Our last day in Dublin we decided to knock out the rest of the things we hadn’t seen by now, so first stop was Trinity College & the Book of Kells. So for those of you not in the know, Trinity College is Ireland’s oldest university, having been founded in the late sixteenth century. Its also one of the most prestigious schools in the world (definitely #1 in Ireland). Think of it as the Harvard of Ireland.

So Trinity College has a lot of famous architecture, etc. but is also home to the famous Book of Kells. The book of Kells is a manuscript from circa 800 that contains the 4 gospels of the new testament (thank you wikipedia). This book is of extensive importance to Ireland and the catholic church.

After seeing the intricately and ornately bound book of Kells we headed of to see the Dublin Castle, which is largely modern by Irish castle standards. I think only one tower remains from the original medieval castle (from around 1200AD).

Although decidedly un-Irish, I had to make a pitstop at wagamama my favorite noodle shop in Europe (and apparently now in Boston too). So after a heaping bowl of ramen the way ramen was meant to be served (not from an 8cent package cooked on a hotplate in a dorm room), we were off to my second libation related tourist spot: Jameson.

After walking halfway across town, we ended up at my second destination for the trip (remember I was traveling w/my parents and sister, otherwise we would have spent the trip going from pub to pub “exploring”): Jameson Distillery! This is a decidedly different type of experience from the Guinness storehouse, well for one its a LOT smaller. Not bad though. I mean Jameson isn’t as popular as Guinness, makes sense for it to be smaller. The old distillery though is purely a tourist destination, there is no actual hooch making going on there. All the distillation has been moved to a facility near Cork. Basically after your tour (takes 45min) where you find out how a whiskey becomes a whiskey (and not a beer), you are taken to a tasting. In this tasting they let you sample Jameson either with ginger ale, coke, cranberry juice, or on the rocks. I gotta say I thoroughly enjoyed this tasting. One thing to note, if you are leaving Ireland soon after this (like I did), the price for a bottle of Jameson in the duty free shop is about 20% less than it was at the Jameson store itself. Though there are a number of varieties you can’t get outside of the distillery very easily.

Once we were through getting our whiskey fix for the trip, we had to head back to the hotel for our flight back early (4am) the next morning.

So tips for visiting Ireland from someone who really doesn’t like reading guidebooks.

• Don’t go to Ireland expecting gorgeous women everywhere, Italy, Spain, Norway, and Sweden all trump Ireland in this category.
• Do eat some of the local food, but remember, its not that much different from English food, and the English all eat Indian & Chinese food.
• Its ok to support English Premiere League teams in Ireland, since they don’t care about their own teams very much anyway.
• Beer is not cheap, actually nothing is cheap. Seriously.
• Some of the best “chips” (fries to us americans) can be had in northern Ireland on the way to giant’s causeway. A dash of vinegar on the fries, also something i’m bringing back over here. yum.
• Guinness in Ireland tastes better than Guinness here. Its creamy enough to drink for breakfast. If you already drink Guinness for breakfast, then hat tip to you my friend.

Oh man am I overdue on writing this one. I had fully intended to write this on the plane ride home, but Air France’s seats are too small for even my Macbook Air, so here goes. After driving all over Ireland we ended up back in Dublin. Our hotel was the lovely Ashbourne Marriott outside of Dublin, which fortunately had a convenient bus running to central Dublin ever half hour or so. I had zero desire to try and find parking inside Dublin after having logged 1200+ KM over the previous 5 days.

So day 6 started off by making our way into Dublin, seeing some of central Dublin and walking around a lot. I had one thing I really really wanted to do on day one, and that was to visit the legendary Guinness Storehouse (headquarters/factory). This is the mecca of Irish beer drinking. Or so I thought. I had expected to walk around with taps every 8 feet and be drunk as a skunk after 15 minutes. I expected it to be to beer as willy wonka’s factory was to candy. Unfortunately despite the good folks from diageo (yeah thats right, THEY own Guinness too!) surely wanting to make the Guinness Storehouse an ode to drunken debauchery, they had to make it “educational” and “family friendly,” so it can never be as awesome as I had hoped. Now don’t get me wrong, I found it quite interesting the way you have to properly pour a pint (they only give you the one), or the sampling of the various brews (they come in thimbles practically), but they could have very easily provided more than 1 brew a piece.

