Groggicks & Guinness

G'Day All!

(I haven't had time to proof read or upload all photos, our tour leaves in half an hour!)

It's been a huge week. We wrapped upour time in Edinburgh by catching a couple of Fringe Festival showsand soaking up the atmosphere with Laura and Rich. I have to say thatEdinburgh during the festival is unbelievable, I had no idea how bigit is. If you ever plan on a trip there, you have to do it duringfestival time.

Getting out of Edinburgh almost turnedinto a rock show. Being the thrifty travelers we are our flights werebooked with Ryanair, a notoriously cheap airline. Not realising thatwe would only have a 15kg baggage limit we had packed to our usual20kg. At check in I discovered that I had to strip about 7.5kg frommy baggage unless I wanted to pay about £12per kilogram extra. This would have worked out to £90,over three times the amount that I payed for the flight.

Unfortunately the heaviest thing in mybag was a bottle of 12 year old single malt whisky that had beengiven to me as a going away gift. Desperate to not throw it in thebin I offered it into the check-in girl. She was happy to relieve meof it. Upon checking my baggage weight again I was still almost 3kgover, but she just let me check it in free of charge and she alsogave us priority boarding status. So kids, todays lesson is thatbribery can work! However special mention must go to our full jar ofVegemite that got tossed, sorry little fella, you just weighed toomuch.

We ended up flying into Dublin withoutany dramas. Our first night was quite, we went for a pint, picked upsomething for dinner and ate in the hostel with a couple of morebeers. The next morning we went for a stomp around the south side ofDublin. We stumbled upon Dublin Castle and found a nice little parknext door to it, as we'd gotten up pretty early we had the wholeplace to ourselves. There was a huge expanse of lawn that seemed tohave some sort of Celtic design weaved through it with paving.

We strolled along the River Lilleywhich pretty much cuts Dublin into it's northern and southern halves.The Museum of Modern Art was next. We were a bit early to go into themuseum, but the grounds and building were impressive enough to keepus occupied. Next door was a 17th century formal garden,again we had the entire place to ourselves. I went snap happy withthe camera as it was a very picturesque place.

Next was the main event, the GuinnessStorehouse. This is the biggest tourist attraction in Dublin, as faras brewery tours go there weren't any real surprises. The museum isin a pretty funky building and the tour concludes with acomplimentary pint of Guinness in the bar on the top level. The barhad a panoramic view Dublin which was a pretty nice setting to enjoya pint of the black stuff, even if it was a little crowded. Thatnight was a fairly quite one seeing as though our tour of Irelandstarted the next day and we wanted a good nights rest.

We had a good mix of people on our tourand our guide was tops. She was a self proclaimed Irish history buffso she always had an interesting story to tell during the drivethrough the Irish country side. The other travelers were a mix ofAussies, Kiwis, Yanks, Canadians, and Scots. Everyone got along welland there weren't any yobbos in the group which made life easier.

Our first stop was the KilbegganDistillery. The part of the distillery that we was no longer in usebut had been left as it was when it closed down in the 1950's. We gota free shot of whisky at the end of the tour, tasty. I got to see areal life Cooper either making or repairing barrels which was prettycool. We then went onto Clonmacnoise Monastery. It was a site whichhad a ruined cathedral and tombstones. Apart from some examples ofCeltic crosses it wasn't really worth the entry fee as all of theruin sites we'd visited in Scotland were free.

Our next stop was a portal tomb in aarea called The Burren which is a limestone peninsula. The portaltomb dated back to around 3200-3800 B.C. It was used as a mass graveby the old Irish cavemen and it's believed to be a portal to theafterlife, or something like that. We next went to the Cliffs ofMoher, a very impressive place and great for photos, I'll let thepictures do the talking.

The first night of the tour was spentin a little town called Doolin. We checked into the hostel and headedstraight to McGanns Pub. This was an excellent small town Irish pub,great atmosphere, brilliant Irish music. However I did overdose onGuinness. Apparently the Irish believe that hangovers are not selfinflicted but are caused by a Groggick which is a leprechaun whovisits you as you sleep after a night of drinking and jumps on youhead, causing a headache the next morning. So yes, I did get a visitfrom the Groggick that night.

Day two and we crossed the ShannonRiver by ferry for a day on the Dingle Peninsula. The weather hadturned sour and a lot of the spectacular views were blocked out byrain and mist. At some stages it really dumped down and some of theroads had started to flood as we approached Killarney. I bought anawesome hunk of bacon hock for lunch, Mel and I spent our lunchtimeon a street corner in the town of Dingle gnawing on a pork bone, I'msure it made for a classy sight.

Our evening in Killarney was spentwalking in the rain. We saw a very impressive cathedral and got tosee a small part of the Killarney National Park. The night was spentwith a few glasses of wine and chatting to some of the guys from ourtour group. The budget was blowing out so I didn't go out.

Today we visited the Mitcheltown Caves,it was good but not any different to the caves I've visited backhome. We made a couple of other short stops for photo opportunitiesas we made our way back to Dublin. We're pretty knackered and arehaving an early night tonight so that we're fresh for our tour ofNorthern Ireland which starts tomorrow.

Wow, that's an epic journal entry. Ihope that those of you who haven't fallen asleep enjoyed my Irelandstory. Believe me, I could have gone into more detail but I wasalready taking too long to write this. I'm really looking forward tothe Northern Ireland leg of our trip, lots of history and more goodphoto opportunities. I hope to have another entry for you once we'reback from that trip, and then it's onto our camping trip in Europe.Woop, woop!

Take it easy.

Justin.