Dún Laoghaire

Note for non-Irish people: It's pronounced somewhat like 'down leary'.

Another small town in the Dublin Bay where you can go by dart. We didn't spend much time there -it's quite boring! There's not much to see apart from the pics I've just uploaded. It has a nice beach and some strange and old buildings, but that's all about it.

The rocks at the beach -the most interesting view we found.

I couldn't hold myself, I really needed to take a pic of this sign. 'Corr's', like my favourite band! I don't think it has anything to do with them, but I just found it funny.

Apart from that, the only interesting thing I know about Dún Laoghaire is that the blueshirts (the Irish who joined Franco and Hitler during the Spanish Civil War) departed from here. In fact, this entry is just an excuse to put the lyrics of an Irish song I love.

CHRISTY MOORE - VIVA LA QUINTA BRIGADA

Ten years before I saw the light of morning
A comradeship of heroes was laid
From every corner of the world came sailing
The Fifth International Brigade

CHORUS

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My Weekend Part IV: Heaven Is A Place On Earth

... and it's called Killarney (this time the real one!) We realized it just when we got there, but we confirmed it the next day. Since we were leaving in the afternoon, we spent most of the time walking in the famous park and letting the nature work its magic. Definitely worth a visit, it's WONDERFUL! Probably the pics will tell you more than I can explain to you in words, so here they are.

This old traditional Irish house is nowadays a restaurant. Unfortunately, we had no time to eat or drink, so we didn't get the chance to try it...

The first dragonfly I’ve seen in my life. Isn’t that cute? J



The Education Centre

Of course, we saw flowers of all the colours of the rainbow!! The second pic, showing different shades of orange, is one of my faves.

And last but not least, who asked for pics of myself integrated in the surroundings? Voilà one of my cheesiest pics!

Our last stop in the park was the castle, but we didn’t go in because there was some kind of exhibition and that was not what we wanted to see (and you had to pay, which means that it’s not worthwhile). That’s all about the park. We also went for some minutes to see the Presbyterian Church. Personally, I’ve realized that these churches are usually more impressive than the Catholic ones, since they are entirely made of stone, which makes them look older and a lot more elaborate. But of course, we didn’t spend much time there…

After the visits, we had pizza for lunch (the withdrawal symptoms were starting to show) and headed for the station. Back in the familiar streets of the fair city, we missed what we had left behind. Even though it has already become some kind of second home for us, this trip had made us see that Ireland was full of places which were a lot better.

By the way, I have to thank Marco for the fantastic pics. Most of the ones of this weekend, especially the nicest ones, were taken by him.

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My Weekend Part III: Go West!

Sunday was our last day in Cork. After breakfast and check out, I took some pictures of the bed and breakfast.





It was just great. We left our suitcase there and checked the train and bus timetables for Killarney. Since we found the train too expensive, we decided to go there by bus. But before leaving Cork, we went for the hard stuff… Butler’s Chocolate Café!!! I’d never had such a sweet hot chocolate with a biscuit inside… But that wasn’t the only thing we did. We also visited the only park in Cork we still hadn’t seen.

It was rather small and full of weird people, but it still was a beautiful place. Then we walked the other side of the city, which we still hadn’t seen, and finally headed for the bed and breakfast to pick up our stuff and then to the bus station.
When we got to Killarney, we were surprised to see that it didn’t look as small as we expected. It was a very small town, but it had a very big city centre. In fact, it’s as if someone had removed a big city’s centre and placed it in the middle of nowhere. It was such a beautiful town that just with the first glance, we knew that we where going to like it.

You could walk from one corner to the opposite in probably less than half an hour, which was really handy, since we could see the whole place in the day we spent there… even so, we found that we should have stayed longer in Killarney.

It is famous for its Natural Park and because it’s close to the famous Ring of Kerry, one of the main tourist attractions in Ireland.

It might look like a normal village (it even reminded me a bit of Clonmel), but it was really lively and had the sweet Irish touch that Dublin lacks. And (the most important thing!) it had lots of cafés and other places to go for the hard stuff. As you can imagine, that's one of the first things we did. Istrongly recommendeveryone the pancakes with vanilla ice-cream. They are YUMMY!!!We walked in the amazingly beautiful city centre, we visited the suburbs (if you can call them like this, as I said before, Killarney consists entirely of a big city centre) and checked the opening and closing times for the famous park. When we returned to the city centre, looking for somewhere to have dinner or enjoy some live music, we found something really crazy. At that time, Ireland was getting ready to elect a new Taoiseach (pronouced 'teeshock', it's somewhat like a Prime Minister), so all the politicians had already started their campaigns. But none of them compares to this guy's campaign.



This man, who we baptised as 'Hillbilly', had organized some kind of parade in the middle of the main street with lots of people pointing their rakes to the sky and cheering and clapping hands to their leader. I was surprised to see some young girls with a slight bitch-like touch who were amongst the supporters. Who would imagine they were into politics...

After that, we had a Chinese dinner (I won this time! Woohoo!) in a restaurant called Good Friends... Honouring its name, we were impressed by the hospitality of the owners and the kind way in which we were treated. There's nothing more to say about the day, so I'll present you with this nice pic of the sunset we took during our walk. As you can see, it was quite an artistic weekend :)

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My Weekend Part II: Our (Very Own) Tour

On the second day in Cork, we had agreed to get up at a reasonable time (how could you skip breakfast in a bed and breakfast???) and do a bus tour. We caught the bus near the tourist office and shop. It was not as good as the one in Dublin, especially because the history of Cork was told by a recorded tape, not a human being.
Our first stop in the tour was the County Gaol, which first was mixed and ended up as a gaol for women. I had never been particularly interested in visiting gaols, but this one looked beautiful from outside, like a castle. It was hard to believe that what we were going to find inside was going to be so shocking

Each one of us was given a walkman and a recorded tape which told the story of all the prisoners while we saw some real-size puppets of them. The first one we saw was Mary Sullivan, being grabbed by a female guardian while she was trying to escape.

