Ireland Day 1

Sorry for the long delays in posting. I went on a few too many holidays and am now terribly behind, but it just means I have a lot of writing to do - let's hope my memory keeps up. In August I went to Ireland with A, C and P - the four of us drove around to a lot of beautiful spots in six days. It definitely takes a lot longer to get around than you might expect though - the best places are not always on major roads, and plus you want to leave enough time to stop in scenic bits - so if I could do it again I'd probably extend the trip by a day or two. But let's see what we managed to do!

We flew into Dublin (I would highly recommend the Air France flight from London City Airport to Dublin, as it is SO MUCH EASIER to fly from LCA - you only have to be there 30 minutes before your flight!) After picking up our rental car, we went straight to our first Airbnb apartment to drop off our bags, before heading next door to the Guinness factory. It's very cleverly designed - many floors of Guinness history for you to progress to before you get to the very top for your free pint, by which point it tastes like one of the best things ever. A quick and simple lunch of potato, bacon and lovage soup with brown bread fueled us right up for the rest of the afternoon.

Afterwards we got onto the hop-on, hop-off sightseeing tour of Dublin to make the most of our day there. But unfortunately the first bus driver we had was impossible to understand due to one of the thickest Irish accents I have ever heard. We hopped off. And guess what, we were in front of the Jameson distillery! So we popped in for some Jameson cocktails (do not get the hot chocolate cocktail, but the Irish coffees were good).

After a drink at a great pub (Porterhouse Central) we had one of the best dinners of the entire trip at The Pig's Ear (4 Nassau Street, Dublin). A's dish of pork belly is beautiful, isn't it?

And mine was cod, with boneless chicken wings, cauliflower, micro potatoes and golden raisins. Absolutely astonishingly good, especially the boneless wings.

Our only quibble was that the pea and bacon salad had almost no discernible bacon in it, and the duck fat potatoes side dish was tasty but not as crispy as I would have liked. C's salmon and P's short rib were raved about, so overall I would definitely recommend it.

After dinner, we went to KC Peaches (28-29 Nassau Street, Dublin) as there was a live jazz band playing that night. A bottle of Rioja went extremely well with the cheese plate, which was more like a work of art as you can see.

And to finish off the night, we ended up in Temple Bar to find some Irish trad music. Unfortunately it was Saturday and we are all too old to put up with the crowds and noise - we tried a couple of places but it quickly became obvious we all wanted to get back to the peace and quiet of our accommodation, so we called it a night.