As some of you may already know, Diane and I were headed to Barcelona over Christmas this year. Why Barcelona? Well, we’re trying to get a little more Europe traveling in – something that has been a bit tough this year with a bunch of the time off I took for two trips home. We’ve certainly done a lot of sightseeing, but a lot of that has been in Ireland. So we basically want to see a lot of Europe over the next year, and didn’t really care where we started. Our hunt for a place to go over Christmas, then, was basically looking at Aer Lingus’ site to see what was cheap. Barcelona was on that list.
We headed out on the 20th of December, with our flight leaving in the early evening. The trip started out a bit slowly, as we arrived at the airport on time only to find our flight had been delayed an hour. Oh well.
The Barcelona airport is located conveniently pretty close to the city, and its well connected to city center by train. So we hopped on the train and soon found ourselves on La Rambla (a large pedestrian walkway in the heart of the city) by Liceu metro station looking for our hotel. But like I often do, I probably looked confused as I got out of the metro station trying to get my bearings. A random passerby saw my confusion and asked if I needed help … in Chinese?! Umm, were we really in Spain?
My Mandarin is awfully rusty, despite several years in grade school. Nevertheless, I was able to stumble through a response, and the lady helped point out our way. So, there ya go – my little bit of Mandarin was useful in a place I did not expect. Crazy!
Unfortunately for our plan to go to a warmer destination, Barcelona was on the tail-end of a cold snap, so it was pretty cold the night we arrived. Not only that, the forecast for the week was rain, rain and more rain. Ewww! Oh well, we’re hardy Canadians – we can handle it!
Our first day plan was to wander a little bit to get our bearings in Barcelona. It was a bit cold and rainy, but we hiked out on to La Rambla and took in the scene. The area is quite wide, with several retail stands and newstands along it. As we wandered along, we saw a bunch of stands that were selling … pets! That’s right, rabbits, hamsters, birds, fish, turtles … there was an amazing selection of pets for sale! I dunno why, but even in the rain, they were out there selling pets!
Along the way we found our way to La Bocqueria market. What a place! The area is crowded with stalls selling anything from fresh fruits and vegetables to candy to fresh meat and fish. What’s particularly amazing about the market though is the display of the various items for purchase! Fruits were neatly stacked in piles a couple feet high, candy and nuts were displayed in boxes stretching vertically deep into the stall. Nearly every stall had an artful and space conscious way of displaying whatever goods it was that they were selling. It was a wonderful place … and it was open basically every day (well, it was closed Christmas day and the day after). Simply awesome.
We wandered up and down La Rambla getting an idea what was in the area. One of our friends who has hung out in Barcelona a few times suggested a few places for us to go relax and find some food. So we found a little square that he suggested and decided to get out of the rain for a little while to have a bit of lunch, tapas style.
After lunch, we wandered down the harbour, but the rain started to come harder and that dissuaded us from that plan, so we wandered back up to the other end of La Rambla and found the tourist information center looking for some advice on what we should try to see — preferably something inside.
The first thing they suggested was to check out Casa Batlló just a little ways north from where we were. So we took that suggestion and headed in that direction. The house there was designed by Antoni Gaudí – a man whose work we were going to become quite familiar with over the next couple days.
Anyways, this particular house was quite striking from the front. Its facade curves in interesting ways, and colourful tiles give it a look I’ve never seen in a house before. So we decided to take the tour inside, and were well rewarded with some awfully hard to describe scenes. The house had several wonderful rooms that meshed form and function in a very pleasing manner. Quite an enjoyable time — and I’ll really have to get to those photos so I can share what we saw.
Upon exiting that tour, we wandered over to La Sagrada Família – a church that is still under construction over a hundred years since they started. Gaudí was brought on to the project, and it became a massive and incredible piece of architecture and art. We were pretty tired though, so we decided to pass on the tour until later on in the week. So instead we headed back to our hotel room to dry off and look for a place to eat.
Another friend who had recently been in Barcelona had recommended a couple of restaurants to eat at. One of them was highly regarded on the internet as well, so we tried to go for that. Well, when we showed up there it was closed and from what we saw on the door, it opened at 9:00, but it was only 7:30! Eeep! Well it wasn’t raining so hard, so we walked down to the harbour and walked around that area for awhile. It was quite a nice evening, but we were hungry so we returned to the restaurant and it was still closed. But on closer inspection, a sign higher up said they were actually closed for the whole holidays. Oops!
So instead we walked back up the street and went to a tapas restaurant that looked pretty busy. Turns out it was a pretty good choice! We got ourselves a lovely bottle of wine, and had several nice dishes, including a very nice roasted lamb dish that Diane picked out. Mmmm.
