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.

Day 5: Galway to Westport

Today began with rain. Lots and lots of rain. We got up early to have breakfast and go walk around Galway and maybe do some shopping. "Full Irish breakfast" includes eggs (fried or scrambled), sausage, black or white pudding (not sure what this is... it looks like meat), back bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, baked beans, croissants, toast, cereal, yogurt, various breads, fruits, juices, tea and coffee.

After breakfast, we decided to brave the elements. It was rainy and windy, especially near the harbor. I mean, umbrellas-turning-inside-out windy. After sloshing around in the rain for a bit, and seeing a shopping mall in Eyre Square, we returned to the hotel to pack up and checkout.

We drove northwest from Galway, with Westport in mind as the final destination. The first place we stopped was Aughnanure Castle, which wasn't in the plans, but I like castles so I went from 100 to 30 in about 20 feet and turned down the tiny road, following the signs. Aside from the rain, the castle exploration was awesome.


The first town we went through was Oughterard, on the shore of a lake. These "towns" are basically clusters of buildings, close to the road, and a set of "slow down" and "speed limit 50 km/h" signs. They are finished before you realize that you're in a town, most of the time.

On the way to Oughterard, we had seen signs for a "Ireland's only Showmine", and the mine is maintained by the same people as the castle, so they had some sort of show-this-ticket-at-the-next-place-and-get-a-discount deal going on.


The mine was a Galena mine, so it yielded mostly lead and some silver, in the mid 1800s. The mine tour only went about halfway down the mine, because they hadn't made steps and smooth floors for the 2nd half yet, but it was pretty neat. They were mining into marble, so it required drilling and blasting, and didn't require shoreposts or anything like that. The tourguide seemed genuinely interested in the subject, which makes a big difference.


Next, we stopped at a craft shop in the middle of nowhere, that somehow made it into the guidebook. There was a bubble gum machine that had polished stones in it, which was apparently was hazard enough to earn a warning label.


Onward through Clifden, a town of 1,100 people, considered a city in this area. The area, Connemara, is considered sparsely populated by the locals, which is saying something. Apparently a large portion of the population emigrated, and a lot of others died in the famine... and it's been sparse ever since.


Next was a tour of Kylemore Abbey. We were too late to tour the walled gardens, though, which was just fine with both of us. The abbey itself was ridiculously opulent, since it was built for some rich family in the 1800s. Then the guy's wife died of an illness when she was 45, so he built a mausoleum and buried her in it. And then he had a mini-cathedral built in her honor. All of this is at the base of a mountain, along the edge of a lake. The abbey is still used, with nuns and everything, as a boarding school, so we couldn't see too much of the inside. Poor kids.



Then it was just me, Sabrina, and the sheep for the next few miles of beautiful scenery. Since it was raining a lot of the day, there were waterfalls cascading down the mountains all over the place. The further north we went, the more the weather cleared up.



We ended up in Westport, checked into our hotel, ate, and ended up at (surprise) a pub. This pub had live music, and was full of foreigners "on holiday." Sabrina knew the words to some of their songs, oddly enough. It was just getting dark at 10:30 when we left the pub.


I've been writing this in the bar of the hotel where we're staying, because they don't have wireless, but you can get some wireless signals from one corner of the bar. They have ethernet jacks in the rooms, but who would have guessed that I'd need a network cable? Pfff.

Some old (think senior citizens) women saw me and Sabrina huddled over the laptop, and asked what we were doing. We had a lovely chat with them, and I demonstrated what the laptop is for, with the writing and the pictures, etc. It's tough to understand them, partly because they're local, and partly because they've been drinking whiskey the whole time we've been sitting here.

If you'd like to see all 110 pictures that we took today, start here. Tomorrow is supposed to be nicer, and we're going to take the scenic route up to Donnegal. (Not highly regarded by the old women.)

Day 4: County Clare

After nearly sleeping though breakfast this morning, we made our way south into County Clare, towards the Cliffs of Moher. The scenery along the coast is the type of stuff that people put on postcards. The guidebook that we have claims that this area along the western coast receives some amount of rain, on average, on 300 days of the year. Indeed, on the drive out there, it was raining intermittently, but pretty much as we came down towards the cliffs, it cleared up and turned into a beautiful day.


The roads along the coast down there were marked as scenic, which meant that, once again, they were windy, narrow, and fast. I'm getting pretty good at navigating these crazy roads in the Hyundai. Sabrina said "I liked it better when you weren't comfortable driving on the left" or something like that, probably just after I passed someone on a road that was barely wide enough for 2 cars at once.


On the way out of Galway this morning, I remembered that I forgot to comment on the roundabouts. The main highway into Galway City has lots of intersections with other major roads. At some of these junctions, there are roundabouts. This isn't a huge deal, because I learned to drive where there are rotaries, which are pretty much the same thing: two lane circle, traffic coming into the circle must yield. The roundabouts here, of course, go clockwise. Also, traffic goes from 100 km/h to 60 hm/h quite rapidly ("traffic calming ahead" as they put it), to navigate the roundabout, and then back up to 100 km/h again. There are 5 or 6 roundabouts withing a dozen kilometers east of Galway. And watch out for "loose chippings," too!


I'm having a lot of fun driving on these roads. I've basically gotten to drive like I wish I could back in the US, but it's legal here! A lot of today was spent on roads with a speed limit of 100 km/h again, but I stayed around 70 or 80 for most of them, becaus the Hyundai isn't the smoothest ride in the world, and I really don't think the roads are conducive to that speed anyway.


