A bit of Irish luck...

Hi all you awesome people...  It has once again been a while... :)  The weeks are flying by!  I cannot believe that we are at the end of April already!!  Some travel news...  For Easter Weekend, we had a girls weekend in Dublin, Ireland!  It was SOOO MUCH FUN!!!  For those of you who do not know, Easter works a lot different here in the Netherlands...  We do not have Good Friday as a holiday, we do not have church service on the Friday, but only on Easter Sunday...  The Monday, we did have a public holiday...  Just something interesting I thought to share with you!  I always thought the whole world had Easter Friday as a holiday :)

So we left for Ireland on the Friday evening...  My trip kicked off on a bad note, as we were only allowed to have hand luggage on our flight, and the lady threw away some of my facial products as the bottles were too big - even though the amount of liquid was below the prescribed!  I was not happy :)

Definitely the colour I would have painted my door if I were Irish :)

 We started off our Saturday doing a hop-on-hop-off tour of Dublin!  For those of you wanting to travel - this is definitely the best way to do it!  You have your transport sorted, as well as you get some time to find landmarks and get your bearings of where to go, what to see :)  Marieta and I took a photo with a leprechaun - the kid inside me could not resist :)  Something interesting about Dublin!  The day the Queen Elizabeth II died, the government told the Irish to paint there house doors black as a sign of mourning  (all the houses / apartments look EXACTLY the same!), ...  BUT, because the Irish do not like to be told what to do - they painted their house doors ALL the colours of the rainbow!  It is beautfiul -  all the bright colours in a row...

The Saturday afternoon we did a rural pub crawl in the Wiklow Mountains... A local takes you out into the countryside, and then stops at all the local pubs!  It was great fun!  We met some interesting locals, Carien found her long lost cousin :) (a joke some of the locals made when they heard we were from South-Africa), saw an AMAZING countryside and we even tasted some Guiness beer...  It is a dark beer - and is as Irish as you get.  Some of the locals advised us to put some blackcurrent juice in with the Guiness to make it taste better...   For dinner we stopped in the most beautiful spot!  We had the most amazing food at the one pub (real South-African "kookkos") - in the middle of the mountains - a nice secluded spot!  A lot of walking trials start out from that pub / hotel.  The evening continued, and the last pub we ended up at, the locals were playing music on a guitar, and singing...  And, being South Africans - we could not just sit and listen!  We danced together with the locals in Mickey Finns Pub!  Definitely something I will remember for a long time :) 

In the Wicklow mountains, exploring the countryside...

When in Ireland, do as the Irish do...

The girls enjoying Baileys coffee in Mickey Finns Pub :)

The Sunday we went of a tour of the Guiness Storehouse - giving you the total history of how the beer is made, how everything was established ect...  The most interesting fact I took from the day, is that Mrs Guiness had 21 children!!!  After the Guiness Storehouse we visited Christchurch grounds as well as St Patricks Church grounds.  As it was Easter Sunday, it was very quiet and peacefull!  We took some nice pics in St Patricks gardens...  Check it out...

Christchurch

In the garden of St Patricks Church

St Patricks Church

After visiting the Church grounds, we went for a tour of the Jameson Distillery...  If any of you ever visit Dublin, I would REALLY recommend this!  It was so much fun - they explained to us how Jameson whiskey is made and showed us the process...  At the end of the tour, they looked for volunteers - I obviously put up my hand :) - they needed us for a whiskey tasting - comparing the different types to Jameson.  AWESOME experience!  And I actually learned in the process as well...  "Slange (slan-je)" is the word you say to someone if you "cheers" your drinks :)

For dinner we went to the Temple Bar area.  Also something you need to experience when going to Dublin!  The area is ALIVE, and full of colour!  One thing that was very prominent is the friendliness of the people!  The Irish would help you with ANYTHING!  And they always do it with a smile!  It was really a pleasure going there, and getting to know the Irish culture...

On the Monday we visited Howth - a small little fishing village near Dublin.  It reminded me of Houtbay - a lot!!  We had some nice fish for lunch, and then started the travel bag to reality :) 

I hope you will have an awesome week!  More news to follow soon!!