Här är vår resedagbok. Vi kanske översätter den till svenska senare, men tills vidare är den på engelska.
02.07 2002
And they're off! At 14:05 we left Turku (on time!) and after a brief visit in the new wing of the international terminal of Arlanda, we arrived at Dublin Airport at 17:35. We almost got a couple of hours delayed and 1600 dollars richer, since the plane was overbooked and we volunteered to take a later flight. Finally they ended up not needing us after all. What a shame.
They don't call it the green island for nothing. The view we had from the airplane was magnificent. The bus ride into town was interesting. The street signs were a rare luxury, so we had to guess where we were most of the time. And they actually are driving on the wrong side of the street! Horror! (Jen and Jeff: If you get here by plane, it's good to know that bus number 41 only costs 1.45 euro, instead of 4.50 for the express bus. You just have to make sure you have exact change.)
But we found our way to our little B&B on Lower Gardiner Street. The bus actually stopped almost right outside the front door, and we actually managed to get off at the right bus stop!
The last exercise of the day was a walk along O'Connell Street to see some sights and prepare for tomorrows big excursion. We ended up actually crossing the Liffey (the river), which looked a lot like Aura river, with a few more houses and a few less trees.
03.07 2002
Wow, what a day! Much better than the night, which was not so much spent sleeping as listening to the neighbours through the paper-thin walls. After a big, Irish style breakfast, we set of to see Dublin. We got held up a bit after finding a nice bookshop, though. Books are really cheap here! No sales tax.
We took one of the local "hop-on hop-off" bus tours of the city. It tours all the interesting sights and you can get on and off the bus as much as you like during the whole day. It runs every 10 minutes, so there is really not a lot of waiting. The driver also acts as a tour guide, and at least some of the drivers possessed their fair share of the world famous Irish sense of humour. One of the drivers even sang a few songs to us.
The first stop for us to hop off was the Trinity College. An amazing collection of buildings including the exhibit of the Book of Kells, a manuscript of the four gospels dating back to the 9th century.
We had a bite to eat at the Dublin Castle. We didn't take the tour of the castle, though, but we walked the grounds and enjoyed the beautiful garden.
Our next stop was Saint Patricks cathedral. It's a beautiful ancient cathedral built on the site where Saint Patrick himself supposedly baptised Irish converts in the 5th century. The inside of the cathedral was quite impressive too, although the walls were mostly covered by plaquers honouring patrons of the cathedral.
Next, we went to Dublinia, an exhibition on Dublin in midieval times. By now we were both quite tired, so the hoards of teenage Italian and Spanish tourists seemed very large and loud. A very interesting exhibition, though, but a bit run down and not all the interactive gimmicks worked the way they should any more.
Our final "hop-off" of the day was the Guinness Hop Store, a seven storey factory building that has been turned into a museum on the art of brewing Guinness. This is a very hightech and fun museum, well worth the visit. Especially since the tour ends with a complementary Guinness in the Gravity Bar on the seventh floor, which has a fantastic 360 degree panoramic view of Dublin. We also got to witness a window washing done by mountaineers hanging in ropes from the roof. For some reason Chakie thinks this was the best stop we'd done all day, and we spent almost an hour just sitting in the bar, sipping our pints of Guinness and enjoying the view.
After a short break at the B&B, we went nextdoors to have a light dinner at the local pub. We ordered some traditional Irish stew of lamb, potatoes and vegetbles. We got a huge plate each, containing well over a litre of stew, including four large potatoes. So now we're stuffed, tired and ready for bed. We even bought some ear plugs, so we may actually get some sleep tonight!
Today's uncut crop of pictures: 105. :-)
04.07 2002
Kilkenny
Today was the day we drove on the left side of the road. 'Twas a great adventure. This people really like their roundabouts. And they go around in the wrong direction! They don't really like road signs, though.
Everything worked out just fine as soon as we made it outside of Dublin; and we did get outside of Dublin after we had bought a map with all the streets in it. Then it was just a matter of keeping to the left and driving straight ahead.