One thing you’ll undoubtedly notice while in Dublin, there are no real skyscrapers. I think the skybar at the Guinness Storehouse is one of the tallest buildings in the city at 7 stories high.

So after leaving the Guinness Storehouse unbelievably sober, and completely devoid of any kind of buzz. We were famished. So we ended up stumbling upon this place called Gruel. The name sounds unappetizing, but the food was PHENOMENAL. The place is akin to what you’d get if a hipster who married a hippie produced an offspring who studied cooking at the cordon bleu. Decidedly minimalistic/unassuming decor, but you don’t go here for the ambience. You go here to eat the best bangers & mash I have ever consumed.

Other things we managed to accomplish on day 6: Visited a few art galleries, and some random churches, and had some more beer at a pub.

The following is my day by day account of traveling through Ireland during the summer of 2009.

After peacing out of Limerick with the quickness, we hopped back on the highway and headed to Cork. Limerick if you read my previous post is often referred to as “stab city,” so coupled with that and the fact there isn’t much to see there, we took off. Well let me rephrase that, there might be great things to see in Limerick, we just had other things we’d rather do elsewhere.

So along the way toward cork, we passed by Bunratty castle, which 20 years prior we (the Breslin family) had enjoyed this cool (for a 7 year old) traditional dinner set in medieval times. Flash forward to today, and that same dinner now costs $90/person ($60 euro). $90 for something akin to medieval times/dinner show at The Excalibur in Vegas, hmmm let me think about that for a sec… nope, gonna keep driving.

So we decided that we were going to stop for sure at the Blarney castle, as my mother hadn’t kissed it 20 years ago (though I guess she didn’t need its “gift”). Quick sidenote: the Blarney Castle is most famous for its “stone” whereby legend has it, that if you kiss said stone, you will be granted the gift of gab. Being a fan of silly superstitions, i made the whole family climb the absurdly narrow stairways up to the top of this castle, and all get down on our backs, hanging 8 stories up to kiss this stone…. and then we all put purell on our lips. Quick tip: make sure you get the soft worn stone, and don’t worry about falling, no one has fallen that I’m aware of.

After exploring Blarney and its gardens, we headed back towards Dublin. Along the way we needed gas, so we stopped in the town of Cashel, where we ended up seeing the Rock of Cashel, and having one of the most amazing meals I’d had so far in Ireland. Scratch that, THE most amazing meal I’d had so far. Cashel Tip: Go eat at Cafe Hans, the cheaper lunch-only sibling of the ridiculously expensive chez Hans (both on same street). Oh yeah, and we couldn’t find any gas (apparently the one gas station I could find closed early).

Cashel is this beautiful shell of a cathedral/fortress which sits above the town on a rock/hill looking over everything. Most of the buildings on the rock date to the 12th century, but legend has it that the rock is tied to St. Patrick and his banishing of Satan to some nearby cave in the 5th century… Now I kinda wish I’d gone to see this cave!

After we explored the town of Cashel (not that exciting), we hopped back on the road to continue our search for gas. Unlike in the States, gas is rarely by the entrances to the highway, you have to go INTO town for it. So make sure you get gas before you absolutely need it, as you may not actually find an open gas station.

Next up: Dublin!

The following is my day by day account of traveling through Ireland during the summer of 2009.

Day 4: Galway & Limerick
After getting the eff out of the booming metropolis that is Donegal town and heading back on the highway (aka a two lane country road with more curves than Kim Kardashian), we set out for Galway. Galway is renowned for its local beauty, and something else, which I’m not really sure of.

On the road to Galway there is a cool castle off on a cliff somewhere. I have no idea where it is, or what its called, just that it looked friggin sweet as we whizzed past at 100km/h which on a country road feels like 75mph (though i suspect its closer to 55mph). If you can find the castle, and its name, i’d suggest getting off the road and seeing it, as it looks like a fantastic photo opp, though I could be incredibly wrong and it could suck. (Note I think it might be Mullaghmore)

Once arriving in Galway, it struck me as the most “continental” city I’d seen so far in Ireland. Galway has this beautiful pedestrian street (Quay St up through Kennedy Park) lined with everything every other major city on the european continent has: overpriced shops, random little cafes, street performers, beggars, and creepy statue people. This part of Galway though looks like Walt Disney had a wet dream here, but then thanks to budget cuts due to the economy had to scale back the powerwashing/cleaning just a bit.

