Days 14 and 15 - Dublin and the trip home

After acquainting ourselves with the hotel yesterday, we made the decision to not eat breakfast here.  The food is probably fine, but we don't want to risk it with everything else we've seen here.  Instead, we walked down the street and grabbed some muffins and a mocha at Starbucks.  One of my conclusions from this trip is that I am glad I was not born over here, because I am finding that I am avoiding the local food after a short vacation.  Too much pub food.

Because I am actually writing this blog post a week after I got back, I can mention what I think happened at this Starbucks.  During breakfast, I logged onto their free WiFi to surf the interweb.  I think the only thing I did was search for sights pertinent to U2.  I never intended to go out of my way to see anything, but where we are staying is so central in Dublin that I figured we had been walking sights all along.  This was true, and I will get to more of this later.  Shortly after logging onto this open network, someone tried to hack my google account.  I learned of this after getting off of the plane on our return flight when I was trying to upload 2 hours of blogging.  After I changed my passwords and ensured I was in control of my own accounts, all of the blogging that had not yet been uploaded disappeared.  I was bumming.  My last few blog entries (including yesterday's) are all from notes and memory.

After we finished eating, we walked across O'Connell St. to the central post office.  We needed to mail Peggy's post card now that it had her zip code.  I took a picture of the post office only because it had the same architect as Markree Castle.  I do not see the similarities, but this is cool anyways.

After mailing the post card, we went shopping in one of Dublin's many tourist shops.  We were in there for a while finishing up our trinket shopping, ensuring that relatives and coworkers were handled (we each brought a tin of shortbread cookies for the coworkers).  Not wanting to carry all of this around, we made the decision to bring the loot back to the hotel, which was maybe 2 blocks away.

En route, we passed the local U2 sight that I found the most interesting.  The sight I visited had everything from the houses they were born in to the pub where Larry Clayton was busted for drug possession in the late 80's.  Locally, it mentioned all of the theaters on O'Connell where they have played shows or debuted movies like Rattle and Hum.  However, just down the street from our hotel was something I found more interesting.  Young Paul Hewson was given the nickname Bonavox by a buddy in Dublin.  Disliking it at first, he warmed to it when he learned it meant "good voice" in Latin.  The buddy got the name from a hearing aide store in central Dublin (see below).  Obviously, he shortened this up.

At the same time I took the last picture, I turned to get a picture of the Spire looking down Talbot St.

We hung out at our hotel room for a few minutes.  I used the time to buy tickets to the Gaelic Football game.  So excited!  I would have bought them last night, but I wanted to make sure Melissa was cool with it.  It will be a later night than ideal, especially since our flight tomorrow is at 550 am and tomorrow is Ireland's spring forward day (I have to do this twice this year...).  The tickets were a deal at €10 each.

We had lunch at a pizza place down the street because my travel buddy wanted to.  They had pizza in the window and it looked good.  I thought it tasted alright too.  After lunch, we walked over the river to temple Bar.  An observation of Dublin is that we really could have gotten along quite well without the buses in the city center.  The walks are all short distances, and the buses are unintelligible anyways.  I took a few picture of the River Liffey to prove that it exists.

Along the river, we passed the more traditional entrance to Temple Bar.  Our entrance the other day when we took the bus here was more of a walk through a scary alley than this.

In Temple Bar, I got a daytime picture of the temple bar.  

We walked around for a while looking for a good souvernirs for my mom.  We wanted to get her something extra for all of her morning meetings with our daughter.  Riley has been waking like clockwork at 4 am looking for a bottle of the good stuff, and my mom has delivered.  Hopefully some of the reward here was getting to spend time with our ridiculously cute little girl, but the time in the morning probably wore things thin a bit.  We did not find anything in the temple bar shops, but one of the shopkeepers pointed us to a district over by Trinity college that should have some good stuff.  They especially recommended a shop called Kilkenny's.  

It was a short walk.  We went through a few wool shops first.  We didn't see anything for my mom, but Melissa did find a nice wool hat.  A side note here:  we both bought our hats in York, and they were hard to find.  In England, the winter hats were picked over and they were beginning to put spring items on the shelves.  As a result, both of our hats are pretty atrocious.  We would never wear these at home.  Mine is either slightly better, or Melissa is nicer than me (likely) and hasn't said anything.  Her hat, on the other hand, has earned her the nickname "Meg".  As in Meg from the Family Guy.  I am happy to say that she bought a cute hat today, just in time to have it not show up in any of our vacation photos.  I will be happy if both of our original vacation hats don't make it back to the states.

