Ireland on a micra scale

Mum and I flew into Dublin from Berlin with aer lingus and their suitably green colored planes and uniforms!

the little micra!

Our rental car for the week is a little red Nissan micra and it has been really easy to drive, even on the tiny (and I mean one lane, no verge and rock walls either side) roads we've come across so far on our trip. We rented a gps as well, and it's proved a godsend (mostly!) in us knowing road names when the signs are missing.

Outside the stallion's boxes

We set off from the airport bound for the Irish national stud. We walked around as the stallions were being led to service, paddock or stable; the mares and their super cute foals were put to bed for the night and listened as the tour guide made many euphemisms so the language would go over the head of the kids on the tour. It was an interesting insight into the peak of the industry.


From Kildare we drove across to our accommodation for the night, at Galway. Some of the roads are being re-done at the moment, and our gps was very confused so we had a bit of a detour along the new motorway to Limerick before correcting up to Galway.

Green, rocks and sheep!

On our drive we lots of animals; sheep, goats, some cows and horses; but what struck me was the green-ness of everything and the use of rock everywhere - road side fences are rock walls, everyone has rock wall driveway entrances and even a proportion of stone houses!

We pulled into our bnb for the night, found an Irish pub and awoke to Marian's (our bnb hostess), huge irish breakfast. The irish make interesting brown bread! Marian had a good chat with us, she's the president of the local flower association (you should see her garden!) and has a daughter studying in Adelaide. Everywhere we go we are told that the person's son/daughter/relative is living in Australia at the moment, I think the unemployment realities of Ireland are pushing people elsewhere.

We set off in the little red micra for a day of driving around the Connemarra. It was a drizzly day, so we just stopped quickly at lots of different places, but spent most of the day in the car.

Friar

We stopped at an old Franciscan Friar, which was down a one way 'lane' (if it can even be called that!) and wandered through the ruins. 

In the Friar - note the burial plaques on the ground, some from the 1970s - a strange wish to be buried in the middle of a Friar I think.....

We encountered some interesting roads on our journey, with one lane streets so little even the micra only just squeezed through, and blind corners that you hoped had no one coming the opposite direction. If we didn't have the gps we would have not had a clue! Although, it did take us down some interesting paths!

Some of the pretty views along the way

The towns over here are so little and quaint, with barely two pubs marking some, others are larger with one or two main streets, but a fabulous laid back attitude in all, I've really enjoyed having a walk along (usually on a quest for a bathroom!).

The scenery has been more barren than we had expected, with mountain after mountain covered only with tufts of grass between exposed rock and greenery only in the lower areas. There are sheep and cute little lambs everywhere, which may explain the lack of vegetation.

We had a lamb pie for dinner, just to try to even up the balance a bit (joking Chloe!)

Day Three:
We hoped to get to Cliffs of Moher on our way to picking up Jess, my friend from Melbourne who's teaching in London and currently has school holidays, but just ran out of time. We went through some towns close to the area and had a pretty good view of some of the cliffs as we went, there seems to be spectacular views at every turn here, it's pretty amazing.

We picked up Jess without any problems and headed out to the Dingle peninsula, had a very mediocre soup at a cafe in Glin (you win some, you lose some!) and traversed the Connor Pass on our way to Dingle.

View from the Connor Pass

The Connor Pass winds up through mountains, on a very little and at times quite precarious little road. Once at the top we pulled over and hiked up to the top of the hill for an even better view, but mainly just to get out of the car!

The one lane road for both direcctions of traffic - Connor Pass

Fungie, the Dingle dolphin...... hmmmmm.....

We drove onto Dingle, which is a cute little fishing village out on it's namesake's peninsula. We wandered down its streets, had a look in some of the gift stores, marvelled at the cutest little cheese shop (Simon you would be in heaven!) and had a coffee down on the dock area.

More at dingle

We drove back from Dingle to Killarney where we met our next bnb hostess, Greta, who was also very lovely and settled in for the night.

Day four:

After discovering that Jess likes horseriding, we looked up on the Internet a few places to ring and found one with availability for us in the morning (hopefully before it started raining again), so we were all set for a day of driving around the ring of Kerry and taking in some pretty special scenery as well as a trailride to start the day.

A roadside stop along the way - incredible!

Another hearty Irish breakfast under our belts (or expanding jeans!), we drove through some pretty incredible forest, lakeside and coastal views to get to our horses.

Our leader, Caroline, was a pretty typical horsey person, blunt, upfront and reasonably cautious. She relaxed a bit when we she could see we could ride. Mum was on a lovely plodder of a Clydesdale, Murphy, Jess had the piebald Clancy and I had the cheeky Gillipurn (spelling, who knows!)

