We’d no sooner got ourselves unpacked from our brief jaunt to Vila do Conde then it was time to pack ourselves right back up for another journey. The last getaway was a near-spontaneous escape from the heat, but we’d been planning this one for quite some time. We’ve told family and friends back in the States that if they make it across the Atlantic we’d do our best to close the gap if they were up for a visit. We were happily being taken up on our offer by Lisa’s sister and her family, who were taking a rare vacation overseas to visit Ireland. Us being us, we plotted a trip that ended with our rendezvous in Dublin and then worked back to include not one, but TWO bucket list items that we could finally check off.

So off we popped on a short flight to Dublin, although for now this was just a waypoint. Directly from the airport we hopped onto a commuter bus that would drop us in downtown Belfast. (Unlike the last time we pulled this maneuver, we did not start at 1AM nor did we arrive in Belfast at 4AM. Go us.) Arriving while the sun was still up, we had no difficulty navigating to the lovely Fitzwilliam Hotel; three cheers for flash sales on booking.com.

It was a wee bit surreal as it turns out that the Open was happening. (Us Americans would call it the British Open, the oldest golf tournament in the world, held over four days.) The City was festooned with golf-related events and experiences, and waiting for us in our hotel room were little party favor / welcome gifts – golf balls made out of white chocolate. Sure! After checking out the room and unpacking a bit, we headed out to dinner at Mourne Seafood Bar. Total yum! It’s a great place for oysters in particular and the mussels were excellently garlic-y and tender. (We did think the dough on the lobster gyoza was a bit too thick.) We slept very well.

You may remember that we enjoyed our visit here in 2022, we ran into . . . difficulty . . . seeing the Giant’s Causeway. If you’re an OG Sasha’s Doghouse fan you may even recall similar difficulties on our honeymoon in 2012. This time we were by gosh and by gum going to succeed! Making it completely easy (and not our usual style) we booked with PaddyWagon Tours for a day trip that would leave all of the planning in the hands of locals. We scored quick breakfast and then let them drive us all around for a day.

We started with the Dark Hedges, which have been made famous by the Game of Thrones TV show, and which we found underwhelming. No matter how atmospheric and cinematic the location may have been on the show, when its swarmed with people and vehicles it’s … just a bunch of trees. Instead, we took this picture about 100 meters away from the overrun hedges. It may not be fancy or featured on the television, but a) it’s prettier in our opinion, and b) we had it all to ourselves.

Much more interesting was the dragon door at a nearby Inn carved from the wood of fallen trees in the Hedges, which has apparently suffered significant losses from immense tourist traffic. There are a few of these doors scattered around the world and you can even get stamps in a little passport thingy to show when you’ve completed your collection. Sorry, there’s probably more lore here to unwind but as you’ve probably gathered by now neither of us are particular fans of the show.

From there we went on to Dunluce Castle, a glorious ruin set on the edge of a basalt outcropping. The views are lovely and it was wonderfully scenic. John had a moment of cognitive dissonance as we grappled with the fact that the vibe was of an incredibly ancient site but the castle actually only dated back to like the 1700s. That’s what being on the Irish coast will do to a place; eek. He got over it and enjoyed the visit immensely.

And, finally, we arrived at Giant’s Causeway! The natural element is interesting and worth seeing, but not during the summer when the rocks are covered with people. Frustratingly, the Visitor’s Center is an expensive 15 pounds and is the easy way to get to a cafe and souvenir shop. However, there is no need to pay the fee, you can just walk through a tunnel (that looks like the way to a car park) and then down about a mile to the rocks themselves. However, there is also a tram for a small fee that takes you one, or both ways. (Good idea, especially on the return trip uphill.) By the by, this was our main gripe with the Paddywagon tour. While an incredibly close reading of the text probably reveals that they never said boo about the visitor center, they go to great lengths to sell you on the idea you were being ushered along to all of the spots. (We didn’t pay an entrance fee at Dunluce, for example.) At the Causeway, however, we pulled up along the curb just outside the place and were dropped off with instructions to meet back there in am hour and a half or so. “Nah, don’t worry about the Visitor Center, who needs to be bothered with that nonsense?” Us. We need to be bothered with the nonsense. Sigh.

