I began booking this trip back in early February, before Marissa had even arrived, and already, finding plane tickets and lodging was hard to come by. The best price/direct flight I found was leaving from Berlin. So I jetted out of work on Friday afternoon picked Marissa up and hit the autobahn to Berlin. Parking cost around 25 dollars a day at the airport, so we decided to park somewhere on the street for free in Berlin and take the train out to the airport. After a 3 hour drive, 45 minute metro ride with 3 connections, and a 1.5 hour plane ride, we had arrived in Dublin.
After passing through customs, a 3 person Irish band met the passengers right outside of the baggage claim. A guitar, fiddle, and whistle made of tin put you right in the Irish mood. The trip was off to a good start. After a 30 minute bus ride, we arrived at our hostel and got some sleep.
Saturday
Woke up, got dressed headed to grab breakfast. We were headed on a day tour of Wicklow countryside and had to catch the tour bus leaving at 8:45. We realized that the amazing Irish breakfast we had was taking too long and ended up running down the street trying to eat it at the same time. We got on the bus in time and then waited for 30 minutes for the rest of the people. Other than in Germany, nothing in Europe is ever on time.
Wicklow is a beautiful green county just south of Dublin. There have been hundreds of movies filmed there, including Braveheart and some mushy movie called P.S. I love You. Our first stop was an old castle/garrison that had been turned into a summer camp for boys during the Irish revolution. The idea was to bring the young men in their teens from the North and South and let them live in the summer camp together, with the purpose of better relationships between the two sides in the future. Getting kids away from politics and war allowed them to see each other as equals. This being a huge success, many other countries did the same and sent their boys to this castle. Many important people have come to see this place, including Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama.
Many famous novelists, playwrights, and actors live out in Wicklow County, and they told many stories of Bono and his manager’s parties at the local bar and all the famous actors who would attend. Next we headed to the former hunting lodge of Mr. Guinness. He has a ridiculous house at the bottom of a valley with a huge lake that many famous people attend. It is said that the Beatles wrote many of their songs during their trips here.
The Guinness family is well loved in Ireland. As much money as they have made, they give a charitable amount back to the community. During WWII, Ireland was cut off from goods because of the German U-boats governing the seas. Dublin only survived by the farmers in the countryside shipping their goods up the canals in exchange for none other than Guinness.
That evening when we got back to Dublin we went and had our first Guinness of the trip and listened to some live music. The city is full of good music and we couldn’t get enough of it. We were blessed with great weather on Saturday. The story would not be the same the next, but all was well, because it was St. Patrick’s Day.
Sunday
After breakfast from our friendly Hostel owners whom we couldn’t understand, we headed to get a front row spot at the parade. Snow, rain and cold made the morning quite miserable, but when the parade started, the entertainment occupied our minds. They do parades big in Dublin. The floats and costumes were extravagant, and everyone involved was very excited to be there. Surprisingly, there were plenty of American marching bands from high schools and colleges.
We left the parade and found a pub for some food and drinks. A hot Irish coffee sounded perfect right about now. From then on, the population of Dublin went south in a hurry. Pub’s got louder, people got happier, and straight lines got harder to walk. We spent the rest of our evening hopping from pub to pub listening to awesome music and stopping on street corners to people watch for half an hour at a time. There was no shortage of interesting characters at this place.
Monday
We got up the next morning and our roommates in the hostel still were not home from the night before. We went for breakfast, and as we were leaving, they returned and said they had been in the hospital all night. Impressive. Don't worry, she was fine. Just partied a little too hard the night before.
We headed across the street to the Guinness brewery. The building is shaped like a pint glass and the tour was pretty cool. At the top of the brewery they teach you how to pour the perfect Guinness and we drank our final beer in Dublin before heading to the airport.
We arrived in Berlin at 8 and as luck would have it, we ran into another blizzard. Stuck behind snowplows and traveling 60km/h, we were forced to pull over at the rest stop and take a nap in the car. A normal trip from Berlin would take 3 hours, but this took 6. This wasn’t the first time this had happened. Our 7 hour return trip from Paris turned in to 14 hours back in February. Nonetheless, Ireland is an awesome country, the people are over the top friendly, yet I can understand most Germans better than I can some of the Irish. We look forward to being able to go back, but our next stop is a 7 day road trip with my Dad for Easter next week. Up on the agenda is Berlin, Prague, Hallstatt (Austria), Neuschwanstein Castle, Lauterbrunnen (Switzerland), and Cologne. Let’s pray for good road conditions!
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