It’s hard to believe that this trip is finally happening, after weeks, perhaps months of planning! Now I know why people pay so much to join tours where all the accommodations and transportation is already planned for you. It’s a ton of work!
Randy and I took an Uber to the Nashville airport then waited for an extra 30 minutes for a flight crew from a delayed flight to come handle our flight. The delay put us landing after our layover flight in Dulles should have taken off, but fortunately, they held the flight for the handful of us that were making the connection. Whew! Since it was the last flight out that night, missing it would have caused us to miss our first day of activities, so I’m super thankful they waited. About 7 hours later, we got our first glimpses of Ireland. Randy & I were both intrigued by how their property was defined by tree lines.
With the 6 hour time difference, we landed in Dublin at 10:30am, but our bodies thought it was 4:30am. We were both able to doze a bit on the plane, so we hit the ground running and planned to just get to bed early that night. We rented a super small KIA, knowing that we’d be driving on single lane, winding, country roads; but I didn’t realize that the trunk would be too small to hold our two suitcases — oops. Since Jeremy just had a duffle bag, we decided not to upgrade and put my suitcase on the back seat. Cozy! We also decided to get the manual transmission instead of automatic, to make sure Randy had as much as fun as possible driving, haha. Left handed stick while driving on the left side of the road — let the adventure begin!!
Randy got us to our first destination, lunch at Jaffas Cafe, with no problems. And the small car already paid off by squeezing into a tiny parking lot behind the cafe. We each enjoyed our toasted sandwiches and the friendly lady who served us. She went above and beyond, telling us how to avoid the road closures due to a funeral procession for a guard (their name for police officers).
It was surprising easy to adapt to the time change, given we were already eating lunch around noon. I had heard that barefoot grounding was also a good way to combat jet lag, so we stopped by the nearby Balbriggan Beach, took off our shoes and went for a 20 minute walk. The weather was perfect! Mid 70s and sunny. The water was a bit chilly still, but there were still a few people swimming, since that’s the warmest weather they’ll get the entire year.
We left the beach and drove about 30 minutes to the Brú Bóinne Visitor Center for our 2:30pm Newgrange + Knowth tour. Newgrange and Knowth are both designated as UNESCO World Heritage sites, dating over 5,000 years old (older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza). They are Neolithic passage tombs containing the largest collection of megalithic art in Western Europe. Our tour led us inside the chambers of Newgrange, where they turned off the lights and simulated how the sunlight illuminates the narrow passage during winter solstice, casting light on its ancient carvings.
After spending a few hours there, we drove another 30 minutes up to Dundalk and picked Jeremy up for dinner. After dinner, Jeremy showed us around town a bit then we drove through Dundalk Institute of Technology, where he’s been attending school the past three years. I guess we were so excited to visit with him, or perhaps so tired, that we didn’t take any pics of Dundalk. Since Jeremy got done with all his final tests earlier than expected, he decided to join us for the entire Ireland trip. We dropped him back off at his place for the night while we crashed at the Innisfree House a few minutes away. 7:15am is going to come way too early!
Day 2: Dark Hedges, Carrick-A-Rede Rope Bridge, Giant’s Causeway, Dunluce Castle, Letterkenny
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