Driving around and about the island of Ireland

Traveling is at it’s best when you’re travel with friends. So many laughs, happy memories and mainly FUN, FUN & FUN. Ireland to me will always be a happy place due to the fact we were traveling there with some of our best friends. Overall Ireland is full of jolly people with a fairly great accent. Due to my ex work, I was able to drive through whole of island of Ireland (round trip). Unfortunately I don’t think I have any pictures from this trip. I only have vivid memories of the beautiful nature and roads from one small town to the next city. But in any case, here’s my memories from Ireland:

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We flew out to Dublin. Idea was to enjoy Dublin for couple of days and then hire a car and head across the island to Galway through Limerick. This was all to be done on Easter Holidays so we had about 3 days. So let’s start where we started which is Dublin. We had booked a little hostel near Dublin city centre. The idea was not to take taxis but to walk. And the hostel served it’s purpose perfectly. Too bad I can’t to the death of me remember it’s name. But it wasn’t that glorious either that I’d recommend it from the heart. We didn’t have many expectations for Dublin. We pretty much wanted to see the Guinness factory and just walk about and enjoy drinks. So a lot of pubs, just having a laugh at who knows what and strolls on random streets. This attitude is the best with Ireland, I would say. It’s a relaxed place where people are who they are unconditionally. Obviously we did the Guinness Factory and that actually ended up being a lot better than I expected. I’m a not a huge beer fan (more now than I was back then) but it was actually fairly interesting and the little things to do, like get your Guinness pouring certificate etc, were fun. You can get great photos inside, our skills just need a bit of work!!

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But what I really recommend to do in Ireland is to drive around. It’s definitely an immensely beautiful country with such lovely little villages. So many great small destinations awaits and driving in Ireland is mainly pretty easy (although I think Mr Merry learnt his first Finnish swear words during my driving). Highly recommend driving in the North West of Ireland towards Northern Ireland. That was something totally special and different. I just remember being in awe of the nature and it’s beauty. This was during my work trip, I was driving alone and have no evidence. Back to the holiday with friends: We drove down from Dublin straight to Limerick. We wanted to see the castle, King John’s Castle, in Limerick and just enjoy our day there. From Limerick we headed towards the Cliffs of Moher, which we pretty fast renamed as the Cliffs of Ripoff. Parking there was extortion and everything cost. I guess there was a way to avoid paying things but we fell onto all the traps.This pissed off our penny calculating Mr Merry. But we did manage to get some magnificent pictures and a few laughs.

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We made a fatal error on not calculating enough time to move from place to place in Ireland. It might feel like a small little island but driving around actually takes some time. We kinda thought we’d wing the next place to stay in and little did we realise that around Cliffs of Moher it’s pretty busy. So our idea of sleeping in a lovely Bed & Breakfast soon turned into a very late nightmare of not finding any place to sleep in. Hunger was creeping in and hangry Mr Merry is no fun to travel with. Luckily we managed to drive all the way to Galway where we found a Chinese restaurant that had some free rooms available on top of it. Not ideal little countryside B&B but it’s food and a bed. In the morning we toured a bit in Galway and then headed back towards Dublin. Highly recommend having fun little exploring breaks: makes the journey unforgettable.

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I’m throwing in a bonus here: NORTHERN IRELAND. I visited Northern Ireland for work and Mr Merry flew with me to explore Belfast for a day or two. Our main goal was to eat Ulster Fry which we managed to reach in this awesome place called Maggie May’s Belfast Café. Mr Merry went for the original Ulster Fry and I got the vegetarian one. Belfast (and Northern Ireland overall) has a really rough history with the whole war between Catholics and Protestants. We took a taxi tour to see and hear the very recent history told to us. This is very much a MUST DO when visiting Northern Ireland. The history is unbelievable and we were listening to it with very broken hearts. What we humans did to other fellow humans was absolutely shocking. And we should hear about and remember it so it doesn’t happen again in the near future..

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Mr Merry also visited the Titanic museum by himself whilst I was working and in the evening we walked around Belfast centre together. I don’t recall Belfast being very amazing but we do have some great friends there and seeing friends is always the best. And I saw a tyre being changed for the first time in my life. You live and you learn on your travels. I think Northern Ireland, specially the western part of it, would have had so much more amazing experiences to give but we didn’t unfortunately have time for it. So another day, right?