Ireland

With our tiny amount of luggage due to the restrictions of the wonderfully cheap flight by Ryan Air we set off for Dublin on a lovely Sunday. We got there kind of late in the afternoon but had just enough time to dump our stuff and go for a quick look around the city. We managed to see Trinity College, Dublin Castle and the main Cathedral, all very lovely to look at. We also went into the Temple Bar area and decided it would be nice to sit down with a beer/cider and listen to some traditional music. This was going well until I went to buy the drinks...13.20 euros for a pint of light beer and an alcopop. Holy shit!! So it's safe to say we only had one drink each. And yes, the music was good!

Our tour left bright and early on Monday morning, we were to set off on the 6 day all Ireland tour with 49 others and a tour guide....hmmm not too impressed with the 51 seated bus since we were under the impression most tours were only about 30 people, and the fact that half of the bus were rich gap year kids (18 year olds who take a year off after year 12 and become a teachers aide at a school exactly the same as the one they just left...hmm what a new learning experience) but this aside we headed off to our first sight seeing attraction with only 3 hours on a bus to get there.....but onto what we saw. Now I could bore you all with a day by day outline on what we did but instead I'm just going to give you the highlights in dot points as they are practical and easy to read :)

• Blarney Castle - no I didn't kiss the stone...bloody disgusting if you ask me and I definitely don't need the gift of the gab which is apparently what it gives you HA!
• Saw Inch Beach where Coldplays 'Yellow' clip was filmed just for all you music fans out there, it's a beach.
  
• Stopped in Annascual a small town with not much in it except the explorer Tom Crean's pub for the night
  
• Followed the coast line to Dingle which is a small but cute fishing village where due to the rain there was not much to do except have lunch and it is here that we had the NICEST fish since being over here
• Drove around the Ring of Kerry - not all of it since it is 192km long but what we saw of it was pretty through all the rain and mist of course
• Stayed the night in Killarney - due to the weather and the lateness of our arrival we didn't see much of it. Due to the shit organisation (lack there of actually) of our tour guide Liz and I were separated for the night, we weren't even on the same level! We only just survived....
• Crossed the Shannon River, the longest on in Ireland and the UK at a whopping 300km...can you believe it?!
• Cliffs of Moher - one of my favourites. These cliffs were amazing and we had such a beautiful day that we had our picnic lunch on the top of them
• Burren Mountains - a bit of an odd thing really, it's just this huge space of land covered in limestone rock but was such a cool thing to see, I think this was one of Liz's favourites.
• Galway was next - super cool town, we were actually really disappointed that we didn't have more time there. Listen to a fantastic local Irish band and had THE best Irish stew ever
• Derry was really cool, again we got in late and didn't get to see much but we had a walking tour in the morning and was shown the areas during the Troubles and found out some really interesting stuff. Got to see some of the murals that had been painted...amazing but strange at the same time
• Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge - we crossed. Not so scary at all really especially when you have a lovely calm day with only a sprinkle of rain! Beautiful walk down to the bridge though
• Giants Causeway - fantastic on our top 5 or Ireland. The Myth that goes with the rocks is so great that there is no way the scientific reason for their formation can be true....it just can't be
• Belfast - this is such a beautiful place, the people were so friendly and it just had a really great feel to it. We went on a black cab tour where you are taken to both the east and west sides and are told stories of all the troubles and taken to all the murals. Amazing, it's hard to believe that such a lovely city had such a horrible past...what is amazing though is that even though they're largely at peace, the wall that separates the 2 communities still exist and the gates are still closed at night times due to not being able to trust each other.
• Well this isn't really a highlight, especially not for Liz but I thought I'd put it in...we visited the Guinness Storehouse. Yeah, beer making is not that interesting but I got my free beer and that was that.

So there you have it. The main highlights. We really enjoyed Ireland but were quite disappointed by the tour.....it was lucky our guide (although disorganised) was really entertaining and knew her stuff about everywhere we went and made the long boring bus rides passable. Our accommodation was shit to say the least. Especially in Belfast where 22 of our bus got shafted to another hostel where we were put in a room, the same room, which was in an old building out the back of the actually hostel with no showers and no hot water. There was toilets but that was about it...safe to say we didn't enjoy that at all. It would be great to go back there with a car and visit all the places we didn't really have much time in and just take things at a slower pace..but that would take time and a fair amount of cash due to Ireland being so bloody expensive (well the Republic is the North is cheap as chips!