Checking In
We landed in Dublin in late morning, having slept very little on the flight. Our game plan in Dublin involved day excursions outside of the city, so after customs we headed for the rental car pickup. Amber is our main driver most of the time anyway (reinforced by a combination of her car-sickness and my vision issues), but especially when we’re in left-drive countries.
Unfamiliar as yet with the GPS in the car, we navigated via phone to our hotel, the Skylon. It sported the uncommon feature of having rooms with three beds. Put that with being well placed between the airport and the city and parking for the car and it worked out great.
By this time a small problem from our launch on another continent had emerged – Cora had slipped on Amber’s Birkenstocks instead of her sneakers when we left home. This wouldn’t have been a big issue except those were meant to be her walking shoes… for the next three weeks. Off to the shopping center we went!
It wasn’t a bad errand for keeping us all awake. Our goal was to stay up until nine o’clock to get our rhythms set. Helpful hotel folks sent us to the Jervis Shopping Centre, a pretty basic mall setup in a shopping quarter of the city which gave plenty of options for getting Cora’s feet adequately covered.
As a bonus, it was also near a Nando’s, one of our favorite restaurants to hit when we’re in the British Isles. Although appetites were mixed around 4pm, it filled bellies enough to last the rest of the day. We each wandered off at one point or another to the restrooms, with Asher leaving for a particularly long stint. When he came back he admitted to zoning out and almost falling asleep on the pot, a sentiment we could all agree with.
Back to the hotel we settled in to relax and get some rest. I sat up reading a while but somewhat out of characters fell asleep in that posture, waking with a little jump-scare and a vigorous snorting, snoring noise that had everyone else laughing. Jet-lag notwithstanding, everyone was conked out pretty well by 9pm and slept decently through until morning.
Guinness, Natural History, and Seafood
Our first activity in Dublin was a tour of the Guinness factory. In a trend that would become evident on the trip, this was a timed entry that Amber had purchased tickets for ahead of time to smooth the path. The approach to the factory looked honestly very much like a working sort of industrial place, just with more brick and cobblestone than I’m used to. You could totally imagine the place being in active use.
Guinness has been around a while
Once we’d queued outside, though, the interior was revealed as something entirely different. QR code readers and folks with computers were there to check folks in in an orderly fashion. Groups were made by time of entry and steadily flowed with great efficiency. We found ourselves walking through spaces that explained the brewing process with great animations and immersive exhibits. Here and there elements of the old factory look sneaked through, though.
The Factory tour makes interesting updates to the old warehouse space
Whole floors of the place were devoted to the wide ranging advertising empire of Guinness. As an American, this was interesting though not nostalgic as little to none of that advertising really broke into my world. It was fascinating to see how it evolved over time, though, and how often they used art and styles which were strikingly modern for a brand from the 1700s.
Bright modern Guinness advertising
The final stage of the tour went to the very top of the whole place, which had two different bar areas both entirely done up in floor to ceiling windows. Different meaningful locations were marked on the glass in such a way that you could see the place and read about it at the same time – really nice trick to use the lovely views. Each adult member of the party (so two of us) got a ticket for a pint. Sadly Amber isn’t drinking alcohol in this season, so I had to take care of both for us.
Amber didn’t want her pint. Pity that.
After the Guinness we took a nice long walk to circle by a couple of spots Amber wanted to shop at. The first was a chain of stores I’d never heard of called Avoca which sported a lot of nice clothing, home goods, and tasty treats. Asher was about as happy to hang around there as you’d expect any thirteen year-old boy to be. From there we visited a smaller art store called Irish Design Shop. We bought a really nice print for our wall at home, and enjoyed the artistry. Next door a furniture store had a hipster-ish coffee spot, so I grabbed a flat white to stave off the afternoon jet lag.
After the shopping we got back to the sightseeing with the Natural History branch of National Museum of Ireland. Now the kids always love a good natural history museum anyways, but this one was special as it was kind of a relic of the Victorian era. Rather than glossy huge exhibits with animation and vibrant colors, it was case after case of taxidermied animals with varying degrees of believability.
Typical case at the Natural History Museum
I was a little surprised with how much the kids took to the uniqueness of the space. They searched out their favorite types of animals – frogs for Cora, turtles for Asher, with plenty of zooming around taking photos with their phones in between.
Flock of seagulls I guess, I don’t know New Wave
Plenty of the exhibits were a little newer, gathered throughout the 1900s. The insect cases all seemed very realistic and well taken care of (as my childhood entomologist enjoyed seeing). But not everything was quite so, well, successful in its preservation.
