Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Honeymoon/ 1 Year Anniversary!!

I was looking through my computer's files and I found this blog which I NEVER posted!!!  Enjoy, this was about our honeymoon/ 1 year anniversary on August 29, 2010:


Here it is, finally our honeymoon blog... almost a year later.. I warn you this will be LONG!

So as I said in the previous post, we left London very early in the morning to go to Dublin, Ireland.  Once we arrived, we got our rental car and headed to the hotel.  We saw a lot of pretty churches, and houses along the way.


After we checked in, we decided to go for a walk, there was no one out on the streets, since it was still around 8am. After we ate breakfast, we went back around the hotel, and decided to do our souvenir shopping.  I think I had a little too much fun in shop!  We walked to the Temple Bar, and saw more beautiful churches, and lots of people.



We had decided to walk to the Guinness Brewery (terrible idea).  It was such a lot walk, but we had the opportunity to see a lot of the city.  The Guinness brewery was AWESOME!  


They had a really cool waterfall thing, right in the middle of the building.  The main building where they held their self guided tours was in the shape of a pint glass, with the top of the glass had a room with a 360 view of Dublin.



We walked around all the different displays, learning about the deliciousness that is Guinness, until we got to the very top, where we enjoyed the view of Dublin with a nice tall glass of Guinness.



 Both of our beers had a shamrock shape in the foam! I thought that was very noteworthy.







We took the bus back to our hotel area, and went to a little Italian restaurant called “Toto” for dinner, then headed back to the hotel, and literally passed out!

Day 2

We got up early the next morning, and went to a yummy bagel place called “The Bagel Bar” for breakfast, then hit the road to Kilkenny (which was our favorite city in Ireland).  The drive down to Kilkenny, was so beautiful, perfect green landscape and wonderful weather. We took a really nice walk around town and went to our first castle (Kilkenny Castle), the inside of the castle was really pretty.  We took a self guided tour of the castle, then walked around the gardens around the castle.


















 We then went to Esquires Coffee House, for a nice afternoon coffee break.  Little side note, the coffee in all of Ireland was as thick as mud, delicious, but really strong.  We loved it.  After our coffee break we went to our second brewery of the trip, Smithwick’s.


The tour was really awesome, there was 6 of us on the tour, so the tour guide took his time and showed us everything, and shared so much of the history of not only the brewery, but of Kilkenny as well. We learned a lot of how the town came together to build the St. Francis Abby Church, when times were really hard financially, it was a real touching story.  After our tour, we went to the underground bar they had at the brewery, where we learned how to pour the perfect Smithwick’s and drank!










 After we finished our beer (which is now one of my favorites), we walked around the town a bit more, had dinner, then went to the hotel to crash again.



Day 3

Up early the next day, free breakfast at the hotel (lots of salted meats). Then we were off to Blarney Castle!  Before we went into the castle we walked around “The Rock Close”, oh boy was it amazing.  They had waterfalls, a rock shaped like a witch, and signs with stories on them.







 We then ventured into Blarney Castle, this place was HUGE, and had the most fantastic views you will ever see.








We walked up some crazy skinny, spiral staircases, to get to the tippy top where the Blarney stone was.




And at the top we both kissed the Blarney stone, and boy was it scary.  You were a million feet in the air, at the top of the castle, and they made you lay back and grab onto the bars and hang basically upside down. It was awesome haha.





After the Blarney castle we decided to go to the Jameson Distillary (Erik loves his whiskey)! We doodled around the gift shop while we waited for our tour to start.





The distillery was really cool, we learned it was an old distillery and that they had since built a new one just a few miles down the road, which was fully operational.






We went to the old barrel room where they had a display set up of all the different aged whiskies.


 After the barrel room, Erik got to participate in a whiskey tasting, where they tried 3 different types. One was obviously Jameson, they had Johnny Walker, and Jack Daniels, Erik passed and got a certificate :)



Day 4

We spent our fourth day in Ireland driving around the Ring of Kerry.  I cannot even begin to tell you how amazingly beautiful it was.  We had to stop every 10 minutes to take a picture, stunning.  I wish I had a better camera, because I don’t think my camera did this place justice.  I will let the pictures do the talking for this section of the bloggy.































Day 5

We took a ferry across the ocean, to go to the Cliffs of Mohr.  Here is what our navi showed us as we were going across the ferry.


 On our drive over there, we got to experience, the crazy TINY Irish roads, we took a pretty cool video of Erik driving.  Ill try and post it here, if not it will be on facebook.




I believe everyone should go to Ireland and go to the Cliffs of Mohr, OMG they are spectacular.




They do warn you, they are pretty scary.


Im also going to let the pictures tell you the story of how amazing the cliffs are.














After the cliffs we went out to dinner at a place called Pier Head, the food was really yummy, and it was right by the water.






Day 6

Our last day in Ireland, and it was our anniversary!  We spent the day driving across the country, I believe it took us 3-4 hours. Here are some more amazing views:






So we got back into Dublin and our hotel was near a stadium, where they were playing some sport haha.  The entire area was closed off, and there was a crazy amount of traffic. I had to get out of the car and go up to some cops in order to ask them if they would let us down the street where our hotel was.  Needless to say it was a pain in the butt to get to our hotel, but it was worth it.  We got a really sweet deal, for a king size suite, with bathrobes, and free drinks. We went to dinner at the hotel, and got some wine and celebrated our 1 year anniversary.




It was the perfect way to end the most amazing trip!

1 comment:

Lauren said...

You Two Are Too Cute!!! ;)