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We got up at about 7 AM in Dublin today, to leave for home.

We had a quick breakfast, and made our way to the airport. We returned the rental car (total distance driven: 1340 km [832 miles]) and found the checkin area for Continental.

Aer Lingus (Ireland's national airline) has awesome planes!


That's a shamrock on the tailfin. That's so awesome. I didn't take a picture of our plane....

First, we had to fly from Dublin to Shannon. Flight was delayed, and then only took 29 minutes. In Shannon, we had to de-plane, go through US immigration, and get back on the plane. I somehow managed to get a knife to this point, in my carry on. Before reboarding the plane, the US Dept. of Homeland Security did a bag search and found it. I don't know how this made it through security in Dublin, but I guess they're not as concerned. It was probably a 8 inch, serrated blade, with a dual-pointed end. Basically a cheese knife. Brought it on the plane. Hmm.

The flight was only about 7 hours, and we got two lunches. I busted out the video camera and got some great footage of landing and take-off again in Shannon. That whole thing about "turn off portable electronics"... pff. I was listening to the ipod, too.

This concludes the Ireland 2007 vacation. I hope you enjoyed reading this. If you made it this far, congratulations. The grand total for pictures is.... (drumroll) 1173 pictures! Not bad, not bad.

Suggestions for custom views of the photo album so far: all of the road signs, all of the pictures of me and Sabrina, all pictures of random weird things. I'll think about it.

-Keith

Day 9: Belfast to Dublin

We got up very early today, because the hotel didn't have a parking garage ("car park") and we had parked on the street. So, I had to run down to the car before 8, feed a few Euros into the Pay-and-Display machine, and put the ticket on the dashboard. This bought us until 9:30 to move the car.

Breakfast was not included in our discount, internet-only room rate, so we opted to skip that and just snack in the car. We managed to get out of Belfast without too much trouble; the streets there seem easily navigable and they actually have signs indicating which way the highways are.

I managed the take a picture of some of the "speed cameras" in Northern Ireland, before we crossed the border. The border exists pretty much only on paper (these days, anyway), and is further marked by the presence of money-changing establishments.


The weather was rather blah, so we didn't stop much in the morning part of the drive. Belfast to Dublin is about 110 miles, and since we left at about 9:30 AM on a weekday, traffic was heavy. Up until now, most of our traveling has been late morning to late evening, so we hadn't seen much traffic.

On top of that, there was some serious construction in a few spots. This reminds me of a cool thing that I wanted to comment on. When they close a lane of a normal, two-lane road, such that each side alternates using the single lane that remains, they use temporary traffic lights. Instead of paying two guys to stand there with radios, they set up little traffic lights that must be on timers, to automate the process. Now, one might argue that this doesn't load balance well.... and it wouldn't. Maybe they're not on timers, maybe the guy in one of the construction vehicles has a switch, I don't know.

It seems like they have automated a lot of things in a way that make me say to myself "hmm, why don't we do that in the US?". A perfect example being the Pay-and-Display system. Forget meters, those are so old-fashioned.

Also, with the public parking garages in a lot of the cities here... you get a ticket on the way in, just as you'd expect, but when you leave, you feed the ticket into a machine, and it calculates how much you owe. You feed it some money, and it gives you back the ticket. Now that ticket will open the exit gate, no live attendant required. Why don't our parking garages work with EZPass?

Some day, a lot (more) of our jobs will be replaced by machines.

But I digress. On the way to Dublin, we stopped in Howth, as I mentioned we might in last night's post. It was, as promised, quite nice.



Howth is a tiny little fishing harbor out on a peninsula, just north of Dublin. The middle of the peninsula is a tall plateau, with the village center of Howth being carved into the side of it. The rest of the village sits on the edge of the water, with a few large piers and a very functional fishing industry.


The weather cleared up for us as we were headed to Howth, so we walked around for awhile and had lunch. The yacht club was in full action, and the harbor was busy. We took the majority of today's pictures in Howth.



After that, we drove vaguely in the direction of Dublin, with a few extra turns here and there, until we made it back into the city. It started raining again, but we decided to continue with the plan. The plan, which I don't think I mentioned yet, is rather complicated. In fact, it requires some back story:

A few weeks ago, I went to a conference in Ohio. The attendees were all computer professionals, of course. At the bar on the second night we were there (there was nothing else to do, we were in the middle of nowhere, which is in Ohio), we ran into a bunch of fellow conference-goers. One of the guys at the table had an Irish accent, and after speaking with him for a bit, it turned out he lives in Dublin and works for Information Services at Trinity College, in the center of Dublin.