Derpy otter
Dinner that evening was one of the reasons we’d taken the car for rental. Cavistons is well to the south of Dublin, and would have been quite a stretch to get to from downtown. We punched the directions into the GPS in the car this time and happily watched the city sweep by. Well, up until that one turn anyways. Now remember, it was the end of our second day in country, and the jet lag at that point is rather heavy. We’ve had a full day, and honestly are a little scattered. Amber started to take a left turn at a light and, as she has thousands of times, headed for the rightmost lane.
“Drive left. Hon, drive left. DRIVE. LEFT.”
She recovered in plenty of time, though not enough to save the kids from a reasonable startle. “I don’t want to die,” Asher said as we drove further along, mostly in jest.
The meal was lovely, the seafood fresh and just what we were hoping for. The atmosphere was a little fancy, but not so much that we couldn’t pull out some mini Uno cards while we waited. All in all, a successful day.
Newgrange
Since we’d left the States, Amber had had a sore throat hanging on. She’d gone to urgent care back home and gotten a treatment, but it hadn’t taken care of everything. Now a few days in she was still suffering (multiple tests, no COVID) so we decided to track down options. We managed to get a virtual doctor appointment scheduled through an app locally. Wham, bam, antibiotics on the way which helped her feel much better. I was impressed, though, with how realistic the virtual appointment proved to be – I mean, she waited at least 15 or 20 minutes past the scheduled time for the doctor to show.
Our first destination for the day was Newgrange, a neolithic stone tomb. One of several such large mounds in the area, it was the one that you could enter so Amber had chosen it and gotten our entry passes all lined up. It meant an early start to drive out, but the day was sunny and we arrived at the visitors’ center with plenty of time. While the whole point of the excursion was to see a 5000 year old tomb, the center was stark and modern, with lots of glass, lofty open spaces inside, bold pictures on the walls imagining the ancient world that Newgrange represented.
We took a short walk down across a river to get to where the buses ran from. On a schedule, the buses ran up little country roads to drop us at the base of the hill.
Walking up to Newgrange on a sunny Irish day
The weather was amazing, perfectly clear and warm, giving us long views of the Irish countryside. Up on the top of the peak was the site. It looked almost like the hilltop had been belted around with stone, grass growing in a rounded green mound on top of it.
Panorama of the back of Newgrange
The tour guide at the entrance told us all about how the site had been discovered in the eighteenth century. Thankfully the folks hunting for stones to pave a road realized they had found something important, and halted taking it apart to be studied instead.
Family gathered at the entrance to Newgrange
The entrance leads into the center of the mound where there is a chamber with three alcoves off of it. Carvings mark the walls inside, and it is an astonishing space to imagine humans having built so many millennia before. The roof climbed up probably twenty or thirty feet, narrowing drastically from how the stones were stacked to construct it. The tunnel in was narrow and short in spots, and they asked that we take bags off to avoid scratch the rock.
Reconstructed stone wall at Newgrange
In more modern times the wall was reconstructed over about a decade worth of summers work by researchers. It is really an awesome thing to behold poking up there in the Irish countryside. Even more amazing, in 1967 it was confirmed that the site is perfectly aligned so that on the winter solstice, light at dawn will make its way down that cramped little tunnel, all the way into the chamber itself. How folks so long ago managed to see, understand, measure, and then build to accommodate a day that only comes once a year boggles the mind.
Closer view of swirls carved into rock at Newgrange
Slane
Not far from Newgrange was our next destination, Slane Castle.
Slane Castle
Slane Castle hosts a tour and high tea, which the family would be enjoying. They took the tour, heard about the high profile rock concerts held on the grounds, met the earl briefly who was busy doing yard work and overall had a lovely time.
The family had a nice high tea without me anyway
Slane also boasted, as of rather recently, a distillery. Sadly, the tour there was only for over eighteens, so I had to do that my myself. 😭
Slane Disillery
Having done a scotch tour before the process was very familiar, but it was fun to see all the equipment both old and new. They’re also making use of the waste heat from distilling to warm the castle, which is really neat. I ended up purchasing a bottle of their cask strength whiskey, which came with the bonus of being able to pull the handle to fill it myself.
Filling my bottle at Slane
Family being still at high tea after I finished my tour, I took a seat in the sunshine of the courtyard by the distillery, sampled more of their fine options, and read a book in peace for a while.
Enjoying myself in style at Slane Distillery
Getting back to Dublin, we had a reservation for our evening meal at an Indian restaurant called Pickle. This had come with pretty high recommendations online, and we’d requested ahead of time the full leg of roasted lamb. We taxied from the hotel again to avoid parking and got to the place which was a long narrow space decorated in warm inviting colors with lots of artwork.
