Sunday May 26, 2013

We woke up at 8:00, as we needed to pack all our bags before the bus left on the Stonehenge/Bath tour at 10:30.  We actually got packed quicker than I thought, although I ended up throwing a few shirts and socks away to make room for things that we had accumulated during our vacation.  We had some breakfast at the restaurant with Melissa’s grandma and aunt Karen, went upstairs for the last time to grab our bags, and checked out.  We boarded the coach bus after putting our bags below, and we all headed out on our farewell tour.

When we finally got to Stonehenge, whoever had the tickets thought they were only brochures, and either handed them to random people or went in with multiples.  Eventually we all made it in to see the stones, but because we had pre-booked tours in the city of Bath, we only had about 15 minutes to enjoy Stonehenge.  It felt similar to Poulnabrone Dolmen, how it was basically just rocks in a field, but the scale of it was actually bigger than I had expected.  We quickly walked around the place, boarded the bus again, and headed to Bath.

There were two tours set up in Bath: one was a walking tour with a guy dressed in 18^th century costume, and the other was to tour the Roman hot baths discovered in the middle of the city.

Melissa and I ended up on the walking tour first, which I found very enjoyable.  The guy had studied history so he knew his stuff.  We wound all over the city, and the guide had arranged for us to see one of the private gardens of one of the houses on “the circus” (Nic Cage recently sold house no. 7 on the circus), so that was an added bonus.  The Roman Baths tour was extremely interesting.  It turns out that the baths were buried and only rediscovered in the 1700s; how something so extensive could be covered up by the expanding town and not found for so long is beyond me, but there you go.  Again, the bus was due to leave the city around 5:30, so we couldn’t see absolutely everything but still saw most.

We bought our train tickets to London Paddington at the Bath Station for 30 pounds each.  TRAVELLERS TIP: WHEN THERE IS A LARGE GROUP TRAVELLING, CHECK FOR GROUP DISCOUNTS!!!  Turns out we could have joined in with everyone else, and although the first person’s ticket would have been 30 pounds, all additional tickets sold for 15.  Oh well.

We arrived at Paddington Station around 8:00, and took the tube to Swiss Cottage, where Adam, Devin, Alex, Alan and Madonna had a hotel reservation.  After Adam and Alex got the keys to the room, we smuggled the other five of us in, and settled into the room for the night.  Madonna and I stayed in the room while the rest of the gang went out for some food.  We ended up having pizza, Chinese, and pasta, along with some convenience store snacks and soda.

The highlight of the night came at bed time, as Melissa and I needed to leave at 6:30am.  With 7 guests and only 2 twin beds, we needed to be creative.  Alan fell asleep on the floor, but we ended up pushing the two beds together, and the other six of us slept on these mattresses somehow!  Yes, you can try and picture it, but I was there and still don’t know how it worked out.  Devin, Adam, Madonna, Melissa, and me sleeping transversely (across the crack) and Alex was along the wall below everyone else’s feet (except me who shared a pillow with him).   Melissa and I only made it part of the night until, due to uncomfortable conditions and snoring, moved to the floor.  We had a horrible night’s sleep, but came away with a very funny story.

Saturday May 25, 2013

I was alone in the morning.  It was nice that Melissa’s uncle kept calling to make sure I was alive.  At least one person cared…

We needed to be ready and waiting for one of two shuttles to take us to Highclere castle, leaving either at 1pm or 1:15.  I got downstairs around 12:45 and waited around with the other ‘smarties’ that showed up early.  After boarding the 1pm shuttle, we were informed we were stopping at a church instead.  We pulled up to see a fleet of period-style cars to give us a truly memorable experience pulling into Highclere.  Except I had no date.  So I just rode with some random people.

Melissa and Malorie woke up at the Vineyard to find they had no running water.  They had to wait for a repair man to fix the water, shower, and needed to order breakfast to the room as they missed the breakfast downstairs.  They got to Highclere with the girls around 9:30 to get ready.

I got to Highclere as they were setting up tea and finger sandwiches, so I got my first food of the day.  We then played some lawn games and walked around the castle until the ceremony began, sometime around 3:00.  The first time I saw my bride was when she was walking down the stairs, immediately before Siraj saw his bride.  They were both beautiful.