We wandered back to our hotel by way of the metro — which, by the way, is awesome in Barcelona. I am entirely jealous of cities with awesome metro systems. It was pretty cheap (with a T-10 pass, it was €0.77 a trip anywhere in the city), and the trains ran so frequently that there was rarely more than a couple minute wait for a train. I think the longest we ever waited for a train was 5 minutes, and that was ten o’clock in the evening on boxing day.
So that was our first day in Barcelona. Hopefully I’ll get through the other days in the next few days here!
Morgan
A couple months ago, Diane and I had started planning our trip to Barcelona, and I had a bunch of travel sites open. While I was doing that, I re-discovered http://www.skyscanner.net/, which has improved a great deal since I last used it. One cool thing it can do is you don’t have to search for the from or to dates — you can ask it to look for cheap flights departing from city X over the next month, or in March or whatever. So when I found this feature, I tried it out, and promptly found a €16 deal for two seats to Oslo and back with Ryanair. Wow! Of course, after all the booking fees, that ballooned up to … €36 for the two round trip tickets. Oh well, I’ll take that!
So I took the day off work on Friday and Diane and I wandered over to the airport for our Friday afternoon flight. The flight, in Ryanair style, landed in an out-of-the-way airport called Torp about an hour and a half or so from Oslo. From there, we caught a bus to Oslo.
When we were looking for accommodation, we quickly found out that Oslo is one of the world’s most expensive cities in the world. Hotels were easily running into the €175-€200/night range, and we weren’t exactly thrilled at the idea of spending that much. Eventually, we found a listing for the MS Innvik, which is a ship that’s been converted to a theater and bed and breakfast. The boat is moored right in the city center across from the Oslo Opera House, which turned out to be a great location. So we spent the weekend in Norway on a boat!
Saturday was bright and beautiful weather-wise. We took a bit of a walk around the harbour and eventually made our way to the tourist information center. The lady there informed us that we should take advantage of the good weather since it had been cloudy and raining for the last 3 weeks! Guess we lucked out on the weather thing! We picked up Oslo passes at the tourist center which turned out to be a pretty good deal. The pass got us free use of the city’s trams, subways, and buses as well as free entry into a couple dozen museums/other attractions.
It being beautiful out though, we decided to not activate our passes (which were good for 24 hours) until later on and instead walked over to the Vigeland Scuplture park. The park is filled with 212 statues originally carved by Gustav Vigeland (although the statues were made by other people based on the sculptures that Vigeland had made). It’s a pretty impressive area. Some of the sculpture were pretty amazing, although I do totally remember being impressed by the brick mosaic patio around this fountain (which actually wasn’t turned on for the winter).
Next up, we wandered around the Vigeland museum which had a lot of the original sculptures that the statues in the park were made from. Following that, we headed to what is essentially museum central in Oslo. There we first went into the Oslo Folk Museum at the recommendation of the tourist information lady. The museum was a huge area and kind of resembled a Norwegian version of fort edmonton park. They had a bunch of old buildings from various eras, and it was pretty cool wandering around looking at all the buildings on stilts.
It was starting to get a little late so we wandered on to the Viking museum without completely exploring the folk museum. The Viking museum is pretty small, so it was pretty quick to walk through and admire the three big viking boats they had on display.
Next up, we walked over to a small area where there are three separate museums. It was after 3:00 when we got over there and we discovered that the Kon-Tiki museum had already closed, and both the Fram museum and the Norwegian Maritime museum closed at 4:00. So we had some work to do!
The Fram museum was pretty cool — the museum itself was a giant A-frame building which houses the entire ship that made several polar expeditions — to both poles. Not only that, you can go up and actually walk through the boat’s interior, much of which is still intact. A pretty nice experience!
The Norwegian Maritime museum didn’t have a huge amount of interesting things for me, but it was good to walk around it. Definitely good to leave to the end of the day where we could hurry through and then leave. The sun was setting as we left the museum so we stayed by the coast there to take some photos — some of which I think turned out pretty well. Not too sure when I’ll get those photos up, but hopefully not too long.
Having done a lot of walking and a lot of museuming, we returned to the city center to find something to eat. One thing we didn’t really find on the trip was any sort of traditional Norwegian food. The places we were at seemed to be populated with Italian and Indian and other food, but we didn’t really see anything traditional :/ Oh wells. So we stopped in at an Italian place which wasn’t too bad. After having a nice dinner we headed back to our boat to enjoy the evening atmosphere therein.
The boat’s common room was the only place where we could get internet, which was a good thing since there was lots of activity in the common room. There was a bar (although the beer they were serving wasn’t amazing), and music and just some general fun times. Some dancing even broke out later on in the evening. But we had had a long day so we turned in early.
The next day we were determined to use the remaining time on our Oslo passes, so we first went to visit Akershush fortress, which we didn’t realize didn’t open until the afternoon on Sundays. Whoops. The day was cloudy and rainy, but we weren’t gonna let that stop us. We walked around the outside of the fortress a bit before heading off to the Nobel Institute, which is based in Oslo. They had some exhibits there, but it actually wasn’t all that interesting, and was pretty pricey at that! Good thing it was free with our Oslo pass!
