Causeway

I took another tour with Railtours up the East coast of Ireland to Giant's Causeway. Like the Burren in the south of Ireland, this is another amazing site if you like interesting geology. There are thousands of 5 and 6 sides columns of stone. All fitted together like a huge puzzle. It was caused by volcanic eruption.

Then we went to the Carrick-a-rede Rope bridge - that joins a small island off of the coast. It was a very secure bridge but it was also a very windy day and they had had the bridge closed all day until right before we arrived. The whole area was spectacularly beautiful. On the way back, I left the tour in Belfast in Northern Ireland and stayed the night there.

And now..back to my 4th day - Dublin

I went on a fantastic free walking tour with Sandeman tours. They do it strictly for tips. We walked for over 3 hours and Connor, a Senior at Trinity University who was born and raised in Dublin, told us all kinds of interesting facts and stories (notice anything odd about this statue of Justice?). The offer these free walking tours in a dozen cities in Europe and we hope to catch them in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Edinburgh, London, Munich, Paris and Prague.

After the tour, there wasn't much time left to actually go into anything, so I used the free bus pass for one of those hop-on, hop-off buses that RailTours had given me to see the further reaches of the city that had been too far to walk to. As it got dark, I took a walk along the river and the Temple Bar area (which is what most people come to Dublin for - the drinking).

One nice surprise was the smoking was not allowed in public places including hotels and bars. In a way though, this was a negative for me because I didn't go into any of the bars - I just walked around outside and all the smokers were relegated to standing outside and smoking!

I am off to meet Ian and Sean at the airport but will leave you with one more picture - At left is the oddly painted royal quarters of Dublin Castle which give it an appearance of being fake.

New photo album is having issues

I am removing the link to the photo album until I figure out what it wrong with it. Its on Web Albums so shouldn't be a problem.

Finally off the highlands...my lifelong dream

Still working on catching up with my photos - will continue to add to the albums a limited number from each area (I've take around 1500 picts so far, so I don't think you want to see them ALL!).

Toured Glasgow yesterday and a little the day before (it was about 4:30pm when I arrived on Monday). It has a lot of beautiful architecture but not as much interesting history as Dublin and Belfast. Also, everything is very brown and gray - stone - cement. Could easily imagine what it was like to live here in Victorian times as so little has changed. It hardly seems like I am in Scotland as I could be in any busy, big European city.

But today I leave on a coach (Bus) tour up through the Highlands, stopping at several castles and other sites and then staying the night in Fort William. Tomorrow we continue on to Eilean Donan - a small ruin of a castle on a jetty out into a loch - but it is one I saw a picture of ages ago and fell in love with it - so it is where I have always wanted to go. Afterwards we come back south for a few more stops and end in Edinburgh where I will take the Caledonian Sleeper train (where I have a berth reserved all to myself) back to London overnight. To meet Ian and Sean in Heathrow that afternoon.

Arriving in Scotland as I type this

I am extremely behind on my photo uploading, since I like to go through and crop them and make them look all pretty - and hence I am really far behind on my blog notes. The Last post about SW Ireland was what I did on 5/14. I will catch up later (hopefully) but wanted to let everyone know just generally how its going. I spent the 15th touring Dublin then on the 16th headed up to Northern Ireland - spending that day along the coast and then staying Belfast. Yesterday I toured Belfast and then caught the ferry around Noon today (18th) to Scotland. The ferry had free wifi but I spent the 2 hour trip just working on the pictures! I am landing on the coast and will take a 2 hour train ride to Glasgow where I will be staying tonight.

Over all EVERYONE has been wonderful. The people are friendly and glad to help. I have felt very safe in both Dublin and Belfast. There is very little sign of the past troubles in Belfast and I would highly recommend it as a vacation destination. Here's an interesting fact about each place before I de-bark. In the Republic of Ireland - all public signs are in Irish and English. Kids are all taught Irish in school. In Northern Ireland, some people have an extremely thick accent - different then the regular Irish accent. The public bus driver said whole sentences to me where I couldn't even understand a single word!

Cheers, Tricia

Stairs and Stones in SW Ireland

A pre-arranged tour with RailToursIreland took me to south-western Ireland via Train to Limerick, then by Bus to Bunratty Castle and Folk Village. Bunratty was wonderful - just what every kid thinks of as a Castle. It had 2 main rooms - One above the other - and 4 turrets, each having a tight spiral staircase with a little room coming off at each level. There was also a lovely little folk village where authentic buildings had been relocated.

For lunch at a pub in Doolin, I had a real Irish Coffee and a large wedge of deep-fried Bree. Then we went onto the Cliffs of Moher - getting there just in time to see them before the fog closed in. Although they were beautiful, I was more impressed by the Burren, which I had never heard of. The pictures don't do it justice...its stone that looks exactly like half-melted ice!

We continued onto Galway and caught the train back to Dublin. The countryside looked just as you expected - very green, no trees, stone fences everywhere and the occasional abandoned stone house. They call the stone houses "famine houses" because they were abandoned either by migration or death during the great potato famine. We saw many stone churches that were "deroofed" by King Henry VIII to discourage Catholicism. And cemeteries with scattered stones marking graves from the famine.

Mind The Gap

"Mind The Gap" is on most of the rail platforms in England. It's a warning to pay attention to the void between the platform and the train when loading and unloading. It also was my first lesson-learned about trains - I was trapped, not by the physical gap but the timing gap. After much time wasted by my confusion and the gap between trains and the number of train changes needed, I arrived in Liverpool at 22:20 - missing my 22:00 overnight ferry to Dublin. I knew there was a faster ferry that left from Holyhead at 2:40 in the morning (there aren't any other ferries out of Liverpool except the 7 hour ones). I made it to Holyhead at 2:20 - fortunately the ferry office is connected to the train station and even though it was past loading time, they let me on.

I arrived in Dublin at 6am and took a taxi straight to the train station for my 6:40 tour to Bunratty Castle, The Cliffs of Moher, Burren and Galway with RailTours. Arriving back in Dublin at 9pm and gratefully making my way to my B&B. Other then my own folly in planning, there weren't any problems...well, there was one incident...

I had switched trains in Chester (between Liverpool and Holyhead) and settled down for a nice 1 1/2 hours sleep (I only slept for small snippets of time until I was in the B&B last night). The train was very empty - there was 4 of us in my car and then 2 drunk young men (early 20's) got on. I had just fallen asleep when one of them opened a can of beer (they brought a 6-pack on with them). He managed to spray it over his seat, the seat facing me, and the table and drench my shirt! I guess you could say I've "had" some beer in England ;^)