Ireland. The funny country.

After two weeks of cold and rainy weather in London I dressed on Monday to be wearing as many clothes as possible. Why? No, not just because it should be cold, but mainly because I wanted my bag to be as light as possible for my cheap Ryan Air flight to Dublin. Fifteen kilograms max. I left Amy’s place for a powerwalk to the train station and realised that I had far too many clothes on. Wimbledon was over so of course the weather improved.

I changed at London Bridge station with heaps of time to get my connection to Gatwick. Only problem was that the connecting train was running five minutes late. No problem, I’ve got five minutes to spare. Ten minutes later the train arrived and it then proceeded to run even later, stopping to give way to other trains along the way.
I had to put a lot of effort into staying awake on the train. What did I do the night before? Can’t miss my stop. Stay awake Dreadful thoughts of the station being travelators or bus rides away enter my thoughts. I’m usually fine with missing the odd Qantas flight to Melbourne. They run every 30 minutes and are more than happy to just stick you on the next, but not at Ryan Air. I sprint out the doors and up the stairs two at a time (quite a feat with the load on my back… the load which I hope is only 15 kgs). I’m most impressed to find that the terminal is only at the top of the stairs and I get to the check-in counter with at least three minutes to spare. Fortunately my slightly flustered state must have been enough to distract the check-in guy from the 17kgs which displayed when I heaved my bag onto the belt with a thud.

The reason for being so flustered was partly due to Justine, my cousin with whom I was now travelling, was also late for the flight. I did my best to stall but there was no way of stopping those stubborn Ryan Air guys from putting up the ‘Desk Closed’ sign and walking away.

And then there was one. And then there was Dublin. On arrival at Dublin airport I got an sms from Justine saying that she’d be in at 2:30pm so I decided to make the most of the few hours I had to kill and take a trip into the city. I instantly got a taste of Irish friendliness when a guy saw me debating my coins and the bus ticket machine. He offered me what was remaining on his ticket – enough to get me to the city. Why is it that public transport away from airports is always to difficult? You either need exact change (with no way of changing notes anywhere nearby), a valid travelcard for the city (which isn’t available where the buses leave from), or you need to decide between paying $10 for the tourist city-direct bus, or otherwise risk getting lost on the standard bus which is a tenth of the price.

Anyway, I made the long trip into the city. I ended up only having enough time to briefly get a taste of the mall as well as a taste of lunch. I didn’t want to be late back to the airport because Justine and I had big plans for getting to Galway and exploring it that evening.

The express airport bus certainly is express so I got back to the airport with heaps of time to spare before Justine arrived. Luckily there’s a Vodaphone shop which didn’t charge me for using the net (had I known I would’ve spent more time there). Sometime between 3 and 4 in the afternoon we set off for Galway.

What a pretty drive it was. I wasn’t all that excited by the amount of driving we’d be cramming into a few days, but upon seeing the Irish countryside I realised that it would keep me entertained for much longer than the Australian bush can. Galway was lovely and we had a pretty good dinner of fish, chips and mushy peas from a very unpretentious but popular shop on the main mall. We had a brief wander around in the morning along the water’s edge and past the Spanish bridge before setting off for a big day of driving around the Ring of Kerry.

This is when we really started finding things to laugh about in Ireland. The morning involved a relatively uneventful drive south through the outskirts of Limerick and through numerous other small and pretty towns. We stopped for lunch at a place called Castleisland rather than in the more touristy Killarney or Tipperary. Castleisland is one of many places where men in trousers and gum boots made us laugh. Why wear trousers if you’re doing dirty work? Very high standards. We also got our first taste of the Irish cuisine we’d been so looking forward to. No, that’s not sarcasm either. We found a little bakery in the main street which had excellent wholemeal bread (you’ve got no idea how good it is unless you’ve tried it), as well as pots of tea Irish style. ‘Tea for two’ is the equivalent of tea for six in Australia. Gotta keep warm somehow. Another funny part of Irish cuisine, at least at this bakery, was that they served their Shepard’s Pie with mashed potato.

