Honeymoon: Euro Trip - Day 12

We had our alarm go off around 7 and got up around 7:30. We slept very well and we really didn't want to get out of that bed...it was so comfortable. Ben got dressed quickly to go validate parking since parking wasn't free and we had to park out on the street in front of the hotel. I finally had to pry myself out of the bed and started getting ready and packing up our stuff.

We went down for breakfast. I ordered two sunny side up eggs and toast, and Ben risked ordering pancakes and bacon. We were also served on this really fancy two-tiered serving tray. It had yogurt, granola, fruit, porridge, an array of small pastries, orange juice and coffee. I've never had porridge before, and it was similar to oatmeal and grits, but it had its own unique texture. I liked it. I am not sure if that makes me weird or not.

We went back upstairs, finished packing and then called the bellhop to come get our bags. Yes, we know we could do it ourselves but at a 5-star hotel it's common courtesy to utilize their hospitality. They helped us load our car and then we went back inside to ask any advice about what they knew about Glasgow. They had a lot of great information, and we thanked them for their time. They told us to enjoy the rest of our honeymoon.

We left Dublin, drove the 2 hours north to Belfast. We plugged the address to the Titanic Museum and followed the GPS's directions to the highway obviously trying to avoid the tolls. The GPS took us through some small towns before redirecting us to the highway. 

We coasted all the way up to the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland. I thought there would be some sort of marker or stop along the way but there wasn't. We did notice we needed gas, so we stopped at a rest area with gas. Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, therefore, uses pounds and not the Euro but they use miles per hour and gallons instead of kilometers per hour and liters. Our car actually knew where to make this change and changed from km to mph. We were super weirded out.

We got into Belfast and went directly to the Titanic Museum. We didn't have a ton of time to wander around because we had to get in line for the ferry in a bit. I've always wanted to see where the Titanic was built, moored and departed. We parked in the garage, used the restroom and went up into the building. We didn't have enough time to explore the museum or take the tour, but we did see a few things before going outside to see what we actually came for.

We went out back to the dry dock to see where the ship was built (1909 to 1912) by Harlan and Wolff under the White Star Line. I was standing where the Titanic was built! I was in awe. It was hard to imagine an enormous ship in front of you being built by 15,000 men, under poor conditions, without any safety precautions. Just trying to put yourself in that time period to envision what life had to be like back then was difficult, especially what we know now. Anyway, it was so cool to actually be there.

We still had a little bit of time to kill before the ferry ride, so Ben and I walked over to the Thompson Graving Dock to see where it was moored in the slip while it was being outfitted and some supplies were stocked. The voyage from Belfast to Southampton was often called the "delivery trip" which primarily featured engineers, firemen and a select few from Harlan and Wolff to fix issues if they were to arise. The ship was there from February to April 10, 1912, when it left the harbor. It was surreal being in that spot too. I felt like I walked into a history documentary.

We walked back to the building, did a few of the caches, a virtual cache, TITANIC (GC891GZ) and a traditional, Titanic Quarter #1: Titanic Yard (Yard No. 401). 

We made it back down to the parking garage and drove the short trip over to the ferry dock. We showed the clerk our reservation information and followed directions into lane 5. We still had about an hour until we boarded but it's better to be early rather than late...especially when getting onto a ferry. They do recommend getting there early just in case something happens.  At home, it was 6 a.m. and where we were it was 2 p.m. so we called Erika knowing she would be up working. We talked to her for a little less than an hour. She said they had a huge storm the night before and knocked out power in a bunch of areas, but she and Zac were spared.

We started seeing trucks and cars moving in front of us onto the ferry. We followed suit and found our place in line next to a giant truck filled with sheep. We grabbed what we thought we would need and walked up the stairs to the deck. We found a place to sit and then went to see what the cafeteria had. I really wanted to spend the Pounds my sister gave me. Sadly, the cafeteria did not take cash. We ordered a burger and some dirty fries. We found a place to sit and got situated. We found out you can't return to your car during the ride. Ben somehow convinced one of the ferry attendants to let him go back to our car to grab a few things.

I wrote in my journal and Ben, and I played dice and Rummy to pass the time. I went outside on the deck a few times to take a couple pictures and to enjoy the frigid winds of the Irish Sea. We used the restroom a few times as well. We got the announcement that we were getting close to Cairnryan and the ferry terminal. I grabbed our stuff and waited for Ben to join me before we walked back down to the car.

We sat there and waited until it was our turn to leave the ferry. We put the address to the hotel in Glasgow into the GPS and off we went. It was going to be about a two-hour drive. It hailed hard going up the hill onto the highway from the ferry terminal.

