Wednesday 27th March
We left Uncle Noel's at Lunch time for our flight to Dublin and to meet Sam's grandparents!
Right, so here's the plan: Sam's grandparents were due to arrive in at 5pm, and we told them that we were catching a flight that would get us in at 10pm, (this is where we get sneaky!) however in reality we were catching the 2:15pm flight and were going to wait at the airport and surprise them.
We check in, make our way through security, grab some lunch and are waiting for our flight when we get a message from Sam's grandparents saying that they arrived into Heathrow ahead of schedule and so are getting on an early flight to Dublin...the 2:15pm! Oh no, our plan was out the window!
We casually try and find out their flight number so we can track it, and are searching flight times from Heathrow to Dublin, compared to Luton to Dublin (our flight). It turns out we should arrive in 5mins before their flight (yay) but into a different terminal (not so yay). This was going to be tight. We look up a map of the Dublin airport and realise it's a fair distance between the two terminals. That's ok, as long as we land on time and are speedy getting off the plane, we can do it! It'll be tight, but we can do it!
Sam and I were seated separately on the plane so we agreed to just exit the plane the fastest way you can, and we'll meet up once we're off. We take off right on time and actually land 10mins early, giving us a nice head start of 15mins on Sam's grandparents. Phew, we're back in the game!
We land, and they only open the front door to disembark, so it's slow getting off. We quickly walk through the terminal to immigration, and then wait in immigration for about 20mins. Once we're through and out, body's racing with adrenaline, we search for a map and follow the signs, racing out of the terminal, across the airport, and to Terminal 2.
Ok wow, we obviously came into the budget terminal because this one is insanely nice! We wind our way up a few floors to arrivals, whip out the sign we made, and wait expectantly.
Well, it appears we made great time and we're waiting long enough that Sam starts to get convinced they've already landed and left. Nup, no way could they have landed after us and got through that quickly. Adrenaline still coursing, we're waiting and waiting and then they pop through the doors!
Well they seemed thoroughly surprised! The mission was a success!
We all loaded into a taxi and headed into the city to find our accommodation. We had a lovely apartment right in the heart, opposite the Ha'penny Bridge, on the spire side of the River Liffey.
I somehow became the "Key Girl" of our apartment as it had the most complicated door system, with three different doors, all with different kinds of locks, using the same key just to enter the building.
After unpacking we headed across the street to catch up and chill over a coffee.
We spent the afternoon having a little stroll around our area. Dublin has really good vibes and such character, it felt really lively and warm (although the weather was not) walking around.
Everyone was starting to get tired, so we had some dinner then called it a night. What a way to start our Ireland adventure!
Thursday 28th March
We started the morning off with a treat for Sam's grandparents, that's right, we have a couple of rosti left to share!
Sam and I cooked up sausage, beans, and the last of our precious rosti for brekkie, and I think it was a hit all round.
After brekkie, we all headed out for our Hop-On Hop-Off bus tour! It was great fun, and such a good way to see the city. The driver was great as well, full of character and 'craic' (an Irish term we learnt that means fun!).
We had great fun driving around with commentary, learning about the history of Dublin, and fun stories about the place.
We hopped off at Trinity College and had a walk around here then made our way to the Temple Bar area. I absolutely love Dublin, everyone seems so jolly and full of life, everyone wants to help you and are all up for a chat. There's so much character and culture and it feels so lovely to be in. Theres a pub on every corner and they are all so colourful with flags on them, and kegs out the front, it's just got such a nice feel to the city.
We walked through Temple Bar and up to Grafton Street where we heard some great street music and saw the Molly Malone statue.
On our meandering we came across this really cute shop called the Jam Art Factory. At first I thought it was somewhere where you can make your own jam, turns out its a little art shop full of beautiful prints.
Along the way we ended up back down at the river and found a Centra, which seems to be a cross between a coffee shop, a mini grocery store, and a cafe/food bar, for lunch. Sam and I both had a really nice pesto pasta salad and we sat in the coffee shop section looking out at the river.
We wandered down Grafton Street for a while, which was bustling and stopped here and there for some really great street artists. We then detoured off Grafton Street and found ourselves at a market place. It had stalls of blown glass, bags, collectables, paintings, and food such as dried fruit which had some samples of and bought some (it was really nice).
We then continued down another side street and found a beautiful children's book store, with all the stories from our childhood! It was such a gorgeous store.
We realised from here we weren't far from Dublin Castle, so off we set, weaving our way up and through back streets and eventually (after a little confusion) we found it!
We wandered through the courtyard of the castle, and while it's a nice building, it seems a lot of it doesn't exist anymore (or perhaps we were in the wrong spot to see it all).
We kept wandering to the Christ Church Cathedral and took in the impressive building, before hopping back on the bus and continuing our loop around the city, passing the Guinness store house and Phoenix park!
