The Book of Ashes

Ireland... 10:03PM

We flew into Dublin around midnight. The temperature changed from a balmy 20 odd degrees to around 8 degrees. It was dark, cold and raining. Tom had told us the easiest way to get to his house was to grab a taxi so we wondered outside to find a queue of hundreds of people at the taxi stand.

Luckily the taxis were flying in and taking 2-3 people at a time so we only had to wait about 30 mins but still. So after a bit of lost we arrived at Tom and Corina's appartment in Dublin. We came inside, had an Ozzu and caught up. We slept on the comfy couch. It was good.

It was awesome to catch up with Tom and see where he lives. Next day was a Sunday so he took us for a walk into town to meet Martin and see a few sights (mostly pubs). It was absolutely freezing. Heres a photo of Tom by the giant metal spike in the centre of town. I think its to help with finding directions...

Don't be fooled by the blue sky in the background, it was freezing! Below is the bridge over the river that divides the city in two.

We caught up with Martin and had a bit of a pub crawl. I impressed Tom with my ability to still know where I was even after a few guinesses and going in and out of pubs.

So I had to have a Guiness. I don't usually like them but over there they are much easier to drink. In fact I could quite happily drink 5 or more, unlike NZ where I struggle with one. So really Guiness isn't all that bad...

Next day in Dublin it was a Monday and everyone was working. Bonnie and I headed into town to see the Book of Kells and to do some shopping. However it was even colder that day than the day before (if thats possible) and it rained then hailed on us. Beautiful. Another thing we discovered was that the shops don't have awnings, no where to shelter from the rain!

Martin took the afternoon off and showed us round a few sights. We headed back to check out his new pad (pretty cool) and got hailed on again.

Our stay in Dublin was to be a short one though, we headed off to the airport that night and flew to Cork on Ryan Air (0.01 Euro cent tickets = NZ$30 via the Ryan Air exchange rate (e.g. more money for bagage, etc)).

This was an interesting experience with them selling scratchies on the plane (instant kiwis) and playing a trumpet fanfare on arrival (congratulations you've arrived on time with Ryan Air. Ryan Air gets you there on time so many percent of the time compared to other airlines, etc...). I thought the trumpets should have been saved for the trips like that to Grenada where the plane dropped suddenly and you really appreciated landing safely.

So here we are in the country in Cork with Robyn and her cute little puppy.

We stayed the night in Cork at Robyns place then got up at 5am the next morning to head off in a Campervan around the coast of Ireland. We had a boat trip sheduled for that morning (hence the early start) in the hopes that the weather would be fine that day and it was.

This is a bridge to an island. We are at a small port, ready to hop on a boat and travel out to Skelligs Islands. We didn't really know what to expect for these islands (I'd seen some of Robyn's photos and Bonnie didn't really know anything about them).

The sea was pretty calm and it was only a 45 min boat trip out. The first island we came to was all rock and bird. All the white you can see is birds. There was a cloud of birds flying around the island constantly. It was like something out of a pirate movie, pretty cool. The birds were puffins and ganets.

The next island we came to was Skelligs island. It was intimidating. It jutted up out of the sea like a big steep thing. It had grass over it and the odd stone path winding straight up the vertical face. Bonnie turned a little whiter when she saw it and said "are we going up that?".

The island blew me away. We first walked around the bottom and saw puffins and ganets nesting around the rock faces. Then we made our way up the steep stone steps. These steps had been made [ages ago] by monks who lived in isolation on the island, eating God knows what (puffins?).

In the background of this photo you can see the shear steepness of the island. We didn't walk up the peak behind but it did have a path up it (closed off) including rope ladder parts. It was bloody steep!

The monks built themselves a walled off area at the top along with stone mounds that they lived in. There is quite a lot of history and effort that has gone into building this. Unfortunetly the guides who tell you all about it arrived on the island later that day (starting their guide season that day). Overall this island is a must visit (on a good day only), I found it totally amazing.

The next two days we spent driving around the coast of Ireland in the campervan with the dog. The dog was still little and pissed and shat everywhere but made up for it by being very cute. Below is a random pass we drove over. Very cool. We also saw a slate quary and some 365 year old tetrapod footprints in rock (one of the first fish to walk on land).

Then we headed back to Cork and went for a walk around the coast there.

That night Tom, Corina, Eddie and Alida arrived. Eddie had managed to arrive in Dublin 2 days after we left after 2 months around Asia. This was totally unplanned. So we went to Ballymaloe and had a meal there. Bonnie and I got to stay the night there.

It is a fairly posh place. Like you have to dress up for breakfast and eat properly. Ballymaloe was a great example of the countryside. It was very relaxed and cool.

The weather while we were there was mostly like below, overcast and grey. Still Darren took us out to try Kite Surfing one afternoon. That was quite cool. We only did it on the sand tho.

All of us at the local pub having a Murphys. We were there for Robyn's engagement party and got to meet all of Darrens family. Then we had to head off back to the Dublin airport and off to London...