At Kilkenny's, we found a gift for my mom.  We also purchased a nice print of Sligo County for ourselves. 

Feeling accomplished, we strolled back to the hotel.  We needed to get some packing done, and we wanted to Skype a bit early today.

We didn't leave much time to get to the game.  Croke Park was a 15-20 minute walk, and everyone we talked to told us to be there a bit early.  We grabbed some burgers from MvDonalds and walked with the to the game.  The snob in me hates that we keep eating at American fast food places, but they are convenient and the food here isn't that great to begin with.  The walk was easy and quick.  The walk was made easier by the crowd of people walking to the game.  All we had to do was follow the pack once we were in the neighborhood of the stadium.

The game was a blast!  The ball is like a larger volleyball.  The field was a larger soccer pitch.  Teams scored three points for kicking the ball into the goal and one for kicking it through the uprights.  Passing was by hitting or kicking the ball. Throwing the ball is a turnover.  Players can catch the ball and run with it.  Like Aussie rules, they have to bounce the ball every 4 steps.  No tackling is allowed, but they can check each other shoulder to shoulder.  Players cannot pick up the ball directly off of the ground.  They have to scoop it up with a foot.  The goalie is the only player than can pick up the ball without a foot.  The game is chaos, and a quick YouTube viewing of Gaelic football will get the point across better than my explanation.

In the stadium, all, signage and announcements were in Gaelic.  Even the team names were the Gaelic names for the cities.  The game was Cliath vs Maigh (Dublin vs Mayo).  Thought the stadium sat 84,000, only 25,000 were there as it was a pre-season game.  For big games, the place is packed.

In the game itself, the Dublin goalie got sent off early for a cheap shot, which forced them to play a man down for 3/4 of the game.  Also, the goalie was their team captain and their backup goalie was sort of not that good.

The game ended in a tie.  Dublin scored a last minute game to tie it and immediately stole the ball and missed a potential game winning one pointer.  It was super exciting, though ties are like kissing your sister.

After the game, we had a brisk walk back to the hotel with a crowd of fans.  After lacking for a few, Melissa went asleep.  I could not fall asleep at all.  It could have been that I stayed up until 11 packing and surfing the internet and I knew we were going to wake up 2 hrs later at 2 am (really 1 am now) to catch a 3 am cab ride to the airport.

Day 13 - Sligo County and back to Dublin

Last night was one of our most peaceful nights on the trip.  York and the castle are the only locations that have been free of big city noise.  However, our bed in York was super sweet, while our bed last night was like sleeping on bare metal springs.  I woke up every time I rolled over.  The castle is still awesome and I still totally recommend it to anyone, but hopefully they update their mattresses soon.

Breakfast was served in the grand dining room.  I had the eggs Benedict, while Melissa had the florentine.  All was excellent.  I particularly liked the honey ham they served mine with.  Melissa was excited that they had cocoa crispies.

After breakfast, we packed and spent some time in the lobby by the fire (using the wifi).  Melissa needed to book a place for our return to Dublin, and we wanted to figure out a few things to do or see before we head back.  At the front desk on our way out, the friendly staff recommended a few drives we could do near Sligo county.

Originally we had planned on making it south to Galway, but we overestimated the drive from Sligo to Galway.  Even though they look close on the map, it is faster to drive from Sligo to Dublin than it is to go from Sligo to Galway.

Prior to setting off for the day, Melissa took the time to document my four wheeled chariot.  I have been getting better by the minute behind the wheel.  Most notable is that I am not having to think as hard to stay on the left side of the road,  As you can see, I have been totally excited to shift lefty.

Our first drive of the day was down to Strandhill, which is the local beach community.  Everyone here told us to go down to see the surfers.  The drive down was scenic, passing tidal plains and fields of sheep.  

The town of Strandhill had a bit of a hippie vibe.  The northern Californian in me felt like it was an extremely small Santa Cruz without the sandy beach.  The surfers were not in the water, which was probably a good thing because the water looked choppy.  There were 8-10 foot waves, but none of them looked rideable.  They sat at a picnic table at the surf school in their full body wetsuits waiting for the waves.

Next, we headed to see the Glencar waterfall.  To do this, we had to drive back through Sligo and head off on a NW bearing.  The last few miles into Glencar were on a narrow road that had a posted limit of 80 km/hr.  I got up to 60 a few times and could barely keep the car on the road.  On the way there were good views of Benbulben, the headlands overlooking Sligo and the Atlantic.

Once at the waterfall, we parked next to Glencar lake and walked up a paved trail to the waterfall.  It was drizzling a bit, and we had the place to ourselves for the most part.  The tourist guides said this is the area where Keats lived.

