If I had only 2 words to describe my trip to Ireland and London, they would be: breathtaking and busy!!! Ireland was more breathtaking than I could have imagined, and we were busier than I thought we would be. But to be honest, I should not have been shocked by either experience. My last trip with Calleen (travel buddy on this trip) to Europe was beyond busy. And well Ireland, you are all that people say you are…gorgeous and SO GREEN!
Oh, and before you even continue to read this blog, just small warning…this blog contains a major picture OVERLOAD. I feared I would take a ton pictures on this trip and I was right. I just couldn’t help it. Ireland just had too much beauty to capture. Beyond the pictures, I will try to share some of our experiences and some of the history of what we saw. So…sit back, relax, and get ready to see a ton of pictures!!
I arrived a day before Calleen. So, I explored Dublin on my own. I arrived in Dublin at 7 in the morning. I was ready to hit the town, knowing I only had one day there. I knew I couldn’t see it all, but I wanted to capture as much of the highlights and history as I could.
My first stop was Trinity College. A few years ago, a couple of friends and I toured the Ivy league schools in New England. I loved visiting the campuses and learning about the history of the schools. So, it only felt right to visit Trinity College in Dublin. It was a beautiful campus and full of history. The tour was conducted by a student and I learned a lot of interesting facts. The problem is, I can only remember a few of them as I write this blog (only a couple of weeks after the trip). But I did remember that graduation is held in all Latin, graduates receive their diploma at graduation in order of their GPA (so everyone knows your grades), you cannot fail a class in the last two years of college-if you do-you fail out of school, and if you are EU member school is WAY cheaper than any IVY league school in the US (something like 4,000 Euros).
Next, I visited the Ireland Potato Famine Memorial and later in the day I visited the museum. If you don’t know about the famine, here is a little of the history:
During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island’s population to fall by between 20% and 25%. 
No event in history has had a more profound effect on Ireland and the worldwide Irish Community than that of the Great Irish Famine (1845-1849). The cause of Famine is blamed on a potato disease commonly known as potato blight. Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland, where one third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food, was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate. (visitdublin.com)
It was very educational and humbling to visit the memorial and museum. I am so glad I went to both.
I then went to the General Post Office. A bit more history for you:
Besides its architectural significance and role as the chief office of the Irish Post Office, Dublin’s GPO holds a place of particular symbolic importance for Irish people. It is the home of the 1916 Easter Rising.
It was the headquarters of the men and women who took part in the 1916 Easter Rising. While that rebellion ended in failure with most Irish people lamenting the death and destruction caused, it led to Irish independence and the creation of a new State. (gpowintesshitory.ie).
Besides trying to soak in all of the history of Dublin, the last thing I wanted to see was the Temple Bar area. I imagine this is a lively area all of the time. But there was a game that night and I believe a Dublin team was playing and so the energy felt very high this night. I was definitely tired (again, I arrived at 7 am in the morning) by the time I made it to this area, but it was worth it…I felt I was seeing iconic Dublin.
I was so ready for bed by 7 pm and I knew I needed to get up early the next morning to meet Calleen at 7 am at the airport. I stayed at a cute boutique Hotel, called the Castle Hotel. It was a great location.
I had a wonderful day in Dublin. But I SO excited to see Calleen and hit the road to see more of Ireland. It was a wonderful reunion in the Dublin Airport, and we were both ready for the adventure to start.
Our first stop was to get the rental car. Little did we know the this is where our adventures would start.
But before I tell our adventures at the budget car rental-a HUGE trophy needs goes to Calleen for driving the entire trip…on the opposite side of the road, in a foreign country, and on NARROW roads. She did such a great job! I am forever grateful to her for and for all her driving!!
Back to the rental car…for any of you have seen the movie ‘Leap Year,’ you know the character Declan has a lot of strong feelings about Dublin. He says in the movie, “let me tell you something about Dublin. Dublin is a city of chances and cheats and back stabbing snakes.”
We just thought Declan was just jaded by an ex-girlfriend…but it turns out he is SO right.
The car rental dude rented us an external GPS when the car had a navigation system built into it and sold us car insurance we probably didn’t need (I had already purchased full coverage online). Dublin is full of cheats and back stabbing snakes!! Thankfully, we saw that the car had a built-in navigation system and we were able to return the GPS right away. And anytime we hit something…we just said…the car is fully insured 😉
Our first stop on our road trip was to Bru na Boinne to see Newgrange. Newgrange is the best-known Irish passage tomb and dates to c.3,200BC.
I will be completely honestly, I originally did not care to go this site. When researching this site, I felt it was another Stonehenge. I did not enjoy my visit Stonehenge in England. I know I may be in the minority, but I found it soooo boring. And I was worried Newgrange was going to another Stonehenge…another structure that no one knows why it exists. Well, it is like Stonehenge, in the fact, no one knows why it was built. But, I enjoyed Newgrange so much more!!
