For the first leg of my trip I did some of Europe with my Mom. We spent the first week in London and Paris hitting up all the main tourist sites, before heading to Ireland for a two week road trip.
In Paris, we experienced a few runs in with the gypsies. The first time we were sitting outside the Louvre, eating some lunch. I was eating some chocolate, and a gypsy woman approached me and asked for a piece. I shook my head, and said no. She asked again. Again I said no. She then told me to f*$# off, and walked away.
The second time it happened, we were on our way to the airport, to fly to Dublin. We were taking the metro to the airport, which is something I would totally recommend avoiding AT ALL COSTS. In Paris, it's definitely worth the few extra dollars to take a shuttle to the airport and skip the metro all together. It was hellish entering and leaving the city. It's a long, hot, crowded ride.
I thought we were on the correct train headed for the airport, and we were making good time. What we didn't realize until to late was that the route we were on forked a few stops before the airport. One train on the line would head to the airport, the other for the Paris suburbs. We happened to be on the wrong train, headed for the suburbs. Once we realized this, we got off at the next stop and went around the other side to catch a train going back in the opposite direction, so that we could get on a train headed for the airport.
Now we just had to wait. And wait. And wait. We were stuck at that stop for over 30 minutes, and every minute was cutting it closer and closer for us to make out flight. As we were standing at the stop, a whole group of gypsies walked up the steps. Men, women and lots of children. Of course, I happened to be eating again, so a little girl approached me for some food. Great. The interesting thing about the experience was that after the gypsies arrived, so did the police. Two police officers stood right in front of the group, and on the other side of the platform we could see more police officers walking a huge German Shepard.
The train finally arrived, and we did make it to the airport. We were in a mad rush to check out bags and get through security, since we barely had any time. Of the course the line up for security was huge. We got lucky though, and there were quite a few people from our flight all stuck in the line up. We boarded the plane 5 minutes prior to departure. I've never been that stressed about getting to an airport, or that close to missing a flight.
In Paris, we experienced a few runs in with the gypsies. The first time we were sitting outside the Louvre, eating some lunch. I was eating some chocolate, and a gypsy woman approached me and asked for a piece. I shook my head, and said no. She asked again. Again I said no. She then told me to f*$# off, and walked away.
The second time it happened, we were on our way to the airport, to fly to Dublin. We were taking the metro to the airport, which is something I would totally recommend avoiding AT ALL COSTS. In Paris, it's definitely worth the few extra dollars to take a shuttle to the airport and skip the metro all together. It was hellish entering and leaving the city. It's a long, hot, crowded ride.
I thought we were on the correct train headed for the airport, and we were making good time. What we didn't realize until to late was that the route we were on forked a few stops before the airport. One train on the line would head to the airport, the other for the Paris suburbs. We happened to be on the wrong train, headed for the suburbs. Once we realized this, we got off at the next stop and went around the other side to catch a train going back in the opposite direction, so that we could get on a train headed for the airport.
Now we just had to wait. And wait. And wait. We were stuck at that stop for over 30 minutes, and every minute was cutting it closer and closer for us to make out flight. As we were standing at the stop, a whole group of gypsies walked up the steps. Men, women and lots of children. Of course, I happened to be eating again, so a little girl approached me for some food. Great. The interesting thing about the experience was that after the gypsies arrived, so did the police. Two police officers stood right in front of the group, and on the other side of the platform we could see more police officers walking a huge German Shepard.
The train finally arrived, and we did make it to the airport. We were in a mad rush to check out bags and get through security, since we barely had any time. Of the course the line up for security was huge. We got lucky though, and there were quite a few people from our flight all stuck in the line up. We boarded the plane 5 minutes prior to departure. I've never been that stressed about getting to an airport, or that close to missing a flight.
To kick off the road trip we flew into Dublin and spent a few days there, and then rented a car and started driving towards Northern Ireland. Our plan was to go north, and then drive down the west coast and eventually make our way back to Dublin. Cover Ireland in a counter-clockwise direction.
Our first stop was Bru Na Boinne, to visit the Neolithic tombs of Newgrange and Knowth. We got lost trying to find it, and this was about an hour after getting the car. At this point I wasn’t so sure skipping out on renting a GPS was going to be a good idea. The tombs are older than Stonehenge, and look just like huge mounds of grass. The pictures don’t really do it justice, because it was actually quite neat walking around them. We visited Knowth, and we couldn’t go inside but were able to walk on top.
We skipped Belfast and headed to Ballycastle to drive the Causeway Coast in Northern Ireland. It is a beautiful drive along the coast! Our destination was the main tourist site, Giant’s Causeway. Giant’s Causeway is a natural formation of hexagonal stone columns, all packed closely together in the ocean. The whole area is just beautiful. We did a great walk along the cliff top, and from there we were able to walk down to the ocean and check out Giant’s Causeway. We were lucky because it wasn’t very busy so we were able climb all over the rocks. It was super cool, and I would definitely recommend visiting! A highlight for sure.
We didn’t spend much time in Northern Ireland, just a short stop in Londonderry. Derry had kind of a coarse, hard-working vibe to it. From there we headed straight to Galway, which had a nice college town feel. Along the west coast we drove the two most scenic drives (both in County Kerry), the Slea Head Peninsula, and the Ring of Kerry. The weather wasn’t very cooperative and it rained on both the days we did the drives (it rained most days we were here, some days just worse than others). While we were driving through the mist and fog on the Ring of Kerry, we passed a sign that read something like “Ireland’s best view” and all we could only see about 10ft in front of us through the mist.
Even with that, the west coast is beautiful! We also visited the Cliffs of Moher, which are apparently some pretty famous cliffs, in lots of tourist brochures and stuff. I didn’t find this out until we arrived. They are 200m high and cut straight down to the ocean. We walked along this entire section (that had a huge sign at the beginning telling people not to walk any further) and past the sign you could pretty much walk as close to the edge as you wanted. And some people were walking preettttty close.
Along the way we saw awesome scenery, visited villages and heard some great traditional live music. We’ve also seen plenty of sheep (I really had no idea there were SO many sheep here), and plenty of castle ruins.
The roads in Ireland are quite something, VERY narrow and winding. The speed limit is 100km/hr on most of them, and people were actually driving them that fast. I took it a bit slower. There are also round-a-bouts EVERYWHERE. Some of them are just circles painted on the ground so it looks like a normal intersection. I had to learn fast to yield to the right, instead of the left like I’m used to. We had a few close calls but it was all good.
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