This woman, whose name I can’t remember right now, was probably the one I found most impressive. She was arrested for stealing when she was pregnant and had her baby in the gaol. She was released two months later and no-one knows what happened to her or the baby boy after that. Of course, there were also many people who had been arrested for political reasons, but I think the tour focused more on common people, most of which were poor and had been arrested for stealing… even a young boy who was hit with a whip everyday for some months. Apart from that, I also found funny the fact that some of these people had been taken to the gaol for drinking alcohol or smoking. If it was like this nowadays, I guess the whole Ireland would be in the gaol…
After the gaol visit, which took around an hour, we caught the bus again and heard about the more than 30 bridges the city has (and I thought Dublin was the bridge city… apart from Venice, of course) and got off when we arrived to the area in which the Cork City Museum and its gardens were located. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see the museum because it had already closed, so we had something to eat (the worst kebab I’ve ever had, yuck!) and visited the University College Cork.

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My Weekend Part I: Meeting The Second Giant

CORK

Cork... the second biggest city in Ireland, but still a loooot smaller than Dublin. Maybe that's why I liked it better, I just felt more comfortable without having to take the bus everywhere and because on the second day I was already able to find my way to the city centre. As about Limerick, I had heard that it was not a very nice city, but that was not my impression. For me, there is only one adjective to describe Cork - COLORFUL... just like me :P

Every two steps you saw houses of many different colours, which I found really lovely. Another thought that came to my mind is that before visiting Cork I thought that Dublin was the city with most bridges I had ever seen (apart from Venice, of course), but I was mistaken. As you can see, the city is not flat like Dublin, but it has its hills and slopes. For the rest, I have to admit that when I was walking next to the river Lee I felt like in Dublin, it was so unbelievably similar to the Liffey… The only bad point I found was that it was slightly crowded with homeless people (you found people begging in every single corner…)

It might sound silly, but I really have to stress that we went there by train. It was the first time I took a real train (not a dart) in Ireland!!! We had reserved some sits on the Internet, so it was funny to get in the train and see that there were our names written. As usual, we arrived in Cork at lunchtime. We found the bed and breakfast more or less easily. I really recommend it to anyone who visits the city because it was looooooooovely (and one of the cheapest ones, by the way)! Don’t forget this name: Number Forty-Eight (of course, the address is 48 Glanmire Road). The owner, Jerry, was a charming Irishman who welcomed us as if we were honour guests and treated us in a really kind way. We really felt like at home.

After finding a place to eat something and leaving our stuff in the bed and breakfast, we headed for the city centre. At first we didn’t know much where to go, but we checked some brochures and we finally decided to go to the Cork Vision Centre. I’m glad that it was free admission, because the exposition there was not really interesting. I think the artist had some strange obsession with a particular kind of pictures. Anyways, we had the chance to get some more brochures so that we could decide what to do next.
We spent the first afternoon checking some nice places we found in the city centre. The first one was (church). The inside, which was golden, reminded me a lot of the cathedral in Venice. And of course, the typical statue of Saint Patrick was standing by the door.

The next thing we saw was the courthouse, which we found by chance. It might not sound special, but the building was standing there majestic and the inside was even better. The atmosphere had a feel of respect and elegance that cannot even be described in the pics.

Our next stop was the bird sanctuary. It’s a big park with a lake that has a small island in the middle. At first we thought we could go to the island, but then we realized that it was only for the birds. We saw lots of ducks, goose, ganders and swans (even black swans!) and then went for a little bit of hard stuff in the café next to the park (we never change…), which was very nice. Here are some pics of the birds:

And we also had the chance to take this wonderful photo of the sunset

It was starting to get late, so we had something for dinner in an Italian restaurant (of course!!!) and went back to the hotel. But before that, we had some more pics of the city at night.

Isn’t it beautiful? J

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My flatmates and other animals

I still can't believe it! One of my flatmates must be sick or something... miracles do happen...

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Noodle days are over!!

Woohoo!!! I needed to celebrate it. It's the second time I've made a fried egg in my life (and the first one it's been good) and I survived! I feel really proud of myself. It tasted delicious! I'm becoming an expert in cooking!

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In the coast

HOWTH
.
It's a small town around 20 minutes away from Dublin, where you can go by dart and come back on the same day. There's not much to say about what we did there... fish and chips, ice-cream, a walk in the harbours and a small hike to see the breathtaking landscapes of the mountains and cliffs. The sunny and cloudless weather made everything look more beautiful. It is also worth mentioning the lovely houses... even better than the ones in Galway! (probably more expensive though)

Yes, we went to the top! :)

This small island you can see from the harbours is called Ireland's Eye (I guess it will ring a bell to all the fans of Mike Oldfield...) You can rent a boat and visit it, but aparently the only thing that's there to see are the birds.

MALAHIDE

Another small town in the Dublin coast, famous for its castle. We also went there by dart. The village is nice (and there is a very good and not too expensive Italian restaurant!), but probably the nicest thing is the beach.

Once again, we where extremely lucky with the weather, so we had the chance to stroll there for a while. Of course, we were not as crazy as the Irish and we didn't swim...

This is the famous castle. We didn't go in (it was insane expensive and not even the half of the one in Kilkenny!), but it was great to be in the gardens and the park. And the outside of the castle is very fairytale-like.

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