Ireland: Dublin, Belfast and Giant's Causeway

It's been a while since I've updated the blog. For several months, we mostly hung out around our town and patiently waited for the weather to warm up again. We planted flowers, bought bikes, pulled out our summer clothing and did just about everything we could to encourage spring to arrive. It finally did, and then we went on vacation to visit a still cold and rainy Ireland.

It stopped raining about a minute before this picture

GoT Filming location in Northern Ireland

We've been planning to go to Ireland since we arrived in Germany. Each time we made plans, they were delayed. Originally, we planned to make a short visit on St Patrick's Day and Greg's birthday in 2014. Because I started my current job in February 2014, I didn't have enough leave saved to make a trip in the middle of the week. We decided to hold off on the trip until Greg's 29th birthday this past March to celebrate his last year in his twenties. This plan was also delayed due to a duty Greg was assigned over his birthday week. Getting impatient, I went ahead and booked the trip for April immediately after his duty ended. So, it wasn't exactly ON his birthday, but I'm still going to consider it part of his birthday present.

On the walk to Giant's Causeway

Once everything was booked, we were still faced with several other delays and disappointments. Before leaving, everyone talked Dublin up to be the most awesome city in Europe, so needless to say, we were very excited to make the trip. The day before our flight, I came down with food poisoning and Greg was not far behind me in this illness. On Saturday morning, we both experienced some severe GI illness. Our ride to the airport overslept and we had to drive ourselves, stopping along the way to pickup as much nausea/vomiting/diarrhea medication as we could find. Running late, we got held up in customs as we mistakenly ended up in flight crew line which gave priority to pilots and airline employees. We ended up at the gate 10 minutes before boarding still feeling horrible.

St. Patrick's Cathedral

After landing in Dublin early on Saturday, we planned to spend our first day exploring the city. Instead, we spent it in the hotel bed. We could barely eat our first dinner in Dublin and it took several days before I could look at meat without wanting to throw up. Basically, our first day was wasted. For this reason, we decided not to go to Cliffs or Moher on the second day so that we could actually spend some time in Dublin.

Our second day, we explored Dublin using the hop-on hop-off bus route. While it was great to hear the history of the city, this tour was really not necessary. In London, the hop-on hop-off and Underground were necessary forms of transportation due to the huge size of the city, but Dublin was significantly smaller and easily walk-able.

Trinity College

Trinity College and Temple Bar, two of the main sites, were less than 5 minute walking distance from our hotel. We started off at Trinity College because I desperately wanted to see the long hall of the main library and the Books of Kell, which are beautifully illustrated editions of the Gospels written in Celtic language meant to spread Catholicism to Ireland. Obviously, the concept worked, and most of Ireland is Catholic today. You can take a tour of the grounds with a student before visiting the library. The cost difference is only one euro and the whole tour takes 30 minutes. Our student explained that all of the books in the long hall of the library are history books written in Latin and Greek. He explained that Trinity College owns a copy of every book ever published in the UK or Ireland. There are so many books, that majority of them are housed in a warehouse outside of the city and carted back and forth on a regular basis when students request them. All current and former students are allowed access to these books throughout their lifetime. Even the most antiquarian of books could still be read by students, although there are certain restrictions on which books may actually leave the library as some of them are obviously extremely valuable. On our way out of the library, our guide pointed out a building across the way which was designed by the same man who invented color photography. Prior to planning our trip to Dublin, I never expected so much history from one rather small school.

The Library

As you may expect, because of Dublin's literary history, there are several great places to purchase rare and antiquarian text. This was our next stop after leaving Trinity College. I started collecting antiquarian books in college but couldn't afford much and was limited by only having one small store in a 4 hour radius which sold such books. After moving to Germany, antiquarian books are readily available at almost any store. Mind you, most are in German, but there is a much bigger interest in Europe in preserving antiquarian books than I would imagine in America. I only found one book I enjoyed at the first store, but it was very inexpensive. The second store we visited was much more pricey, but reflected the fact that the shop owner was a huge collector of antiquarian Irish literature. The walls were lined with first editions and rare copies of James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and other famous Irish authors. I don't collect Irish literature, but I did find several other books that we were interested in owning. The shop owner was absolutely wonderful and gave us a discount which she really did not need to do. I will probably order from her online store as well.

