Ireland

A great time was had by all on our trip of Ireland. When we flew into Dublin all the fields were snowy white and looked stunning.  Dublin itself had had some snow melt so was very icy when walking around the city.  In the morning we started our tour with Mark on the paddy wagon.
Mark was hilarious and made the tour very worthwhile. He was great at explaining the history of spots we were visiting, especially the troubles in Northern Ireland.  Often he would play us songs that were relevant to the place for example U2s Bloody Sunday in Derry where 13 unarmed protestors were shot dead by British Soldiers. Our favourite song was 7 Drunken Nights by The Dubliners - a man suspects his wife of having an affair.  It is very catchy and we requested it alot, and tried to sing it coming home drunk on a few occasions.

Hopefully the song posted above so you can listen to it while reading the blog. 

The first part of our trip was in Northern Ireland - we stayed a night in Derry and Belfast.  The troubled past between Catholics and Protestants is terrible.  We did a black taxi cab ride round Belfast to se the walls that still seperate the two sides.  But whats silly is that the heart of the city is a neutral zone so catholics and Protestants work together no problems but then label themselves one or the other at home time. Silly buggers. In Northern Island we visited the Giants Causeway and walked the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge.
We then moved down to The Republic of Ireland which is on the Euro.  We did so many cool things.  Its great having a local guide as we had many little stop offs to things like the fertility stone and the Leprechaun wishing well. We took a ride in horse carriage around Killarney and kissed the Blarney stone hidden up the top of the Blarney Castle. The highlight of the trip for me was walking along the edge of the Cliffs of Moher.  Crazy how the clifs drop straight down to the sea below. 

The 7 nights we were Ireland we went to the pub pretty much twice a day - for lunch and dinner.  3 nights turned out to be fairly decent sized nights out.  We spent New Years night in a tiny spot called Annascaul which is on the Dingle Peninsular.  The hostel we stayed in was attached to a pub called the Randy Leprechaun so we started our night off there.  In the town there was one street with 6 pubs along it so we pub crawled down the street but only went into one other pub.  The others were closed or empty.  Arrived back in London with much bigger beer bellies and decreased funds in the bank account.