Wednesday would be my favorite day when I look back on that trip nowadays. We started for a trip to Howth which can be easily reached by bus. We jumped of the bus at Howth Summit and started with the Cliff Walk. We headed North first until the road was blocked suddenly and we had to turn around a take the southern route. We had extremely good weather and the view from the cliffs was perfect. Due to my wish to get as near to the water as possible I sometimes could feel a hand grabbing me from behind and telling me I would get beaten up if I’d go any nearer to the edging and so I didn’t start to climb down at some parts. I am still quite sure it would have been possible. As always when I get sun and water at the same time I burned my skin and as there is absolutely no tree that would spend some shadow during that route we were quite thirsty and exhausted when we reached Howth (town). Here we visited Cafe Caira at East Pier where we had fish and chips. I have to admit this has been the one and only time I really loved this. The fish was directly out of the water and the chips were handcut, absolutely delicious.

We left Howth with the Dart (which pointed out to be a normal train). The Dart departs every 10 min from Howth to Dublin and is much faster than the bus. We ended up at Conolly station and I had again overestimated my abilities to find my way from there to O’Connell Bridge. We got help from a nice Dubliner again and so we finally reached Trinity College where I wanted to have a closer look this time. I must admit that I was some kind of envious when I walked through that College and compared it to my university. I guess it is really fun to study there. They have fantastic sports facilities and I had the impression that most of the students were sitting outside in the sun or playing tennis or rugby.

Perfect day for me with lot’s of sun, water and fresh air….

Tuesday morning we got up really soon as I still wanted to get to the tourist information to book a trip to the Wicklow Mountains. My mobile started to ring at 7.00 a.m, which normally should be forbidden during holidays…

Before we got anywhere we faced Liz‘ breakfast. The breakfast in the ABC Guesthouse is perfect and the coffee was really good. We could choose between Irish and Continental and the Continental had really everything you could wish for.

After the experience from Monday we took the bus to O’Connell Bridge, which is nearly the opposite of Trinity College. No chance to miss that. We were extremely lucky when the guy in the Tourist Info told us that a bus would start to the Wicklow Mountains in 30 minutes and we could get in that if we wanted to. We booked that trip and went to the bus station where our guide picked us up. Here name was Niamh and I was enchanted as I had just finished a book where this was the name of the main character and I thought (at that time) that the name wasn’t a common name in any country. Niamh was so nice to tell us during the trip that her name was a pagan name and that in Ireland nowadays it is only allowed to baptise a child with a pagan name when it is given a christian one as seccond name, so that most girls / women with the name Niamh have Mary as second name. She told us a lot of the history and old traditions during our trip to the Wicklow Mountains where we were finally allowed to leave the bus. The Wicklow Mountains were quite impressive for me at this time of the year as the whole ground was covered with heather and I found this extremely beautiful.

From Wicklow Gap we drove to Glendalough, which pointed out to be some ancient religious site. A huge tower is standing there which is about 30 meters high (at least I believe this is what was told to us). In the ancient times there used to be a church and a priest’s house as well but those are merely ruins now. Glendalough translated means City at two seas and so there are two sees which we surounded during the time we were allowed to spend there. Niamh told us that the legends tell about a sea monster living in one of them which is the reason for a prohibition to bath in the seas…

From Glendalough we drove to Alvoca. This is where one of the oldest irish weaving mills is situated and it was quite impressive to see those looms in action. In the weaving mill there is a cafe as well where we had an absolute phantastic tomato soup and they have a store where they sell products that have been made in the mill.

We reached Dublin at 6.00 p.m again and so I still had time to take some photos in Temple Bar before we ended up in a pub again

On Monday morning we had to get up at 6.00 am to get to the airport, so I was standing in front of the check in counter quite tired … and then it happend. I don’t know if anybody else is having this experience with travelling over and over again. I certainly do so….there was a family in front of me, a huge one…that had obviously not read the instructions provided by Ryan Air. Travelling with Ryan air means that you have a limit of one bag for check in and one hand luggage and there are limits for weight and size of both. That family had a lot of more luggage than allowed and the woman at the counter told them they had to pay for that additionally. An argument was starting (I was thinking of coffee in the lounge) and the argument took nearly 30 minutes until daddy got to the cash automat and got the money to pay the additional luggage…..