After the ceremony was time enough for a tour of some of the rooms, and then into what I can only describe as a library (maybe a lounge) for dinner.  The food was excellent, as was everything the entire day.  We then went into the main hall which they had transformed from the ceremony to the dance floor, and danced the night away.  We got back to the Donnington hotel around 1am, and I collapsed into bed and fell asleep before Melissa had finished taking her hair pins out.

Friday May 24, 2013

Melissa and I woke up around 9:00.  I just sort of laid around in the bed while Melis worked on the computer and answered some emails.  We thought the breakfast provided by Donnington went until 10:00, but around 9:45 we realized that the note slipped under our door the night before said that it only went until 10:00.  We rushed down and arrived in the hotel restaurant in time to have a hurried breakfast. 

There was a taxi waiting to take me to the nearby golf course, and at 10:25 I went to the lobby where we were supposed to meet.  The other guys stayed up the night before extremely late, drinking at the hotel bar, and were also meeting there, albeit groggily.  We finally left the hotel at 10:45, and with a 5 minute cab ride, got to the golf course embarrassingly late for our tee time.  And we were the first guys there.  I don’t know exactly when wee teed off, but the staff had to put us off the back 9, which had less water, but more trees and hills than the front.  The three foursomes each ended up playing a sort of best-ball round, but we ended up quitting after 7, 7, and 5 holes respectively, due to the cold temperatures, rain, and lateness for the scheduled luncheon (I say this in my head in a very English manner, you know shhhejuled…)

The steak sandwich that I ordered in the course bar was excellent, the Guinness on tap sat a little flat on my palate (but still good) and we had a great time all getting to know the rest of us a bit better.  Melissa’s brothers and I took a taxi back to Donnington while the groomsmen went with Siraj to the wedding rehearsal at Highclere castle.

I began to feel a little weird, almost like I ate something bad and felt a bit sick to my stomach.  I laid around until Melis came into the room before the dinner.

Meanwhile…

Melissa met up with the other girls and went downstairs to the Donnington hotel spa.  Each of them got back, neck, and shoulder massages.  The girls staying at the Vineyard hotel went back, Melissa got ready for the rehearsal upstairs, and she then took a taxi with Melanie to the Vineyard.  A van took Melissa and the wedding party to Highclere for the rehearsal.

After the rehearsal, the van took everyone back to Donnington for the rehearsal dinner.

We both came down to the hotel restaurant again for the dinner, my rather reluctantly, and after some table shuffling ended up sitting next to Adam and Devin.  Melissa probably has more to say about the dinner other than “the food was good” but it’s not really her blog, its mine, so I’ll just say that the food is good.  I was continuing to feel sick more and more throughout dinner, and just as the servers brought out dessert, I reached the threshold of my tolerance.  I excused myself from the table, said a quick word to Malorie and Siraj, and headed to my room.  I only had one close-call in the hallway, but I got to the room and laid down on the couch.  For the next 5 hours.

Melissa came up, packed some stuff, and went with Malorie to the Vineyard for the night.  As the matron-of-honor I gave her my permission to abandon me for the night, and off she went.  I was alone with my sickness.

I eventually fell asleep around 1am, once my stomach finally left me alone for a while.  I felt sure that Melissa made a good decision to comfort the bride-to-be.  And there was nothing she could have done for me anyway, other than listen to me gripe and groan.  I just hope Malorie appreciated my sacrifice…

Thursday May 23, 2013

Today was my dear, sweet, and beautiful wife Melissa's birthday.

We woke up at Cathy's house around 7:40.  We already had our stuff laid out to wear for the day, so all we did was grab our piles and take a shower.  Well I suppose that would be too easy for us when we needed to get to the airport on time.  When I say 'shower' I mean that we kneeled in the tiny European bathtub and sprayed water over ourselves with a handheld showerhead that had low water pressure.  Lather, Rinse, and repeat as necessary.

We left her house at 8:30, the same time that she needed to leave to get her daughter Chloe to school.  I was worried about the amount of fuel in the car, but we glided into the Hertz return area on fumes.  We paid to be allowed to bring the car back without a full tank of gas, but in the last few days had discovered that, even though the original guy behind the desk said we'd save money this way, it was a colossal rip off.  DO NOT MAKE OUR MISTAKE!  So we ended up eating about 15 EUR overcharge (only that little since there was probably less than 1 liter of fuel in the tank) and headed to our departure gate.

