We had a great time in Ireland after a long 10 years of not visiting. We enjoyed visiting some places that we've been before - like St. Patrick's Cathedral and Grafton Street - in Dublin. The Guinness Storehouse was better than we'd remembered and a highlight for the kids. We went to Jameson mostly to get some whisky that is only sold there but the changes to the distillery made it seem like just a big bar area so not much excitement or Irish heritage there - except a nice photo spot for St. Patrick's Day! In Dublin, we also caught the St. Patrick's Day parade after the morning at Guinness. It was mostly a big American holiday/parade and not that exciting. It was crowded and we couldn't see much. The kids also didn't enjoy the smoking everywhere. Cecilia's asthma really didn't like it! But the hotel and food (even the ice cream with chocolate that Kyle thought was a wood chip!!) were excellent. We enjoyed fish and chips, Guinness stew, good steak at Fire steakhouse and overall a lot of fond memories re-lived in Dublin.
An area Eric and the kids hadn't been to before was the Cliffs of Moher and Galway. Unfortunately the day we chose to take the very long day trip over there and back to Dublin was rainy and we couldn't see much of the Cliffs. The highlight for me in Galway was going to the original Claddaugh store where my ring is from. The girls picked out necklaces with their birthstone and Maeve's will be part of her Fall Golden Birthday this year! The countryside was beautiful, though, and stopping at Leprechaun castles and seeing fairy trees was fun.
The 2nd half of the trip was to visit Bernadette, Kevin, and Adam in Belfast. We took the train up to Belfast and stayed downtown at the Hilton. We had beautiful weather and everyone said it was coming at a good time since they had endured 40 days straight of rain. We went straight to the Titanic museum that we could walk to and it was a great experience. We had been before but the kids enjoyed the audio tour and learning all about it. The next day we did a day trip to Giant's Causeway with a quick stop at Bushmills. We also saw Dunlace castle and toured around to the amazing sites on the coast there and saw Portrush Golf Club where the British Open was last year.
The highlight, of course, was spending time with Bernadette, Kevin, and Adam. We visited their house, we went to the W5 science museum, we saw Adam's school, and ate out at McHugh's pub. We didn't get to see too much live music at night as the kids couldn't go in the pubs in the evening but luckily on the last day we went to St. George's market in Belfast and caught some trad music and got amazing local crafts as souvenirs.
It wasn't long enough with only 7 days but we packed a lot in and had a lot of fun. We can't wait to go back!
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