Back in October I went to Ireland with my mom. I have been meaning to blog about it and finally I have! I really want to get something written so I can share photos with people, and to help me remember some things about my trip. So here we go!
Day 0
Of course the trip started with a day of flying! We had a morning flight out of San Francisco, with a layover in Newark NJ, and finally onward to Dublin.
Day 1
We landed in Dublin and customs was easy. They had EU and no-EU passport lines. I wondered if British people had to use the non- EU line yet, and whether that would make things more difficult. My mom of course had to stop to find paperwork in her bag and got shooed off by a scary Irish security guard. I tried to stop her, but she doesn't listen to me all the time - I get it, I'm bossy and always right so it must be insufferable. The tour luckily picked us up from the airport. We checked in about 2pm - just enough time for a quick nap. We stayed in the Gibson Hotel - as in Gibson guitars - so there was some cool rock n roll decor. There was a huge mural of Bono, if you're into that kind of thing.
At 3pm we took to the bus for a quick tour around Dublin. Evidently a lot of famous writers we Irish - such as Johnathan Swift and Oscar Wilde. It was hard to take pictures from the bus, so I don't have any for day one. We then did a tiny bit of shopping before returning to hotel for dinner.
I am very proud of myself for impressing the waitress by asking for cider. As an avid cider drinker, I am super excited to be where cider is more popular. We had salmon for dinner. Too bad we're on an island and have to eat fresh seafood all week. ;)
Day 2
The real adventure began the next morning! We boarded the bus with our 42 other passengers We had mostly Americans, with a Canadian couple and one lady all the way from Australia. Our bus driver, Patrick, was an Irishman, while our tour guide, Johnathon was a delightfully funny and information British dude. Johnathon told endless dry British jokes in between all of the great history. One lady told me one day that I always laughed so quickly when he told jokes, while most people had a let the jokes sink in. What can I say? I love me British humor!
We saw this piece of public art on the side of the road. It's hard to tell from the photo, but it is much larger than a bus.
There were sheep everywhere! So cute! These days farmers use paint on the sheep to tell what one below to each farmer. They don't actually breed brightly wooled sheep.
The scenery was gorgeous and green. And many of the houses were made of rock.
Our first stop of the trip was at the Ireland National Stud farm. The farm was originally owned by the rich guy. He willed the Stud farm to the government of Ireland. The stud farm breeds race horses.
First entering the stud farm is a statue of the original owner and an other art piece. He really believed the stars could tell the future of a horse and had the horse's stars read when born.
We got to see some horses. The farm had retired horses who no longer raced or bred horses. The mares were very friendly and let us pet them. The studs (the male horses) didn't care we were there and just kept eating the grass.
Tiny horse!!!
Randomly, the property had this old monk's rock house. Also, there was a pretty little stream.
This horse is the stud farm's most expensive stud horse. If I remember correctly, the horses are raise until 1 or 2, and compete in a year of racing. Then the owners decide whether to keep racing the horse or breed the horse. This horse was only a so-so racer. But his first batch of offspring were excellent racers. And he keeps breeding really great racer horses. They said it costs 150,000 euros per pregnancy from this stud. They do guarantee a pregnancy, so if the mare doesn't conceive on the first try, she gets to come back. They said the breeding price is cheap for a horse his quality because he is government owned. If privately owned, they could charge 300,000-350,000 euros. The top race horses get about 450,000 euros. I think I picked the wrong career!! Wait, no I didn't. They also told us that to have proof of what horses were the parents of a foal, someone from the farm and the horse owners had to observe the horses getting it on, and then take a picture of the, umm, main event.
This sculpture was presented to the original owner by Queen Elizabeth II. You can't see from the picture, but there's a horse in there and the inside should light up when the light shines through the constellation pattern. Unfortunately, no light gets into the sculpture because it's in the shade.
Also on the stud farm was this very beautiful zen garden. Yes, you read correctly - a zen garden. The original owner was great friends with a gentleman from Japan who built the zen garden. The garden is a metaphor for the journey through life.
Our next stop for the day was at the Strokestown House in Longford. Part of the house contains the Famine Museum. We learned a lot about the affects of the famine. Ireland at the time was run by 7 British landlords. British morals at the time said that just giving charity to someone was not good, but rather people should work for charity. So, some of the landlords had Irish people build roads or walls (sometimes to nowhere) as a way to earn the charity. Of course, some landlords didn't care and just evicted famine victims who couldn't pay. At one point the landlords decided to load a bunch of Irish peasants on boats, and send them to Canada or the US.
