Ireland

We arrived in beautiful Dublin late on the 12th of July. We proceeded to our hotel in the dark and were delighted to enter a very clean, spacious and modern room at the premiere in airport hotel. After taking a day to get organized and get clean laundry, we proceeded into downtown Dublin. We adventured through the streets and alleys of temple bar and made our way to visit Dublin castle.  Dublin castle is unlike most castles you will find on the coasts in that it is inland, and has been expanded on, many times over the past few hundred years, only having one true "castle like" building. Still rich with history, it is worth the sight.

We had been talking about getting a tattoo, and spontaneously decided to check out a tattoo parlour just across the street from the castle. We walked right in and a hour later had new ink from a very thick accented Irishman named Paul. (Who has inked Britney Spears and Mike Mendozi).

The highlight of Ireland for us was our tour of Northern Ireland on the "Paddy Wagon". If you want to do any tour in Ireland, we highly recommend Paddy Wagon tours, as it is very affordable and the drivers are hilarious, and knowledgable.  The tour included a brief tour of Belfast, including a stop at the place the titanic was built and launched, as well as a view of the Europa hotel, the world record holding building that has been bombed 37 times by the IRA. We continued north to Carrick-a-rede and crossed the famous rope bridge to beautiful cliffs and views of Ireland's north peak and Scotland across the sea. The ocean was beautiful and high cliffs provided us with beautiful panoramic views.

We continued on the famous "Giant's Causeway", an ancient rock formation that is rich with Irish mythology.  The amazing hexagonal rock formation that starts in Northern Ireland disappears in the northern channel and resurfaces in northern Scotland in the isle of Staffa. Legend has it that the Irish giant "Fynn McCool" built the causeway to accept a challenge by the Scottish giant "Bennandonner". There are many different versions of the legend depending on which Irish local you ask, but the general idea is that Fynn built the causeway to fight Bennandonner, but upon crossing found that the scot was twice his size (over 80' tall compared to Fynn's 40' height") he retreats to his wife and has the townspeople build him a giant bassinet, where he lies in wait for Bennandonner to cross the causeway. He then pretends to be a baby and when Bennandonner arrives for battle he sees Fynn and thinks he is a baby thinking "If this is the Irish giants son, his father must be gigantic!". After he retreats to Scotland Fynn smashes the causeway so the dispute is ended. The entertaining mythology only adds to the beauty and charm of this volcanic formation that is 60 million years old.  The tour finished at a brief stop to see Dunluce castle, "Ireland's most romantic castle" where many scenes from the popular HBO series "Game of Thrones" is based. We hadn't yet seen Game of Thrones, but immediately downloaded it after seeing this beautiful picturesque castle ruins.  Overall we loved Ireland, it's beauty and myths make it an interesting place to visit and the people are always happy helpful, and willing to point you in the direction of craek! (Irish Gaelic for "fun").