The two-hour drive was uneventful because it was dark and some parts were rainy. Welistened to music and chatted about random things as we drove. We arrived in Glasgow and right away it reminded me of Seattle. We arrived at our hotel, but there was no available parking, so we checked in, unloaded our stuff and Ben got directions to an overflow parking garage a few blocks away. Of course, we had to pay for that garage too. I took the stuff up to our room, 909, and then went down to wait for Ben. He arrived shortly after - he said getting to the parking garage was confusing.

We went and walked to the hotel that was inside the hotel called Chop. We were seated quickly and given a menu. Our server sounded just like Uncle Scrooge from DuckTales and I loved it! He explained the specials and told us he would be right back after we perused the menu. Ben got a Guinness and I got a Scottish IPA. I am not really a fan of IPAs, but I had to try a beer from Scotland. I wasn't super hungry because we had that burger on the ferry, so I ordered an appetizer. While in Scotland I decided to try the haggis balls and Ben ordered the chicken and ribs meal. We ended up sharing our meals because Ben wanted to try haggis. It actually wasn't that bad.

After dinner, we paid for breakfast for the next day since it wasn't included in our reservation and then headed up to our room. I got cleaned up and then we watched A Goofy Movie from our account. I did my post, wrote in my journal and we discussed what we were going to do after breakfast before we left Glasgow. Ben messed with the lights, and we finally went to bed after around 12:30. 

Next Adventure: Honeymoon: Euro Trip - Day 13

Honeymoon: Euro Trip - Day 11

I felt better in the morning, and we got up at 7 and started getting ready for the day. We got all packed up and went down to breakfast. It was a continental spread plus the kitchen menu if you wanted something specific. We both had stuff from the continental breakfast counter and Ben ordered a traditional English breakfast, we shared part of it. Ben had a coffee and an apple juice and I had orange juice. The food was delicious. 

Ben asked if we wanted to do the Kilkenny Castle tour since we didn't get to do the Blarney Castle the day before due to the rain. I said, "let's do it!"

We went back to the room, finished packing up our stuff, made one more sweep and then took it out to the car and then checked out. From there, we decided to walk around the town for a bit before our castle tour at 9:30 that morning. We walked to the virtual cache, Clash of the Ash: Kilkenny (GC890ZT) and we learned about the popular sport of hurling. It was a very big deal in Ireland. We had to pose like one of the people in the statue and pretend we were hurling. 

We walked along the River Nore and saw some swans. We got to the castle grounds, but we were still too early. We had to kill about a half hour, so we walked along the trail system out to the duck pond to grab, My Favorite Park (GC5298C). We walked past several people jogging and walking dogs. It was a quick grab and an easy going walk. We got our names on the log, put it back and made our way back to the castle for our tour.

The castle was open for our tour. It was a self-guided tour, and it took us through all the floors of the castle. There were lots of rooms to look through. It's amazing how much history those walls have seen over the course of time.

Kilkenny Castle was built in 1260 to control a fording-point of the River Nore and the junction of several routeways. It was a symbol of Norman occupation, and it is original 13th century condition, it would have formed an important element of the town's defenses with four large circular corner towers and massive ditch, part of which can still be seen today on the Parade.

In 1967, Arthur Butler, 6th Marquess of Ormonde, sold the castle for £50 to the Castle Restoration Committee for the people of Kilkenny. The castle and grounds are now managed by the Office of Public Works, and the gardens and parkland are open to the public. The Parade Tower is a conference venue. Since 2002, ceremonies for conferring awards and degrees on the graduates of the Kilkenny Campus of the National University of Ireland, Mynooth, have been held at the castle.

Once we were done walking around inside the castle, we used the restrooms and did the earthcache, Kilkenny Castle (GC6QA6W) outside. It took us a little bit to find all the pieces we needed but we did. We had to change our itinerary because of the rain from the previous day. We wanted to go into the Wicklow Mountains to see some waterfalls but decided this wasn't the best time of the year to go. We walked back to the car in the parking garage and headed towards Bray. 

We took the highway and we were glad to see that highway didn't take us off the road somewhere weird, through tight narrow roads and back on the highway again. We did drive through several hundred roundabouts though and saw a double rainbow - we heard that was good luck in Ireland. We had to know exactly which exit we needed before we got there because driving on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road messed with our minds.

We made it to Bray, and the traffic was on the heavy side for some reason, but we were able to get to the roads we needed. The only time I've ever heard of this town was through geocachers who have visited Ireland to grab a specific cache at Bray Head, a hill, that forms part of the Wicklow Mountains. I figured since we were here and had some time, we needed to go grab Europe's First (GC43). This is the first geocache placed in Europe.

We found the streets that we needed to turn onto to find the parking lot we needed to start our hike. We grabbed what we needed and opened the cache page to follow some instructions that were left by another cacher a couple months back. They had described an easier, less muddy way to the cache. We started up the hill and followed the step-by-step directions to get us to the next waypoint. I am glad we wore pants and sturdy shoes on the next section. It was a narrow trail through a bunch of scratchy bushes, a large scree pile and it was like that all the way to the cache. We did take a few breaks to catch our breath.