From there we caught the underground to the Eastern part of town to check out the natural history museum. That museum is actually several buildings spread across a pretty wide area, and there was a lot to see. So we wandered through the rained on plants for awhile before finding the geological building and then the zoological building. They sure had a lot of stuff to look at! Partway through my feet were sure tired of all the walking!!!
We had a couple hours to spare before our bus back to Torp airport, so we stopped in at another Italian place … and this turned out to be a really good choice. I had a dish called “Turkish Risotto” which was absolutely delicious. Mmmm.
We picked up our luggage and spent a rather uneventful trip back to Dublin via bus and plane. So it was a pretty good trip! Next up, we’re headed to Barcelona over Christmas, which is pretty exciting!
Morgan
This is getting crazy. I’m having trouble getting us all caught up. Photos have been up on flickr for awhile, but somehow I keep forgetting about this poor little blog when I get a spare moment to breathe. So … here’s a quick hit list of some of the highlights of the past couple months. Hopefully I can remember all the highlights!
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Sugarloaf
Company Summer Party: The company pulled out the stops for the summer party. We spent the day at the Ritz-Carlton hotel next to powerscourt gardens. Starting with an excellent BBQ, free booze, massages, climbing wall, trampolines and more. Later on, Republic of Loose played a private show for us (I’m led to believe a pretty popular Irish band). Then when it got dark, we went inside to see some belly dancers, followed by a chocolate fondue fountain, more booze, and dancing. All in all, a very fun day!
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U2 in Dublin
U2 Plays in Dublin: At the last minute, we scored tickets to one of the three shows U2 played at Croke Park in Dublin. By the time we picked up our tickets and found our seats, we had just missed the opening bands (one of which was republic of loose!), but U2 played a pretty awesome show on a kick-ass claw stage. There’s nothing quite like going to see one of the biggest rock bands in the world play a sold out show to over 60,000 people! Definitely an awesome experience.
- Galway trip with Bryce: A little while later, our friend Bryce Paradis came to visit us for a couple weeks which was really fun. On the long weekend, we headed out to Galway which sadly was a little rainy. Highlights from the trip though was the few hours we spent peddling our (electric) bikes around the Aran islands. On one side of the island there’s the ruins of an ancient fort called Aonghasa where you can look over the tall cliffs into the oceans for a fabulous view. In addition to showing Bryce around Ireland, we spent a few nights playing Castle Crashers on the xbox which was pretty fun.
- Surfing in Bundoran: The second weekend Byrce was here, Christine organized a surfing trip to the west coast of Ireland. So the three of us drove out to Bundoran to join Aaron and Christine there. I had never been surfing before, but it was a mighty fun time. It’s really quite hard though! We went out both weekend days for a two hour session each day. The first day, I only got up on the board once, which felt awesome after getting smacked in the face for an hour and a half with meter tall salty waves! The second day was much better conditions than the first, and as a result I think everyone did better than the previous day! After our surfing, we headed on a short hike to see Slieve League — apparently some of the tallest ocean cliffs in Europe. Thanks to Christine for organizing such a great trip!
Over the Hill
- Another Visitor: Diane headed back to Canada for a visit a couple weeks before I left, leaving me at home, but I was able to keep myself pretty busy. For one thing, my travel buddy Mike Smith (I’ve been in more countries with Mike than anybody else, although Diane’s going to pass him someday I imagine!), started work at Pocketkings at the end of August. Right as he started, his friend Frano from Winnipeg came to visit — a guy I had known back at University. So it was pretty fun to hang out a little in Dublin with yet another visitor!
- Back to Canada: Our good friends JR and Shelly were getting married at the beginning of September, so we made the trip back to Canada to catchup with friends and family. Diane was there for a little longer than I, so she might fill you in on what she got up to before I got there. I got in and tried to see as many people as I could — but unfortunately missed a few people I really wanted to see. Sorry to those people! The theme of our trip back? All the engagements that had happened! I can count no fewer than five newly engaged couples. Eesh. Congrats to all of you!
- Jasper in September: JR and Shelly’s wedding was lovely! We spent two nights in Jasper in the lovely Canadian Rockies. We ran around taking a lot of photos — at the ceremony, and then taking scavenger hunt photos around Jasper. They had some pretty fun ideas for contests. The scavenger hunt had us taking creative photos, and we ended up with some great ones (including this lovely Elk!). The reception was also really fun — it has been a long time since Diane and I got out on the dance floor. So congrats to you guys, and here’s to many years of happy marriage!