The way Ryanair works is that the flight is relatively cheap, but they charge you for every little nicety and thing they can.  Any drinks or water available? CHARGE!  Seat-back pockets with a magazine and vomit bag?  FORGET ABOUT IT!  Want to reserve a seat so you know where you will be on the aircraft?  NO WAY!  We survived the hour-long flight from Dublin to Stansted to find a giant hole in the side of our checked bag.  But did they do anything about that?  Nope.

We caught the Stansted Express train that took us to Liverpool Street Station (another 47 min) and then rode the Underground train to Great Portland Street.  We walked to the apartment that they had arranged for us to store our luggage and proceeded to wash our nasty clothes FOR FREE. 

We got through to Mary and Lily on Skype for a short amount of time, and once everyone met up at the apartments, left on the Underground to have dinner at Cotto (near the Lambeth North stop).  After Cotto we walked over to the London Eye and all took a ride, although this must have been frustrating to the others in our same car that our group of 20 ended up taking over and making a ruckus.  Being stuck in this din for 30 minutes was beginning to drive me mad, but fortunately (and before it sent me into a 'mood' again) the ride was soon over and we were heading back to the apartments. 

Siraj had been busy working on wedding stuff and couldn't join us for any of the earlier stuff, but had been busy loading all our suitcases and other pieces of luggage onto a shuttle.  We split our group between the shuttle and another van and drove down to our destination of the night, the Donnington Valley Hotel.  We all hung out a little bit, Melis and I played a game of Fluxx with Adam and Devin, and I finished up posting the pictures from the previous few days onto the blog.

And now to bed, at 1:30am.  Hopefully this can still be a restful night for what could turn out to be a pretty full day tomorrow.

Wednesday May 22, 2013

Today ended well, but every once in a blue moon I get in a mood where I am mad about something and it spoils everything else.  Well today was one of those days.

We woke up around 9:00 after not setting an alarm again.  We packed in a rush and left around 9:30.  We had a lot of driving today so this could have started "the mood".  We stopped at Grianan of Aileach stone ring fort on the way to Northern Ireland.  It's situated around Derry, and when writing today I can say that it was pretty decent, with a view of Inch Island (Joey would like that, he pretends to be an 'inch' sometimes).  But in the moment I wanted nothing to do with this stupid circle of rocks.

 

 

 

View of Inch Island

 

Our next stop was Dunluce castle, on the Antrim coast.  Again it was pretty cool and I can see the value of seeing something more historical, since that's kind of Melissa's thing.  But again, I was irritated that I needed to pay 12 pounds to see a ruined castle when we have seen a million ruined castles all over the countryside.  We did get the kids some goodies here, also 'too expensive' at the time, but in hindsight, it was a pretty decent deal for a very cool gift.

 

 

 

After this was the Giants Causeway.  This is where 'the mood' hit its peak.  Who on earth wants to pay 17 pounds to park at a car park, which is not even close to the free natural area, along with the other tourist lemmings? Not me.  But we did it anyway and walked the mile down to the causeway.  Not only was it clogged with human cattle, but they also bolted safety-lines all over the rocks.  In my opinion, the only thing they could have done to spoil the beauty of this unusual site is to post 'no diving' signs.  We ended up hiking off the trail along the coast, where we would be left in peace, and Melissa got me to settle down and my mood returned to something closer to normal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At about 4:30 we got to Carrick-a-rede rope bridge, but since we had a 2.5 hour drive, we skipped this and headed down to Balbrigan where we got a couchsurfing response from a french woman named Cathy.  After shepherd's pie and leek with cream, we played games with her 10 year old daughter, and after they went upstairs for bed, we packed our bags for the morning flight to London Stansted, and went to bed around 11:30.

Just a cool road we ended up driving

 

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

I was up late getting some of the blog posted last night, and Melissa was up even later handling some last minute business with Malorie (via chat, as our Skype connection wasn't working).  After a short night's sleep I got up around 8:30 and posted some more pictures to the blog.  I woke Melissa up at 9:00 and we packed up our things.  We were in the car and driving out of Dunkineely by 9:30 westward, along the coast and heading for Slieve League.

