Dublin, Ireland - March 2011

This was our first trip to Ireland and we decided why not go for St. Patrick’s Day.  We knew that it was mostly a tourist deal in Ireland to celebrate, but why not.  We flew in and out of Dublin and rented a car to drive clockwise around the coast back to Dublin. We were there 16 days, Mar 16 - Apr 1.  We packed one oversized backpack each with 8 days of clothes.  We dropped our laundry off half way through our trip to be washed.  We were really lucky with the weather and of our 16 days had mostly sunshine.  It rained one evening and drizzled a couple of mornings.

Our itinerary included: 3 nights in Dublin, 2 nights outside Kilkenny, 1 night in Kenmare, 2 nights in Dingle, 1 night in Doolin, 2 nights in Galway, 1 night in Westport, 2 nights in Portrush, 1 night in Belfast and 1 night in Trim.  The trip reports will be broken down by the places we stayed, otherwise it would be one long blog!

Dublin (Days 1-3)

Day 1 - We arrived in Dublin at 6am.  It took us about an hour to get through passport clearance.  We had reserved a car with Avis, but realized it was for a manual car, which is the default rental in Ireland.  We had to wait for them to find us an automatic and were charged about $75 USD more for it. 

We then drove to our hotel, Roxford Lodge.  Many people on the Trip Advisor forums don’t recommend driving in Dublin, especially if your hotel is in the city center.  Our hotel was a few miles away from city center and we had experience driving on the left, so we thought we could handle it ok.  It took us about 2 hours to get from the airport to our hotel due to traffic mostly and turning around a few times. We parked our car in their private lot, checked in and left our bags until our room was ready. They said it would be ready probably by 1pm.  We had a quick breakfast at a Bean Scene down the street from the hotel and had our first full Irish breakfast.

Our plan for the first day was to ride on the Hop On and Off Bus.  We walked to St. Stephen's Green to catch the HOHO bus. Our first stop was the Kilmainham Gaol.  We bought our Heritage Card here and were able to get in all the other qualifying places in Ireland for free.  It definitely pays off and all the locals were glad we had figured it out.  We also visited Jameson's and had a tour.  It’s not a working distillery, but an interesting tour.  We also toured Bushmills which is a working distillery.  If you have to pick one over the other, definitely go with Bushmills during the week.  To see everyone working and smelling the distillery really is fascinating.  Our last stop was the Guinness Store.  It was packed since it was the day before St. Patrick’s Day.  You give yourself a tour by walking through and reading signs and then are rewarded with a free pint in the Gravity Bar.  There are great views of Dublin from the bar as well.

It was a long day and we headed back to our room.  I was about to fall asleep and not eat dinner, but figured that wouldn’t be a good idea, so we asked the receptionist at our hotel for a recommendation to somewhere close by the hotel.  She sent us to Roly's Bistro.  It was a white-linens-on-the-table restaurant, but it was really good.  It was a little pricey, but our entrees were pretty tasty.  We debated on finding a pub close by our first night, but we were so tired, that we decided to turn in early.

Day 2 – St. Paddy’s Day!  We had our breakfast at the hotel, some French toast for me and a full Irish breakfast for Mike.  We then walked to city center to find a spot on the parade route to watch the St. Paddy’s day parade. It was really crowded and people liked to push to get close the front.  I’m not a fan of crowds.  We stood waiting an hour for the parade and then only watched 30 minutes of it.  It was a really colorful parade.  I just wanted to hear few bagpipe bands go by.  We walked over to Bewley's Cafe for some Irish coffee and snack and to watch the crowd from their balcony seating.

When planning our trip from home, I came across a band, Blood Red Mountain Band, which would be playing at the Cobblestone Bar on St. Paddy’s Day.  So, we decided to head over and check it out. It was a 5 Eu cover charge and we listened to about 3 or 4 bands before BRMB came out.  It was a very fun afternoon, we were probably the only tourists in the there.  We befriended some local gals and they recommended going to Brazen Head for dinner. We sat at  a very large table and shared it with 2 other couples.  They only have a few small tables.  We had traditional Irish food, bangers and mash and Guinness stew. Since we spent all afternoon in a pub, we headed back to our room again early since we were still adjusting to the time difference. 

Day 3 - We decided to try Chorus Cafe for breakfast. We walked and took the HOHO bus for a few blocks to get there.  It’s a nice, small café and the breakfast was ok, cheaper than at our hotel.  They didn’t really have the best cappuccinos though.  After breakfast, we went over to Dublin Castle, but couldn’t get a tour right away.  We had an hour to wait, so we walked through Trinity College.  One of our friends from Cobblestone had planned to leave us tickets to the Book of Kells exhibit, but we didn’t feel like waiting in the long line on a Sunday.  Our tour through Dublin Castle was pretty cool, but it wasn’t my favorite one we visited.  I like the Kilkenny Castle better.  It was really neat to see the original castle and city wall underground at the Dublin Castle however.  We needed a coffee fix after the Castle, so we stopped in at Insomnia across from Trinity College.  I needed something to make up for the disappointed cappuccino I had had in the morning. 

We headed over to visit the National Museum of Ireland Archaeology and took an hour to explore. It’s a really interesting museum with lots and lots of stuff to see.  After the museum, we tried to find the Georgian House No. 29.  For some reason, we just could not figure out where it was and gave up.  We were both still very tired and had been walking a lot the last few days that we decided to head back to the room for a nap before our pub crawl.

I used Trip Advisor to help decide on where to go for dinner.  I came across Cornucopia and it look for promising and inexpensive.  We had a delicious dinner at Cornucopia, a vegetarian enchilada dish and some chicken curry.  You order at the counter and get an entrée and 2 salads.  We had booked with the tourist office the day before to go on the Traditional Music Pub Crawl. After dinner, we walked to St. John Gogarty’s pub to wait for the pub crawl to start.  It was really crowded and I thought they had limited the event to 50 people, but later found out it was increased to 75.  As I mentioned before, I’m not a big fan of crowds, but made the best of it and we enjoyed ourselves.  We had way more fun going to random pubs throughout our trip to listen to trad music, but we did learn a little from the 2 musicians, member of Dublin City WorkingMan's Band and James Riley, that hosted the crawl and even bought their CDs and listened to them all throughout our trip.  We are still listening to them back home pretty frequently.  We only went to 2 different bars with the musicians, Ha’penny Bridge Inn and another one north of the Liffey.  We got off track a little after leaving the second bar, that we grabbed a taxi back to our hotel.  We didn’t feel like walking another hour back anyway.

Trip Summary

Lodging - Roxford Lodge

Restaurants - Bean Scene, Roly's Bistro, Bewley's Cafe, Brazen Head, Chorus Cafe, Cornucopia

Activities - Kilmainham Gaol, Jameson Distillery, Guinness Store, Dublin Castle, Trinity College, National Museum of Ireland Archaeology, Traditional Music Pub Crawl

Pubs - Cobblestone Bar, St. John Gogarty's, Ha'penny Bridge Inn

Trip Continues.....

Killkenny, Ireland and Rock of Cashel

Kenmare, Ireland and Ring of Kerry

Dingle, Ireland and Dingle Peninsula

Doolin, Ireland and Cliffs of Moher

Galway, Ireland and Aran Islands

Westport, Ireland and County Mayo

Portrush, UK and Antrim Coast

Belfast, UK

Trim, Ireland and Newgrange