I had heard from coworkers that London pretty much empties out for Christmas, so Heather and I decided to follow suit and head to Ireland for the holiday. Visiting Dublin sounded like so much more fun that sitting around the flat because all the local shops and restaurants would be shut down.
And so we caught a very early plane on the morning of Sunday December 23. The airport was an absolute mess, but we're used to that with the usual chaos at SeaTac, so we handled it like traveling pros and made it through to our gate in plenty of time. We were flying Ryanair, which is one of those really cheap budget airlines, so while your ticket might be cheap, you have to make sure you have everything all set up and ready before you arrive at the airport. They only let you bring one tiny bag onboard, and if you're checking, they limit the weight to 15 kilos (unless you upgrade further). And God help you if you go over the weight limit on either bag. They'll also charge you a fortune if you need to print a boarding pass or make a change to your reservation. Since I've been traveling so much these past few months, I've gotten used to how ridiculous Ryanair is, but Heather was a little shocked by how tacky the whole experience turned out to be. I think trying to sell us lottery tickets on the plane was the tipping point for her. (P.S. on the way home, they also tried to sell us electric cigarettes, saying although this is a smoke-free flight, these vapor cigarettes could be used right away on board. Oh goodie...)
Still, we survived the crazy holiday rush at the airport, and as soon as we landed in Dublin, we hopped on a bus that took us over to the small, ferry port town of Dun Laoghaire. Our boy Rick Steves had recommended a stop in Dun Laoghaire to get a better feel for charming, small town life in Ireland, and he was right on, as usual. Dun Laoghaire is a cute, tiny little town, and we enjoyed roaming around checking out the shops. We stayed in a really neat older hotel called the Royal Marine Hotel (that had recently been remodeled inside--yay!). The people were lovely and the room was fantastic. The beds were super soft and the hotel was very quiet! What a nice treat and a change from my busy, loud block of flats.
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| Heather in front of our charming hotel! |
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| Neat old church next to the hotel. |
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| One of several Christmas trees at the hotel. |
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| Dun Laoghaire |
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| Dun Laoghaire |
After a very restful evening, we headed back into Dublin and checked into our next hotel, the Wynns Hotel, located right off one of the main shopping streets called O'Connell Street. How convenient for us to land so close to all those fabulous shops! As you guessed, we did some shopping damage right away. The Wynns hotel was also a very nice property. Although older, the hotel is clean, and the accommodations were really comfortable. We even had free wifi and a cute little fireplace in our room! What more could a couple of young travelin' girls ask for?
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| Settling in to the room. There's our little fireplace! |
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| Statue of Daniel O'Connell, nicknamed the Liberator for his heroic work fighting for a free Ireland. |
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| The River Liffey |
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| Looking up the Millennium Spire, which stands almost 400 feet tall and was completed in 2003. It's located in the middle of O'Connell Street. |
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| The famous General Post Office. There are still bullet holes in the columns from the 1916 Easter Rising. |
Since it was Christmas Eve, we headed back to the hotel pretty early for a rest and to get dressed up for our Christmas Eve dinner. Our hotel package came with all our meals for the three days we stayed there. For meals, you joined the other guests at the hotel and ate at big, round tables together. It turned out that most of the other guests were senior citizens, which surprised me at first. But I do love a good story, and I tend to get along with anyone who likes to talk (like so many elderly people do), so I enjoyed the chance to have a chat with some of the talkative guests. Still, thinking about the reason most people were at the hotel was a bit trying on the heart for both Heather and I. As I mentioned, most were elderly single people or middle-aged, single men. Heather and I were lucky to have chosen to spend Christmas on holiday away from our families, and we couldn't help but wonder how many of these people had no other alternative than to spend it by themselves at the hotel. To be totally honest, looking around at meal times and seeing so many people alone, together, was pretty sad. But we tried to not feel too sad those speculations. We decided instead to count ourselves blessed to have our families and friends to spend the holidays with, and we vowed to remember to watch for those around us who get lonely during the holidays so we can invite them to join us next year.
