Sarah and the rental car, Bray, Ireland
Wicklow Mountains at sunset through the car window
Wicklow Mountains, Ireland
The Mucky Duck, site of my birthday beer
the seaside village of Bray
Give that dog a red card! No fouling!
The cliffside walk from Bray to Greystones
Sarah and Matt on a hike
cute picture of Sarah
Matt at the Guinness Brewery
Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin
The Temple Bar neighborhood, Dublin
St. Stephan's Green, Dublin
Guinness.
Believe it or not, we did actually manage to do some sightseeing while here. We took a day and went into Dublin on the train. The first strop in town was the Guinness Brewery (St. James Gate Brewery), since it was close to the station. This massive brewery complex churns out 2.5 million pints of Guinness every day. The brewery tour cost $21 per person, so we skipped that and simply went into the gift shop, Once there we were able to listen to the beginning of a tour, and could easily have gone on the whole thing without anyone noticing. A trip up to the restroom also let us see a couple more floors of the amazing multi-media extravaganza that is the Guinness Storehouse. We left feeling like we had done the tour anyway, and realized that really what people are paying for with their entrance fee was a $21 pint of Guinness at the bar at the top of the building. Guinness is a decent beer, but it isn't worth that much!
After the brewery, we wandered the streets of Dublin down to the city centre, where we ate out picnic lunch of soda bread, Irish cheese, and apples on the grounds of the Christchurch Cathedral, then wandered down through the manicured lawns of Trinity College and stopped at the bookstore and library where the famous Book of Kells is housed. After we left campus, we looped around to St. Stephan's Green, where people were out lounging in the sunny (!) fall weather. I bought the requisite fish and chips from a little place on the pedestrian shopping area of Grafton Street, then we headed to St. Patrick's Cathedral, the site of St. Patrick's holy well where he supposedly baptized the "heathen" Irish. We walked back to the train station through the neighborhood called "The Liberties", where we found a small pub and popped in for a pint. It was pretty fun to drink a Guinness just down the street from where it's brewed (and best of all, it was only old-timer locals in the bar). Though Guinness is a mediocre beer as far as taste goes, it is certainly the most beautiful beer out there, bar-none. Watching a Guinness being poured is like watching someone create a fine work of art.
After spending the day in Dublin, if I didn't know better, I would guess that the official language of Ireland wasn't English but was some Slavic tongue. We were blown away by how many Poles, Slovenians, and other Eastern Europeans have migrated to Dublin with the incorporation of their countries into the European Union. I would be willing to say that 3 of 5 people who were obviously local and not tourists didn't speak English as their first language. Very surprising.
Yesterday we put the car into use and headed down to the seaside community of Bray, just south of Dublin. Our goal for the day was to do the seaside cliff walk from Bray to Greystones. Once again, we lucked out with a beautifully sunny day, with a slight breeze coming off the ocean. The cliffs along Bray Head are nice and craggy, and held groups of European Shag and Great Cormorant, as well as Eurasian Oystercatcher and Great Black-backed Gull. There was a single Razorback off the coast at one point, and a migrating Whinchat in the cliffside heath. Once we'd hiked the seven kilometers to Greystones, we decided to hike back rather than catch a train. Once again, we were struck by the sheer number of languages being spoken by the people along the trail. This time, as we walked along the winding path along the cliffs, it provided an interesting analogy to our trip; we've wandered in a linear path through so many cultures and languages since we landed in China, and here we were seeing our trip in a microcosm. The diversity of this planet is stunning. I have to give Sarah credit for noticing this, since she was the one who made the observation.
Since the weather was so grand, we decided to drive the backroads back to Celbridge, and made a winding path south to Wicklow, then west through the Wicklow Mountains and up over Sally Gap. I had no idea there was such stunning scenery in Ireland. Up in the high heath, I felt like I'd driven right back to Alaska. The sun shining on the grassy mountainsides turned everything golden, and the green fields full of fluffy white sheep provided good counterpoint to the desolate gorse and heather higher up. Calling Ireland's hills "mountains" might be a bit of a stretch, but once you are up there, it's obvious the weather and topography makes it a tough place to live.
Yesterday we put the car into use and headed down to the seaside community of Bray, just south of Dublin. Our goal for the day was to do the seaside cliff walk from Bray to Greystones. Once again, we lucked out with a beautifully sunny day, with a slight breeze coming off the ocean. The cliffs along Bray Head are nice and craggy, and held groups of European Shag and Great Cormorant, as well as Eurasian Oystercatcher and Great Black-backed Gull. There was a single Razorback off the coast at one point, and a migrating Whinchat in the cliffside heath. Once we'd hiked the seven kilometers to Greystones, we decided to hike back rather than catch a train. Once again, we were struck by the sheer number of languages being spoken by the people along the trail. This time, as we walked along the winding path along the cliffs, it provided an interesting analogy to our trip; we've wandered in a linear path through so many cultures and languages since we landed in China, and here we were seeing our trip in a microcosm. The diversity of this planet is stunning. I have to give Sarah credit for noticing this, since she was the one who made the observation.
Since the weather was so grand, we decided to drive the backroads back to Celbridge, and made a winding path south to Wicklow, then west through the Wicklow Mountains and up over Sally Gap. I had no idea there was such stunning scenery in Ireland. Up in the high heath, I felt like I'd driven right back to Alaska. The sun shining on the grassy mountainsides turned everything golden, and the green fields full of fluffy white sheep provided good counterpoint to the desolate gorse and heather higher up. Calling Ireland's hills "mountains" might be a bit of a stretch, but once you are up there, it's obvious the weather and topography makes it a tough place to live.
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