On the way back into town, we took a picture of a common sight here....  Tractors on the road.

We headed back to Sligo the city.  Our first order of business was to find long term parking.  We found this at the Quays (keys), which is a modern shopping mall.  Our first experience in Sligo let us know that everyone here is more friendly that the US, and as such we needed to budget more time in each store to account for people wanting to chat.

We grabbed lunch at a bagel shop.  Melissa had a Manhattan Bagel, which amongst other things had guacamole on it.  When she ordered it, red flags went up in my head.  Sure enough, her guacamole consisted of yellow mustard mixed with pickle relish.  Yummers!  This also kept my prophesy back at LAX intact.  Considering I can barely eat avocados sitting on my countertop before they over ripen, I can only imagine the challenges associated with getting them to Ireland.

Our first shopping stop was to buy a postcard for Peggy, our daycare provider.  Melissa carefully selected one with a shot of Benbulben.  The next order of business was to walk down the street to the post office to mail it.  After getting the stamp and writing a note, we had to hold off because neither of us could solidly say what the zip code is on the other side of the 23.  We both think it is 91062, but we weren't 100% positive.

Next, we visited the shop we went to yesterday, Mullany Brothers on O'Connell St.  Melissa did some more souvernirs shopping while I chatted witht the shopkeeper.  They had a soccer jersey there that I did not recognize.  It turns out that the soccer jersey they were selling wasn't for soccer, but instead it was for Gaelic football.  After a long discussion with him, I decided that the game sounds lawless and I would love to watch a game someday.   

We returned to the car and began our 2.5 hr drive back across Ireland.  Other than one roundabout where I had to do two laps and popping a curb at the Dublin Airport, the trip was uneventful.

We took the airport bus back into Dublin to get to our hotel, which was the Dublin City Inn.  The location was great, only 2 block straight shot to the spire on O'Connell St (lots of O'Connell Streets here).  That is where the good things to say about this hotel end.  The halls smelled of musty vomit.  The walls in our room were so thin we could hear conversations around us.  Our nonsmoking room, complete with signage indicating that there is no smoking, smelled of cigarettes and had a hotel issued ashtray.  Our room was adjacent to the elevator shaft so we could hear that humming and rumbling by.  The remote for the tv was AWOL.  Not a nice hotel at all, and it cost pretty much the same per night as the castle.  Big cities come with big city prices.

However, their wifi worked just fine, and I was excited to find a Gaelic football game that was going to be played at historic Croke Park in Dublin tomorrow night.  We are so going!

We finished the night by Skyping and then trying to fall asleep.

Day 12 - Markree Castle

Due to the horrendous events of last night, we slept in to around 830 am.  The first order of business of the day was to make our plan as to how we were going to get across Ireland to county Sligo and Markree Castle.  Melissa went through great trouble to book a castle hotel, looking for any castle within a convenient distance of one of our destinations.  Really, none of the castles were convenient, but we decided that if we had to drive in a country it would be Ireland.  I don't know the logic here, because Scotland has way fewer people, but it's what we chose.

After a few minutes of debate, we decided to rent a car from the Dublin Airport, as we could see that the highways were laid out nicely from there.  We definitively did not want to rent a car from the city center because it would not be a good place to learn how to drive on the opposite side of the road shifting left handed.  

As we left the hotel, we spoke with the front desk to see if we could get comped breakfast for the sleepless night.  They told us some excuse about how guests caused the alarms, not them, and thus they were not comping anything.  They also said that pretty much all guests were complaining so they couldn't do anything.  This is not good logic, because now a hotel full of guests is going to tell a whole lot of people that this hotel sucks and does not care about their guests.  We are going to write to Best Western when we get back to the US to let them know this hotel has soured us on their brand.

Once at the airport, we picked up our car from Europcar.  It was a tiny black Hyundai I10, which was somewhere between the size of a Smart Car and a Honda Fit.  We purchased the GPS and the full array of insurance because we had no idea where we were going and our insurance does not apply here.

Initially it was really odd shifting lefty, and I did not do great at my first few junctions and traffic circles.  However, I got the hang of it pretty quickly.  We took the M1 to the M50, and then took the M4 (which turned into the N4 when it downgraded from freeway to highway) the rest of the way to Sligo. There were many small towns and speed traps along the way where speed had to be reduced from 100 km/hr to 50 km/hr.  Also, there was quite a bit of farm equipment clogging up the road.  

We stopped for lunch along the highway at Supermac's, which was a total and complete McDonalds rip off.  My Big Mac (or Supermac) was accurate, except it had too much of the special sauce.  We have been having fast food a few times here, but this time there was really no way around it as the rest stop options were limited between that and a Tim Horton's.