I explained how I was going to be in Dublin, and he told me to stop by and visit. One of the attractions in Dublin is the Book of Kells, which is the oldest known copy of the New Testament, or something like that. Also, it is written and illustrated with painstaking detail, which is impressive considering it was created in the early 9th century, on vellum, with quills, etc.


Regardless, the Book of Kells is in the old (1712?) library at Trinity College, which is impressive all by itself. The fellow I met at the conference (let's call him Dave, because that's his name) said that he could probably get us into the exhibit for free, which is always good.

We dropped in rather unexpectedly on Dave around 2 or 2:30 this afternoon. He knew I was going to come by some time this day, but I guess I never solidified the plan with him. He flashed his staff ID and got us past all of the lines waiting to get into the library, past the line to get into the exhibit without any tickets, and stayed for a chat about Trinity, Ireland in general, etc. In fact, he was a wealth of information and happy to talk about it, which seemed odd for a man who was supposed to be busy.

Unfortunately, you're not allowed to take any pictures in the exhibit, or the very old parts of the library either. I bet google has some, though.

By the time we got out of the library, it had stopped raining and was a beautiful day (again), so we toured around Trinity for a bit.


We then decided to shop a bit and get some dinner in Dublin before going out to our hotel out by the airport (which we actually passed on the way to Howth). We drove around and found a parking spot near the center of the city and put the last of our Euro coinage into the parking machine. After we shopped, we had some more coinage, so we payed the parking machine again and went into a restaurant.


The Guiness was rather expensive, and small...

Would you pay $5 for that?

The food was excellent, but it was slow to arrive due to the fact that every table in the place was full. It was so slow, we were out of time on our parking ticket. In Ireland, they don't issue parking tickets, they immobilize your car and then charge you to re-mobilize it. As they put it, "clamping in effect" or "violators will be clamped".

We had literally spent our last Euros on the previous parking permit, so I bought the guy at the table next to us a Guinness in exchange for some coins to feed the parking machine again. I was willing to risk it, but Sabrina wasn't willing to play those odds.

We're staying at the Hilton near the Dublin airport, which is very nice, and probably the most expensive night so far. Free parking and free breakfast, plus wine, chocolates, fresh fruit, and bathrobes waiting... very swanky hotel. No free internet; No free wireless, no free wired, not even free internet in the business center. Since we're in the middle of nowhere, I can't even steal it from some neighbors, not even with the laptop in the 4th floor windowsill.

We settled for a drink and desert in the swanky hotel bar, and I've had extra time to write this since I don't have to wait for photos to upload across the Atlantic. I considered wardriving, but Sabrina convinced me to wait until tomorrow to post the photos and such.


Tomorrow morning we fly home, with a brief layover in Shannon. The plane leaves Shannon at about 1 PM local, and arrives in Newark at about 3:30 PM Eastern time... even though it's about an 8 hour flight. Should be interesting.

Day 8: Bushmills to Belfast

We briefly considered another walk down to the Giant's Causeway this morning, to take some more pictures. Sabrina didn't read the blurb about this site in the guidebook before we went, so she didn't realize that a large part of the attraction was the odd rock formations, vertical pillars of nearly-hexagonal rock jutting out of the ocean and up along the coast. I got some of them on video, but Sabrina took all of the pictures. When I commented last night that she didn't get any pictures of the stone pillars, she basically said "I thought they were just rocks, so I didn't take any pictures."

Since it's literally a mile walk downhill, and then back up, to see those hexagon pillars, or about $4 each for a shuttle bus ticket, we opted to skip this and just get on the road as early as possible. If you want to see what I'm talking about, google image search for "giant's causeway".

Not too far down the road from Giant's Causeway is another attraction with some nice cliffs, with a sort of cliff island, connected by an 80 foot rope bridge.


It was very, very windy, which was fun, because we kept feeling like we were going to get blown off of the island. Especially the parts without any fencing.


After we left the rope bridge, we drove along the northern coast (Literally, along the coast... like, stone wall on the side of the road, and the ocean on the other side of the wall). We passed through a few small towns huddled between the mountains and the ocean, with some nice views.


We saw some interesting signs, and got stuck behind a tractor for a short while.



