Thursday, August 25, 2011

DAY 150 - pogue mahone

If you’ve ever been to Ireland and visited Temple Bar, I don’t need to tell you what the title of this blog means.  For anyone else,  ‘Google’ it….Sorry Mum!!!.

Ireland is so different to what I thought I would be like….I really don’t know what we were expecting to see but perhaps a Leprechaun, a pot of gold & a guy playing the fiddle on every street corner would have been more like it.  

Kathy made it safely (Paul's Mum) and joined us in the motorhome.  Being that Kathy is Irish, she of-cause was the brunt of all our bad Irish jokes and got the daily ribbing about being Irish.
We started our journey in Holyhead (Wales) and got the ferry to Dublin.  It was really exciting  taking ‘wher’dmadaygo’ on the ferry for the first time.

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Booze tour of Jameson's

Dublin is so much smaller in reality considering it has such huge stories to tell (civil & political) and such big successes like U2.  It’s population according to Lonely Planet is 1.5m, not sure how true that is but non-the-less it still isn’t that big.  I guess from that they mean the central area, but it’s not much bigger than Adelaide and you can easily walk around and see it in a day.

We discovered the art of drinking Guinness in Dublin which was fun...it's so much yummier if you gulp instead of sip and tastes 100% better.  But I reckon the Guinness family is a bit smart with this logic as it then means people drink more, get drunk quicker and buy more Guinness....so not to silly those Irish folk after all!

‘The emerald isle’ rained 12 days straight at the beginning of our trip and by rain I don't mean sprinkle, more so torrential down pour and August is supposed to be summer.  We did get a little more lucky later into the trip and got a few  lovely days of sunshine, around 18degres and even got to wear just a t-shirt and jeans.

After Dublin we drove to Connemara National Park and stayed right on the beach in a little village called Renvyle.  The beach was just so amazing but being that it was quiet isolated was pretty basic.  The first night we had the most amazing sunset & weather system set in and around the mountains, which was just so spectacular and our last day we were hit with a really full-on weather front which lasted another 4 days and followed us south towards Galway and Doolin.

Renvyle Beach, Connemara National Park

Didn’t think much of Galway.  Doolin is home to the Cliffs of Mohr, which are just amazing.  They are huge like the great Australian bite and so dramatic with the green fields, full on weather and clouds and wild, wild winds.  They have a bit of trouble with people jumping off them, so if your ever doing the daily cruise around them you might get to see a bit more than you expected or become part of the ‘recovery mission’ – yucko and very sad!

Cliffs of Mohr - Amazing

After that we followed the coast south to Killarney and hired a car for a few days and did the Ring of Kerry, Blarney Castle & Cork.  It’s a really nice spot so ended up staying 2 days longer than we initially planned & even tried our hand at 'fly fishing',  of cause not without much frustration and a lost 'fly' hook up a tree.  

Paul caught 1 small trout but we threw it back as it was too small, but really excited to have got one in our first go.  Paul's really into it now and always looking for the next possible fishing spot.
We thought it would be all pubs with singing, dancing & carrying on, drinking, jokes, laughs, cheap and cheerful, but in fact found it to be dodgy pubs, grumpy people, bad fast drivers and expensive.  That's not to say that we haven't enjoyed it, but was just so different to what we imagined.  I didn’t think much of the cities, but really enjoyed the countryside & National parks.

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