We also decided to strike up conversations with people and maybe spread some Christmas cheer that way. Over the course of the three days we spent at the Wynns, we made some new friends, including a darling mother and daughter from the countryside who were so friendly and happy to chat EVERY time we saw them, a cantankerous but hilarious elderly woman named Terry--who called herself Terry the Terrible and cracked off-color jokes all through Christmas dinner, and even a toothless old man, a regular patron of the bar who told us were two angels and that he must have died and gone to heaven to be sitting next to us. We certainly met some real characters!
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| We cheated and actually took this "Christmas photo" after Christmas, but at least we have our Christmas crowns from our crackers! |
For the next two days, we watched Christmas movies on my laptop, walked around Dublin, ate delicious and festive meals and just enjoyed our free time (but as a busy body, I did get a more than a little antsy at times. I'm just not used to having so much down time!). Christmas morning was very strange, though. Heather woke up early and went to the gym while I had what the British call a "lie in," which means I was lazy and stayed in bed. We didn't bring any presents with us to Dublin because of the airline weight limits, so instead of tearing through packages, we just enjoyed a nice breakfast and then walked down to the Catholic church for mass. I haven't been to Catholic mass in years, so it was interesting to not only be back at mass, but also to attend an Irish mass. In case you're curious, while everything is basically the same, many of the refrains the congregations says back are slightly different. Later, after our huge meal Christmas day, I took a nice, quiet walk through the empty streets of Dublin. It was so still and quiet and lovely.
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| One of several pedestrian bridges over the river Liffey. This one is adorned with lovers' locks. |
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| Cheery pub all decked out for Christmas |
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| The General Post Office and the Millennium Spire, with the big pretty tree on Christmas night. |
It was an enjoyable Christmas day and a memorable one for sure. But coming from a family where Christmas is always a really big deal--where Christmas traditions are enforced without fail year after year almost like law--it was so strange to be away from home. Heather and I both felt a little off, and we really missed our families and our special traditions. But as Heather says, we'll remember this trip forever and one of us is going to be talking about this trip at the other one's funeral (slightly depressing, sure, but probably true), and as my dad says, there's always next year! :)
On December 27, it was time to move hotels again, this time south of the river down toward Grafton Street. Our next hotel was the Grafton Capital, and again, it was a very nice property. Unfortunately, we had some crazy, loud neighbors and even a room change didn't help that situation. But there were some other things about this hotel to be excited about, including this:
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| Oh, American electrical socket! I've missed you!!! The longer I live abroad, the more I miss the stupidest things...like this power socket. Genuinely, it was SO NICE to just plug electronics right into the wall without messing with one of my crappy socket adapters. What a treat! |
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| Another nice hotel room! Notice how the two twin(ish) beds are right next to each other. This arrangement is really common in European hotels, but unheard of in America. |
We spent the next two days exploring more of Dublin and having a good walk around. Unfortunately, all the things we really wanted to see (the cathedrals and the Book of Kells at Trinity College) were still closed down. I was mostly disappointed with the Book of Kells exhibit not being open as that was one of the reasons I wanted to come back to Dublin. Well, I guess I'll just have to try again on another holiday.
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| City Hall building |
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| Enjoying our walk through town |
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| Christ Church Cathedral |
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| Dublin has TONS of statues. Here's Heather with some creepy kids. |
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| Dublina--a viking museum |
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| St. Patrick's Cathedral |
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| The famous Temple Bar...in the Temple Bar area |
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| Statue of Molly Malone on Grafton Street. Can you guess what the old folk tale is about her? |
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| Trinity College campus. |
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| Pretending to be students at Trinity College |
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| The closest I got to the Book of Kells |
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| We had a great lunch at this cafe. |
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| Yummy Irish stew for lunch |
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| I had a nice walk through St. Stephen's Green, a large park in Dublin. These swans were enjoying the crisp afternoon in the lake. |
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| Famine memorial in the park |
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| I love these green spaces right in the heart of cities. So refreshing! |
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| This must be the groundskeeper's house. I wouldn't mind living here! |
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| William Butler Yeats statue in St. Stephen's Green park. Yeats is just one of many famous writers from Dublin. |
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| We went to this pub, the Hairy Lemon for dinner and a Guinness or two for me! |
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| Yum! |
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| I ordered this dish--an Irish coddle soup. It's a soup of sausage, bacon, onion and carrot, served with mashed potatoes and amazing brown Irish bread. It was very hearty and tasty, and it felt pretty authentic, too. |
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| Cool old church in the city. |
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| The house where Oscar Wilde was born and lived as a child. |
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| Unlike me, Heather loves to do laundry, and she even found some downtime in the hotel to do some. |
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| But look! I found Paul Newman in our hallway in Dublin! |
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| We also found time to Skype with our parents back home in Washington. |
On our second to last night in Dublin, we decided to go to an Irish music and dancing show. After looking online, we found a great show--The Irish House Party. You can buy a dinner and show combo ticket or just a show ticket. We wanted to have another pub dinner, so we decided to just get the show ticket, which worked out really well for us. The venue was only about a ten minute walk from our hotel, so it was easy to find, though a little creepy to be out and about walking around at night. The dodgy walk was worth it, though, as the show was amazing! There were five performers--a flutist, a banjo player, a uilleann piper (kind of similar to bagpipes but much more tricky), an accordion player/Irish dancer and a guitarist. They played beautiful music, told interesting and humorous stories about the instruments and the history of the music and just put on a wonderful two hour show. We loved every minute, and our feet were tapping right along with theirs the whole time.
