4 days in Ireland

So it happened that we spent 4 days in May, 2008 in Ireland. I was expecting that Latvian will be heard almost in every place (as in Dublin are working quite lot of Latvians), but it wasn’t so... I saw latvians just twice and those were the same as we – turists.

2008.05.09, Friday
Flight at 20:45 with Aer Lingus. Flight as a flight ;) I slept all the way. In Dublin we managed just to check in in hotel and went to bed as we had nice plans for Saturday :)

2008.05.10, Saturday
Nice beginning of the day – Guinness museum that finished with pint of beer after which we run to Jameson whiskey museum which ended with whiskey degustation. Both museums till 2PM. But museums are worth to see. I advice even to those who don’t like beer nor whiskey.

Guinness Brewer

Pint of beer

Movie before jameson museum

Things for whisky distillery

Second part of day we spent walking around Dublin. Bnice city and not very big. Poipular Temple bar district was very crovded.

Temple bar

One of many bridges

Most popular bridge in Dublin is Ha’penny bridge. I couldn’t understand why is it so popular as we thought there vere other bridges more beautiful. It turned out that former times you had to pay to get over the bridge.

At Trinity college

Unfortunately we didn’t see the oldest book in Ireland – Book of Kells

2008.05.11, Sunday
As our initial plans changed completely (will not say why), we decided that Sunday we should go out of Dublin. We found some bus tours and decided to go. First we wanted to go Wickolow tour, that starts at 9:45, but who new that in Ireland ar very good used internet booking and we didn ‘t get on that tour. But we got on another one – more expensive, with more stops and it turned out more interesting. We spent on that trip all day and saw 3 places: 1) Powercourt gardens; 2) Avoca – weaver village and Glendalough
Powercourt gardens – first we didn’t want to go there as we thought that there won’t be anything special, but we were wrong, this wasn’t jsut garden, it was GARDEN., very beautiful garden... very beautiful, with interesting trees, flowers. That was real beauty. I was fond of Chinese garden, „small” trees – when man stand at them he looks like small bug, view on castle, cat in Chinese garden who was resting in sun and didn’t feel disturbed when we tried to turn his attention to us.

View to the left from the catle

Castle

Flowers ;)

Very small trees

Chinese garden

Cat in Chinese garden

Avoca – this was dissappointment for me. May be that was because out guide praised Ireland and European Union so much that I it felt like lie. But Avoca itself – it is small village the only one where are weavers - everything hand work. Hmmmmm.... when I saw what our guide is fond of, I thought you should see our weavers in Latvia, but maybe I am wrong.
Glendalough – here we were short of time to see everything :( I didn’t see what I really wanted to see – just quick walk to farest lake and quick look at building from far.
And then – way back to Dublin.

Small part of Glendalough

On the way to farest lake

2008.05.12, Monday
Day to return back home. In the morning we walked through Phoenix park. We didn’t go to Zoo as there is needed whole day, but we didn’t have it any more.

Phoenix park and its tenants ;)