We eventually made our way down the coast and arrived in Belfast. For once, we didn't get very lost while driving around, trying to find the hotel, in a large city. There was a tour bus stop right in front of the hotel, but due to the route of a mini parade the bus couldn't make it to that stop at the time. (The full parade being on July 12th... the Protestant Orangemen or something like that, celebrating the Protestant King of Orange's victory over the Catholic king in 1690. Apparently the parade was historically a family event, with friendly neighborhood competition and such, but during The Troubles it became a catalyst for violence.) So anyway, we walked down by city hall and hopped on the tour bus.


Normally the tour is on an open-top bus, but due to weather concerns, we got to ride around in the classic tour bus.


The bus went all around the city, for about an hour or so. We got to take in most of the interesting sites, including everything from the area where the Titanic was built, to all of the government buildings, and from the area where the feud ("the Troubles") was centered (still very divided, literally and figuratively) to the political murals.


The tour dropped us off back in the center of town, so we walked around for a bit. We crossed the river and saw the tidal gates that were recently built, to stop the river from dropping 30 feet or so with the tide.


We took a closer look at some of the older government buildings from street level, and then tried to find somewhere to eat dinner. A lot of establishments were closed as of 5 PM, so we walked back towards the hotel, and found a pub that was still serving.



The early closing might be a historical leftover from the time of The Troubles, when the city center would close down at 5 PM, because nobody wanted to be around when the fighting might start. Even the Subway closed at 6 or 7 PM every night of the week. The tour guide referred to this as the donut effect, since the center of the city was devoid of restaurants, bars, etc., as they had all moved farther out from the trouble area.

There was one roundabout that was the center of the conflict, apparently. There were three streets involved; one home to the British loyalists, one to the Irish Nationalists, and one neutral divider in the middle.

Both sides had memorial parks dedicated to the people who had been killed in the conflicts.

Even now, there are walls between some of these neighborhoods, only a few minutes walk from the hotel where we are. The next hotel down the street is the most-bombed hotel in the world, having been bombed 30 or so times (and rebuilt all of those times).


[ see http://www.forces.org/writers/james/files/ni.htm and http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/53/europa.html for more information ]

Tomorrow we're leaving early to head down towards Dublin again, hopefully with a stop in the fishing village of Howth first. This location was suggested to us by a resident of Dublin that we met at the Continental President's Club, who happened to be flying to London on business, but was happy to talk to us about Dublin while we all waited.

I tried two new beers today, too. Tennents lager, from Scotland, and Carling lager, which the bartender tried to tell me was American, but according to www.carling.com, is "Britain's Number One Lager." In his defense, I asked him in my best Irish accent, so he didn't know I was from the US, presumably.

As always, lots of pictures available in the photo gallery, 2nd picture on page 102.

Day 7: Donegal to Bushmills

Today's journey brought us into Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK. This doesn't really matter, except in a few small ways.

First, they don't use Euros like the rest of Ireland. We had to get some Pounds Sterling today at an ATM. Now I have Euro change in the right pocket, GBP change in the left. The GBP coins aren't clearly marked, either.

Second, all speed limits are in miles per hour here. This wouldn't be an issue (I have a better idea of how fast 50 mph is than I do with 80 kph), except that the Hyundai rental doesn't know what a mile is. The speedometer, the odometer, etc., kilometers only. So... maybe tomorrow I'll make a cheat sheet of mph to kph conversions, so I don't have to convert in my head, which requires a few hundred yards sometimes.

Third, gas is even more expensive here than in the rest of Ireland. We'd been seeing regular gas (I don't think they have different grades) for around 1.10 to 1.20 euros/liter... which is $5.61 to $6.12 PER GALLON. Here, in the UK, it's more like 0.99 GBP per liter, which is closer to $7.50 per gallon, according to Google. Yay, crappy exchange rates! With any luck, the full tank that we just got in Donegal will last until we get out of the UK. (It's not like the Hyundai uses a lot of gas, anyway.)

There is a real risk of getting a speeding ticket by accident here; they're big on cameras, everywhere. There are cameras at intersections, "speed limit" cameras randomly in the middle of nowhere, cameras in town on buildings, cameras everywhere. And you thought the Patriot Act was bad...


The weather started out cloudy, but before we left Donegal Town this morning, we toured Donegal Castle. This castle was another of those built in the 15th, then destroyed by the English, then rebuilt again castles. This was was nicely restored, at least in the main tower, and the tour guide must have been a history major or something, because she was very good, and couldn't stop talking about the history of the place.


