July 30 - August 4, 2009
We just returned from a six-day road trip through Ireland with our friends Kyle and Tiffany! After we flew into Dublin, the first stop on our itinerary was the
Guinness St. Jame's Gate Brewery. In 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease for this property for an annual rent of 45 pounds, including free water. This was convenient for Mr. Guinness, as the only ingredients in his one of a kind 'porter' are water, hops, barley, and yeast.
St. James Gate - Guinness Brewery
We took a self-guided tour of the Guinness Storehouse (built in 1904 to house the fermentation process), which included a small tasting of Guinness Draught followed by a complimentary pint of the frothy goodness.
After the brewery tour, we headed to Ireland's most famous school, Trinity College. Founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth, Trinity College was once only open to Protestant males (females and Catholics weren't allowed entrance until the early 20th century).
Unfortunately, the Old Library, housing the
Book of Kells, was closed by the time we arrived, but this is what we would have seen:
The next morning, we hopped in our rental car and drove south from Dublin through the Wicklow Mountains to Glendalouugh. There were some beautiful sights along the way...
Glendalough is home to an impressive early Christian monastic settlement, including a round tower (see far right of picture below; used as bell towers, storage lofts, landmark for pilgrims, and hiding spot from Viking invaders), 8th-12th century churches, and a deluge of grave stones.This settlement was founded by St. Kevin in the 6th century (Matt thinks he was friends with St. Todd).
While we didn't look long enough to find a
four-leaf clover, here is a picture of a bonafide Irish Shamrock, thought to have been used by St. Patrick to explain the Holy Trinity.
For lunch, we stopped in Kilkenny, home to Smithwick's Brewery and a pretty nice castle.
Our final destination for Day 2 in Ireland was Walyunga B&B in Kinsale, County Cork. We had a pretty great dinner at Jim Edward's Steak & Seafood, including seafood chowder, deep fried brie with apple-raspberry compote, and blue cheese crusted cod fillets with root vegetables. Breakfast the next morning consisted of tea, juice, yogurt, muesli, fruit salad, scrambled eggs with smoked salmon for me and the full Irish breakfast for Matt, including a fried egg, sausage, and bacon (resembling ham) but excluding the black and white pudding (blood sausage). Following breakfast, we admired the views near our B&B and walked around town for a bit.
From Kinsale, we drove to Blarney to visit the castle and infamous stone. We all kissed the stone, but only Kyle was kissed back (he cut his head on the Blarney stone while leaning back)!
15th century Blarney Castle
View from Blarney Castle
This tree had a branch running parallel to the ground that connected to itself, begging for someone to climb up and hang from it.
From Blarney, we continued around the coast to the westernmost tip of Ireland, Dingle Peninsula. Dingle (or
An Daingean in Gaelic) is a small and fairly quiet town where we were able to relax for a couple of days. On our first evening, we walked into town and admired the harbor views before pub food and folk music.
We stayed at Milestone House just outside of town, where they served a full Irish breakfast and the BEST white and brown soda bread straight from the oven each morning. Following breakfast, we headed out on a driving tour of the peninsula. Along the way, we saw...
Early Christian beehive huts (
clochans)
Gallarus Oratory, an early Christian church built about 1300 years ago
12th century Kilmalkedar church and an odham stone (tall rock pictured below with a hole at the top) that was here 900 years before the church!
See the island pictured below? There is a cute childrens' story about a giant who scared all the townspeople, so they fed him a stew that made him sleep.
"Sleeping Giant" island
Clever beach message, or so I thought. It was only after ascending back up the cliff and looking down that I realized how I may have ruined people's photos of this previously unspoiled beach for the day...oops...hurry up tide, wash it away!
Amazing coastline views
And to top it all off, we went on an hour-long horseback ride over the hills of Dingle (Gypsy and Ashley below).
The next morning, we drove from Dingle back to Dublin, with a lunch stop at the Rock of Cashel, a super old church where St. Patrick baptized King Aengus in about 450 A.D.
13th century Abbey in the fields below
It was a treat to travel to an English-speaking country for a change and the people were so friendly! Someday, it would be fun to do the same thing again, except leave from Dublin and drive the northern coast of the island. This was a really great trip and it definitely left us wanting to see more!