We were almost to the cache when we passed two women sitting off the trail enjoying snacks and drinks. They asked us if we were there to get the cache, we said yes, and they replied, "you guys are close." We dipped down on the trail and found rocky outcrop the ammo can was hiding in. Ben and I spent some time going through its contents, writing our names on the log and getting a few pictures with it. This was definitely a destination cache - the view from up there was amazing! We put everything back and walked back up to the trail where the two ladies were.

We spent about 20 minutes talking to them. They were from the Netherlands, their caching names were Vader and Zoon, and were on a week long holiday in Ireland. They told us about some of their adventures they've been on so far that week. We told them where we were from and they were excited to meet people from Washington State, since that is where the headquarters of geocaching is, and they had several questions for us. 

They told us we needed to go to the top before we left the area. We took their advice and started the hike up. We thanked them for the short hang out. It didn't take us long to get to the top of the hill. There were a bunch of people up there getting pictures with the cross. It took us a while to get a picture of it without people in the background of our pictures. We also worked on the earthcache, Scree Slope at Bray Head (GC80PB5) while we were up there. It was windy.

We decided to go down the muddy way and grab another geocache, Cache In - Slί de Buitléar (GC5GWND). I had Ben go and find that one. It was a quick grab. We continued down the rough path full of mud, rocks and exposed roots. 

There was even a creek running down the hill on some of the pathways we had to avoid. I noticed also on the way down, there were so many footpaths, and I could see how someone could take the wrong one and get lost. I had maps on my phone, and we were able to get down with ease. 

We heard a bunch of teenagers walking up on another path and it sounded like someone had fallen in the mud. We rinsed our shoes off in the small creek when we got to the rocks and then the eventual stairs that lead back down to the parking lot. I thought this hike would take longer but it was surprisingly quick. 

Since we had to alter our day due to the previous day's weather, we knew we were going to be in Dublin for the night and had to fill in a few more hours with an activity. I remembered Fitzy visited the Guinness Storehouse and that sounded like a cool tour. So, we booked us a tour for 4:30! We drove into Dublin and made our way towards the Guinness Storehouse. We were a little early, but we wanted to make sure we found the customer parking lot and there was plenty of room for us. We drove into the gated lot, and an attendant guided us on where we needed to go. It was easy. We grabbed what we needed and walked the half a block over to the entrance in our rain jackets.

We got in line to get checked in and found out that we could jump into the shelf guided tour at any time, so we did! We learned that they have been brewing beer for 250 years and the 9,000-year lease signed and sealed in 1759 by Arthur Guiness himself! 

It was fun learning the process from grain to glass, the history, the factory, the people, the advertising, the taste testing and beyond. The factory was multi-leveled, and we got to celebrate with a free pint at the top in the gravity bar! We were probably there for at least two hours.

We grabbed a few souvenirs before heading back to the car. But first, we did a traditional cache, The Guinness Logbook of Records (GC1JE8J) a virtual cache, Arthur Guinness (GC7B7RT) and a locationless cache, Where's 25? - Locationless Cache (GCA2025), celebrating the 25th anniversary of geocaching. We grabbed all three. 

We set the GPS to our 5-star hotel. Neither of us have stayed in a 5-star hotel, so we were excited. We pulled up to the historical building, The Dylan Hotel - the foundation was laid by Queen Victoria's daughter in 1900 as a place for nurses to stay while they were employed by the hospital around the corner - and someone was out immediately to take our bags and check us in. Our bellhop took our bags to room 304 and we followed him to get settled in.

We went downstairs to the restaurant and looked over the menu. It kinda looked like we were probably the only guests they had that night. The hotel and restaurant were virtually empty. The fish and chips looked delicious, so I ordered the Atlantic Hake with fries and mint pea mash. I just had water with mine. Ben ordered the halibut and a double of the rare Midleton Whiskey. The hotel surprised us with free champagne because Ben told them we were on our honeymoon. We thanked them for the kind gesture. When we were done, Ben asked for the dessert menu. We ordered some gelato and again, they surprised us with a small dessert platter with "Congratulations" written in chocolate on the plate. We thanked them again and felt like VIPs at this 5-star hotel. We paid for our food and went upstairs to relax.

I got cleaned up from the day's activities and that shower was amazing! I put on my bathrobe and slippers that were provided to us in our room. Ben decided to go take a shower as well and put on his bathrobe and slippers as well. 

We watched Super Mario Brothers Movie while I wrote in my journal and made my daily post. We had enough time to watch a second movie, and we chose 50 First Dates and then went to bed around 1 a.m.

Next Adventure: Honeymoon: Euro Trip - day 12