Ireland

Mar 2010: I was waiting for Vivi to make an Ireland trip in a non-winter month. He heard from his manager that he might have to go to Dublin in April 2010...we decided both of us can take a week off and see the country before that. So we got our visas and booked our flight tickets. This was in March 2010.
As we got closer to the D-day I started panicking in my usual style: "Vivi we haven't booked any hotels. We don't know where we are gonna stay..we don't know what we are gonna do once we get there!". Vivi replied in his usual chilled out mode..."arre we'll play it by ear. I'll book a car and we can drive around and figure out the itinerary as we go." With some more encouragement from friends (Niru and Swami), I decided to go with the flow and not make any hotel reservations or decide on a fixed itinerary...am glad we did that. It was one of the best decisions for this trip.

Apr 7th: We get to SFO airport just to find out that there are thunderstorms in SF and our flight is delayed! Great so I am already anxious about flying and now wait 1 more hour. Vivi started plotting our itinerary and we decided on the towns we would like to visit. (A huge thanks to Susima's colleague who is Irish and suggested a bunch of places we could go to on our trip). Both the flights had a mechanical fault each(Imagine how freaked out I am by this time..thunderstorms in Chicago, pressure light doesn't work on flight 1 and fuel pipe was showing we didn't have enough gas to make it across the ocean on flight 2! And they find this out just before we take off...seriously??)

Apr 8th: Half a day later we finally get to Dublin. We rent a stick shift car and realized that there's too many things to adjust to...a manual car and driving on the opposite side of the road. We shelled out 50 euros and some of our ego and switched to an automatic car. We had 1 road map with us but that was not very detailed. For our entire drive around the country, we relied on Google Maps on the phone for our directions. Vivi yelped up for food and before we knew it, we were having an awesome veggie meal at Govindas in Dublin downtown.

We decided to drive along the coast and get to Galway on the west coast of Ireland in the next 2-3 days. It took us some time getting out of Dublin. Google maps tried its best to re-route us but all those roundabouts and random change in direction on the roads confused the heck out of us. At one point Vivi drove up to a road where only pedestrians were allowed :) One of the local guy asked him to roll down his window and told him: "Wrong road...police see you arrest you!". Another local guy figured we were terribly lost so he asked us where we wanted to go and he tried his best to explain to us how to get out of the city. Somehow we managed to get out of the mess and our 1st stop was at Killiney Hill . It has a beautiful vista point to see all of Dublin from a hilltop. We started chatting with a local couple and the lady suggested we stay in a B&B in Bray (she was from Bray and liked the town a lot). We also encountered our first Irish hospitality here. We needed to use the restroom so we asked an old lady if she knew of any around. She said there weren't any so we decided to head out and find one along the way. As we started to leave, she came running towards our car and knocked on my window..."there is a toilet in the Killiney castle down the road. You can use that if you want." We thanked her and felt a little embarrassed to use a toilet in a castle so decided to drive to Bray and find something there. We drove past the town of Dalkey and got to the Bray promenade to find a row full of B&Bs along the Irish seafront. We picked one at random and parked our bags in the tiny room and went dining. I tried the green and sweet Grasshopper drink here for the first time. Vivi couldn't sleep very well that night coz the Irish people were parting like crazy till 3am right below our room :)

Apr 9th: Our day started early. We drove to Wicklow and luckily lost our way inside the town and happened to chance upon a nice little cafe that was open at 8am (The day starts pretty late for Irish people...the roads are quiet & deserted till 10am on most days...so finding some place open that could quench my caffeine urge at 8am was a relief) The lady serving us at the breakfast place was super sweet. She went out of her way to tell us about this lovely vista point where she would take her dog on a walk every evening.We tipped her 5 Euros for her service and hospitality but she refused to take it from us. She said that's how much we should be tipping for dinner and not breakfast :)

We followed her directions and got to that place and it had spectacular view of the Irish sea. In the olden days the Irish army would watch out for the English fleet trying to attack Ireland from this point. Also we took her advice and drove upto Glendalough next. Its a small cemetery maintained from a few centuries ago. I picked up my first set of post cards from here. Later that afternoon we drove to Lismore Castle. Its a nice castle although you are not allowed to go inside. Here's a little something about driving around in Ireland...people there don't like to brake much. Most of the national highways (all except the big freeways) are pretty narrow and have 1 lane on each side. The big trucks are driving towards you in full speed but they are confident they wont hit you. The first 2 days, I prayed every time we crossed a truck! Also the whole concept of roundabouts takes some getting used to. A few times I just drove around the roundabouts because I didn't know which exit I needed to take and which lane I needed to be in :) Overall driving there was great fun and pretty challenging...kept me awake all the time! We got to Kinsale around 6ish. Its a tiny little town, very colorful and has 5X5 lanes of restaurants, pubs and small shops. Also the B&B (Pier House) in Kinsale was the best in our 5 days in Ireland. We slept off at 9 thinking the town comes alive at 11:30-12 so we will be fresh for the party scene..knowing vivi and me, we woke up directly next morning :)

Apr 10th: We decided to skip Blarney castle (famous for its stone) and Dingle Peninsula (famous for fish) and drove to Killarney. The drive is really pretty along this part of the Ring Of Kerry.
We didn't do the whole drive around the ring but the little that we did, we liked it a lot. Don't miss out on the Torc falls along the way.