Elk
- Back in Dublin: Life didn’t slow down at all after returning to Dublin. Work has been absolutely nuts, and now we’ve got Diane’s mom and her sister in town to entertain (look at all the visitors we’ve had!). They’re in town for about ten days or so, and we’ve got some plans to head up to the Giant’s Causeway on the weekend. In the meantime, we made a short, wild trip to …
- Oktoberfest! That’s right. Mike, Carolyn, Diane and I got on a plane headed to Munich for a very short, but pretty fun trip to check out Oktoberfest. We took off from Dublin around noon on Saturday and arrived back just 24 hours later the next morning! I’ll have to type more about the trip later, but it was really quite fun, even with the insane schedule.
Streets of Galway
I’m trying to get this post done, so I cut things a little short. I’ll try and flesh it out a little with a couple more posts, but no promises! It’s going to be a busy few weeks here still!
Morgan
Wow, a month and a bit really passes in a hurry! My mom just had one weekend left before she headed back home from Gatwick airport. One of the last things on the list to do was to go visit some friends of hers who live in Brighton, England. So for the last weekend we got on a plane over to Gatwick airport Friday evening and took a train from there to Brighton which is on the south coast of England.
Our kind hosts, Margaret and Ron, met us at the Brighton train station and took us to the bed and breakfast which we would stay for the next two nights. It was pretty late when we got in so basically we went straight to bed. The next morning, Margaret and Ron were going to meet up with us around noon, so we had the morning to ourselves to wander around. Our B&B was really close to the coast, and it was a beautiful sunny day so we wandered up and down the beach for awhile enjoying the weather and basically taking it easy.
After a little while we returned to our B&B and were picked up by our hosts who took us to see the Sissinghurst gardens. These magnificent gardens were an hour and a half’s drive outside of Brighton, and it was well worth the trip. When we got there, we had some lunch in the restaurant before spending a few hours wandering around in the gardens.
The gardens surround a large tower which you can climb up several floors of spiral stairs to get to the top of. From the top you can see not just the gardens itself, but quite far into the English countryside. On that beautiful day it was a wonderful view! I don’t even really know what else to say about the garden except that we spent quite a lot of time there walking around and taking photos.
After taking our time there we got back in the car and headed back towards Brighton. It was quickly approaching time to eat, so our hosts took us to a place called Shelley’s. When we arrived, the place was an impressive building, also with an impressive number of cars in the parking lot. The garden behind the house was filled with some fancily dressed up people — it certainly looked like a wedding! But Margaret decided to go in and ask if there was space for us anyway and the restaurant staff said they could squeeze us in! So we sat out on the patio for a bit before being shown our table. We were just one of two tables in use in what basically was a private dining room for us! We had a very lovely fancy dinner, which took us well into the evening.
The next day, we had the morning to ourselves so we walked down the coast a ways once again enjoying the beautiful weather. We split off the coast farther on and eventually found ourselves in the Lanes — a narrow pedestrian street shopping area with a bunch of quaint little shops all over the place. It was pretty cool to wander in and around there. While we were there we stopped in at a courtyard area and got some frozen yoghurt, which was rather interesting actually. Instead of tasting more like ice cream, it actually tasted like … well … yoghurt. It didn’t taste bad, just kind of … odd. It was, however, pretty refreshing on a day where the sun was out and no clouds to speak of.
Next, we wandered towards the museum and Royal Pavilion which are colocated in a large city park. We were due to meet our hosts in a couple hours at the museum for lunch, so we decided to see the Pavilion. It was an *incredible* place to see. The pavilion was built by King George IV, and was an extremely lavish vacation palace.
While the start of the tour is impressive enough, when you walk into the dining hall you can’t help but pick your jaw off the floor. The dining hall is a huge domed room, and the focal point of your attention immediately shifts up to the chandelier hanging from the top of the very high dome to a little above the dining table in the center. The top of the chandelier is a large dragon clutching the rest of the chandelier in its claws — and there are more dragons at the edges of the chandelier with their mouths turned upwards with lights inside burning to make them look like they are breathing fire. If I remember right, the whole chandelier weighs at least 1 tonne, and is certainly the most spectactular sight in that room.
The tour continues on through the extensive and for its time modern kitchen, through the various bedrooms as well as the music hall — a room that matches the dining room in size and dimension, but instead has plush carpets and row upon row of gold covered shell shapes lining the domed ceiling. It really was an incredible tour and well worth it.
After that we wandered over to the museum where we walked around for awhile before joining Margaret and Ron for some high tea lunch: sandwiches, tea, and scones which made a lovely lunch!
It was starting to get towards time for us to catch the train back to Gatwick, but one last thing Margaret wanted us to see was a view near the village of Ditchling; a hill overlooking some rather pretty English countryside. We had enough time to do this, so we went and it really was quite a wonderful view.
Our train trip back to Gatwick was uneventful, as was our plane trip back to Dublin. So that was a nice way to wrap up the parental visit. My mom headed back to Edmonton on the following Tuesday after spending some more time with Margaret and Ron. I think both my parents enjoyed the trip — I certainly hope they did!