It might have to do with our awesome tour guide. If you know the show Parks & Rec, then you know and love Ron Swanson. Our tour guide was so Ron Swanson. He knew history, did not or would not fabricate any facts, and stood for no breaking of the rules and expected you to remember them. So ‘please and thank you’ to our awesome tour guide. It really was a beautiful site. The ‘fact’ that stuck most to me was that this tomb was built before the wheel was even created!!
The last time Calleen and I were in Europe, we feel in love with their biscuits (cookies). It was a deep love and one we were ready to rekindle!! So, for this road trip to be as epic has we hoped it to be, we knew we needed to get some biscuits. And thank goodness, we did!! We had no idea that the 4 bags of biscuits and a huge bottle of water, would be constant companions’ the entire trip. Due to the desire to see all we hoped to, we spent a lot time in the car and did not eat regular meals. For a few days, biscuits ended up being our breakfast, lunch, and snacks.
Our next destination was Doolin, to see the Cliffs of Moher in the morning. It was about a 3-hour drive. We soon learned, our time was slower than the GPS projected time. This was due to driving in a new country, but also because we stopped a lot. Again, I/we couldn’t help it…there was so much to see. We couldn’t handle all the beauty we were seeing.
Doolin was a quaint and tiny sea side town. I didn’t think it would be so small. But we loved it. We arrived at our first B&B, the Boherbui B&B. It was a great place to stay, we had a huge room and a view of the sea. The sad thing was, we did not know it was the sea until morning!!
After getting settled, we set out for dinner. We chose a pub (only a few to choose from) in Doolin. We ate at Mcgann’s Pub. It was SO delicious. It might have tasted so good because we were starving, but I might think the stew and fish & chips were the best I had ever eaten. Everyone was so friendly and kind. We loved it here!!
Due to Calleen’s overnight flight, it was her night to need to be in bed early. We wanted to explore more, but knew sleep was more important as we wanted to get up early to see the cliffs. On our way back to the B&B, we found ourselves at such a place of stunning beauty. We couldn’t handle what we were seeing. The fields and a castle in the background were just too much. We decided this would be a great place to start the photo session in the morning. Also, let it be documented that evening, Calleen went to bed before I did. THIS NEVER HAPPENS. NEVER.
We got up pretty early the next day. We stopped at the place from the night before and took some gorgeous pictures. We were hoping to get the cliffs before the crowds arrived and got there about 8:30 in the morning. This is one of the best decisions on the trip!! It felt like we had the place for about 1.5 hours to ourselves. I have always wanted to visit the cliffs and seeing them was the first thing I knew I wanted to do when I booked by trip to Ireland. The Cliffs were more amazing that I could have imagined.
I finished up the photo session with Calleen at the Cliffs and we ended up spending about 4 hours there. The cliffs/walk along the cliffs is deceiving and bigger/longer than it looks!! I loved every minute of it.
We then set off for the Dingle Peninsula. Any who is going to Ireland, make sure you go here. It was SO awesome!! We stayed at the Dunlavin House. We loved it there. The owners were fabulous people. So kind and helpful!! We wanted to stay and just hang out with them. There is so much charm and stunning scenery in Dingle. Conner Pass and Slea Head Drive were both breathtaking drives. We could have easily stayed a week there.
After checking into our B&B we headed to the shopping/restaurant part of town. We did a bit of shopping and had dinner. Dingle will always be remembered as where I got my famous Irish wool sweater. I am pretty sure I will have this sweater for the rest of my life. It weighs almost 2 pounds. Yep, I weighed it!!
The next morning, we got early (again) to do the Slea Head Drive. This was an EPIC drive. We got to see sunrise and see gorgeous views. We had to go through it pretty fast, to get back to breakfast. But we loved every moment of the drive.
At breakfast we feared we wanted to see more of Ireland than we may have time for. We wanted to see the Ring of Kerry and Killarney National Park. And Calleen, the map master, found a way to do both. We drove a lot and hustled. But our pace was so worth it. Again, everything we saw was so great! I loved Killarney State Park. We saw things that I thought were only in cartoon movies. Also, the many shades of green we had seen throughout the trip was unreal.
It was such a long day and we got to Cork much later than we thought. We were driving in a city for the first time (more challenging when driving on the other side of the road), it was dark, and we were so tired. It took it us a bit to find a parking garage and walk to our hotel. Poor Calleen, stepped in dog poop. I felt like a bit a mess by the time we got the hotel. The long days were starting to catch up with me.
