My Ireland: History, Whiskey and Beer

The stars are where we spent the nights

I loved my trip to Ireland! If I were to be totally honest, in terms of frequency, my experience was not quite the order I have it in the title. It would more accurately be Beer, History, and Whiskey, but I went for the lovely rhythm. It's kind of the Irish way.

This was my first trip with this set of folks. We had my Boat Partner (BP), her husband the history guy (HG), and their good friend, Mr. Irish Boyo. (IB). I have spent a great deal of time with BP, sometimes in unpleasant or difficult circumstances, so I knew we were likely to be compatible for travel. Since they've been married for 40+ years, I also know HG, and while we are totally different people, I like him quite a bit. IB was an unknown quantity, but he came highly recommended.

I did none of the planning - it was primarily a scouting trip for future forays by IB, who was in the role of our native guide. He has a lot of Irish heritage and feeling, but had only been in-country for a two week tour twenty years ago, but that made him a comparative expert. So he laid out a suggested itinerary and asked for feedback and help scheduling hotels. The idea was to hit certain specific historical and cultural points, with as many different pubs and beers as could be worked in. It all worked fine.

Lovely green countryside

We flew non-stop from Newark to Dublin, the cheapest non-stops available when IB booked the flights six months ago. (IB spelled my name wrong in the reservation, an error I didn't have a chance to discover until we got to the airport, and I spent an unpleasant hour with Air Lingus customer service getting it fixed, but it finally worked out. Note to self: make sure to double check oneself, don't rely on others. And arrive early at the airport.) The flight arrived at 5 am local time, so we got some coffee and our first Irish scones at the airport while we figured out transport into town. We opted for the local bus, and were in downtown Dublin at 6:00 am. With our not-insignificant baggage, standing on a deserted street corner, every business in sight shuttered We couldn't get to the AirBnB until the afternoon. As a result, we dragged our luggage around quite a bit (had to stop for more coffee and scones) before we finally found a place to store them. Hooray for the app Luggage Hero! 

BP, IB, HG, and me in yet another pub

Our biggest difficulty was very few things were open early. This turned out to be the case everywhere we went. Restaurants listed under "breakfast" opened at 8:30, 9:00 or even 10:00! Even some hotel restaurants started serving at 8:30. Because we wanted to cover so much territory, we wanted to be up and out each day. We found that there was the occasional coffee shop open early, and while they looked like pastry-only places, to our delight most of them served the "Full Irish Breakfast" that we soon loved. Fried eggs, "bacon" (looked like ham), my very favorite Irish sausage, black or white pudding (don't google it), baked beans, and toast. Luckily, we found such a coffee shop the first day (for what by some counts was Third Breakfast). We also found during our road trip many gas stations that had surprisingly good cafes inside - fresh baked goods, good coffee, hot cafeteria-type service (more sausage!) We didn't try them for anything other than breakfast, I have doubts about how good they would be for dinner.

From left: IB, BP, HG, and me

By noon on our first day we were ready to get to the Guinness brewery. They have a six-story "visitor experience" building, not tours, but it was well done. We also learned how to pour a pint with a perfect head on it, and sample some of their other beers. This was a good launch for the Beer portion of our tour. IB is a real beer guy, with a tap room in his basement that displays his collections of stolen beer glasses and coasters, and an app to keep track of everything he's tried with notes. With a brief quiet chat with the bartender, he added to his display collection right off on the first day.

Every dinner, and a few lunches, were in pubs, and were very good. There was a sameness to the menus, generally hot sandwiches and chips (fries), fish and chips, usually something more ambitious such as broiled fresh fish, sometimes other traditional Irish food such as lamb stew. I liked it all. The chips were especially good, and just chips and beer could be dinner some nights. I managed to find a few afternoon ice creams, but generally sweets were not in our plans, as most don't go so well with the beer. The first thing we'd do upon entering a pub was to scan the taps. Guinness was always there, along with their related brands, plus Coors and Corona and an Italian beer often showed up. But often there was also one or two taps dedicated to a local brew, and that usually became our choice. I learned what I liked, but didn't stick to it. Experimentation was the name of the game.

Early morning in Wexford

Walking through the cities is one of the great pleasures of traveling. Sadly, I am out of condition and feeling my bad knee. The first day, according to my fitbit, we covered nine miles, much of it hauling around our baggage. None of the other days hit that total, but still there was enough walking to double my average steps from the previous month. I went slow, and I sat whenever I could, but I got everywhere I wanted to get. Many of the ruins and castles we visited had hills or stairs, and the stairs in particular slowed me way down. When we were at a history stop or in a city, we often split up during the day, and I could amuse myself with my camera and not feel like I was holding anyone back. We learned how to take buses in Dublin --google maps to tell us what to look for where, excellent real time signage, all fares 2.60 exact change -- and BP and I rode in the front seat of a double decker all along the river front, big fun. Taxis were available to flag down, and Uber had an arrangement so the app would summon a taxi (with roof light and meter) and you would pay through the app like usual. I guess there aren't drivers using their own cars there.

Wexford waterfront

We picked up a rental in downtown Dublin the second day and headed out of town in the pouring rain. IB was our driver, and BP his co-pilot. Those first few miles, with a lot of traffic all on the wrong side of the road, we were all helping co-pilot, as we got used to traffic circles and cryptic road signs. We had phone-based navigation, which took us on all sorts of roads, including narrow tracks with signs saying "oncoming traffic in the middle of the road". It was fun watching IB learn to drive, and BP learn how to help him out. We checked off each new accomplishment (passed someone on an expressway! passed someone on a two lane road! 15-point turn on an unpaved lane with ditches!) By the end, when we returned to Dublin, IB was relaxed and confident.