At the Cliffs of Moher, they have an extensive visitor center built into the side of a hill.

The cliffs themselves are pretty ridiculous, and I busted out the video camera again, to get the full effect. Also, the video camera has 25x zoom, while my digital camera has none... so, it just worked better. Fear not though, Sabrina took pictures too. I might even try to send the video home somehow, eventually.



On the way back to Galway from the cliffs (also on the way there, somewhat), we passed through the Burren, a large area of Clare made up of limestone hills. It's really quite incredible, there are just limestone chunks everywhere, and sheep/cows grazing amongst the rocks.


We took a different route back, to see a few more places. In one small town, we stopped for a late lunch at the first pub I saw. (Every small town, even of only a few hundred people, has at least 2 pubs, it seems. Just find the Guinness signs.) There was an older woman tending bar, and two older men drinking Carlsberg. I asked if they were serving food (some places serve lunch from 12-2:30, then close the kitchen until dinner). She said "sure" and put the specials board back up. I don't know why they were called specials, I'm pretty sure all they had were specials.

Forgot to get a picture of this place, but it was memorable.... mostly due to the fact that we could barely understand a single word that came out of the mouths of these three people. At first, I thought it might be Gaelic, but it turned out to be English, once they slowed down and enunciated a bit. I had to interpret to Sabrina when one of the men asked if we had any Irish roots, and if we were trying to locate them, etc. Also, I learned what Hurling is, and that it is played with a stick that looks like a cross between a lacrosse and field hockey stick.


Later down the road, ("just through town, take a left at the castle," as the bartender put it) we stopped to tour the Ailwee Cave, in the Burrens again. This was a series of natural, limestone caves cut into the rock hillside by melting glacial rivers.

Sabrina never had to duck, not once. Other people (not me) were hitting their heads on the ceiling.


I've now tried just about all of the local beer that I can find on tap. I passed on Stella and Heineken tonight, but had Carlsberg and Smithwicks again, which I think is my favorite, despite the Guinness hat I'm wearing in a bunch of pictures. And I saw people drinking Miller out of a bottle (they also have Budweis on tap.... ugh). I commented to the bartender that I couldn't believe people drink Coors Light, and he said "I can't believe a lot of people drink what they drink here." Turns out he was from Slovakia... so he's a little picky about his beer, for good reason.

Now that I look, I think some of the pictures are out of order (trying to reconcile order between two cameras, and my camera timestamps them wrong), and one might even be upside down...

Day 3: Dublin to Galway

Day 3 began with the difficult task of leaving Dublin by car. It was almost as hard to get out of Dublin as it was to find the hotel the first morning.

Once we got on an actual highway, it wasn't so bad. I think I'm finally getting the hang of driving on the left and such.

The first place we stopped was the estate of the first Duke of Belvedere. There was some scandal involved in its history, which is sort of weird.


The guy's wife fooled around with his brother; she had his brother's kid, in fact. So, he had her locked up somewhere for like 30 years, and tried to kill his brother. Then he had a fake castle-ruin built on his property to block the view of his brother's estate.



Next, we stopped in Kilbeggen, which is home to the Locke Whiskey distillery. They don't distill there anymore, but they did for many, many years. They have a tour, which ends with a taste of their product.


Distilling whisky is a lot like brewing beer; doesn't sound too hard... perhaps we could try it someday.

Next we drove out to the middle of bu-fu nowhere to see an ancient monestary. I mean, we were driving through peat-farming country to get there. Some of these country roads are a bit intense. To begin with, the road surface itself is often in tough shape. The speed limit is often 80 to 100 km/h (about 50 and 62 mph), and the road is not even wide enough for two cars in many places. On the roads where the speed limit is 100 km/h, there are often passing zones, and the local drivers have no qualms about passing you on a narrow, barely two-lane road. Lots of blind rises and corners, enough to make me nervouse, and that's saying something. Especially since we have extra insurance on the rental, and we can total the car and only be liable for about $200.


To add to that, there's often "no verge" (no shoulder? wtf is verge and why do we need a sign to say we don't have any?)... the road might be 16 feet wide, with a thick hedge on each side. Or, maybe a steep bank on each side. We actually busted out the video camera today to tape a short chunk of one of these roads. To make it worse, you have to navigate by wayposts that tell the distance to the next town.


Anyway, we took a few shortcuts and somehow found Clonmacnoise, on the Shannon river. Essentially a monastery, started in the 6th century AD or so, that grew into a small town. The town was raided by the Vikings, the native irish, the British, and the Normans many times over its long life. There are a lot of partially-restored ruins, and a museum as well.



The main purpose of today's journey was to cross the country, to the Western city of Galway. Once we got here, we of course had trouble finding the hotel (they really don't believe in street signs in Ireland, apparently).

We then walked around town a bit, had some dinner, and ended up at a pub that had a great live band. The list of beers that I have sampled on draught now include: Guinness, Harp, Kilkenny, Smithwicks, and Bulmers (cider). It's tough to find other stuff on draught sometimes, since a lot of the pubs literally have 4 or 5 taps devoted entirely to Guinness.


Up until tonight, I don't think I'd actually seen anyone drinking Coors Light... heard about it, sure... but not seen it. There was one woman, though.... and she sounded Irish, too. Shameful!


Tomorrow we're off for a loop down by the Cliffs of Moher, and back to Galway City for another night.