So…my credit card number got stolen a few months before the trip. So, of course, the CC was cancelled. But the CC that was stolen was the card that I used to book all the hotels. It had not been an issue so far…but eventually it was. The hotel in Cork cancelled our booking because they could not get ahold of me and the hotel was full!! The hotel lady called around and eventually found a place in a suburb of Cork and for more money than we usually pay for a hotel. But we didn’t have a choice as Cork seemed sold out and we needed a place to stay. I feared it was going to a gross hotel.
But I was so wrong!! The Maryborough hotel was so fancy and nice. We were so shocked and excited to be there. We got our second wind and tried to soak up what we were experiencing. It felt like we didn’t quite fit in. We got lost often and people keep trying to help us. This was the type of hotel, they wait on your every need/move. We were not accustomed to it. We were pretty sure the night manager was annoyed with us. We needed help to call the other hotels, to make sure we still had places to stay. He was gracious, because that’s his job, but we knew he was annoyed!!
We stayed up way too late and slept in the next morning. This day was going to be another busy day, but we needed the sleep. We had a lovely breakfast and head off to the first of two castles were going to see this day. This was our last day in Ireland. Again, we determined to see all we hoped to see. We stayed focused and it was SO worth it.
The first castle stop was Blarney Castle. According to Wikipedia ‘Though earlier fortifications were built on the same spot, the current keep was built by the MacCarthy of Muskerry dynasty, a cadet branch of the Kings of Desmond, and dates from 1446.’
This castle is also home of the Blarney Stone. Those who kiss the stone are said to be give the gift of gab. The wait to kiss the stone was 90 minutes. We did not have time for that and I don’t need that gift. I gab 8 hours a day for living!!
The next stop was Rock of Cahel. ‘According to local mythology, the Rock of Cashel originated in the Devil’s Bit, a mountain 20 miles (30 km) north of Cashel when St. Patrick banished Satan from a cave, resulting in the Rock’s landing in Cashel.[1] Cashel is reputed to be the site of the conversion of the King of Munster by St. Patrick in the 5th century.
The Rock of Cashel was the traditional seat of the kings of Munster for several hundred years prior to the Norman invasion. In 1101, the King of Munster, Muirchertach Ua Briain, donated his fortress on the Rock to the Church. The picturesque complex has a character of its own and is one of the most remarkable collections of Celtic art and medieval architecture to be found anywhere in Europe.[2] Few remnants of the early structures survive; the majority of buildings on the current site date from the 12th and 13th centuries.’ Wikipedia.
Our final destination in Ireland (so sad) was Wicklow Mountains National Park. It felt like we took the most indirect route to the park, but we did not mind. The drive was beautiful and seemed different that other parts of Ireland than we had previously seen. The rush and the amount of driving was so worth it. The park was gorgeous. We were again overtaken by the amount of beauty we were witnessing. We got to spend a few hours in the park.
We were sad to leave the park as the car rental return was our next stop. We made it back right when we supposed to! The return was simple, and all was well with the car. We said good bye to our road trip companion, but I am sure Calleen was ready to be done driving. We stayed right by the airport, knowing our flight to London was early in the morning.
On this trip, both Calleen and I wanted to eat in a pub and listen to some Irish music. We had a bit of it in Dingle, but most places did not start playing music until at least 9 pm. Any night we could have done it, it did not work because we knew we needed to be in bed early. We thought we were in luck in Dublin because we were ready to eat dinner a little before 9 pm. The restaurant noted it closed ‘late’ on the door. We thought we would be fine, because everything was open later (much later) in our previous destinations. Well…we were denied entry due to the restaurant closing before 9 pm. So much for late!! We ended up eating at the Crown Royal Plaza hotel and talking a bitter business man from Florida.
The next morning, we left for the airport at 5:30 am for a 7:30 am flight. The entire process through security took about 20 minutes. We had plenty of extra time. We felt like the flight only took a ½ hour when it said it was and 1.5-hour flight. But we were not complaining!! We got our Oyster card for the Underground and we were on our way to our hotel in London.
Being in London felt so different than being in Ireland. But I was excited to be there. Our little boutique hotel was centrally located in a great neighborhood. We had no idea, but we were only minutes from where we would be seeing Hamilton the next day.
We walked to get lunch and then onto Churchill War rooms. We got a little lost on the way to museum and ended up getting a taxi with the most adorable man. He was so kind-it was just what we needed at that moment.
I have fascinated by WW2 lately. I think it’s due to the number of books I have been reading with WW2 as part of the backdrop of the story and watching any movie/TV show to do with that time period. So, when I knew I was going to London, I wanted to learn more about Churchill as I felt he did so much for the war.
The war rooms are hidden beneath the streets of Westminster and were the underground nerve center where Churchill and his inner circle directed WW2.