Morgan
Woohoo! Finally catching up! This was the final weekend in Ireland for my mom. The following weekend we would be spending in England before she headed home. My dad had already headed home to return to work earlier in the week.
It had been a pretty busy month of touristy stuff, so instead of going crazy and hitting the road for a third straight full weekend of tourist stuff, we decided to just go out for the Saturday and take it easy on the Sunday. So we headed out fairly close by to Dublin to see Trim castle, following that up with the nearby Hill of Tara.
Trim Castle is a tall imposing structure. It had been overgrown for quite some time before being reclaimed and restored. Seeing the keep itself was by guided tour only, and fortunately for us the next tour was starting just as we arrived. So we got shown around the castle. Due to its lengthy time being overgrown, the walls of the castle are stained green from the moss and other plants growing on the walls. It makes for quite an interesting green glow inside the castle.
On the main floor of the castle, the people who restored the castle also put up three small models of the castle at three different points in its history. They were actually really cool to see how the castle changed over history. After our tour, we walked around the grounds of the castle, enjoying the beautiful sunny weather.
Our next destination was the Hill of Tara — not too far away from Trim Castle. Unlike a lot of the tourist attractions we’ve been to, the Hill of Tara is pretty unassuming. At least in comparison to all the fancy castles and amazing natural wonders we’d seen over the past few weeks. Still, the hill had a certain quiet grandeur that I couldn’t quite place. There’s a lot of history there — the hill had been used thousands of years ago as a place to crown kings, and as a burial site as well.
The fields are quiet and calm, with sheep grazing on the grass. You kinda have to watch your step as you walk around the fields and on the hill itself — the sheep have definitely been all over that field! There are actually quite a few hilled rings all over the place there, although the biggest ones are in the middle of the field where the “stone of destiny” is.
It was a nice peaceful walk around the area. Unfortunately, photos on the hills themselves were really hard to get. Any sort of sloped terrain is something that is notoriously hard to photograph without looking just like slightly rolly hills. Oh well – it was still quite pretty.
So it was a pretty nice relaxing day and we headed back fairly early to go continue relaxing at home. Up next! We head to England to visit some of my mom’s friends from quite a few years back, and walk around the beautiful Sissinghurst gardens.
Morgan
The weekend following the west coast trip, our plan was to head up North to check out the Giant’s Causeway in particular, as well as some of the sights and attractions in that area. We got out of the apartment fairly late on Saturday morning, and started up the highway in the direction of Belfast. For whatever reason, we decided to pass on going into Belfast on this trip. It’s been a little while now, so I can’t remember exactly why.
At any rate, we ended up at Carrickfergus Castle, which is not far out of Belfast. On this particular day, there was a fencing contest going on inside the castle — what a cool place for a fencing competition! This particular castle has been kept in fairly good shape by restoration. We wandered in and around the castle for awhile before heading across the parking lot for lunch.
We hopped back into the car after lunch and took the coastal drive up towards the causeway. The coastal drive is a fair amount longer, but we had heard from trusted sources that it was worth it. That advice turned out to be true. The drive was beautiful, causing us to stop several times to take pictures and enjoy the scenery. It turned out to be a really good thing we did go up then rather than the next day since the weather was far superior on Saturday compared to the next day! But I get ahead of myself.
We passed the sign pointing the way to the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, and since it wasn’t too late yet and the weather was still very nice out, we decided to head there first before heading to the B&B. The Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge connects Ireland to a small grassy and rocky island. In times past, the safety of crossing the bridge was a bit questionable, but what’s in place today is a much safer incarnation. The walk up to the bridge is maybe a half hour hike with some truly spectacular views. The lovely weather, and the wonderful views made the walk well worth it, even without the bridge at the end!
The Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge itself was solidly built, and led the way over to a beautiful little island to walk around on. There was some cliffs to be a little careful of, but it was lovely and peaceful on the island. We took a bunch of pictures, and wandered around for awhile before returning to the bridge and the walk back to the car.
Our next stop was the B&B which was just outside of Bushmills. It was a lovely little place, and the lady there kindly directed us to the Smuggler’s Inn for dinner when we asked for recommendations on a place to eat for dinner. So we headed there, and it was totally delicious! We got lucky and scored a table in the corner in what was basically a totally packed place. There was a pile of food, and potatoes done in a gazillion different ways, and some great atomsphere in there. Late in our meal, a couple of guys came in and started playing some traditional Irish music, and they were really quite good. So all in all it was a wonderful little evening.
The next day we got up relatively early for breakfast and then headed up to the Giant’s Causeway — a natural formation that I’ve wanted to see since I saw some of my sister’s pictures from when she was there. Unforunately, the weather didn’t cooperate with us, and it was misty with a bit of a rain. Still, the causeway is definitely a beautiful area. The area consists of a couple of kilometers of walks along the coast and cliffs. Down on the coast there’s a series of pentagon and hexagonal stones at many different heights. It is a pretty crazy looking thing — definitely worth seeing!
