Ireland - Wednesday to Friday

After a hectic flight schedule, including an hour between our flight arriving in London Stansted to our flight leaving for Dublin, we arrived safely in Dublin, and were met at the airport by my mum. We proceeded to collect a rental car, and started our journey across the island towards the Cliffs of Moher. It was a lovely drive through the Irish countryside, with stone walls, green fields, abandoned churches and castles, many detours due to roadworks, and a flat tyre to cap it off. Luckily this happened minutes from one of the largest towns we had passed through, which included a tyre repair shop. We reached the Cliffs of Moher and were greeted by a howling gale and rain. We braved the elements and were greeted by amazing views of sheer cliff faces plunging into the sea, with layered rock, gannet colonies, hobbit holes and a castle. We continued onto Limerick, where we found a room at a lovely B&B.

On Thursday morning we headed to Killarney and the O'Sullivan farm, where my great-grandfather departed from in the late 1800's to immigrate to NZ. Danny O'Sullivan, my mother's 91 year old second cousin, stills runs the farm here, and was an amazing source of Irish historical information - when we could decipher his strong Irish accent. Having lived through 2 world wars, uprisings, revolutions and revolts, and most of recent Irish history, he had some very interesting stories to tell. He is obviously well-respected in the farming and local community. We had a tour of the farm, including the original stone building that my great-grandfather had lived in, and which the family only moved out of in the 1950's. After this visit we drove around Killarney, looking at all the "O'Sullivan" shops in the town, and drove out to the nearby Killarney national park, famous for its walks and lakes. We spent the night in Cahir, complete with a fortified castle, a jail that looked like a castle and now houses a B&B, a Gaelic football field and a 200-km+ wind!!!!!!

On Friday we drove back to Dublin, where Mum was kind enough to drop us at the door of our backpackers. Mum headed to the airport to fly to New York, and we began our sight-seeing trip in Dublin. We spent the afternoon wandering the streets, walking to the River Liffey and through O'Connell St, in the main shopping area. We began the night with a burger meal at a place called Jade's, which was going fine until we saw a couple of cops stop a man of middle eastern descent right the outside the door. The police asked to search him, and he refused and starting arguing with them. This escalated quickly and the police arrested him, at which point he took a swing at one of the officers, which resulted in back-up being called and in no time there were 7 police there and a very angry man having his face rammed into the window of the restaurant we were sitting in. It's hard to know whether the police had a reason to stop him, or if it was just an over-reaction due to the recent attacks at the airports.

We headed down to the Arlington Hotel for a night of Irish dancing, Irish music and Irish cider. We then went to the Temple Bar district, and took in the atmosphere of the streets filled with pubs, nightclubs and street performers.