I am so grateful we took the time to visit here. It was humbling to be where such sad and heroic decisions were made in the fight against Germany. The place is preserved to honor what to took place in there and one can only imagine what it might have been like to be in those scared rooms, making such important decisions.
On such a different topic…If Calleen and I are together, then shopping must happen. We honestly did very little shopping in Ireland. So, it was time to hit the stores and the shopping adventure began. To be honest, clothes shopping is not what it used to be for me, and I have learned to accept this. But I still enjoy shopping for and with others. We began to find some items for Calleen and discovered a certain item of clothing we were determined to find for her, while in London: the trendy jumper. And we did (the next day)!!
Only after a couple hours of shopping, we were tired and needed dinner. We hoped to find somewhere cool to eat, but we soon realized it was a bit more than we wanted to take on. We sadly ended up eating at Pizza Express. SO not what we imagined ourselves eating while in London. But we were tired and decided getting a good night’s rest was more important than getting exciting food.
Saturday was a big day for us. A day we have both been looking forward to for a very long time. It was the day we were going to see Buckingham Palace and HAMILTON!!
Last year when I was Vienna, I saw a billboard for Hamilton in London. I thought to myself, it would be so fun to see Hamilton in London and then I thought to myself I AM going to be in London (I already had my tripped to London planned)!! The tickets at that time were not yet available to buy and somehow, I found out the day they were going to go on sale. I was so ready for this moment. I got up early, had my Ticketmaster UK account ready, and I was determined to get tickets!! I only had two days to work with, so I did not want ‘to waste my Shot!!’ I got in the que for tickets, had them, but I kept pressing the wrong button. I lost my place in line and I thought tickets were gone. I thought I had to accept defeat and tried to remember the trip would still be amazing. So, I did paperwork for about an hour. I then decided to go back on the website, just to see if tickets were still available. And it worked!! I even got better tickets than I originally tried for. I was beyond excited for these tickets. Compared to what we would pay in NYC, we paid pennies for the seats we got!!
Anticipating the day, we would see Hamilton only got better when I found that the state rooms were open at Buckingham Palace for 10 weeks in the summer…during the time we would be there!! Now I am obsessed with all things connected to the Monarchy. I love the show The Crown, have watched many documentaries on the royals, and you bet I woke up at 5:00 am to watch Harry marry Megan!! So, I was so excited to be on the grounds of the palace and to see where the Queen hangs out!! Sure, she wasn’t at the palace, but we were!! We walked in the room where the royal wedding pictures were taken of William and Kate. I was dying!!
The palace tour was amazing!! We could not take pictures. I was not surprised, but sad I could not photograph the beauty and history we witnessed!! We had a great time on the tour and then had some deserts in the garden where the Queen hosts parties!!
After the palace tour we shopped a bit. We needed to get Calleen a jumper and then it was on to Hamilton! We were so excited!! When we were told where our seats were, I was shocked. I knew we had pretty good seats, but we had 4th row seats!! I know my usual spot when I walk into theaters…climb the stairs, all the way to the top. That’s normally how I roll. But not today…I walked down towards the stage, to the 4th row!!
The show was more than I could have imagined. It was more emotional and funnier that I thought it would be. The power of the music/lyrics could be felt throughout my body and I did not want it to end. I LOVED every moment of it.
After the show we headed to Camden Park. The entire area was so cool. We got there a bit late and had to rush to get food and shopping in. It was so worth the trip! It was a great way to spend our last night in England. Oh, I almost forgot about the bubble waffles. Great desert. Lots of Nutella and fruit, wrapped in a bubble waffle. So good, but SO messy! We had to head back to the hotel and pack to our bags to get ready to go home.
On Sunday, we did not fly out until 6 pm. We decided to go the Albert and Victoria Museum and see Kensington Palace…couldn’t get enough royal stuff in!! We knew the church we attend was in that area, but we did not plan to attend. But we were pretty sure on the train we saw members of our faith. We thought why not just attend church for a short while. It worked out perfectly. I mean perfectly. We could not have timed it better. We arrived at church minutes before it started. We knew it was meant to be.
We enjoyed our time walking to the palace and the museum. We so sad, because we knew the trip was ending. We finally got our meat pies in the underground. I normally don’t like to get food in the subway, but it felt like the right place, as this is what happened multiple times on our last trip to London. We picked up on suitcases at our adorable hotel and headed to Victoria train station for the airport. We got to Boston around 7 pm local time. It was lovely to get back at a normal time. We were able to get dinner and be in bed by 9 pm…since it was 2 am in London. I got to spend one more day with Calleen in Boston, before she flew back to Idaho!!
Good bye Ireland and London. I will never forget the memories made and experiences we had. I will be back, and I can’t wait until I do!!