At about three in the afternoon we made it to our new B&B: Cnoc Mhuire. What a change from the one in Dublin! Lovely little rooms with adjoining bathrooms in a private home. Our host Don welcomed us with a pile of maps and leaflets with handwritten recommendations of sights and restaurants in and around the city of Kilkenny.
Unfortunately, Kilkenny didn't show us her best weather today. It has been raining since we got here, but we decided to take a walk down to the center of town and have dinner anyway. Don had recommended Langton Bar, which turned out to be a great choice. The pork spare ribs with chips and Kilkenny beer was just what we needed. We also managed to catch some sights as we walked through town and back through the Castle Park. More about that later (as soon as it stops raining)...
05.07 2002
Kilkenny, day 2
Today started very nicely with a lovely breakfast after a good night's sleep. We had opted for the fruit bowl instead of the traditional Irish cholesterol breakfast. In the breakfast room we made some new acquaintances, as 75 per cent of the people in the room were Swedish speakers.
Two of our breakfast friends joined us for the walking tour of the town. Unfortunately, it was raining slightly the whole time we were walking, but that did not make the tour any less interesting. We got to see a witch's house (now a pub called Kyteler's Inn), the inside of the old city jail, the only remaining gate of the old city walls and the Black Abbey, dating back to the 13th century. The Abbey was the most beautiful church we've seen so far. Quite modest in appearance from the outside, it sported magnificent stained glass windows on the inside. This is still a house of worship and a serene place to walk around in, since no organised tours were allowed inside the church. Our guide did his talking outside.
After the tour we had some tea and coffee at the old witch's house and then made our way to Saint Canices Cathedral and up the lookout tower. The climb up the some 120 steps was well worth it when we got to see the beautiful view of the entire town.
On our way back to town we stopped by Smithwick's breweries just in time for today's free beer sampling. Before the beer we had to endure^H^H^H enjoy an informative video documentary about the brewery and its history dating back to the 14th century cistercian monks that brewed ale in the abbey, now enclosed inside the brewery walls.
Our final sight for the day was the beautiful Kilkenny Castle. The only way to see the inside of the restored castle is to take a guided tour, which we did. The castle dates back to the 1190's, when Strongbow built the first fortress overlooking the river Nore. It was inhabited until 1935, when the Butler family moved away from Ireland after having lived in the castle well over half a millennium. The castle was sold to the city of Kilkenny in the end of the 1960's for the nominal sum of £50. The Heritage foundation are still restoring the castle with the aid of the EU.
That's about what we've done today, not counting the ice-cream outside the castle and the dinner at Langton's.
06.07 2002
Kilkenny, day3
Another day full of action and adventure! Today we ventured out on the Irish highways on the southbound "Crafts Trail". Our Swedish friends had taken the same trip the day before, and they had spent some three hours on the road. Don't know how they managed that. For us it took over seven hours! We're just happy that we survived the interesting highways of south-east Ireland. We took the R700, which turned out to be little more than a narrow corridor with trees and bushes cut vertically along the outer edges of the road.
Our first stop was the Nicholas Mosse Pottery. The patterns of the pottery are hand painted and absolutely gorgeous. Luckily, from an economical point of view, we can't transport any pottery back home without it breaking, so we only bought a pair of mittens and a woollen hat for Jeanette.
Our next stop was Jerpoint Abbey. This cistercian monastery was built around 1160 and developed to be one of the more powerful ones in the region. Its roof was destroyed by Henry VIII in 1540 as a part of the conversion of the Irish people to the Anglican faith. Still, it is the best preserved monastery in Ireland, since the locals secretly stayed true to their faith and protected the ruins from total destruction by the weather. They still bury their dead in the graveyard and inside the ruins of the Abbey. The guided tour we took was just excellent! The stories about a monk's daily living really made the ruins come to life. We were told funny little details, like the daily rations of a monk: some cooked vegetables, a piece of bread and eight pints of beer. At least they didn't die of vitamin B deficiency :-)
Another interesting detail in Jerpoint Abbey is the delicate stone carvings that are really unusual for the otherwise plain cistercian tradition. There were carvings depicting patron saints, as well as local lords and even the god of wine, Bacchus. These monks obviously were inspired by their diet...
