The land of a thousand smiles

Hello Ireland. Looks like there’s a bit of rain here. Any chance of it stopping over the next few days?

Just like our day in London, Ireland wanted to show us what it was like for locals for a large part of the year, so it rained and then barely stopped for our 4 days there.

We spent our first day in Dublin and our first stop was a pub where we had fish & chips and a pint. Well, Mark had a pint, I had a coke and to be honest we didn’t do much after that.

The next day we walked to the car hire office and picked up our car so that we could start our short road trip. We drove from Dublin to Middleton so that we could stop off at the Jameson Distillery and check out where all of the whiskey that Mark loves is made. We arrived just as a tour was starting so we caught up to the group and wandered around listening to how all of the different types of whiskey were made. Mark seemed to be off in his own little world and didn’t seem to be paying much attention to what was happening until I called him over and he was picked to be a part of a whiskey tasting lesson and I thought he would be excited after that but he still seemed odd right up until the tour finished and we got our free drink. He seemed all fidgety and he was finally annoying me enough that I asked him what was wrong, to be which he replied “nothing’s wrong I just really want to go into the shop”. So I finished as much of my drink as I could (I don’t drink whiskey) and we went to the Jameson Distillery Shop. Mark was like a kid at Disneyland. He ran around looking at all of different types of whiskey he could buy and within 10 minutes we had walked away having bought 5 bottles to be sent back home. This resulted in a very happy Mark driving further onto Cork where he spent the whole night talking about the different types of whiskey he had bought and when he thought he would open each bottle.

Driving the next day from Cork to Galway was pretty easy except it just continued to rain with some occasion pauses for the sun to shine through. Did you know that the weather forecasts on the radio in Ireland don’t tell you when it’s going to rain, they tell you when it’s going to be sunny, or at least if they think the rain will stop. We stopped at the Cliffs of Moher on our way and when we pulled into the carpark to buy tickets the lady asked us if we still wanted to go in even though there was “zero visibility”. And so I replied “ok but what does that mean?” To which she replied that we wouldn’t be able to see anything. We decided to go anyway considering we had driven so far. When we parked and walked into the national park we could see the cliffs and although there was a bit of fog it wasn’t as bad as the lady made it out to be. After getting a couple of photos we thought it would be better to walk up the hill to see them better. After walking about 100m we turned around to see if this was a better spot and they were gone! It was just like the lady said – zero visibility. Luckily we had seen them for that brief moment! We were pretty tired once we left and continued into Galway and the mood in the car dropped significantly when we made it into town only to find most of the roads closed because of a marathon. Safe to say Mark was not a happy driver when a 7 minute drive turned into an hour of being stuck. Dinner that night consisted of a bottle of wine.

Our time in Ireland flew and when we left Galway to drive back to Dublin for our flight to London we managed to fit a couple more sites in along the way. We kissed the Blarbey Rock which is said to give you the ability to tell great stories and we went to the Guinness Storehouse because you can’t go to Dublin without drinking a Guinness.

The main thing we realised during our time in Ireland was just our friendly everyone was. People who had no real reason to be extra nice to us just were. It was just so nice to meet people who were happy to help us.