The one with Bangers and Mash (Dublin)

We arrived in Dublin around dinner time, which didn't leave much of the day for us after we checked in to our hostel, Abraham House. I was less than impressed.  The room was dirty with trash on the floor, looking like it hadn't seen a vacumn in quite some time, but such is staying in hostels. We headed to the popular Temple Bar area to find something to eat. I have to say that it didn't bother me much at all when we ended up eating burritos again and getting a student discount as well.  We also stopped by another hostel to book a day trip with Paddywagon tours for Sunday and then packed it in for the night.

Sunday we started our day tour through Glendalough, Kilkenny, and Wicklow bright and early.  These tours actually ended up being awesome. How much you actually learned on the trip depended on your attention span and your driver, but there is no other way to see as much of the country short of renting a car, and neither Marissa nor I was up for driving on the wrong side of the road.  We started our day in Glendalough, a valley with two lakes and the ruins of a monastery dating back to the 6th century.  In the picture is the celtic cross, the circle dating back to the Pagan worship of the sun, with the cross as an obvious Christian symbol.  You may wonder what I am doing, hugging the cross.  Legend tells it that if your fingers touch around the cross, you will find love within the year (theoretically in Ireland).  Good news, my fingers touched, but this could also mean that I have long arms.  After checking out the ruins, Marissa and I walked down a cute path to check out one of the lakes before getting back on the bus and moving on.

Brownshill Dolmen

Next we headed up through Wicklow Gap, which has a reputation of waterfalls, fine views, and greenery that it really did not uphold.  A scene from the movie P.S. I love you was filmed here, and our driver told us that people come up looking for this magical waterfall that supposedly goes right by the road, but in the film, they super-imposed it next to the road to make it look better.  In reality, it is on the other side of the mountain and really difficult to get to.  What we saw was slightly snow-covered mountains and low-hanging clouds, but it was still beautiful.  We also passed by a field where they filmed part of Braveheart; I must admit it is still on my "must-see" movie lists, but maybe I will recognize it! Next we made a quick stop at the Brownshill Dolmen.  Ireland is sort of known for these random dolmens that are often just big rocks stacked in some way on little rocks, but they leave historians befuddled as to how the big rock got there.  This one was a megalithic tomb, dating back to as early as 4000 BC and weighing more than 100 metric tonnes.  Pretty neat I guess.

The big stop for the day was in Kilkenny, a cute little town known mainly for the castle, as you can see.  We grabbed some lunch at subway and roamed around the streets in search of interesting buildings and things to see.  We checked out the Black Abbey which dates back to the 1200s and is named for the black robes the monks used to wear.  The castle also has a history dating back to the 1200s, spending most of its history in the hands of the Butler family before being handed over to the government in the 1960s.  Many royals have been entertained here over the years and it has a fascinating history.

We got back on the bus, quite a bit colder and significantly more tired.  We had visions of going and finding a popular pub somewhere in the Temple Bar Area, but we were done.  So we hit up the closest place to our hostel, O'Shea's.  It actually ended up being perfect.  Marissa and I both got the local fare of bangers and mash, which is essentially sausage and mashed potatoes.  Mine was specifically sausage made from pork and leeks with mashed potatoes and covered in an onion gravy.  Oh My Goodness! It was so good that I have thought of it often since then, and my mouth salivates now just thinking about it.  I would return for this meal alone.  Afterwards, with our bellies significantly fuller, we turned in for the night.

Day 2 in Dublin was reserved for some sight-seeing before we caught the bus to Cork, where we spent the majority of the rest of our trip.  As is often the case with our trips, we wanted to see the city, but we didn't really want to spend much money to see it.  This was especially the case for this trip because we elected to do four of the Paddywagon tours.  Because it was Monday, the museums were all closed, but we walked to the area to check out the buildings anyways.  We wandered into the National Library, which ended up having this great ceiling.  The security guard was really friendly and gave us a recommendation for a good place to eat, not that we went, but I love it when local people are helpful and friendly.

Next we headed over to check out the Trinity College campus, one of the oldest Universities in Ireland.  It has a particularly interesting history surrounding the conflict between English Protestants and Irish Catholics.  It is also known for housing the Book of Kells, an ancient text with elaborate script and pictures.  We also went and found THE Temple Bar, though I am still not sure why the whole area is named after it. I think out driver said something about how they were going to demolish the whole area, but then preserved it because of its historic value, and then it became known as the Temple Bar area, but why?  We tried to check out the Dublin Castle, but right now, some Irish person is the acting European Union president for like six months and so the castle is closed the public, and you can't even see most of the outside, bummer.  We satisfied another craving and grabbed some burgers before catching the afternoon bus to Cork.  Dublin = Success!!