Dublin

Tim and I landed in Dublin in the evening and took the bus into the city. We immediately met a good friend of mine from Mannheim, Tom, who is living in Dublin and working for Google. We bought some drinks and sat along the River Liffey - the central canal that runs through Dublin.

Our first full day, we walked down the River Liffey to the Guinness factory. On the way, we passed the oldest pub in Dublin - The Brazen Head. Established in the 12th century. HA.

The Guinness Factory is more like a museum than anything. To the right, you can see a sculpture of sorts that involved over 20 artists from the area. It's made to look like a pint of Guinness. The dark bottom part (the Guinness) is wood and some kind of metal set into each other and sculpted with hundreds of different scenes. The top (the foam) is hand sewn lace. 

Below, Tim and I took a photo in one of the original ads for Guinness. 

The last part of the tour, we learned how to pour the perfect pint. 6 steps: 1. examine the glass for any smudges, etc. 2. Line up the Guinness logo with the spout and open the tap all the way 

3. When it's about 3/4 full, start to straighten the glass and turn off the tap 4. let it rest for 2 minutes 5. push the tap back to fill it until there is a tiny dome over the glass and 6. serve it to the customer with the logo facing them. 

For the next 2 days, we observed and judged other bar tenders who were not serving Guinness like this. 

 We ordered a flight at one of the microbreweries in Dublin. Met a couple from Pennsylvania and talked with them for awhile.

Trinity College

We went by Trinity College, sat on the grass, got kicked off the grass, and then wandered around campus. We also made a stop at Dublin Castle and spent a couple hours in the Chester Beatty Library - a good friend of mine lived in Dublin for a summer and tipped us off to the library. It is free (!!) and houses hundreds of ornate books - similar to the Book of Kells, but instead of one book, multiple floors. It was amazing. They had a piece of the original scroll from the Book of John, as well as ancient religious texts from Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism.

Day 2 in Dublin, we walked to the Jameson Distillery. Tim convinced me to volunteer to be one of the tasters on our tour. We got to compare Irish, Scottish, and American whiskey. Irish whiskey is triple distilled and in the distilling process, heated with clean fuel (e.g., gasoline). Scottish whiskey is double distilled and in the process heated with peat, and American whiskey is only single distilled. Without being someone who even likes whiskey, it was really informing to be able to taste the difference. I liked the Jameson and Scottish the best. The Jameson has more vanilla flavors, but the smokey flavor in the Scottish was pretty good too. 

The last thing we did was take a bus north to a museum/graveyard to try to track down some of Tim's Doyle relatives. Unfortunately, we didn't have any names past his grandparents who are living in the US, and the records at the graveyard indicated that there were over 400 Doyles buried there since they started keeping records in the early 1900s. The graveyard was founded in the late 1800s though, so there are even more than that. One of the most famous Doyles buried there was a Patrick Doyle (which is also Tim's brother's name) who was killed part of a riot pre-WWI (I think? I'm forgetting the specific dates). We found many other Doyles throughout the graveyard too.

 


 We met Tom for one last drink by the Harp Bridge before heading back to the hostel.














And that concludes the adventure!!! We've been discussing later installments and since I'm not going to be able to have a lot of time off for the next couple years, Nova Scotia and/or Vancouver, BC have been tossed around as good ideas... But I guess we'll see. Thanks for reading!

Deutschland mit Tim

Tim and I landed in Germany around 11pm, took a bus to Mainz and met our friend Jonathan there. We know him from Louisville - he was a grad student with Tim in the school of music. He is living in Austria and met us up in Mainz on a mini-vacation. Theresa picked all of us up at the main train station. After a good night's sleep, Theresa, Julian, and Matthias took us for a walk around Bodenheim. Bodenheim is known for their wine, so we saw a lot of vineyards and signs all around describing the different grapes and their uses.

Bodenheim vineyards

View of Bodenheim from the top of the vineyard

The German beers that we sampled

That evening (the 4th of July), we went to the grocery where we picked out a plethora of different German beers. Karl had some in the cellar as well so we had an evening of German beer tasting. The big discovery was that contrary to a pilsner made in the U.S., or even imported in, a pilsner in Germany is actually really good! Theresa had saved some sparklers so after our beers, we all went out into the garden and light sparklers and sang patriotic songs. Best 4th I've had in a while!!