Temple Bar at night

Other than wondering around for the rest of the day seeing some of the other sites, all that was left to do was listen to folk music in a pub in Temple Bar. This was about the time that I stopped enjoying Dublin. We had seen most of the main sites in one day. We shuffled into packed pubs with nowhere to sit and beer that cost almost 6 euros a pint. Everyone in the bar were tourists. The one thing that was so highly talked about was, to me, the worst part. The streets were dirty and covered in glass. The locals in the area were not remotely friendly. One Irish man near us at the bar spent most of the time complaining that there were far too many tourists and immigrants in Dublin. I was ready to go back to the hotel after one beer. If we want to get drunk, we can pay under 6 euros for a bottle of Reisling at a festival in our own town in Germany and have somewhere to sit and drink it with people who were actually friendly. It was about this time that I realized that Dublin is probably more geared towards college age adults who's parents are happy to shell out the money for their children to experience a "new and interesting culture." I was happy to be leaving the city the next day.

We woke up bright and early on Monday to take a trip to Northern Ireland to see Giant's Causeway. I will be honest, I was pretty ignorant to the history of Northern Ireland prior to this trip. I remember hearing news stories when I was younger about the IRA and British Soldiers in Ireland but I didn't really know what the issues were all about. Our tour guide did a great job explaining to us about why the English came to Ireland to begin with and why Northern Ireland was much different than the rest of the country. He explained it in a way that seemed much less biased than the horror stories of violence I remember from my youth. He discussed the issues that still plague Northern Ireland and Belfast to this day and how so much fighting has occurred over religious beliefs and ideologies. It is a culture that I feel you just can't understand without living it day in and day out.

Our first stop in Northern Ireland was to the Carrick-a-rede Bridge. The bridge was built to allow fisherman onto a small island which provided access to spawning locations of a particular kind of fish. Now, it's a tourist attraction which offers great views of the northern coastline. I hate heights, so the bridge itself was a little terrifying. It was windy and wet, but the sights were absolutely beautiful. The water looked as clear and bluish-green as in the Greek isles. It made me ready for summer.

View from the bridge

The walk out to the bridge is about 1 km with several slippery stone steps. Only a few people can be on the bridge at a time, so you would have to take turns during the height of tourist season. Since the weather wasn't great, our group was the only one visiting so there wasn't any wait. The bridge creeks and sways as you walk across. Other than seeing the bridge and beautiful coastline, there isn't anything else to do in that area.

Proof that I crossed!

Our next stop was the highlight of the trip: Giant's Causeway. The legend says that an Irish giant challenged a Scottish giant to a fight to prove who was the most powerful. The Scottish giant refused to cross the channel, so the Irish giant built a causeway out of hexagonal shaped rocks found scattered around Ireland so that the Scottish giant would visit. The Scottish giant felt he had no more excuses, so he began to cross the causeway. As he did, the Irish giant realized that the Scottish giant was much, much bigger than him so he ran home to his wife in fear. His wife dressed him in baby's clothing and laid him in a crib. When the Scottish giant arrived at the home, the wife explained that her husband was out but that he was welcome to come inside. Seeing the size of the giant baby, the Scottish giant ran back to Scotland in terror, ripping the causeway up as he fled. 800 of the rocks landed on the Irish side of the channel and 200 or so landed on the Scottish side, ensuring that neither giant would rebuilt the causeway in the future.

A much more likely explanation is that the causeway was created through millions of years of volcanic activity. Although, Greg may or may not believe it was created by aliens.


There are two ways to access the causeway. The first it a short .5-1 km walk to the beach down the side of a paved road. You can also catch a bus this way rather than walk for 1 BP (Northern Ireland uses sterling, whereas the Republic of Ireland uses euro). Our tour guide recommended a longer way, 3 km, across the top of the hills and farmlands down a flight of stairs and over to the causeway. We took this route which allowed for beautiful scenic views. By this part of the day, it was pretty humid and it didn't take long to get sweaty.

Giant's Causeway was the most unique landscape we've seen in Europe. This is the main reason we picked this trip over a trip to Cliffs of Moher. Cliffs of Moher is probably the more popular destination from Dublin, and I am sure it is equally beautiful, but we've seen ocean cliffs all over Greece and will again on our trip to Norway. We definitely felt like Giant's Causeway was a better choice for us on our limited time schedule.