The next craft site we visited was Jerpoint Glass Studio. Again, we were economically happy that we could not possibly bring any of the wonderful glass items with us back home. Unfortunately, there were no glass-making activities on Saturdays, even though the furnaces were heated. We still managed to spend quite a long time there just admiring their beautiful products.
By now we were hungry, so we stopped by Mount Juliet Estate and Golf Course for some lunch. We tried very hard to look like we had just driven in in one of the fancy BMW or Mercedes sports cars parked in the front, and not in our little Peugeot 206. Maybe they believed us, after we had payed 26 euro for our two sandwiches and cokes. On the other hand, they might have suspected our wealth when we rushed out and started taking pictures of the lovely golf course afterwards.
Our next stop was the picturesque village of Inistioge, whose claim to fame is the making of the movie "Circle of Friends". Pretty town. Nice coffee. Happy people. Smelled of fertiliser, though -- the town, that is, not so much the people. We think. Not that we explicitly walked up and smelled anybody.
After Inistioge, we headed back north to visit the Kilfane Glen and Waterfall. The drive there was interesting, along a road wide enough for a car and a half and high hedges on both sides. The locals all know the road, so they drive like mad. But we survived this part of the trip too and got to see the wonderful gardens which made us think of Tolkien's magical woods.
By the time we left the gardens, it was already 6 p.m. and all the tourist attractions were already closed. Still, we decided to go to the city of Gowran on our way back to see the church ruin St Mary. It was closed. But we had a bit of fun trying to find a parking spot, though. We passed through the entire town twice before we succeeded. And then we ended up in someone's back yard. On our way out a little suicidal dog tried to stop us from leaving. We all survived, though.
For dinner we decided to eat some snacks in our room, so we ventured out to find an open grocery store or service station. This was harder than we had imagined due to the bands of drunken bag-pipers that roam the streets of Kilkenny after today's piper competitions. We managed to get a couple of 45 gram chips bags each (no, they haven't invented Mega Pussi here yet) and now we're happily munching away on them.
07.07 2002
Kilkenny, day 4
The excursion of the day went to the Dunmore caves. We picked up Gareth and Emily at the castle at 10:30 and headed north, after a bit of chatting. This was the first time the boys met in person, after having worked together for three years, so we were all pretty excited to finally meet.
The caves themselves weren't very big and impressive in size, but they were more interesting with regards to their history. When these caves were first investigated in the 1940's, the archaeologists found the remains of a large group of women and children that had died there, probably while trying to hide from Viking invaders. Obviously, they did not succeed and among the bones, Viking coins were found. They had probably fallen off the invaders as they were wielding their swords.
The caves opened to the public in the 1970's, but it wasn't until 1999 that the latest discoveries were made. An employee that had been sent down to the caves to clean up after the tourists, put his hand into a hole and found a number of coins, some silver jewellery and a piece of cloth.
The rest of the day we spent in the pubs of Kilkenny talking and eating. We just had the greatest of times and didn't head back to the B&B until it was almost midnight.
08.07 2002
Kilkenny, day 5
Lots of touristy things today. First we went book shopping in Kilkenny. We bought only six books. After a light lunch we went out on a castle road trip due south-west of Kilkenny.
Our first stop was the Cahir Castle. This is the best preserved medieval castle in Ireland, due to the fact that the Butlers surrendered the castle as soon as Cromwell showed up at its gates. We took the excellent guided tour and learned how to build and defend a medieval castle. So the next time you try to pay us an uninvited visit, you might just find yourself with boiling oil down your shirt.