It wasn’t actually the end of the tour, as we stopped for lunch at the “Fullerton Arms” which was a huge disappointment. We didn’t get there until after 2pm — so bring snacks to tide you through the many hours between pickup and lunch. The food was bland and very “industrial”. When they drop you off at the Causeway you peruse a terse menu and then you choose fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, ceasar salad, and option four whatever the heck that was, which would then be waiting for you at the inn. The food was “meh” and also not at all cheap, which is particularly irritating when it was not discussed ahead of time and there were no other options presented. It wasn’t terrible, just managed and presented badly which just got us off on the wrong foot. All that being said, the tour accomplished what we wanted it to. It was back to Belfast for us, for a quiet night before catching the Steam Packet the next day? What the heck is a Steam Packet? Tune in next time!

Hi there! While we still think wrapping up the last few days of Dublin into one post makes sense (there really wasn’t that much that actually happened, as you read last time) we still realized as we put the thing together that if we took our usual time with describing meals and lodging that it would make for an extraordinarily long post. And so, since this is a free and gratis blog that can’t get itself in trouble with its advertisers (ha!) we’re going to slow our roll a little here at the end and give a separate look at where we stayed and what we ate in our last few days before returning home. In case you’re wondering just what exactly you’re in for today, here’s a quick summary: two yummy meals and one sub-mediocre hotel stay. So if that whets your appetite, read on!

On the day we arrived in Dublin we scooted right over to our hotel, the Wilder Townhouse. Presumably it was once the townhouse of somebody named Wilder (cool it there, Sherlock! yeah yeah…) but it is now a “Small Luxury Hotel of the World” which is a weird co-op of shmancy lodgings scattered all over the place. We only know about it because SLH may be independent but it has a relationship with Hyatt. Presumably, Hyatt is able to leaven the offerings on their website with these boutique-ish places and the SLH joints get added exposure. All that matters to us is that we get our Hyatt benefits at SLHes (in theory; hang on a sec) and during the pandemic Hyatt was making promotion in their points world obscenely easy. As a result, we are spending at least this year in the peak category, “Globalist”, so Hyatts give us all kind of bennies like automatic room upgrades, late check-out/early check-in etc… Well, the Wilder seems not to have received the memo, because the only way to describe the room we were in is “shoebox.” It was absurdly small, not just for a “luxury hotel” but even for a “Victorian squatter’s hovel”. I assume that’s a category. We have had bathrooms bigger than this room. Which, you know, we’re not totally precious about these things, but this being a special trip and all we had actually splashed out a bit on the lodging, and this is not how you want a special treat to play out. Compounding matters, the staff could not have given less of a crap about the situation, or the breach of policy. We could pay for an upgrade, but as I’ve already intimated the place already wasn’t cheap, so no thanks.

As soon as we dropped our bags off in the Wilder (thus completely filling the room :p) we whipped up a few quick restaurant reviews and made for a neighborhood joint called 31 Lennox. It was midday on the weekend, which meant brunch! One of the strange frissions on this trip has been breakfast – either we’re in a hotel with an at-best mediocre buffet, or else we manage to swing something truly scrumptious in an actual restaurant. This was the latter, and it was really great. Lisa had a buttermilk fried chicken sandwich thing (we first had to ask if we could infer the word “fried” in the “buttermilk chicken” offering, which it turns out we could) and I had a perfect eggs benedict. I actually don’t care for the use of runny eggs in.. well, anything really. The one exception is benedict style. Go fig. It was a great way to reset our day after the bus travel and the less-than-stellar accommodation situation. We could also hear from all around us that this was by-and-large a local joint and not typically tourist fare. It’s a bit two-faced(?) of us to be so anti-tourist when we are being tourists ourselves, but that doesn’t change the fact that we take it universally as a good sign when everyone else in a restaurant seems to be a local. Gods only know what us being there signals to the locals.