The next morning we headed into the city with Theresa to stop at Eisgrub-Bräu, the microbrewery in Mainz. We each tried a different brew and had a pretzel. Delicious! Then Tim, Jonathan and I hopped on a train to Mannheim.

gardens behind the Mannheim Water Tower

In front of the Water Tower

Directly off the train, we did a mini-loop around Mannheim. We walked to the Water Tower, and then around to the main square (Paradeplatz) and then past the Uni before we met my old roommate and wonderful friend, Marieke. Heading to her apartment, a few old friends came by, we ordered pizza, and spent the night drinking wine, discussing German politics, and staying up way too late. 

Another good friend, Sebastian was in town from Hamburg! We met up with him, had coffee and caught up. He is starting a master's in European Government this fall down in the south of Germany. One year there and one year in Barcelona! Tim and I planned a day trip to Heidelberg (20 minutes by train), but first we stopped at the market, we sampled some cheesecake and looked around the Marktplatz. 

Me and Sebastian at the Market. He's about 6'6" so I had to stand up really tall!

We grabbed a train to Heidelberg and walked along the Philosopher's Path - a paved path that goes up along the river opposite the main city. Below you can see a view of the river Neckar and city Heidelberg from the Path. You can also see the ruined Heidelberg castle on the far left in the picture. 

 We stopped at another microbrewery in Heidelberg before we headed up to see the ruins of the castle. We each had a pint and a pretzel. I liked that this brewery had chandeliers decorated with hops.

To the right is a view of the city from the castle ruins. You can see the bridge where we crossed over from the Philosopher's Path. Heidelberg is very beautiful, but time to head back to Mannheim! We had dinner plans with Marieke and her boyfriend, also named Tim. He made pasta from scratch and Marieke made a delicious cream sauce. We also had some salad, and Tim's mother had just sent him some German cheesecake. It's much different that our version of cheesecake. Much less sweet, more cheesy, and she had put raisins in! Delicious. Top it all off with an espresso and we were set for the evening.

from the left: Marieke, Tim, Sara, Daniel, me, Tim, and Marieke's dog Luuk

 Our last morning in Mannheim, we took the train to Ladenburg, where my old roommate Daniel now lives. We had a breakfast like none other including eggs, brötchen, caprese salad, fresh fruit, coffee, juice, I ate sooooo much.

Then off to Taunnustein to see Franzi! Again, the evening was filled with much eating (homemade asparagus soup, deep fried cheese, fresh veggies, and this strawberry dessert, plus some of Papa's fancy liquor), talking with Franzi, her boyfriend Sebastian, and my German host parents from way back when. We spent the day before we headed back to Dublin wandering around Taunnustein with Mama, and then Wiesbaden with Franzi. Unfortunately, I had a slip up and interpreted the wrong time that we needed to catch the bus to the airport, but Franzi accommodated and very kindly drove us two hours out of her way to get us there on time.... THANKS, FRANZI! Next and last installment: 2 days in Dublin.

County Clare!

Tim and I got back from our first Europe adventure a couple weeks ago. The trip consisted of five days of backpacking in western Ireland (County Clare), a week of visiting friends and family in Germany, and then two days in Dublin. I'm going to try to do this in 3 installments. Hopefully I'll be more successful this time with the "installment" idea.

First of all, our flight had a 3 hours delay. We had been considering taking the extra flight the airline was offering to get people off the plane and $900 voucher to arrive 2 hours later but figured it wasn't worth the risk of losing luggage and the hassle of getting the car late, etc. Then the thunderstorm hit Charlotte and we sat in the airport for an extra hour and a half, and then in the plane for an hour and a half and should have taken the extra flight. Hind sight. In any case, we finally got there and picked up the rental car. Driving on the wrong side of the car and wrong side of the road was WEIRD! But Tim did great!

We took all day driving across the country, stopping every few hours to stretch our legs, drink a coffee to fight the jet lag, and look around whatever city we were in. We stopped in Tullamore (famous for their Tullamore D.E.W. whiskey), Birr, and Ennis before arriving in Lehinch, a coastal surfing town that served as our home base. 

view of the Atlantic from our hostel in Lehinch

Starting our hike the next day was very exciting! We did about 9 miles + 2 uphill both ways and out of the way to stop at the Clare Jam Shop - definitely worth it! We were greeted with some great views of the countryside:

Cows and fog!

found a castle:

Doonnagore Castle

And purchased some lunch at the Clare Jam Shop: Guinness Mustard, Strawberry Jam, Marmelade, and Blackberry and Port Jam.