The flight itself was a little turbulent but we reached Dublin safe and sound and departed the airplane for the luggage. In Dublin Airport this is a little round the world trip if you land in Terminal A.

We had originally planned to get to Dublin by bus (from the airport) and did this with a 90 min ticket which we could by via an automat. After some bus stops I already knew what the problem in Dublin would be. There is no record of the bus stations so you never know exactly where you are at the moment and when the station you want to leave is coming. Most stations have names, but not all of them and they are not displayed in the bus. So it is pretty hard to figure out when you have to leave the bus. I asked an Irish sitting next to me and his explanation was quite simple. Tell the bus driver where you wan to get out and he will call you when you reach that stations. The Dublin bus drivers must have an enormous brain for being able to keep this in mind. But it worked pretty fine and after 25min in the bus he called for us and we left the bus directly in front of our bed and breakfast.

Liz was the one to welcome us and was one half of the owner of the bed and breakfast. The room was really nice and clean and to my absolute surprise they had blankets like I am used to have them at home. Normally when I travel somewhere outside Germany I am used to have several sheets combined to a blanket… We were directly informed that for breakfast we would be able to get coffee as well and I really hoped that this „coffee“ deserved it‘ s name… I’ve had terrible coffee in Ireland and normally switch over to tea when I’m there. I asked Liz how long it would take us to get to Trinity College if we walk the distance and she told us it would take us about 20 minutes, so I decided to walk there. Everybody who knows how good I am in reading maps would have already started to laugh at this point. Additionally I have absolutely no ability to orient myself. After one hour somewhere in Dublin and I must admit I had absolutely no clue where we were I tried to find the streetname on my map again and suddenly help arrived. Someone who was looking like a banker or lawyer stopped beside me and asked me if I had lost my way. When I told him where I was heading to he started to laugh and had to admit that I was quite a distance from Trinity College. Due to that nice guy I was first able to find the river (it’s a shame but we were running in circles so that we even didn’t get to the water) and from that we finally reached Temple Bar district, where I wanted to get into the tourist info. This was closed (bank holiday..) and so we ended up in some bar to have dinner and start my holidays with a typical Guiness in a pub named O’Neills.

When we decided to get back again we didn’t even try to walk back. We directly picked a bus and I could already figure out myself where we had to jump off (a fact I was quite proud of).

As for the weather (before I forget that). First day, first shower. A quite heavy one, but only for 20min or so….and to our great relief it would be the only shower for the whole week.

It turned out that ,even if it was written that way during the booking, we were not allowed to pay the B & B with credit card as in all other B & Bs before. Normally I wouldn’t mind if I knew ahead, but as we more or less booked all B & Bs with the remark Credit Cards accepted we didn’t bring enough cash with us and had to get cash in Ireland more than once (combined with high charges of course).

We started quite early that morning and took the road through Killarney National Park which is really a beautiful and very huge park that normally would invite everybody for a week of hiking. We only stopped at Lady’s View and took some pictures before we proceded to Kenmare where our next B & B was booked.

The B & B in Kenmare was really beautiful. Possibly the best one we had during our trip. It was in walking distance to town and unfortunately I can’t find it anymore in the internet.

We walked into town for dinner (walking distance were like 10 or 15 minutes) and had our dinner in „The Bridge“ which was more or less one of the first restaurants we came by. They serve a very good steak!

It was rainy the whole day (as can be clearly seen on the picture of Lady’s View)

We started early and had to drive until 2 p.m. to get to Dingle. The weather during the driving was terrible and the road to Dingle was very bad so it really took us some time to get there.

The Bed in Breakfast we booked, O’Shea’s,  is some km outside of Dingle and not exactly what we thought it would be, but as it’s only for sleeping it’s no problem, but I would not really recommend it as walking into town is quite a distance and walking back in the middle of the night seemed not to be a good idea.

As it was still raining the afternoon we had a walk through Dingle town. A very beautiful and nice town. Dingle has an aquarium we visited and as we were quite exhausted from the day we decided to end up in a pub and chose O’Gradys in the harbour area. I can really recommend food there and we were in the lucky position that it was Champions League finals and we watched Liverpool win the match. Very nice atmosphere and lot’s of fun.

Due to the bad weather the picture of that crow was the only one taken on that day.