While on Quay St we stopped and ate some amazing fish and chips at McDonagh’s thanks to @erinlancione’s recommendation. Must say, some of the best chips I’d had so far in Ireland. Chips for the uninformed are what we’d call french fries, usually though they are closer to what we label as steak fries, served with vinegar and salt. Hmmm chips.

Near the end of Quay st, is the Spanish Arch & the city museum. You can see both in a combined 20 minutes.

After the grub, we headed off to Limerick which used to be known as “Stab City” according to @carlosmiller. Unfortunately we were about an hour too late, otherwise we could have caught the IRLvsAUS friendly that was being played in Limerick; I ended up watching it on TV (they have like 12 channels in Ireland, but I get the impression they don’t need/want more). Sadly since we arrived in Limerick a bit late, everything was closed, so we headed to what turned out to be a delicious Indian restaurant: The Mogul Palace. If they had Yelp in Ireland, I definitely woulda left some kick-ass feedback.

We’d been told Limerick had some rough patches, so we basically used it as a place to park the car

The following is my day by day account of traveling through Ireland during the summer of 2009.

Day 3: County Donegal, Ireland (aka Northwest Ireland)
So technically day two ended in Letterkenny after a long drive along the northern coast, but we really only stopped there to sleep. From what I gather there really isn’t anything to do in this town that’s worthwhile. I did have my first pint of Guiness here, and have to say that it tastes so buttery smooth compared to the bitter guiness we have in the states, that I am not sure I can ever go back to appreciating it in america again. Its like driving a lamborghini after a Kia, yeah they both get you from point A to point B, but its never the same.

Fast forward to Day 3 (August 11)& we’re off to Ardara, a small village of 700 people. Why on earth were we heading to this town in which we now accounted for nearly 1% of the people there? Well turns out this is the town where the Breslins came from. Ages ago, before the internet, the Breslin family emigrated from this tiny village to America, and apparently they all went. There were no signs of any Breslins left (except for this gaelic version in a quickie mart pictured below)! Not even a trace of our family coat of arms in the local trinket/souvenir shops! For those of you wondering, Ardara is famed for its textile/wool industry; unfortunately for me I live in Miami, where wearing wool sweaters would result in spontaneous combustion.

However, all was not lost, we did manage to find a trace. By hunting down our old family farm house on the road to Donegal Town, we managed to find a long lost cousin. 91 year old Margaret Ann Ward. She who happened to be first cousins with my great grandfather Thomas Breslin. Meeting this sweet old lady (novegenarian) was perhaps the highlight of my trip to Ardara.

After meeting this lady who may or may not have witnessed the invention of the wheel, we headed off to Donegal town. Donegal is like New York City compared to Ardara, there are over 40,000 people here! Yet, Donegal makes Miami look like New York City or Tokyo, so its not like we’re in the epicenter of the world here. Apparently Donegal is famed for its natural beauty and sport fishing. When you’re only in town for a few hours, you can’t really do much fishing unfortunately. We did manage to catch a performance by a local Irish musician at the Abbey Hotel in Donegal, but get this, the guy lived in Ft. Lauderdale until recently! He apparently was a regular at O’shea’s in West Palm, and John Martin’s in Miami. So after traveling thousands of miles to see a local musician, we get someone we could have seen 6 months ago 5 miles from my house. Awesome.

Tips for traveling in this part of the country: watch out for tractors on the road, horse drawn carts, and plot out your route on a map before you go, the roads are poorly marked. Also in donegal, make it a point to stop in at the Crafts village which is on the way to Galway.
Next up Galway.

The following is my day by day account of traveling through Ireland during the summer of 2009.

Day 1: Miami-Atlanta-Dublin
Left Miami early Saturday evening on Delta to their hub in Atlanta. Fully expecting my trip to be quick and quiet, I was seated next to a latin lady and her daughter who clearly assumed I didn’t speak Spanish as they spent the next hour uttering the most disturbingly idiotic comments to each other. I can only presume they were saying things that they didn’t think anyone would pay attention to. Luckily for me, I own noise canceling headphones; me = 1, airplane seat neighbors = 0.

