Vilius' posts with tag: beer
|  | Day 4. The last day in Ireland but not for me - I got one more day in Dublin. Blarney castle and stone. Legends for legends, you can get a serious certificate about kissing the stone and your received gift of eloquence =]. I guess it used to be quite an experience before they put up the protective bars and the old dude holding you up.
Since it was 4-5hours to Dublin we hit the road early. Half way got a decent highway and then Monday noon traffic jam - spent almost 2hours on that city bypass. Back in Dublin - a few beers with my classmate Martynas (aka maklaudas) - he's back to Dublin since Feb.
Day 5. Started late, got a breakfast, checked email/work, walked around Dublin - found the old Jameson distillery and Guinness quarters/district, tasted some fresh Guinness. Lunch at airport and back to Bxl. |
| | Day 2. My first day behind the wheel in IE. The b&b owner in Liscannor told us it was 5hours to Limerick and we should consider taking the ferry. 5hours for a mere 100km?? I expected the worst roads with speed limits of 30kmph. I got narrow, stone fenced, 50-60% curves with speed limit of 100kmph. In Ireland they seem to have three speed limits - 50, 80 and 100 - you can be climbing uphill a serpentine in first gear and still get a speed limit of 100. With such a speeding encouragements and time pressing hard, i think we got to Limerick in ~4hours; that's with ~2hours spent at Glin castle and Celtic "theme park" where i still can't believe we paid 6e (each!) to see some damn stones. Have to note - quite a few golf courses around there, freaky hilly ones too.
Limerick - a short stop, a castle (according to Laura/Silvija - nothing much of interest inside), a quick Irish whiskey tasting and Audrius takes over the driving. He had a little more trouble with that left-handed "stick shift" - kept bumping his elbow to the door. We got to Castleisland - a good 40min late to see the caves. We did get to see bunch of guys at the caves getting into trouble with 'Guarda' i.e. cops. Actually, just one of them got questioned - afaik, went too harsh on some girl, choking her a little the Homer/Bart Simpsons' style ;]
We get to Killarney, looks like a busy Saturday night there - barely find a b&b. Even harder it was to get some food. All restaurants had 1hour waiting and after probably a good hour of visiting the restaurants, I convinced our crew to have a drink and wait.. It was well worth the wait.
After dinner we ended up listening to some live music, then some more live bar singing, then at 12 the bar converted to a "nightclub". Well, there was this back room which opened up. That was quite fun.
Day 3. b&b owner strongly recommended visiting the lakes and castle so we did that. It is beautiful. Then, our plan - to circle the ring of Kerry in half a day, leaving us a few hours to drive towards west side of the island - it's Sunday and most of us had a flight to catch on Monday. There are definitely some lovely views as the road touches the seaside. Ocean and mountains.. well, I've never been to Calli...
We took a ferry to Valencia island - driving was even harder there - very steep slopes, narrow roads with no shoulders. After a few adrenaline pumping situations and views we stop for lunch at a local bar in Portmagee. Old Irish and young immigrants spending there Sunday at a pub. Bartender - Latvian, Lithuanian twins in the kitchen.. We also saw quite a few little princesses running around - first communions.
After lunch i grew seriously sleepy - so memories of the rest of the ring are little blurry. Silvija will probably remember that second half of the day - we expected N22 to be a 2-3 lane highway but all we found were 100% curved road. By 100% I mean here, not even a mile of straight line or somewhere max 200-300m visibility. I bet Silvija still hates us for starting drinking and leaving her to drive for the whole day.
We spent a night at Blarney (just north of Cork).
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| | so we flew to Ireland with Virginija and Audrius; Silvija drove down from Belfast. Ever felt confused between metric and royal systems? try living in North Ireland and traveling south, not only miles switch to km, you also have to exchange your currency (pounds -> euro). fun.
so, the road trip..
Dublin. Day 0. Irish are party people, no doubt here. You can bump into quite some wasted locals on a Thursday night. Beers are <6%, bars do close at 12-2am, action continues on the streets for a few hours. At 2am Czech-Inn was our best bet according to the local pizza vendor. So we taste Guinness till 3.30 or so.
Day 1. A decent brunch before hitting the road and we're off to west coast - Moher cliffs. Kudos to Silvija for driving the whole day heroically as we sip tasty beverages, mostly of one kind. A few pit-stops by a more or less beautiful spots and we get to see the Cliffs. Breathtaking, for a few seconds, can be a good source for adrenaline - with good wind gusts we didn't feel very safe even behind those barriers. Some head spinning from just looking down the cliffs has been reported.
Around 8pm we go to the nearest little village - Liscannor, find a cute b&b, chat with the owner for a bit and rush off to the bar for some dinner and a few more beers.
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