A bit over an hour later we were heading back to the apartment. Sam and I dropped our things and headed straight back out to the VAT Bar in the Temple Bar area as part of the Hop-On Hop-Off tour was a voucher for a free Guinness before 6pm. We raced across with a couple of minutes to spare!
The bar was really cool, all decked out as a classic Irish pub (obviously), and again was just so jolly and full of atmosphere. Also, it turns out I really like Guinness, Granny would be proud!
Sam's grandparents came and met us a little later and we all settled into a booth for dinner with another round of Guinness.
Of course Sam and I both had a steak and Guinness pie, which was unbelievably good!
We had a lovely fun evening together and then wandered the vibrant streets home.
Friday 29th March
We were up super early this morning for the Game of Thrones (GOT) and Northern Ireland Tour!
We walked across a still sleeping Dublin to our Bus and off we went!!
First stop of our adventure was a road side stop for everyone to pick up something for lunch later in the day as we weren't going to be stopping for lunch. We each picked up a sandwich (and maybe some mini eggs) for our picnic and we were on the road again.
Our guide was great and throughout the day educated us about the history of Northern Ireland and Ireland.
A little while later and we had driven up to the tip of Northern Ireland and to the first GOT stop, the Dark Hedges which in the show is the King's Road.
After a bit of time here for the bus load of people to take pictures and have a short stroll down the road, we hopped back on the bus.
We saw so much of the beautiful countryside with all the driving. It's absolutely gorgeous, the green fields with little stone walls as fences, and sheep scattered across lush green paddocks.
Soon we arrived at our next stop, the Giants Causeway!! We had both really wanted to come here, but didn't think we'd get here on this trip, so it was a great bonus that the tour stopped here!
The bus dropped us off and we had about an hour and a half to explore, so we left Sam's grandparents while we took an alternate route to the Causeway. Sam and I hiked up the cliff and walked along the headland above the causeway. We had spectacular views of the rugged coastline and a unique top down view of the cause way.
We then made the extremely steep decent down the many stairs of the cliff.
We spent the next half an hour or so scrambling across the Giant's causeway trying to understand this fascinating natural wonder. It was so amazing, and just surreal! 40,000 pillars of hexagonal basalt rock all in an interlocking formation, as a result of a volcanic eruption 30million years ago! It was incredible. And they're huge as well, in some areas they are 12m high! I mean, I guess that's why its called "Giants" Causeway, they're like steps for giants!
The folklore of this fascinating place, of course, centres around giants. The story goes that there was a giant by the name of Finn McCool, and Finn had some troubles with a Scottish giant, Bennandonner who was threatening Ireland. Finn begins breaking off chunks of the coast and throwing them into the sea to create a path to Scotland in order to teach Bennandonner a lesson. Well, Finn didn't realise how massive Bennandonner was, so quickly retreats. Bennandonner comes chasing after Finn, but Finn's wife cleverly dresses Finn up as a baby. Bennandonner sees Finn, and believing that he is indeed a baby, decides that if the baby is that big, then the father must be one massive giant, so runs away, leaving Ireland alone.
There is even a rock within the Giants causeway that resembles a giants' boot!
We had gotten so caught up in the fascination of this rock formation that we didn't realise the time, so we quickly ran back up the longggg steep hill to the meeting point of the bus! We were puffing, and sweating, and struggling by the time we made it to the top and back to Sam's grandparents, only to find that the bus was late! We didn't need to run after all! I think Sam's grandparents got a good chuckle out of it anyhow!
Back on the bus, our guide told us some more history and it turns out he is a musician! So he pulls out his guitar and sings us an Irish tune!
Shortly we arrive at our next GOT stop, Ballintoy Bay. It's a beautiful little bay where they shot the Iron Islands.
We spent some time wandering around exploring the beautiful little bay.
A short bus ride later and we had arrived at our final GOT stop, Cushenden caves. This was Melisandre's cave in the show.
Cushenden was a really cute little seaside town with a town goat called Miriam!
From here we went to Belfast, where we had a couple of hours to explore the city. We had a little wander around the centre and then found a coffee shop to chat and warm up in!
Our guide gave us some more history on the bus ride back as well as sining us a few more songs! There were some classic Irish ones that everyone sung along to! He then taught us the difference between a jig and a reel, and played a game where he would play something, and we all had to guess which one it was. It was a very entertaining bus ride back to Dublin.
Once we arrived back in Dublin we found a little Italian restaurant for dinner. We shared a couple of pizzas and had a great evening chatting and just enjoying the fantastic company. We even had a treat of tiramisu and pistachio cannelloni for dessert! Wow! I had no idea how good pistachio was!! It was delish! And the tiramisu too! It was such a lovely end to a great day.
It was such a fantastic day, so much fun and so interesting. We saw so much beauty, so many natural wonders, and learnt a great deal too, gaining an understanding of the history of the Irish. The GOT part of the tour was fun, but it was also very special to get to see the scenery of Northern Ireland as well.
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