We had received some good advice on where to go from Damien.  He works for the coast guard and travels up Slieve League fairly often, either for training or to search for someone lost in the fog or fallen down a crevasse.  We drove through Carrick and found the lower car park.  Continuing past we arrived at a gate, and needed to open, drive thru, and close the gate again.  We drove along the dangerous (newly-widened) road to the second car park, and saw our obstacle of the day: a path along the mountains from peak to peak, with thousand-foot sea cliffs and amazing views to the sea.

 

We packed up our backpack and left the car at 10:00, basing several other older visitors, but soon we were absolutely alone.  It was very peaceful hiking this precipitous mountain trail, seeing or hearing nothing but our heavy breathing and the sea crashing far below.  There's not much I can write to explain our hike, but hopefully I can post enough pictures to do it justice.
 

Before the fog

 

 

 

 

We reached what could be the summit around 11:30, but continued onto a point higher in elevation, and got there around noon.  Either way, Damien told us that we made very good time up to the top.  When we reached this highest point, within 5 minutes the fog started rolling in, with no warning!  We told each other that we better get moving so we enjoyed our few minutes of breathtaking beauty and headed back down.

Summit View from Slieve League

 

 

After the fog

 

We left the car park around 1:40 and started driving north, but decided we were too tired and only made it as far as Ardara.  We had a disgusting lunch at a cafe featuring burgers with questionable origin, and also found Melis a silver ring to act as a second wedding ring (and it doesn't stick off and catch on anything, so it might become the permanent one!)
 

 

We rested up a bit when we got back to Dunkineely, went to the convenience store to get some sandwich supplies for dinner, and headed to Mac's Bar for a few pints of the black stuff.  We turned in early, around 11, and so ended our favorite day yet (besides the mystery meat).










 

Monday May 20, 2013

Aiofe and Sean had to work early, so we all said a quick goodbye around 8:20.  She gave us a key to lock the door when we left, so we walked up into town and mailed our postcards, and bought a glasses repair kit for 3 EUR to replace the screw in Melissa’s frames.

We didn’t leave Manorhamilton until almost 12:00.  We drove to Glencar Lough and Waterfall, which was a 50 ft. waterfall a short distance from the road along a little path.  After this we headed to Knocknarea, a hill/mountain where an enormous cairn 180 ft in diameter and 30 ft high stands on the peak.  We hiked the 1.2km trail in extreme fog, and could only see about 30 feet in front of us by the time we reached the cairn.  After making it back to the car, we went to Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery, where we saw dozens of passage tombs in various states, some still quite well preserved for being 5000 years old.

 

 

 

 

 

It was around 3:00 and we shortly entertained the idea of heading back to Aiofe’s flat to chat a bit longer, but we had already set up a couchsurfing night with Damien McIntyre in Dunkineely, County Donegal.  We decided to stop in the town of Donegal to visit Donegal Castle, a partially restored castle in the city center.  We did a self-guided tour, took a few pictures, and headed out.

 

 

 

 

And you’ll never guess who we saw coming into the castle as we were leaving:  The annoying guy sitting behind us on the airplane.  NO KIDDING!  What are the odds of that?  We did not stop to talk as we basically heard his life story already, 35000 feet in the air.

We headed to Dunkineely where we met Damien at his place called Mac’s Bar.  We talked for a good hour at least and he recommended going back toward Donegal to a place called the Village Tavern in Montcharles.  The atmosphere was great, food was very good although somewhat pricey, and we paid 43 EUR for fish and chips (Joe), Crab Toes (Melis) and some wine.  We also learned that one of the server girls lived in Madison for about 6 months, so that was another cool coincidence today.  We headed back to Mac’s, talked for another long while with Damien, and headed to McIntyre’s Bar (owned by his dad and technically our host) for the night.








 

Sunday May 19, 2013

We packed up and had breakfast at 8:30am, loaded the car and went to church at Galway Cathedral.  It was the “last great stone church built in Europe” so we chose well.  After mass we drove the rest of the way to Murrisk to the Croagh Patrick visitor center.  We left the car to climb the mountain at 12:00.
 