We had lunch at this really nice Mediterranean place called Treyvauds. The owner there was super impressed with Vivi's Ipad and told us that he is waiting for it to be launched in Europe so he could get one for himself. We followed Google maps all along and suddenly at one point the road ended and Google maps said : Now board the ferry and cross the bay :) Funny and tragic as it was, that's the only option we had so we boarded the ferry. After disembarking the ferry, we drove up further North and eventually reached the famous Cliffs of Moher.
If there's one thing you absolutely have to see in Ireland, its this place. The cliffs reminded us a lot of the Napali coast in Kauai except these cliffs were green and we were on the cliffs as opposed to on a helicopter or a catamaran. From here we got to Galway and the plan was to find a B&B close to the city center so we could walk to pubs and party till late. We asked in several different hotels and B&Bs around there but everythng was completely booked out. Good for us, we found a room in a B&B around 1km from the city center which had started filling up as well but we managed to get one of their last empty rooms. Dinner was at a Bangladeshi restaurant called Tulsi. The food was nice but super expensive. Post-dinner we decided to try out a Guinness (had to coz we were in Ireland) in a local bar...I hated it, vivi tolerated it but we finished it somehow. The party scene in Galway lived up to our expectation. Traffic is completely blocked out on a cross-section of 4-5 streets and the place is filled with young college crowd! One random young guy walking ahead of us was pretty much flirting with every girl on the street. I had heard that the culture in Europe was very different and here we were experiencing it. Pretty much everyone smoked around us and the fact that people could carry open alcohol bottles in this area made a big difference. Unlike US, the club scene in Ireland has guys hanging out in groups of 4-5 and girls hanging out separately in a similar group. I hardly saw any couples walking around. While waiting in the queue to enter one of the clubs we started chatting with the girls and guys in front of us (one of them was the same guy who was flirting earlier)...they were super drunk and super frank. They told us that club was mainly a hangout place for teenagers and we 21 year olds should go hang out at a different club :) Either they were being nice or we really looked young...either way I was happy we didn't go in there :) We hopped around a couple of bars and clubs and finally decided to call it a night .

Apr 11th: We drove to Kylemore Abbey next morning...the drive was beautiful and the Abbey even more!
It was a house built by a father for his son and now over years after being passed through several different owners, its now converted to an Abbey. We saw a few nuns...am sure it would be very peaceful to live in this magnificent castle. From here we started our drive back to Dublin across the country. It turned out to be a short 3 hour drive (compared to all other days, this felt really short). I thoroughly enjoyed this drive. All through the 4 days of driving so far, I had not seen a single Garda (cop) hiding behind a bush or holding a radar gun to check your speed limit. I guess they don't care: if you want to drive fast, go for it. But drivers there are very disciplined and people wanting to stick to the speed limit usually drive only on the left lane which is the slower of the 2 lanes. When you overtake someone you move to the right lane but move right back to the left lane once you are done overtaking. That way people who want to go at a consistent fast speed in the right lane can do so without being slowed down. We checked into our hotel in Dublin (a hotel after all these ays of B&B felt kinda weird). After chilling in the hotel for sometime, we headed to the famous Temple Bar area.
Its a nice little area with lots of restaurants and pubs....kinda similar to Galway's city center but somehow we liked Galway more.

Apr 12th: We woke up at an insanely late hour...relaxed and had a late lunch at this nice but super expensive veggie place called Cornucopia. No I am not stingy (although vivi disagrees) but in general spending in Euros felt pretty expensive. We tipped the cab guy and as I was about to leave, this other cab guy extended his hand out asking: "Can I also get a few coins? :)"
Vivi decided to go chill in a bookstore and I went on my own little expedition around Dublin. I found a local post office, bought a few stamps and mailed the post cards I had bought. Spent the next couple of hours doing some window shopping and also picking up trinkets along the way. Met Vivi for coffee at this nice cafe called Lemon. Went inside Trinity college, Book of Kells and the Long Hall as well.Again pretty expensive for a 5-minute walk through the place (unless you are interested in that kind of stuff). We had dinner at this Malaysian restaurant called Swai. Roti Kanai tastes the same in any part of the world :)

I left for US next morning and Vivi came back in a couple of days after his conference. We both made it back before the Iceland volcano ash cloud hit the Europe air traffic.But I wouldn't complain if I were stuck in this beautiful country for another week. The Irish are known for their craic and we experienced it across several different occasions during our trip. Their laid back attitude and the ability to turn any event into a funny one makes this country truly very unique.