Castleisland is the home of a sort of hardware shop called A Little Something for Everything (I *think* that’s what it was), and nearby was a pub called Chalky Whytey’s amusing because it’s our mothers’maiden name.

We approached the Ring of Kerry with the knowledge that no one gets around it without either being stuck behind a tour bus, or otherwise having to pull off the road to get past one driving in the opposite direction. No idea where the tourists were on this day because we didn’t pass a single bus (except for that one mini bus with three people on it… and it really should’ve known that you don’t drive in the middle of a narrow road when someone is trying to pass).

We observed most of the gorgeous scenery of the Ring of Kerry from the car but did make a brief stop in Waterville to take some photos and buy some postcards.

The end of the Ring of Kerry presented us with a lovely town called Kenmare where we thought about buying far too much wool, but instead came away with minimal amounts of mohair and lambswool. A lovely dinner at a pub later (more great brown bread and an average cider… why does it remind me of champagne?), we confirmed that we could still drive further before stopping for the night.

We aimed for Cork because it’s a big town where we should easily be able to find a room at short notice. After driving around Cork aimlessly as the sun really started to disappear, we decided to find out if there’s a boring Ibis to stay at. Justine decided that we would just ask a cab driver for how to find one and I made sure she was the one to do so. The cab driver she asked must be the friendliest person in Ireland. I watched the episode from a side street through the rear-vision mirror. A good five minutes and lots of hand signals later Justine runs back to the car. ‘Keep left!’ she says. Apparently the cab driver thought it was most important for us to ‘Keep left! Just keep left!’ to find the Ibis. So important that he even offered to lead the way as we followed. The journey ahead sounded like a treacherous one. Turns out that we kept a little TOOOO left because we needed to stop to ask another nice Irishman for details. This guy was so friendly that he leaned into the car to get the pen and paper from me and then proceeded to draw a map. This time we found it, checked in and headed back to the city for some emailing at a 24 hour net cafe seen advertised on a tourist info board. We had only been stopped for a moment to check the address on the board when another helpful Irishman asked if we needed any help. More hand directions and thankyous later and we were there. The rest of our trip around Ireland was spotted with commands to one each other to “Keep left! God almighty, just keep left!”.

We wandered around the city in the morning for breakfast (potato bread from Marks & Spencer) and hit the road once again. After studying the map we worked out that Youghal (Justine’s favourite town) wasn’t all that far away. It’s a pretty little coastal town with a main street which is one way (Lonely Planet describes the city with the line ‘You’ll miss it if you come from the wrong direction’). Justine bought some tack (tacky souvenirs) and we were once again on the road, this time headed for Cashel and its famous castle.

Now that I mention ‘on the road’ I should also mention that I was reading Jack Kerouac’s novel On The Road at the time… in fact I’m still supposedly reading it but I’m not even half way through. It really doesn’t do it for me. But more on that later.

The roads we took between Youghal and Cashel were beautiful. Narrow roads that hugged steep green rolling fields, beautiful little but bustling towns and goats that grazed on the edges of the roads – very narrow roads. At one point I was in the passenger’s seat bent over getting something from the floor. Justine slammed on the brakes and I tilted my head forward to see a goat (or was it a sheep) less than two metres from my face. Some choice words came out of both of our mouths as the goat-sheep galloped off the road.

Cashel isn’t very exciting. We stopped for lunch and wandered up to the castle anyway. Considering that seeing any more than one side of the castle would’ve involved some expense and an hour of our time, we instead focused on Hore Abbey which is just down the hill (mostly because its name makes us laugh). We took some sultry photos near the Hore Abbey sign and then hit the road again.

Somewhere between Cork and Cashel we passed a bus with an ad on the back of it for a factory outlet in a town called Rathdowney. We were particularly excited by the words Pringle and Joseph on it. We decided we had time on our way back to Dublin to make a diversion to this place. Two hours, several sheep and one Joseph skirt later we left. Oh how I love my cashmere. Lugging our load of shopping from the hire car to our hotel in Dublin was quite some effort, but surely amusing for passers-by.