We spent a couple hours walking around the causeway and taking pictures before hopping back in the car and heading further along the northern coast to Dunluce castle. Unlike Carrickfergus which is in pretty good shape, Dunluce castle is a ruined castle. Apparently, part of the castle fell off the cliff into the ocean while people were living in it! They’ve since stabilized the cliffs, and the castle is pretty cool to explore in its ruined state.
From there, we continued down the road to Portrush beach, where despite the mist was quite a nice place. There was a big sandy beach and we even saw some people heading out into the water to go surfing!
After all this sight seeing is was definitely time to head back to Dublin. It was a very good weekend trip!
Morgan
Life isn’t standing still here, and it’s becoming hard to get the motivation to finish these posts. But I can do it!
A week after my parents arrived in Dublin, we undertook the first road trip in Ireland where our car was the vehicle (past trips were thanks to Darse and Xan’s car). On this particular trip, we took our car West with the aim of seeing the Cliffs of Moher. So we packed up some provisions and some overnight gear and got going relatively early on Saturday morning.
The start of the journey out of Dublin was on some nice dual carriageways (that’s what they call divided highways here), but once you get a certain distance out from Dublin, the roads start to get narrow. Driving becomes interesting on these roads, and it’s a little hard to get used to.
At any rate, we neared the area known as the Burren, which is a very distinctive rocky area near the west coast of Ireland. In the vicinity of the town of Gort, we took a bit of a wrong turn and ended up on some *really* narrow roads. Just about the time we were thinking of turning around and retracing our steps though, we came across some ruins. Having been driving for awhile, it seemed like a good place to stop and stretch our legs. Apparently we had run across Kilmacduagh – the ruins of an Irish monastery. It’s still a bit hard to get used to being in a country where you can just drive by ruins of significance at random …
At any rate, we decided to brave the tiny roads and continue along our path. We hadn’t actually planned the weekend out very well, which turned out to be a good thing — because if we had, we might not have made it in time for any bookings. Still, we kind of were in a mood to “see stuff”. In the Burren there were a ton of signs pointing out various things to see. One thing that caught my mom’s eye was the Burren Perfumery, which apparently is something of note. So we followed those signs into a quiet little area where there was a house and tea cottage. There was a very nice video with some stunning photos of the Burren area, which was pretty enjoyable.
Back in the car, we headed towards the town of Lisdoonvarna where we had booked a bed and breakfast for the night. When we entered the town, great big signs proclaimed Lisdoonvarna as the matchmaking capital of Europe. Huh, who knew? Anyway, we found our B&B and dropped off our bags before persuing some local food. After some quick pub grub we headed down to the coastal town of Doolin which was a short drive away. Our aim was to scout out the terrain to see if we could find where we could catch a boat to take us to see the Cliffs of Moher from the sea.
It was a beautiful evening, so it was also well worth the walk to see what we could find. On the way, we found a little pitch-and-putt golf course right next to the ocean. I really can’t think of a more picturesque place for such a thing, and it was enough to pull us in to play a round. Well, let me tell you, we’re not very good at golf! The 18(!) holes of golf took us entirely too long to play. The poor guy who rented out our clubs was waiting for us to finally finish up so he could go home. Still, it was well worth it!
The shops at the dock had all closed already, but I was able to take a few names back to the B&B to look up and see what the rates were. It had been a fairly long day on the road, so we returned back to the B&B to rest up!
The next morning, after a full Irish breakfast at the B&B, we headed back down to the coast where we signed up for the first boat at noon that day. It turned out we were a bit early, so for the next couple hours we spent some time walking around on the coast. My mom and Diane headed into Doolin to check out some shops, while my dad and I walked around and enjoyed the sunshine and the scenery. I was quite happy with the photos I took while walking around!
Reconvening at the docks, we boarded a boat which took us over to the cliffs. About 5 minutes into the journey though, I got a red-alert phone call from work. Whoops, talk about bad timing! I wasn’t able to help out when I could barely hear the guy on the other end of the phone, so I apologized and promised to call in when I got back to land. So with that rather unfortunate downer, the boat took us off to see some rather magnificent looking cliffs. It’s too bad the sun didn’t stick around for our little tour — annoyingly it clouded over just for that bit. Still, some of the pictures turned out!
The boat takes you fairly close to the cliffs, although not very close — since there’s some danger of falling rocks. It did take us quite close An Bhreannán Mór — a pillar separated away from the cliffs. Both this pillar of rock and the cliffs make excellent bird nesting sites, and boy were there a lot of them! We got close enough to catch a whiff. Yeah, birds are pretty stinky! Seriously!
