The Green Hills of Ireland and The Magic of a Cold Beer Milk Shake

By Matt & Laurel Talley
 

A photo taken on our trip to the Wicklow Mountains. Click image for a huge detailed photo.
 

{The following is a copy of an e-mail that Laurel sent out to friends and family after a trip to Dublin that included a link to some pictures. I have added some of my own comments, links and pictures to her text. As Laurel is normally my website story idea sounding board, photo editor, and the one who catches my spelling errors after I post, I feel it only right that she should have equal literary representation. Also, There is no way I can write a trip report for this outing as I have a full time job (and then some) and three other stories in the works. I am glad that she is willing to contribute.}

Dearest Friends and Family,

Can you stand another email update of how much fun we are having over here in Europe? A few weeks ago Matt told me that he was being sent on a business trip to Dublin. Aer Lingus was having a pilot strike and they needed his expertise for a few days. The hotel was being paid for and Matt gets a generous allowance for meals and ransportation while on location. All I had to do was book a cheap ticket and we had ourselves a pretty much free mini-vacation to Ireland!

The flight was about an hour and pretty uneventful. We took a shuttle to our hotel and on the way heard a radio news announcement that the strike was over. We were momentarily worried that they would send Matt right home again, but it turned out that he instead would only have to work a few hours each morning and got one entire day off. Usually when he travels for business he works 16-hour days, so this was quite a treat for him. That night we settled into our hotel and then took a cab to downtown Dublin, where we had Chinese food for dinner (I was craving it!) and then made our way to The Oliver St. John Gogarty for a few pints and some live Irish music. It is a Pub in the Temple Bar section of town that has been that location since before 1880. {It is real touristy, you have to get a seat early, and the beer is pricy, but the music is free and really good. I just considered the five-Euro pints of Guinness part of the cost of admission to a great acoustic music show.}

 

Awards like this one were on display all over the city

Laurel had to bribe Matt to try this on, and she thinks it was totally worth it...
I was first introduced to Guinness beer when I visited my family in London back when I was 15. I remember it tasting pretty good, but never enjoyed it that much when I tried it again at home, so I figured it had to have just been the novelty of drinking in a bar for the first time. After my first sip of Guinness while in Dublin, I suddenly understood what all the fuss was about. Guinness is brewed and bottled right in Dublin proper and so close to the source, poured by people who know what they’re doing, it’s so good it tastes like beer milk shakes. {In the US I am not a Guinness fan and never really understood the fanatic following it has in England and Ireland, but I had at the very least three pints a day of the stuff on this vacation. It was just so fucking good!! I am now a convert and when we move back to the states, I may have to open a pub just so that I can serve my fellow Americans right proper Irish and German beer.} Later in the week Matt and I visited the Guinness brewery, where we learned all about the making of beer, practiced pouring the perfect pint {With ten steps, it is harder than one might think and drawing a shamrock in the foam with beer takes SKILL}, and enjoyed a few free glasses in the gravity bar - a completely glass walled bar on the 7th floor, with a fear-of-heights-inducing view of the city.
 

Laurel learning to pour the perfect pint

Part of the exhibit on the making of kegs at the Guinness storehouse
 
The next day while Matt was at work I took the bus into town (we were staying out by the airport, almost half an hour from city center) and wandered around in search of lunch. Dublin is a pretty expensive city and we were trying to make due on only Matt’s daily food allowance, so I wanted to find something yummy and inexpensive. I passed a Quiznos and thought “Mmm, Quiznos…” but Matt and I have a rule that we aren’t allowed to go to restaurants while traveling that we could go to at home. (Why would you eat McDonald’s in Paris when you could have exquisite French food???) I turned back around when I realized that I can’t, in fact, get Quiznos at “home”. There isn’t one to be found in all of Hamburg. I had a yummy little meal for less than 5 euros, which is relatively unheard of in downtown Dublin. I felt happily fed and proud of myself, and made my way to Dublin Castle, the first stop on my list of things to see. One can only tour the castle with a guide, so I signed up for the next English tour, which didn’t start for half an hour. There was a sand sculpture exhibit in the main courtyard, so I snapped some photos and then explored the grounds. The oldest part of the castle, with the one (of four) remaining original towers, was roped off and surrounded by trucks and people dressed in Tudor garb (clothing worn during the time of Henry the 8th.) Plenty of people stopped to ask “What are you doing?” and I edged closer when I heard the words “We’re filming a show for American TV called The Tudors.” I had discovered Showtime’s The Tudors earlier this summer while in Prague – my friends had downloaded the entire first season and were happy to share. It’s a fabulous show about young Henry and the trouble he gets into with all his wives. {Not historically accurate by any stretch of the imagination, but as long as you can separate fact from pop-history it is a good show to lose yourself in for an hour or so and there is some gratutious sex and violence.} As you all must know, I am a costumer at heart and my great love is Renaissance fashion. Also, I am in the market for a new job in my field. I found a few extras looking bored and chatted them up. They had been filming since the beginning of the summer and had lots to tell me. It would be awesome to get to work on a project like that!
 

One of many beautiful sand sculptures outside Dublin castle

Laurel posed with two Tudor extras, Malcom and Robbie
 


For the next two days Matt got off early and we toured around Dublin, checking out Christ Church, the Beatty Library, the Guinness storehouse, Trinity college and Library {a stunning collection of leather bound books, vellum manuscripts, century old oak furniture and shelving, and the much anticipated Book of Kells} and lots of Irish pubs for good beer and music. On our last full day we booked a bus tour and went with a group of about fifteen people touring around the Irish countryside. We visited a black lake, the Guinness family home and lake (they imported sand at one end to make it look like a giant pint o’ Guinness), an old Celtic monastery and lots of lovely rolling green hills, waterfalls and plenty of sheep.

 

The Talleys in the Wicklow Mountains

Gorgeous shot Matt snapped during our tour of the Celtic monastery
 

Surprisingly Ireland was never on my top list of places I NEED to travel to (Italy, Southern France, Egypt, Thailand and Japan) but I was happy to go along on a free trip with my husband. I was blown away by how lovely Ireland is and how friendly the people are. We went to Christ Church on a recommendation of a friend, and the floor tiles are so amazing that we bought a book explaining them in detail. So often we spend our trips in large cities and It was nice to get out into the Irish country side. Everyone says the rolling hills of Ireland are green, but I wasn't prepared for how green they truly were! Growing up in rainy Oregon and now living in rainy Germany, I know what green looks like. But while Oregon has the deep green of the forest, Ireland’s hills are a bright Kelly green. They almost look like they have been computer enhanced. We look forward to another trip to see the west coast of Ireland and despite Matt’s horror I do want to check out the Blarney stone! {The locals spit and pee on it...}

{It was a big treat to get to spend some time with Laurel in Ireland on the company dollar. We were there at just the perfect time: the sun shined on us the whole time. The locals told us that it was the best week that there had been all year. On other trips, I haven’t ventured outside the city, so in attention to the trip to the Wicklow Mountains being a nice change of pace from city site-seeing, it was also the first time that either of us had seen the proper green hills of Ireland. I have come to the realization that I no longer want to see new places by myself. It just feels lonely and incomplete if Laurel is there with me. Ireland reinforced that belief as my trip with her there had been better than any previous.}

Love,
Laurel and Matt
 

Matt and Laurel beside a black lake

Cheers!