We continued onto Sligo and Markree Castle.  As we approached town, there was traffic circle after traffic circle, which allowed me to perfect my craft.  By the end of the day I was traffic circling like a boss.  

Once we arrived just outside of Sligo, we came upon the castle (editors note: the castle is technically in Colooney, just outside of the city of Sligo, but in county Sligo).  The entrance to the property was a sign of good things to come.

After winding down a long and narrow driveway, past fields of sheep and bare oak trees, we arrived a the main building.

To quote the late Bill King, "Holy Toledo!"  We are going to stay in a castle.  Until I saw it up close, I wasn't entirely into the concept, as I was more concerned with teaching myself to drive a new way and not killing the mother of my children (and Colton is literally counting the days until we return, so we have to not die).  Now I was on the castle train.

Upon entering the castle, we were greeted by a staircase leading up to the reception.

The reception room was one of the more spectacular rooms in the place, with old stained glass, towering and elaborate ceilings, a stone fireplace, and a grand staircase.  None of my pictures did this room any justice, as it was dark, like a castle usually is, and there was no perspective where I could get it all in frame.

At this point, we were shown our room by the friendly staff, and we were introduced to some of the history of the building.  The part of the castle we were staying in is the last part the original family lived in, once the castle had fallen into disrepair.  They essentially retreated to one wing while the rest fell apart.  

The longer history:  The land was originally owned by the McDonaugh clan.  In 1666, it was passed to the Cooper family to pay off a debt related to the Cromwelian war.  Over the years, they built a larger and larger country estate on their 36,000 acre property, as the Cooper family were some of the wealthiest and influential commoners in Ireland.  Though they were not royalty, they were deeply involved in Irish politics.  

Markree underwent an expansion in the late 1700s that was overseen by Francis Johnson, who is responsible for famous buildings in Dublin such as the General Post Office.  It was this expansion that took Markree from large country manor to castle.

In 1834, an observatory was built on the premises, which at that time contained the world's largest telescope.  They also built a meteorological recording station, where in 1881 the coldest temperature in Ireland was recorded (-18 C).  Only the meteorological station remains today.

In 1902, 30,000 acres were sold off by Brian Cooper (another family member with ties to Parliament).  During the Irish Civil War, the castle was occupied by troops who did great damage to the building.  Brian died in 1930, willing the castle to his son Francis.  Francis and his family had to retreat to the east wing (where we were staying) in the 1950s due to the state of the building.  By the 1980s when the next generation inherited, the castle was listed as a no hoper due to the severity of the repairs required.

In 1988, the castle was purchased by the current owners, who have been slowly and methodically restoring the building to its previous grandeur.  But enough with the history lesson...  Let's look at some more pictures!

One of the common rooms...  This served mostly as reception for the bar or restaurant.

The dining room was spectacular.  There were 3 of them just like this, which could be separated to accommodate wedding receptions or other events.  While we were there they were setting up for a wedding and guests were arriving.

As I mentioned above, there was also a bar.

And if your going to have a wedding, what wedding would be complete without a chapel?  The hotel keeper who showed us around said the curtains are over the glass due to some sort of regulation saying the religious imagery must be covered during the ceremony itself.  I need to do some fishing on this to get a better rationale.

After getting comfortable, we took a walk of the grounds.  The following are some pictures from the rear of the castle.  My travel buddy is looking more and more like Kenny from Southpark.

Some pictures from the side of the castle.

Really, the only slight on the castle was our room.  The room itself was nice, large, and warm.  It had a great view of the backyard.  It was a bit plainer than our surroundings, and the mattress was old and lumpy.  Other than that, this place gets an A+.

We spent a little over an hour walking around the castle, up stairs and down halls.  It would have been very easy to get lost in there.  Lots of stairs, hallways, and doors.

Eventually, we took a 19 minute drive into Sligo to check it out.  It was a neat small town, and the people were really friendly.  The shopkeepers just want to chat and share their country.  We also picked up some souvenirs for the family and were not charged the big city prices we have seen all trip.

We headed back to the castle and had an early dinner in the bar.  I had a risotto and a few Smithwicks, and Melissa had the Chicken Laksa.  For dessert, Melissa had a brownie and I had a hot whiskey.  All were delicious.

The castle was lit for the night, so I stepped out into the cold to snap a picture.

As WiFi does not travel through 3 ft thick stone walls very well, the internet only worked in the lobby.  We finished the night by blogging by the fire and Skyping on the grand staircase with a hyper 3 year old.