 

The very beginning of this climb was my favorite.  The statue of St. Patrick stood surrounded by noisy streams of water.  After 10 or 20 minutes though, the streams lay behind as we clamored over sharp loose stones and steep slopes.  The clouds also began to, well, cloud our view, and the panorama of Clew Bay was soon lost.  We ended up arriving at the summit of Croagh Patrick at 1:30, which was a pretty good ascent time, faster than average according to our travel books.  We sat and took a little picnic lunch at the side of the summit church, chatted with an Irish couple for a bit, and then began our descent. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

View of Clew Bay from part way up Croagh Patrick

 

We took the descent very slowly.  We saw one woman slip and fall onto her bottom, and decided to almost creep down the slope.  I would estimate the angle of the mountain between 40 and 60 degrees at the steepest, so we felt that if you fell, you would continue to fall long enough to be injured fairly seriously.  We had rented walking sticks at the bottom, and I felt it was invaluable to get down safely.  Melissa thought the stick was useful but unnecessary, being somewhat a burden in certain places.  Either way, we made it down the mountain in one piece, returned our walking sticks, and got our stick deposit money back.  Across the road from the Croagh Patrick visitor center was a Famine Memorial sculpture called the “coffin ship” so we visited that for a bit. 
 

 

 

We left the car park at 4:00 and started making our way toward Sligo.  After paying so much for the B&B in Galway, we sent a few last minute couchsurfing requests for that area of the country, and were feverishly checking our email any time we would get a blip on our wifi.  And we got an invitation to come stay in Manorhamilton from a girl called Aiofe (pronounced Ee-fah).  Lucky, huh?

 

We met Aiofe at the Castle car park right in town, and followed her to her little apartment.  She had cooked an Irish stew that day and made enough for us as well.  We talked and ate our stew, and afterwards she let us relax while she met up with her boyfriend Sean.  They both came back after about an hour and we all went out to a few pubs in town.  Sean and I went next door to the last pub and bought some burgers and chips, and after going back to Aiofe’s flat around 11:00, we ate, pulled out the couch bed, and went to sleep.
 

Saturday May 18, 2013

We overslept as we didn’t set an alarm.

We woke up at Charlie’s at 9:00am and quickly packed up our things.  Charlie had stayed out late the night before so he was still sleeping, but we had to get going, so we left him a note, said a quick hasta luego to Miguel, and headed to the Library car park.  Luckily we had no ticket or boot on our car, and we headed out toward County Clare.

We drove through Limerick and arrived at the Cliffs of Moher visitor center around 12:00.  We grudgingly paid the 6 EUR/person to park in the car park, packed up our hiking backpack, and made our way to the cliffs.  It was windy and chilly, so we got Melissa a hat at a little shop for 6 EUR.  We bypassed the visitor center, and turned left to make our way to Hag’s Head.  We walked around the Head for a while, and as soon as we turned to head back to the visitor center, the wind picked up.  Big Time.  We lowered our shoulders to the wind and trekked back, explored the visitor center, popped up to O’Brien’s Tower just above the center, and got back to the car at 4:00pm. 

 

 

 

 

We decided to bypass Doolin, and try to make up some ground and possibly give us an opportunity to add some destinations on a future day.  So we drove up into the Burren, a very strange and somewhat eerie piece of Ireland, and stopped in at Caherconnell Stone Fort.  It turned out that 4:30 was the last time to be allowed in, so we headed over to Poulnabrone Dolmen a short distance away.  This was sort of a drive-by destination, but we were still shocked to see a bus full of tourists there at 5:00 checking this place off their lists.  The dolmen was cool, although less impressive in size than we were expecting, so we ourselves checked off our trip list and headed to Galway.

 

We learned another lesson today: BOOK LODGING IN A TOURIST TOWN ON A SATURDAY NIGHT AHEAD OF TIME!!! 

After searching most of College Road for a room at a Bed and Breakfast to stay at, searching several hostels, and resorting to an internet search, we found a room at Carrig B&B a pretty good distance out of town with a woman called Mary.  She allowed us to use her washer and dryer, so after filling the machine we headed to the Galway Plate for pizza and potato skins, costing 27 EUR.  Heading back to the B&B we set up Skype to try and get a hold of Mary and Lily, but we were unsuccessful.  We left 70 EUR on the bed-side table the following morning, and thanked God that we found couchsurfing hosts the first three nights!