Back ashore, I called into work, but they had sorted out the issue so it was back to being a tourist for me! We hopped back in the car and headed north in the general direction of Galway. It was my intention to take a quick look in Galway and find some food before heading home. But we kind of got sidetracked with some of the sights along the coast. It’s quite a beautiful drive there, and we stopped several times to take photos and walk around the rocky terrain of the Burren. So it was well into the afternoon and we hadn’t even made it near Galway yet, so stopped in a cafe in a little town for lunch before heading home.
I’d say it was a decently successful weekend, even if it was a bit disorganized!
Morgan
My parents flew in from Austria on June 6, late in the evening. After getting them home from the airport, we caught up a bit before turning in to sleep (it was late, after all!).
The next morning, the weather didn’t appear to be too bad so we formulated a plan to go see something. Malahide castle is not too far away from the Dublin area, so it seemed like a likely candidate. We decided to drive down to Bray (a town just south of Dublin) and hop on the Dart train and take it all the way up the coast and through the city centre all the way up to the castle. It turns out that this was quite a bit longer a trip than we thought … and with less coastal views than we rememebered. The Dart train isn’t really something we take on a regular basis. Oh well.
Still, we made it to Malahide and wandered around the grounds for awhile trying to find the castle itself. There’s a fairly sizeable park there, with a lot of trails, playgrounds, sports pitches and general grassy fields. It was a nice day though so we enjoyed a bit of a walk until we came across the castle itself. For some reason though, we came across it from the back entrance which was slightly confusing.
There was a guided tour starting right away, so we got in on that. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed inside (seems like too many places these days have a no photography policy). The tour was actually quite interesting — It’s pretty cool to hear about a building that has so much history. I’m not too sure how much I can remember from the tour, except for just a couple of details. The first being that in one of the rooms, there was an amazing marble table in one corner. The table’s surface had several colours of stone inlaid like a mosaic, and it was incredibly beautiful. According to our audio tour, no one’s been able to figure out how the person accomplished it … The second thing I remember from the tour was a portrait in the stairwell of the castle. The portrait depicts a child wearing red shoes being held by her mother Mrs Talbot. The child would grow up to be the woman who sold the castle to the Irish State.
After the tour, we stopped in the cafe there for a quick lunch and then wandered back out onto the grounds for a bit. Eventually we returned back to the dart station and headed home.
That evening, we headed into the city centre on the LUAS and headed in for some dinner at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen. It had been on our list of places to go try, since several people had recommended it. Turns out it was actually quite good!
So that’s how we spent the first full day my parents were here. Throughout the week, I went to work, so the next stuff I saw with them would be on the next weekend: our trip to the Irish West Coast.
Morgan
On the Sunday of our trip to Budapest, we did indeed ride on a boat, upstream along the beautiful Danube. It was a glorious day, and everyone and his dog was out in canoes, kayaks, and motorboats. We saw people tubing and paragliding. And the town where we went was called Szentendre, after St. Andrew. It’s just north of Budapest. There we found tasty barbecued meats at a Serbian restaurant, which boasted an excellent guitarist. One thing that’s really struck me around Budapest is the amount of live music in restaurants and on the street. Much of it is of fair quality too. A ton of artists, actors, writers, and musicians reportedly live in Szentendre. And more and more tourists are showing up. I believe it’s because of the hot chocholate (forró csokoládé in Hungarian) at a little café down the street, south from the dock, across from a family of knife-makers. Here ended my search for “real” hot chocolate, that is, melted drinking chocolate in a cup to which you then add milk and whipped cream as you wish. I would gladly row 10 miles up the river for it. (Okay, 10 km in something streamlined maybe.) I think there’s also a marzipan museum and a confectionery museum, as well as a wine museum there. We took the train back into town after being waylaid at the station and serenaded by a little old fellow and his perhaps-once-tuneful violin.
Mmm, Szentendre drinking chocolate!
The next day we trundled across the bridge to the Gellért Baths to soak our cares away in the mineral-rich waters. A great way to spend a Monday if you ask me. At the lockers, there’s a cute little key attendant who locks up for you and then lets you back in when you’re done. (It’s appropriate to tip a few hundred forint.) It was nice – quite clean, not too salty, not super hot. That said, many people I know would be looking for a lot warmer pools than I found there. They also had extra things like facials and massages, and I think maybe I should have gone for one – I’ve been missing massage since class ended!
Magically healed in the fountains of life and youth and so on, we decided to do a little more walking. We climbed up to see some statues on the hill beside the Gellért, including the liberty monument, which looks to me like a lady trying to paraglide with a leaf, and St. Gellért, who, according to legend, was pushed off the hill in a barrel and died. There was also a very cool, cavernous little church, carved and dug into the side of the hill.