Following that tour, we left Donegal on a drive through some amazing mountains and countryside, stopping eventually in Derry City (or Londonderry, depending on which side of the border you ask). Derry is a rather large city, and we briefly considered a bus tour, but didn't want to wait that long.



We walked around the walled part of the inner city, and along the top of the wall for a bit (the wall being about 5 yards across, of course). This walk offered some great views of the surrounding city, as well as the old sections of the inner city. It had rained for a bit on the drive to Derry, but was generally nice while we were there.


After Derry was some more lovely countryside, as you can see in the pictures. The ones with lots of sky in them were taken by Sabrina, some of which are intended to be stitched into panoramas later.


When we arrived in Bushmills, along the coast, the first place we headed was the Giant's Causeway. The name comes from some strange folklore about the creation of the rock formations, but it's quite a sight. It was mostly cloudy, but didn't rain.


We did the abbreviated walk down along the shore, and took the shuttle back to the visitor's center, so we could see a few more things before end of business hours. Unfortunately, the Bushmills Distillery has weird hours for their guided tours, so we weren't able to taste any whiskey today. We did, however, go down the road to another castle.


Dunluce Castle was built out on a rock outcropping, into the ocean a bit. (One wall fell into the Atlantic, and a new one was built a few feet away from the edge.) It was eventually expanded to include a few buildings and a courtyard on the mainland, and connected with a drawbridge. Again, it was partially destroyed by English and Spanish canons over the years, and has remained largely unrestored.


Dunluce is one of the best castles we've seen so far, I'd say, especially since it had a cave underneath it. If not for the falling rock signs and the rising tide, I would have gone in. Also, it started raining again, and got windy, so we retreated to the car.


We went back to the Giant's Causeway, because it turns out our hotel is pretty much next to the visitor's center. The view out the window is spectacular, although I'm worried we're going to be awakened too early by the loud conversations of the nearby sheep.



The weather turned nice again (it changes faster than it does in New England), so we went for a walk along the upper path of Giant's Causeway, in both directions.



After a quick dinner in the hotel, during which we met some very nice, fellow tourists from Germany and from England. Tomorrow we head to Belfast, with a stop or two along the way.

Today might have set the record for most pictures taken in one day, I'm not sure. Feel free to set my math straight, if you like; you can start on the 5th picture of page 79 in the photo gallery.

Day 6: Westport to Donegal

We got an early start today, since we had a long way to drive, and it was beautiful out. We departed from Westport around 10 AM, after breakfast and such, and drove up through the mountains to County Donegal.

There wasn't much that looked exciting in the small towns along the road (since we're in the sparsely populated area of Ireland...), we pretty much drove straight through to Sligo, only stopping to take pictures of the ocean, mountains, surrounding countryside, etc.



Oh, and I found the machine that trims the hedges along the sides of the road:


Once in Sligo, we parked in the middle of town and walked around a bit. Sligo is the "only sizable town in Northwest Ireland" with a population of 19,000, so it was a bustling metropolis compared to the rest of today.


After lunch, we took a guided tour of Sligo Abbey, which is positioned oddly in the middle of a residential block. There are people who have a 15th century Abbey (mostly ruins, anyway) behind their houses, basically. It was very odd.



Leaving Sligo, we got a bit lost and took a nice tour on the edge of a lake, and ended up on the wrong side of the town. Not like it was a bad neighborhood, more like south instead of north. Northwest of Sligo, we went out to Rosses Point, which is a very expensive-looking area, out in the bay, with beaches and such.



On the way back from Rosses Point, I made Sabrina drive for the first time. It was so good that I decided to get some of it on video. She's much more appreciative of my awesome driving skills now.


Once we got to Donegal, we walked around town a bit, got a map, found the hotel, then took a nap.


After the nap, we found some dinner, then walked around Donegal Friary. The story of this medieval ruin is a lot like some of the others we've seen: built some time in the 13th, 14th, 15th century, destroyed by the invading English/Vikings/Normans, rebuilt by the church/friars/monks, etc. There were some really cool local kids hanging out in the ruined Friary, drinking Jager and smoking. I would have gotten a picture of them, but I wasn't wearing shoes that were conducive to running away if necessary.


We briefly investigated the Waterbus, which seems to be some sort of bay tour boat, but I don't think we'll have time for a journey tomorrow. These pictures were taken at about 10:30 PM.





As always, more pictures are available in the photo gallery. We're up to about 700 or so photos, and we still have a few days left. Aren't digital cameras great? 10 years ago, this would be $200 worth of photo-developing.