The beautiful boys!

Me on Gillipurn

Our ride consisted of walking along the roads to get to the beach area, through a few inlets and sand dunes and a spell along the beach. We had some nice little trots with our horses flicking each other with their tails, or even kicking out in annoyance if one invaded the others personal space and I had a nice canter along. The scenery was spectacular, with mountains surrounding the deserted beach, and cute holiday homes dotted along the coast. It will be an awesome memory of the trip (even if we did have to wash our clothes again that night!)

After the excitement of the ride we drove around the Ring of Kerry and witnessed some pretty incredible views. Caroline had recommended we travel to Valentia island and we had a lovely lunch at Portmagee on the coast there.

Scenery along the drive

In the afternoon we came across the ruinous Ballycarbery castle, the place where Jess was held against her will awaiting rescue from her future fantasy husband on a white horse(!), and a stone fort dating from early AD, that was closely guarded by a herd of heifers (Jess asked them politely to move, but they must not have heard; although, she swears one of them gave her the evil eye for the rest of her walk!)

Stone fort

By the time we made it back to the bnb we were pretty zonked! Another long day of driving, but some great sights seen.

According to my trusty travel companions I must report on the fabulous Irish stew we had for dinner, sitting at the bar at Murphy's pub, and the rather large pint of bulmers I had that made for an interesting walk home. The end. (Jess and Mum's thoughts on the matter will receive no comment!)


- Posted using BlogPress from my iTouch

Location:Galway, Ireland

The final German destination, Berlin

East Side Gallery

Angela put on another amazing German breakfast and then kindly drove us to the train station for our train to Berlin.

On arrival, we dropped our bags at the hotel and hopped on the train across to the East Side Gallery to view the Berlin Wall

East Side Gallery - there was a football game on nearby so the cars were lined up!

We then got back on the train to get to the Charlottenburg Palace and walked around the buildings and gardens. So many people use the gardens as their running track or where they walk their dog - such an impressive place to call that your 'normal' area.

Charlottenburg Palace - from the front

Charlottenburg Palace, from the back

Spring at Charlottenburg!

Church next to Alexanderplatz

The next day we headed out for another big walking day - we started at Alexanderplatz.

From there we walked around the streets of Berlin, past so many incredible buildings - such history. We didn't stop to look in any as we had lots on the list to see!

....and some interesting architecture in places!

 

Just for Camille - there's an entire shop floor devoted to Minis!

'typical' street :P

Checkpoint Charlie

We took in some of the sobering sights of Berlin, with Checkpoint Charlie, the site of all the SS buildings that now has a big museum on the area documenting the rise of Hitler.

We walked through Brandenburg gate, Potzdam place, and took a train to the large department store, KaDeWe. Angela told us that we had to check out the food level and it was pretty impressive. A DavidJones food court on a grand scale.

Brandenburg Tor

A very strange tourist contraption, everyone cycles and one guy steers - often with jerky motions - very strange!

We headed back to the hotel for a quiet night to get ready for our flight to Dublin - two weeks in Germany flew by, but we saw so much, we had a fabulous time.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iTouch

Location:Berlin, Germany

Hobbing around Hamburg

We left Cologne bound for Hamburg, to meet Angela and Claudia; Angela spent some time in Thailand while her husband Rainer was working there, she and Mum became great friends and planned a few international visits! We were lucky enough to stay with the Dorrheide family for the weekend.

Without a reservation on the train, we played seat hockey between those who were getting off and those getting on at different places - you never know whether a reservation is necessary, although the system is cool, LED text lights up above reserved seats, showing the parts of the journey that are reserved.

Angela and her daughter Claudia met us at the train door and we headed off for a tourist bus tour to get our bearings around the city. Hamburg has so many little canals, the catch cry is 'more bridges than Venice and the Netherlands put together', they were used to distribute goods quickly from the port.

There is a large lake in the middle of the city, ringed by parkland and super swish houses, millionaires abound! The tour also took in parts of the port, the new harbour area and many of the beautiful old buildings in the city.

Claudia, Angela and I

After the tour, Angela led us across the city, through a few interesting alleys of shops (the picture is from an area set up after the second world war for the widows of sailors) to have dinner at a traditional restaurant that is famous for selling the Hamburg special, Lebkause (spelling?!). We all sampled the dish, which consisted of shredded corned beef (silverside), in a potato mash mixture served with beetroot and dill pickles- everyone who orders it gets a certificate! Random!

We stayed the night at the Dorrheides' lovely house just out of Hamburg. To get there, we travelled on one of the German autobahns, with no speed limit. Oh boy! I have never been in a car so fast, Angela was happily zooming along and changing lanes at over 180km/hr - huge!