Huge ocean waves crash over the rocks and they can get really slippery. Employees stand around with whistles to remind you when you've gotten to close to the sea. The weren't as fast with the whistles as they were at the Greek ruins so I got pretty close to the ocean before a large Irish man warned me to back away. According to some fellow tourists, people have been swept away by unexpected waves before. I'm not sure how true that rumor is, but I was pretty impressed by how close they allowed you to get to the break.

We took the bus back to the parking lot and ate at a small pub called The Rookery. All of the food we ate in Ireland was amazing, albeit expensive. Even this small tourist trap of a pub was delicious. I finally got a meat pie that was handmade and not frozen like in London.

Crown Liquor Saloon

Our final stop on the way back to Dublin was Belfast. Our tour guide gave us more background information on the Troubles and pointed us in the direction of a few landmarks. We checked out the giant City Hall before visiting a pub called The Crown Saloon. This is a beautifully preserved Victorian Saloon across the street from the Europa Hotel, the most bombed hotel in all of Europe. Our tour guide told us it was okay to just stop in for a few pictures, but we took a booth and drank to be polite. The people around the pub appeared to be locals and seemed a bit confused as to why tourists were around. Aside from at City Hall, we actually saw very few tourists in Belfast. Maybe we weren't in the most tourist of areas or perhaps it still isn't tourist season there yet.

The next day, we were back in Dublin with not much to do. We wondered around aimlessly for a while before breaking down and deciding to go to the Guinness Factory. Originally, it seemed a bit gimmicky so we weren't going to go. It actually ended up being pretty fun. It was definitely a tourist trap, but one worth visiting if you like Guinness. At the end, you get a free pint of Guinness to drink in a bar overlooking the city. We also tried a few types of Guinness that are only available in certain parts of the world, which reminded me a lot of multiple visits to the Coca-cola factory as a kid. We ended up mildly drunk and spent too much money on Guinness merchandise. Afterwords, we took a carriage ride back to Temple Bar to try a second time at drinking in the pub. Luckily, it's a lot less busy in Temple Bar at 3 pm so we were able to get a table and listen to music for a few hours before dinner.

Overall, we had a fun time, but I can't say that Ireland was my favorite. The countryside was beautiful and I wish we were able to spend more time exploring it. Dublin was... okay. I think Dublin would have been more fun if I was 20 years old and living off of my parent's money to afford endless 6 Euro pints. Instead, I found it mostly overpriced with little to do but drink. Coming from Germany, Ireland was actually much more of a culture shock than we've experienced anywhere else. In the tourist areas, the Irish people were pretty unfriendly. I actually got hit by a street-sweeper because apparently I didn't move out of the driver's way fast enough. In the less tourist areas, they seemed happy to stop and help you find your way. This was pretty reverse of our experience in other parts of Europe. Belfast had it's own unique culture that is extremely difficult to explain. According to our guide, there is still a lot of tension which may never dissipate.

For anyone planning a trip to Ireland, I wouldn't recommend spending more than a day in Dublin or Belfast. The country is gorgeous and deserves exploring. The cities are much less interesting. Whereas we could easily spend a week in London and still not see all of the sites, unless you are really interested in museums (they're free!), Dublin can easily be seen in under a day. If we ever go back to Ireland, which I doubt we will, we'd definitely spend our time on the west coast. I will say that all of the food we ate in Ireland was absolutely amazing. Also, I think Greg would disagree with my thoughts on Dublin as he thought it was great fun.

I'm actually out of town currently for work, hence my ability to finally update the blog. We have a lot of great things planned for the summer months of this year. We have a camping trip planned very soon and are pricing out a trip to Rome. We've also discussed that we would like to take several road trips to nearby places this summer. We're looking at some campgrounds in Bavaria and a short trip to Belgium one weekend. We'll be finishing our summer with a week long trip to Norway.

Next month will begin our last year in Germany! Despite all of the traveling we've done, I'm ready to move on with our lives. We have a lot of decisions to make in the next several months about where we'll be moving next. Greg will begin separating soon and we'll have to decide our best options for the future. Luckily, my career path gives us a little breathing room. We've discussed moving back to Colorado. We've looked into our career options in Alaska. As of right now, it's still technically on the table that we could remain in Germany. It's too early to rule anything out completely, but we have some ideas in mind.