Aillie River Hostel

The end of the day brought us to Doolin, where we stayed in what was my favorite hostel of the whole trip, the Aillie River Hostel. We stayed here overnight before we took a ferry the next day to the Aran Islands.

Day 2 enjoying Doolin

Day 3 we got on the ferry to head to the Aran Islands - the waves were huge! 12-15 feet high and boy did we get wet! But we were also some of the lucky few who did not get seasick. Below is Tim in his rain suit being blown around the boat. I tried to take more photos, but really needed both hands to hold on. It was pretty terrifying, but what an adventure. Whew.

 The weather once we got the Islands was beautiful! We rented bikes and began exploring. The first stop was the Seven Churches - ruins of literally seven churches built between the 8th and 12th centuries all in the same area. It also has a lot of graves and it was interesting to see gravestones from the 1500s right next to ones from 1990. We were on Inis Mor (pronounced Inish more), the largest of the three Aran Islands. There are about 900 residents who live there year round.

 The next stop on our bike tour was the old fort. It was built, LITERALLY, on the edge of this crazy cliff and there were no guard rails or anything to stop you from falling off. I took this series of pictures - we crawled the last few feet to the edge to be sure there were no untimely deaths. It really felt like we were standing/laying on the end of the world.

Yikes! We had another adventure trying to find the "Worm Hole." This is a naturally occurring hole cut in the rock on the south side of the island. It was rather difficult to find. We took some wrong turns and eventually found some red arrows painted on the rocks that guided the way - somewhat. Just like being out on the edge of the fort hanging off the cliff, the Worm Hole reminded me how powerful nature is. 

We also saw the smallest church in the world (see below) and another graveyard on the island. There were a couple people who served in the U.S. army buried there as well as the guy who starred in the movie "The Man of Aran" from the 1960s? 70s? way back when. 

From there, we headed back to the mainland on a much calmer boat ride. We could actually see the other two islands and I got sunburned (again). 

The hike that afternoon took us to Lisdoonvarna, where we stopped at our first Irish microbrewery, The Roadside Tavern, and enjoyed the three beers brewed there (black, red, and pale). They also had some of the best food of the trip! 

Our final day of hiking was the longest and it rained for the entire four and a half hours back to Lehinch. We hurt all over and spent the afternoon sitting in our room exchanging foot massages.  

The next day, we had a flight to Germany but first, stopped in Galway to check out the city for a couple hours before we needed to be back in Dublin. Galway exceeded both our expectations, who knows how much the weather accounted for that after our hell-hike. 

Galway

I'll pick back up here to share our adventures in Germany!

I wonder if not posting since in 10 months means that I have once again failed at blogging. NO! I refuse to admit defeat! This academic year has been insane, including (but not limited to) a published manuscript, TA duties, full class load, practicum at the Veteran's Affairs Med Center, and writing my Preliminary Exam (once passed, I can start my dissertation proposal to enter doctoral candidacy!). However, this blog is not about my business, nor is that an excuse. Most of my travels the past months have been in Georgia (Atlanta, Savannah, Statesboro, Claxton, Augusta, among others), visiting my good friend Tim. Over Memorial Day weekend, he and I and a friend from Michigan, Jon, went to a Bluegrass festival in Cumberland, Maryland and had a fantastic time, so I thought I would get back on this old horse and post a bit about it!

The festival site was absolutely gorgeous - in this little valley, surrounded by mountains. Weather was perfect too (some cold, some sun, some sunburn)

Jon and I sitting in the grass, waiting to hear some music!

We heard a lot of different bands. Including: Blue Mafia, Keller Williams, The Del McCoury Band, Yonder Mountain String Band, Trey Anastasio, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band, and the Infamous Stringdusters. The highlight of the weekend was the Old Crow Medicine Show concert on Saturday. I danced my feet off and sang my heart out. 

Old Crow!

Overall, fantastic weekend. And yes, Tim trimmed his beard when we got home. 

Coming up next: Ireland (leaving June 27, 2013)!!! Should be some fantastic updates afterwards :D