Just a random ruin we stopped at

Our group dynamics also grew more relaxed and confident. I realized that HG was going to zig and zag as he saw a new squirrel to chase, and he couldn't pass anyone without striking up a conversation (I said we were very different.) IB and I grew more relaxed as we got to know each other. I knew we were doing OK, though. On the third morning, we were cranky (annoying hotel, no breakfast yet, changing plans on the fly without discussing it) when IB smashed his finger during the daily assembly of the 3D puzzle that was our luggage in the small car. He said (I paraphrase) "fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck FUCK". As we got in the car, someone said, in a small voice, "fucking luggage". Someone else said "fucking hotel". Someone else said, "no fucking breakfast". "Fucking small cars." "Fucking hotel clerk". It went on, and we were all dissolving into giggles as we hit the road. 

From the outside, the castle-ie-ist castle on a city street

We made bunches of history stops. There were ruined castles everywhere, many of them open to be explored. We stopped at battle sites and markers and a museum for the Irish rising in 1798. HG had created and is marketing a board game about the conflict, after meticulous research (everything hinged on whether or not the French landed their army). In Cork, we visited an island that had served as a fortress and prison in the 19th and 20th century. IB's grandfather escaped to America from Cork during the Irish Civil War in the 1920s, but would have ended up in that prison had he not run in time. I don't know so much about the convoluted history of Ireland, but had done enough reading to understand how Ireland was England's first colony, and served as a testing ground for many colonial policies used elsewhere in the empire. 

Big 19th century house repurposed as contemporary abbey

Much of the preparation I had made for the trip was reading novels with Irish settings and scenes. I was happy to find connections. I read This is Happiness, by Niall Williams, set in a small village in 1950. It's your basic coming-of-age story, but the backdrop is the coming of electricity to the village. I was thrilled to read a display in a museum about Rural Electrification in 1950's Ireland, and to see many of the dynamics that played out in the book be reflected there (maybe the author had seen the same display?) In a still-functioning but open to the public abbey, I read about how suppression of the Catholic orders and indeed education for Catholics from Henry VIII through Cromwell and right up to the twentieth century led many religious orders  to establish Irish foundations in France and Spain. This abbey had finally moved back to Ireland from France during the First World War, but they walled up their precious relicts in the catacombs back in France. This was, indeed, a plot point in a book I read that takes place during the First World War! 

We toured two whiskey distilleries, Tullamore DEW, in Tullamore, and Jameson, in Dublin (they don't actually make whiskey in Dublin anymore so it was another "visitor experience"). The Tullamore one was fabulous! Irish coffee to start, a complete tour including a sample right from the barrel in the aging warehouse, and more samples and guided tasting. Jameson was cheesy, but fun, and also included guided tasting. 

Our very own castle!

We stayed in two AirBnBs and the rest hotels. Often we had a hotel on the outskirts of town (much cheaper), so the Uber/taxi was useful to get us to walk around towns and visit pubs. One AirBnB was a castle! We had the whole castle to ourselves, seventy-five steps high to get out onto the battlements. It was basically a square tower, with one function for each floor, so not only did we each get our own bedroom, but we had our own floor! There were great handholds available for the spiral staircase, and especially for the transition required from staircase to floor at each level - it involved a bit of jockeying for me, to make sure I stepped up with my good leg each time. The castle was in the middle of nowhere, so we stopped at a grocery store and bought food and drink to carry us through. It could have been cold, but both the flooring and the bed were heated. We met the hosts outside in the morning (they live in a cottage nearby) and heard a bit about the restoration. They are booked almost always, so hopefully their labor of love / investment is paying off.

My castle bedroom

My castle bedroom also came with its own canon

All of the castle details were exquisite

Castle stairs, with rope for handhold

One comment on Irish wiring. They use the UK electricity plugs, and each plug also had an on-off switch, sometimes some distance from the plug itself. Both AirBnB showers had a distant on/off switch on a wall outside the bathroom, and then an electrical unit inside the shower with an on-off switch that created the hot water and water pressure. Never saw such a thing before, but I have read in novels about British old houses with retrofitted bathrooms with "geysers" to heat the water for each bathtub. I guess this is the latest version of that.

Cobh, from the island in the harbor

My favorite stop was Cork, and the associated small town of Cobh. It was a very sweet small town (very accomodating to tourists). This is where we went out to the island in the harbor for a half day. I spent my time outside, climbing the walls and taking in the views. The island had many small focused little museum exhibits, about its time as a fortress and its time as a prison, but I skipped most of that. (The guys were mostly in there.)

 

 

 

Scenic Cobh

A beautiful day to be outside-Spike Island in Cork Harbor

When we got to Cork for the night, we rode a taxi from our outskirts hotel to downtown, and followed the advice of the taxi driver. First, a brief stop at the English Market, then some gift shopping, then to a local brewery, a different local restaurant/pub, and finally to yet another pub where we finally encountered trad (traditional) music, one of our quests. These were musicians not exactly hired by the pub, not a band, who came in to play. There were four fiddles, a flute/penny whistle, and an Irish piper. The talking and noise of the pub went on around them, but I was fortunate enough to eventually get a seat by them and really listen and observe. There was a young woman who asked questions and got kind direction from the older guys. It was really sweet. 

Busy pub!

 

We had extraordinary luck with the weather - the only rain was our first couple of days in Dublin and down to Wexford. It may have actually rained other days, but not what you would really call rain. Just some extra thick wet air. But we were blessed with a lot of clear skies and beautiful views. And the rain is what makes everything so very very green.

Ruined abbey

Abbey from the inside

Vista along the Ring of Kerry- rough west coast

I took many pictures of the intimate details
This is on a rock wall outside a graveyard

We got many recommendations for restaurants from TripAdvisor, and all of the tours we took asked us to review on TripAdvisor. So it seemed fair play to me, and I did.

Final pub night