Some movies have been partially filmed in the Cahir Castle. The most famous one is probably Braveheart. There's about 3 seconds worth of footage from the castle gate being closed behind pursuers in the movie.
In Cahir, there is also the so called Swiss Cottage, which actually has nothing to do with Switzerland at all. The cottage was built in 1810 for the Butlers to play peasants in. That was apparently something the aristocrats enjoyed doing at the time. The cottage was very beautifully designed and decorated using the naturalistic style of architecture that was in fashion back then.
Unfortunately, the view from the cottage over the castle was somewhat contaminated by the real peasant lodgings along the river Suir, so the Butlers had the houses moved and the forest cut down. That's something you can do when you own your own county.
Our next castle was the Rock of Cashel. This is really not a castle, but a very impressive fortified cathedral on the top of a dominant hill overlooking the village of Cashel. Unfortunately, we arrived too late to take part in the tour of the cathedral, but we really didn't need anybody telling us how impressive it is. The oldest parts of the cathedral date back to the 12th century, but there are legends placing St Patrick on the site baptising converts already in the 5th century. For this reason the cathedral is sometimes referred to as St Patrick's Rock.
After this, we made our way back to Kilkenny to spend an evening eating candy and reading our new books.
09.07 2002
Adare
The goal of the day was to see the cliffs on the west coast. For this we had to leave Kilkenny immediately after breakfast. We were actually a bit sad to leave. We have really enjoyed Kilkenny and our lovely B&B. After finishing our breakfast we were very surprised and touched to find a gift from Helen and Don in our room.
Most of the day was spent in our little Peugeot. First we had to get from Kilkenny to Adare. Don had given us very good driving instructions, but still we managed to take a wrong turn and end up doing a detour of about 25 km. We didn't mind too much though. We had plenty of time and now we got to see some cities we wouldn't have seen otherwise.
We arrived at our new B&B, Hillcrest House, just outside Adare at about 13:00. We were met by Jennie, who was very helpful and let us borrow some guidebooks with information about the cliffs.
We stopped for lunch in what our guidebook refers to as a Medieval Disneyland: the village of Bunratty. It is basically a little village of tourist attractions built around a restored medieval castle. The castle looked very impressive, but we settled for lunch at Durty Nelly's and some shopping for souvenirs and gifts in the castle's gift shop.
After a looong dive we arrived to the Cliffs of Moher. But it was definitely worth the trouble. The view from the top of the cliffs was simply breathtaking. We were very lucky with the weather, too. We had had showers on and off during the whole trip, but as we climbed the cliffs, the sun was shining and we could even see some blue sky in between the clouds.
On our way back to Adare, we tried to find a coffee shop to have some evening tea and pastries. Alas, we were not very successful. We had hoped to find one in theme-park Bunratty, but it seems the entire village closes at 17:30. So we ended up having our coffee, tea and apple tarts in a nice pub in Adare.
Now we are preparing to spend our last night in Ireland. Tomorrow we'll drive to Dublin and fly back to Stockholm. Hopefully we'll catch some sights on our way back.
10.07 2002
Going home
We woke up to the mooing of cows and barking of hunting dogs. Yup, we were in the country-side, alright. After a nice breakfast of an abundance of toast, cereals and fruits, we set off to Dublin. The two house dogs were sad to let us go.
We had planned to stop at some of the sights along the way, but we just couldn't be bothered. We had had a slight overdose of castles and other historical sights by now, and besides it was raining almost all the way. So we just stopped for a cup of coffee and to buy stamps for our postcards (which had actually been written some days earlier!).
We actually didn't get lost even once on our way back. We could return the car without any problems and a taxi took us to the airport. We could have returned the car at the airport too, but we didn't need the excitement of driving in Dublin. The cab driver was a merry chap and kept talking all the way to the airport, so now we know everything about his two daughters and their boyfriends.
After a quick dinner in the airport restaurant and some hysterical shopping for last-minute gifts, our plane took us back to Stockholm and then on to Turku.
EOJ (End of Journey)