Ireland Weekend - Road trip

There is definitely something that England is great for. City breaks! Since it is close to most of Europe, the pound is stronger than the Euro (marginally these days) and there are a host of cheap deals to pick from you can easily and with a smallish budget get a taste of a different culture (and a break from the English one).

So last weekend we packed our hand luggage (budget trips, no normal luggage allowed but hey we paid £2.50 a ticket from Ryan Air. Went up a little because I figured it its that cheap I might as well pay the little bit extra for Priority boarding (won't ever go without it again) so all in all for me and my wife's tickets it cost us about £25 incl taxes and the lot. So off we went.

We arrived late, around 22:30 and hurried over to the rental car collections to pick up our car. We opted for a Garmin from Europe Car. Okay so the trip gets a bit more pricey with the extras but I think we saved at least the €10 in petrol a day by not getting lost and loads of frustration. We did however get a slightly confused Garmin and it took us a couple of U turns to eventually get to our Hotel. As per usual at the start of a holiday, especially one starting at 22:00 at night after a hard days work we passed out.

The next morning we were surprised to see that it was sunny! It didn't last long but they bad weather didn't stick around long either, it seemed to move fairly quickly rather than the English weather that seems to hang around, especially when its cloudy weather. We had a quick breakfast and then used our confused Gamin to get us to the Guinness brewery where we had a Guinness in their lovely tower bar with views over Dublin and learnt all about how to make it.

We then set off from Dublin to Cork. This is a 5 hour drive if you go straight, I think it took us closer to 9.

Our first stop was the Rock of Cashel. The guide book says that Cashel is overshadowed by it but we thought it looked more like it protruded from it. It looks completely out of place. The huge stone castle that was later given to the church, with it medieval feel is completely out of place in the green landscape with a couple of small houses around.

We then moved on, we stopped at a pub for lunch in a small town and then continued on to Cork. I was adamant to find an Irish stew but Alas this eluded me, my wife was also disappointed by the fact that we couldn't find a pub playing Irish music with some Irish dancing the first night in cork.

The morning of the next day we took a trip down to the coast. We actually after a bit of driving around found a pathway leading to a little beach and got some fresh sea air in before our hunger got the better of us and we found a nice little restaurant called The White House in Kinsale where we had lovely service.

We really enjoyed the Irish's encouraging manager. Every question is answer with "Off course you can" and when you asked if you were on time you were told "Your right on time" and when trying to leave a pub that night you had chorus of Irish accents calling after you "What it something we said? Come have another one, there will be Irish music in a minute." We had to stay until 22:00 but their promises did come true eventually.

We had to off course go up to Blarney and kiss the stone, the Legendary Blarney stone. When I first heard of William Churchill I didn't think I'd ever kiss something he kissed, but life is full of surprises!

Blarney Castle isn't all the impressive, the gardens are pretty and all but when its freezing cold, as it happened to be in the hour we were there we quickly made our way back to the car after paying €10 of a photo of us hanging upside down through a hole in the tower floor. Gotta love capitalism.

Our last day was a bit of a mess up because we thought we could make it around the ring of Kerrie from Cork and Back to Dublin before 19:00 that night to catch our flight when we only left about 10:00. Needless to say we realized the error of our ways halfway around the ring of Kerrie and had to push our poor little VW Fox to its limits to get back to Dublin. We did stop for some encouragement next to the road and had a coffee and a toilet break and was told "You'll make it no problems" in their encouraging tone. So feeling reassured we set off and made it with an hour to spare. I did loose my temper with taxi driver because he had a problem with me reversing up a one way after the airport roadworks and signage being less than adequate got me going down the wrong lane. But all in all it was a successful trip and we'd definitely go back to see the rest of Ireland someday!