That evening, it was time for possibly the biggest helpings of food yet at a nearby restaurant appropriately named Fatál. Yes, it’s Hungarian for wooden plate (on which some of the menu is served), but I prefer to take it literally and without the accent. Morgan and I indulged in roast duck and wiener schnitzel of significant area. (The schnitzel was totally hanging off the edge of its fatál.) With various flavours of beer of course. And not a vegetable in sight, unless you count potatoes. Please don’t tell our moms.
After supper the guys, apparently not completely owned by the hugeness of the food, went to check out a local casino. I went home to pass out. They came back with stories of poker hands and people that tried their darndest to usher them into strip joints. Rumour has it that if you accept the invitation of such an establishment, the bill will be much more than you bargained for…
On the morning of our final day, we checked Gerbeaud off our list. It is a fancy-pants café-confectionery with tasty cakes including Morgan’s Gerbeaud torte and my alma torte. You can tell how respectable it is by the way they bring thimbles of complimentary water to your table without your having to ask. I must say though, that their version of forró csokoládé is entirely trumped by Szentendre.
Back to the Oktogon (octagonal intersection and subway stop below) and Andrássy út we went, to see the House of Terror. The building that now houses a museum was formerly chosen as headquarters for both Nazi and Communist terror organizations, and many people were tortured and interrogated inside it. It’s very well set up to tell the stories of Hungary’s double occupation (and very short-lived rebellion) through pretty much endless amounts of media. There must be several days’ worth of video alone, as well as printed material and some of the technology and other artifacts of the day. There were beautiful statues and tributes but also reconstructed prison cells, some of which I really would not have enjoyed. It can be a profound experience if you allow it, and we left reminded of sobering stories made up of many lives.
We took our last ride on the underground and strolled our last Hungarian streets, ate our last honey-cakes and said our last thank you’s to our generous hosts. We used our last few hundred forint to buy a bottle of water for the plane and we were off home again. There or thereabouts ended a lovely extended weekend away. I would highly recommend Budapest and wouldn’t mind going again myself, though we have the rest of Europe to get through. I hear Croatia is quite lovely.
Mixed and ready to drink!
Gerbeaud's Alma Torte
Diane
Here is the last installment of our adventures in Austria. I hope you enjoyed them
Unfortunately, we just had the one last day in Austria before our flight home the next day. The Austrian relatives had been wonderful hosts — not only generously giving us a place to stay and feeding us, but refusing stubbornly to let us pay for anything (though we did manage to get a couple of the bills, it was a struggle!). There was one thing we had been requested to do by Sabine’s mom, and that was go over to her place for dinner. Fortunately, we had one night left to do that so that is what we did.
On Monday morning, Sabine and her husband picked us up and we made a journey about half an hour out of Linz to a little town called Gmunden which is famous for the ceramics (or in German: keramik) they make there. Unfortunately, the guided tour of the facility was closed until early January (one reason to go back I guess!), so we took the chance to admire some of the wares. They were rather nice, I must say, and you could really get just about all of your kitchen dishes in one design or another if you liked. They even had napkins, candles, coasters, and placemats you could buy that matched particular patterns. I dunno if it would be worth buying a 3.50 euro coaster just to match your ceramics though…
After taking a look at the ceramics, we walked down to the nearby lake to walk along it and stopped for lunch at a cafe which sat right next to the water. It was well worth it just to enjoy the sun shining through the glass of the porch and watch the birds on the clear water. We didn’t leave until much later and enjoying more traditional Austrian desserts (complete with a lot of whipped cream!). It was a nice lunch.
We continued walking along the coast taking pictures. Our eventual destination was a castle built on a small island on the lake. It made a nice subject for pictures, particularly with the mist over the lake in front of it. On the way, we found some ice frozen on the side of the road and Diane and I were quick to walk around on it a bit. You know the kind of ice where it’s not frozen solid yet, but you can walk around on it and watch and hear cracks in the ice and bubbles run in the shallow water underneath? I have great memories of playing on ice just like this in the spring back in Edmonton. Perhaps that’s why I keep doing it now whenever I get the chance.
We reached the castle and walked around it quickly before making the return journey to the car. We needed to be back to Linz to setup Skype for Sabine’s mom to talk to people back home. So we arrived at her place the smell of cooking. She must have spent all day cooking up a feast for that evening! So we ate, and ate, and ate… it was delicious, and I don’t really want to think about how much work went into preparing everything!
We returned back to Kien’s place, and got packed up and ready to leave in the morning. The next morning, Kien’s brother generously drove us back to the Salzburg airport where we caught our plane back home.
It was a good trip, and we’re glad we got out to see this side of the family and where they live. It was Diane’s first time in continental Europe, and just my 3rd time with one of those times happening when I was just 2 years old, and the other when I was in Italy for a computer games research conference. It was a good experience and we’re looking forward to our next trip. I hear we’ve got an open invitation in Budapest…
Morgan
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