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| The stage was set up really simply, just like a living room. The artists said their intention was for the audience to feel like they had stepped into a real Irish house party. |
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| This cutie is playing the uilleann pipes. |
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| I couldn't get a good photo of her dancing without a flash, so this is not very impressive looking. But let me assure you, she was amazing! At one point, they didn't even accompany her with their instruments, so it was just her dancing to show us the amazing rhythms and sounds she can make with just her feet. Fabulous! |
For our last full day in Ireland, we took a day tour to nearby Malahide Castle and then up into the Wicklow mountains to Glendalough. I've been to Ireland before and have seen the gorgeous countryside, but Heather hadn't, and I really didn't want her to leave without seeing some of the landscape outside the city. Our day trip was the perfect way to do that! We met our group at a hotel that was just a short walk from ours, and then it was off into the wild for the rest of the day!
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| This teeny castle was lived in by the Talbot family for 800 years, and was auctioned off to the local authority in the 1970s. We got to see several rooms inside, which are restored, but you can't take photos. |
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| They say the castle is haunted by several ghosts, including the White Lady who wanders the halls at night, a horseback ridding guy who gallops across the estate once a year, and a cooky court jester named Puck who hung himself in a turret where he lived after a lady in waiting who he was in love with rejected him. |
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| Malahide Abbey |
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| Malahide Abbey |
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| I love the cool old castle doors |
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| Creepy... |
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| I had fun watching these peacocks who were hanging out, looking pretty in the yard. |
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| As I was watching, one of them chased down a cat and forced him out of the yard. |
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| Bye bye kitty. Then the peacock walked back and rejoined his friends. Too funny! |
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| Malahide also has gorgeous gardens. |
We also found a great gift shop inside the visitors center, and Heather and I both found some neat treasures in there! Then it was back onto the minicoach and off into the Wicklow mountains to see Glendalough, a very old monastic settlement. On the way, we got to stop for photos overlooking Lough Tay, a lake nicknamed Guinness Lake because of its dark waters and sandy shore. Several scenes from movies have been filmed here (including P.S. I Love You).
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| Lough Tay |
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| It was SO cold and windy! And rainy! |
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| The views were stunning! |
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| On the rest of the drive to Glendalough, we also saw lots of pretty green landscapes and sheep |
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| The entrance of Glendalough |
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| This stone was a cross carved in it, and those seeking refuge would have to touch the cross on their way into the monastery. |
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| Heather listens while our tour guide explains the cross. |
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| Being silly on our walk around the property. |
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| The famous tower. |
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| The old church and the tower. |
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| Heather holdin' up the fort |
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| Sheep!!! |
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| Then it was time to head back to Dublin on our minicoach. What a fun day! |
It really was a fun week for us in Ireland. We met so many kind, friendly people and made a lot of silly memories that we can laugh about for years to come. And while Heather and I may have driven each other slightly mad at times, we really did enjoy our time together. All week, I tried to remember that it's not very often grown sisters are afforded such a generous gift of time to spend together, just the the two of them. That means Christmas with my sister was really the best present I could have received. I know I'll look back for years and always remember this unique Irish Christmas I spent with my sister.