We snacked our way through the evening, rummaging together a meat and cheese selection from a local Spar (that’s a 7-11 to my American friends); don’t judge us, you weren’t there. (heh) We compensated for such a meager supper by turning things up a couple of notches the next day at Suesey Street, whose tagline is “A Taste of Home in Every Bite.” This may very well be true, but they cheat by being super vague about where “home” is. I presumed France based on some of the things on the menu and the accent of the kid who was serving us, but Lisa swears he was just Irish of a region we hadn’t encountered. In any case, the food was excellent, the wine list was not extensive but was thoughtfully put together, and the décor & ambiance were nice enough that we had a rare moment of feeling like we maybe weren’t dressed well enough. Still, it was a quiet afternoon and as with any truly good service we were never made to feel uncomfortable with the situation. It was an excellent way to pass a meal.

And that’s what (else) we have to say about the end of the trip. Thanks for following along and we’ll see you next time!

We’re going to wrap up the last few days of out trip a little bit differently. It’s not that we don’t *want* to tell you more about Ireland, it’s just that it (the trip, not Ireland) really isn’t interesting; part of this was by design and part of it was just dumb luck. Fortunately, we can still give you some (hopefully) interesting stories of travel in Ireland. You’ll see, hang on a sec. On the other hand, this covers enough time that even a seriously pruned blow by blow would make for a small novel. True, love means never having to monitor word count on a blog, but still. So we’re going to talk about what went down in the last few days, and then next time we’re going to talk about where we ate, which was notable on multiple occasions.

As I said at the end of the last post, we had a plan to see some last sites before dropping the car off in Belfast. Well, the weather gods had been unreasonably kind to us for this whole trip, and they just couldn’t help themselves any more. It was sheeting rain; windshield wipers were barely keeping up. We gave it until a key highway exit to get better and when it didn’t we just pressed on for Belfast. Naturally, the rain let up, but seriously who knows what direction the clouds were moving? (Anybody with a compass I guess, but … shush you.)

We arrived in Belfast and dropped our car at the airport. I’m not 100% certain that we needed the comprehensive coverage this time, but like all insurance, you don’t need it until you do, and then you really need it. Chalk it up to my excellence at driving on the left. (Ho! It is to laugh.) We scooted back to the same hotel we stayed in last time, not because we loved it so much as that it was a known quantity and after the last few quaintly idiosyncratic (ahem) places we stayed we liked the sound of known. We did have a lovely dinner at a place just down the street, Gnostic, and it truly is worth a visit if you’re ever in Belfast. Other than that, though, it was a laundry day and a reset for Dublin.

The next day was comprised of a bus ride to Dublin, a check-in to a shoebox of a hotel room (we have had the strangest run of hotel rooms this trip, I swear…) and brunch at a tasty spot in the neighborhood, 31 Lennox. (Hold that thought.) Other than picking up an ersatz cheese board in the local SPAR that was it. See what I mean about quiet, almost not worth mentioning? And yet, here you are.

The day following, which was a Tuesday was filled with…. shopping. Here’s the thing: neither of us likes to shop. We did not have a fun, free-spirited romp through the luxe markets of swanky Dublin. No, we needed shoes and the Portuguese seem to have uniformly narrow feet. The Irish are not similarly afflicted, so we knew we could get better-fitting shoe there, and thus we did. A couple of other mundane sundries were crossed off the list, and though it took some time it was once again desultory.

Wednesday, our last day in Dublin, finally had a bit of action to it. We packed up, checked out of our hotel and had them hold our bags so we could stroll across St. Stephen’s Green to the Irish National Gallery. In my limited but growing experience, art galleries come in two flavors (they all have “nice art for people to look at” as part of their purpose, that’s a given): either the gallery exists primarily to demonstrate that its home belongs in the constellation of great place, by exhibiting a selection of work from the greatest artists in the world, or it exists primarily to raise the visibility of home-grown artists for their glory and the reflected glory upon those artists’ home. The Irish National Gallery is definitely the latter; it has multiple floors of art by Irish artists, often portraying Irish artists (authors in the main), and then a capstone gallery of art by “European masters” in which the pieces were created in, or which portray places or people in, Ireland. None of this is to take the piss out of the gallery; it’s well organized and a treat to ramble through. Plus they have a Vermeer so it would never be a complete waste. After the gallery we gathered up our things and took a bus to the airport, thence on to our flight to Lisbon, and a check-in to a literally-one-week-since-opening Hyatt. Seriously. We’re pretty sure we’re the first people in this room, they are clearly still working out some bugs with the elevators and such, and they upgraded us to a pretty amazing suite simply out of gratitude, it seems, that somebody is staying with them. It’s a lovely place and surely won’t be empty for long, but it is kind of weird to be practically alone in a gigantic hotel.