Pickle, a fabulous Indian restaurant in Dublin
Honestly the kids were a little done by this point and didn’t really want to be out, so we got right down to ordering. We picked a few appetizers, and the waiter very directly told us, “Oh no, you don’t want to order that. You want this and this.” Mildly taken aback, we went with his suggestions and they were awesome. The mixes of fresh and spicy, crisp and rich flavors exceeded all our expectations. And the lamb was so succulent, falling apart off the bone, seasoned with amazing spices. Our only regret was that we couldn’t finish more of it.
Those that know me will know that I’m always reading something. While I don’t always line up topical reading for trips, I did have a couple of books by noted Irish author Claire Keegan in my stack when we arrived, so I bumped those to the front. Gotta say, that was a good move both for atmosphere, to read them while on the Emerald Isle, and simply because she is a spectacular author. Her ability to capture both the setting and the deep inner world of her characters in just a handful of words still has me amazed. I’d wholeheartedly recommend Foster and Small Things like These to almost anyone.
Waterford
The next day was one of the big reasons we rented a car for our time in Dublin – we were headed to Waterford, a roughly two hour drive (you know, nearby by American standards 🤣). So of course, when we woke up Asher was feeling sick to his stomach. Everyone else in the family was fine, but he was not a happy camper. He threw up a bit, so we got hold of some big plastic bags, rolled the dice, and set out anyways.
The long drive didn’t improve how Asher felt, and the driving that day was more wearing for Amber than we would have expected. Keeping to the “wrong” side for those stretches takes more attention than usually is needed. She honestly felt it more than a ten hour drive to Montana from our home in Oregon.
Sculpture of Waterford town layout
We arrived in Waterford not long before out scheduled tour time. The House of Waterford, a black, sleek-fronted building, stood out very much in the otherwise typical Irish architecture of the town.
Entrance to the House of Waterford
The tour started with some introductory remarks about the company itself. It has an interesting history, with a surprisingly long gap during the twentieth century when it wasn’t in operation, but then revived later on. They’re at an interesting intersection of carrying a lot of old-world elegance with their brand, but needing to modernize their reputation (if not their products) to stay afloat.
Huge custom crystal piece of an Irish harp
The crystal making process these days is still very labor intensive and manual. When you get down to molding and blowing the glass, that’s done the way things always have been, up to and including sculpting temporary wooden molds for shaping.
Hot glass blowing
An interesting aspect of their work as well is how heavily it leans on a traditional mentorship program. Along the way we saw several cohorts of apprentices being trained by the masters of the shop. Learning to do the art takes years, and even within the shop has specializations that folks will spend ages pursuing. The end results though show the evidence of all this hard work – the crystal is spectacular.
Moulds for the crystal are made from wood
They don’t entirely shun the modern world, though. Computers and newer tech do show up where it aids the process. This is clearly part of design, which makes a ton of sense, and some of the machinery can be computer controlled. That said, some types of marking on the crystal are still only done by hand.
Good to see familiar faces in the Waterford facility
Even when your crystal sax is 30k, mistakes happen
Asher carried his bag and moaned the whole way through the tour, but we found out afterward that this was one of the highlights of our trip for Cora. She was fascinated by the process and the art of the crystal. In the end although it wasn’t the easiest leg of the trip, I’m glad we went.
After the drive back to Dublin, Asher stayed in the hotel with some crackers, ginger ale, and electronics, and the remaining three of us headed out for dinner. We went to a spot called Fish Shop, which was a highly rated new-school chippy. You could tell pretty quickly that this was a bit of a different spot because they only sold wine, no beer. The tables were tiny and we sat at the bar, listening as a steady stream of folks tried to drop in but had to settle for take-away if they didn’t have a reservation. The food, though, was absolutely worth the reservation – the fish was crispy and tender, the salad perfectly dressed, just a great meal.
In such a small space we couldn’t help but overhear other folks, and partway through an American guy near us struck up conversation with a family that was dining there. He turned out to be a voice actor who was working on a film, and you could feel the charisma dripping off him as we eavesdropped on the conversation. It honestly felt for a few minutes like we were just bit players in someone else’s story until he left. This guy was clearly the protagonist.
After the meal we walked over to the Cobblestone pub, which is well known for its live Irish music.
Entry to the Cobblestone pub
The place was totally packed out, every seat at the bar and along the walls taken, folks standing in patches here and there. We ordered a pint or two, hovered awkwardly until some folks moved on and we could shuffle into place.
The lovely musicians gathered at the Cobblestone
At the front there was a circle of a dozen musicians – just whoever was able to show up that day. Someone would lead into a song and they’d all play along. It was vibrant and joyful (or sorrowful at times) and huge fun to listen to. We hung around for a while, longer than I originally expected to with the crowd.
Cora at the Cobblestone bar… a first! Still no beer.
What a great way to cap off our time in Ireland, because the next morning we were on our way back to Spain. Next stop Bilbao!