So I left off at Edinburgh, UK. Outside of viewing the Royal Mile, there was also Carlton Hill, which too was high atop the city. Here there was an odd column structure along with an observatory and a lighthouse type building. Again, the view from here was amazing. While sitting and meditating, we noticed a few people walking atop a cliff-like mountain peak, so we too decided to check it out. We walked down to the start of the path, passing an old (and I mean old) cemetary. The graves were very old and I believe this is where they have the spooky Edinburgh night tour. We got to the mountain and started our climb. It was steep at first and then became narrow. I got a little worried as I'm not the best for heights, but I perservered and made it to the top portion. A secondary path led to a higher area on top of the mountain, however it was too steep for my comfort. haha. So we walked down using a cut-through path that led us to ruins of an old chappel and further was a pond that was full of ducks and swan. The swan were very beautiful and large. I was a bit nervous and thought this would become an AFV moment if they started to attack us, but luckily they didn't.
The next day we left to go to Holyhead UK to catch the ferry to Ireland. It is crazy that we spent about £100 traveling from Salisbury to Edinburgh, yet the fare to get from Edinburgh to Holyhead was a mere £26 each! And that included the ferry to Ireland. Very bizarre. The trip took us a mere 9 hours total- the ferry was about 2 hours.
When we got to Dublin, it wasn't what I thought it would be. It smelled of dog pee (which later I linked to the Guiness brewery) and there were tons of younger people (kids) walking the streets at night in crowds. Of course we arrived late, so my first impression was blah until the morning.
Our hostel here consisted of a 10 bunk dorm that was mixed. Our first experience with that. We've slept in a lot of Youth hostels where there would be about 4 to 8 bunks (all male) but never mixed. This was also our first with staying at a regular hostel and not a YHA, which tend to be more clean and less rowdy, but we thought what the heck- it was only for 2 nights.
We toured Dublin the next day using an open roof bus. As usual with Ireland weather, it rained a bit, so the views were blah (it was cold here too). I found out an interesting factoid: The world's second largest monument (like DC's) is in Dublin's HUGE park- the 1st largest is of course DC. Pretty cool, no?
After the bus, we headed out on foot to take snaps of the city. We also stopped in the Harry Lemon (I know-odd name...) pub for a pint and some delicious traditional Irish stew. It cracked me up when the food came, as the stew was served with a baked potato. It seems most of Europe love their carbs! Many times you would get a 2nd potato with your meal. I didn't mind though.
After lunch, we found an internet cafe and spent 4 hours there planning out our journey from Ireland to Paris and then to San Sebastian Spain.
Dublin has a famous pub area called the Temple bar. Here, there are swarms of people in pubs listening to Irish music-some more traditional than others.
After our 2nd day I was happy to leave to go to Limerick to tour the Cliffs of Moher.
David
