Bad Luck Of The Irish

I am never going to complain about the English summer again, not after our long weekend in Ireland where it rained for 80% of the time, and not just a gentle shower but chucking it down. We now know why the Irish drink and their pubs are so good, they cant be outdoors!

We had gone in with high hopes for our Ireland long weekend. For the first time in ages we had opted to do a tour, something we normally never do. But because we were on a tight timeframe and wanted to see as much as possible we booked onto the Paddywagon to take in the sights of southern Ireland.

We were on our own for the first night in Dublin as our tour didn’t start till the Saturday. Managed to take in the Temple Bar area where Chris sampled his first Irish Guinness and I had a less traditional (but still Irish) pear cider.

The streets were crammed with tourists and all the bars were hideously busy so we moved on from there to check out the oldest bar in Ireland – established 1846. The place was great, even had the old horse trough in tact, if only we hadn’t arrived by foot. They had a great Irish band playing with a phenomenally good fiddle player, but we couldn’t stay for the long haul as we had an early tour start the next day.

8am the next day along with 32 others, we were heading out of Dublin. Our tour guide was on automatic pilot and clearly wasn’t that impressed about his choice of career. We hoped it was just down to the fact it was early...it wasn’t. He was grumpy the entire time. He spend most of the time texting or taking phone calls whilst driving and cracking the occasional joke or half heartedly telling us some history. Not the energetic story teller we had hoped for!

First day took in the sights of Clonmacnoise which is a religiously significant site for Ireland. It was a lovely place, but pretty much a burial ground so it was like visiting a cemetery. What I found odd is that people come there to picnic in the summer, cant see that taking off as an afternoon out in NZ...

We stopped for lunch on the first day in what can only be described as Irelands town of losers. Pure class here, first thing we witnessed was a young lad throwing his glass at his girlfriend on the street, it was a quick 180 back the opposite way down the main street of gloom. We all got back on the bus after lunch somewhat confused about why on earth you would let people off to kill an hour in the most depressing town of all time, came to the conclusion that it was so we wouldn’t be disappointed in any other part of the tour from then on...

Spend our first night in Galway, had some free time in the avo to wander around this tiny town. Not an amazing amount to do here so I went shopping and Chris watched football – we were like proper English on holiday doing all the things we could have done at home. But there wasn’t really anything else I promise. Galway is renown for being a student party town so we went out with the rest of the group for a traditional feed and then to hear some live music. No fiddle playing phenomenon’s to be found in Galway, but a brilliant old school rock band, the 80’s live on!

Day 2 and we were on the road heading towards Killarney along the west coast. Stopped off at Burren to walk along the site of the old sea bed which now looks something like a lunar landscape before pulling up to see the Cliffs of Moher.

Now I have mentioned the rain, well with this rain came a whole lot of cloud and wind so the chances of actually seeing the supposed spectacular cliffs were slim to none. Obviously the Irish are used to their weather as they had a massive picture of what the cliffs would look like if you could see them in the visitor centre for you to take a snap of...which we did...

We pulled into Killarney with the promise of the weather good enough to take a horse led ride on the famous jaunting cars through the Killarney National Park. We got through half of it before the wretched rain was back. Apart from that it was a beautiful park and worth getting wet to see.

After a much awaited long hot shower it was off out for another night in search of traditional Irish music and food (this is Irish stew by the way and although it looks disgusting in this picture it was incredibly tasty!)

We weren’t disappointed and got to see a fantastic Irish band, Killarney was going off on a Sunday night, none of the locals deterred with the thought of having to go to work the next day, they were partying till the wee small hours, probably long after we went home.

Our final day of fun was to take in Blarney Castle and of course to kiss the Blarney Stone. They say if you kiss this you will never have a problem talking...I did consider asking our tour guide if he had ever done this seeing as he was having difficulty chatting himself. Decided against it as I wanted to be on his good side so he would get us back to Dublin in time for our flight. The castle grounds were immaculate and vast. You could have spent a lot of time wandering around, but as with any tour, your are on a strict timetable so there was no time to take it all in.

The last stop before Dublin was the beautiful Rock of Castle Dunamase ruins which would have been spectacular in their time. As with a lot of historic sights in Ireland, a lot had been ravished by war times which is a real shame.

We arrived back in Dublin with no time to spare to say goodbye, we had a plane to catch! We weren’t really that keen on keeping in touch with our dull guide anyway it has to be said. Tours are an interesting thing, given the right one you can learn valuable history, meet lots of other like minded travellers and cram a lot in if time is limited. Having been so independent for so long with our travelling though it was hard to get used to the regimented nature of it all, but a good time was still had! We might have to return another time to see those cliffs for real!