Nos fuimos pa Dublin...

Hola a todos,

bueno tras un poco de parón este tiempo, volvemos online para contaros un poco qué tal estamos. Como habréis notado, ya está el frío con nosotros desde hace un tiempo, el invierno se acerca y la navidad ya está aquí.

Nosotros ya estamos en plan invernal total, con la vuelta a casa por Navidad preparada y todos los planes familiares y navideños pensados. Además de con mucho ajetreo, como siempre. Aunque sobre todo pensando que ya llevamos en Dublin ¡¡1 año y 3 meses!! madre mía como pasa el tiempo... ya hemos tenido nuestra segunda Navidad en la "ciudad siempre mojada".

Estos días hemos estado disfrutando de la ciudad y de planes sencillos, aunque han sido bastante amenos. Últimamente nos estamos pasando por las zonas de compras, como no podía ser de otra manera, buscando regalos y tomándole el pulso al ambiente navideño en la ciudad.

De Navidad en Dublin.

Salida por la noche.

Por supuesto en los centros comerciales, donde está todo montado y listo, con muchas cosas para niños y los no tan niños como yo jeje. Incluso hay una pista de patinaje sobre hielo montada en uno de ellos, donde queremos ir próximamente, a ver si lo conseguimos porque tiene buena pinta.

De Navidad en Dublin.

La casa de Papa Noel.

De Navidad en Dublin.

¡¡Y sus muñecos de nieve!!

También estuvimos, hace una semana, asistiendo al encendido de la iluminación de las calles y del árbol de navidad en O´Connell. Estuvimos junto al edificio de correos, en el centro de la ciudad, donde por cierto nos cayó bastante agua justo después de encender el árbol. Aunque no hay que quejarse, que en otras ciudades de Irlanda están teniendo unas inundaciones de la pera.

De Navidad en Dublin.

Teatro navideño.

De Navidad en Dublin.

El árbol de O'Connell antes de ser encendido.

La ciudad ha estado preciosa y la Navidad le ha sentado muy bien. El ambiente en Dublin se nota mucho y la gente se implica. Imaginamos que el consumismo, que está muy presente, hace que ésto ocurra pero también hay una parte bonita. La gente vive mucho la Navidad y se hacen muchos eventos benéficos, la ciudad cambia de ritmo, y la gente decora sus casas de forma preciosa. Hemos visto montones y montones de casas decoradas de arriba a abajo con luces y adornos y queda muy bonito.

De Navidad en Dublin.

Decoración en Henry street.

Ha habido muchos eventos navideños, y por supuesto nosotros nos hemos dado algunos gustillos: alguna cenita, cine, compras de Navidad... lo único que se nos ha pasado antes de volvernos a España ha sido patinar sobre hielo, que espero que podamos hacer aquí en España o cuando volvamos a Dublín, que sólo he patinado sobre hielo un par de veces y hace años de eso.

De Navidad en Dublin.

Grupo de personas cantando villancicos en un centro comercial.

También hay grupos de personar o niños de colegio que se organizan para cantar villancicos en la calle o en centros comerciales y obtener dinero, para organizaciones benéficas o para caridad. La verdad es que se hacen muchas cosas relacionadas con la Navidad, las iglesias también organizan misas especiales o eventos, e incluso en la universidad se organizan cafés solidarios o cosas así para recoger dinero para cualquier causa. Al menos, la navidad saca la parte positiva en este sentido.

De Navidad en Dublin.

Árbol de O'Connell encendido.

Así que tras haber disfrutado la Navidad en la ciudad, y haber hecho unas cuantas cosas por allí, palpando el ambiente Navideño, nos hemos vuelto a casa, a por un poco de relax, días en familia y también disfrutar las fiestas con los nuestros. Esperamos pasarlo bien y que vosotros también lo hagáis, disfrutad de los amigos y familia y que tengáis unas felices fiestas.

¡¡Feliz Navidad a todos!!

Hi friends!

Yes, we did a trip some time ago to Connemara and the Aran islands, and I hadn't talked about it... until now! hehehe... This trip was a really good one. We had lots of laughs, a wonderful weekend and in summary, a great time all together.

We left on Saturday morning, and everyone came in time to my house, what is amazing, and then left for Galway. We arrived there before midday and walked around he city for several hours. It's an average Irish city, nothing major, but there was a very nice street market where we had an Indian soup for lunch. It was cloudy but it didn't rain more than several raindrops.


Galway, "Shops street".

After spending some hours in Galway and have lunch there, we took the car again and drove towards Letterfrack, the town where we were going to stay, near Connemara national park. We drove to this town not using the main road but the one that goes along the coast, through the town of Clifden, the main one in the penninsula.


We visited a castle in the way.


We also went through a town where we found a "Pony fair" with auctions going on.


This way we drove through very nice landscapes and also took the sky road, a route that goes along the coast, and has some spectacular views. You can see islands and the seaview is fantastic, as an example, look at the pictures we were able to take there at dusk.