Since we didn’t do a lot of interesting things in Ireland those last few days, we figured we’d point you towards some stories where more happened. Our honeymoon, as it happens, was a little more than 10 years ago and covered parts of Ireland and Scotland. I’ve linked some of these posts below, please do have a look.

Day 1 of our Honeymoon which kicked off in Dublin.

Day 2, when we went to Newgrange and the Hill of Tara.

Day 3, including Trinity College and the Book of Kells.

Day 4, including Hadrian’s Wall and Vindolanda.

You can use the “Show More Posts” function at the top of each post if you want to see more in the series. It’s a pretty good trip… at least, if you’re enjoying The Ramble, it’s more of the same just slightly older.

We’re beginning another stretch of traveling! So much so that if we keep to our intended publishing schedule we’re going to be talking about October in February of ’23 or so. That seems… weird, and we’ll be chewing on how we want to handle the timing. For now, though – buckle up! We are heading for the North of Ireland to finish up our honeymoon, just a bit over ten years later than expected. See, we went to Ireland (and a splash of Scotland) in 2012 for said honeymoon. We went clockwise starting in Dublin, and we had intended to finish up in the North. We had some travel shenanigans that caused some on-the-fly changes, including the complete scrubbing of anything north of Galway. “Someday”, we told ourselves, “we’ll be back to see the rest.” Welp, someday turns out to be August of 2022.

Getting to Belfast was a sojourn of its own, but we’re deciding more and more that commuting minutiae are kind of like telling people about your dreams – the stories are intense and impactful to you, and barely interesting to anybody else. So, to keep this to a paragraph rather than a page: we began with a 4ish hour train ride to Lisbon; trains continue to prove out as simple, comfortable, and effective transport in many situations. We had more time than we would have liked between arrival and flight check-in, but the next train would have been cutting it too close. So, dinner at Chez Roi de Burgeur (they call it something else in the U.S. Sandwich Monarch, maybe? Something.) in the airport before checking into our Aer Lingus flight. The flight went smoothly but, and this is important, it left at 10:00PM. So, we arrive in Dublin at ~1 AM, then a transfer to a handy bus route, and we were in Belfast by about 4. Because we had been sitting so long we eschewed the waiting taxis and rolled out bags 20 minutes to our hotel on the river. We were in bed by 5. Easy peasy!

After a refreshing (ahem) 6 or so hours of sleep, we got up, had some quick room service toasties, and made ready for our day. As is usual for us, we set ourselves up with a day that wouldn’t necessarily require a lot of us to begin our trip. In this case, that meant a black cab tour of The Troubles. There are a lot of providers of these or a variant tour, ours was a nice gentleman who never identified his personal take on the situation directly. (That said, you’d have to be intentionally obtuse not to see where he came down on things.) In case you don’t know: Belfast was a flashpoint and a focus for severe unrest in Ireland, for many many years but most (in)famously from the late 60s to the the late 90s. They call this time “the Troubles.” I really don’t want to talk about it much more than that, maybe because I’m sitting in a Belfast restaurant right now so my sensitivity to the issue has been jacked up to “12”. Maybe it’s because a tour guide this morning glided past the subject with a couple of vague references to “orange” and “green”. I just know that it’s been made clear that it’s more than just a touchy subject here. Besides, I’d have to learn a lot more before I’d feel qualified to describe things with anything approaching accuracy. And finally, unless we’ve got a base of readers that are far younger than either of us think we do, you probably know what I’m talking about.

Anyway. The black cab tour is definitely “general overview” versus “deep dive”, but it was very interesting for all that. We were first taken to a Unionist neighborhood famous for its murals. Murals seems to be Belfast’s political speech of choice – they can be positioned as memorials while still conveying loads of other meaning. The neighborhood was still festooned with bunting and flags from the Queen’s Jubilee (back in June), which in and of itself is making a point.

