Aliandcam's travel blogs:
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A mad dash around the Emerald Isle...
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Hi everyone!
For those of you new to the travelpod, welcome and thanks for reading :) This going to be a fairly hurried entry as we arrived back in London from Ireland last night and are heading off to Morocco in a couple of hours...eek! We feel a bit under-prepared actually as we haven't really much research at all but never mind, we'll get there...! Right, so, just to take a few steps back...we finished up at work in London last Tuesday so have been officially unemployed for a week now. Let's just say the adjustment hasn't been TOO much of a struggle...though it does still feel a bit weird and we can't quite believe that we have finished for good. Leaving work and saying goodbye to everyone was really sad (though at that point in time I still couldn't really believe I was actually leaving!) - more so for me than Cam, as I've been lucky to be part of a really lovely and close-knit team who I am going to miss a lot. We were also packing up and moving out of our flat at the same time so we were actually pretty exhausted physically and emotionally! After finishing work on Tuesday we had a day in London on the Wednesday sending our shipping boxes off, I queued for a good few hours in the chaotic Indian Embassy to get our Indian visas, we purchased our wedding rings (! yes, slightly ahead of ourselves but we wanted to get them from the same jewellers as my engagement ring) and we also got Cam an early birthday/Xmas pressie - a digital SLR camera (note most of the pictures of us in Ireland are of me as he has been testing it out)...
We then headed off to the Emerald Isle on Thursday morning - we flew into Dublin and picked up a car from the airport and headed straight across to Galway, where we spent our first night in a cosy hostel and sampled some hearty Irish cuisine - well at least I did - we went to a little restaurant that looked fairly traditional (it was called Finnegans??!) and I sampled some Irish stew (Cam cheated and had BBQ spare ribs!). A little disappointing actually, must've been a bad batch as I've heard it can be pretty tasty...Day 2 we were up early and headed along the coast through County Clare (there's a photo of me by the sign as my middle name is Clare and I was named after this place as my Mum and Dad thought it was rather pretty...I was pleased to find I agreed with them!), stopping off at scenic points en route, the most famous being the Cliffs of Moher - which were rather impressive, and consequently overrun with tourists (mainly loud American ones - and actually we found the entire country swarming with them, and constantly exclaiming about how funny it was that they kept bumping into each other!). We then worked our way south and made our way right down to the cute little town of Dingle on the Dingle peninsula, where we stayed in a very nice B&B with a very hospitable owner (he certainly liked to chat and was really lovely despite reminding me a lot of Louis Walsh!) He recommended that we go further down the peninsula and check out the tip of the peninsula (Sleahead) which was a gorgeous drive - despite the rain and mist. We then tackled the obligatory Ring of Kerry and headed eastwards where we spent night 3 in a B&B above a pub in Skibberdean - which was also a nice little town, though perhaps a bit foolish to stay above a pub in Ireland on a Saturday night - at 2am everyone spilled out on to the streets and were yelling, singing and generally making a racket for a good couple of hours until it started raining heavily and everyone skeddadled...!
Next day the sun came out (we'd had mainly drizzle and mist up to that point which, though atmospheric, wasn't the greatest for holiday makers such as ourselves)and we stopped off at a beautiful sweeping beach near Skibberdean (can't remember the name of it) before heading to the pretty fishing village of Kinsale then up to Cobh (where our friend Caitriona is from) - a gorgeous little town on the harbour, and one of the nicest places we went in Ireland. We then panicked a bit as it was 2pm and we were supposed to have the rental car back in Dublin by 5pm so we headed off as fast as our little car could carry us up the motorway, with no time to go and kiss the Blarney stone at Blarney Castle (have to do that next time)...got to Dublin a bit late and then had a fun time driving around the streets trying to find the car rental place...by the time we finally found it and it was closed so with a bit of to-ing and fro-ing we agreed to drop it off in the morning...which meant trying to find a car park in the middle of Dublin to leave it overnight - another fun task! Found one eventually quite close to our hostel so had a nice pub meal and a wander around the city in the evening.
Next day we jumped on the hop-on hop-off bus tour - we've never been on one before (despite them being in just about every city you go to)but we figured it was the best way to have an overview of the city in our limited time frame...we had a hilarious driver who amused the Americans and us on board with his jokes and general shenanigans. We jumped off and visited the Guinness brewery which was quite interesting but I could only manage a few mouthfuls of my complimentary pint...blergh...then we were back on the bus and out to the airport as we flew back at 4pm yesterday. Phew! It was a bit of a whirlwind tour - we really should have allowed ourselves a few more days as we would've preferred to do less driving and more exploring but we did have a good time and glad we fitted it in! All the cliches you hear about Ireland, we found to be true - beautiful, green countryside and stunning coastline (and it was quite NZ-esque in parts),lovely friendly people with gorgeous accents, cute colourful towns, and there seemed to be an air of prosperity and development - at least in the touristy areas we went, lots of construction, new houses and very clean and well-maintained little towns, nothing scruffy or run-down (except in Dublin really!). We'll have to go back and spend more time there in the future. Caitriona - thanks so much for your tips!
OK, better run cos we need to go to the airport in an hour! Hope all is well with everyone, drop us an email with your news, and next update will be from Morocco! Looking forward to some sunshine (rainy and a bit chilly in London today!) Lots of love, Ali and Cam xx More thumbnails ...
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