The next morning Angela put on a lovely German breakfast of meats, cheese,  yoghurts, spreads and fresh rolls from the bakery - yum! We set of for an English walking tour of Hamburg which was led by an English pianist who talked quite quickly - but Angela and Claudia's English skills are so good they had no problem keeping up. 'Kim' told us many stories, from the growth of Hamburg as a port and how often it was pirated and the story of the most infamous pirate who, when finally caught and brought with his crew to be executed he bet the executioner that he could run beheaded (think a chicken beheaded) and for every crew member he made it past, they would be saved. As the story goes, he saved every one.

Mum, Angela, Me and Claudia waiting for the tour to start

We walked through areas of churches, significant buildings for the town, even the area where the great fire of 1842 started in a cigar factory (it burnt almost the entire city down over two days),

Where the fire started - its now a restaurant

'Sharpest' building

We also saw the 'sharpest edged building' which was built in the shape of a ship as it was a shipping merchant's headquarters

Kim also took us to the new harbour area, that, much like Melbourne's Docklands is facing a glut of supply and its major landmark, the under construction music hall has blown out from a budget of 28MEuro to over 350MEuro last year when they were informed there would have to be major structural re-inforcement works - so the current indication is over 500MEuro - oh boy!

A small section of the harbour area

The building of blowout interest is the on the left at the end

Amazing wood and brick buildings!

From the tour we went back to the Dorrheides' house for birthday cake for Rainer, Angela's husband who had just arrived back from Thailand. Angela and Rainer took us to Lu(e)neberg, a small university town near Hamburg, where Claudia is at university. Luneburg is a gorgeous little town, that made its money off the salt that lay under the town. Unfortunately, the salt mines have removed so much of the salt that areas of the town have dropped around 10m in places, it looks quite strange! In other areas, foundations of the buildings have been, or need to be re-done and the buildings sag a little. Angela told us that the town 'council' decided to demolish the whole town due to the cost of fixing all the foundations, but the history and tourism that the town has stopped that plan. 

The main square - the slant on the buildings doesn't come out on photo great, but if the angles look peculiar, that's why!

This duck had a great nesting spot!

 We had a beer in the beer garden next to this canal in a busy little restaurant

The Dorrheides' then took us out with them for Rainer's birthday dinner to an incredibly traditional German restaurant in an old farmhouse, with period furnishings and a menu that made translation very difficult! We had a lovely meal to finish off an amazing weekend!

Misadventures around Cologne

From the train heading to Cologne

So we set off nice and early to get a direct train to Cologne from Heidelberg, and had a beautiful scenic trip as the train tracks wind along the Rhein. On one side, we had vineyards on impossibly steep slopes and the other side was the river, with little villages and cities along it's banks, and an old castle ruin at the top of almost every outcrop, it was very picturesque and a definite recommendation for anyone traveling by train through Germany.



Once in Cologne, we found it's most famous landmark, the Cathedral, staring us in the face before we'd even made it out of the Hauptbahnhof.

Chocolate museum!

We walked around Cologne for a while, worked out our river cruise for the next day, visited the Lindt chocolate museum and decided to hop back on the train to visit Du(e)sseldorf for the afternoon.

Unfortunately we didn't find the tourist information booth on our arrival and it turns out that the Aldstadt and river area of Dusseldorf is a fair way away from the train station. We wandered for a while, weren't seeing much, got lost, wandered and got lost again, wandered, got lost and finally gave up on seeing anything interesting and made it back to the train station (with a detour, of course!). By the time we made it back to Cologne, we were stuffed! I must remember to always get a map!
 

Bingen, on a powerwalk to get to the boat in time!

Day two in Cologne we rose extra early to get the 5:56AM train back up (current wise, we headed south) the Rhine to Bingen so we could get the 9:30 cruise down the river to Koblenz and take in the scenery from on the river.

After finding the boat platform just in time, we hopped onto the boat to find it packed full with a Japanese tour group, the boat would almost sway to the side when they all clamored to the edge of the boat to take a photo of a castle!

The four hour cruise was very pleasant, we were very lucky as the sun came out and the wind wasn't too strong. There are so many castles along the Rhine, many are now hotels and inns dot the riverside. There looked to be a great bike path along the Rhine, I reckon a week of bike riding, sampling the local wine and enjoying the historic villages will be on my bucket list!

(warning: lots of random photos of castles follow)

We finished the cruise in Koblenz, the town where the Rhine and the Mozelle (I think that's right!) join together. It's a lovely old place, we had a lovely lunch in a square filled with flowers and historic statues. After wandering for a bit, we headed back to Cologne on the train for an early night.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iTouch

Location:Cologne, Germany