In any case, we saw the murals and, since it was the wrong time of year to see them in person, we were shown photos of the bonfires that are built every year to “celebrate the victory of William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.” Picture me making giant rabbit ears (quote marks) in the air as I say that. We then took a drive along the Peace Line, a picture of which heads this post. The Peace Line is a dividing wall between Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods; it is Berlin Wall-esque in scope if not magnitude; it goes on for a while. There is an official graffiti policy in place to try to corral the constant vandalism it used to go through and it seems to work; every few months there will be a concerted scheme to go over it with fresh, purposeful street art. It eventually gets defaced, but seems to take the edge off some of the more virulent messaging. After exploring the Peace Line we drove into the other side of town and saw some similarly-themed murals, as well as some historical locations of note. We spent a fair bit more time on this side of things, but not so much that we couldn’t get a feel for both groups.

Our driver dropped us where ever we wanted, which in this case turned out to be the Europa Hotel (the most bombed hotel in Europe it is said, although surprisingly this is not printed on their business cards) for high tea. Why yes, we do enjoy a schedule of stark contrasts. It was lovely, and if you’ve been following along for awhile you’ll understand when I say it was a more genuine and enjoyable version than what we experienced at the British Museum. It was yummy and leisurely, and made even better by the old-timer sitting behind us who was clearly a serious regular; the young man who sat him apologized that none of his usual friends (staff members) were around due to a staff training. Even so, the temp knew what the man’s standing order was. We heard the man telling stories, which the other man listened to graciously. It was really quite lovely. Worth the trip even if you don’t get this much local color.

By now, our tiring day of travel was catching up to us so we walked back to our hotel, stopping to get some non-hotel-priced munchies to have in the room for the next few days. We settled, took advantage of television stations in English(!) to watch a little bit of random nonsense, and then settled in for our long winter’s naps. Tomorrow will be a busy day – if we can get to all of it.

Cliffhanger!

Lisa and I were married on April 28th, 2012. 3 days later, Christ rose from the dead and we got on a plane. On the 2nd of May we landed in Dublin, which is where the adventure really begins. (The only noteworthy travel note before this is that the Frankfurt airport, where we connected, was apparently conceived by hamsters bent on revenge – it was nothing but tunnels and intersections for what felt like miles.)  There were travel delays getting into Dublin so we scrapped most of our plan for light sightseeing .. which was fine, as we’d learned from our first big trip together (London) that jet lag + foreign culture = us not being our best on day 1. So, after dropping our bags off we simply checked out our neighborhood.

(Side note: dropping our bags off began our long list entitled “Holy Shit are the Irish Ever Nice.”  The lovely woman at the front desk gave the usual “so where are you from, what are your plans” shtick, and seemed nice enough about it. LATER, we discovered she’d hand-written a couple of pages of her personal recommendations for when we were in the stretch of Ireland that she hails from. Woof.) As it turned out, the Westbury Hotel was situated smack dab in the heart of where we wanted to be. Note, “as it turned out” will, for this and all future uses in these posts, actually mean “thanks to Lisa’s meticulous planning.”  Museums, restaurants, and several points of interest were all easy hoofing distance. This day, though, we simply strolled about a bit, marking time until dinner and SLEEP.

Dinner was at a lovely restaurant called The Pig’s Ear. Charming, contemporary, and laid back. For all the differences in cuisine, I think Dublin’s food scene is a lot like Seattle’s. They don’t go for dressing up the people or the food, except for a few joints that cater to that sort of thing, but decor & decorum are completely divorced from how seriously they take the meal in any given joint. We ate early, and got back to our room (which had been upgraded at the mention of the word “honeymoon,” a practice that my new bride was shameless in exploiting) and fell into bed, and sleep, not much after. Tomorrow, a tour bus to Newgrange and the Hill of Tara.

DISJOINTED MEMORIES CAUSED BY TIME: (so, in many posts, rather than belabor the point that I’m getting around to these posts a year later, I’ll simply have a section like this when I can’t figure out how to place something chronologically. Otherwise, I stress and then I stop writing, and boo.)

* At some point they sent up champagne and strawberries, completely unsolicited. God bless them.

* Our insertion into Dublin went loads easier than London. Paris, too, although Paris was smooth (it just involved mass transit in a country where we barely spoke the language and then we walked the streets, late at night, hauling luggage, for a smidge too long for comfort).

* I swear, we brought Seattle gray with us and it stayed, almost without a break, the whole trip.