De Aran islands and Connemara.

Nice landscape.

After a good while driving and taking pictures, we took the main road again towards Letterfrack, where we arrived at about 19h, and set everything up to have dinner. We enjoyed a good time in the hostel, with a very interesting chat titled: "interesting plots in Japanese porn movies", wasn't it Kai? hahahahahaha... Anyway, the hostel was very good, we had a lot of fun and we also went for a walk around the town, where we found very very scary things.


Like this guy!!! ;)

On the next day, after a good rest, we drove to visit a very beautiful place, Kylemore Abbey, spend some time there and then drove for an hour down to the seaport of Ros a' Mhíl, where we were going to take the ferry towards the Aran islands.


Kylemore Abbey.


Let's board that ferry!!

We had a very wet and bumpy ferry trip, with the ferry moving a lot from side to side and a rough sea, but that was part of the adventure! Nobody ended up sick and 45 minutes later, we where safe in the islands. There, we got to our "lovely", "Kilronan hostel" where all the fun happened thanks to the place's life and thanks to DJ ssssshhhhhhhhuuuuu Double D in "da" house, the italian guy Marcooooooo... more on that later hehe.


Korean noodles lunch at the hostel.

We had lunch in the hostel while we were trying to sort out some things. We had some trouble in the hostel because when we got there, the kind of room with ensuite bathroom that we were supposed to have wasn't available. So, after some talking with the guy, we got one without it, a 20€ discount and... beds with sheets that hadn't been changed!! A very good deal indeed!!! That's why we spent some time there speaking with this guy to explain him we wanted new sheets... but he was an easy learner hehe.

After solving that tiny thing, we rolled fast to visit the islands by bike. We spend some hours cycling up and down, (more uphill than downhill) and got to see some very nice landscapes around the island.


Cycling.


Rainbow.

We cycled for some hours and then went back to the hostel for a shower and to relax, have dinner and the usual things. Talking again about the hostel, I am sure this italian guy who run the place, Marco, was on drugs... this guy behaved so strange... so suspicious.. he even tried to open our door in the middle of the night to look for a place to sleep... hahahaha... That guy was soooo strange. He wasn't scary, but a mix between dumb and strange. But well, in the end we managed to have a good stay in the hostel, although it wasn't the best place I had been. But I have to say that the Aran Islands were very nice, we took many pictures and enjoyed our time biking around.


At dusk, we took very good pictures.

We also went to a pub in the island at night where we saw "The Mulkerrin brothers" perform. They are the winners of the "All Irelands Talents show", it is a program like X-factor or any of those...

De Aran islands and Connemara.

The guys are really good playing and singing typical Irish songs!

After the night out and some pints, we went back to the hotel to be ready for a second day cycling around. But this time we split up in two groups, leaving the guys go and Laura and me cycled nearer the hostel, because she was quite tired.

And actually we went to the best part we saw of the island, the Black Fort. The places you must not miss are this one, the worm hole and Dún Aonghasa (these two quite near from each other). Here you have a good map.

So we went there, and the last part was really "off road" with lots of rocks in the way, until we got to the end of the road. At that point we locked the bikes there and started walking towards the cliffs (see the google map image), that were really amazing as you see in the pictures we took.

De Aran islands and Connemara.

We followed the road that goes next to the houses until we reached a rock wall that was blocking the way.

We walked around 1km next to the cliffs, and there were three main round cliffs, very very beautiful, and amazing, because of the shape, and because of the height. A really nice place.

De Aran islands and Connemara.

The cliffs.

De Aran islands and Connemara.

That small dot on the end of the rock is Laura!

And with all these wonderfull views... we walked around a lot... and in the end we had a problem. As we had walked from the end of the road to the cliffs, when we tried to go back to the bikes, we couldn't!!! So we got lost... and time was running out, the ferry was leaving at 12:00 and by 11:30 we were still runing around the fields trying to look for the road and the bikes... this was a bad time... the whole place looked like a maze, and there was no way to go...

What we did in the end was forget about the bikes and go to the houses, where, by coincidence, we found a car who was going to the dock, because the guy living in the house was going to take the ferry back to mainland, as we needed!!! At that time we saw the light, and 5 minutes before the time the ferry was going to leave, we got to the dock with them... ufffff... that was so near! We really thanked this family, because they saved us.

Of course we left the bikes in the middle of nowhere, and told the bike rental guy to pick them up in the place we left them, but that was the only thing we could do, as our friends were waiting for us in the dock with all our bags, and we were running so short on time... this time we were reeeeeally lucky! But in the end we made it to the ferry! Astounding adventure!!

De Aran islands and Connemara.

The adventurous adventurers happy after having made it to the ferry.

And that was mainly it, after we took the ferry back, we took the car again, back to Galway, and way back to Dublin, where we got all happy and safe after a wonderful trip!

Hope you liked the story, and keep following us. Our life is starting to get very interesting again hehe.

Cheers!