This picture shows where the potato blight affected. Ireland was hit so hard because the common folk mostly ate potatoes. Even when they received other food as charity, their systems weren't used to the other food. Even in some places where people lived near water, the Irish people starved because they didn't know how to get food from the sea.
This picture shows what a potato plant looked like if the plant had the blight. If even on leaf looked like this, the entire potato plant was ruined. The blight was especially bad as a crop of potatoes also served as the seed for next year's crop.
This was our adorable Irish tour guide. He was very informative, chatty, with the nice winking Irish humor. Too bad he was probably like, 12, by the looks of him. :^D
Here are a couple pictures of the outside of the building.
Here's fancy bookcase. I want a fancy bookcase, so I can buy more books!!
The beds back in the day were really short. This is partly because people were on average much shorter, and because people in Ireland slept sitting up. The cold weather did things to people's lungs.
The kitchen was HUGE!! You can't see in the picture, but there was also a balcony above the giant kitchen. That way the lady of the house could oversee the cooking without having to interact with the servants. :^P Fun story - the last member of the original family to own the house didn't like having to keep up the large kitchen. So, she had a smaller kitchen built within the large kitchen and walled up the large kitchen. Then, the old lady sold the house and property to some other guy. He didn't realize how badly worn the house was. And an even greater surprise was when he started looking to fix up the kitchen, and he found a much larger one hiding behind it!
We then retired to our hotel in Claremorris for dinner and a good night's sleep.
Day 3
We started the next morning with a drive through the countryside, along a mountain area near the ocean. Here are some nice scenery shots!
On the way to our first destination, we stopped at the Fairy Tree. People tie various bit of material - scraps, socks, ribbons, etc. - around parts of the tree as wishes to the fairies.
A few people asked me what my favorite part of the trip was. It was our visit to Kylemore Abbey. Originally, some rich English guy had visited this remote, hilly region of Ireland and loved it so much that he decided to build a house of his wife there. Now the house is an abbey and run by the nuns.
Here are a couple shots of the house, by a friggin' lake! as we approached.
Here is a shot of the map to give you an idea of how large an area the place takes up. You can make out the small area to the right where the giant house sits.
My favorite part was the large walled garden. There really aren't many (or any other?) walled gardens in Ireland. The original owner built the garden for his wife because they were so in love. Ummm, where do I sign up? But seriously, as a girl who loved The Secret Garden as a kid, I want to move in!
This picture does a better job at showing the include of the garden. I'm lucky I didn't accidently roll downhill!!
Oh look! Here I am reading a book in my new garden! This place suddenly made me more serious about all those times I joked about becoming a nun.
Here I am inside one of the gardener's houses. What tiny beds! I definitely would need to live in the big house.
At least the head gardener got to live in a decent sized house.
Here is the other half of the garden, where they grew the herbs.
Here is a super cute picture of my mom standing by the stone wall in front of the large house.
And now for some picture of inside the house. Really, that part was not as fun. But with a garden like THAT, who wants to stay inside?!?! But here's some random fancy furniture pics anyway.
After our trip to the Abbey, we were back in the bus for more traveling, more history, and more British humor! Next we stopped at a marble workshop. I don't have any pictures but I can tell you about Irish marble. They have 3 kinds. 4 kinds? Well, one kind is legit green! Of course Ireland would even have green rocks! I bought some pretty shamrock magnets made of green marble, so you should stop by and see them sometime. They also have this black marble with white exoskeletons of fossilized creatures! It looked super cool!! I'm a science nerd that way.
Oooh look, some different sheep! Johnathon told us the sheep the stood in the middle of the road while the bus came at them were the Kamikaze sheep.
We spent the evening having dinner at Dunguaire castle. We had dinner In. A. CASTLE!!
I only got a couple half decent shots of inside the castle. That would be because the lighting was very low, and not because of the mead, and all you can drink wine on the table. Mmm, the mead! One of the advantages to having a traveling companion who only drinks water and diet Pepsi is more drinks for me! We all got a glass of mead at the start before heading upstairs, so Dayna got 2 glasses of mead!! Which now that I think about it make this next part extra funny.
Not long after sitting down to dinner, then nice older lady next to me turns to me and asks "what grade are you in?" To which I give a short pause and reply, "I'm 32." She then says "Let's start this over. What do you do for a living?" Yeah, she wasn't the first person who thought my mom brought her high school aged daughter on vacation. Ummm, I brought my mom on vacation. I'm an independent woman who makes big girl, adult trip plans, and then takes my mommy.
After that we return to our hotel in Galway to sleep off the medieval dining and prep for our early morning adventure.
To be continued...
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