Land of the Gingers

Gingers are freckled redheads in case you didn't know and Ireland had hordes of them. In any case, we had a fairly rough and tearful goodbye with Maddie since she didn't want us to leave.  It was probably related to school starting soon, another big separation event.  However, after multiple attempts to put her down for her nap we found her in my parents' family room again, but all smiles now.  She said "I decided not to be sad anymore.  Bye."  With that she went to bed and we didn't see her until our return from Ireland.

As usual, Delta screwed up our flights since one was booked on miles and the other purchased.  Somehow, when I check two bags and Emily checks none, our seats get separated.  Very logical.  As a result, at least Em ended up in comfort economy and I with an exit row since neither of our neighbors would trade.  We arrived in Dublin, took a bus to the train station then a train to Bray where we'd meet our REI travel group about 24 hours later.  Bray had two redeeming qualities: proximity to the ocean and Porterhouse brewpub.  The amusement park on the ocean didn't quite make it into the "redeeming qualities" category for our outdoorsy, trekking trip.

In a sleep-deprived daze, we ate a decent lunch at Porterhouse while I enjoyed their Wrasslers XXXX, the finest beer I'd encounter in Ireland.  To give you an idea of the depth of flavor, Guinness is what you pee when you drink Wrasslers.  Guinness might be the beer of Ireland, but they'd do themselves a favor to upgrade.  We took a short nap and then returned to Porterhouse for dinner.  It was good.

We slept, then ate a traditional Irish breakfast at the hotel which among other things included, blood pudding, white pudding, baked beans, soda bread, eggs, rashers, yogurt and fruit.  To translate, blood pudding is a sausage-like item which indeed contains animal blood and thus has a black appearance when cooked.  White pudding is similar sans animal blood, but because it contains pin oats, tastes very similar to goetta, a delicious German breakfast treat.  Both are served sliced. One helping of blood pudding served to meet my yearly allowance of blood as a major ingredient (this certainly does not include steak).  Ahhhh soda bread, so basic yet so delicious.  It was consistently the best bread I've ever had and they serve it at every meal.  The Irish beat the Nepali people (lentils and rice) in variety of diet, but not by much.  After breakfast, we waited for our hiking crew to arrive by shuttle from Dublin.  When they did, we found that we were the youngest by 20 years.  Em was promptly fired by me as trip planner just like she fired me when we were in Nepal driving through Kathmandu. 

We had a trip briefing and then took an uninspiring hike in gray weather along the coast to Greystones.  Considering the out and back nature of the hike, we opted for the train, but nearly resigned ourselves to walking when the train was closed for a fire on the tracks.  About 15 minutes later, the train reopened and we cruised back to Bray.

Peacock butterfly on the Bray-Greystones hike

Dinner at the hotel in Bray was below average, but we learned a lot about our hiking companions.  Most were kindred spirits.
The following morning we ventured to a monastic village with its ancient ruins and cemetery founded in the 6th century by St. Kevin of Glendalough.

Next we hiked along Wicklow Way in the Wicklow mountains to the Spinc and got a nice taste of Irish weather.

We travelled to Kilkenny next, stopped first at the weavers in Avoca and then toured Kilkenny Castle briefly.  We toured and learned quite a bit in Cahir castle.

Kilkenny Castle

Killkenny (very European looking)

Rock of Cashel

Hore Abbey

Cahir Castle

Later that day our "hike" consisted of a walk along a gravelly trail to some bunk tourist destination called the Swiss Cottage, which is a replica of a cottage that was never lived in, but owned by some rich people last century.  Lame.  I couldn't wait to get out of there.  We proceeded to Castletownbere on the Beara peninsula that afternoon for some non-replica experiences.  Hiking along the rugged Irish coastline was far more pleasing that being stuck in a "simple country cottage" (the cottage operator repeated this annoyingly over 100 times).

To get to the following hike on Dursey Island, we took a rickety cable car that nearly made Em have a heart attack.

Napoleonic towers (watchtowers built to keep an eye out for that short guy)

Our new guide for the day, Paddy (I swear that was really his name) took us along some of his childhood trails in the Gleninchaquin Park where he was raised.  That night I had the best seafood chowder of my life and I enjoyed watching Paddy, who had one too many Guinness, try to fondle all the female trekkers as we parted ways.

Closeup of flowering gorse which covers the hills an imparts a yellowish hue

We're totally in love

After spending the night in Kenmare, we drove through Moll's Gap and took in some big views before starting our hike through Killarney National Park.  Great hikes except we departed early due to some rumblings in Em's belly.  Tragedy was averted and we got to spend some much needed time apart from the group.

Dingle was our next destination with many, many pubs, decent restaurants and nice coastal views.  We had the afternoon and evening to ourselves, a blessing after 8 days with a group of people we'd never met.  We spent the afternoon trying to find some different beer to no avail.  Ironically, we met some our fellow trekkers, ones we actually cared to see, and had a pretty good pizza dinner with them.  Our final day of trekking was spent walking up Slea Head, briefly swarmed by some blackflies, then watching a torrential downpour heading toward us.  Thankfully, the weather diverted and we ended up with a nice end to our hiking.  That evening we had our best dinner, lots of wine (couldn't stomach anymore Guinness) and topped it off with some fine Middleton Irish Whiskey compliments of Tom, the clown in the final picture.

Impending downpour

One of our fellow trekkers

We parted ways with our fellow trekkers in Shannon, but not before learning that our return flight had been cancelled due to the hurricane Irene.  Sadly, we were ready to return home at that point and see Maddie, not "enjoy" another  day of vacation.  My flight was automatically rescheduled, but Em had to go through a lot to get a a roundabout flight back to the U.S. through Paris.  Without going into too many details, I made it back to Denver over 26 hours of travel (in first class, but still miserable) and Em made it to Cincinnati to get Maddie in a little over 20 hours.  An adventuresome end to a fairly mild vacation.

P.S.  Sorry the narrative was a bit sparse, but I'm way behind so better to catch up with shorter posts, than never catch up.