After making it to Atlanta I had one goal in mind: acquire some delicious Chick-fil-a, and if that didn’t work out, get some popeye’s chicken. Lo and behold, nary a chick-fil-a nor a popeye’s in sight. Had to settle for the slowest Arby’s in the continental United States. After scarfing down all the gloriousness of a roast beef sandwich, my dad and I rush to our gate, only to find out our flight has been changed to the furthest gate away in the history of mankind. Whatever, no big deal, thankfully the Arby’s was satisfying. After finally getting to our gate, and boarding Delta Airlines’ flight to Dublin, I start wishing I had brought some food from the airport with me. Three hours into the flight when they bring out the worst food I have ever seen on an airplane ever. EVER. I REALLY wish I had brought something, heck even a saltine cracker or two. I mean now I wish I had taken a picture of this food. It was some supposed pasta in a cream sauce, but smelled more like an industrial paint remover, and tasted like rubber which had been dipped in said paint thinner. Note to self: ham+cheese+baguette from airport shop = greatest thing ever after having tried to eat 2 Delta airlines meals.

So after arriving in Dublin via Atlanta, we “quickly” set off to get our car and make our way to the hotel. I say quickly because we tried to do this quickly, only to realize that Expedia had booked our car with the least technologically advanced car company in Ireland. We finally get to the counter after waiting behind what seemed like an entire French village worth of tourists, and are told “oh sorry, all our vehicles like the one you needed have been crashed.” Wonder – ful. So we are sent off to another car rental agency (which btw, now just cost us an extra $200) to do continue our quest for a vehicle designed for someone larger than a leprechaun.

Luckily the nice eastern europeans we encountered everywhere else were very hospitable (note at this point I had only interacted with maybe 2 actual Irish out of 10+ people).

Day 2: The Hike (Newgrange to Northern Ireland)

Setting off from just outside Dublin at the Marriott in Ashbourne, we headed in our rented Opel Astra up the N2 to Newgrange. Newgrange is basically a big ass tomb that is over 5000 years old. This crazy ass tomb is the ancient irish equivalent of an Egyptian pyramid mixed with Stonehenge (even though it is MUCH older than Stonehenge). So whatever aliens or spirits told these ancient Irish folk to build this tomb must’ve known the right words because the rocks and stones used to fabricate this thing are from hundreds of miles away. Remember this was before the freaking wheel was invented. THE WHEEL. So this tomb has all these crazy carvings inside and then on December 21 each year the light from the winter solstice lines up perfectly to illuminate the inside for 17 minutes. That’s right, the tomb is only illuminated for SEVENTEEN minutes each year. Hundreds if not thousands of people spent years and years building this massive thing that was only used for 17 minutes a year!

After getting over my shock that some people dragged ten ton stones hundreds of miles without the use of wheels, just for a 17 minute light show, we jumped back in the car and headed north. It was off to Giant’s Causeway. This was going to be our second world heritage site in 1 day.
If you’ve never driven in Ireland before, well its nothing like driving in the states. The roads look like this.

Just like that for hours. And the road is super narrow, and winding through the hills. Highways are not really their favorite thing to build as they would eliminate the necessity to pull to the shoulder when cars try to go past you in either direction. Seriously most of these roads are the width of 2 compact car parking spaces.

So we made it into Northern Ireland, I had completely expected there to be a border guard and some militia guys manning it. Maybe some barbed wire too. Nope, nothing. You don’t even realize you’re in Northern Ireland until you see a sign that says the prices are in Sterling/Pounds.

Once in Northern Ireland, we obviously had to make the mistake of taking the least direct route to get there, as apparently Northern Ireland is a GPS dead zone. Yep that’s right, the whole time in Northern Ireland, the GPS thought we were in a lake. GPS=0 – Brian’s map reading skills = 1. After a few more hours of driving, we finally made it to Bushmill’s distillery. Lo and behold it was 6:00PM. What time does Bushmill’s close? How about 5:30PM. Yeah, that’s right, we missed out on the delights of Irish whiskeys. Something I am a huge fan of. Whatever, I can still get to Jameson’s later in the week. So we head to Giant’s Causeway (world heritage site #2 of the day) These people have decided that it should cost $35 per person to ride in their bus, or you can just walk the 3km or so each way down the cliffs.

These cliffs are filled with these weird hexagonal rocks that stick up like they were placed their by humans. Who knows, maybe they were. Anyway, off to Donegal next.